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Dungeon Delving is Damn HARD - 7.5 Interlude
🕑 Added 2022-10-28 04:02:00 +0000 UTCLOKI
"Should we have someone watch him?" Asked Gareth as he scratched his beard, the dwarf didn't particularly believe it was needed, but it was always better to be cautious.
"No, I think he was just intimidated by us." Voiced Finn, the Loki familia captain had considered having the boy followed, but decided against it.
True, there was a chance the boy had been a mole from the attacking bandits, and his obvious fear was suspicious but, from what Ramillia had said, he had fought with his life on the line and the enemies hadn't even hinted at his involvement.
He also hadn't tried to curry favor with their familia, or even seem interested in the fake map they had been using to draw his attention so, even if he had been a mole, their activities didn't seem to be his target.
Plus, Finn wasn't above giving someone a second chance if they earned it, and it seemed like the boy had.
"He wasn't afraid of you guys." Said Loki herself with a serious voice. "Well, he was, but it wasn't really about you guys."
"Then why?"
"He was absolutely terrified of me!" She said with barely contained laughter, her red eyes shining in interest. "How amusing, he was in a room with 3 level six adventurers and the one that made him shake was little old me."
Riveria sighed and made a brief prayer for the poor adventurer. Let the other gods have mercy on his soul because Loki certainly wouldn't.
"Loki-sama, you have a lot of work to do." She said to try and distract her god.
"Come on Riveria-chan, did you see the way he shook every time I moved?" Jumping on top of the table, Loki put both hands behind her head and gave a wide, predatory smile. "Where else will I find such a perfect toy?"
Well… in the end, she didn't try very hard, a bored Loki was annoying and, if it took a traumatized adventurer to satisfy her, it was a sacrifice Riveria was willing to make.
"I guess we're getting someone to follow him after all?" Asked Finn as he looked at his goddess, he didn't really need her approval to make decisions for the familia, but he liked to accommodate her whims, it was better for everyone involved.
"No, no I'll be watching him personally… I wonder how far he'd jump if I suddenly appeared behind him?"
Incredibly happy with her discovery, Loki pushed herself up and fled the room before Riveria could grab her, leaving a mountain of paperwork behind.
"Poor guy." All three of them signed at the same time, then they started spreading the real dungeon map over the table so they could finally start to plan their next delve.
"Get a team to protect Loki anyway." Finn said as he grabbed a stack of notes from their previous expedition. "I don't think the boy will be dangerous, but we better make sure."
"Any preferences?"
"Use people Loki won't feel tempted to harass, no need to get our female members mad at us."
"Good thinking." Nodded Gareth, the dwarf patted Finn on the back and opened the door to shout for someone to follow Loki before the goddess started a riot on the streets.
"Ugh, why do I feel this is gonna be trouble?"
"Because it's Loki, anything that grabs her attention leads to trouble."
All three leaders of Loki familia briefly traded glances and sighed, over the years, they had learned to love Loki, but they still couldn't help but wish she were more like Hephestos.
FREYA
At the very top of Babel tower, an elegant woman sat looking down over the city of Orario, all around her laid plucked rose petals spread all over the floor.
Freya's eyes searched the city for a long time before she found her target and watched him look around in worry, her body gave a little shudder and she grabbed another rose from a vase beside her chair.
Slowly, her delicate fingers plucked a petal and released it to drift down to the floor.
"Should I do it…"
"What is the problem, my goddess?" Asked Ottar from behind her, the giant boaz always willing to hear her musings.
"Do you feel fear Ottar?" she mused in a calm tone. "I don't think I ever asked you about it but, when facing a new monster or some impossible odds in the dungeon, are you afraid?"
"Yes." He answered simply, even as one of his hands found the handle of his sword and squeezed.
"I had never felt fear before, you know." She confessed and pulled another petal out, throwing it over the edge of the tower. "That shiver down my spine, the feeling of helplessness and oppression, as if something has grabbed my heart and is slowly squeezing…"
With a flushed face, Freya squeezed her legs together and her whole body shook with pleasure.
"His aura should have been so uninteresting, incredibly damaged, yes, but it was only a light green color filled with sports of red." Sighing again, she let her body sprawl over her chair as she saw him ducking under an alley and away from her gaze.
"A perfectly ordinary aura, were it not for the lines of deep purple running across it, they grabbed at his colors, holding then together and tainting them as if they would consume him, as if it would consume me just by looking, it's even causing my divine origin to shake."
"What's the name of the one I should kill?" Ottar asked with barely contained rage, how dare a lowly adventurer threaten his goddess!
"Oh, stop it Ottar. Nobody is gonna kill him if I can help it."
"I see…" The giant forced his hand to release the weapon and sighed, his goddess did like to play with danger.
"Come now." Freya laughed as she pulled another petal out of the rose and threw it in his face. "Would you deny me this excitement, Ottar? You, who throws himself in the dungeon over and over again, facing danger every day would deny me the chance to do the same?"
"Of course not, my goddess."
"Besides, he may have that strange aura clinging to him, and those eyes that feel so close to the divine, but he's barely a level 1." Freya sighed and finally relaxed. "I doubt he has more than a single status over H."
Ottar didn't say anything else, but Freya was sure he understood, he was the child who was closest to her after all.
Freya looked down on Orario once again and sighed when she couldn't find him, he was always so quickly to sense her gaze.
Truth be told, she had the urge to send Ottar down there and slay the kid once and for all, she had a familia to protect and her promises to keep, she really shouldn't risk her life like this but… she couldn't go against her nature.
Freya had always loved collecting heroes, those who shone the brightest or had the most beautiful colors would always find a place amongst her children, but she had never encountered something like this before.
For all intends, the adventurer had been a weakling, she could see it had been barely a month since he received a falna and, while his growth was impressive, it wasn't impossible so.
Still, that deep purple color she couldn't see through, that little bit of aura holding his own soul in place and slowly spreading its tentacles over the rest, mixing with it, changing it.
It had left her heart beating madly against her chest.
Even before incarnating in the mortal world, she had hardly felt such danger, such power… and such allure.
Freya had taken dangerous lovers before, she had taken risks and gotten involved with those capable of hurting her but, even then, the most they could do was send her back to heaven.
There was just something different about courting something fully capable of ending her very existence… could he truly kill a god? Could she afford to find out?
"Should I not…" She mumbled as she plucked the last petal on her current rose without coming to a decision.
She let the rose fall from her fingers and quickly found her own hands tracing her body until one of them was squeezing her chest and the other found its way inside her tight pants.
Should she end the treat before it affected her familia? Should she help it grow until it could? She couldn't decide, and the roses weren't helping.
Even without the strange purple on his aura, the adventurer still had those eyes, she could see they were deteriorated, but their origin had been something great.
Not divine, no, but something equally powerful, was he a descendant from some mighty spirit? How much of their former power would those eyes regain if he grew stronger?
So many questions…
No, for now, she would wait without interfering, she would see if those purple strings would continue to grow and consume him or fade away after his wounded aura healed, leaving him an ordinary man.
She really hoped she could find out quickly, before she was unable to stop herself.
DIX PERDIX
Perdix poked at the creature in the cage with his cursed spear and laughed as it desperately tried to avoid him.
He really wanted to kill the damn thing, to drive his spear through its core and watch as it dissolved in front of its friends, to savor their fear and helplessness as he did it to them too.
The headache hit him suddenly, making him grab at his cursed eye and scream in defiance even as he pulled the spear back and left the lizardman alone.
It seemed he had been killing far too many of them lately, the curse wouldn't let him continue.
Sometimes, Perdix though it would be better to be like his brother, so lost into the curse he couldn't care about anything else but growing the damn labyrinth.
But no, he was the money man, the curse needed his brother to work on the walls and doors, to sculpt the labyrinth as that bastard had envisioned it, but it also needed him to gather the necessary money and materials.
Sometimes, Perdix wondered what he would have become if the curse didn't force him to gather money, to desperately fight for every single magic stone and valy he could get his hands on, just so he could buy more Orichalcum to complete the damn place.
Truth be told, he hadn't even taken pleasure at tormenting and killing the monsters, well… Not in the beginning.
It had just been an act of rebellion, a way to deny his curse the money they'd bring by devaluing or even destroying their bodies.
"Perdix-sama, it seems they have failed to kill the adventurer."
"What?" He asked and jumped down from the monster's cage to fall before the bald man. "How the hell did they fail to kill a single level 1 adventurer?"
He wasn't really mad about it, the fuck did he care if Enyo wanted some poor SOB dead after all, more like, he was baffled that his own familia was so incompetent as to fail on such simple task.
The tattooed bald man grabbed the surviving crossbowman and forced him down to his knees in front of Perdix.
"He wasn't alone." Gran said as he laid his huge great sword against the floor and shook the man. "Explain what happened again."
Hearing the explanation didn't make Perdix feel that much better, sure, losing to a party, even a heavily wounded party, was better than losing to a single level 1, but not by much.
"Did you guys at least find out his name or something?"
"Roland Perdix-sama." Answered the kneeling man as he tried to wipe cold sweat from his forehead. "In Riviera, he said his name was Roland Sinclair."
"And which familia he's from?"
"He never told anyone."
Grabbing at his spear, Dix imagined piercing the man through his chest and throwing him to the monsters, but a new spike of pain changed his mind.
Even família members were resources and, without the payment from Enyo, his curse was being even more insistent.
Godsdamnit, why did that damn shady god had to have such odd tastes? Every once in a while they'd get some completely random request to murder an adventurer or party and, for the life of him, Perdix couldn't find out why.
Wiping his arm around, Perdix smashed his spear into the cage, sending sparks flying all over the floor and scaring both monsters and adventurers.
"Alright, alright, I'm calm." Taking a deep breath, he rubbed the spot above his eyes and hoped his damn curse would stop demanding more resources. "Find out where this asshole is, take a level three or four and end him!"
Another spike of pain hit him, causing him to stumble in place, he should have known it wouldn't do to test his curse, but he just couldn't help trying to sabotage it's efforts.
"Tsk… wait, just monitor him for now, wait until the guy steps into the dungeon before acting." deciding to give up for the day, Perdix twisted his spear and let it rest quietly at his back. " Try to use a monster train to kill him, make it looks like an accident or something, it wouldn't do for someone to get suspicious."
"What about the Loki familia?"
"They didn't capture anyone alive did they?"
"No Perdix-sama."
"Then they shouldn't be able to find out anything, that's why I said to make it look like an accident!" He pressed two finger to the idiot's forehead and poked it repeatedly. "Two attacks against a level 1 would be suspicious, but a dungeon related accident…"
Sometimes, he wondered why he even bothered to train those idiots anyway.
Then he remembered that, without them to bring in the money, the curse would probably force him to hunt in the dungeon 24/7 and sighed.
"Having trouble with your subordinates?" Asked the tall god with amusement as he inspected a small goblin trembling inside one of the cages.
"Just some idiots messing up one of Enyo's little assassinations, Thanatos." He greeted the god.
At least Thanatos was bearable, the way he played with his own delusional familia without even having to trick them was incredibly amusing.
"Hmm, perhaps I should get some of my own people looking into it?"
Perdix smirked, he couldn't order his own familia to cause a mess and lose him money but, if Thanatos wanted to do it for him…
Like him, Thanatos didn't really need their plans to succeed, he wanted to win sure but, far more importantly, he wanted to have fun doing it.
He wondered how much trouble the god's little fanatics would cause this time.
OURANOS
In a closed off room bellow the guild, a lone god sat upon a stone throne, his expression was serious as he looked down upon the dungeon in concern.
Was it trying to find a way around their deal already?
"Fels!"
"You called, Ouranos-sama?" Asked a tall robed figure as it seemed to materialize from the shadows.
"Something escaped from the dungeon." Ouranos told his only familia member.
"Hmmm, did it use a different exit? No, you wouldn't have felt it them but, how did it overcome your prayers?"
Ouranos himself frowned, that was a question he had been asking himself for a few days already.
"I felt it was born from the dungeon but… not, I am certain it wasn't a monster at least." He tapped a single finger against the armrest of his throne, trying to find an answer.
"A Xenos then?"
"No, this creature is something new." Ouranos said, his once impassive face growing concerned.
"Hmmm, first the Xenos, then those odd movements in the deep floors, now this… the dungeon is changing fast."
"Whatever escaped the dungeon is free in Orario, find it Fels."
"And what should I do once it's found?" The robed man asked, a metal gauntlet rising from under the dark robes to scratch at his hidden face.
"Whatever you find necessary."
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