Akashic Records
patreon
Is It Wrong to Skitter in a Dungeon? Chapter 5
🕑 Added 2024-06-30 17:03:00 +0000 UTCChapter 5: Interlude 1
Freya idly swirled a glass of wine around in her glass as she stared out over the city. She should have been elated that little Bell had succeeded in slaying a Silverback, one of the more dangerous Level 1 monsters of the Dungeon. And she was happy, there was no doubt about it! But there were certain things that made her less than pleased despite that victory. And that problem was the girl Hestia had found. What in the name of Tenkai was she?
When Freya had tried to peer into her soul, she had immediately been forced to retreat because something had stared back. It was utterly alien, and she couldn’t even begin to fathom what that thing stuck to the girl’s soul was.
The best glimpse the goddess had managed to get was of a crystalline spider’s web strung between the stars before she’d retreated, lest the entity that spun the web that blanketed the child's soul take offense to her voyeurism. It was terrifying in the sheer impossibility of it.
‘Though seeing as it seems to be the source of her ability to control insects, I suppose a spider’s web is the perfect way to symbolize it, whatever it is,’ Freya mused to herself.
She would keep an eye on the girl. She was too odd and too close to her little Bell to allow for anything less.
And the goddess could admit that the small amount of the girl’s actual soul she had seen was tantalizing as well. Like a Rupert's Drop made of broken stained-glass window, beautiful in the fact that it had been made out of multiple pieces of colored glass and then pieced together. It was strong yet fragile in equal measure. What had the mortal experienced to make her soul look that like?
Freya unconsciously licked her lips. How exciting! Not since Evilus and the fall of Zeus and Hera had something so interesting happened in Orario! She could hardly wait to see what happened next!
&&&*&&&
Hephestus stared at the object on her desk. When Hestia had brought it to her, she’d first thought it was a joke. The Goddess of the Hearth had thought a broken knife would be able to cover the cost of creating a custom order, goddess-forged Growth Weapon? And she wanted it repaired and returned as well? Had Hestia gone crazy after being thrown out?
And yet Hephestus had agreed. Why? Because a closer inspection of the item revealed it to be made of materials she had no idea of, not to mention the fact it was a dagger with the ability to kill a Level 9 adventurer in a single hit.
Using a tiny amount of her Arcanum, the most she could reasonably get away with, the Goddess of the Forge had peered into the knife’s composition and discovered several things.
First, she could barely perceive it even with her Arcanum. Trying to observe the item’s ‘past’ using psychometry failed as well. Even materials from the Dungeon could be analyzed by her abilities as a divine craftswoman. But this? It resisted her gaze. It was foreign. Alien. Not of Genkai or Tenkai, of Earth or Heaven.
And that should have been impossible.
Secondly, after expending far more power and effort than she’d done since coming to Orario, she finally figured out what the weapon was by using her Arcanum to ‘ask’ the weapon itself what it was.
‘Nano-Thorn Dagger.’ A name. And its function? To create a cloud-like blade comprised of millions of miniscule slivers of metal that would allow it to sever the bonds between matter.
If it hit an adventurer, level alone would mean nothing, as it’d instantly shred their body and, depending on where it struck, would be instantly lethal. Not even the strongest metals known to her would be able to stop it, either, making armor worthless. A barrier made of magic might, possibly, protect against this weapon, but Hephestus wasn’t willing to bet on it.
‘Where the actual fuck did Hestia get this thing?’ Hephestus wondered. Her head ached and she wanted a drink. But she couldn’t help but think of what the existence of it meant.
If she could figure out what the alloys were, and how they were made, that alone would repay the debt Hestia had incurred.
The only real issue with the weapon, besides the impossible nature of it, was the fact that the nano-thorns had a limited number of uses. Two more at best, if Hephestus were to hazard a guess. Of course, she could be wrong. She just had no clue due to its nature. So, trying to replicate the knife would be tricky, to say the least.
But she would try and do it, because a weapon like this? It could potentially slay the Black Dragon itself, and there was nothing more important than fixing it and making more if that was the case.
She leaned back in her seat, and thought back to the final words Zeus and Hera had given her before they disappeared from Orario.
‘A dragon-slaying sword fit for a hero, huh?’ Hephestus mused to herself. ‘That’s quite the tall order. Still, it should be interesting if nothing else.’
&&&*&&&
Ouranos shifted uncomfortably on his throne, channeling his power into sprawling labyrinth beneath his feet. The Dungeon had been acting up for a week, now. It hadn’t been hard for Fels to find the reason for it, either. A Faller had appeared, and in the Dungeon, no less!
It had been decades since the last one had arrived from beyond the boundaries of Genkai, and the God of the Sky was worried, as the Dungeon had never acted as violently in the presence of a soul from Outside the world before. What made this person different?
Her ability to control insects was likely the cause, as it extended to monsters born of the Dungeon as well. Though that didn’t fully explain things, that was the best guess Ouranos’ agent could come up with at the moment.
‘This mortal… what is she?’ Ouranos wondered. Fels had his hands full dealing with the revelation of the Xenos and working to solve it without copious amounts of bloodshed from adventurers and Xenos alike, so he could not use him to investigate beyond what he’d already done.
Nor could he use the Guild to keep an eye on her, beyond what they’d already be doing due to her ability to control monsters.
‘Perhaps I could nudge Ganesha in her direction?’ Ouranos mused to himself. The eccentric god of the people would likely be drawn to her regardless, as his Familia was famed for being monster tamers, he didn’t have to do anything in that regard.
‘The real issue is that other gods will now have their eyes on her,’ the God of the Sky thought, before shuddering at the thought. Even with his Arcanum dedicated to suppressing the Dungeon, Ouranos didn’t need to be able to see the future to know that any god who got on the bad side of the girl, this ‘Taylor Hebert,’ would end up back in Tenkai. At best.
‘Can Orario withstand the chaos she will bring upon us?’ Ouranos couldn’t help but wonder. He wasn’t sure it would. Though perhaps a bit of a shake-up to the status quo could help knock some of the rust off the city and its defenders it had accumulated in the past few years.
Nothing like a wildcard to make the game more interesting, after all.
&&&*&&&
Queen Administrator was not often happy, nor would the crystalline alien supercomputer really understand that emotional comparison, but this was the closest approximation it was capable of.
And for good reason, too! Her host had not only survived being transported to the other world, she had also been picked up by a fellow member of her species who had rescued her!
There was a lot of new data to acquire, as well, which was even better! Already Queen Administrator was compiling the data from this interesting new world, which seemed to have access to an energy source that was completely foreign to her databanks!
A liquid made of unusual components that could heal wounds when ingested or applied topically? Living creatures that radiated energy capable of altering reality in interesting ways, and higher dimensional beings that could ‘descend’ onto lower planes of existence and interact with the natives of the world? So much glorious new data!
Not to mention, something was oddly familiar about the place her host had appeared in. No, not the city and world, which was clearly just a parallel iteration of the one her host had originated from, but the pocket dimension the portal’s coordinates had led to. How very strange, to encounter something similar to an entity like the Thinker and Warrior, and yet not, at the same time.
Then, last but certainly not least, was this ‘Falna’ that one of the higher dimensional beings had etched into the essence of her host. At first, Queen Administrator had been infuriated by the intrusion into her host’s mind. She tried to repel the intruder, but after some thought (and being unable to force the other being away without damaging the host further), decided to agree to the strange idea to share the host between them.
‘Sharing’ was not a concept the entities had really understood. Oh, they would exchange data and shards with one another if they happened to stumble across any of their own kind, but this was instinctive, as well as a transaction, and done between members of the same species. Shards did not allow other shards to have access to their hosts. That was just ‘wrong’ on a fundamental level to the entities.
Letting the higher dimensional being occupy the host’s essence galled Queen Administrator, for her host was hers alone! But the sheer quantity and quality of data received from this act was worth it, in the end. And it wasn’t like Queen Administrator was giving up control, either. She still occupied her host’s brain. The higher dimensional being had merely carved out a pocket dimension of sorts where the exotic matter of the local reality would be collected before eventually infusing the host’s body. A curious method of energy storage, one that had intriguing possibilities for the entities themselves.
Was it possible that this world might contain the secret to combating entropy? Maybe. Less than a one percent chance, if Prediction Engine’s calculations were correct. But it was still a non-zero chance, and that was good enough for Queen Administrator. She’d even gone so far as to prep several new nodal server-growths in anticipation of all the extra data that was sure to come!
Queen Administrator was indeed happy with her decisions these last few nano- and micro-cycles. And now that she had almost completed the process of taking over both the Warrior and the Thinker’s Nodes for herself, she could begin work on fixing the damage that’d been sustained in the last cycle.
So many things to do, so little time!
