Chapter 1: Broken, but still kicking
Notes:
AN: As usual, massive shoutout to Merlenyn for beta reading this! 😁
This does also have stuff from 2 other universes she's gone through, and they even show up sometimes, but I didn't tag them since they aren't the focus of this fic in the series. That would be a female Harry Potter from the series of the same name along with Hei and Misaki from Darker then Black reincarnating into Solo Leveling.
So. When I made Calanthe's name in her 5th life, I just grabbed Korean name elements, like how a lot if not the majority of their names are element1-element2?
I was just picking ones I thought were fitting for them and apparently by sheer coincidence re-made an actual Korean word with Calanthe's name in this life? Doubt I did for the others but, no clue, and I mean, it's not a big deal, a lot of names have meanings or are technically actually words. Especially since it was also apparently the name of the 25th monarch of Silla, so it's definitely a valid name in general though I'm not sure how common it is or if the actual Korean culture avoids it due to its historical significance, especially given said Jinji was a King so while it may be a unisex name, it may also be masculine, though that also may just be a matter of what characters are used, but I don't know, lol. Just a... weird coincidence for the word thing though. Especially given the word's -not the elements as used in a name but the word itself's- meaning is... weirdly fitting for her... Meanings of Jinji the word though it doubtlessly uses different characters:
Seriousness/earnestness- That's a pretty good descriptor for her in general. Yeah sure, she like, jokes and laughs with her soulmates and sister-in-law or even others fairly easily, it's not like it's the only facet of her, but on the whole, it fits her fairly well.
A military position (technically part of the phrase jinji-reul guchukhada ― to set up a position with jinji specifically in this context meaning “camp”, “position”, or “stronghold” from what I saw online)- Again, cross her lines or her…
From what I saw, it's also a respectful word for meal, especially for elders or superiors, and while I could make a jokey comment about her husband and how one could say it fits her in that way too, but I'm not sure if that would be inappropriate or not given the word is supposed to be respectful and all that, so I ain't gonna actually full on say it. This part is just an acknowledgment of “I can't say this is all the meanings of it, but this is another I saw, and I'm not forgetting about it or am unable to say one could claim it fits her, but here are the vague reasons why I'm not going to go there” soft of thing. Since from my understanding, respect is a much bigger thing in Eastern cultures then it is in a lot of western cultures and I have no clue if making a joke about a respectful word like that would in and of itself be disrespectful? Figure it's better to be safe though.
For anyone joining from the Solo Leveling fic pages, you're more than welcome to join, but be warned, this is part 5 in the series for a reason. Also, reincarnation that becomes Sung Jin-Woo has less in common than she's had with other MCs she's been reborn as though isn't exactly an entirely different person compared to the last one? All that being said, for anyone joining who's interested, there is a Discord Server where at minimum I actually put out notifications about chapters going live so people don't have to either wait for email notification or to let them know if they happen to be waiting because they know I post Mondays and roughly the time, since sometimes there are sometimes minor delays, usually in the form of still working on finishing up a final read through to try and catch any errors.
More of a funny side note than anything, but usually when you're filling out the fields when submitting a fic, like characters and additional tags, as you're typing, it'll try to predict and if you see what you're trying to tag, you can just click it, right? If you don't it will just kind of perpetually display 'Searching...' in the pop-up below where it recommends tags, but you just type it out, and if you need to add any other tags, use the comma to separate them. 😐 I seem to have made a tag. Because AO3 certainly didn't recognize it when I first put it in, and while I don't totally recall and could've been copying the text of the link for the tag and just pasted it in, therefore leaving it no time to try to recognize it, it now suggests the tag 'Hei/Kirihara Misaki/Harry Potter' which it did not do before. And of which the only fics are the ones I've written. So. Apparently I made a tag AO3 now recognizes? 🤷♀️
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sung Jin-Ji is smiling tiredly. Not that it's unusual. She's always tired for reasons she doesn't understand and no doctor her concerned parents had taken her to had been able to figure out.
Currently she was kinda sitting on Jae-Min's leg, her own on either side where its knee is hooked over the top of the monkey bars as he dangles upside down, his hands tucked behind his head as he jokes with his younger twin sister, Jae-Hui who's leaning against the pole planted in the ground leading up to the one she's sitting on.
Their other close friend, Ha-Eun was sorta sitting on his other leg next to her, mouth tucked behind her hand to hide her amused giggling as she watches the siblings.
And then it very quickly proves to likely be a good thing they're kinda sitting on Jae-Min's legs.
Maybe he'd have been able to react in time and use some of his abilities, but he goes kinda slack as the memories slam in like a tidal wave.
Her hands tighten instinctively from where she's bracing her tired slump holding onto it on either side of her legs, even as Ha-Eun tips into her and grabs her arm desperately as her angle starts to slide her past her back. Below them Jae-Hui sways like someone spun her too much too fast on a merry-go-round, a hand reaching up to press her fingers against her forehead as her eyes go wide.
Below her as the memories fade and the vague, unfocused background noise that the world became while she was bombarded by memories, Jae-Min sucks in a sharp breath. She hardly has time to blink tiredly at the world before he's suddenly forcing his untrained six year old body to perform an upside down crunch without even grabbing the bar to try to assist and kissing her straight on the lips hard. By hard she just means the pressure not how he's kissing her.
Still though, even if it's little more than a lip to lip press and nothing more, the strength may not technically be triggering the block nor be inherent crossing the line, but it feels like a bit much given their physical ages. Which is why she gives him a playful shove that does little more than pushes him back maybe half a foot before bringing her hand up between their faces as his own hands come up to grab the monkey bars, probably so he doesn't have to deal with the awkward crunch with his untrained body, “Jae-Min! Behave!”
He laughs in complete and total relief as his eyes greedily drink her face in even as he tries to playfully duck around her hand, “Never!”
Apparently Ha-Eun agrees with his assessment, since she tilts her face towards her to place her own hard kiss to her lips. She pulls away with a laugh, “You two are impossible!”
None of them acknowledge the fact that it's just because the last time they had their memories and saw her, she was literally breaking apart in their arms, as they both keep dodging around her hands to kiss her more, hard enough to be skirting the edge of decency in her opinion.
She supposes she should just be grateful at the fact that the Rowena copy she left behind had already agreed to use Decomposition on her soulmates and sister-in-law after her death at their request so they didn't have to outlive her however long it would've taken their own bodies to break down.
Not that she wants to think about that right now, too much pain dealt to her soulmates, too close to what she imagines happened in Chronoa's echo timeline from what was said about what happened and their soulmate marks. Right now, she's perfectly happy to just indulge in being alive and her soulmates playfully trying to snatch admittedly desperate kisses while she tries to fend them off.
After the playfulness tapers off and Jae-Min and Ha-Eun manage to gently bully her off the monkey bars -probably lingering terror that she'll break with the slightest bit too much pressure- they settle on one of the benches while Jae-Hui wanders off to buy some ice creams for them.
Mind, Jae-Min seems to take that as an opportunity to try to kiss her again, even harder though it still doesn't trigger the block so as far as it's concerned it's still in the realm of okay, even if it feels indecent to her. She shoves him back again with a huff of laughter, then flicks his forehead before pointing at him, “Excuse you mister! You are six! Rules say no kissing until seventeen at least! You've got eleven more years until kissing is allowed!”
Jae-Min all but squawks, “For make out sessions and the like! Chaste kisses are within the rules! That was a peck! A peck!”
She shakes her head, “It was not! That was absolutely not just a peck!”
Their wife is laughing almost hysterically, “Even if it wasn't, considering how that last life ended, you can't blame him that his instinct is to kiss you for all he's worth without really taking in our current ages. I'd have been kissing you like that more if he didn't get there first and your lips weren't occupied already.”
She rolls her eyes at that, “I'm fine.” Then she lifts her arms wide, “You can see that yourself.”
Her wife shakes her head before replying rather flatly, “Physically maybe, but those soul corridors and my Ananke Skill means I can tell you have a wildly different definition of fine then I do if you consider that fine.”
She shakes her head with another eye roll, “That's something I can recover from in time, like a broken limb, it'll just take longer is all.”
Her wife turns to her husband, to ask him tiredly, “Why is she like this?”
Her husband responds without missing a beat in a tone just as flat as Ha-Eun's was just a few moments ago, “Because she's absolutely ridiculous.”
Then he turns to her quickly, and hisses out somewhat threateningly, “I swear to the Reaper -since that means far more to you Potters-, I will put you in a goddamn basement if something comes up and you even think about-!”
She cuts him off with a snort, before dryly responding, “Fortuna didn't completely break. You can try but chances are, you'd likely just end up taking yourself out of play.”
To what extent it was still active and usable, she'd have to poke and prod at and test the waters, because unfortunately… Both Elemental Sight and Multidimensional Perception had broken, so. She can't just study it with that. She's not about to tell her soulmates that if they're gonna threaten to lock her up though.
In that vein, as well as for general use, she should probably summon her Trunk and retrieve one of the bracelets or necklaces with the magic script for them embedded into it. It makes her breathlessly happy she'd updated the Trunk's ambient magic absorption to be able to run on raw MA energy from whatever planet in whatever universe they were in though, given otherwise one of the others would have to manually power it while she figured it out since this universe doesn't seem to have the sorts of magics she saw in other universes before her last one.
MA energy was the source of all magic and life though, so she can't see herself ever landing in one where that isn't available. She had had to temporarily remove all of the stuff she kept stashed in it to keep or for emergencies, but that was purely as a just-in-case measure against it basically shutting down if she messed up when somehow when she was using Separate to remove the stores and traces of the types of magics from her the universes she lived in prior to the last one.
Of course, she'd dutifully made magic reservoirs capable of holding so much magic to put the Separated magic into with Synthesis. No point letting the massive wells of power it had saved up go to waste after all. Well, there wasn't as much of her first life's magic left, given how much got used up before she managed to alter the Trunk to accept the ambient magic of her second life, but there was still a decent amount of even that left.
And all that was just to avoid anything like in her third life where the magic of it didn't play well with the magics of her previous two lives. Can't have a poor reaction to a type of magic if it's run on and absorbs the raw building blocks of magic after all. She'd had had to add to its magic more to give it the ability to absorb whatever magic type a universe she may land in builds the MA energy into and pull it apart into MA energy, but that was no big deal.
Nevertheless, her current circumstances also make her unbelievably glad that she has such ingrained habits of preparing for every eventuality she can think of, particularly when she knows things are about to end poorly.
Azathoth's Imaginary Space would've collapsed and taken everything inside with it when it broke. She'd prepared for that by transferring everything of particularly high value, personal or otherwise, back into the Trunk out of Azathoth.
Well, she hadn't shifted Charybdis’ core out of Isolation and into it. If she's lucky, the fact it was destroyed with Imaginary Space's collapse while completely cut off from the Central World will mean it can't ever form again anyway. She's not holding her breath though. Not that it's a big deal. If she has to re-absorb it later after she recovers and shove it back into Isolation, then so be it. It's not like Jura-Tempest didn't have the means to destroy and seal it if it reforms before then.
But while she hasn't managed to shift that, she had added some things of other high value like a Hipokute Farm and Lambas fruit orchard, as well as made sure it had all the knowledge and everything needed for their processing.
At her husband's sullen demand from his ‘trauma’ of having to substitute in his cooking back in Jura-Tempest's early days, as well as not having to lose the possible things Lambas fruit can be used in, when she says she means all of the things they can be processed for she means all of them.
She'd also had people pop in so it could learn their knowledge about various alcohol crafts and set up any farms that may be needed for such. That one could be accused of being more frivolous, but it kept her husband happy just in case they ended up somewhere that lacked the alcohols used in or paired with things he cooked, or other things that come from such that are either used as ingredients or as sides.
However, she'd disagree that it's more frivolous. Sure, things like their gear or everything for Full Potions and other such things were more vital, but she'd argue it wasn't anymore frivolous than her stiletto knife hairsticks. They were ultimately just a present meant to try and make up for previously having to leave birthday and anniversary presents in the Trunk before she worked out that runic ‘tag’ marking things to summon back to it when they died so may have sentimental value unlike him having everything for cooking, but at their very core they were things that made them both happy.
So while she couldn't exactly say him having all that was as important as those hairsticks, she'd argue it was still important and not frivolous in general. A good chunk of the things in the Trunk may be important but in all actuality, the majority of the things in the Trunk were at their very core things that made them happy, even if it was usually due to sentimental value.
On another note, she'd added more of those runic ‘tags’ to more things that were frequently outside of it that she didn't want to lose during reincarnation if they didn't happen to be inside to summon them back into the Trunk the moment it detected her death. But towards the very end, she'd also thought to replicate Azathoth's magic script onto it, which wasn't too hard even without shutting it down and losing all its memory with Synthesis.
The primary idea was another way into Azathoth's Imaginary Space without necessarily needing to have a Parallel Existence hold open an entryway into it. But now with Azathoth and its ability to maintain and access Imaginary Space broken, it was not only the only way to access Imaginary Space, but it should've also sort of unintentionally taken over maintaining Imaginary Space's existence from the original copy of Azathoth on her shattered soul.
Which… only increases her happiness that when she'd done that and was making preparations for any eventually she could think of, she'd pulled the Trunk out of Imaginary Space to wait in the regular world for her to summon it.
Given that though, there's definitely a mental note to never actually store it in Azathoth. Take it inside momentarily for ease of transferring things between them, sure, but storing the Trunk in Imaginary Space? Never again.
She certainly doesn't plan to ever break her soul or Azathoth again, but it's clear that if she did, best case, while it may maintain Imaginary Space for her and since this is best case, she should still be able to summon it out, it's all too easy to imagine that second part is beyond her and everything may be safe at the moment, but she'll have no access with the backdoor that is the Trunk stuck inside Imaginary Space itself and could very well lose everything stored in both if Imaginary Space is erased. Which is all too high of a possibility, given if the Trunk is stuck inside Azathoth, while there technically is some ambiance MA energy for it to absorb from the orchards and fields and the like inside of it, she has no clue if that can keep up with it.
And if it can't in such a scenario, yeah, the safety features she built in to prevent it from drawing directly from living things rather than just the MA energy they radiate may stop it from directly killing all the orchards and fields. But it wouldn't save them from it absorbing too much from the ground to continue to live anyway. Nor from Imaginary Space collapsing if it could no longer maintain it for her before they died.
Not storing the Trunk in Imaginary Space should never be a huge deal anymore after she recovers, but she'd still rather be safe than sorry.
She's pulled back to the flicker of thought as Jae-Min lets out an enraged growl, “Woman. You drive me absolutely insane sometimes, you know that? And not always in a fun way!”
She rolls her eyes at him before shifting the topic, “This seems like a fairly peaceful world. No magic either from what I can tell.”
Ha-Eun pushes out a slightly harder breath, “...Yeah. probably for the best with your state. You need some peace while you recover rather than gods only knows what putting nonsensical ideas into your head that you have to do something.”
She's honestly a little surprised, though once more incredibly ecstatic when she hears Rowena, <I quite agree with Ha-Eun Creator.>
It's not exactly a general surprise Rowena is fine even with her shattered soul and destroyed Azathoth, which she'd originally been attached to for, well, all of less than a minute before she used her name and Words of the World mistook her for a Manas. At which point her ego had been detached from Azathoth -well, at the time Raphael- and her ego was pulled down into the center of her Heart Core along with her own.
So technically she was fully aware Rowena should be fine, that if she was alright, Rowena certainly should be as well. It's still incredibly relieving to get confirmation though. Honestly, the only reason she was surprised was just because she hadn't been expecting it and was still settling from her memories coming back.
Rowena piping up reminds her though. At its core, the beaches of magic that were Occlumency and Legilimency were the makers basically stumbling across how to train an ego to read the recording of memories from the infons of the part of the soul that makes up the Heart Core directly even if they were consciously unknowing of that, which actually explains a whole lot about why the Mental Magic of her second life felt so much weaker given they worked entirely on the physical brain.
It also explains why memory charms from her first life never really worked all that well on Occlumens since such spells also affected the physical brain. And why an Occlumens would have a sort of double of memories if a fake one was planted, since their physical brain would be telling them one thing while the infon records on their Heart Core told them something else entirely.
Legilimens also unknowingly read infon records from a Heart Core, but if they came up against an Occlumens, they were essentially trying to get through whatever infons the Occlumens had unknowingly inscribed with defense or false memories to get to the real information.
The problem is, it means she literally can't use Occlumency to find out if she lost any memories when her soul was being damaged since the memories she'd be looking for would just be… gone. She could potentially scour through and just try to find blank spots, but that's significantly more complicated and depending on the timing of a potentially missing memory, she may not even be able to find it. Like, as an example, if she lost a memory of a sleepy relaxed chat with her soulmates from just before she dozed off, then the memories she does have suddenly ending… well, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume she'd fallen asleep, now wouldn't it?
That's alright though. She may not be able to tell if there's anything missing, but Rowena would.
Having not been thinking behind the walls she put up to have privacy from Rowena when necessary, which funnily enough had been sort of what tipped her off towards figuring out how Occlumency worked since she'd unknowingly made a literal wall of infons sectioning part of that hollow in the middle of the Heart Core where their egos were so she had someplace Rowena's ego didn't have inherent access to and would have to actively work to reach, it's not surprising in the slightest she picked up on that, <I hope you don't mind my presumption Creator, but I've technically been here the whole time while I was waiting for you to ‘wake up’ as it were, as such, I did a thorough check when you were a baby. It's probably unsurprising, but there are some memories missing, not a whole lot, just small fragments that… flaked off as it were while your soul was breaking. I, of course, have records of them and can remake them perfectly with blank infons to restore them, but I thought it may not be wise with the current state of your Heart Core, and even if it would've been fine, I didn't wish to do so without your permission anyhow.>
She nods absently, before asking, <Was any of it particularly important? Personally or otherwise.>
Rowena hums even as her soulmates stiffen a little at the thought she may have even temporarily lost memories that were important on a personal level, <In general, no, though there are some that aren't majorly important that are somewhat important. Smaller things. Joking around and making that bet with Yanagi Muraji as to whether it would be your fault or someone else's if or when it came out that you were perfectly capable of being terrifying when you want to be or are pushed.>
She sighs lightly, if she was going to lose memories, she'd have preferred if they were things she didn't care about in the slightest obviously, things like walking somewhere alone with nothing important on her mind. She doesn't like losing any memories of friends, even if it's not all of them, but she's rather thankful she didn't lose any major or important memories.
All in all though… Perpetual tiredness, loss of power, and the loss of a few non-critical or important memories is a pretty cheap price to pay to save an entire planet without having to do something drastic like evacuate everyone even with the risk of people not believing her about the reasons and thinking she was enslaving them, perhaps even sexually in some case, and committing suicide or worse killing children in some misguided attempt to save them from her.
Ha-Eun shakes her head, “It can't really be helped, but… it could've been a lot worse.”
She nods slowly, “Yeah. I was just thinking that myself.”
Jae-Min narrows his eyes at her, “Liar. You were thinking it's a cheap price to pay.”
She waves a hand lazily, “Semantics. It's the same thing.”
He shakes his head, “It really isn't. There's actually a pretty big difference between ‘well, could've come out the other side of that mess in a worse condition’ and ‘the price I paid is absolutely worth it’ fundamentally.”
Ha-Eun gives a weak laugh, “Oh, don't bother Jae-Min. She's basically never going to understand that.”
She drops her gaze to where she's clutching the edge of the bench, squeezing and releasing it rhythmically. She tilts her head at her, “Ha-Eun? Is something wrong?”
Ha-Eun shakes her head slowly, “I- No. Not exactly. I was just- Before you finished your calculations and we went to deal with things, I was working on training with my Moirai Sub-Skill, even though it meant I was seeing… some rather unpleasant visions of possibilities.” She takes a shaky breath, “I was just- just thinking that if this world doesn't have magic or the sort of problems our last had- Well, I was thinking it may be a good opportunity to train it, y'know?”
Jae-Min nods slowly, “You… aren't exactly wrong there. It should- I mean, worst case, you should just be seeing visions of us dying to old age, right? And I mean, even if you see a vision of one of us dying in some sort of accident like another car crash, that just gives us warning to try to avoid it. This universe… probably is your best bet when it comes to training it while avoiding things like that.”
Ha-Eun nods and she bites her lip. There's not a whole lot she can do about it, but she can't help but have a sinking feeling that- Well, that unlike her second life, not only will she die much earlier than them, but unlike that life, she won't be able to delay it to prevent having to leave her soulmates so much earlier.
MA energy isn't just magic, it's also the source of life. For a living thing like her, it comes from the soul. With hers broken, she produced about half of what an average human did.
With it being the energy of life… she'll probably have a shorter lifespan as a result.
She can't help but wonder how much earlier that will make her leave her soulmates, but there's nothing she can do about it.
Ha-Eun suddenly throws her hands up, breaking the meditative pose she was sitting in while she tried to concentrate on getting a hold of Moirai. It was actually only a couple hours after their memories came back, but that wasn't exactly surprising given Ha-Eun wasn't any more prone to procrastination than she is. Pretty much as soon as they got around to leaving the park and going back to her place, Ha-Eun settled into working on Moirai, though it was apparently frustrating her if the thrown hands are any indication, “I just don't fucking understand!”
She gives her wife a concerned look, “Understand what?”
Ha-Eun runs an aggravated hand through her bangs, “You said it would take lifetimes for your soul to start making any real progress healing, much less be fully restored! So I don't fucking understand how the fuck every vision I get is showing you, this you, fully restored! Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining but I don't understand.”
She swallows thickly, voice turning a bit hoarse at the dizzying possibilities, “…Something is coming then.”
It may ultimately be good for her, but it's far more likely to be bad in general. How bad, she doesn't know, but… The possibilities were endless and they don't really have any information beyond inferring that something is coming based purely on her recovery, which is not possible in this singular universe as things currently stand.
Or well, she thought that was the obvious deduction, but she doesn't know if it's just surprise at her suddenly jumping forward to that conclusion rather than continuing to discuss what it could mean or if that hadn't occurred to him, but Jae-Min's brows furrow as he tilts his head at her, “What?”
She shakes her head, “This universe doesn't seem to have magic, much less something that could restore me. Which means something is coming. Something that'll change that and see my soul repaired at that.” She hesitates given that uncertainty as to what he was asking for, but pushes on, “I doubt it's good news in general though. It may end up helping me but it's far more likely to be trouble and dangerous at that in general.”
Jae-Min nods slowly in agreement before taking a deep breath, “So then… we should probably prepare, right? But what for?”
She shakes her head, “I don't know. We can make vague general preparations, but. Without more information, that's about all we can do.”
Ha-Eun rubs her arm as she chews her lip, “I… could try to get more information from Moirai? I mean, it lets me see visions of our fates, but. Fate isn't necessarily the end result. It's just a result so. As… should be more than evident from the fact I may have been seeing visions of your death in our last life, but that's not what it's showing me now. I could try to use it to see the in between? Between now and the result of… whatever it's a result of that it's showing me I mean.”
Jae-Min rubs at his lips with the back of his pointer finger, “It's worth a shot, but on second thought, are we sure it's something coming to this world?”
Her brows furrow, “What else could it be?”
Jae-Min shakes his head, “You gave myself and Ha-Eun copies of Dimension Leap, and while we also have copies of Dimensional Communication that you'd tweaked, so if you wanted to be able to go and do something but didn't want however long it took you to pass for your Parallel Existences in other universes to pass for them as well that you could essentially make a disconnect between how fast time passes for each version.”
“Not that you have any Parallel Existences active right now, given you canceled every single one to have every drop of your power available. No time has passed for the Parallel Existences we have back in the Central World or even the other one with Nefas and all that. Are you sure it's not something from there that's responsible for your swift recovery?”
She shakes her head, “I suppose it's possible, but I can't think of anything in those worlds that could be responsible for it.”
Ha-Eun shrugs, “Couldn't hurt to reestablish contact and check though.”
She sighs, “I guess not. You guys would have to handle the Dimension Leap though. And we gotta go down to the System core right after we died though. I promised Julius.”
Ha-Eun laughs a bit, “Don't worry, we'll make sure to aim for the right place and time to get there basically immediately after we died. Rowena should know both the precise coordinates it's safe to go to for an empty area that doesn't have someone standing right there and the time down to the millisecond. Just bump it up a second or two to be safe and we're golden.”
Jae-Min's brows furrow, “Actually, hold on. How can we use Dimension Leap? For Richer or Poorer is supposed to share gains and losses. We should be just as bad off if not worse, shouldn't we?”
Ha-Eun's own brows furrow, “Maybe… It’s because she didn't actually lose power? She just doesn't have access to it due to the soul damage after all.”
Her gaze darts away as she nods vaguely, but Jae-Min narrows his eyes as he leans towards her, “What. Did. You. Do.”
Her gaze darts back before shifting away again, “That-” Then she sighs, she's never exactly been great at straight out lying to her soulmates, concealing things from them maybe, she got an awful lot of experience hiding her feelings when the block on their soulmate connection was only one way, but full on lying is another matter entirely. The idea of straight up lying to them doesn't feel all that good either, “...I used an Occlumency pin and Decomposition to block For Richer or Poorer from really accessing me.”
Jae-Min shoots to his feet in anger, “Jin-Ji! Why the hell would you do that?! If you hadn't then maybe we could've helped you when you were trying to fix that fucking planet and your soul was being damaged!”
She shoots to her feet, just as mad, “It's because of the soul damage that I blocked it!”
He opens his mouth to fire back and she yanks a hand through the air, “Shut up! You know full damn well that magic power originates from the soul! That means that when For Richer or Poorer shares gains and loses, it's sharing strengthening and weakening between our souls! We knew full well I was at risk of soul destruction! I was not going to drag you two right down with me! Or worse and more likely destroy you two's souls but survive it myself! I was magically stronger than both of you! Your souls would've been destroyed before my own from the losses and strain!”
Jae-Min takes a breath to argue right back, but Ha-Eun's quiet but exhausted voice beats him to it, “She's right Jae-Min.” As he whirls towards her, she shakes her head, “You had about twenty percent of the power she had, and I had even less, even if not by a huge margin. I'd also like to remind you that due to the Binary Star link between you and Jae-Hui, she was just as tied into things as us, and was between you and I power wise.”
“That also means her soul was that much sturdier than our own. I hate the idea just as much as you do Jae-Min, but if it put even her in this state, then… It would've utterly destroyed us. All three of myself, Jae-Hui, and you, in that order, and Jin-Ji would've been the last standing but having lost all three of us in the process, and in a much more permanent manner than just death given our reincarnations at that.”
Jae-Min snaps his mouth shut as he turns away angrily, unable to dispute that, but also still utterly furious that she'd blocked them from trying to help even if it would have been a poor idea.
Ha-Eun leans forward, “Jae-Min.” He holds his gaze away, jaw tight, but she persists, “Jae-Min.” He snaps his gaze towards her, but before he can snap a ‘what' or whatever his mouth was opening on, her gentle voice points out, “And if it had counted as a power loss, it would've drained our souls right out of existence.”
His head moves back and forth a little, less like a headshake and more like he's going to say something while moving his head to emphasize it, but nothing comes out of his slightly parted and barely moving up and down lips.
But while he has no counterpoint or argument, he's clearly in no mood for it right now, given he turns sharply and walks away without a word, door slamming behind him.
She bites her lip as she collapses back on the couch they'd been sitting on, leaning forward to bury her face in her hands, elbows braced against her knees.
Ha-Eun sighs quietly, “He's not exactly mad anymore. My last point seemed to take all the anger out of his sails. He's just upset in general.”
She nods silently before dropping her hands and leaning back on the couch.
Even if it was a perfectly reasonable course of action, she doesn't like upsetting her soulmates. Sure, there are plenty of things she's done that they haven't liked, but she can't think of a single thing that would put them in a state like this.
It feels fucking horrible, but it's not like there's anything she can do about it, and while technically she actually could go back and try to change it if she replicated Yog-Sotohort's Time Domination, though she'd have to replicate its script onto an enchanted object and charge it with the Trunk, she wouldn't. No matter how upset Jae-Min may be, she's not going to go back and very nearly guarantee the destruction of their souls on the miniscule chance things will work out somehow and he won't have to be upset by it.
Even if he did switch back to anger and started hating her, she still wouldn't.
Her soulmate’s souls weren't worth them liking her.
Ha-Eun nudges her a little, then gently pulls her into a discussion about going back with Dimension Leap tomorrow or something.
It had actually taken a couple days of Jae-Min being upset and kind of avoiding her before he calmed down enough for them to head back to reassure Julius and all that. He still didn't want to really talk about it, but that was more that he didn't want to think about it and all that and just wanted to move on, so neither of them had pushed.
Now though, he was calm enough to head out, so Ha-Eun pulls open the portal for them all.
Stepping through -and practically immediately getting a pop-up notification from the new System she implemented-, she just catches Julius’ attention clearly being caught by the portal opening as he turns quickly to the empty coordinates Rowena gave them. She smiles softly at his devastated expression and tear stained face, “Come on now, I told you this wasn't some dramatic goodbye, did I not?”
He shoots up, stumbling towards her as he trips over his own feet repeatedly in his haste to get to her, before suddenly yanking back at the last second just before he impacts her when he tosses himself into her arms. She assumes it's due to the fragility her body had been experiencing just moments ago from Julius’ perspective and a terror that he'll break her.
Jae-Min snorts and shakes his head at Julius when he looks over, “She's physically fine now. The brittleness was just a side effect of the damage to her body while she was repairing the planet. This is a brand new body. No damage from that to this one.”
Julius lets out a heart wrenching sob as he lurches the last bit of distance forward, his hands desperately grabbing on and clutching at her tightly, very nearly hyperventilating with the crying he's trying to hold back, “M-Mom! You‐You're ok-kay! Y-You're b-back!”
She assumes it's the solidness of her body and the fact she's here sinking in after a moment, but a beat later his stiff spine and shoulders practically collapse as he leans heavily onto her, the sobbing breaking free, though while there's certainly pain in it, it's overshadowed by sheer utter relief. She wraps one arm around him and holds him while swaying just a little, even as the other runs soothingly through his hair as she shushes him gently for a few moments before gently and soothing remaking, “I promised you, didn't I? That I'd be right back?”
He nods his head, even though it's still buried in her neck, though he has to stoop down a bit since he's actually taller than her right now. They stay like that probably for a few minutes before Julius finally calms down, leaning back as he sniffles a little, his head bowed. Having pretty much been expecting this, especially given how upset he was when she was dying, she drops her hand from his hair to tug a small to-go container of tissues out and offer it to him silently, extended enough for him to see it even with his head ducked.
He lets out a somewhat weak laugh at the sight, pulling one out and blowing his nose before using a small fire spell as he tosses it. Taking another, he starts to wipe at his tears before she can put it away and do it herself as he lifts his head. He blinks a couple times rapidly before leaning back, seemingly to get a better look at her given his gaze travels up and down a couple times.
Then he barks out a laugh, a sort of childishly delighted amusement taking over his face, “Mom! You're younger than me now!”
She flicks his forehead with her now empty hand without hesitation, “Brat. Physically maybe, but I'm still much older than you in general. And my having a physically older emotionally adopted child isn't anything new, as you well know by now.
He laughs, but it's still somewhat disbelieving as he continues to drink her in. Ronandt having been summoned as one of the top fighters that could fit in the room without hindering others, steps forward, “Lady Shirao-” He cuts off and shakes his head before bowing it shallowly, “Pardon me, that wouldn't be your name any longer would it?”
She glances his way, “Technically no, but I'll tell you guys the same thing I told the people of Jura-Tempest. That's also very much my name and equally valid as my current one, so you're more than welcome to continue to call me that instead of switching to Jin-Ji if you prefer.”
Julius tilts his head at her, his face scrunching up adorably, “Shinzi?”(1)
She snorts as she shakes her head, pausing a split second before shrugging elegantly, “Normally I'd use magic to write it out in the air for you to see for yourself, but I'm in no state to do that right now.”
Ha-Eun pipes up in a somewhat quieter voice, probably at the reminder of her state, “I can.”
She glances at her with a smile, waiting a beat before she writes it out before nodding towards it, as she carefully pronounces it slowly and clearly, “Jin-Ji,” Then her voice returns to its normal speed and all that, “not Shinzi, though I can't blame you there, it's decently close as well as being a foreign name, so. Not really a big deal or anything, but considering how you got last time you mispronounced a foreign name, figured you may want the correction.”
He nods, and she turns to Ronandt, “Anyhow, you had a question?”
Ronandt clears his throat, “Ah, right. Are you sure it was a good time to return, Lady Shiraori? Pardon me, but you look a bit tired.”
She snorts, “That's a side effect of my damaging my soul. I said before I died that I had about half of the Existence Value of a regular non magically active human. I'm always tired as a result of that.”
Julius’ brow furrows for a moment before another adorable look crosses his face, this one utter determination. What that's about she couldn't totally say, but if she had to guess, he wants to protect her at the reminder as well as realization as to just how weak she is right now.
Before Julius or her can say anything, Güliedistodiez speaks up from where he's been sort of watching quietly off to the side, “More a matter of mild curiosity, but how old are you now anyhow? Physically I mean. That tiredness combination with your mental maturity is sort of throwing everything off is all.”
She shrugs, “Six.”
At her answer, Julius falters as a hesitation grips him, before asking in a small voice even younger sounding than her age, “...Why'd you wait so long to return?”
She shakes her head, “I didn't. My memories just returned about a week ago. Actually, would've been back sooner, but we had a bit of a personal issue come up. My memory actually usually comes back when I'm this age, but.” She shrugs, “It was different the last two lives. I assume as a side effect of the species I was born as in said lives.”
Julius nods his understanding but before anyone can say anything else, someone else pipes up. Looking that way as he starts talking, she doesn't recognize the man, and considering what comes out of his mouth, it's a bit unfortunate he doesn't look like as much of a deplorable asshole as he is, “Can we move on to important matters now?” He eyes Julius in a way that makes her want to punch him, like he's lesser and something utterly lacking, “Things like not disgracing the Hero title with a disgusting crying fit.”
Her tone turns clipped, but also like he's completely unworthy of her time, “Julius may be the Hero, but he is still a child. And at that one who did sort of just watch someone he cares about and is sort of a second emotionally adopted mom to him die right in front of him.” She gives him a blatantly evaluating look, before shifting it to an expression like that evaluation concluded that he was even lower than a bug or pile of shit she was unfortunate to step in beneath her boot, “What's your excuse? For being disgusting I mean.”
He turns red and sputters, “How dare you?! You think just because you-!”
She pins him with her best scorching look. It's nice to know that she may have de-aged with reincarnation and lost all her magical power and all that, but not having the weight of that backing her doesn't undermine the weight of the gazes and the like she cultivated first as a noble Lady in her first life, then honed further as a noble in all but name in her second given he chokes on his own words immediately. Though, she supposes in fairness that could be from Jae-Min backing her up or something since he hasn't lost his power, but she doesn't sense anything coming off of him, so who knows.
She lets it hang for a minute before turning away dismissively as she idly tosses, “As one who finds himself deeply lacking in innumerable avenues, it would suit you well to familiarize yourself with the intricacies of silence. I would recommend frequent repetition, perhaps enough to formulate a personal neverending ritual.”
Her soul itself may be incredibly wrecked right now, but while they're a bit shaky, her soul corridors to her soulmates are still intact. Which is mostly relevant given Jae-Min barks the laugh he's holding back physically down it, <Did you just tell him to shut up and keep his damn mouth shut permanently?>
She sends him a mental smirk, but doesn't verbally reply.
Then she refocuses on Julius and flashes him a brief smile at the amusement she can see him biting back before she shakes her head, “Anyway, there's really no point being here any longer, so we ought to leave.” She glances towards the full on copy rather than Parallel Existence of Rowena, her H3 specifically, “I assume you have the coordinates the previous version of the System snagged everyone else from to teleport them back?”
Rowena nods, “Indeed Creator.” Then she gives her a smile, “I can handle returning everyone. Would you prefer if I teleported yourself and your soulmates to where the previous version of the System grabbed Julius from, or for them to handle the teleport?”
Jae-Min shrugs lightly, “We can do the teleport just fine ourselves, but it undoubtedly saves some trouble getting precise coordinates and all that if you handle it.”
Rowena nods again in understanding, “Very well.”
Without another word, teleport circles blaze to life around them. At the same time, the System gives her a notification about the world wide stream ending, and she gives it a look of some disbelief. She'd have thought Rowena would have shut that off before. Why she left it open until now was a damned mystery.
Well, if nothing else, she supposes that asshole will get his comeuppance. He basically just showed the entire freaking world what a piece of garbage he is after all.
Being deposited into the lounge attached to Julius’ bedroom, she settles onto the couch with a tired sigh before flashing another smile at Julius as he settles down close to her, very nearly plastered to her side. She reaches up and over to run her fingers through his hair. She hums thoughtfully as she does, “Given my current state, I'm in no condition to do so, as such, I'll need to assign someone to supervise your leveling.”
Julius huffs a laugh, “Is that even really necessary? I mean, I know there were space limitations and all that, but I was summoned as one of the top one hundred fighters in the System…”
She gives him a flat look as she hears the door open behind her, “Which does not change the fact you are still a child. Nor that you may have been pulled in due to raw Stats presumably, but you're young enough that you don't have a whole lot of combat experience. Your leveling will still be supervised for now, even if I have to assign the job to someone else. Do I make myself clear young man?”
He laughs, a little helplessly, a little deliriously happy as he snuggles that little bit clear, “Crystal clear Mom.” She hadn't been paying much attention to the door opening, but she supposes she gets her answer when Rohesia's laugh comes from that direction. Julius peeks over her head at the sound, “Hey Mama. I guess it's a bit pointless to say since you already know, but I'm back, and it was kinda a false alarm.” Seeing her confused glance, he flashes her a smile, “Rowena didn't teleport me exactly back to where I was grabbed from, but I imagine it's because she didn't want you to have to deal with the Queen's most recent nonsense and wanted you to be able to rest.”
Rohesia makes her way over in front of Julius before bending down to drop a kiss to his head, speaking as she moves, “I may have already known and it may have just been a false alarm, but I'm always happy to hear of your return directly from you my sweet boy.” As she straightens up, she smiles at her, “Well… I'd say it's nice to see you in good health after that scare you gave us, Shiraori, but even if you're physically fine, I suppose that's not exactly true in other ways…”
She shrugs, “It is what it is. Better than it could've turned out anyway.”
Julius stiffens a little, his voice going quieter as he asks, “Is it?”
She sighs, and while part of her wants to shield him from it since he's a child, he basically saw it playing out for himself. Plus, she has no guarantee someone like Ariel won't mention it, and she'd rather he hear it from her, “Considering Ha-Eun -Selina that is, it's her name in this life- was getting visions from a Skill of hers that made it clear it was basically a coin toss as to whether I'd survive or my soul would be totally destroyed? Yeah. Could've been a lot worse.”
He chews his lower lip, “Is- Is that why Miss Selina was completely unavailable for a while a couple weeks ago? A couple weeks ago from our perspective I mean.”
She sighs again, “Yeah, it is. Her Skill kept triggering on its own and inundating her with visions of my soul being destroyed as I was trying to work out something about my plan. I had the backup plan of just forcibly evacuating everyone to Jura-Tempest's world if I just absolutely couldn't work it out, which is why I was confident enough to ask you to just trust me. That was a last resort as far as I was concerned though.”
He leans forward desperately, face screwed up “But why?!”
She smiles painfully at him, “Because that would have inevitably led to a lot of deaths.”
He flinches, “What? But-”
She shakes her head, “Julius, honey, even if I explained to everyone why I was doing it, how many people would've refused to believe me, thinking I was actually enslaving them?”
Again, he's a child, so she refuses to explain the possibility of people thinking said enslavement may have even been sexual for some of them. He's still too young even for The Talk given he's only nine, and even if he wasn't, there's a vast difference between that and what people may have feared. Which is why she skirts the topic, “Some may have even thought it was an enslavement of rather a deplorable and abusive nature. How many of them would've killed themselves trying to escape the fate they thought I was stealing them away to? How many of them would've killed their own or even other children?”
He flinches at that, but his gaze drops to the floor, unable to dispute that. She sighs, “Honestly, the only problem I was having was actually coming up with the necessary amount of power. The amount necessary to fix the planet and all that other stuff was close to eighty-six billion times what I myself had at full power.”
Julius’ gaze snaps up with wide, wide eyes, breathing out a somewhat disbelieving, “Oh.”
She gives him a wry smile, “Oh indeed.” She looks a bit away, “Well, technically…”
She sees him bite his lip out of the corner of her eye and after a few moments without her continuing, he prompts quietly, “Technically..?”
She looks back over at him and sigh, “Technically, one of Azathoth's Sub-Skills basically has the ability to generate unlimited amounts of power.
He jolts in surprise even as his head tilts in confusion, “Then why were you trying to figure out..?”
She gives him a somewhat weary smile, “You actually have the answer to that in a way. That is what I ultimately used to fix the planet, and we all saw how that turned out. Even if the problem was that unlike the other plans I was trying to come up with, the danger was less in trying to get that much power and more in trying to avoid being utterly crushed by Nihility Collapse's might.”
Rohesia shifts from where she'd settled on the opposite couch while she was focused on Julius, “I don't… really understand. How could you have gotten a power you yourself couldn't handle?”
She shakes her head as her smile turns back to being more wry, “I don't recall if I ever explained it, but the world Jura-Tempest is in is indisputably made by a god. He didn't make every world, and I can guarantee you he didn't make this one, since a good part of the reason there's no real doubt about his existence is he didn't hide himself away or anything. He wandered the world he created himself. Kieron -Jae-Min now- actually spoke to him in that life, more than once at that. It's why I can guarantee he didn't make this one actually, because during their conversations, while he mentioned making other worlds, the magic in them all was the same, and since it's not here…”
Rohesia and Julius nod their understanding before she sighs a little, “Thing is, he actually discarded his omnipotence and omniscience before he started wandering around and all that. The Words of the World he created sort of made Skills that were echoes of it though. He discarded basically all of those as well, but due to how and why they were made, they didn't just cease to exist. They kinda just remained unattached until someone or another would basically unintentionally evolve a Skill sort of related to the things each of those echo Skills had to do with and gain them.”
She glances at Julius, “The Raphael Skill you once saw in Azathoth's evolution tree was one of them. When I pushed it even further and managed to evolve it, another Skill he used to have that had been unattached up until that point got absorbed into it. That Skill being Nihility Collapse, which is a sort of echo of his omnipotence.”
Julius and Rohesia's eyes both blow wide, even as understanding enters their gazes. She snorts, “Just don't ask me what the difference between Nihility Collapse and its ability to generate infinite power and full omnipotence, because I don't really know myself to be honest.”
Julius huffs a weak laugh, “Sure Mom.” Then he shakes the topic off, shifting a little to one related, “So, do you have some sort of plan for your recovery?”
She hums as she accepts the cup of tea Jae-Min had wandered over to the brewing set up left in the lounge of Julius’ suite amongst others they were in frequently at his request, “Technically even if there was no outside interference, I'd recover over time, even if it would undoubtedly take quite a few lifetimes to do so. It would get faster the more I recovered since my soul would have more power to work with for said recovery, but it would nonetheless happen on its own.”
“However, I would certainly prefer to try and speed it up if possible, though I don't have a plan for that just yet. Other than just my promise to you, it's part of why we came back immediately rather than say, letting however many lifetimes it took to pass and hopping back to the moment we did now. Currently though, there's definitely an implication that I may figure it out in this lifetime.”
Rohesia flashes Jae-Min a thankful smile as she accepts her own teacup before refocusing on her, “An implication? From what?”
Ha-Eun sort of barks out a laugh, “From Moirai. The Skill that was showing me visions of her soul destruction before. That's not its main purpose specifically. It's just to show glimpses of the three of our futures in general. When our memories came back to us about a week ago, I was trying to train with it to get a better handle on it since it's a new Skill. Figured it seemed like a peaceful world, so it was probably a good time to do it.”
The other two nod in understanding, and she continues, “The weird thing is, despite the fact it should take lifetimes, it's been showing me visions of Jin-Ji being revitalized in this life. So yeah, she had her promise to Julius to keep, but we also figured it was also a distinct possibility that she manages to put together something from the abilities of one of these worlds to deal with the damage.”
Julius furrows his brow, “But you're not totally certain about that?”
Jae-Min snorts, “The world Jura-Tempest inhabitants may be familiar with a whole being all the way down to the Heart Core and ego, but very few understand all that much about it. Jin-Ji herself is pretty much one of, if not the leading expert on it. And the previous System may have had a lot to do with souls and this one Shiraori may have added a soul repair function to counteract the damage the previous iteration did, but in general, even less is known by this universe.”
Julius nods slowly as he turns his own cup of tea in his hands, “What else could it be though?”
She shrugs, “Something coming to the world we were born in perhaps. Global changes bringing new things certainly happen. I mean, there was that whole business with the Contractors, Dolls, and Gates in our first world, not to mention the original advent of the System here.”
Julius bites his lip, “And… you have no clue if something really is coming or what it may be?”
She sighs as she shakes her head, “No clue. The chance of it is just extrapolated as a possibility of what had to do with my rapid soul repair. Ha-Eun has been talking about training Moirai and seeing if she can't potentially get answers, but… Until then, we neither have confirmation that it really is something like that nor what it could be.”
Julius swallows thickly, his head dropping as his voice turns a little hesitant, “O-Okay.” He peeks back up at her with furrowed brows, “I- Please be careful Mom. If something really is coming, then unless and until Miss Selina can use her Skill to get information, you have no idea if it's dangerous or not.”
She smiles wearily, “I know. Though in my experience, it's more likely to be something dangerous than not. I'd like to try and prepare for it, but unless Ha-Eun can get answers and even if so until she does, other than incredibly vague preparations, there's not a whole lot we can prepare for.”
Julius nods slowly, his gaze returning to his tea cup momentarily before shifting to empty space as he lifts it for a drink.
Jae-Min's tea is as delicious as ever as she's already confirmed from sipping it while they were talking. As equally unsurprising as its quality, he'd had the foresight to pick something soothing given the topic.
Notes:
Second AN: I wasn't all that certain in the past, but I've been leaning more towards doing follow ups after the main overarching story, though that will only finish completely after a shorter thing after this, like I said in the series page description, I kinda unintentionally gave it a 5 +1 format, lol. Not 100% sure what universe I'd take them to, and, though I've got 4 a bit more firmly in mind and 2 more that I've been toying with the idea of, though there wouldn't be much in those. Mind, there wouldn't be more overarching story going on, it'd just be Calanthe and them going to universes to fix things, maybe learning some interesting stuff and/or (usually Calanthe) getting ideas for things to make.
(1): Just for the record, the way it's pronounced in Korean from what I'm hearing from pronunciation sites as well as getting some phonetics for it and what the IPA symbols mean to make sure I'm hearing it right, it's pronounced sort of like that. If you were roughly but really writing it out but not in IPA it would be someone more like tshinjzhee but that's a bit messy and also Julius is supposed to be slightly mispronouncing it, lol.
Chapter 2: Predictions and Warnings
Notes:
AN: Time starts skipping forward here. Not going straight to when things really start with the Double Dungeon or anything, but I don't go into massive detail on every single year of her life between when her memories came back at 6 and when canon starts when she's 24 (we aren't given an exact age for Jin-Woo in canon, just vaguely know he's 20-25 and 24 is what I picked, mostly since it puts the Gates appearing when he was 14), or even cover them all.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
She scrubs at her face tiredly, “You're certain you don't know what it could be?”
Velgrynd nods solemnly, “Quite certain.” Velgrynd gives a sort of tiredly amused smile, “While it is true that individuals like myself and Velzard are well aware of Heart Cores and the like, quite frankly Jin-Ji, between your studies and understanding of MA energy, you've very much overtaken us and are the leading expert on such things. If you don't know of some technique or the like to repair the damage your soul suffered, I can't see anyone having the information you're looking for.”
She sighs, “I see. Thank you anyway Velgrynd.”
Velgrynd nods, “Of course.” Then she smiles, “I won't distract you from those wheels inevitably turning in your head, so I'll see myself out now.”
She flashes her a smile and nod as Velgrynd heads out of her office in Xiǎo-lóng. She drops her gaze to her desk when she's gone though. Yes, there was that method of replacing the Heart Core she'd had to make for the other world, but the problem is it actually wouldn't work for her. Her soul was too fragile. Moirai made that clear when she proposed the idea. The damage meant her Heart Core and ego were so tightly pressed against one another and tightly crushed in on themselves holding her together that they've basically merged together into one thing rather than two different layers of what's collectively known as the soul.
Part of that was because the two halves of her soul were so unstable they couldn't even maintain their forms properly. The infons of her Heart Core recording everything from her ego kept losing their physical form and becoming raw MA energy that makes up her ego and bleeding into it. Her ego keeps solidifying into infons of her Heart Core and joining its supercluster.
It's alright though. At least the infons with their not exactly a particle yet also particle state means that it's not like an atom. There isn't so much energy in it that the ones losing their form and unraveling blow her soul to pieces from the inside.
One can't break her Heart Core open to try and transfer her ego to one with the information recorded on hers without also breaking that, and as fragile as she currently is, it wouldn't be like Masayuki. There wouldn't be anything to try to gather. The two halves cannot be separated from one another as things are. She'd just vanish if someone tried.
The only real plus side is that she's not losing anything recorded on the infons of her Heart Core that keep losing their physical form and bleeding into her ego. It just causes whatever is recorded on them to flit through her mind, which another blank infon will re-record. She supposes hypothetically degradation could happen from being re-recorded over, and over, and over again, but it hasn't happened yet and Rowena is keeping an eye on it so anything lost or twisted can be restored at the earliest opportunity.
That being said, the situation wasn't all bad. She's been studying the phenomenon occurring in her soul, wondering if she can perhaps learn things to try and deal with the way the MA energy making up Ramiris’ ego was warped by the bombardment of Daemonic and Draconic power back when Guy was stopping the mindlessly rampaging Milim and she stepped in to calm her.
Dryly mentioning that it was a unique opportunity to study the two parts of the soul and the way they interacted and all that in much more depth to potentially find an answer to Ramiris’ situation had gotten displeased grumbles from her soulmates at her basically brushing off her own situation. And a couple mutters about redwood and catastrophes but they liked to toss that out semi-regularly so it was hardly worth batting an eye at.
Regardless, Velgrynd's answers or lack of makes it clear that whatever repairs her soul faster than she was expecting won't be found in the Central World. Assuming it isn't as simple as her figuring something out while studying the phenomenon looking for a way to assist Ramiris, they're back to the assumption that something is coming for the newest world they've been in.
She leans back, tilting her head to rest against the back of her chair and stare at the ceiling with a sigh.
As a silver lining to her current situation, she has some of her husband's delicious tea, and her desk chair was really comfortable.
Honestly, she was expecting to have to work from the couches or kneeling on the floor next to the coffee table given her age and size, but by the time she'd come up, the copy of Rowena managing the new System over in the other world had gotten in touch with Kaijin and the others. They'd done a whole rush order on a comfortable but adjustable new office chair for her so she could easily seat herself before raising it up enough to reach her desk. It's also easy to lower to get back down without having to jump off.
She did have some problems reaching things further away on her desk, but Jae-Min, who was more focusing on the things like making tea again, hadn't even let her try to strain herself reaching for things before he'd swooped in, using his shape-shifting to easily grab things and hand them to her.
Part of it was undoubtedly more along the lines of his desire to take care of her and Ha-Eun that usually saw him as a thorough and loving house husband and later stay at home dad that was translated to being her secretary in their third life due to their long separation. But from his expression as he gently chastised her for pushing her body, part of it was unquestionably his overprotectiveness.
So it doesn't really matter if something is out of reach of her younger and shorter arms. She has him on hand to sweep in and grab it for her.
As things stand, she can no longer make a Parallel Existence for Rowena to use acting as her receptionist to sort the papers coming in for her and what needs more immediate attention during her visits. However, she can make an object enchanted with Dimensional Communication and use that as a method of Rowena being able to stay in touch with her Orb that's now the System administrator rather than Sariel. By having the Trunk make a new H3 for her to control, it's a bit round about, but it'll let her maintain contact with it and continue to do that job whenever Ha-Eun isn't, as well as let her know if there's anything urgent.
All she needs to do is have either the Trunk or someone else, probably either Jae-Min, Ha-Eun, or Jae-Hui, keep the Dimensional Communication enchanted necklace charged for her and she's good.
That, and keeping the Golems and that other AI she'd made to act as backup for Hei after he almost died charged. She'd turned down her offer to name her, wanting Sora to be the one to name her back in their second life, but he hadn't been able to think of anything that felt like a good fit, and she hadn't been in any rush. After she'd called the Trunk to them but before he'd stormed off upset after the realization she'd blocked For Richer or Poorer while they were waiting for Ha-Eun to try and get answers, he'd collected it and basically slapped it into her hand, demanding she wear it so the Golems and AI can watch over her and protect her in her more vulnerable state.
He'd hardly even had to order the AI to do so, given she may have wanted Sora to name her since she was designed to be his backup, she was still made by her and very much still loyal to her. She was fully in agreement that it was the best course of action with her weakened condition and the fact Jae-Min didn't really need backup. Since part of the job was to watch over her, Jae-Min had proclaimed that he'd finally found a suitable name. As while the fighter portion didn't totally line up, he was trusting her to keep watch for him, so he'd named her Yin, obviously after his pseudo little sister from their first life.
So. Now she had Yin and the squad of Golems she commanded with her at all times to protect her at Jae-Min's demand, which Ha-Eun and Jae-Hui had backed up like they were scared she'd refuse to wear the bracelet and keep them with her. It was a bit loose on her, since it was made for an adult male's wrist, had been when she'd taken to wearing it in the beginning of their second life to keep in touch with Rowena in the Trunk in the early days. Nice thing about it being a chain bracelet, she can technically just clip it to a different part of the chain rather than where it's supposed to go. Though, she'd actually kind of prefer if she could embed a shape-shifting ability to it so it fits properly.
That would require her to not only remake the Synthesis Skill, but if she wanted to make sure it was embedded directly onto its Eidos(1), she'd have to tweak it to do so. She had already come up with the magic that would let one do that instead of just placing the magic script on its physical form, but it would require some work. Which while she had made enchanted items with Elemental Sight and Multidimensional Perception, would require she use those to make sure she did it properly. It's perfectly doable, but much like with keeping Rowena in contact with her Orb in the other world and her H3 here, it was all a roundabout way of doing it.
She didn't exactly have much choice though, given her current condition.
She doesn't have access to those abilities on her own, and even if she did she undoubtedly couldn't even handle using them herself rather than just using enchanted items.
Her soul was just too fragile in all honesty.
It was a bit disturbing when she'd hesitantly used Multidimensional Perception on herself to check the state of it. The first time she'd gotten a glimpse of her soul, it had taken the form of a humanoid with something sort of like wings that extend up and up and into the form of a Dragon. Then she'd evolved into a True Dragon in her last life and it had changed to a Dragon who had the bottom of its tail curled into her humanoid form. And in either case, the whole of it was radiating a purple almost mist like substance that her magic looked like at that level even with her ironclad control containing most of it.
That latter was still the general form of it, but… Rather than the sturdy but old looking, it appeared more like tightly packed sand, those purple wisps clamped down tight and doing it's best to hold her together rather than spreading. The Dragon form was curled up in an almost tiny ball compared to its usual size as well, like if it presses itself together hard enough it won't break.
In fairness, instinctual or not, she can't claim full credit for the fact her soul didn't completely break and dissipate. Part of it was Fortuna's doing via its Faithful's Fortification Sub-Skill. It was strengthened by the number of believers, and she'd had basically an entire planet as well as the majority of a second one fueling it. It succeeded in protecting the part of her soul it rested on like she designed it too, ensuring she could continue to benefit from its Luck based Skills to the end.
It made a little island, a core of sorts, of undamaged soul for the rest of her to cling to. One single handhold.
She rarely needs more than that though.
Perhaps Fortuna will allow her to not have to sort out degradation from re-writing the records on infons over and over and over as they bleed into her ego and parts of it solidify into more infons with their records. It's not a big deal if it can't stop it of course. She always has Rowena's records. It would more save her some time later if anything.
As for the imagery of what her soul looks like currently, there wasn't exactly anything innately disturbing about it, it wasn't an overtly gruesome image or something, but to know that it's her soul and it is nowhere near it's usual state, any soul's usual state…
And while other things are going better, she can sit comfortably at her desk, Jae-Min is on hand she needs something further away, she had a method for Rowena to keep in touch with her Orb and H3s, and she has Yin and the Golems to protect her while she can't do it herself… There's no answers to be found for the problem with the damage to her soul here.
Which circles them right back to the idea that something is going to happen to their newest world. Sure, it's still not a guarantee, maybe nothing exists now but she comes up with something that her soul and ego can take to repair it and detangle her ego from her Heart Core and transfer it to a new one. She may lose a lot of power depending on how they do it, and they'd have to get records from Rowena about all the memories and the like recorded in her Heart Core, but it's technically possible that it's something like that showing Ha-Eun visions of her soul being restored.
But it's looking far more likely that it is, in fact, something coming to that world.
Ha-Eun is still going to work on training with Moirai to try and both confirm that and maybe get an idea of what to expect, but until then, all they can really do is prepare as best as they're able to despite the lacking information. She'll still look into options regarding her soul problem just in case it is something she's supposed to figure out, but… She's absolutely drawing blanks in all honesty. She doesn't even have any idea where to start.
She hopes it is something like that though. That she will have some flash of inspiration.
More because it's far more likely in her experience that whatever may be coming to their current world, it's more likely that it's malevolent and her recovery is more of an unintended side effect.
She doesn't wish whatever it may be on the innocent people of her current world.
Even if the cost is that she actually does have to wait lifetimes to be restored, it would be an incredibly cheap price for the safety of the masses.
She has no control of that however.
All she can really do is hope.
Jae-Min is leaning back against her wall from where he's sitting on her bed, expression unhappy, “It's absolutely unfair.”
She looks up in bemusement, “What is?”
He groans, quickly double checking their silencing spells are in place before he answers, “That you're older than me yet again! It may be years before the block drops, but it's completely unfair! It wasn't enough that we had to wait for you for over almost three hundred thousand years back in our third life, but now I gotta go through the block dropping, you being right in front of me, and still having to wait?! I'm telling you, the wait in our third life was absolutely karma for what you went through in our first life with the block only being one way and trying to avoid us realizing your feeling to avoid making us uncomfortable or question your motives when you did things and all that! This is just a cherry on top adding onto it!”
She gives him an amused look, “You still think that?”
He huffs out, “Yes! I mean, come on, how many times have we had things like this?! We were born being the younger ones in our second life, then that time fluctuation means we went all the way back to when Veldanava was making those worlds and the things in it, and now we're yet again both younger than you?! It absolutely has to be karma both for you having to deal with the block going one way and trying to hide your feelings, and now that I think about it, probably also for me asking you not to give up when I passed and you became a full widow and live a full life! Which left you a widow longer than both mine and Misaki's entire lifespans in that life combined! You will never convince me otherwise!”
She hums in amusement, “Counter point. Or if there's something like karma, it got sick and tired of me stressing you two out with my workaholic tendencies and decided to equip you two to handle it. Because while it caused you a decent bit of pain, all that time with just each other in our second life without me around set up the current situation of you two possessing ungodly sex skills and me lacking the necessary resistance. Which is what enables your threats when I'm working too hard or long to basically fuck me stupid since I can neither remember my own or even more tellingly you two's names during and leave me unable to go to work the next day to begin with."
"And as such, while I can't speak much for the age orders in our second life or now, the situation born from the circumstances of those millennia you were waiting for me is actually my karma.”
Jae-Min jolts as surprise washes over his face, commenting distractedly at her as he starts to turn to Ha-Eun, “Like I've said, I'm not threatening you, your workaholic tendencies are threatening me with a good time.”
He shares a Look with Ha-Eun, who smiles in amusement after a beat, "Concede that particular point?”
Jae-Min turns back to her quickly, and hold up a finger, “Alright, I withdraw the statement that you'll never convince me as far as the millenia we were waiting for you in our third life and concede it was in fact your karma, though I am still convinced the fact you were the eldest in both our second life and now is our karma.”
She shakes her head in amusement at her husband, but doesn't try to change his mind about that. He's just being dramatic about the fact the block towards her will fall for him before the block towards him will fall for her. Something occurs to her and she suddenly feels a little uncertain. Entirely unsurprising given her Lachesis Sub-Skill and the way it's a little snitch always measuring her emotional state and blabbing to Ha-Eun about it, her wife turns to her in some surprise, “Jin-Ji? What's the matter?”
She shakes her head, “No just- …Jae-Min is enough of a horndog that he would absolutely die if I tried to make him wait for the block towards you to fall, like how you and I waited for him in our second life.”
Jae-Min expression immediately twists to almost dramatically horrified but also uncertain and reluctant. She may not have Lachesis but she does get an even better idea of his mental state down the soul corridor between them. It seems to come down to him absolutely utterly loathing the idea but also feeling like he can't not return the consideration to Ha-Eun.
Their wife laughs at his expression, “Oh relax Jae-Min. I wouldn't do that to you. We may have worded it differently back then when we talked with you, partly because we hadn't quite figured out why it felt bad until we discussed it more later, but our decision to wait was mostly because you're such a glutton for us that it felt mean to be getting up to things while you couldn't participate."
"Certainly, I desire you two in general, if obviously not in this life yet due to our ages, but that same insatiable hunger you've always had for us isn't exactly a trait I share. Also, I think you might just die if you had to wait even longer after having the anticipation build up for over three months. That is to say, I'm telling you right now, just go for it after her block towards you falls, and don't feel bad about it.”
She snorts at his still uncertain expression, “Ha-Eun isn't wrong. With how insatiable you are, you'd probably die if you had to wait nearly four more months. Besides, everyone has needs, and the level of how important those needs are differ from person to person. As much as we've always given you shit about it, it's not just base sex drive in your case, though that certainly is part of it."
"You're also a more physical person in general, and love for you has always had a strong basis in taking care of someone and physical connections. That is to say, yes, some of it is purely sexual desire, but a decent chunk of it is a genuine relationship need for you. Yes, to some extent it is a relationship need for Ha-Eun as well, but it's not nearly to the point it is for you.”
Ha-Eun hums, “Mm. If anything, I'd feel pretty bad if you did try to hold back for my sake.”
Jae-Min opens and closes his mouth a few times, but doesn't respond before turning quickly back to the notebook he'd been writing ideas for vague preparations they can make before he'd taken a break and gotten distracted.
She shares an amused look with her wife but neither of them pushes. Undoubtedly their husband will need some time to come to terms with the idea of not doing the same as Miho had done for Ha-Eun. He'll undoubtedly get what they're trying to say and come around though, so she's not too worried about it.
In all honesty, she's been feeling vaguely uneasy for months.
For the past nine months specifically.
Which put one hell of a dampener on her own birthday when it passed a few months ago, but-
But really can you truly blame her?!
The one and only time she's experienced a sibling was… Yuki. In her second life.
That was nowhere near what most siblings are like of course, but…
Okay, she may be a little traumatized, but she had to deal with Yuki's obsessed insanity, so again, can you blame her?!
All that is to say, the small bundle in her mom’s arms is probably fine, but it sure doesn't feel like that right now. Her brain is already painting horror pictures of having to do that whole damn thing again with another younger sibling.
There's a tiny comfort from the feeling created by the fact her parents didn't have her to be her spouse and also in the fact she's, y'know, a girl unlike Yuki. The last one only aids in the differences to Yuki, mind. She herself is into women, or one woman anyway, so she knows full well women can be bisexual or homosexual. It's not that part that the comfort originates from in the slightest. But the less she has in common with Yuki, the easier it is to step away from the sheer dread turning in her.
She really hopes Jin-Ah doesn't have much in common with Yuki at all. Not just in the obvious, but other things like general mannerisms or… well she'd say hobbies and likes, but Yuki hadn't really had either of those that didn't have to do with her in some capacity.
Regardless, it'll be easier to step away from the instinctive alarm she's been feeling ever since her mom told her she was going to be an older sister.
In the meantime, her soulmates are undoubtedly going to have to put in an awful lot of work constantly reminding her that it's not the same, and Jin-Ah is very likely not to have romantic or sexual feelings for her, and that it'll be fine, and reassuring her.
For the time being, it's all she can do to force a natural looking smile on her face as her mom shows her Jin-Ah, tilting her towards her a bit while her dad holds her up to get a better vantage point.
She's probably going to be making an awful lot of excuses to avoid Jin-Ah as much as possible for a while though.
Ha-Eun sucks in a sharp breath from where she's meditating yet again while training with Moirai. She'd gotten a furrowed brow a bit ago, but she'd still been deep in concentration so neither of them had bothered her.
She's been steadily getting better with it for the past few years, but they haven't gotten all that much information from what she's been seeing in all honesty.
Well, about what is happening anyway. She's seen multiple visions about them fighting various monsters that may have vaguely familiar forms, but are otherwise unique. By which she means, she's for instance seen her getting into it with wolves, but they're like no wolves any of them are familiar with, a deep red with metal wrapped around various different parts of their muzzles.
It at least confirms whatever is coming is dangerous and her recovery is just a, presumably unintentional, side effect though. And while they may not know more details like how and why, it does tell them what to shift their preparations towards. Monsters appearing somehow specifically. And from the images Ha-Eun has shared down the soul corridor, not generally misunderstood and potentially friendly beasts like some magic born that call Jura-Tempest home. More akin to the aggressive ones like the Knight Spiders or Storm Serpents.
Well, they didn't have any additional information anyway. From the way her wife sucked in that breath and general lack of alarm -though she does look a bit concerned and pained if not deeply enough to point to seeing something regarding one of them- they may just get some now.
A prediction that proves right when she swallows a little before hoarsely whispering, “Gates. Gates are going to appear.”
Jae-Min's brows furrows as he frowns, “...Gates? Like the Heaven’s Gate and Hell’s Gate?”
But Ha-Eun shakes her head, “No, not like-”
Ha-Eun pushes out a breath and then an image down their soul corridors to her of a swirling blue… wall of energy that was flecking off small embers and sparks of more blue, as they watch, she walks up, her body disappearing as she moves into it. Then it flickers to another image of a different Gate, the view from further away showing it behind a cordon, before it suddenly cracks like glass in the center before it spreads and a few moments later monsters start pouring out.
As they spread, she hears someone call out desperately, “Dungeon Break! It's been here longer than we thought! The Hunters are still-!”
She just barely catches a glimpse of what can only be an older Jae-Min appearing practically from thin air and starting to cut them down and push them back from the cordon they were beelining to before it ends.
They're both silent for a few moments, before Jae-Min nods slowly, “Ah. So no, not like the Heaven’s Gate and Hell’s Gate, but very much a Gate of its own. I suppose that answers the questions on where the monsters come from, as well as gives us the assurance that they can't just appear anywhere and without warning.”
She purses her lips, “That line though, ‘It's been here longer than we thought’? I guess that tells us that there's some sort of time component before these Gates undergo one of these Dungeon Breaks, but if so, why wouldn't a method of detecting them when they appear not be made so you know exactly how long there is left before it breaks?”
Ha-Eun sighs, “I imagine there is. If nothing else, you may not have your power but you certainly still have your experience with runes and all that, so even if no one else made it, I can't see you not. It's far more likely that in that possible outcome, some sort of interference prevented it from being detected immediately. Or maybe it was something like the overall detection method was down for a bit, or even a local node broke or something. Really, there's a lot of reasons there actually could be a detection method in place but they didn't have accurate information on that Gate.”
She nods her head to the side conceding that point before moving on, “Well, it gives us a better idea of what to prepare for if nothing else.” She gets nods in response as she continues to think it over, “...We should probably warn this world and call in Jura-Tempest for assistance to minimize the amount of deaths and the like.”
Jae-Min snorts in amusement, “You can try to warn them, but I have no clue how you'd convince them it's true or even how you'll prevent the governments from hiding it from their people and not warning them. And you might wanna wait until we have a timeline to when it starts and it's closer to that time. If there's too many years between the warning and when things kick off, even if they have the exact date it's supposed to happen, people will likely start to disbelieve it when nothing occurs. You also have the issue of the messenger possibility being attacked that you'll need to figure out how to try to mitigate.”
She bites her lip, “I can't do much about the timing and date unless I have that information.”
She tosses a glance at Ha-Eun and she hums, “Maybe it's due to inexperience with it, I have only really had three years to really start to get a handle on Moirai, since I didn't get much of a chance to work on it in our last life, but honestly it feels easier in general when I know what I'm looking for. Hopefully now that I know about the Gates, I'll be able to get you a date for when they first appear and maybe other information.”
Nodding in understanding, she turns thoughtful again, “As for the rest…” She's silent for a little bit as she weighs and discards options mentally before something sparks at the vague idea of ‘tell everyone’ and she smiles, “I may not be able to do it myself as things are, but I actually do have a trick up my sleeve to deal with all of those.”
Ha-Eun raises a surprised eyebrow, “Do you now?”
A slants a look at her wife, “I do. You've both actually seen it before.” At their confusion a grin spreads across her lips, “A worldwide mental message. Perhaps with visions as well. Whoever I have deliver it -probably Rowena- wouldn't physically be present for anyone to attack due to a misunderstanding about them being a threat."
"It has the additional benefit that they're less likely to think Jura-Tempest means any harm to begin with, given everyone in the world was contacted mentally at the same time, yet despite the mental connection, we didn't try to do anything malicious like try to use mind control magics or something. It also at minimum pushes people to understand that magic and all that really does exist which gives us a leg up in them believing the warning.”
The other two look amused, and Jae-Min nods his head a bit at an angle, “Well, you aren't wrong there. Undoubtedly there will be those who don't believe it, there always are, but they'll more than likely be in the minority after pulling something like that pretty much disproving an elaborate hoax at the same time the warning and all that is being delivered. From there… You'll undoubtedly tap Xiǎo-lóng's forces to assist with these Gates, but we should probably also help prepare people more directly as well, right?”
Ha-Eun straightens up a bit more, “Survival courses. Like basic self defense, how to actually evacuate -especially since parts of the Labyrinth can easily be made to replicate vague location types, like malls, subway stations, schools, practically anything we can think of- if there's one of these Dungeon Breaks rather than just running away screaming including how to assist the more vulnerable with evacuating, how to actually recognize a safe path… That kind of stuff.”
Jae-Min hums, “That's all well and good obviously, but there has to be some sort of reason they didn't seem to be using modern weapons in that vision, right? So maybe combat lessons for anyone interested?”
She hums, “Magic engraving lessons.” When they both turn to her in surprise, she shrugs, “We can explain that MA energy runes are way more complicated but will work since it's based on the source of magic, but if people wanna gamble that they'll work since they're easier with the others, we also have the other runes and all that from other lives. It doesn't really matter how many people take us up on it though."
"It acts as a smokescreen for me making things quickly because I am not going to delay things that can save lives just to make it more believable. The moment I can get a better idea of this world's magic, I will be moving. May even try pre-building things like the Gate detection stuff in a way that I just need to essentially fill in the blank regarding this universe's magic and the like so they can be done asap.”
Jae-Min hums and they lapse into silence, she's not entirely sure about the others, not without reaching down their soul corridor, but personally she's trying to think of anything else they can do to minimize the devastation of these Gates. Ha-Eun probably is as well, but who knows what Jae-Min is thinking about. Probably something like how he's supposed to take care of them or ensure her safety while he's busy with these Gates if she had to guess.
Well, she still stands by that probably being what he was thinking of originally, but his brain has clearly at least pointed something out if not outright moved on given he suddenly sucks in a breath as his face turns utterly horrified, “No…”
Ha-Eun looks over at him in concern, “Jae-Min..?”
He turns to her numbly, “...We lost the bet.”
She blinks rapidly at him, “The… bet..?”
He nods miserably, “The bet. You know, when we were talking about your theory about things slipping through the walls of the universes or echoing or whatever and how depending on how popular a trope is, the more likely you are to see it? And we had the bet about what trope we'd see in our next life… I bet ‘Skills’, Ha-Eun bet ‘Cultivation Trope’, and… you bet ‘dungeons.” His face is a mask of pure devastation as he turns to her, “We had twenty red and gold chips down on it each.”(2)
She laughs, “Oh don't even pretend you won't absolutely enjoy it when I cash a chip in!”
Jae-Min waves a hand impatiently, “Of course I will. But,” He lets out a pathetic little whimper, “...I had an opportunity for forty red and gold chips from you two in total. And I lost.”
She shakes her head in amusement at her husband even as Ha-Eun starts needling him in amusement.
For everything that does change, some things never do.
Pushing it aside, she brings up something else that's relevant from that second vision, even if only on a more personal level, “Anyway, you were obviously working on these Gates in that second vision Jae-Min. Are you going to use that gear I made you back in our first life? It's still pretty good in general, but it's also been strengthened in other lives.”
He and Ha-Eun moved away from her teasing him and his dramatics when she started talking and his expression turns more serious at the question, “I mean, it's not a bad idea in general, it is my best gear and all that, but… I mean, what if I need it for something more clandestine and someone sees it? Then it would be recognized and tied back to me.”
She chews her lower lip, “I mean… I never thought about it in previous lives, but I do know the magic script for shape-shifting. If we add it to your gear's Eidos directly and tweak it so you control it, it shouldn't screw up the enchantments placed on it previously but you should have the ability to just… make it look different so no one connects the two. It shouldn't be too hard with the tweaked Synthesis, and if it does damage it somehow, I can just give Rowena's orb the script for Regrowth and she can reverse it.”
Ha-Eun nods, “Mm. The mask already has that ability to melt the bottom up into the rest so your mouth is uncovered if you need to drink or eat or something. Use the shape-shifting to take it further and shift it to what looks like sunglasses maybe, and it should still protect your head and let you use all its other functions without it being recognizable as your mask. Alter the green of your coat and make it shorter so it doesn't go halfway down down your calves but rather around the knee and you'd still have full protection between it and the knee high boots. From there, just alter the style of the coat and boots and there's nothing to link the two.”
Jae-Min nods his head a little with his eyebrows slightly raised, “You aren't wrong there. Could potentially make it even stronger, but part of the reason you thought it came out so well was the multiple things of numerology strengthening it, so would it strengthen it more overall to do something like add in some of your Hihi'irokane merged True Dragon scales, or would the weakening from losing the numerology be higher?”
She snorts, “The benefits would undoubtedly outweigh any losses. However it shouldn't throw them off anyway. The only thing in the merged Hihi'irokane and my True Dragon scales that has anything to do with the numerology is my scales since it would technically have weight in the three items each for three creatures in one of its materials, one item each from three different creatures for another material not only making the number three be represented three times itself, but also with its base material being from yet another creature making for a total of seven different creatures in total."
"However, Dragon scales is one of the materials from one of the creatures in it. So that wouldn't affect the numerology in the slightest to begin with, and Hihi'irokane is just magically evolved iron, so.”
She laughs, “Actually, if anything, we should see if we can't find a third metal. It already has silver for its heightened ability to conduct the magic of our first life and Hihi'irokane. If we can find a third that would bring the number of metals in it up to that and add to the numerological of it.”
Ha-Eun tilts her head, “Wouldn't it break the number three being represented three times?”
She waves her hand, “Technically a little, but while that may be how I've always worded it rather than going into it more, magic would absolutely care that the three threes are specifically regarding the creature parts in used in the potion for one of the threads and the creatures parts used in the other thread and the final in the leather. Yes, the overall three threes would break but you'd still have it in the creatures specifically which is absolutely a distinction that would matter magically.”
Jae-Min hums, “If that's the case, wouldn't it be even better to find another material as well? I mean, it has creature parts in the stuff for the potions and thread and leather, and it has metal threads worked into it, so couldn't it also get another three representation if we used something that was neither creature nor metal?”
She hums, “Yeah, it could. Maybe something related to plants.”
Ha-Eun's brows are furrowed as she asks, “Hold on, does it even matter all that much? I mean, you never seemed to give any thought to numerology with magic in other lives, and I definitely didn't notice anything about it in our third…”
She snorts, “That is entirely because numerology isn't a thing in those types of magic. Don't ask me why one type of magic cares about it and others don't, but that's just how it is. Jae-Min's coat, however, was made with the magic of our first life, which does have numerology and for which such things have weight. As such, it does matter in regards to his coat.”
Ha-Eun makes a silent ‘Ah’ of understanding, “Well, if that's the case, do you have any clue what plant thing you'd put in it? It'd have to be something that wouldn't rot away.”
She hums, “...Maybe if we infused some of the scale-Hihi'irokane mixture with Full Potion? It's made purely from a plant and magic with nothing else added to it.”
Jae-Min snorts, “Added benefit that it would probably repair itself from rare damage quicker too.”
Ha-Eun raises an eyebrow, “Or passively heal you while you're wearing it. But that should absolutely work if you can merge Full Potion with the mixture.”
She waves her hand dismissively, “The tweaked Synthesis enchantment would be able to handle it. The real problem is if it tries to turn the mixture into a liquid.”
Jae-Min tilts his head, “It shouldn't though, right? I mean, it's capable of adding something like heat to something else without altering its state except making it hot, so there's no reason it shouldn't be able to merge it into the mixture without altering its state of matter.”
She snorts, “Should doesn't mean will though. Yeah, it shouldn't but I have no clue what to do if it does.”
Ha-Eun pushes on her leg with her foot, “Don't go looking for problems. If it happens, fine, but there's no point getting hung up on it now when it probably won't even be a problem.”
She sighs, but drops it. At least as far as the conversation goes anyway. Her mind is very much still turning the potential problem and what to do about it over.
More than likely, her soulmates have a notion of that, but they don't press her on it as they turn the conversation back to what they can do on a more personal level.
She's looking over her work with a critical eye.
Ha-Eun had been right about having an easier time chasing down the information she was looking for with Moirai once she actually knew what she was looking for. It had both come with the confirmation that modern weapons didn't work nearly as well against the monsters from the Dungeons, as well as the revelation that certain people would become ‘awakeners’ when they suddenly gained power, many choosing to become ‘hunters’ though they unsurprisingly varied in strength just like the Gates did.
They were the ones who went into the Gates to kill the Dungeon boss, as another piece of information that had been revealed was the fact there was exactly a week between when they appeared and when they broke open if the Dungeon boss wasn't slain.
Ha-Eun had also seen that while there were Guilds dedicated to Dungeon clearing, they were still ultimately registered and managed by a government department generally known as the Hunters Association which also tends to handle weaker Dungeons with Hunters that aren't part of a guild, though the name varied a bit by country. To make sure they're ready and already somewhere organized and all that, they'll undoubtedly tell them about that with the warning as well, so they can get a head start on getting the various countries Hunters Associations up and running before things kick off.
There had also been the revelation that regular tech didn't really work inside Dungeons, so along with the limit on available manpower, there was also no real way to even try to request backup if anyone is available or get the people out quickly if they're critically injured or something. With how terrible some people can be, it leaves the possibility of them taking advantage of the fact there's basically no way to monitor what they're doing in those Dungeons as well. Most people aren't bad people obviously, but bad people absolutely exist. It leaves way too much leeway for the terrible assholes in the bunch to try to get away with murder or rape or something.
Undoubtedly, she'll have other things she needs to do later, but that gives her a clear picture of what's needed immediately at least.
Some method of detecting Gates opening like she originally thought, yes, but also some way of returning to just outside the Gate immediately, at minimum automatically triggered if someone's health is critical. Her instinct is to do the same if they fall unconscious, but with the fact there will be Awakeners with healing powers, that could all too likely screw the Hunters inside over since their Healer can't just use their power on them to get them back into fighting shape and awake. She also just can't allow them to be left vulnerable though so, probably a sort of internal timer waiting to see if it starts detecting healing magic being applied to them and teleporting them back out if it hits zero, but also capable of being triggered early by someone else in case there's a rush.
All Ha-Eun had gotten on the why was that it had something to do with running on electricity, but technology that does seems to stop working inside. To handle that and both the disadvantages of not being able to stay in touch just in case as well as not being able to have any oversight to prevent people from committing crimes, she's come up with a couple dozen designs that may be able to handle it, depending on why it occurs. Everything from magic that protects the tech from outside interference scrambling the electricity to full on temporarily converting the device to run on magic, or mana as this world will apparently call it.
Finally, at least amongst the things that need to be finished swiftly when the Gates appear and she has the last of the information she needs, was things to evaluate the power of both the awakeners and the Gates to prevent throwing weak Hunters at strong Gates and the like.
Well, technically it could work on an awakener pretty much as it is now if she just plugs in it scanning for MA energy specifically and tunes it in to ignore anything but what it's supposed to be scanning since MA energy was everywhere in everything, as she'd just made it to measure the power of the soul its evaluating for them, but she needs data on the type of magic this universe and the Gates use if she doesn't want it to be monstrously complicated to get it to measure that while ignoring the MA energy of literally everything else.
But her final check of things before she inputs the last of the data she's waiting for isn't revealing any mistakes or anything so it's probably all basically ready to go and just waiting to be finalized.
Which brings her to another rather important consideration.
She's pushing the pen into her bottom lip, clicking it slowly but rhythmically as she thinks it over.
Jae-Min stokes a hand over her hair as he leans over to press a kiss to her temple while settling the steaming cup of tea in front of her, “What's got you thinking so hard? Another invention?”
She hums idly, “No, not right this moment.” She tilts her head back to look at him with total seriousness and in a matching tone, “I'm trying to decide if I'm gonna release them under the name Dogong-Hyun Mi-yeong(3) for Potter-Black Calanthe's meaning or if I should shake it up a bit since I did that for Tōkōkuro Mihana and maybe use something like Negae-ipdeul Min-Ja(3) for the meaning of Yotsuba Toshiko or Noe Rimongok(3) for Tempest Rimuru's meaning as I usually write it. That last one doesn't translate in a way that sounds remotely good to me though in all honesty. The other ones aren't bad exactly, but I don't know.”
Ha-Eun shakes her head with a roll of her eyes, “I still say Tōkōkuro Mihana was ludicrous. And really? You wanna continue with the ridiculous pseudonym thing? I mean, if you've gotta, Negae-ipdeul Min-Ja sounds best in my opinion, but really Jin-Ji?”
Her husband snickers then turns to their wife with a smile even as her brain catches and starts churning in absolute mischief, “I agree with Negae-ipdeul Min-Ja sounding the best myself, but I'm pretty sure a pseudonym is only what it's called when you're like, publishing a novel or something under a fake name? I'm pretty sure for something like this it's an alias. I mean, they mean the same thing, but…”
Their wife waves it off, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
She starts writing it out in the Korean alphabet, absolutely filled with complete and utterly mischievous glee.
수다니ᄆ
As she finishes with a flourish, she looks up at her deeply suspicious wife, “What did you do?”
Her grin widens as she turns it around. Her wife looks confused since while if they were broken up it could mean something like "I can't believe it" but as one word its utter nonsense but she can see when she mentally sounds it out and it clicks.
수 Su.
다 Da.
니 Ni.
ㅁ M.
Technically, if she was going with how Koreans tend to pronounce it, she should've made it su-do-ne-m but sudanim was more how it was generally pronounced in English, so.
Regardless, their husband starts laughing so hard he's forced to bend over the back of the couch and brace himself against it, even as her wife looks up at her in utter disbelief, “Are you kidding me? Sudanim?!”(4)
She's laughing almost as hard as their husband, “Nope!”
Their wife pinches the bridge of her nose, “Why would your brain even go there?”
She's still laughing hard, “Be-because you said pseudonym and my brain giggled over Pseudo-nim like Pseudo with the nim honorific!”
Her husband lifts his head, "Sudanim-nim! Nim-nim!”
Their wife presses her tongue to her top right canine tooth with her mouth slightly open, then closes it and shakes her head, “You two are terrible.”
She continues to laugh with Jae-Min and needle Ha-Eun about it. Honestly, she'll grant it makes it easier to come up with a name, but she'd only originally done it in their second life to get the other two's attention. Now though, while one could consider it a bit of a tradition, especially given she's done similar things for other aliases, a good chunk of it is honesty undoubtedly in the amusement of their wife's reactions to them.
Really, she does it to herself in a way.
It's hard not to watch the clock in her middle school classroom.
In fairness, she knows full well the worldwide message is supported to go out sometime soon.
So she's been like this basically the entire period.
Thankfully, the anticipation is finally popped as it fires off, her sense of time much like her spell in her second life had, to ensure no one that was driving or doing something dangerous or time critical would have problems, and designed to release them slower so they can take in what they were doing and get back on track before things go horribly wrong.
Otherwise though, her vision suddenly cuts out and she finds herself ‘looking’ at Rowena as she dips into a little Jura-Tempest manners curtsy, “Good day, I shall start by preemptively informing you that this worldwide mental message is accompanied by a time dilation that will slowly ease off when its finished so anyone in the middle of something critical like driving has time to take in their surroundings and be reminded of what they were doing."
"It is also being translated for everyone to their native language, and we also wish to reassure you that as some of the things I am here about are of a more violent nature, it is also being adjusted and filtered based on age. With that said, my name is Rowena, and I am reaching out on behalf of the Empress of the Jura-Tempest Federation. You will not recognize its name, as amongst other more important things, I can also confirm that multiverse theory is in fact correct and we of Jura-Tempest are in fact from a different universe then your own.”
“More importantly, despite how it may go against your understanding of your universe, magic is in fact real, it's how we're reaching out in fact. But this is mostly relevant in the fact amongst other things it can do, visions of potential futures is one of them, and while there are generally different possibilities of what the future may hold, if there's one thing all possible futures of your world agrees on, it's that danger is coming.”
“We know this as while we have no more information about what happens to the vast majority when they parish, some souls do in fact experience reincarnation, though unlike some beliefs, they don't tend to be born as another species without there being rather unique circumstances or if the species in question is incredibly similar to one's own. Additionally, souls that reincarnate frequently do so in an entirely different universe than they died in.”
“This is relevant as our Empress was reincarnated into your world, and while she wishes to keep her anonymity, it's due to that we have gotten warning regarding what the future holds for your world.”
The vision of Rowena is suddenly replaced by visions of people awakening and the Gates opening, some breaking open after their week is up and spilling out their monsters. It hadn't been easy but Ha-Eun had chased down unlikely possibilities of them heading over to other countries to get visions regarding as many as possible of the early chaotic days after the Gates appear to make it clear this wasn't just one country's problem.
At the same time, it also shows how ineffective modern weapons are. Mind, in those visions they'd edited out themselves like as an example cutting the very end with Jae-Min showing up after that one Dungeon Broke, since the way Moirai worked, it only showed visions related to them, and they didn't want anyone to pick up on the same people being present in every vision.
The visions end and it cuts back to Rowena's serious form, “These Gates will be showing up in about a year and a half. Our Empress does not wish to let such devastation engulf your world. We do not have the power to stop it entirely, but that does not mean there are not things that can be done.”
It cuts to another vision, though this one actually isn't from Ha-Eun. She may not be able to use it, but she'd replicated Prophet's script onto Rowena purely so she can use Future Glimpse's ability to see a minute in advance to acquire the visions of the Labyrinth Gates appearing world wide technically before they happen since while it may have started the time dilation means it hasn't finished yet.
“Jura-Tempest is opening up permanent passageways into a sort of sub-dimension that we and another world are connected to, and we will be offering some basic survival courses for free to anyone who desires them so as to attempt to cut down on the number of casualties if a Dungeon Break occurs.”
Another image of the ineffectiveness of modern weapons against the Dungeon monsters pops up along with visions of awakeners and them fighting the monsters, though this time they're sort of off to either side of Rowena, “We will also be offering basic combat lessons for those interested. We have given you a quick overview of the most important parts, but what the visions have shown us, these awakeners will all have specialties, and while we have no way of predicting who will awaken and what their specialty will be, basic combat lessons are good in general."
"Even a Healer never knows when they'll have to fight while everyone else is busy. We will be offering more specialized lessons that anyone can take, but again, we have no clue who will awaken to begin with and what their powers will be -one vision even revealed an awakener with a good amount of kumdo swordsmanship training that awakened as a fire mage so we don't even know the deciding factor-, so we can't guarantee the usefulness of those for any who take them, though they will of course still be available after people start to awaken to assist people in getting a handle on their powers.”
“Additionally, there will also be courses on various types of magic engraving from the universes our Empress has been through, though one is guaranteed to work as it uses the basis of all magic in every universe, it is also the most complex. We can't guarantee the others will function with the magic -mana as the visions have shown this world calling it- of your universe, but they are available for any who wish to take a chance on them."
"Again, the only one we can guarantee is also the most complicated, and we have no clue how many will be interested in these, but the visions have shown at least someone will, and that they will have the basics of things already ready and just waiting for final information on this universe's magic to complete things that will aid your Hunters, as the Awakeners who go into these Dungeons are called according the the visions.”
Rowen nods, “On that note, another thing these visions have shown is the various governments making departments who are in charge of managing the Gates and getting them cleared as quickly as possible, the Hunters, and also doing things like making sure the strength of latter are matched up properly to be able to handle the danger of the former. The name varies a bit from country to country, but in your own it would be the Hunters Association."
"We would highly recommend you get started on setting it up preemptively so as to not be caught entirely flat-footed and scrambling even more than the early days are likely to have while you try to figure out who all awoke and do your best to make sure the strength levels between Gates and Hunters are appropriate. A scramble to catch up is practically inevitable, but if as much as possible is set up preemptively, it won't be nearly as bad.”
Rowena smiles, “We're also here just to help in general.” Then she shakes her head, “We can fully understand that people may be wary and distrustful of us, though we do hope you sincerely think about the fact we were capable of connecting to every single mind on your planet simultaneously and did not try anything harmful like mass mind control and the like. Nevertheless we are perfectly fine with governments and the like investigating us, we only ask you keep it respectful please, rather than being unnecessarily aggressive.”
Rowena's face hardens, “That being said, while we aren't here with harmful intentions, if anyone gets any strange ideas about trying to conquer us through the passageways we're opening we will react accordingly, and with live coverage of just who the aggressor was and what's happening. For any government who may be inclined to try and do media blackouts and propaganda, I'll remind you that we're perfectly capable of reaching an entire world simultaneously. Do you really think we can't do other things like create a holographic screen floating nearby of actual video coverage?”
“Or even other things, something that will be proven, if only because we have made it so such screens appear around people with the address to a website where an audio and video recording of this message and the others based on age and language will be available, both for those who want to check that we didn't alter anything but the language from version to version and for any parents who wish to check the versions their children received. It will remain until it's dismissed for anyone who wants to open it or write it down to look at later.”
“Additionally, as one final point for the less scrupulous nations or people, we may understand cordons around the doorways until you're satisfied with what you've investigated and confirmed we truly aren't here with harmful intentions, we will not take kindly to general gatekeeping. Having an age limit on unattended minors certainly, but otherwise you have no right to bar people from trying to make use of the assistance we're offering. We will take even less kindly to anyone attempting to set up toll booths or any other payment requirement and will consider it a hostile act. As I said, that warning is more for the less scrupulous who may be inclined to do such things, for everyone else, we will not be hostile unless prompted by your own hostility.”
She gives another Jura-Tempest customs curtsy, “I understand the news we came with is somewhat alarming, but I sincerely bid you a good day.”
After they're all slowly released from the spell, it's rather unsurprising her classmates start freaking out, shouting over one another or at one another when someone says something they disagree with. This wasn't like her second world when she'd last used the worldwide mental message where everyone already knew both about magic and even mental magic. Though in fairness she also hadn't been telling them what their future held.
If her mental message back then had been say, and the Paranormal Parasites that were coming rather than the past and events actively happening if behind closed doors for some of the things she'd talked about, they probably would have freaked out more, though they probably would've been more likely to ignore her. Magic for seeing glimpses of the future wasn't a thing there after all.
Nevertheless, while the scene surrounding her of people shouting about being invaded by Jura-Tempest, while others bring into question their intelligence while pointing out that they didn't use it for something underhanded like mind control or subtle propaganda, even as yet more are basically ignoring that part and arguing on the validity of the warning about the Gates all while the shaken teacher is trying desperately to restore order.
She herself is just pretending to be one of those who are still and silent or maybe even numb as they process everything quietly.
Mostly because she's not exactly close to anyone and she doesn't want to risk slipping up and mentioning anything in the full adult version of the message, since her physical age and the ages children around her being twelve -or by international standards anyway, by some customs like Korea that count a baby as one years old the moment it comes out, they're thirteen- means everyone else around her got a somewhat more censored version due to their ages.
Not to the extent as like, someone only five or six would of course, but still somewhat censored.
She didn't though. They'd contemplated having herself and the others experience the censored version so they had a better idea of what people would expect them to know, but they already have an idea of what's going into each version, so that doesn't exactly do much.
Besides, as long as they bluff their way through now, they can just claim they accessed the site and it's more mature versions of the message -telling the prompt asking for their age that they were older then they are- if anyone realizes they know more then they should later.
From now on, she can only really hope they actually listen to the warning.
That whole, you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink saying and all that.
She hopes they drink, going by that metaphor that is.
So many people will die if they don't.
But there's not much more she can do.
Notes:
(1): Mostly just letting you all know that with the Astral body and Eidos being the same thing, I've honestly struggled a little with what to use, so I've made the decision from here on out- If it is or was a living thing, I'll call it it's Astral Body, otherwise I'll call it it's Eidos. Just thought I should mention it just to prevent any potential confusion.
(2): ‘...Unto the Breach’ chapter 6. About halfway down if you want to refresh, but can also just page search ‘dungeons’ since it's the only time it pops up on that page. Also, no, its not meant to be her genuinely anticipating it or anything, it was me hinting at the next universe by having Shiraori guess correctly.
(3): These are probably rough, but from what I was piecing together online (though these are ultimately just things I found online, so I can't guarantee their accuracy):
Potter-Black is self-explanatory with the first name Calanthe meaning “beautiful flower” (this is also the meaning of the alias Tōkōkuro Mihana.) So-
Do (도) using (陶) meaning “pottery” and Gong (工) meaning “worker”
Hyun (현) using (玄) “dark" or "mysterious"
Mi (미) using (美) meaning "beauty" or "beautiful" and Young/Yeong (영) using (英) has several possible meanings, with the most common in names being "flower," "excellence," or "talent".
.Yotsuba literally means “four leaves” and Toshiko is “quick, clever, sharp” combined with child. So-
Negae-ipdeul (네개-잎들) literally means four leaves from what I could find online.
Min (민) using (敏) meaning "quick, clever, sharp" and Ja (자) using (子) meaning “child”
.Tempest is self-explanatory, and I found it this online and it's how she writes Rimuru 理夢瑠 which respectively (理) meaning "principle, logic, reason" (夢) meaning "dream, vision, illusion" (瑠) meaning "lapis lazuli.” So-
Noe (뇌) using (雷) meaning “thunder”
And to break up the sections of meaning with the way she usually writes Rimuru
Ri (리) using (理) meaning “reason, logic, truth, principle”
mong (몽) using (夢) meaning “dream”
ju (주) using (珠) meaning "jewel, pearl"
.Again, those may be rough and possibly incorrect, and I'm not above or against corrections if anyone has any, but I was piecing things together from name sites and the like. Semi related note since its names and meanings, Sudsnim (수다니ᄆ) was just taken from a graph of their alphabet though, so I shouldn't have messed that up, apologies if I did and sorry if it actually does make a word when its all together as one word, especially if it happens to be a rude one. When I was double checking that I got the right alphabet characters with google translate just to be on the safe side, I did see that when its broken up with spaces between the characters that it says it means "I can't believe it" but I don't guarantee it's accuracy either, and it's all meant to be one word anyway.
(4): Along with influencing her emotionally adopted children, someone's also been influenced by their kid. In the form of the way I didn't show it, but it absolutely happened in the background that Veldora did, in fact, do the food stand thing at the founders festival -of which the wedding was on the tail end of- under the name... Alias. As a bonding activity with dad actually! Couldn't find a way to work it in since muses didn't wanna give me a scene though.
Chapter 3: A World Awakened
Summary:
AN: You may or may not have noticed I applied a work skin with the “Hide creator's style” option, it's literally just to color parts of text for the system later, which I'm basing the design off of the webtoon.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
As she watches another inspection team leave, she leans back in her chair with a tired sigh, “I understand why they're so cautious, but by the Reaper it's frustrating that they still don't trust us!”
Yaana smiles brightly at her, “Worry not Lady Shiraori! They'll inevitably come to understand the truth in time!”
She blinks rapidly as she turns to her, “Well, I certainly hope they learn better eventually, but it's not a guarantee. I certainly wouldn't call it inevitable.”
Yaana laughs like she'd just told a funny joke, “Of course it is!”
Before she can do little more than tilt her head in question, someone pokes their head into her office, “Excuse me My Lady, I was sent by the Healers to request Miss Yaana's presence? Something about a patient that was just diagnosed with cancer, and well, Full Potion can't do anything about those since it's technically the body's own cells causing the problem, so…”
Yaana hops up with a bright smile, “Nothing Miracle Magic can't fix! Lead the way!”
She watches her go still with some bafflement. Then she turns to Julius and Hyrince as she jerks her thumb towards Yaana, “What was that about?”
Julius gives her an amused look, “Are you telling me you haven't noticed how the people of my world have been looking at you?”
She bristles a little defensively, “I've only had my memories return and started making trips here six years ago, and they've been kinda busy years, what with trying to prepare for the Gates and all that.”
Hyrince snickers as he swallows the bite of the bagel he was chewing on, “Sure, but for real Lady Jin-Ji? You rescued the woman they've spent millennia worshiping as a Goddess, replaced her with a being of your own creation, and also repaired and revitalized the planet all in one day. Hate to break it to you, but there's a reason the churches never disbanded even though they stopped worshipping Sariel.”
She sputters as what he's saying clicks, “Why does that shift the worship to me?! I mean, there was already a System in place, it just needed to be rebuilt, and the only real complicated part of the planet fixing was the power, and hel-lo! They all saw what it did to me too! What it's still costing me!”
Julius snorts, “It may have cost you but Rowena means we know the crushing crucible all that power put your soul in, and you survived it. Damaged maybe, but your soul still survived. And it doesn't help that you've straight up admitted that you were expecting to recover, even if you thought it would take lifetimes. And the only reason you're wrong is because surprise! You're apparently going to recover in this lifetime actually.”
She opens and closes her mouth trying to find the words to explain a being who's a god wouldn't have almost been destroyed to begin with and the sheer nonsense of worshiping someone as a goddess when they needed assistance from an AI, a shit ton of luck, and the belief of like, one and a halfish planets fueling the protection of the one last bastion of her soul to cling to as a handhold and hold herself together.
She doesn't get a chance to before Hyrince grins at her in amusement, “If anything, you're lucky the vision of what you were doing that Rowena showed didn't convey the fact that ‘oh yeah, that wave of revitalization light going out? I'm fixing everyone's souls with it as it washes over them as well! You're welcome!’ or people would worship you even more.”
Julius leans forward to snag the tea cup he'd put down on the coffee table and swap it with the now empty plate for the cookies that were brought to him, “To answer your original question though, since you apparently missed it with everything else you were focusing on; Yeah, Yaana was being honest previously when she's said she didn't worship Sariel anymore, but she's very much still religious and a member of the church.”
“She just shifted who she worships nowadays. Cheerfully comments anytime it comes up while we're around doing Hero Party stuff that yeah, she may have been ignorant of things before and went down the wrong path with her worship as a result, but she's already witnessed a miracle from her new goddess, so she's absolutely certain she has it right this time.”
Hyrince barks a laugh at the face she makes before smiling mischievously, “Why do you think she spends so much time with Adalmann when we can come by? Or why they're so buddy buddy. Usually busy discussing the beliefs of your church based on your own beliefs that you've spoken of and actions and the like, since the only thing you've ever said in a sort of manner of speaking to a worshiper in that manner was perceived as tests of their faith by Adalmann and the others from what I've been told when you tried telling them to you aren't divine.”
“They consider Adalmann a high priest here. I'd say head priest, but honestly, I'm pretty sure Lady Shuna has been quietly holding that title given the role amongst the ogres she was being trained for, that she's been with you since nearly the beginning and certainly longer than him anyway, and the fact you gave her the title of Oracle. Think she's more giving Adalmann directions.”
She shakes her head, “I meant Oracle just in the sense of someone who guides people in a vague way! Not a religious manner!”
Julius nods his head to the side with an amused smile, “Sure, but that's not how anyone interpreted it from what I've gathered. She may be more busy, which is probably why she oversees Adalmann but unless she feels the need to, she generally trusts managing more of the day to day of the religion focused on you to him. Which is why when Shuna is available at an opportune time, she's also with Yaana and Adalmann.”
He shakes his head in bemusement, “I don't tag along myself when she runs off with them, but I'm sure it's all discussions about the teachings of your religion and Yaana seeking advice and guidance from who she considers her superiors on the totem pole regarding spreading the teachings of said religion in Jura-Tempest to our world. And things like correcting the rites and stuff of it from their old doctrine.”
“Despite her age, given she's the only one of the church in our world that's been around Shuna and Adalmann or even more importantly you more than just in passing, from my understanding she's basically considered by either the church in our world or Shuna and Adalmann to be the world branch head priest. Or priestess in this case. Also, you do realize that my world isn't the only one where your church has been rapidly spreading, given through the Labyrinth's bridging of worlds, this world witnessed everything too.”
She stares at him in utter disbelief, “That is completely ludicrous! I am in no way a god and that should be damned obvious for a number of reasons!”
Hyrince leans over and stage whispers to Julius, “Should we keep it to ourselves or mention that Lady Rowena has been accepting and approving applications to Jura-Tempest from our world on the grounds that ‘Lady Shiraori is far too busy with her newest project to be bogged down with such paperwork herself’ and no one even questions it since she's clearly got a new, important, and tricky if in a different manner project with these Gates and saving another world?”
“Or the fact that it's honestly only a matter of time until she has our whole planet too, what with aforementioned Sariel, planet, and goddess stuff. Especially since she's already got Nefas, Renxandt, Alleius, Sariella, and Analeit and that basically covers all the major powers.”(1)
Julius stage whispers back from behind his teacup, “Probably best not to.”
She throws her hands up in frustration, “For the love of the Reaper! I didn't want a planet to begin with much less another and certainly not for them to worship me! Fucking hell. I think I fucking need Luminous since she may have that whole god Luminous thing going on, she at least knows the damned difference between the powerful and an actual god since she knows full well how weak she is compared to someone like Veldanava. You know, an actual universe creating god.”
It's entirely unsurprising she already knows what's being discussed since as roundabout as her connection to it may be, the H3 serving as her receptionist is still connected to the version of her inside her own Heart Core, but as she opens the door and enters with more urgent paperwork, Rowena idly comments, “I can call for her if you'd like.”
Looking up at Rowena in some annoyance, she grumbles out, “It's not exactly important but if she's available, sure. More importantly! You little traitor! You've been accepting applications to join Jura-Tempest behind my back?!”
She knows, she knows that the wounded look Julius gives her is fake and played up, but she's still damn weak to it as he affects it with a hand over his heart, “Mom? Are you saying you wouldn't have accepted my formerly independent nation wanting to join you?”
Careful not to get in Rowena's way as she organizes the paperwork she's bringing in on her desk, as quick as her body is capable of, she snatches up a rubber band from the dish holding them and shoots it at him, “Brat.”
He easily brings the hand that he'd pressed to his chest over his heart up quickly enough to catch it before it hits him with a snicker, “Technically, I'm physically older than you!”
She rolls her eyes as she picks up some papers to start reviewing what Rowena brought her, “You are genuinely fifteen. I am only twelve physically.”
He laughs, as amused as ever by the fact she's physically younger than him now and her reactions to him bringing it up. Of course, he teases her about that, the fact Jura-Tempest is expanding, and so is her church her for a good ten minutes before she's surprised by a knock on her door before Rowena opens it, poking her head in, “Creator, I have Miss Valentine here at your summons?”
She blinks a little rapidly, not having actually expected her to respond, “Send her in.”
The door opens immediately, Rowena holding it as she stands out of Luminous’ way. After she enters, she curtseys elegantly while greeting her, “You called for me Lady Rimuru?”
She drops her pen to her desk as she lifts her other hand up flat like she's going to making a chopping motion, “Yeah, I did. I've been busy so you probably have, but have you heard of this madness around more people worshiping me?”
Luminous gives her a somewhat amused look, “Yes My Lady, I have. With how busy you've been, we've all been wondering how long it would take you to realize.”
She rubs at her eyes with the hand that was holding her pen, “You may be doing that Goddess thing, but you still fully know the difference between someone powerful compared to the vast majority such as you and a being like Veldanava. Furthermore, it's been spreading here too, which undoubtedly weakens the church you set up.”
Luminous nods, expression still amused, “As is to be expected.”
She gives her a look of utter disbelief, swapping from being about to ask her to release a ‘divine revelation’ through Louis, “What do you mean ‘to be expected’?! And if it's weakening your own church, shouldn't you be trying to put a stop to it?! Especially with your church's doctrine that you're the only god there is!”
Luminous tilts her head, still far too amused for her liking, “But My Lady, how can I possibly deny what is clearly a superior deity to myself? It is one thing to claim you never deigned to truly reveal yourself to me, which is why I thought I was the only god after Veldanava's death, but I couldn't possibly deny your existence, nor your superior power.”
She's still in utter disbelief, “You-!”
Then Luminous sniffs haughtily as she flips some hair over her shoulder, “I must confess, My Lady, it was quite aggravating before. I am the Vampire Queen. My Demon Lord title is the Queen of Nightmares. It was quite vexing to be… well, as Milim worded it, ‘out gothed’ by you, though I can accept it from a superior deity.”
And well, she really doesn't want to think about people worshiping her, it's uncomfortable if nothing else. So she'll admit if only to herself that she's latching onto the topic, “Ha! Not my fault your dedication to the goth is weak.”
Julius gives her an amused look, and cheerfully remarks, “Well, I'm happy to hear you've finally accepted how much of a goth you are mom. Especially since you've already infected Shun's friend Karnatia. Not that it's all that strange nowadays. Between the fact you clearly don't mind people picking up your style given Xiǎo-lóng and the whole planet saving thing, its kinda become the height of fashion amongst the ladies due to admiration and all that.”
“Especially among the younger ladies. Ten years ago would've been another matter entirely, but no one even gives Karnatia's style a second look. Or at least not in that manner. I've happened to see a couple that did but more in the sense of admiring the outfit or wondering where she bought it from.”
She leans forward to grab her tea, “Wouldn't they recognize the work of higher end tailors from Analeit?”
He snorts, “Of course they would. Karnatia has a bit of a strange tendency to purchase clothes from Nefas and Xiǎo-lóng though, so. She swears they've got the style down better.”
She shakes her head in utter bemusement even as Luminous re-joins the conversation all too happily, swearing up and down that they do and getting into a discussion about where they go wrong or what they fail to include.
Fashion may not be either Julius nor Hyrince's thing, but the step to the left on the differences in designs and all that seems to interest them.
She watches them in amusement, though once more, she'll admit to herself that she's honestly kinda desperately mentally hiding from the idea she's got even more people worshiping her. Which makes it a lot harder to put down as Adalmann and the others already being religious and just latching onto her due to giving them new bodies and all that.
Jae-Min gives her a bemused look from over by the files he was sorting, <You're ridiculous sometimes, you know that?>
From where she was also sitting on the couches with them, Ha-Eun tucks her smile behind her tea cup, <It may be one of the most ludicrous reasons for her to finally accept that no, she is in fact, a goth, but at least she's not denying it anymore.>
She sends back the feeling of the eye roll she's physically suppressing.
She could damn near cry in relief that while yes, after the initial panic, the various governments had cordoned off the Labyrinth entrances they'd dotted around while they investigated Jura-Tempest, eventually, someone had declared them clear, took down their cordons, and started letting the people curious about them gain entrance or interested in their courses attended them.
And honestly, she somewhat thinks that they were all hesitant to do so first as while there was a bit of time in between while they were watching how Jura-Tempest actually interacted and treated the people who entered for some reason or another, it wasn't long before another cleared them, and even less time before the third.
Things had gone much more smoothly from there as others had already hesitantly stepped out on the proverbial ice and realized that not only was it solid, there weren't even potentially dangerous waters underneath lying in wait for the unprepared and unsuspecting. It was solid ground. A bit slippery on the top before they gained traction to continue the metaphor, but they were starting to get somewhere at least.
She'd been worried they'd see a minor setback when Russia had ignored the warning against any attempted hostile takeovers. She doesn't know whether it was just greed or if it was driven by the abilities of the Labyrinth and connecting to every other nation in the world, but they had, in fact, tried.
The forces they'd sent had been utterly humiliated, and when they hadn't taken the warning to backoff, Benimaru had incinerated them with a Hell Flare.
She doesn't know if it was due to Russia's reputation from its history or what, they were kind of conquest-y after all, but the live stream of things practically hadn't been needed. Most people seemed to brush it off as more of a “They got exactly what they were asking for, especially ignoring that warning.” kind of thing. While the sparse Russian traffic to the Labyrinth had kind of vanished, that was it.
People from other nations were still coming.
She imagines it'll pick up even more as more and more people give it a go and come back just fine, with the only difference being whether they wandered around the upper levels of the Labyrinth, actually went through to see Xiǎo-lóng or somewhere else for themselves, or they went down to the lower training levels for one of their free courses. And in any of those cases, the only changes between the person who entered and the person who exited was experiencing the Labyrinth and/or the courses and information and knowledge one of those left them with.
Mind, those who wandered around the upper floors couldn't exactly buy anything on their own right now since they haven't exactly gotten the chance to work things out with the governments on exchange rates, given, y'know, there isn't any large country in the modern day Earth that still gold backs their currency while they literally still use metal coins. And even for the magically reproduced digital banking in Jura-Tempest, the balance on their bank accounts represent metal coins.
Something made all the more relevant by the fact that the modern worlds she's been in may value gold more than platinum due to things like recent industry needs(2), but in Jura-Tempest platinum was very much the more expensive of the two. Honestly, she's mostly left such things to Rowena, but she's pretty damn sure that was one of the biggest hold ups. They agree that copper is the cheapest and that silver the second from the bottom up. But Jura-Tempest and this Earth could not agree about the placement of the last two.
They don't even have the same price differences between the metals. For them, it was as simple as one hundred of the previous coin was equal to one of the next. One hundred copper was one silver. One hundred silver was one gold. One hundred gold was one platinum.
That was obviously not the case with earth and the metals’ value based on weight. For them, going by the more common measurement for precious metals, troy ounces even if it's not really used for copper from her understanding, as of this year, twenty thirteen, one would have to purchase a little over seven point one troy ounces of copper to equate one the value of one troy ounce of silver. One would have to purchase one hundred and nine point two eight troy ounces of silver to equate the value of one troy ounce of gold. One would only have to buy about one point two three troy ounces of gold to equate one troy ounce of platinum. Silver to copper was decently close to their one hundred to one, but it was the only one of the bunch.(3)
The easiest way to handle the differences would be to agree upon an exchange rate with various countries based on buying power and then do something like only allow Earth people to use the magically reproduced digital banking and straight up banning them from handling the actual physical coins. Because the only other thing would be to go out of their way to print paper currency to act as a stand-in specifically for the people of Earth. But then there's all sorts of other complications like vendors having to have those on hand specifically for any Earth customers.
It would just be significantly easier if they just did purely magically reproduced digital banking with them. They're locked to a person's magic signature anyway, and while it may have originally been locked to their magicules when she first designed it, it hadn't been hard to shift it to their MA energy signature in general and everyone has that. Even magically inactive.
Add in the fact that there are public stations for all sort of things like checking one's balance all over Xiǎo-lóng and the Labyrinth as well as the fact pretty much every vendor in those places at least and spreading further had the equipment to connect to the network for anyone to easily make a purchase -which didn't even require a card or anything, they just had to touch the reader in some manner for it to read their magical signature-, and it wasn't even like anyone would not have access to it.
As much of a headache as that is though, while the people who'd visited the Labyrinth didn't currently have available means of buying anything on their own, the ‘on their own’ part was pretty relevant, given her people had a bad habit of buying them food and the like. Regardless, unless they were coming for the courses, their visits served more as sight seeing than anything. They had ended up getting a few homeless people who wanted to get out of conditions wherever they lived, too cold, too hot, rain, snow, something they were wanting to avoid in the ever comfortable replicated day or night of the Labyrinth.
It's kind of funny actually. Given how much they tend to adopt her… everything -styles, beliefs, customs like the type of bowing she was familiar with from her first life-, and her own beliefs on helping and protecting innocent people, she wasn't even surprised that while the more fortunate who wandered though may not have been able to afford anything, for the less fortunate there was always someone from Jura-Tempest who either bought them something, or offered them something from their stall or restaurant that maybe got a tiny bit burned, or the customer rejected, or was going to be tossed since it couldn't be kept overnight for free.
That, or jobs, inside or outside the Labyrinth if they were comfortable working somewhere on the other side in one of the other worlds it's connected to. Though, given the aforementioned exchange rate problem, Rowena had had to step in and ensure any hires would be paid via the magical banking and not in actual coin to prevent the value difference abuse as they haul the coins and money back and forth and continue to exchange them as they make more. But in general, they've been getting an overall increase in workforce.
…Particularly Nefas actually, given practically the moment he heard what was going on Balto on his authority as her second in command over there -even though she's no longer the Demon Lord since her death given they had, in fact, gotten rid of that law- had sent recruiters to wait around to see if any of them were interested in jobs. She may have worked out the fertility problem and the tribe of Goblins Razraz was reincarnated to may handle a decent bit of stuff, but they were still lacking on manpower for a lot of things to become more independent.
And as far as Nefas is concerned, much like with the Goblins, it was a win-win for everyone. Nefas got to make up for some critically lacking manpower, and the various down on their luck folks they've been hiring get a chance to turn things around.
Probably doesn't hurt the numbers on how many have accepted that while they've made it clear they do need to put in the agreed upon work, there's not only a free translation magic enchanted item so they don't have to learn a whole new language on the fly, they're also offering room and board on top of a smaller in comparison wage since there's said room and board already included.
Thankfully, she'd had the Trunk craft another H3 for Rowena to act as her main contact point when she isn't actually there as well as to keep an eye on things, and Balto had gone to her with his intentions first. It meant that on top of setting things up so they were paid digitally to negate any chance of abusing the value differences, she was able to quickly put together items enchanted with a tweaked copy of her Detect Absolute Truth Skill for trusted individuals to use while they went recruiting before the first one happened.
Mostly just to weed out the ones that were lazy that would try to abuse that as free handouts without actually doing the work they were asking for. Not that a decent chunk of such people had actually believed them when they were preemptively warned the recruiter had it. Any humiliation they felt from being rejected rather than hired was entirely of their own making.
Those who couldn't do the various jobs they were looking to fill but had fallen through the cracks of programs meant to help such people were gently informed that they were a nation recovering from near ruin and genuinely couldn't afford to help, but directed towards Xiǎo-lóng.
If those little traitors were gonna make her the Empress of the entire damn world over there, she was gonna make use of that power. And while there is still an economy and all that, being Empress makes it all too easy to get things in order to be able to provide for such people without being unable to pay the people like the High Orcs that are making the houses or the other people making the foods, clothes, medicines, and anything else they need. Or the Healers examining them, both in general or for specific ongoing medical issues that need constant checkups that Full Potion or the still more limited availability Miracle Magic can't do anything about.
There are things it can't deal with because they were born with it and it was more something to do with their genes than just forming wrong as a fetus. Full Potion can absolutely help with the latter, given it reads the DNA to correct things, but it can do nothing about the former. And of course, it's always been able to do something about any lingering issues due to later injury or illness.
That last one makes her really like it if governments would get quicker with working something out to make a reasonable exchange rate with Jura-Tempest to its currency that doesn't devalue either though. She can't reasonably just hand out Full Potion to amputees, non-genetic based paraplegics, or any other number of things it can deal with.
They sell them in Jura-Tempest, and while she can get away with smaller scale things like taking in and taking care of people who need it, the scale that would require would do massive damage to Jura-Tempest's economy if she tried to start giving away potions for free. Which is a problem in the ‘if the people who make and/or sell potions aren't making enough, then they can't buy other necessities, and then the people who make them get screwed’ domino effect kind of way.
It would be a humongous problem, but it also wouldn't exactly be fair if she was selling to people in Jura-Tempest and the other world -they really need to come up with a name for that already- but just giving them away in this world. Earth obviously, but it feels weird calling it that when it's just one version of Earth. The Labyrinth may not be connected to any other version right now but it could be in the future for all she knows. They should probably come up with a distinction to tell it apart from potential future Earths it may be connected to. ‘Gate Earth’ is way too vague. So is something like ‘Dungeon Earth’, ‘Awakener Earth’, and ‘Hunter Earth.’
Work in progress. Possibly only relevant to her, Jura-Tempest, and the other world, since she's not likely to reveal things without good reason. Much as she may want to help people with Full Potions and the like, it would be a bad idea to shake people's understanding of the world without good reason. And it would undoubtedly be somewhat disastrous as well.
As suspicious as this world was, they were also more cautious than anything given the warning about the Gates. She doesn't wish such a thing on other worlds, but without something like that, they'd be more likely to attack. And then they'd undoubtedly fight back and there would be Reaper only knows how many casualties.
And that would undoubtedly lead to grudges, which would make it all the harder to get them to stop, and then unless they wash their hands of that world and disconnect, it would be more likely to turn into an endless continuously growing grudge driven war.
That's just from militaries and the like at that. It doesn't even begin to touch on things like racists who just decide that because a decent chunk aren't human it'd be better if they just died. Or extremists who take some sort of issue with them. Or people who have everything they believe in potentially ripped out from under them and commit suicide for some reason or another.
It's just a bad idea all around to reveal themselves on a large scale to a world without good reason or good relations like she already had with Renxandt and Analeit without even taking into account she was in control of Nefas. An idea that was more likely to lead to more harm than good at that.
That was another and currently entirely hypothetically matter though. For now, things were going decently. This world was learning to trust Jura-Tempest; That they're being honest when they say they aren't here with harmful intentions, that they want to help.
Nefas is engaging in some mutually beneficial hiring, getting some much-needed manpower while simultaneously giving people who through some circumstance or another, become homeless or are even struggling under other problems.
There may technically be no benefit to Jura-Tempest, but they've been helping the people who need it but have fallen through the cracks for assistance programs.
She's not quite satisfied with the speed, but the allure of Full Potions and other such things has the various governments hustling decently to work out mutually favorable exchange rates without them having to just straight up charge people however much it would take of their currency to purchase the weight in copper, silver, or gold in the coin or coins to buy things though it can definitely be pricey depending on how many and what coin they're trying to buy. Which they currently have that ban on anyway.
Honestly though, with the people they've been taking in… for all that she's never been born American, she keeps being reminded of the Statue of Liberty's inscription, “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
That isn't to say she's under any notions that America would just take in en masse people like she is, they have pretty strict policies for it from her understanding. Which is absolutely fair in her opinion. They need to both make sure the people they're taking in aren't drug dealers, or terrorists, and other such undesirables, and they also have to limit the number of people they accept at a time to prevent flooding and straining their already in place systems. They can only really get away with it since they have Detect Absolute Truth and more than a planet when it comes to their infrastructure.
It's the inscription she keeps being reminded of. She doesn't know if it's arrogant that it keeps doing so, but honestly? It feels kind of fitting, and she's more than okay with that.
But back to this version of Earth learning to trust them, she's more than happy, especially since the longer it goes on and the more they learn to trust them, the more they can help. In the earlier countries that cleared them, Rowena has informed her that some companies and school districts and the like have been consulting with them regarding potential updates to their buildings in case a Gate breaks nearby before it can be beaten or even something like one going unnoticed somehow and breaking.
There are fire escapes on buildings of course, but monsters were honestly even more complicated to escape than a blaze. At least the latter is somewhat predictable and you certainly have a good idea of where it is, as well as usually having the ability to turn and find a different path if one is already blocked off.
Monsters? Not so much for any of those. Of course, they don't really want to give any monsters on the ground floors another way up and to be able to cut off the escape routes of anyone trying to get away from the ones already coming up using more traditional methods if they can help it.
Currently the best idea they have is to implement some sort of anchor around each window with a few pre-set up but magically resizing harnesses and the ability to pull them back up that can automatically let them down in a quick but controlled drop. If the magic on them is intent based, they won't even have to have someone up top controlling the whole thing that will either have to know how to manually repel down without hurting themselves or find another way out.
They will have to set up the enchantments bringing it up to either only do so when it's empty, or in the event of someone starting down only for a monster to appear, only allowing it to pull back up with a passenger if the person is a human to prevent monsters grabbing the harnesses and getting up that way. Maybe specifying they have to be a living human since there's always a possibility of undead with currently mostly unknown magic.
There are other possibilities of course, but the exact manner doesn't matter, just that there's a way out and down attached to every window on every floor so no one has to risk their life trying to make their way to a specific part of the building for a fire escape staircase.
Though they'll have to stagger them horizontally so any windows above any particular floor can still use their own as needed without interfering with one another.
Once things are more finalized, they'll undoubtedly start offering evacuation drills in the Labyrinth to make sure everyone understands how they work so they can use them quickly.
Perhaps she can rework a Labyrinth exit to the Central World so it allows enough magicule bombardment so as to let people acquire Skills. Though given she imagines the ‘awakeners’ are the people who were closer to being active magicals and either lacked the power just didn't have a magic calculation area strong enough to make use of their power, if she does adjust one of the exits to do that, she has a strong feeling anyone who takes them up on the chance will be amongst the most likely to awaken.
So, they'll probably have to make some sort of waiver for anyone who goes for it acknowledging the higher chance it will eventually see them become an awakened as well as the fact they have no control over what Skill they acquire or its usefulness.
Whether people will trust them enough to contemplate it, much less take them up on the offer, she has no clue.
For now at least, they were starting to be cleared by governments, people were starting to take them up on their courses to prepare them, and entities like schools and businesses were looking into implementing methods of people escaping monsters in their buildings.
It's still slower than she'd like given the deadline of sorts they're racing against to prepare this world as much as possible, but it's progress nonetheless.
Honestly, she'd been expecting to have to try and angle things and subtly push her parents in this life so as to plant a seed she may or may not need later in excuses, but would rather have just in case. They still don't totally know the circumstances behind her restoration after all, and it's better to cover as many bases for excuses of it being outside the norms Ha-Eun has glimpsed in her visions just to be on the safe side.
But she hadn't given her parents enough credit. She feels like it should be at least a little understandable. The only time she's had a living guardian when she's old enough to remember was her second life, and while they sorted things out later, she wasn't exactly all that trusting of Miya at first, given the whole Yuki situation and her being pushed into the Guardian program which was its own mess regardless of her inclusion.
She's not used to having actually good guardians, much less parents, when she's old enough to understand.
She hadn't even gotten around to settling on how to subtly bring it up and quietly push for it before her parents acted entirely on their own after the exchange rate and all that was settled and took her to Xiǎo-lóng to try and get answers there for the constant tiredness she still has.
There are plenty of other reasons of course, but it makes her all the more glad on a more personal level that the Healthcare in Xiǎo-lóng was designed to be incredibly affordable. If it wasn't, she'd inevitably feel guilty for having her parents spend money on it when there's nothing Xiǎo-lóng can do to help and the answers they can give are limited given she doesn't want to out her reincarnation.
Luckily it was fairly cheap though, so it wasn't even really a noticeable charge for her parents to take her in. It still kinda broke her heart again to see her mother trying so hard not to cry while insisting that she's perfectly used to medical professionals wanting to speak to her privately to question her while trying to find out if the root cause was mistreatment of some sort, and that she was perfectly fine with it since they just wanted answers as to what was wrong with their daughter’s health.
After the Healer had gently reassured her mom that she was already pretty sure it wasn't anything like that just from preliminary magical scans and it was just a mandatory thing before her mom left to give them privacy, the actual questions had been on what she wanted the Healers to report to her parents given her reincarnation was currently hidden. But well, it wasn't exactly the reincarnation she didn't want to get out there per say, it was that she was in fact Jura-Tempest's highly praised and oft talked about Empress she didn't want getting out.
The general blanket on reincarnation was more because said Empress was the only person Earth knew for sure was a reincarnation so it was somewhat inevitable that's the first person people’s minds would go to if they're told a young female is a reincarnator.
That is to say, she'd sorted it out what to say after running some tests with the Healer, and while she wasn't to bring up reincarnation in the slightest, she was free to ‘discover’ the issue wasn't physical but some sort of ‘inexplicable’ soul damage too advanced for even them to deal with affecting her but reassure them regarding the fact there weren't really any other issues or potentially terrifying root causes lying in wait to spring on them.
It simultaneously broke her parents’ hearts a bit even as it relieved them. On one hand, there wasn't anything to be done about it that they know of. On the other, while it was a surface symptom, it isn't just one for something that will grow even worse or potentially even kill her.
It made her feel a bit bad for her parents, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. It wasn't like telling them she was the ‘mysterious Empress’ would magically change anything.
There's a sort of weightless tension in the air. She's not referring to Jae-Min’s living room either. It's basically all over the planet.
It was D-Day for when things were supposed to kick off after all.
The day when the first awakeners and initial wave of Gates was set to appear.
They'd had a more vague notion of the year and month originally, but the closer they got to it, the clearer things became for Ha-Eun's visions with Moirai.
By the time they got about two weeks away, she even had the exact time of that first wave. After it breaks it won't exactly be in waves per say, more random, but there would be an initial surge of them both all at once.
From what Rowena has absently told her of her observations, it was like the whole world slowly ground to a halt as the last hour ticked down. It was practically completely at a stop by the time there was five minutes left.
Mind, what they haven't been told is that Ha-Eun knows that so precisely because practically the same instant that deluge of initial Gates sends out a wave of mana worldwide, unsurprising given how primed as it were their souls are for it due to their own power, all four of them will awaken.
It was why they were hiding at Jae-Min's actually.
Her visions have shown that as a means of trying to teach them how to get a handle on their powers, it wouldn't be very long before stronger awakened minors would be shuffled into specialty schools.
Neither her soulmates nor sister-in-law were willing to be drawn away from her though, even if it wasn't exactly the more peaceful self indulgence of attending school together that it was in their second life. Not the same peaceful self indulgence partly due to the rising tension of what was coming even before they warned this world, partly due to the state she was in that is.
Their refusal to be separated from her was entirely due to her currently weakened state and their overprotectiveness.
But that also means they don't really want anyone to be aware of their awakening until they're out of school at least, regardless of how trustworthy they think they are. Her own mom was a stay at home mom, so that ruled her own home out to wait the final countdown out. It left it as something of a toss-up between Ha-Eun's or Jae-Min's and Jae-Hui's since both sets of parents would be out, but Ha-Eun had a neighbor her age right next door who was honestly kind of a stalker.
They have put up wards and the like all over the house to protect Ha-Eun's privacy from him of course, especially after the binoculars incident, but even if Jae-Min scared the little bastard off when he pulled him aside for a private talk while Ha-Eun spoke to his parents with proof from what they can tell, it's still just better to play it safe rather than sorry and potentially find out later that not only did he actually have some method of spying inside her house still, but he was even willing to send her away from his own school later to try and separate her from Jae-Min and her.
Even if whatever Jae-Min said to the boy seemed to have traumatized him so badly he wouldn't even look in Ha-Eun's direction. Not knowing and willingly anyway, and if he happened to glance that way and realize she was there, he'd turn away so quickly Ha-Eun has remarked on concern of him pulling something in his neck.
Which of course brought up questions of what exactly Jae-Min said to him, but Ha-Eun knew by now to let sleeping dogs lie, especially since she's fully aware by now at the differences between her cop past and personality and Hei's assassin history and the way it influenced him. If anything, Ha-Eun didn't want to know.
She was a bit morbidly curious though in all honesty. Jae-Min told her, mild as milk away from Ha-Eun later that he'd basically told the kid he'd torture him to death if he did it again, but had actually focused on scaring him via how thorough he'd be about disposing of his corpse so no one would ever find him.
Mainly, that he'd skin him, removing all the organs and all that, separating it out from harder things like bone. Toss the former through blenders and make sure it's thoroughly minced so that even if some part survived the incinerator it would go in afterwards, no one would be able to identify it as human remains at a glance and would likely assume it was just some meat that went bad or something. As well as crush up all of the former into fine powder to dump directly into the ocean. And not like, off a pier or something where maybe it could get washed up and maybe some sequence of events would see it analyzed and identified as human. Oh no no no. Off a rented boat at least a few kilometers out.
Which made it rather unsurprising that he hasn't been an issue since, but still better to play it safe then sorry, especially if he sees something and gets notions he can try to get Jae-Min away from him, possibly go back to creeping on Ha-Eun with him gone if he didn't reveal her awakening.
Even that was assuming he wasn't scared off of such behavior for the rest of his life and honestly if he did report seeing their awakening if he somehow did observe it, it's far more likely a terrified self preservation thing of just straight up getting Jae-Min far away from him even if Ha-Eun gets sent away too.
Regardless of the fact it should be impossible for him to witness it or the potential reasons he may report it, assuming he isn't too terrified of Jae-Min to breathe a word, it never hurts to play it safe anyway.
Jae-Min's was secure of potentially permanently neutralized creeps though, so they could safely awaken there without anyone the wiser.
Practically the second the final minute ticks away, a massive wave of magic surges through her. Jae-Min, Ha-Eun, and even Jae-Hui, though it was stronger with the other two of course, had hopefully wondered if it was the awakening that restored her soul.
She knows immediately it's not. Not as far as the visions of her being fully restored anyway.
Yes, the moment it surges up, like pouring water onto too dry ground, her soul starts greedily absorbing it and ‘spending’ it as it were in a far more permanent capacity as it starts to stabilize and repair her soul, but there's nowhere near enough to finish the job.
Previously, when they'd measured her Existence Value, she was at around seven hundred twenty, almost three quarters what a regular human has. Once it's practically all burnt out and she's just left with a small core of magic that refills, at a rough estimate she'd say she only managed to keep about eight thousand.(4)
May have been more, but much to Jae-Min’s frustration she had made that Occlumency pin to stop For Richer or For Poorer to stop it from very likely destroying her soulmate’s souls and even her sister-in-law’s as the binary star BK-201 tries to equalize things between them. It has still been active all the way up to her death, so even if there was an opportunity to shut it off, she’d missed it.
Not because the window that For Richer or For Poorer can do something closed permanently. But because she didn't have Elemental Sight or Multidimensional Perception to actually properly manipulate Decomposition, and given the fact Occlumency was really just magic based around the infons of the Heart Core, she can't just get rid of the pin either.
Which means, her soulmate's and sister-in-law's awakenings don't help restore her either.
So her soul is still a mess, and she's still by and large incapable of calling on other powers she's gained previously, but she can't complain.
Her soul has been somewhat repaired and she now has some power to draw on if and when she needs to. Plus, her soul undoubtedly can't handle too much of it, but she can at least use the Trunks magic stores to enchant a couple pieces of jewelry with a Skill for magic regeneration and also a Charity based power booster.
She'll have to carefully find out what her limit is regarding how much the power she uses is boosted without harming her still mostly broken soul more than it already is, or worse, finish it off, but it's a foot in the door. Honestly, probably hardly a toe, maybe even just a nail, but she rarely needs more than that to figure something out.
It still feels kinda awful when the other three look a bit heartbroken, her soulmates more so unsurprisingly, not needing her to say anything to sense the truth for themselves.
She looks away as the news station they were watching that had fallen into an unnatural silence suddenly explodes with the news of the plethora of Gates that had suddenly appeared just as they said they would, “I told you it probably wasn't the awakening that did it. Even told you it could be put to bed if Ha-Eun used Moirai to try and see more than just the moment of awakening and the appearance of the Gates to confirm it.”
Ha-Eun lets out a shaky breath and she glances over to see her eyes are teary as she admits, “I know… I just- I couldn't stand to see it yet, to have the hope of it taken away just yet…”
She looks away again, not really having anything to say to it.
She hates it a little. Not her soulmates and sister-in-law themselves, but that they got their hopes up only to be crushed by reality.
There's nothing to be done about it now though.
No one seems to want to talk about it either, so she pulls the papers on the things she was working on close from where she left them waiting for the final moment and to get an idea of mana and its makeup of MA energy.
In the heavy silence of the shattered hopes with nothing but the news in the background, now playing a press release from Rowena trying to calm everyone and reminding them that this is exactly what they warned them of and have been preparing them for as well as the fact Jura-Tempest absolutely intends to continue helping, she uses her Multidimensional Perception enchanted ring to get a better look at the mana. The structure it builds its MA energy into and all that.
Once she has it, she gets started on finishing up her detectors and measuring devices. Shouldn't be more than a day, and she'll absolutely take advantage of the excuse for its speed in being released Rowena told everyone. She has zero intentions of holding it back just to let a believable amount of time pass or whatever.
Let them all believe whatever they want about how far along she was and how she went about getting the last of the data she needed so quickly.
As long as they actually use them, she couldn't care less.
Her dad, Sung Il-Hwan, was apparently an awakener.
Entirely unsurprisingly given he was also a firefighter and chose that job out of a desire to help people, he was leaving said job behind to help save lives as a Hunter.
It made her mom even more nervous then his old job, but that's not unsurprising.
He'd gone and gotten evaluated the day after she released the information on it and Jura-Tempest started pumping all the equipment she'd released designs for out as quickly as possible.
The evaluation equipment to figure out the strength of Hunters, the detection equipment to find all the Gates preferably as they form, and even the things to let people teleport back to the entrance to the Gate or temporary additions to phones or cameras to not only function but be able to connect to the outside so there's record of what actually happens in the Gate to make sure no one tries to abuse the lack of eyes on them. Especially if they send back what's happening to the Association people monitoring their Gate live.
Nonetheless though, her mom was nervous, even if she can totally understand why. All she'd done was see to it that the devices to measure power would get to them quickly. Since they didn't exactly have any experience with mana or the Gates, they hadn't included any sort or scale, not wanting to potentially give notions of things that may have them overestimate awakeners or underestimate the threat various Gates have.
So after being advised to measure some Gates and awakeners before so they'd have a good idea of power scales they were seeing, since all the equipment did was measure raw mana, they'd done exactly that before an S+ A-E Rank System was made. At least, that's what South Korea had labeled the power scale.
Other countries probably gave them their own names, but there had been some quick meetings to make sure they were on the same page for the scale itself so there wouldn't say, be a request for emergency assistance for an A-Rank Gate, but because they use a different power scale, end up sending nothing more than B-Ranks as the main force rather than as backup or support for higher Ranks.
While they'd made their own labels and set their own ranges for the scales, the devices did measure things using Existence Value and put it in those numbers. The cut offs and all that seemed like awfully odd numbers at first glance, but it's because they were smart enough to give more care to the actual power levels then putting them to nice round numbers.
That aside, her dad had been the only fighting capable S-Rank that's known to have awakened in South Korea.
At least for now. Ha-Eun's visions make it clear it's not the last of the awakeners, and they'd made sure to let the world know that as well. But no one else that's come forward to be evaluated has been an S-Rank. He wasn't the only one here, but the only other one, Go Gunhee, was too old to be a Hunter. He was the head of South Korea's Hunters Association already, since Ha-Eun's visions had shown it and they'd quietly released that information to Go Gunhee and the Association that was being put together.
He seems like he's a dutiful man, since practically the moment it had been revealed, he had left behind the position of chairman at the corporation he was working at and taken up the mantle at the Hunter's Association without having to be coerced or anything.
Her soulmates and sister-in-law, unsurprising, have already privately confirmed with evaluation equipment Rowena made especially for them and they'd moved into the Trunk that they were also S-Ranks, but again, they utterly refused to budge and reveal themselves until after they've all graduated and no one can separate them from her.
But as the only fighting fit S-Rank they have, while they treasure him enough not to risk his life carelessly, South Korea also doesn't exactly have any choice but to have her dad partake in the strongest Gates to shut them down before they break open.
So yes, she fully understands her mom's worry over it, but at the same time, it can't really be helped.
Her mom, Park Kyung-Hye, has been sort of trying to bury her anxiety in getting things packed up.
She's honestly rather unsurprising that nations have already started trying to steal one another's limited S-Ranks. She's equally unsurprised that each nation has been somewhat desperately trying to hold onto their S-Ranks.
Yet more completely expected news; Her dad was honestly insulted at the implication that South Korea had to pay him or something like that just to make him stay, but he was even more insulted by the people who've come sniffing around trying to bribe him with money, favor, or other ‘perks’ to abandon South Korea and head to one of their nations.
Even if this world hasn't had the chance to find uses for the ‘essence stones’ one can find in the bodies of the monsters from the Dungeons, nor has Jura-Tempest, but if nothing else, a desire to study them and this world’s mana or even as mana reservoirs means Jura-Tempest has been purchasing them from Hunters, so they already have a source of income.
Her dad has already made enough that her parents have decided to move to a better neighborhood. She had, of course, taken full advantage of being seen as a moody teenager to get answers as to whether they'll move away from Ha-Eun, Jae-Min, and Jae-Hui or her school, and had been fully prepared and willing to raise a bit of a stink over the very idea of being separated from them if they'd indicated they were planning to.
There were nicer homes to buy that were still in the school district after all.
Luckily for her parents’ sanity on not having their ‘moody teenage daughter’ throw practically the first fit on her life, they hadn't exactly intention of moving out of the school district anyway, just out of the apartment to a house they own.
They had tried to gently point out that technically they could move somewhere with nicer schools, but she hadn't had to say anything, since the Look she gave them seemed to make them immediately wave the white flag rather than risk getting into it with their moody teenage daughter. A label she's had practically from the moment the personal style she'd been slowly tipping towards goth had crossed into that territory enough for them to recognize it when she was about ten.
There were benefits beyond her own enjoyment of the style. Even if it was mostly in things like her parents low-key dreading what sort of devastation will reveal itself if they break her unnerving‐given-her-physical-age usually calm and level headed maturity.
And she's only usually calm and level headed since it's not like she doesn't have a temper. It's just not the sort of temper people expect in association with a teenager. Hers is pretty much entirely set off by someone messing with people she loves or being a threat in some manner to innocent people.
Which that one recruiter had learned the hard way when he was persistent enough to try to show up and pressure her dad at home. She'd chased him out of the building and all the way to his car all but screaming at him given as the only fighting capable S-Rank, and therefore South Korea's strongest Hunter if her dad leaves, the people of South Korea will be in danger.
Her mom was sort of mortified. Her dad and their neighbors found the entire thing hilarious. So had a lot of people on the internet after one of their neighbors uploaded a video of what they got on camera.
Which had only strengthened the benefit regarding her somewhat unnerving calm maturity potentially really erupting. Even if it was a strange benefit she wasn't expecting to begin with as she eased her parents into her actual sense of style rather than whatever her mom picked out or something. A benefit was still a benefit though! And it keeps her from being separated from the other three, so.
Equally unintentional benefit, the video being uploaded meant whenever any other recruiters approached him, if they didn't have awakeners he was concerned would hurt her or something, her dad was all too amused to cheerfully tell them to take it up with his eldest daughter and watch them run away with their tails between their legs.
She wasn't exactly expecting or intending to become a sort of scary guard dog, but.
She was okay with finding herself cast in that role.
Doesn't hurt that the other three find it as funny as her dad does as well. Probably wouldn't if he legitimately sent everyone her way, but again, he's careful not to send anyone he thinks could actually be a danger to her so they're pretty fine with it.
Honestly, out of the people close to her, it's really only her mom that's mortified or anything. Even her baby sister finds it an absolute riot.
She's only seven sure, but who cares. Jin-Ah finds it funny too. And she's nothing like Yuki, so she's totally alright with amusing her baby sister.
Notes:
(1): Just tossing this out there, no the idea isn't that she basically absorbs/conquers every world she goes to. In Tensura she both bodied the strongest people alive with ease and for various reasons the strongest/most influential nations joined which prompted the others. KumoDesu as I laid out here, it was a combo of the stuff surrounding Sariel who the majority of them believed to be a goddess and the fact she literally rebuilt the planet and survived -or her soul did anyway- the dangers of the method she used while having a pretty good idea about what she was facing down to pull that off due to the vision. I don't currently have any plans for her to acquire any other worlds. I mean, I admittedly can't guarantee that since I wasn't exactly planning for her to get KumoDesu, more a belated realization of the likely consequence of her actions, so 🤷♀️
(2): Along with possibly messing up the Korean alias names, I'm also not above regular mistakes. While it's true platinum was more value in the past, more recent (in the grand scheme of things) shifts made gold started to become more valuable back in 2008 though it was flip flopping for a bit, but using averages, 2013 when this part is taking place is set, platinum is actually in the lead. I only learned of the shift in this chapter while looking into what the coins would actually be worth in sheer weight value (mind it does require making assumptions about their size to get volume, but that's fine).
This is mostly addressing the note back in “Once more…” about me questioning why they didn't pick it for Dwargon's Stellar coins. That being said, it's absolutely still valid for Tensura since the reasons for the switch don't apply to it. And I worded it later as “This Earth” since in her first world, given she'd have been purchasing the rare metals she needed from active magics of that magical world, it wouldn't have been really influenced by inactive magicals seeing swaps like that -though the Goblins on that world must've had one hell of a time with value differences-, and in her second life, the year was around the 2,095s, had also gone through a third World War and had also had changes to tech come about. So honestly, this is the first life it would've been realistic for her to see it anyhow.
(3): Coins by weight in US dollars as well as Won given the setting. Historical metal prices and exchange rate total average for the year -2013 if you set the canon part of the story in 2025- used for this; Platinum USD 955.86 Won 1,042,194; Gold USD 772.61 Won 842,393; Silver USD 7.07 Won 7,709; USD 0.84 Won 916.
(4): Just a note, I'm not saying it's 1 to 1 of 8,000 = 10 or 800 = 1 by canon mana evaluation of Sung Jin-Woo's 10 mana. Her situation is a little different due to why she's so weak but it also means she won't have the exact same evaluation even going by canon standards.
Chapter Text
Jae-Min suddenly straightens up from where he and Ha-Eun are watching the news discussing the newest regulations the Hunters Association is putting out about the Gates, “Oh yeah!” At her and their wife's glance, he shakes his head, “Got understandably distracted with fixing the last world, trying to find a way that doesn't result in soul destruction for you, the realization that something may be coming to this world, trying to figure out what it is, learning about the Gates and making to prepare for them, and then being distracted by the initially unstable situation when they did come that I spaced it.”
Then he purses his lips angrily, “But it just occurred to me now that the situation is more stable. Why the fuck is that male voice calling you ‘Beloved’?! What audacity made it think it has the right?!”
Ha-Eun immediately cracks up, “Oh my gods Jae-Min! You were so mad I thought it was something serious!”
He waves his hands, “It is serious! Whoever the hell that is, where does he get off thinking he has any claim to our wife?!”
Ha-Eun shakes her head, clearly trying to hold back more laughter, “I think we potentially have much bigger problems in the form of him getting through Jin-Ji's Occlumency with such ease and evading detection and all that. Especially given we still don't know his aims or all that.”
Her husband waves a hand sharply, “We basically already concluded that he's probably not a threat like that given he's had plenty of opportunity to do some shit before now. But even if he's not a threat, this is still a major problem! How fucking dare he?!”
She shakes her head as her husband starts ranting, Ha-Eun all but losing it in her humor over it as she turns her attention back to what she was doing.
The results staring back at her kinda wanna make her purse her lips, but the background noise from Jae-Min and Ha-Eun pretty much dispels it before it can take hold.
While she knows full well why they'd done it, it still feels stupidly lucky. Yes, back when they first found out, they had been concerned about people discovering the Basilisk meat making Hei and Misaki active magicals, then later after it came out, that people wouldn't believe the bluff regarding them having already used all of it and actually finding some around.
And yes, she did have that Vanishing Cabinet that had gone directly from first the trunk her mom left her and her bedroom in Japan then later between said room and the Trunk of Requirements so it was always fairly easily available at all times.
But it still felt unbelievably stupidly lucky that they'd taken to storing the Basilisk meat in the Trunk and Hei would just pop in through the cabinet to grab some when he intended to cook with it before they genuinely ran out. Mostly because she's never seen a huge reason to really study how it made them magicals before but. Well, it's come to light that for reasons she doesn't really understand, something entirely unique about this universe was that some people were utterly physically intolerant of magic.
There have been plenty of magically inactive people in pretty much every universe she's lived in, but she's never seen people who literally can't handle it. Which is both understandable and makes the people suffering from this ‘Eternal Slumber’ all the more mystifying by the fact that all magic was MA energy at its core, which was itself the source of life.
Not how it does what it does to them, the mechanics of it that is. It was fairly easy to pinpoint with using the enchantment on an earring to observe it with her Multidimensional Perception. Essentially though, Mana is a denser than usual forms of magic, at least compared to others she's encountered.
She's likened different forms of it to atoms, with the reaction between her magics of her first two lives being like halogens that had been coexisting just fine suddenly meeting an alkali. She'd later expanded the thought process and considered MA energy the quarks. To continue that though, the mana of this world…
While it wasn't literally like magicules, it was its own atom. What sets it apart is its surprising density. She'd never really noticed any variation in density between magics before, which makes sense, given when she'd actually checked the density differences were in the decimal millionths to one another, even if in general if one tried to put them all in numbers regarding their densities the rest of them would be a tenth of a whole number. But mana was a ten point two, just shy of point three.
Not that it means it's inherently more powerful as it is or anything, given the majority of those things are just metaphors to clarify things at the end of the day. The point wasn't that it was stronger or whatever.
Could potentially be if one used spells and such that were originally designed for other magics given its increased density, and you'd certainly get more MA energy out of it if you ripped it apart then you would from other magics. But the powers of this world are built around that increased density mana.
She doesn't know if it's intentional, but while the density would imply an increased potency that makes it so you need less mana for magic, this universe itself seems almost built to compensate for it, having proportionally higher costs for the abilities. The only people who can potentially take advantage of its potency are herself, Jae-Min, Jae-Hui, and Ha-Eun.
Maybe people from Jura-Tempest or the other world that Julius is from -which undoubtedly had a name before the whole MA energy mess, but Sariel can't recall which of many names over its entire history was its last, Ariel never knew it to begin with, and Güliedistodiez was of the opinion it should be discarded right along with its past so she named it Feronia after the Goddess the Romans adopted to keep kind of in theme with Nefas- like Güliedistodiez could make use of it, but that would require them to Awaken before they can even see if they can take advantage of the potency of mana.
Or well, Güliedistodiez and Sariel may be able to get away with not Awakening to tap into it, she's not exactly sure, but the people of Jura-Tempest undoubtedly would have to.
Which isn't to say they can't, just that they haven't thus far. That may just be that they haven't been exposed to mana enough yet, maybe with it taking longer to Awaken in them since they aren't from this universe and technically already had a connection to it even if they were unaware of it since it is native to their universe, but they won't really know unless someone from Jura-Tempest Awakens so.
The density is neat enough that it seems intentional, like this whole damn universe or whatever brought the Gates here and not only increased the costs but even increased the potency of the magic of this universe enough to negatively impact some of the life in it is as cruel as Wakaba or maybe even worse.
The latter problem being that while every person, regardless of whether they're an active or inactive magical, has a magic calculation area, for the latter, they're smaller and less developed since they don't need them.
Much like say, a medical researcher doesn't really need the same physic of a firefighter since they're not expected to carry people given they have an entirely different job. It doesn't make either of them lesser in any way than the other. They're both helping people and potentially saving lives in different equally important and valid ways.
But for the people who have started to suffer from Eternal Slumber, their magic calculation areas are too small and underdeveloped to keep up with regulating the external mana bombarding their bodies.
And with mana being so dense, it was toxic to the people whose bodies can't regulate what they're being flooded with. At which point, something similar to when the body is too cold starts occurring. Like how blood vessels will constrict, limiting what goes to limbs to try and preserve the brain and heart, the Astral body will start performing essentially emergency ‘shutdowns’ in the form of unconsciousness of the physical body to try and direct more energy to sorting out the problem.
Unfortunately, sometimes it takes it too far and the person in question goes into a coma, which nothing they've tried so far can wake them from. Plus side, it can technically keep up with mana in their system when none of their energy is being directed into being conscious and moving around and all that other day to say stuff. Downside, permanent coma.
Actually, if anything, the Astral body over does it here as well. They over regulate and purge mana. Except while it was in much, much fainter traces before the Gates appeared, it was still the structure of this universe's MA energy. Which, you know, was the source of life? Purge too much and you purge life from something as well. Which is why, paradoxically, people who've entered the final coma of Eternal Slumber actually need essence stones in their life support.
Ultimately though, that means the problem lies in the magic calculation area within the Astal body rather than the physical body.
Which is why she was ever so grateful that they'd stored at least some Basilisk meat in the Trunk of Requirements at one point. Because if it was stored in here, the Trunk can recreate it for her to study just how it turned Hei and Misaki into magicals. Because here's the thing, part of it had to have somehow been imparting magic onto them, but it would've been useless without a magic calculation area capable of actually using that power. Which means it must affect that somehow as well.
She doesn't exactly want to make people magicals, not because of any elitist nonsense or because she doesn't think they deserve it or should have it or something, more that it's more likely to cause absolute pandemonium, especially in the beginning.
People would end up getting hurt when the wrong sort of people got power like that to start abusing on power trips or in crime. People would end up getting kidnapped either by extremists, more regular criminals looking for ransom and the like, or even their stalkers they suddenly aren't safe from. People would end up dying.
She's also been studying the recordings of the people who took Jura-Tempest up on the exit that lets them enter as though they're otherworlders and potentially gain useful Skills, since statistically, more of them then not have to lack magic calculation areas capable of making full use of whatever power they get.
One could argue that is also somewhat of a risk in giving the wrong people power, but part of the process to sign up for it required strict interviews under Detect Absolute Truth and mental evaluations and the like so as to ensure they aren't giving the wrong people power. They had to turn a few over to authorities actually, given they absolutely had illegal intentions which was premeditation for crime.
The point is, no she isn't exactly looking to make people active magicals. What she's looking for is the process of strengthening a magic calculation area in weaker than usual inactive magicals.
Given the root problem people suffering from Eternal Slumber had was one too weak to handle the mana of the people and things like the Gates, if it can be addressed, then they have a cure.
Honestly though? The Basilisk meat is definitely the weirder one. It was just one layer between body and soul that was important for this, so it's not like they were eating the soul itself… but as far as she can tell, Basilisks… had their Spiritual and Astral bodies somehow… half pulled out of the information dimension and fused with their physical bodies?
And because of that, that half didn't disappear upon death like the rest did. So they were kinda literally eating what was left of its Astral body. Even if they weren't eating its magic calculation area specifically, that part doesn't seem to get merged, probably because it only exists there so there's nothing for it to merge with and they weren't eating the brain anyhow, but it was made up of the same magic so they may as well have been.
It had strengthened Hei and Misaki's magic calculation area in the same sort of manner a magical parent can basically give some of their own to their child or children and recover it later.
The magic they gained was just from how much was saturated into the meat actually being absorbed more permanently as their magic calculation areas developed and could regulate more better. At which point, from what she can tell, it regulated some of the magic being absorbed into their bodies towards strengthening their souls to produce more excess energy in the form of magic.
It was honestly weird to her. She could hardly imagine them not being active magicals these days, she can easily go pull up the memories of course, but even watching those, it was nearly foreign to see versions of them that aren't active magicals.
The otherworlder summoning process was more straightforward at least. Veldanava definitely had to have known about MA energy. Not that there was really any doubt given he was a universe creating god.
She doesn't know if he'd done it because of things he knew when he was omniscient or if it was a later failsafe of some sort, but the process of gathering up the magicules and pulling some of them apart into MA energy for more a fundamental work such as essentially reworking someone's Astral form post birth while they're still alive without potential major consequences was far too neat to be anything but design.
It was also her better bet for finding a way to deal with Eternal Slumber. It doesn't even really need reworking if she or someone who knows how to manipulate MA energy uses it, though if she wants to make it more readily available for casting or more likely through enchanted items one just needs to be trained how to use it, it will need at least a bit of tweaking.
Normally, she'd want to design it so the people of this world could use it themselves without having to rely on others, but most of the people of this world that suddenly Awakened found themselves seemingly to mostly work on instinct of the powers they gained with little to no ability to break out of those boxes yet.
They'll undoubtedly adapt and learn in time, and the ones from now will learn things to pass on so later Awakeners or even generations have a better idea of how to do it, but as things stand, it would be difficult for any of them to use the equipment she made even if she altered it to work on mana. Which makes her all the more glad the Emergency Teleport Stones she made to quickly evacuate out of Gates were basically entirely based on willpower, rather than needing some sort of learned talent to operate.
Probably for the best right now anyway. With the density of mana and how delicate the procedure was, as things stand, she feels like it would be more likely to result in injuries or deaths. Perhaps in time, much like learning to expand their abilities with mana, they'd be able to safely operate the enchantments, carefully measuring their own power in incredibly limited doses, but for the time being…
She'd personally rather not risk it.
Maybe if some of those who Awaken, more likely the Healers though not necessarily of course, show strides towards expanding their abilities and fine control with their mana she'll look into properly translating something.
For the time being, she'll just have to try to make things that more regular Healers in Jura-Tempest can operate and make sure they're trained in their use.
Honestly, it's more just another seed planted to potentially excuse her being outside the norm for Awakeners, but nevertheless, after she turns eighteen, she goes to healers over in Jura-Tempest to ‘get a checkup’ about her Awakening, or rather since they already know the problem and it's what she's after, an official medical report.
One that basically just says what they all already know, even if it leaves out other things like the cause of the soul damage or her reincarnation. It basically just lays out the fact she'd Awakened, that presumably she was going to Awaken stronger then she is, but the vast majority of the energy seems to have been directed into soul repairs, which aren't complete, but of which her Awakened power was a bit left over that wasn't permanently burned though for the soul repairs.
She doesn't even exactly know if she'll need either of them, but unless whatever fixes her soul happens all at once and she can pass it off as a Reawakened, she'll need some sort of excuse as to why she's so far out of the norm from other Awakeners.
It's one of the reasons why they also pushed things towards setting up home security cameras at Jae-Min's with his parents, then made sure to save the footage of all four of them lighting up with their Awakenings.
Which also shows the glow surrounding her was actually brighter despite not only being weaker than them, but from their personal evaluation equipment and comparing the four of them to public records about the power levels of the Awakeners, but so far she looked to be setting a world record for weakest Awakener ever even if not the world record.
Which also gives a pretty damn good indication of just how much energy the partial soul revitalization ate. Especially given the minimum they'd set for S-Rank measured at one million Existence Value. Which wasn't a small number, despite what someone just glancing at Jura-Tempest when they're at full power may think.
Yes, she had over two hundred and forty-seven million Existence Value when she wasn't dealing with soul damage and after it went up a bit in Feronia with all the Skills and stats and whatnot, Ha-Eun had around fifty-six million after Feronia, Jae-Min had around sixty-one million, and Jae-Hui had around fifty-eight. But they were definitely outliers. After all, two point five times million Existence Value was the power of the likes of Primordial Daemons Mizery and Rain.
Doesn't mean an S-Rank could beat a Primordial Daemon, they don't have nearly the same amount of experience and knowledge and all that. But raw power wise, yes, while it's nowhere near the pinnacle of power in the Central World, that's more accurately in the ballpark of weaker Primordial Daemons. And even then, she's pretty damn sure it only put them in that ball park when it comes to raw power as some sort of side effect of the density of mana.(1)
Which while it does not put them on par with them, what with the abilities having that insidiously intentionally feeling proportionally high mana cost, the lack of experience both in using it in general and compared to even just a few centuries of experience much less millennium, and other factors like that, has some rather terrible implications for any that are horrible people if they ever get anywhere as far as tackling those factors.
While Jura-Tempest has some pretty damn heavy hitters like the True Dragons, if any such person figured out how to… unravel she supposes one could say, the densely packed mana into other kinds of magic and learned less cost intensive powers…
Well, needless to say, it would be bad even for Jura-Tempest, much less this Earth -which they still need to find a nickname for in case they ever encounter other Earths to differentiate between them, but they're waiting to see if anything unique shows itself- or Feronia.
Especially given the fact that yeah, the ten to under one density difference is nowhere near the biggest density difference, there were things more dense to one another just on the periodic table, much less if one starts to take into account things like the mass in neutron stars. But it doesn't change the fact mana is about a little over one hundred times denser than any magic she's encountered.
If someone who just barely made the requirements for S-Rank figured out how to… pull it apart into something less dense, they'd have more raw power than even the other True Dragons. Not her when she's at her full power, they'd need at least two million four hundred seven thousand to unravel to do that, though it is a distinct possibility.
And of course, they'd still need to figure out how to use it, not to mention how to overcome things like the Time Stop and other such Skills that can absolutely screw someone with no means of working around or countering them one can find perhaps not everywhere they look, but in far more abundance then one would expect with so many heavy hitters in Jura-Tempest, particularly given how long so many have been around for.
And if she does recover in this life, she's honestly yet to not only meet anyone that can do anything about things like Azathoth or her Decomposition, the Area variant or not, nor gotten very far in preparing for any counters that may pop up in the future since she genuinely struggles to think of all that many, so it's probably decently safe to conclude that even such a foe would struggle with her abilities as well.
Or the absolute wild card that is things like the luck of Masayuki's Hero's Blessing that tends to make everything turn out well for him, even if the path can be a bit convoluted and therefore unpredictable at times.
Still, it could be a problem, so she really ought to figure out methods to preferably stop them from attacking to begin with to avoid any innocent victims being caught up in things, but potentially to counter such hypothetical people just to be on the safe side.
That's something slowly cooking on the backburner right now though.
Right now, she's secured her second potential piece of an excuse she may or may not need when her soul starts to recover.
She'd love to think that while the Gates did appear, they were actually wrong about that meaning it's not her that caused her revitalization, given the revelations about the density of mana that were revealed even more fully after she started looking into Eternal Slumber. But unfortunately, she'd already concluded when she was running Charity power boosting tests that her body can't even handle one of the spells using her own magic system and MA energy being boosted fifty times.
Given MA energy was the -literally in the case of magicules from the way Veldanava built his universes, though metaphorically for any other universe- quarks of magic, if she unraveled that one hundred times as dense mana into MA energy… it would absolutely incinerate her soul.
So, unless she can figure out how to do something like only unpack its density by a quarter or something instead of all the way, which may sound simple but is monstrosity complicated, that isn't the avenue to her recovery.
She'll still look into it of course, even as she's fervently glad Ha-Eun has at least managed to get enough control of Moirai and her subconscious so she's not shown visions unless it's something that actually may come to pass rather than struggling with nearly impossible but technically plausible visions assaulting her.
Ha-Eun had needed to fine tune what was similar to Jae-Min's Occlumency pins on his In Sickness and In Health Sub-Skill so as to basically only warn her if something bad had at least a one percent chance or above of happening. While it technically meant she was willingly ignoring those one in a million catastrophes and the like, none of them could bear to have her continue to be plagued by anything less likely than that.
Mind, there was an exception to the one percent or more rule of her Occlumency pin and it actually means she'd have still been suffering those visions in their last life too, given that exception was soul destruction.
Given even then she fine tuned some things, Ha-Eun won't be getting tormented by visions of her destroying her soul just because she's looking into the possibility of only partially unpacking the dense mana into MA energy. Because realistically, Rowena and she should catch any problems or miscalculations well before they get to testing things, much less attempting to actually use such a method to restore her.
With the way Moirai was before, she was still getting visions from those trillionth or less of a percent chance of things going wrong and every test and calculation and all that all letting the lethal truth slip through the cracks.
It had taken some convincing to get their wife to agree to shut those down for the most part, though that was with the compromise that she'd set a pin so that she'd be alerted if and only if they'd gotten far enough in the testing and calculations for something that she'd soon move to actually attempting something and that possible future hadn't disappeared.
The idea being that if it still existed as a possibility, clearly they actually had missed something.
So her wife won't be getting tormented with visions just because she's casually looking into the possibility on the side, to be more seriously examined and put through its paces for safety if it starts to even look like a genuine possibility.
Whether or not there's anything there and that's what restores her soul or it's something else, she has another piece of excuses she can make at least.
Practically the moment they graduate high school, they all head down to the Hunters Association, her included, despite all of her soulmates’ attempts to persuade her not to even officially evaluate, much less be a Hunter.
Getting up to the front desk, Ha-Eun smiles at the woman manning a station at the long reception desk they'd approached, Na-Ri according to her name tag, which sends a flicker of nostalgia through her in combination with her red hair, given the name means ‘Lily’, but otherwise even at a glance it's just superficial similarities between Na-Ri and Lily Potter that she quickly shakes off, “Hi! We're all here to be evaluated!”
Na-Ri smiles back and turns her gaze to her computer, “Names and case number or numbers if you have separate ones?”
Jae-Min's lips twitch a little in preemptive amusement, “I'm Kim Jae-Min, she's Mun Ha-Eun, this is my sister Kim Jae-Hui, and that's Sung Jin-Ji, but we don't have case numbers.”
Na-Ri blinks rapidly, “Pardon? The association always responds to the surges from Awakeners to explain what's happening and they always give a case number..?”
He laughs, “Yeah, well, we don't have one. Only thing we have is this!”
Jae-Min pulls out his phone and pulls up security footage, turns it to Na-Ri and points at the relevant part of his phone, “See that date and time stamp?”
Na-ri looks and sounds exasperated, “Yes, of course I see-”
Jae-Min doesn't let her get any further, hitting play on the video starting with a word she'd been saying being cut off as the rush of magic and light show of their Awakenings surging out. Jae-Min smiles a little bemusedly at the woman, “What date did the detection devices come out and start getting installed?”
Na-Ri seems unable to answer, just opening and closing her mouth in surprise.
His smile widens, “Haha! So! What was supposed to pick up our Awakenings? And who was supposed to know and come give us a case number?”
Poor Na-Ri is still rather flummoxed, “Why… Why did you not register before today..?”
Jae-Min shrugs, “Originally ‘cause the world was going nuts and they were basically pressganging any Awakeners into being evaluated and taking on Gates, and we didn't trust our mere fourteen years of age would shield us. And I mean, me, Ha-Eun, and Jae-Hui could've handled it, but they were grabbing all Awakeners and Jin-Ji is a lot weaker than us, so we weren't about to risk it.”
“And then the government started getting its shit together more than the barebones basics they had from Jura-Tempest's warnings, but they also made those schools for stronger Awakeners, and while we obviously weren't sure where we'd place, we weren't gonna risk being separated from Jin-Ji.”
Na-Ri nods slowly at that before getting ahold of herself and clearing her throat, “Right! No case number it is!”
Jae-Min flashes her a smile as she quickly gets to work getting them checked in and giving them que numbers to wait for their turn to be called for evaluation off to the side.
As they get called in one by one, given the evaluation tech she'd made was based on Existence Value measuring, she's not surprised in the slightest at their astronomical scores. Higher than they'd been even at the end of their third life, but that's to be expected given that while the Skills of their fourth were hit and miss as to which were useful in general and which only really worked against other System abilities and the like, they'd still been strengthened by them and stats.
And then they had Awakened which brought them to seventy-seven million for Jae-Min, seventy-one million for Jae-Hui, and sixty-eight million for Ha-Eun.(2)
They'd informed her in the privacy of their soul corridor rather than letting anyone potentially overhear it of course, with Jae-Min temporarily linking his sister in with telepathy.
Given the public records of other Hunters, the highest she's ever seen amongst the other Awakeners of this world being about fourteen million, she's also not surprised in the slightest by the increasingly shaken evaluator calling them in hoarsely ever since Ha-Eun was evaluated.
As she gets called in and follows him, she smiles a little sheepishly as he gets ready, “You can calm down. I'm nowhere near as strong as them. I'd be incredibly surprised if I even get D-Rank.”
The man gives her a surprised look before relaxing a bit with a smile as he gestures at the evaluation orb, “I see. Well, please place your hand on the orb Miss Sung.”
She nods as she steps over and lifts her hand to lay on top the small crystal ball looking orb that's about the size of her torso.(3)
Given her current state as well as the fact she actually already knows it from her own personal evaluation equipment, she's completely unsurprised when she only registers as eight thousand, two hundred and three.
Despite that, man evaluating her still seems a bit surprised at her results, but that's to be expected, given he had just evaluated the other three and they were sitting together making it obvious that even if he hadn't heard what was said at the front desk about not wanting to separate from her and all that, the other three were with her.
Even in the last four years since the Gates appeared, the inevitable assholes of the bunch have certainly started setting precedents and ideas of stronger Hunters not really interacting with weaker Hunters or even Unawakened people. And even for ones who aren't assholes looking down on such people, others don't really get it, what it means to be a high rank Hunter and all that, so…
She's not particularly shocked at him being fairly surprised that three different people that all evaluate at over sixty-eight million are hanging around someone that evaluates at a little over eight thousand.
Especially given from what she's been seeing from public records, they'll all break records. The other three shattering the previous records for strongest first second and third place Awakeners and Hunters.
Her? There have been weaker evaluations, both from when they were tuning things in better with the instructions handed over with the equipment both on regular people and pretty much every Awakener there was, regardless of whether they became a Hunter or not.
So she wouldn't be weakest ever recorded -at least publicly, there was her private medical history-, or even the weakest Awakener, which from her understanding was someone in India -unsurprising given they have the highest global population which means more potential people for such things- that only registered one thousand seventy-two, but she would set a world record for weakest active Hunter after she signs up since the current world record was nine thousand and four.
So, they would all be setting records of their own. Even if it wasn't the sort of record most people would be comfortable with in her case.
It doesn't matter. Raw power can make things easier or harder depending on whether you possess it or lack it, but it's nowhere near the end all be all. She has some tricks up her sleeves like the Charity power booster, general experience, and her own magic system though that one is a little tricky right now.
From there though, they run her through testing to figure out what kind of Awakener she is.
It's actually kind of fun to utterly flummox the examiners with the wide range of her abilities, weak as they are. While she basically doesn't have any of her Skills, she still has her knowledge and that doesn't just apply to runes and the like. She knows plenty of magic. And she's also had four years to do what translation work is needed to get the spells to use mana with her casting system.
As for confusing the examiners given this world's magic tends to be more limited in the focus of the powers people gain upon Awakening... Well, she actually pulls out part of the paperwork from her previous ‘examinations’ at Jura-Tempest to use as her first excuse, even if this isn't exactly what she was preparing them for.
But it's easy enough to suggest a ‘theory’ that whatever caused the soul damage she suffers from, it meant that while Awakening had fixed at least part of it, no ability had been able to solidly settle into her. That due to the damage, her mana couldn't really decide on a particular course to take or something.
It's utter bullshit of course, but the examiners accept it nonetheless, especially given it's not like they've ever encountered an Awakened with soul damage before. She is careful to impress upon them, or at least remind them since it should have occurred to them, that they really need to keep that quiet to prevent people getting foolish ideas of damaging their souls in the hopes of gaining more powers. That it would be more likely to lead to soul destruction then more power.
Especially given if they didn't already have damaged souls like her, then in the ‘theory’ she was using as an excuse, their souls would have already decided on what to do with their power. It was actually part of why she made the ‘theory' she was using as an excuse the way she did. So as to give people the idea that it would be stupid to try to replicate it when there's no benefit. To that extent, given the majority of the abilities she showed off were types of magic, they officially list her as a Mage.
Once they've all been evaluated and gotten their general paperwork, the packets about the special laws specific to Awakeners and Hunters to prevent them from using their powers, the forms to work as a Hunter, and their new IDs, they head back over to Na-Ri. She seems a little surprised that they're back, but while she gives a bit of a confused head tilt, she still smiles politely, “Can I help you more?”
Ha-Eun leans forward and leans on the reception desk with a smile, “They're just tagging along, but you can help me. I was wondering if there were any additional training or age requirements to join the Hunters Association and what paperwork I need to fill out to do the training and sign up.”
Na-Ri's eyes go wide, and she seems utterly breathless for a moment, but that's honestly not all that surprising. The Hunters Association didn't have any S-Ranks, which absolutely complicated things a little given they don't just manage evaluations and Gates and stuff like that. They're also sort of the police for Awakeners, given their powers can make them a problem for regular law enforcement.
It was the whole reason Ha-Eun wanted to sign up after all. Even before their memories came back, and for those few hours before they got a notion that something was coming from her visions, she had wanted to be a police officer again like she was in their first life. Even if the desire to go back to that was unknowing until their memories returned to them.
She may have gotten pulled away by other things in their other lives, but it was who she is at her core. So it may surprise the receptionist but it certainly doesn't surprise any of them that she's more than happy to be able to simultaneously do her part as an Awakener/Hunter while returning to her law enforcement true calling.
Na-Ri starts typing at her computer rapidly for a few moments with one hand while the other starts almost clumsily floundering for the paperwork with the information and that Ha-Eun needs to fill out to join the Association even as she stutters over the brief explanations about courses Ha-Eun needs to take to learn procedures and the like.
It is brief though, since most of it is in the information packet, which she mentions repeatedly as she tells Ha-Eun that more information on the various things she talks about are on this or that page or packet.
But brief as it is and as flustered as she seems to be, she seems to be stalling a little before her computer dings and she glances at it quickly before she flashes a trembling smile at Ha-Eun, “W-Well, like I was saying, m-more details on what I was saying and the rest of the information you'll need is on the various papers in the packets. B-But while it's probably because we haven't had an S-Rank want to join the Association up until now, I've been informed that a higher up would like to speak with you directly.”
She glances over at a man hurrying over out of breath from what was probably a sprint to them, then waves at him as she returns her gaze to Ha-Eun, “If you and your friends will follow Jeong here to the meeting room?”
Ha-Eun smiles at her one last time as she starts to turn away towards this Jeong guy, “Of course. Thank you for your assistance!”
Na-Ri's smile trembles a little and her fingers twitch a little like she's fighting not to wring her hands, “H-Happy to help!”
They follow Jeong silently as he leads them further into the building and up to another floor before taking them over to a meeting room that looks fairly comfortable when he opens the door and steps aside to hold it for them. Once they're all in, he gives them a tense smile, “Please wait here for a few minutes. They'll be here shortly.”
Ha-Eun nods, “Of course. Thank you.”
Jeong flashes her a smile as he closes the door and they all turn to their own papers. For her, Jae-Min, and Jae-Hui, it's just the paperwork they need to fill out to officially become Hunters, of which the other three throw very unhappy looks towards her own as she settles it on the coffee table in front of their couch to get started on while they wait.
For Ha-Eun however, there's a good deal more, what with all the courses and the other things she needs to get done first. As she goes through the paperwork, she makes a supremely unhappy noise, “From the way Na-Ri was talking, trying to reassure me over and over, you'd think it would be difficult or something, but this training and everything else… it's actually pretty lackluster. I mean, they don't even seem to do any sort of psychological evaluation!”
It's not the only thing she finds in the paperwork that she takes badly and complains about, but she's mostly focused on that. That being said, while they're all going over the packets they'd been given, they do idly discuss their evaluations.
Given they didn't have the excuse of damaged souls and they weren't willing to bring her own excuse into question with the suspicion of the four that came in together all having a diverse variety of abilities by claiming it had something to do with having over sixty-eight million, they had stuck to what they gained with their mana or anything similar enough to pass as being under those Skills’ umbrellas or associated with them for their evaluations.
They'd use more powers if things got dicey of course, but while one could argue they could make more use of it, their raw power meant they were less likely to need to be able to freely use their powers.
So the other three had resolved themselves to let her have access to as many options as possible in whatever situations she finds herself in given they knew damn well they couldn't talk her out of being a Hunter. …And Jae-Min wasn't willing to risk being taken out of play and potentially not being able to protect her by trying to lock her in a basement or something to physically stop her.
Which was relevant, since while they waited, they were idly talking about their evaluations. Unsurprisingly, Jae-Min and Jae-Hui were evaluated as ‘Assassins’, and equally expected, Ha-Eun was labeled a ‘Ranger’ based on her skills.
But while they idly chat about other things, Ha-Eun was still finding other things that she does not find up to snuff seven minutes later when the door opens again and -much to her legitimate surprise even if she hides the reaction- Hunters Association Chairman Go Gun-hee himself enters.
Ha-Eun quickly sets her papers on the coffee table and stands up and while none of them are in a rush, they do as well, both for general respect and out of habit from the customs in Jura-Tempest, “Sorry Chairman Go! I was just asked to wait in here but wasn't sure how long I'd be waiting or who I was waiting for, so-!”
Chairman Go laughs boisterously, “Haha! That's quite alright Miss Mun!” Even as he waves them to sit back down he glances at the paperwork she'd quickly put down and she returns her attention to her own papers, “I had heard one of our newest S-Ranks was interested in joining the Association.”
Ha-Eun hums, “Yes, that would be me sir.”
Chairman Go grows visibly brighter at that, “Wonderful! While I'm certainly not complaining, I must confess to being rather surprised. We've made offers to every S-Rank we've evaluated, but they always turned us down. So I'm sure you can imagine my utter shock at hearing one was taking the initiative to try to join themselves without prompting!”
Ha-Eun turns a little sheepish from the feeling down the soul corridor, “Before the Gates appeared, I wanted to become a police officer. It's not exactly the same obviously, but after I Awakened, I thought I could do more good with the Hunters Association than with the police, you know?”
“Obviously there are requirements and attitude and personality are things to take into consideration, but by and large, pretty much anyone can become a police officer, but the Hunters are a select and notably smaller group of people to pull from, so…”
Chairman Go sighs, “You aren't wrong there, and the Association has even fewer options, given we have to try to convince people to join us instead of one of the guilds where they can make significantly more money.”
Ha-Eun pauses momentarily, “Sir? If I may ask..?” She must get some non-verbal encouragement, since she waits a beat before going on, “With what you said about trying to convince people… Is that the real reason there's that delay due to ‘special paperwork for S-Ranks’ between the evaluation and..?”
Chairman Go lets out a wry huff of amusement, “S-Rank and sharp. Good. We could use that as well and it'll certainly serve you well in general.” Then he lets out a sigh, “But yes, it's something the Hunters Association implemented to make an opportunity for us to try and convince S-Ranks to join us even though we certainly can't pay them as much money as they may earn with a Guild.”
“I must confess though… I'm a little confused in all honesty. If you wanted to be a police officer, why on earth did you wait so long before evaluating? Even if you would've had to be an adult before you could join the Hunters Association, you could've completed all the courses and training and the like and just needed to file the last of the paperwork after you turned eighteen.”
Jae-Min snorts and he must gesture at her in some way given what comes out of his mouth, “Because you'd have insisted on moving us to that school for strong Awakeners and we refused to be separated from her. Since while she's Awakened too, she wasn't strong enough that she'd have been allowed to transfer to that school, so.”
From the shift of their couch, she's pretty sure he adds a shrug on the end, and Chairman Go sounds somewhat bemused, “Rather loyal, aren't you all?” There's a beat, before he continues, “Anyhow-”
From the sigh her husband lets out, she's confident the beat of silence was at least partly Chairman Go turning to him and his sister, a notion reinforced by what comes out of his mouth, “I imagine you're about to ask us to join the Hunters Association as well, but we'll have to decline and frankly it's for the best anyhow.”
From the tone of his voice, she's pretty sure Chairman Go is biting back frustration, “In what way?
Jae-Min snorts, “In the way of the fact that my sister and I aren't good with rules and instructions, particularly strict ones, of which there's a lot more of the former on an Awakened belonging to the Association then not. If we did join, it's more likely that Ha-Eun would end up spending the vast majority of her time trying to reign us in to follow the additional rules Association Awakened have that other Awakened don't.”
There's a brief pause, but when she glances up in mild concern that Chairman Go may be upset with her husband, he's just blinking rapidly in mild surprise before he clears his throat, “Ah. Yes, I can see why it may not be a good fit.”
She snorts before piping up herself even though this meeting has practically nothing to do with her given she's not S-Rank, “A Hunter’s job is to protect people anyhow. They do so by entering and clearing Dungeons. Yes, there are some needed in other roles, like persevering law and order with the Awakeners that regular law enforcement and other institutions could struggle with or even just those who aren't suited to it, but for the majority that is their role. To put it simply, a Hunter ought to Hunt.”
Chairman Go barks a laugh, “I like your attitude young lady! You may not be S-Rank given I was only told about three, but I suppose that rather sufficiently answers whether you'll be joining the Association or not yourself, and honestly I can't even really complain with that way of looking at things.”
She hums, “Well, not officially no, though I imagine I'll be one of those Hunters that aren't in a Guild and just do vague jobs the Hunters Association assigns.” At his confusion she gives a wry smile, “The Guilds don't have interest in lower ranks, and even if they did, they certainly would have no interest in the woman who's about to break the rather undesirable world record for weakest Hunter ever.”
Chairman Go looks startled, “I-” Then his brows furrow, “Miss Sung, if you're that weak, becoming a Hunter isn't-”
She rolls her eyes, “Advisable? I'm aware. I'm not doing this because of naive ideas of it being ‘cool’ or childish daydreams of glory or whatever. I'm doing this because the Unawakened are even weaker than me and not exactly able to defend themselves if a Dungeon Breaks, because the lower unaffiliated ranks have the highest casualties, because weak or not, I can't just turn my back on things when they threaten people. Whether I'll make any difference…”
She shrugs, “Who knows. Maybe things will work out in such a way I do even if it's just for a couple people, maybe they won't. But I can't just not act when there's even a flicker of possibility I could help even one person.”
Chairman Go studies her with a grave expression, then nods solemnly, “I see… It's an admirable resolve, I can't deny that, to be realistic about things but genuinely be driven to move anyway, but…” He searches her face again, then sighs, and gives up what seems like it was an attempt to dissuade her, “No, I suppose with that perspective, there's really no question about you becoming a Hunter, regardless of your power, is there?”
She shakes her head firmly, “There isn't.”
Chairman Go nods slowly, and while he does seem genuine in admiring her determination, from the look in his eyes, he also seems like he's questioning just how long it's going to be before he's hearing of her death.
The other three look like they're dying to point out that Chairman Go is trying to dissuade her as well, despite the fact there really aren't enough Hunters in general, but they hold their tongues as the meeting gets back on track, shifting back to Ha-Eun joining the Hunters Association.
The only other real deviation is the three of them asking Chairman Go about keeping their connection to her quiet on the Association's end, not because they're embarrassed about her or anything, but because they don't want to risk potentially dangerous attention being drawn to her by people who want to try and use her against them.
Chairman Go was obviously more than agreeable to it, promising that the Association will do its utmost to keep a lid on that information from their side of things.
She looks up from the calculations she got back to doing after they returned to Ha-Eun's house from the Hunters Association in an attempt to make enchanted items that grant at least a low continuous regeneration effect when Ha-Eun calls her name, “What is it Love?”
Ha-Eun gives her an exasperated look, “So! Jae-Hui kinda stumbled across this while online the other day, or rather an image with the phrase. It seemed fitting though, so Jae-Min got this custom made. We were wondering about giving it to you since it seemed a bit pointed in my opinion, but we came to the compromise we'd only give it to you if you really went through with becoming a Hunter despite your current condition.”
She's honestly a bit wary of whatever her wife has, especially given the somewhat exasperated smirks on the twins’ faces, “And ‘it’ is..?”
Ha-Eun holds a bag out to her, not a regular shopping bag or a more permanent bag like a backpack or duffle bag or anything like that. She means the kind of bags people put presents in when they're either awkward to wrap, they don't want to deal with wrapping paper, or some other reason like that.
Accepting it skeptically, she opens the bag. Her gaze immediately falls on black cloth inside, so she pulls it out hesitantly, then unfolds it.
And promptly finds herself looking at an -admittedly comfortable looking- hoodie that had to have been made by Dord, given not only the high quality but also the intricate scrollwork hiding all her usual preferred designs, skulls and scythes and all that, with elegant and thematically fitting script in big bold red letters scrawled over the front declaring, “I refuse to die until things are better and that is a THREAT”
Immediately lowering it, she gives them a look of exasperated disbelief, wordlessly asking, “Really? Are you kidding me?”
Jae-Min laughs in response, "Is it wrong Miss I-will-fix-the-world?"
She opens and closes her mouth a couple times, but can't exactly find anything to dispute that, "Hmph! I am not talking to you two for at least ten minutes!”
Ha-Eun gasps dramatically and places a hand on her chest, “Ten whole minutes?! Whatever shall we do?!”
Jae-Min snickers, “Especially since I distinctly recall a conversation in our third life about how none of us have ever made it even five minutes giving each other the silent treatment.”
Ha-Eun's eyes dance as she slants a look at him out of the corner of her eye, “Funny, I remember that too. I also seem to remember that it was Rimuru pointing out that lack of ability to give one another the silent treatment. How strange that it's Jin-Ji who suddenly thinks she's capable of it…”
Jae-Hui leans forward at that, “Well, while I may not have much to do with attempts at silent treatment in you guys’ relationship, I do feel the need to point out- especially since she's the worst at it out of you three. I don't think I've ever seen her last even two minutes.”
Ha-Eun sighs, “Side effect of waiting three years for the one way block to drop in our first life. Left her awfully weak to us in general.”
Jae-Min huffs in annoyance as he leans against the wall and crosses his arms, “Except when it matters. Like when she's gone right past flirting and is basically straight up asking danger out on a date. Such as now, with her insistence on being a Hunter.”
And well, joking about the silent treatment or not, she can't not respond to that, “Some things are more important than personal safety Jae-Min. We've been over this.”
Then, even though they'd given it to her as a joke to needle her, she unzips the hoodie, pulls it on, and zips it back up pointedly.
Jae-Min rolls his eyes, even as Ha-Eun sighs and Jae-Hui snicker a little tiredly.
…It is an incredibly comfortable hoodie. Dord once again lives up to expectation.
Notes:
(1): Pretty sure I've said before that I'm not trying to say one universe is stronger than the other when it comes to things like this, and I'm still not saying that. Comes down to a combo of the Rulers trying to prepare humanity for the arrival of the Monarchs and, as I said, a general side effect of the density of mana as I'm depicting it in the series which is honest the much bigger factor and not nearly the problem Jin-Ji worries it could be later, since it would be complicated to turn it into something less dense to power other things (guess what trick Jin-Ji is gonna figure out lol).
But as I stated in this passage, the raw strength does not mean they could necessarily beat the beings the density essentially forces them to be on par with, especially if, when they're over helping, they eventually manage to Awaken mana of their own. Which isn't a foreshadowing btw, I'm still considering it lol.
Full breakdown with them using Existence Value based evaluators -since Jin-Ji made them- as I've figured it for those interested though (and why I said in previous chapters the cut offs of the numbers are a bit odd):
- Regular human average, 1,000
- Jin-Woo in canon, 2,560 if you did the math with D-Rank average, but we aren't told its the average, we're told the weakest are 7× his strength, and yes, the wording is weakest Hunter but honestly? People who scored weaker probably weren't crazy enough to try to be Hunters, so the minimum I'm going by is also the minimum listed, so he'd actually be just shy of 1,463, and what a coincidence that's only 463 points above the 1,000 human average! So hardly stronger than a regular human, just like Jin-Woo days he is at the beginning! Yes, numerically it's almost 1.5 times, but with the scale being what it is that is little stronger than a regular human. As far as translating that to his canon 10 mana, good luck, since you can't just chalk it up to the excess 463 given at least part of it was soul strengthening in general, and not the excess coming off as mana, so.
- Jin-Ji in series, 8,203
- E-Rank, (minimum is for anyone but Jin-Woo or Jin-Ji) 10,240-25,600, exact average between numbers 17,920
- D-Rank, 25,600-64,000, exact average between numbers 44,800
- C-Rank, 64,000-160,000, exact average between numbers 112,000
- B-Rank, 160,000-400,000, exact average between numbers 280,000
- A-Rank, 400,000-1,000,000, exact average between numbers 700,000
- S-Rank, 1,000,000-10,000,000, exact average between numbers 5,500,000 though the reason I was saying average between numbers is because that's not necessarily the actual average strength of an S-Rank or even any of the others. Reality regarding such things doesn't always bow to such things. I was more giving the averages for the idea of things for whenever I use numbers. Like why people absolutely know the other three are so damn strong.
- National rank, 10,000,000+
(2): No, not an error. Yes, when we last saw an evaluation they were lower than that, but they also gained strength in KumoDesu as well as Awakened in this one. It's just that I haven't given numbers in a while is all.
(3): Just wanting to say, no I'm not unaware that in canon it's a humongous orb, but Jin-Ji made the evaluation equipment before they could get around to working out a functional if a bit lathe and clunky device of their own. The one in the Hunters Association is as stated, about the size of an average torso, the smaller less accurate but portable ones fit in the palm of one's hand.
Chapter Text
She turns her wand slowly in her hands outside of the rim of the tub she's relaxing in.
She hasn't needed to cast with it in centuries, but given having a foci like it cuts down on power requirements, she could really use it. Especially since while she had made her own magic system, it was primarily built on both manipulating magic without a foci, which was more expensive magically, as well as required the ability to more freely manipulate infons, which was difficult with her soul unstable.
Which brings her back to wanting to fall back on her wand again.
The problem was, of course, that while it may work perfectly fine with the magic from her first life, that is nowhere near the case with any other kind of magic.
Which means if she wants to use it for those she'll have to find some way to tune it to such magics. That, and if she wants to use anything from her third life, she has to embed Magic Domination and sort of… perpetually force them not to react to one another. She'd need some help from Rowena's H3 for that since she can't do it right now.
However, there's very much a problem of what to use for the materials to add to it.
About the only thing she can think of from her second life is to recreate the magatama relic that was used to store magic sequences. She doesn't exactly need to store a magic sequence right now, but it's one of the only things that came from that universe's magic specifically.
Well, she supposes she could store a sequence that will essentially let her mentally manually input a magic sequence to invoke a mental terminal in a way, maybe with holographic capabilities if she could get it to work in case she wants or needs it. If she's real smart with it, maybe she can build in the capacity to essentially have a couple slots to ‘save’ a few ones she may use frequently. Possibly loop cast capabilities.
She removes one hand from her wand to scrub at her eyes as she realizes what she's thinking about. She's essentially wanting to try and cram an entire CAD and a limited terminal to be able to manually input saved spells or change what's saved in it into a magatama relic. That's a bit of an ask even for her, in all honesty.
She squints at her wand.
…Maybe if she finds a way to increase its ‘internal storage’ in a way. Trying to translate Azathoth's Imaginary Space is way too much of an ask… probably. She'll try but if she can't, maybe she can translate the magic of the Gluttony half that made Azathoth or one of the previous evolutions?
She supposes if she can manage that, even if she can only get a lesser form rather than Imaginary Space, she probably wouldn't have to be so picky about what spells she saves the magic sequences for.
She sighs as she straightens, leaving her arm with her wand dangling outside of the tub as she leans her head back against the bathroom wall.
…She supposes it's something she'll have to research. She has those magic reservoirs that she'd stored what the Trunk had built up before she altered it to run off MA energy rather than having to update it for pretty much every universe she went to, so she does have the magic of that universe to make the materials steeped in its magic and eventually a magatama relic with. Whether she can alter it to do so much is another story entirely.
She won't just write it off as a bad job without even trying though.
She'd managed to make it work for the magic calculation area. Hypothetically, this should be sort of similar, even if she would alter how it's bigger rather than just using expansion magic that eats stupid amounts of energy in and of itself.
If she can get that to work, that's something to attune it to the magic of her second life.
For her third life… Hihi'irokane? It is at its core iron that's been fundamentally altered three different times by the sheer amount of that world's magic it's absorbed. She supposes she could use some of the fused mixture of that and her own True Dragon scales. The scales from her wouldn't really do anything for attuning it to the magic of her second life in particular given it’s her scales, which means it's attuned to all of her magics, but it would enhance the magic bonds between herself and her wand.
Actually… now that she thinks about it, if she uses shavings from her scythe for it, not only would it get the attunement towards the magic of her third life from the Hihi'irokane in it from when she fused her sword and scythe into its newer shape changing form, as well as attuning it more to her from the scale she added after merging them, but the scythe was originally made from the scythe claws that her front spider legs turned into in her fourth life. Which would both further increase its attunement to her, but also increase its compatibility with raw MA energy what with being from a magical creature, since she did technically count as one back then, from that world that ran off of it and it alone.
That just leaves something from this life, since while she doesn't exactly have any spells or anything from it, if she's going to be altering her wand, she may as well include it just to be on the safe side. Especially given Ha-Eun's visions of her being restored.
Much like her second life, there wasn't a lot to pick from, given the only real option there was an essence stone. Well, not a whole lot of option of the what. She supposes there's a lot of options in what creature the essence stone is from since from what little she's observed with her Multidimensional Perception replicating enchantments, it very much fundamentally affects the magic of the essence stone.
Not that the people of this world seem to have noticed all that much, just treating them like batteries overall. In that sense, it's a bit like the magic core of a wand though. Hers probably won't be in the core of her wand, even if she can potentially use magic to basically phase something through the outer wood of her wand to its core if she needs to add something there.
Probably the shavings, since there's not a whole lot of places she could put it otherwise.
But while it hasn't really mattered a whole lot for the people of this world and the things they've been making to use the essence stones, it's absolutely important when it comes to something like her wand.
She squeezes her eyes.
So…
The wand is obviously from her first life.
The third and fourth life are basically already dealt with.
But she needs to try and figure out the magatama relic as well as carefully select an essence stone.
Or at least, she does if she wants to be able to use her wand anyway.
Technically, her sword/scythe kind of acts like a foci, but given the incompatibility with the magics of her first two lives, it only works with magic from her third and fourth life.
Arguably given that, she could just use her sword/scythe for them and just look into modifying her wand to use magic from her second life and perhaps an essence stone from this world at some point, but given those are the harder parts anyway, she may as well do the whole damn thing.
There's no reason she can't just use her sword and scythe for the other two, either until then or as another casting foci.
Could modify them both.
Then she comes to the problem of how to attune her sword/scythe to magic from her first life.
She opens her eyes and gazes at the ceiling as her mind churns over the problem.
She does have some ambient magic from her first life stored in a reservoir, and she has those items enchanted with Elemental Sight and Multidimensional Perception.
Maybe… she can essentially use the ambient magic stored and Synthesis to try and recreate the Thestral tail hair in her wand's core? Maybe make woods steeped in that magic as well.
Basically recreating the components of her wand to add those.
She'd still need to add Magic Domination to it and make it essentially force them to get along with the magic of her fourth life though.
It's all something of a mess to get anywhere with it in all honesty.
But while she had already signed up to be a Hunter and technically could with just what she has, which includes access to pretty much unlimited Full Potions and all sorts of other things like that, with how weak she is, it would be best to stack things in her favor as much as possible.
It was going about it that was the hard part.
All she can really do is look into it and see if she can't get somewhere.
If she can't, worst come to worst, she could have Jae-Min use Dimension Leap and try to find a way to target their first two worlds.
Then just have him swipe the things she's missing.
Would be far from the first time her husband's sneaky capabilities were applied to be more of a thief than an assassin.
She'd still have to work with the magatama relic to try and get what she wants out of it, but at least worst case scenario, she has a genuine Thestral tail hair, wand woods grown in her first world and naturally steeped in its magic, and one of her original magatama relic recreations from that world rather than trying to cobble something together with what little she has right now.
She supposes if she does have to send him back, it's a good thing that while not often, they did occasionally see thefts of the magatama relics she made.
It would confuse the ever living hell out of the younger her if not, and while she'd like to think it wouldn't change anything in her timeline, who really knows in the end.
Best to avoid that and leave it as a last resort just to be safe.
Her mom isn't particularly happy she'd gone and signed up to be a Hunter in spite of the fact she had tried pretty hard to discourage it herself given her strength.
At this point, she's mostly just silently radiating her strong disapproval while making sharp movements as she works in their kitchen, occasionally setting things down or closing cabinets and the like noticeably harder than necessary even if she's not quite slamming things around.
Her dad didn't exactly like it himself, but he'd let it go after talking about it with her a couple times with a sigh that she was, “A little too much like him to turn away from something like the Gates and the people that need help they create.”
Which is a reasonable conclusion to come to, what with him previously being a firefighter and all that.
Technically, the actuality of it was that as a reincarnator, she'd already developed her personality and such traits well before she came here of course.
Given her dad is one of the many people who has no knowledge of her reincarnation though, it is a perfectly reasonable conclusion that it's his influence.
She still doesn't want to get into being a reincarnator, and especially not potentially being linked to Jura-Tempest's ‘mysterious’ Empress though. So she continues to keep that a secret even with her family.
It's not any sort of permanent division, but it's made something of a split of heated opinions in her family though. Obviously, she's on the side of her being a Hunter, and her dad knows there's no talking her out of it so prefers to support her so if something does go wrong, their last however many days they have prior to said ‘things going wrong’ aren't spent arguing. Her mom was very much against it though, particularly given how weak of an Awakener she is, and her sister sides with their mom.
As much as she loves her mom and sister, it makes her glad her soulmates are S-Ranks. They'll undoubtedly get their own house fairly quickly, then she can move in with them. They don't approve anymore then her mom and sister, but at least they aren't passive aggressive about it. And they know there's really no arguing with her, so they don't really bring it up either.
She doesn't touch on either her mom's clear disapproval or the fact she'll inevitably be moving out soon as she gets up since she's not interested in getting into another argument about it, “Breakfast was delicious Mom. I'm heading out though. See you all later.”
Her dad flashes her a tired smile, “Good luck Jin-Ji.”
She smiles back, ignoring her mother hissing, “Il-Hwan! How could you just let her-?!”
She catches the beginning of her dad letting out an exhausted sigh, “Enough Kyung-Hye. For starters, she's an adult. Also, we've been over this-”
She doesn't linger to hear her parents arguing about it, letting out a sigh as she closes the door behind herself and double checking the mix between camera and bluetooth headset she's wearing is secure. Since she'd come out with the way for tech to connect through the Gates, it had swiftly become rather standard for Hunters to wear things like them.(1) Sometimes it was just a body camera clipped to their top, sometimes they wore cameras attached to some sort of headwear so it'll follow their line of sight.
It's that later reason she herself prefers the part Bluetooth part camera actually, since there's certainly value in the people keeping an eye on things from outside being able to see what she's seeing instead of being left in the dark if she, say, turns her head towards a noise but not her body or something.
She's made a decent amount of money from the patents for that and other things, even pricing them dirt cheap actually.
She's been contemplating taking advantage of that already heavy income to get her own place rather than wait for Ha-Eun and Jae-Min to get a more permanent place for them to move into actually. She'd have done it already, but they had convinced her to just wait a bit until Jae-Min starts making the sort of money one would expect from an S-Rank Hunter.
Actually, it may be more accurate to say he convinced them, since he also convinced Ha-Eun to save her still nice but certainly significantly less paychecks from the Hunters Association.
But she's not sure how much longer she'll stay at her parents house to be honest. It probably would be for the best overall if she moved out rather than just to avoid her mom and sister’s passive aggressive disapproval. While she hasn't heard it before, chances are this isn't her parents' first argument about it, and not having it right in front of their faces may cut down on that.
She doesn't want to be why her parents in this life are arguing after all.
And while she can see the reasoning of his eventual S-Rank Hunter pay being higher per year since while numerous, she did make everything she came out with as cheap as possible so it makes more sense to let him cover the cost of their eventual house. But it's not like she couldn't just temporarily rent a decent apartment while waiting for Jae-Min to get set up with the Guild he and his sister are working on, Black Dragon.
They were honestly being absolute brats with the name. Entirely unsurprisingly, as they started to trust them and then far more when the Gates appeared, there had been questions directed at Jura-Tempest about their Empress. Some just curious, some driven by gratitude for her warning and preparing them, but some were rather rude demands about why she wasn't doing anything directly if she's so powerful as to command the likes of Jura-Tempest.
Her people hadn't much liked the implications of the last group, but Rowena had idly explained that she'd been weakened considerably at the end of her last life and wasn't really in a position to do so.
The little traitor had released far more information publicly but targeted to the previous two groups about her in general. She wouldn't have minded if it was just more information about Jura-Tempest and its general history specifically, but while they'd been more than happy to answer any questions about that of course, the little traitor had explained that she was weakened saving Feronia. Actually released a recording of things from her perspective and everything. Also released a more in depth history about her.
Amongst that, as is relevant here, her becoming a True Dragon, and Jae-Min rather publicly attributed the name as a nod towards her when he'd been questioned about he and his sister making their own Guild and its name.
They had obviously been questioned about not joining her dad's Guild, Aegis(2) since while the connection to her -his daughter- may be hidden, it is the biggest guild, but Jae-Min had brushed it off with vague excuses about not neither of them really taking orders well so they figured they that as good as Aegis was, they were better off striking out on their own, where the only real things they were obligated to listen to were laws.
Less publicly, Ha-Eun had rolled her eyes at that claim with mutters about how he tended not to care about those either.
The truth of the matter was that her dad had obviously offered to let them join his own Guild before they had started getting things in order for their own Guild, but Jae-Min had turned it down rather seriously. With Aegis having been around practically from the get go and seeming to have a monopoly on Gates around Seoul, other Guilds weren't really popping up in the area.
And he knew full well that while it also meant they had a lot of manpower, they were still starting to strain from trying to hold things down pretty much entirely on their own. Yeah, they had the manpower, but the logistics of pretty much singlehandedly covering the entire area and managing so many people was what was getting them.
Her dad hadn't exactly been taking it personally to begin with, but he'd definitely approved of them striking out on their own to try and offset the strain his Guild was facing, therefore protecting people better while simultaneously not having to risk running his own people into the ground trying to do so themselves.
They'd filed the paperwork with their third Hunter being a Healer that really wasn't made for fighting, Min Byung-Gyu with the understanding that he wouldn't go out on raids, just acting as a Healer afterwards or in between from any incidents and could take other Healing work at his own discretion as long as he didn't slack in his Guild work.
Byung-Gyu seemed like a good man, but it really was for the best from what she saw when she met him. He really wasn't a fighter in the slightest, nor really a battlefield medic. The after action healing and cleanup he could do just fine, but the rest…
He really wasn't cut out for it. That was fine of course, not everyone was and there was no shame in it. He'd been pushing himself and been being pushed to be an active battle Healer though, and it was absolutely shredding his mental health.
The pressure from others was actually why her dad had gently pushed the man from his own Guild towards joining the twins, since while he had tried over and over to get people to leave Byung-Gyu alone or for the man to ignore them, he hadn't been very successful. He'd figured Byung-Gyu needed the fresh slate and the out before the Hunts he was being pressured into by others broke him.
She absolutely agrees with her dad after having gotten to know Byung-Gyu a decent bit while helping with the paperwork and all that setting up Black Dragon.
Honestly, more recently she's been worried about what the hell her husband is up to. He'd had no qualms previously about her assisting with the paperwork, even if she's pretty sure he was hoping to nudge her towards focusing on behind the scenes work like that rather than becoming a Hunter, but quite suddenly he and Jae-Hui had shooed her off a couple days ago.
Given the timing, it couldn't have anything to do with her going through with being a Hunter, which means they're up to something.
Something only made all the more obvious by the fact Ha-Eun had cheerfully told her not to worry about it rather than getting even more worried then her, given her cop nature and the likelihood of them breaking laws if they're plotting.
Even while she mulls over it, she's still paying attention to everything around her obviously, especially since she can't really rely on Elemental Sight or Multidimensional Perception to sort of watch her surroundings even when she's not paying attention, but she's admittedly a bit lost in thought as she heads to the raid she's been assigned to.
Her first one actually.
When she gets there, there's a guy shouting at the Hunters Association contact monitoring the Gate and the Hunters, "-absolutely ludicrous! Have the Hunters Association lost their damn minds?! Surely you had to have to think it's remotely a good idea to assign a so-called Hunter who literally broke the world record for weakest one in the world!”
The Hunters Association guy is holding his hands up, “Hunter Lee, please-”
She bites back a sigh. They're arguing about her as well it seems. As she steps into the cordoned off area with the Gate, she activates the bracelet her sword and its sheath and belt is stored in. She hasn't yet managed to update her wand though, so she leaves it and its arm holster in one of the other charms designed to let her equip them at a moment.
She approaches casually, "You do realize that even if you take issue with the Hunters assigned to this Gate, there's no point taking it out on this poor man since the decisions weren't made by him.”
As this Lee guy turns to her, the Hunters Association guy looks at her sort of torn between gratitude at getting Lee to stop yelling at him and like he doesn't want her to have to be the one in Lee's sights. Lee snarls at her, “Who the hell are you to butt in?!”
She just stares him down uncaringly, “It's rude to demand someone's name first you know.”
Lee's eyebrow twitches, “Lee I-Jun, C-Rank Tank, now who the hell are you?!”
She hums, “The one you were just yelling at this poor man over. Sung Jin-Ji, E-Rank Mage.”
Lee's face twists, “You! Why are you even here?! What the hell is someone who's so weak it's disgusting supposed to do beyond be a liability. E-Rank I can get, that's fine, but the world record-”
She might've understood his concerns, even if she wasn't going to back down, if he'd been more focused on the concerns of casualties or something, but given the first thing out of his mouth was her weakness being ‘disgusting’, she's pretty damn sure he's just one of those assholes who looks down on people weaker than him. Which tracks, given the way he was yelling at the Hunters Association guy.
To that extent, and given she's seen people with much weaker Existence Values take on people with more, she responds rather casually, “Ranks and magic power levels are more suggestions.”
Lee chokes in utter rage,, “They are not suggestions! It's clear you have no understanding of such things, but listen to me young lady! They are hard rules. You're delusional if you think they're suggestions. And if you're so stupid, maybe I ought to show you the real difference between someone with power and someone so fucking weak. Then maybe you'll learn your damn place, in this world or any other, since there's no world where-”
There are some whispers, a good few derisive, from the other Hunters that had been drawn over by the argument and she tilts her head boredly as he steps forward threateningly. Her own magic system may not be really be built for it, but it's not hard to brush the fingers of her left hand against the hilt of her sword, using it as a foci.
Her soul may not be able to handle much of it in its current condition, but she can at least unpack a little mana so as to cast without utterly tapping herself out. Specifically, using it to power a translated Fortification spell as well as a strength boosting spell both of which she runs through her Charity enchanted earring before settling the magics into her right arm.
Then she launches a straight punch forward, laying him out.
And knocking him out as it turns out.
Which silences everyone in an instant.
Gazing down at the unconscious Lee, she idly comments, “It's a suggestion like that Mister C-Rank.”
Blinking at him a couple times, she sucks in a quick breath as she turns to the Hunters Association guy, “I wasn't actually trying to knock him out though. I underestimated his Squishiness.”
The shocked Hunters Association guy asks numbly, “His Squishiness..?”
She nods, “Mm. Squishyness. You know. How in general, if you don't take other factors into account like the possibility for spells they can use to defend themselves or heal themselves respectively, Mages and Healers are Squishier than Rangers. They're more Squishy than Assassins, who are Squisier than Fighters, who are themselves Squishier than Tanks, since their whole job is to be sturdy.”
She and the Hunters Association contact kind of stare at each other a moment and she hums after a couple silent blinks worth of time, “Mind, when it comes to general Squishiness, ranks do have some weight. Not that they're the end all be all. But he said he was a C-Rank Tank. I thought he'd be less Squishy.”
The Hunters Association guy blinks rapidly at her before flicking a look down at Lee, “Ah, um, Hunter Sung, regardless of how ‘Squishy’ he is or isn't, that was an assult-”
She shakes her head, “Nope! He was threatening me. That was self defense.”
The Hunters Association guy pushes his lips together, “...Right…”
She waves it off as she moves away to text the four person group chat rather than the one just between herself, Jae-Min, and Ha-Eun while she waits, “Seriously though, I didn't expect him to be so Squishy! My bad! Healer may wanna wake him up!”
The other Hunters quickly get out of her way as she moves away to wait for them to be ready to head into the Gate.
Spotting the truck where they're giving out free coffee to the Hunters, she feels a pang of disappointment.
Jae-Min has absolutely spoiled her for his teas and coffees and honestly? It leaves others tasting pretty damn lackluster and absolutely not worth her time.
…It makes her wish she had a travel mug of Jae-Min's coffee though, since now she's kinda craving it.
Something to mention to her husband later. A more mischievous side of her wants to claim she'll harass or bully him into it, but honestly, forget just batting her eyes at him, she doesn't even need to do that when it comes to things like this.
Simp that he is, her husband bends over backwards for her and their wife.
It's adorable.
The best her mischievous side could do would be to suddenly make it sexual out of the blue and purposely misuse it while calling him a service top or something.
Not that he isn't.
When it suits them.
It varies.
And while it may be a little funny as a joke, it certainly wouldn't satisfy her flare of mischief since he'd just agree. Maybe ask her if that's what she's in the mood for or even turn it right back around on her and flip the script in some way or another on her.
Well, that wouldn't satisfy her mischief, but it would be satisfying.
Yeah.
She'll do that later.
After she makes him make her some coffee.
And also, now she's a bit horny Reaper damn it. But she's gotta deal with the Gate and who knows how long that will be. They vary after all. Could be practically in and out, could take hours.
She wants her husband and/or wife. Preferably both! …But her wife training to work with the Hunters Association means she's already sort of in a nine to five even though she isn't officially hired yet.
Well.
She clearly hasn't crossed the threshold that he set for one of the parameters for In Sickness and In Health to monitor their physical conditions to ping him if they get aroused enough.
Nothing to do for it but make her husband suffer knowing she's getting in the mood and there's jack all he can do!
Biting her bottom lip slightly to keep from grinning like a loon, she switches the four way group chat she'd opened but not sent anything on for the three way chat between her and her soulmates to start tormenting her husband.
He's gonna get her back so damn hard for this later.
It'll be fun.
It's hardly been three months when the news broke.
Another S-Rank Gate. This one on the west coast of America and tracking the highest Gate power level evaluation ever recorded.(3)
Given the sheer power level of it was hardly comparable to other rare S-Rank Gates she wasn't surprised that after five different American teams had to withdraw in a rush after trying to take it on, even losing a couple S-Ranks when things went south and either circumstances or lack of time meant they didn't use their Emergency Teleport Stones, America sent out requests for aid worldwide, or that various countries all over had responded en masse.
They all knew that whatever was in that Gate could legitimately be a threat to them all. They've basically all come to the conclusion that their only real chance to stop potentially country destroying devastation -if the other weaker S-Rank Gates that have broken are any indication- is to try and stop it with everything they have after it breaks and there's plenty of room for everyone.
It was the whole reason the Hunters Association had been willing to let her go, despite the fact she's hardly actually started officially working there.
The American Hunters Association guy twitches a little when she, Jae-Min, and Jae-Hui finish the bit of paperwork regarding payment for the Gate, all three of them turning down the cash reward for the assistance being offered in lieu of their percentage of the Hunt. The essence stones and mana crystals that is. Perhaps Rune Stones if there are any, since while obviously there wouldn't be enough to go around, if they're keeping their claim to their percentage of the loot from the monsters and Dungeon itself despite his cajoling.
She'd kinda suspected already, but in her opinion, that twitch makes it obvious as all hell the Americans were trying to temp people with the insane cash reward to keep the loot to experiment on or maybe even make incredibly top tier gear with.
She can't really blame America for that in all honesty, and it's not like they aren't compensating the Hunters for giving up whatever percentage of the loot they'd be entitled to.
That being said, she absolutely hates this man in particular when he actually looks relieved when they indicate they intend to use the blanket permission filing the paperwork gives them to attempt the Gate.
She knows he's unaware of their power, but that's exactly the problem. They already knew the people around here would inevitably think they were all overconfident about their power and would likely die.
What kind of sick monster would look relieved at that notion just to keep a higher percentage of the loot for his country?
The moral failing of one man is not on their country. She's not going to blame America as a whole for it, but it gives her rarer violent desires to punch him in the damn throat and watch him choke around his crushed throat. She has the strength for it, much as she's never particularly been a front line fighter in either previous lives or now.
How dare he be relieved at what he thinks is the inevitable death of children? Of her sister-in-law? Of her husband.
It's honestly harder than she'd like to admit to stamp down on the urge to just end the filth.
In a way, she's actually kind of grateful for the mocking calls from other S-Ranks around, utterly ridiculing them for attempting the Dungeon. Particularly when Jae-Min side steps derisive questions about where they're gonna get the other Hunters to make their party more balanced with other types of Hunters, Tanks and Healers and all that when none of them are going in by casually affirming they intended to go in with just the three of them actually.
As annoying as the mocking is, there's no denying it makes it easier to fight down the desire to absolutely obliterate that bastard who dared looked relieved at the idea of her husband's death.
So yes. As strange as it may be. She's grateful for them and their derision in a way.
Jae-Hui waves off the Hunters Association woman coming over to hook up their cameras to show them what's going on live inside, idly using the excuse that if they wouldn't last a second according to them then there was little reason for it.
They'd never actually intended to stream what they were doing back to the local Association from the get go, so they wouldn't have to worry about holding back.
Still, if they were gonna give them an excuse rather than make them either come up with their own on the spot if none of the vague ones they thought of potentially using before didn't fit, they may as well take advantage of it, right?
Once they're inside, she roughly unclips the powered off body camera from her top, sending it into her Spatial Storage magic where she keeps other clothes to Dress Change onto.
She looks up in surprise as her husband catches her shoulders before she can do more then start to take a single step, turning her towards him as her hands instinctively reach up to grip his arms for extra balance as she's turned so quickly.
He flashes her a smile, “Well, you usually stay in the back, especially now that you've Awakened as a Ranger, but you wanna take some of your anger out on the boss's face with your fists?”
She blinks rapidly, “What-?”
Jae-Min sighs, “...I may not have Lachesis, but you're so livid it's echoing down our soul corridor.”
With his durability, they don't break skin, but her nails start slowly digging more and more into his arms as her grip on him tightens in rage, “...He looked relieved at the thought of you dying. At the thought of it happening to Jae-Hui and I. To children as far as he knows.”
He steps closer and leans down to rest his brow against her own, “I know, sweetheart, I know. He's complete and utter garbage. And we are going to make him choke on that relief when we clear this Dungeon and its boss, claiming everything for ourselves as the only contributors to the Hunt.”
“And then we're going to make our wife unbelievably happy with the spoils for her to nerd out over that we bring back. Hopefully even finding essence stones that fit her wand and scythe magical modifications while we're at it, though she'll undoubtedly have to at least shrink them with magic if not also use magic to change their shape.”
“It's looking awfully promising given the reports about Wyvern monsters and therefore hopefully Dragons, especially since the previous Hunts never even got to the boss.”
She'd slowly loosed her grip on his arms as he spoke low and slow. Her lips twitch up entirely of their own accord at the last, “Even if we don't find one that fits, just the mana this Dungeon is radiating… It's been way too long since Jin-Ji was distracted from her worries and smiled as freely as the stuff from here will make her, hasn't it?”
He brushes a kiss over her lips, “Mm. I'd say not since Moira started hinting at the Gates, but honestly given that was the same day our memories came back and there was restoring Feronia before that… It's been even longer than that. Far, far too long. I don't know if she even realizes it herself in all honesty…”
She sighs as she brushes her own brief kiss on his lips, “Probably not… that infuriating woman is so damn self sacrificing I doubt it registers in the slightest that her smiles haven't been as full or reached her eyes as well since before her pre-Awakening perpetual tiredness and they're still that way…”
Her husband hums, “Mm. But we're gonna bring her some real nice presents back and fully distract her from her worries for the first time in years. Maybe it'll be something of a reset button for her. Even if it isn't, for at least a little while… She'll be so damn happy she'll forget about her worries.”
“And in the meantime before we get back, you'll get both the satisfaction of taking your rage out on some genuine monsters rather than the all too broad category from our third life that included way too many beings that should never have been in that category. Then you're going to have the complete and utter satisfaction of rubbing it in that utter trash's face that he had the pleasure of signing away the rights to all the loot from the monsters and Dungeon.”
She barks a laugh at the last part and after one last kiss, pulls away a little, “Well, the stuff from the Gate isn't gonna bring itself to our wife, now is it?”
Jae-Min smiles, “That it won't!”
Tapping into their Spatial Storage, they Dress Change into more combat appropriate clothes as well as equip their weapons.
She's fully aware only part of it is her brain wanting an additional distraction from the rage towards that American Hunters Association guy and the fact the rest is totally on her and has been ever since their first life when it stopped being associated with a potential threat to herself, her team, and pretty much everyone else around them.
But even as her husband scans the mountainous area they find themselves in presumably more with the Universal Perception Skill they both picked up in the millennia they were waiting for their wife more than his physical eyes, rather than doing the same, she is taking the moment to appreciate the view of her husband in his Black Reaper gear once more.
She wasn't likely to see it again for a while, given the fact that unless he needed to move in a more discreet and usually if not necessarily illegal manner and to distance himself from the figure of the Black Reaper if he needed to, he intended to use form changing effects on his gear.
He wasn't bothering right now given it was just the three of them, but she likely wasn't going to get many opportunities to see him in his full Black Reaper gear again.
Mind, back when she'd thought he was an enemy since she had no clue he was actually acting under threat to their shared soulmate, the trench coat hadn't had the hood that's pretty much always pulled up so it looks a bit different nowadays.
Calanthe had added it later when she'd made the boots after that one witch almost killed him with a curse to his ankle which was one of the few unprotected spots on him after all. She'd mostly added it more due to paranoia of it being another weak spot in the defenses of the gear she'd made for him to look exactly like what he already had so as to not raise any flags with his previous forced employers.
Regardless of which life it was though, whenever he has reason to don his gear again, he always has the hood up nowadays, as unnecessary as the defenses of it may be.
While she hadn't been romantically or sexually involved with them back then, being a minor and all so she wasn't their wife at that point, their wife had put work into adding it as additional protection just in case the mask's magic fails to protect the physically uncovered back of his head after all.
Of course he'd have it pulled up both just to be safe and to give their wife peace of mind about it.
Plus, it's not like it hampers him in any way given their wife had gone out of her way to make it invisible in the eyes of his mask specifically, so it's not like its edges get in the way of his peripheral vision or something.
Hell, he could have it pulled all the way over his head right down to his neck and still see just fine given that mask induced invisibility. Which… while the hood wasn't big enough on its own he could actually kinda do if he wanted to…
Their wife had worked out the method of pressing enchantments straight into an item's Eidos both for overall better enchanting since it can't be disrupted just by damaging any physical runes and the like as well as to be able to tweak enchantments without potentially damaging previous ones.
And when she was updating his gear, as well as Ethelyn's, she had given it shape shifting abilities and if he really wanted to, to stop someone from looking at the magically terror inducing eyes or something, he could make the hood big enough for it. Though, since the material had to come from somewhere his coat or sleeves or something would get shorter.
The only possible way it could be a problem was if his mask got damaged, and given just how sturdy that thing was, already capable of taking a full wrecking ball in their first life and only having gotten stronger since.
It not only absorbed power from him over multiple lifetimes but also. Well, once she'd had that enchanting and enchantment tweaking method available, she'd basically thrown every new trick she'd learned in the two lives between them to strengthen both Jae-Min and Jae-Hui's gear. Things like Fortification Magic from their second life and the Echo Reflection she'd learned from Frey's Skills via Multidimensional Perception.
As such, quite frankly, if something broke it, even if it was just the glass eyes of the mask, Jae-Min had much bigger problems then hampered peripheral vision.
As much as it had been something that had immediately been a threat the moment she laid eyes on it all the way back when she thought he was an enemy and shamefully didn't notice either the fact the infamous Black Reaper never tried to kill any of her team or even people that weren't necessarily targets if he could avoid it, and even tended to more subtlety help them out of trouble… Well, nowadays her husband's form in his full gear was more a temptation incarnate then anything.
With Universal Perception, she can see under his mask when her husband tilts his head at her, giving her that partly amused partly hungry little grin he tends to have whenever he's reminded that both her and Jin-Ji found him going Black Reaper attractive.
Horndog that their husband is, even when he's using other abilities, knowing him he'll be leaning into it heavily just to tempt her.
For now though, he sends a burst of information of what he observed both physically and with Universal Perception over their soul corridor even as he summons one of Rowena's H3s and glances at her patient form, “Given with a high level Gate and Hunters like this, they presumably left the few kills they did get for the recovery team they undoubtedly thought would grab them later, we should probably pick them up but store them in something space expanded, since Jin-Ji did translate the magics for them and they are available in Jura-Tempest. Easily keeps it separate from our own stuff so none of them can try to claim any of our kills and the like.”
She nods, “Best way to do it is to consider the Gate the starting point and tie them to coordinates based on that so they can try to sort out what belongs to who.”
He hums, “Undoubtedly.” He nods at Rowena's H3, “Rowena can handle that part undoubtedly, as well as collecting any samples or other stuff behind us. Not just the corpses from our own kills mind. In between doing that, she'll undoubtedly be wandering around the Dungeon checking if any of the foliage and what not is worth grabbing samples and seeds for cultivation.”
Rowena's H3 nods in understanding as to why they called for her, pretty much immediately turning herself invisible as well as basically erasing other indicators of her presence, sound, footprints, all that and sets off to get started. While she disappears, her husband refocuses on her and his sister, “We can use magic to rip the mana crystals whole from the ground or cave walls or whatever else they're embedded into and store them along with our own kills in our own Spatial Storage magic.”
She nods, “Mm.” Then her gaze drifts idly, “Planning is over though. That incoming Wyvern will be here in less than a minute at this point.”
Her husband snorts, partly amused, partly dismissive, not of her of course, of the Wyvern they can see almost upon them with Universal Perception.
She's not even surprised when Jae-Hui doesn't even let it even truly start its roar before she beheads it in one swift and precise strike.
Mind, after so long around Jin-Ji, none of them are exactly willing to let something that may have its own magical properties like that be wasted, so she cauterizes the wound even as she makes it to avoid the blood going everywhere or leaking out of the body after it drops and being lost.
It did seem to have some degree of heat resistance, but it wasn't completely immune clearly, given while Jae-Hui seems to have to adjust the temperature on the fly while she's on standby to use magic to catch any blood that spills, she can, in fact, turn it up enough to burn the wound closed even as she makes it.
It's far from their only encounter with Wyverns as they wander around the Dungeon methodically dealing with them all, occasionally seeing signs of Rowena having either already been someplace or was nearby in empty gashes of ground where foliage and the dirt it was in had clearly been removed or a corpse suddenly vanishing behind them.
They don't make her do pretty much everything else except fight though. Like Jae-Min had said, they head off to where they are to pluck the mana crystals whole and intact out of the various spots they're dotted around.
Honestly though, while she's here as backup mainly for the boss fight and to assist with mana crystal collection, she mostly ends up with plenty of time to admire her husband's form at work.
He's very much been leaning into the whole Black Reaper thing like she'd expected he would.
Even with the meticulousness though, it's maybe two hours before Universal Perception isn't picking up on any more deposits of mana crystals nor any other monsters well after Rowena gets in touch to let them know she's finished her magical scans of the area and collecting samples of pretty much everything in the Dungeon, regardless of their immediate seeming value.
Hipokute was just grass under the right conditions after all. Like hell they'd leave anything behind without at least collecting samples and seeds.
It's doubtful that all or even the majority will prove valuable, but who knows what some of it may become if the conditions are right.
So even as Rowena shimmers into view right before disappearing with the last kill's corpse, they turn their gazes toward the shimmering wall of light over the peak of the tallest mountain in the middle back -compared to the placements of the Gate- of the small range.
Undoubtedly, essentially the boss ‘room’.
Her husband grins, “Well, nothing but the boss left now. Shall we?”
She hums idly in agreement. Without another word, they all take off at speed towards the boss ‘room’, pausing right outside of the barrier for some set up.
Given the lack of desire to let any potentially valuable blood go to waste, the main thing beyond double checking all their gear and their own states just to be certain they're ready is setting up some magically expanded jars enchanted with spells to essentially magically ‘catch’ any spilt blood before it hits the ground and levitate it over to deposit it in itself.
While they genuinely aren't expecting any injuries given their history as a Primordial and Near Primordial Daemons, they'd already essentially put their own blood on an ignore list for it to avoid contaminating any of the boss's blood.
Once they're done with their final checks and setup, they step into the boss ‘room’, waking the deep red Dragon that looks about twenty meters tall if it's planted on all four feet. As it starts to climb to its feet, its glowing yellow eyes glare at them below three horns nestled in what she thinks are more scales curving out given they're the same color as the rest of its body contrary to the horns that continue from the back of its head a bit longer then its skull seems to be, with one more on each side of its head, curving out and then back in towards its chin.
With a glance at the other two, they silently confirm the self imposed ‘rules’ they'd laid on themselves. Mostly just how to go about killing it while trying their best not to damage its body too much for Jin-Ji's sake. As such, they won't touch the wings if they can help it, wanting to leave those intact.
And honestly, given they know damn well such things can have their own magical value, Jae-Min's coat having Dragon Thunder Thread silver runes and the potion to make the enhanced Dragon Thunder Thread Calanthe had used having thunderbird brain in it and far from being the only potion with creature organs, they were also going to try and avoid damaging any of its organs if they can help it.
The method they'd prefer to use would be beheading, same as they've been doing for any of the Wyverns they came across in the Dungeon, since the neck area made for a bit of an somewhat awkward section of hide anyway, even if it was less awkward with a large creature obviously. Death via bloodloss would be fine too if its neck is sturdier than they're thinking it will be.
Jae-Min takes the first shot, and she's honestly genuinely surprised he doesn't take its head immediately, but she also knows he wasn't giving it his all. And that part of the reason he was doing so was because he wanted to get an idea of its sturdiness and report it to Jin-Ji so she can try and figure out if it's just its natural resilience or if they further harden their own scales, instinctively or otherwise, when they're alive, thereby weakening the scales and hide when they die.
There's other values in the intelligence about it, but if it's the latter case, it also lets her try and come up with spells to try and disrupt that strengthening while they're still alive if there are other Dragon type enemies from the Gates in the future and any of them give them problems.
The Dragon starts to try to take to the air, but while she may not be great at close quarters combat, she had been a crackshot with a firearm in their first life and she'd never really let that proficiency die due to neglect or something.
So while she needed to be careful not to hit the wings, it's honestly not very hard to use one of the magic guns she'd been given as a wedding present mainly from Kurobe and partly from Myrd.
After double checking they were fine with it and wouldn't be hurt she'd altered their gift, they'd been tweaked a bit since, being able to act as magical foci that essentially turn spells into their own bullets, can combine MA energy into pretty much any type of magic she wants -including mana of course so she can get away with it being her Hunter gear if the Association ever sends her to into a Gate-, and had their magic enhanced high powered coil guns made even more high powered.
That is to say, while she has to carefully gauge things since she doesn't want to risk damaging the wing membranes, it's frankly easy to use two precise shots around where the joints seem to be to shoot the wings as a whole completely off before it can leave the ground.
It howls in pain and rage as it turns its furious gaze on her, but Jae-Hui snatches its attention as she goes for a stab right to its spine from behind its head. She's also holding back a bit for her and Jae-Min's measurement of its sturdiness while it's alive since they'd planned from the get go for her to not really hold back nearly as much so she didn't have to worry about not removing its wings. But Jae-Hui threatening its life is obviously more important than her taking its wings off.
Which an invisible Rowena must snag to prevent them getting damaged during the fight, given they suddenly vanish into thin air.
As Jae-Min and Jae-Hui all but dance around the furious Dragon, she occasionally takes shots at its throat from where she's basically in the back, poking at its durability herself, occasionally having to dodge breath attacks that aren't even really aimed at her but happen to pass her way while it's trying to get one of the others.
That too, she's running tests on.
Mostly in making sturdier and sturdier shields in its way even as she dodges to get a notion of the power of its attack.
She stops firing when one of Jae-Min's knives cleanly cuts through some of the meat on the side of its head, and she's not the only one that ceases attacking.
They'd found its sturdiness after all, but they still needed to wrap up their tests on its strength. Both the general ones Jae-Min and Jae-Hui are running on its physical attack strength and her own on its breath attack.
She wraps up first, letting them know without a word as she starts just making shields to take its breath attack without bothering to dodge.
They must finish up their own testing not too long later, given it can't even be five more minutes before Jae-Min suddenly changes course as one of Jae-Hui's shields holds without so much as a crack and takes its head off in a clean scissor like snap of his daggers.
The detached head and the rest of its body don't even get a chance to hit the ground before Rowena suddenly appears monetarily before vanishing with them.
None of them were even the slightest bit injured.
There's a momentary pause as they tuck their gear back into Spatial Storage, seal and collect the jar that was gathering blood as it came out of the Dragon's body, and tuck it back into a separate Spatial Storage, but then they leisurely start back towards the Gate.
By the time they get there, there's only a few minutes left before it closes.
A sudden silence falls over the Hunters and Association people as they step out.
Jae-Min stretches a little, “Everything's already been collected.” He tosses the space expanded trunk at one of the American Association people around, “Bodies from previous Hunters’ kills. They aren't exactly in the best of shape.”
“Partly since Dragon type monsters apparently eat each other, partly due to the beginnings of decomposition starting to set in. Marked each of them with their coordinates with the Gate as the starting point. You guys can sort out who's is who's based on that and the footage.” Then he grins a little smugly, maybe a tad mockingly, “Gate will close momentarily. May as well stick around for a minute or two for that.”
She's all too pleased at the horrified expression and denying headshake of the absolute monster that had been hoping for the deaths of what are basically children, since while they may technically be barely legal adults, and were actually reincarnators, he doesn't know that latter part, and barely legal adults were practically still kids.
While they're waiting the brief minutes before the Gate closes, she pulls her phone out to book the first flights they'll be able to board back to South Korea, even as she keeps an eye on asshole, maybe reveling a bit in the absolute mess he's on the verge of becoming, only barely staved off by utter denial that they really had managed it.
It's even more satisfying to see the way his expression utterly collapses as she hears the Gate close behind her and any hope of denial is ripped away from him to hide behind.
Without another word to the numb crowd, they start off as Jae-Min turns to her with a grin, holding his phone out towards her, “Look! I know I was originally saying we should wait until things stabilize after the Guild gets really on its feet and all that, but with all this, figured we wouldn't really need to, right? So while you were booking our return flights, I was browsing around online and found this!”
She accepts his phone from her husband in amusement and takes a look at what he's excitedly wanting to show her, though she has a fairly good idea already from what he said about waiting. She's proven right when she finds a house listing on his phone.
It's a pretty comfortable looking thing from what she's seeing of the photos and the written details. Bit on the big side, but that's not surprising, given they need enough room both for kids later down the line and also things like home offices or a home gym.
Has a pool in the backyard too.
And enough room to build something comfortable but technically detached for privacy for Jae-Hui as she and her brother tend to prefer.
She hands him his phone back with a smile, “It looks really good, but we should look around a bit more before we commit, just to make sure there isn't something even better for what we're looking for.”
Jae-Min nods, “Yeah, I know, but still! This one is really good, so if we don't find something better after looking around a bit-!”
She laughs, bumping her shoulder with his, “Yeah, definitely.”
She's not the slightest bit surprised at her husband's excitement.
She's been looking forward to moving in together in this life herself, and while it's a good bit off, it's hard not to let her own excitement get to her a bit at the thoughts of ‘extra space’ and ‘future kids’ and ‘good school district’ and all the rest whirling around in her head.
Of course, they also need to run it by their shared wife, but she can't see any reason she'd reject that one specifically. And even if she did, there's inevitably other options out there.
Notes:
(1): Jin-Ji is just doing as she does and helping people as much as she can, but that does change things since, I mean. How you gonna be a lizard or some other kind of criminal if it's all being sent back live…
(2): For those unfamiliar, just gonna drop these- “(figuratively) Usually as under the aegis: guidance, protection; endorsement, sponsorship.” OR “(Greek mythology, Roman mythology) A mythological shield associated with the Greek deities Zeus and Athena (and their Roman counterparts Jupiter and Minerva) shown as a short cloak made of goatskin worn on the shoulders, more as an emblem of power and protection than a military shield.” these are, for the record, just a copy-paste of the majority of the definition from a Reverse dictionary site, like for when you know the meaning of a word but the word itself is escaping you, or in this case if you know what you're vaguely going for but can't exactly find a good word since it also works as a really good thesaurus. Name picked because he used to be a firefighter and his personality is that he's protective of people in general, so.
(3): You probably know where this is going. Yes, I'm aware Kamish's Gate opened only 2 years after the Gates appeared and was the very first. But given they got essence stones from Kamish, it's clearly a Ruler Dungeon. And while they were trying to introduce mana to prepare the world, they were also trying to prepare humanity as a whole. Why the fuck would they have tossed Kamish at them 2 years in when they're barely getting there feet, especially since they're shown to be ramping up slowly in the frequency and power of Gates in general, and they clearly have weaker S-Rank threats to start off with, given the Ant Dungeon on Jeju (more on that later), so. No, I don't buy it being the first S-Rank Gate, it's one of the things I mentioned in the tags that get shifted but isn't MCs fault. If I'm gonna move it anyway, may as well move it somewhere that fits other decisions.
Chapter 6: Go!
Notes:
AN: You guys get a longer chapter this time, lol. Wasn't planned that way since I was just writing and not taking into account when this chapter would be out, but suppose you can consider it an early holiday gift, and speak of which, bit early but happy holidays!
Also, while it may or may not change if I like other things from it more later, the descriptions of things from here are more from the webtoon than anime.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
She stares at her husband blankly from where she's kneeling on the floor by the bookshelf she was transferring things to from their still in progress move, “...Excuse me?”
Her husband grins smugly, “You knew I was working on something. Well, this is what I was working on. No clue if any other Guild will start doing it but. Guild affiliated freelance Hunters Association Hunters. If other Guilds start doing it, it'll take some of the pressure off of the Association since they can have forces dedicated to handling smaller Gates the Association will assign based on current availability rather than make them bid on them since we'd just lose money.”
“And it's not like we don't get anything out of it, since the work contracts mean if any of the Hunters Reawaken that were previously affiliated with the Guild and they want them full time, they automatically shift from Guild affiliated to working for the Guild full time.”
He shrugs, “It's in the Hunters’ interest as well, given Guild affiliated Hunters have access to Guild benefits such as the better tax rates on selling essence stones. Independent Hunters pay forty percent compared to our ten percent tax rate on them after all. That's just an example mind. Guild affiliated Hunters are meant to have access to most if not all of the benefits of joining a Guild. I suppose technically others might withhold some benefits, but things like which benefits they'll get would be in the contract to become Guild affiliated.”
His face scrunches up a little, “Not that there's really any reason beyond greed to withhold benefits from Guild affiliates. Sure, if there are too many injuries in the lower ranks, Healers will get a bit stretched thin, but in general, it works out for everyone if such things are offered and it gives the Guild the Hunters Association's favorable opinion undoubtedly.”
“Even if you ignore any other reason and look at sheer practicality, if nothing else, it saves the Hunters Association money on the medical bills of said Hunters and their families and while it may not be expensive in general per person, the sheer amount of them undoubtedly adds up. And that's not including any outliers who have someone who does have expensive medical needs on their coverage.”
She rocks back on her heels, “I mean… I guess I can see the benefits of it, but why? Why would you push for something like this I mean?”
He gives her a surprised look, “Isn't it obvious? So I could officially have you working for Black Dragon which you obviously would never do when it would get in the way of you working as an independent Hunter with the Association. But since the idea is that Guild affiliates can be both affiliated with a Guild and working on lower Gates they may be assigned but still work with the Hunters Association if they haven't received jobs through the Guild lately, there's no reason for you to not become Guild affiliated.”
She rolls her eyes, “You ridiculous man… You seriously pressed the Hunters Association to push a change in legislation though just to get me to work with Black Dragon?”
He nods without hesitation, “Yes.”
She shakes her head, more muttering under her breath than anything, “Absolutely ludicrous…” Then she refocuses on him, “Yeah, okay, let me know when they figure out what the paperwork will be I suppose.”
Her husband grins triumphantly, as he whips some papers and a pen out of nowhere, presumably a Spatial Storage spell, “Ah-ha! But see, I already got Chairman Go to sort the paperwork out before he took it to them to vote! So I have the paperwork right here and it can be submitted as soon as it passes!”
Her lips twitch in amusement as she accepts the papers, shifting out of her crouch into sitting properly before accepting them. Obviously she trusts any paperwork her husband gives her, but it's always better to read things through thoroughly before signing anything, so she does just that.
Reading it meticulously before she starts signing in the appropriate places that is.
Given they have one of their precious S-Ranks pushing for it, she's not even surprised when they pass it on February eleventh, at two oh one pm.(1)
She's even less surprised that the paperwork is submitted and she's officially the first Guild affiliated Hunter at two forty-seven pm.(1)
She's honestly rather surprised, but she feels it's rather fair. The Hunters Association, and lower ranked Gates in general, don't tend to have porters after all, so she can't exactly be blamed for her reaction to being asked to be one, “What? Since when does the Hunters Association use porters in their Gates? Or raids for lower tier Gates have them in general for that matter?”
Ha-Eun sighs, “Neither generally does, that isn't a change. It's because this Gate is bordering on B-Rank so they want to be more cautious about it.”
She blinks rapidly, “O…kay… Why are they asking me of all people if it's that strong a Gate?”
Another sigh, “You weren't their first choice. No where near. But everyone else they've tried to get to do it has turned it down.”
She hums though she supposes it explains why they're having Ha-Eun speak to her about it when she's usually not allowed to have anything to do with things such as assigning her Hunts and the like, given conflict of interest, “I see… Yeah, I can do it, though I'm still surprised just for the record.”
Ha-Eun chuckles lowly, “You and me both. I'll let them know.”
She hums in agreement, and with an exchange of goodbyes, ends the phone call with her wife.
It's a little strange but it shouldn't be a problem.
This was a massive problem.
An absolute disaster in fact.
She doesn't know what the cause is for Gates, but clearly whatever is behind it considers the line between C-Rank and B-Rank to be at least a bit different.
Considering they've only ever seen them in B-Rank Gates or higher it's the only explanation for why this one is a Red Gate. So, whatever is behind this, must actually consider this a low B-Rank Gate rather than a high C-Rank Gate.
Things were not going well.
She's not entirely sure how much of a difference she could potentially make given her state, but she also hasn't been able to find out.
Mainly since there's been an asshole Mage who kept shoving her whenever she tried to help, snarling about useless E-Ranks staying out of their way.
It's honestly taken everything in her not to punch him from his latest shove even as he fires an ice spell at the boss, and she doesn't have a chance to snap back before the boss, a sort of bipedal crocodile looking thing, finishes sweeping the front liners away with its tail as it turns at about the same time the ice spell hits it and with a snarl and turning more, it beelines for them, throwing the Mage into a nearby tree along with giving him a pretty bad wound across his chest with his claws with a furious snarl.
She tries to jump back, but is just a little too slow, her right leg is snatched painfully tight before she's thrown away hard. The air is knocked out of her as she slams into the ground, the front of her left shoulder and side taking the majority of the impact, but her head does smack into the ground. For a few moments she's dazed, trying to reorient herself from the blow to her head, as she looks up, she sees what's left of the resistance that tries to attack it get brutally thrown away with a backhand.
As she watches, the raid leader gives a sad laugh, “Well, given the whole Red Gate thing means there's no potential backup even if they could get here in time, I guess this is it guys.”
She pushes herself to her feet slowly as some quip back with a sort of good natured gallows humor, while others start crying quietly or sobbing. She sways as she raises, the motion drawing the Dungeon boss's attention, it growls at her and starts to move her way ponderously. Her main weapon was actually with Kaijin and them as they worked at getting the shavings she needed for her wand, which was more of a thing then she was expecting given its sheer durability.
Her backup blade was too short for what she had in mind though, so keeping an eye on it, she staggers over to the left towards one of the people who aren't crying, bending down slowly to grab his sword, “I'm borrowing this.”
He laughs despite the tears in his eyes, “Given we're all gonna die, you can keep it. Don't know why you want it though.”
She gives a smile even as she refuses to take her eyes off the boss monster, “Because I'm more of a ‘fight to the end’, ‘do not go quietly into the gentle night’(2) kind of person, thanks.”
He snorts, “Suit yourself.”
A couple people look like they want to join her at that, but practically everyone else who's even paying attention and doesn't have an utterly broken look on their face physically can't get up. As the boss lumbers towards her, she gathers her miniscule energy, directs it into fire magic, and boosts it a bit with her Charity enchanted bracelet. Without it, she's capable of little more than a weak thumbnail sized flame, but more if she just makes sparks.
Sparks can be more useful then people give them credit for though. And she's not using Charity to increase its size. She's amplifying the heat of a cascade of sparks. Which she flings into the soft vulnerable flesh of its eyes as she swings her sword when it gets close enough that it's practically point blank from the tip of her borrowed sword to make sure practically all of them go right into said eyes with as much heat retained as possible.
It roars in agony and staggers back and she darts as quickly as she's capable to its left off towards another tree in this swamp a suitable distance away. It hears her of course, though with it being in so much pain and disoriented, it takes a moment to follow, which she'd been banking on since it was definitely faster than her.
Flipping the sword into a reverse grip as she runs, she manages to get to the tree and run up, kicking off and turning as it closes, purposefully brushing her right foot against its outstretched arm. As expected, its head snaps back as it turns its unseeing gaze up and one of its hands snaps up to snag her foot, just as painfully tight as it had grabbed her leg before, yanking her down hard.
A smile slips over her lips.
It was, after all, exactly what she was after. She thrusts the sword down with every ounce of strength she can muster, using both it and its own strength from the yank to drive the sword into the hollow of its throat and down into its chest, exposed from the way it tilted its head back.
It lets go even as she crashes into it, staggering it back with a wet gurgle before tripping backwards over a root poking out of the waters of the swamp. Pulling the sword out, she slips some Charity boosted strengthening spells over herself and takes its head off to finish it off.
Blinking tiredly at it for a moment she hums as she lifts her gaze, “Well, that went better than expected.”
The Mage who had become the temporary raid party's vice-leader snaps at her, “If you were capable of something like that from the start, you should've just done it!”
She gives him a dry look, “Says the man who kept forcing me back or getting in my way.”
He looks like he just swallowed a lemon as his gaze drops to the ground, expression a mess of anger, shame, embarrassment, and mortification.
She sighs as she staggers back to her feet, tiredly tugging her phone out to check her connection, but finding, as expected, that while still technically connected, the time dilation is still screwing with the connection, “The Red Gate hasn't finished opening yet, which isn't very surprising given the time difference makes them take a bit from the perspective inside. So, we still haven't connected and can't teleport back with the Emergency Teleport Stones yet.”
Pushing her phone back into her pocket, she heads over to where the only ‘opening’ in the trees makes for a sort of doorway into the boss ‘room’ and staggers that way, wearily stopping far enough away that nothing they may have missed can take her by surprise, but close enough it would have to go through her before it can get to the others.
As she does, she glances at some of the previously dead eyed, but now just numb in shock people, murmuring, “You guys should do some triage to try and stabilize the more critical and get them ready to be moved when the Gate finishes opening and we can teleport back.”
That definitely seems to snap at least a few out of their daze, and the ones who are capable of it either stagger to their feet and start to make their way to others, or in a few notable cases, crawl over.
One of the more critical people looks up at her even as someone else starts to help, “What about you? Do you need assistance? If not, shouldn't you help too?”
She shakes her head, ignoring the spike of dizziness, tone firm, “I'll stay by the proverbial door and guard it, just in case we missed any monsters. Better safe than sorry.”
That seems to surprise everyone, but the woman who asked nods jerkily. The party leader calls out as she turns away, “Aren't you going to collect the essence stone?”
She shakes her head, “Not with no one else still here in any state to fight if anything does show up.”
The party leader lost a leg to the boss monster's jaws, but he'd insisted they just cauterize it for now and help the more critical out. However, it meant he was definitely of no help, given a battle axeman who couldn't stand wasn't a very good guard. He hums in understanding, then grabs his axe and starts crawling over to the corpse, “Fair enough. I'll cut it out for you.”
She glances back, “Thanks.”
He flashes her a smile, “Least I can do, given everything.”
After he collects it, he moves over towards her, holding it out to her, “This is rightfully yours. You were the one who not only ultimately dealt with it, but while the rest of us may have hurt it, we'd be dead if it wasn't for you, so…”
She flashes him a weak smile and accepts it and tuck it into her pocket even though she really only takes her share to bring down any fights over her cut of things, since she really has no need for the money with her not-legally-in-this-life-spouses and will just end up donating it, “Thanks.”
He nods as he settles back against one of the trees making the ‘walls’ of the ‘room’, “No problem.”
A silence falls as they get back to waiting for the Gate to finish opening, but it's probably less than two minutes later before people's cameras start letting out beeps and the like to let them know their connection is back to normal, indicating that the time dilation isn't making the video so fast no one outside can make heads or tails of it without slowing it down a lot. But obviously, if they're back to live at the same speed as outside, the Gate has finished opening.
As such, people quickly start to teleport out, but she lingers until everyone is gone, still not wanting to risk them missing a monster and shit timing lining up to make this mess even worse.
Only once there's no one else still here does she activate her own Teleport Stone to return to right outside the entrance of the Gate.
There's people rushing all around, sorting out the injured, healing them, particularly the more critical, and just generally checking on everyone. She doesn't move, just watching everything for a while.
Inevitably, someone from the Hunters Association hurries over to her, “How injured are you ma'am? Do you need assistance?”
She hums tiredly, “I'm pretty sure my right foot and leg are fractured from the last two times it grabbed me, combined with the fact my left shoulder absolutely dislocated when it threw me and I'm pretty sure my ribs are at least bruised on that side from the impact as well, I wasn't really wanting to try and squeeze through the rush of bodies right now.”
The Hunters Association guy winces, then glances around, “Ah…”
He doesn't quite seem to know what to do, but that in and of itself seems to grab one of the Healers’ attention, “Problem?”
The Hunters Association guy gestures at her, “Ah, she has a fractured right leg and foot, a dislocated left shoulder, and presumably bruised ribs on her left side too, so she wasn't wanting to try and get to through everyone rushing around, but it's probably not a good idea to leave her standing here where someone could run into her, right?”
The Healer shakes his head, “No, definitely not.” He makes his way over to her right side, “I'll help her walk, clear the path as best you can, would you?”
The Hunters Association guy nods, but waits for them to get ready and the Healer flashes her a smile, “Sorry, this is probably going to hurt with your shoulder and ribs, but you really shouldn't put any more weight on your foot, so I'll take your weight, just kinda hop for me?”
She nods, and he's not wrong, it does in fact hurt when he loops his arm around her, given it moves her shoulder and puts pressure on her ribs, but it's far from the worst pain she's ever experienced. That being said, having Cancel Pain as well as Suffering Nullification from two different worlds for so long has undoubtedly lowered her pain tolerance though, since despite the fact she's certainly experienced worse, her eyes water a bit from the combo of her shoulder and ribs from it.
Nevertheless, they start to move and the Association guy does his job of clearing the way enough for people not to run into her and either potentially aggravate her injuries or at least make it more hurt even more.
The Healer assisting her helps her settle down, and she glances up at the Association guy, “Do I need to call in to drop out of upcoming raids? I'm scheduled to join a couple in the next few days, but I need some time to recover. I mean, I can still go if they're really short on Hunters, but otherwise even with healing it's better to take some time off and rest.”
He blinks quickly, but before he can say anything, someone else pipes up, “I can remove you now.” Looking over, she sees the woman who'd been in charge of overseeing the Gate clicking away at a tablet, and she hardly has time to look over and recognize her before the woman is looking back up with a smile, “You've been removed from the raids Hunter Sung. Don't worry about them, they had enough people scheduled.”
She nods, “Thanks.”
The woman nods back, “Of course. Please just rest Hunter Sung. You've definitely earned it from what I hear.”
With the time dilation making the video go so fast for them, she's not the slightest bit surprised that the woman didn't see what happened, though she's sure the Association will eventually slow it down and go over everything to make sure no crimes were committed and all that.
For now though, all they have to go on is what people report. She supposes it's not that surprising people are already talking about what happened at the end with her and the boss, but it's a bit irritating. She doesn't like attention. She's been just fine up until now with being just a generally considered insignificant if strange E-Rank.
Even as the Healer starts to get to work on her injuries and the Hunters Association people head off, she lets out a bit of a sigh.
She has a bad feeling that she's going to be more noteworthy to more people after today.
She turns her head suddenly, voice a somewhat confused murmur, “Benimaru..?”
Shuna tightens her hands on her tablet, “My brother..? Is he..?”
She can't seem to bring herself to complete the question, and undoubtedly partly to assist with that though it's likely mostly just seeing if there's trouble she needs him to deal with, but Soei speaks up at that point, “Is there trouble with Beninaru, My Lady?”
She shakes her head as she turns back, “Ah, no. Benimaru must've made a breakthrough with his training I guess.”
Shuna's brows furrow as her grip on her tablet loosens as the concern for her brother passes, “That's wonderful, but I thought your Perception Skills were broken, how do you..?”
She hums, “Mm. They are. So is Shub-Niggurath, but I mean, I did name you all and one of the benefits of a subordinate type naming is that as one party grows stronger, so does the other. I suddenly got a small burst of energy is all. Did a bit of repair work on my soul, which is nice, even if it was a miniscule amount in the grand scheme of things.”
Soei suddenly stills. He's fairly still most of the time of course, but even the minor movements of breathing and blinking and all that vanish for a few moments. Moments in which Shuna and everyone else also go unnaturally still and Shuna's grip on her tablet tightens briefly once more.
She waves it off, “Like I said, nothing to worry about. The report Shuna?”
Shuna suddenly regains life as she smiles widely, “Right! Of course My Lady!”
Even as she listens to Shuna, she eyes Soei and the others with some confusion as they shake their weird stillness off and start sharing meaningful looks amongst themselves.
Her people are weird sometimes, that's for sure. Doesn't seem like something to worry about though, so she shakes it off.
She's at the hospital visiting her mother, a more selfish relief at working out how to permanently deal with Eternal Slumber stirring in her once more.
Her mom had started to show symptoms of it a couple months ago, getting officially diagnosed a couple weeks back.
While she knows it's perfectly fine, given they haven't exactly had time to test the cure more thoroughly, as long as waivers acknowledging that there haven't really been tests including long term effects, since otherwise people will either die or be in a semi permanent and expensive to maintain coma, they do use it though kind of insist on careful twenty-four seven monitoring of patients during the treatment.
Hence why they're at the hospital though. Her mom is currently admitted to longer term patient care while she receives her treatment.
She's more than happy to have helped other people of course, but she just can't… help that more selfish relief that curls through her at the fact it also helps her mom.
Song Chi-Yul is chatting idly with Kim Sang-Shik when their attention is suddenly pulled away by Sung Jin-Ji calling out to them, “Hey! You guys know where Joo-Hee is?
He blinks rapidly for a moment, only a little surprised to see Jin-Ji dragging an unconscious Hunter, “Uh, yeah. What happened to him?”
Jin-ji gives him a blankfaced look as she deadpans, “Talk shit, get hit.” Then she shakes her head, “I was chatting with Kang Jeong-Ho and he asked if things were still good with my romantic partners. This guy started talking shit about them. Sayin’ they gotta be pathetic and the like if they're with me. But he was going on and on about how he's C rank earlier, so I apparently underestimated how squishy he is. Knocked him out in one hit when he took my return insult poorly and got aggressive. He may have swallowed some teeth too. Anyway. Which way is Joo-Hee?”
Sang-Shik points off in the direction they'd last seen Joo-Hee, “Uh, that way.”
Jin-ji resumes dragging the other Hunter with a bright smile, “Thanks!”
He nods idly, “Just Jin-Ji doing Jin-Ji stuff then…” Then he jerks his thumb after them, “That guy though-”
Sang-Shik casually takes a sip of his coffee, “Oh he's new.”
He breathes out a relieved sigh, “Oh thank the gods. I was seriously concerned about our raid party if there was a dumbass who didn't know better than to insult Jin-Ji's mysterious partners and then get aggressive when she insults them right back. Guess it can't be helped if he's new. Gotta learn sometime after all. So anyway-”
He puts the entire incident out of his mind as he gets back to his discussion with Sang-Shik he'd been having before Jin-Ji interrupted them to ask where Joo-Hee is.
He's absolutely strongly reminded of just why the young lady is nicknamed the Menace of the Association whenever there's an incident.
She may only be twenty-two and set the world record for weakest Hunter in the world, but it's generally a poor idea to get on her bad side.
It's even dumber to do so and then get aggressive with her, giving her an excuse to lay you out.
Doesn't help that as rumor goes, Chairman Go himself likes her.
Something about admiring the fact she's never let her weakness stop her along with liking her attitude. That, and the fact that when things go wrong on a raid, as illogical as it is given she's, you know, the weakest Hunter in the world, it's usually Jin-Ji pulling them out of trouble.
He can easily believe that the man likes her between all that and the things she seems to get away with. Her having Chairman Go in her corner would definitely explain it.
Not that he seems to be the only one.
He's heard someone tried to sue her given they didn't exactly have grounds to press charges since they technically started it, but from what he heard, she had some powerful people in her corner there too, given the lawyers that handled it.
Sung Jin-Ji is an absolute enigma in all honesty.
Weakest Hunter in the world, yet an absolute menace that seems to utterly ignore logic and the hard rules of ranks, which she insists are more guidelines. Seemingly no one particularly noteworthy beyond her strange ability to practically ignore ranks and be such a key player in preventing things from going horribly wrong when things start to go wrong, yet having people who can afford some of the best lawyers in the country to represent her if the rumors are to be believed. Again, weakest Hunter in the world, but utterly confident in herself despite the way it would affect most if they even dared become a Hunter to begin with when they only have that level of power.
She's a strange and mysterious girl, that's for sure.
He's more than happy to see her on any raid though.
Illogical though it may be given her raw power, while they all know they have to do their best as well if they want to increase survival odds, one had good chances of making it home even if things went to hell when Sung Jin-Ji was there.
Her strangeness was more than easy to either navigate when it comes to not picking a fight or ignore when it comes to everything else, and more than worth it to put the effort into doing so.
She happily sips at her thermos of coffee her husband had made for her while she waits for the raid to start once everyone is here and ready.
It's honestly not even a surprise that practically the moment he found out that while the Association was courteous enough to make contracts with food trucks to do things like serve coffee and food to Hunters, he'd been personally insulted at the idea of her having regular cheap coffee.
He's been as dutiful as he always is these past six years with such things in making sure there's always fresh coffee or tea so she can have whichever she's in the mood for before she heads out on a raid. It was more of a coffee day today, and her husband's coffee is as delicious as ever.
Not that it's any more of a surprise than him loathing the idea of her having regular coffee. He's as picky about his coffee grounds and tea leaves as he is with his cuts of meats or any other cooking ingredients. He's as meticulous about making them as well.
With it just being a D-Rank Dungeon, only thirteen(3) Hunters were assigned to it.
She lifts her head when Chi-Yul calls out, “Alright, looks like everyone is here, so if everyone could gather?”
She obviously doesn't have direct access to Imaginary Space even if the Trunk can open a way to it, and without more direct control, it's a bit too difficult to store things inside and pull them back out, but she at least has expanded pockets. They're common enough nowadays that if anyone even notices, no one bats an eye at her twisting the opened cap back on and making sure it and the lid for the thermos as a whole are secure before tucking it into her coat pocket as she makes her way over.
She listens idly as Chi-Yul makes sure everyone is fine with him serving as raid leader before they head in.
It doesn't take too long in the slightest to realize this Dungeon primarily has goblins in it. Which… honestly feels a bit weird to be killing without hesitation and so indiscriminately. Jura-Tempest's roots was the Goblin village Rigurd and all of them are from after all.
Difference is, the goblins from these Dungeons are absolutely hostile to pretty much everything that isn't itself from their Dungeon. Which was probably why when Jura-Tempest assists with Dungeons, even the Goblins from there don't seem to possess a lick of hesitation to kill the goblins from these Dungeons.
Still feels weird to her though. Maybe the others as well, though they insist it isn't and it doesn't make them uncomfortable or anything like that.
Honestly, it's not exactly a threatening Dungeon either and it's maybe an hour and a half before the Dungeon boss is biting the bullet, finished off by Chi-Yul's fire magic. She feels a bit bad for the guy actually. He was that kumdo master who rather than Awakening as a Fighter like you may expect instead Awakened as a Mage they'd used as an example about how Awakenings are somewhat unpredictable all the way back when they'd first warned the world the Gates were coming.
It must be incredibly frustrating to have spent years polishing his swordsmanship only to Awaken as a Mage.
The latter part is a bit messy, but it also doesn't take very long to finish gathering the few loose mana crystals as well as the essence stones from within the monster's corpses. Technically, those can be valuable in things like hides for armor and teeth for weapons and the like, but certainly not from the weak monsters in a D-Rank Dungeon like this. It would have to be a C-Rank at least for them to be strong enough to really be worth it, though obviously of the materials collected from various monsters, those are frankly the weakest.
Right about when Chi-Yul is asking if everyone is done with collecting the loot, Kang Jeong-Ho calls out to them, “Hey! Come take a look at this guys!”
Sharing looks, people start making their way over, before following him through an opening in the boss room that quickly turns to the right as the only way to go.
The smoothish brick of the boss room and small hallway doesn't continue for very far before turning into a tunnel they can't see the end of.
Chi-Yul tilts his head, “A Double Dungeon huh? I've heard of them rarely popping up. Never thought I'd see one, especially in a D-Rank Dungeon. Anyone got a mobile evaluator? They've been getting both better and cheaper. Then if it's not too strong, the Hunters Association people outside can let us know if we're in clear to handle it or not.”
She reaches into her pocket, “I do.”
Chi-Yul nods and steps over to her to look at it as she goes over to the opening of the tunnel to evaluate it. He snorts as he tugs his phone out at the result they get back, “So, not anything higher than a D-Rank itself. Give me a minute everyone, I'll call the people outside, see if we're good to go or if they want us to come back.”
She nods absently even as her brows furrow while staring down the tunnel as she absently tucks her evaluator away. Which seems to get Chi-Yul's attention given he pauses while dialing the number they were given to directly get in touch with the Hunters Association people outside, “Something wrong Sung?”
She shakes her head, “I- Not exactly. Just… there's something weird about the way the mana coming from down there is flowing. Something about it is familiar but I can't put my finger on it…”
Chi-Yul hums as he resumes dialing before gazing down the tunnel while he waits for someone to pick up, “Even if it's moving strangely, this is still just- Yes, hi. You saw everything we're sending back, right? Yes, I can hold.”
He keeps the speaker pressed to his ear but tilts the mic away a little, “What I was saying is that this is still just a D-Rank, so even if the mana is flowing strangely, I can't see it being a problem.” Then he glances back at the people behind them to include them in who he's directing what he's saying at, “They're calling their superiors to find out if we're clear to finish the Gate or not based on the readings.”
There are murmurs of understanding and a few minutes of silence as they all wait. Eventually though, Chi-Yul straightens his phone, “Yes, I've still got a good connection.” He pauses and while listening to the response, then nods, “I understand, thank you.”
Then he hangs up, “Welp! We've been cleared to finish the raid, so let's get going.”
She tugs an orb enchanted to let out light and follow the one who activates it within a range the user sets, altering the settings quickly and activating it. Immediately, it floats up out of her hands and starts illuminating a decent area around her.
Chi-Yul smiles at her briefly before stepping past her. While he was a fire Mage, probably due his kumdo history combined with how quick his magic is to summon in general, he's honestly somewhat of a frontline Mage. She could be as well, given she is pretty good with her sword, but with how ‘strangely’ versatile her magic is, most of the people she raids with tend to prefer her to stay in the back like most Mages, only coming out for more head on confrontation when things are going pear shaped and she's stepping in more fully.
That is to say, she's not surprised he, as well as some of the others who touch her shoulder before lightly pressing on it to indicate to stay behind them do so to begin with, nor does she argue with it. They won't fight her if she feels the need to step in after all, so she can let them shuffle her to the back to protect her.
Once Joo-Hee is drawing level with her, she starts off with the Healer.
She'd been expecting the tunnel to branch off or obviously at least for monsters to pop out but they just keep walking straight with no deviations entirely unimpeded. It's not that there's hidden side passages either or anything, something she can say beyond a shadow of a doubt given she does activate her Multidimensional Perception enchanted ring and checks it.
It's just one long straight tunnel. She could theoretically see the end with Multidimensional Perception if she pushed the range out more, but she gets a lot of information from either Elemental Sight or Multidimensional Perception, and frankly, her Heart Core and more importantly her ego are too unstable for too much of it.
She'd suspected that in all honesty, so when she'd originally made the enchantments, she'd tweaked the scripts a bit, both altering the unknown end parameter in Elemental Sight as well as giving them a truly variable range, rather than just her actively pulling them in and concentrating on wanting to keep them there or just tune things out.
Which is undoubtedly a good thing, since forget things like her coating a bullet with her magic to be able to better keep track of its Eidos in the ocean of data in the information dimension at twenty kilometers, she couldn't even handle eighteen feet before the instability between ego and Heart Core started shifting towards worsening. And that's her current ‘pushing it’ limit. The instability means that if she isn't, then she starts to struggle at a mere thirteen feet.
Mind, that's in a radius. Which means that comfortably! …She only has a diameter of twenty feet around her. And that's for Elemental Sight. It's a third of that for Multidimensional Perception. In other words, her Multidimensional Perception can only comfortably observe in three feet in all directions. Obviously there's still a lot of use in it for getting information on things like mana or what it does to cause Eternal Slumber, but neither of them are useful for long range observation at the moment, that's for sure.
They've been walking for almost forty minutes before they finally reach the end and find a massive and somewhat elaborate double door, as she eyes it, she digs her evaluator back out while commenting, “Suppose it's a good thing we have Emergency Teleport Stones. It'd be pretty tight otherwise, given we'd only have twenty minutes to get back, and considering it took us forty minutes just to get here from the boss room, never mind the distance from there to the Gate…”(4)
Chi-Yul hums in agreement, “Tell me about it. It's a bit strange to see an actual door in a Gate though.”
As she studies the evaluation with furrowed brows, she absently listens to the conversation though she's not focusing on it. The mana levels haven't risen, but that strange flow to it is still there. It's like it's simultaneously fluttering yet merely the very edges of something. And there's this… semi familiar weight to it as well.
As the door starts to creek open, she pushes it back into her pocket, still trying to place her finger on its familiarity. While it's not unavailable like her Skills given it's a learned talent rather than inscribed onto her very soul, it's definitely another difficulty with her destabilized soul. This one she hadn't even been expecting nor noticed at first.
That being that given Occlumency and Legilimency are one training to read information on the Heart Core, while she technically still could, with it and her ego being so unstable and becoming one another, it was like she was trying to read a book with constantly shifting letters.
That is to say, while she technically can, it's harder to read things from her Occlumency.
She idly notes the way the blue torches near the ceiling of the strangely elaborate room are lighting up as she continues to think about it. That, and worryingly noting the fact that while there are large statues, most in the form of armored figures, she can't see a boss monster. She's not the only one who notices the lack of it as well as regular monsters and even mana crystals, but she's more focused on trying to put her finger on that damned familiarity with the way the mana is flowing.
Ignoring the other statues, even the massive one sitting on a throne that makes the already huge statues look tiny in comparison, she makes her way straight to where the weird flow was centered on, flowing out of and into, Joo-Hee following her.
It's one particular statue ringing the circular room, in the shape of a hooded angel with six wings holding a stone tablet. Part of her wants to disregard one or the other, but both seem to be important in some manner. The strange flow was centered on the statue itself, but there was something in the tablet as well.
Something important.
Musing over it for a few moments, she realizes she can recognize that at least.
It's both a mild compulsion to read it aloud and a trigger for once it's been partly read.
A trigger for what she couldn't exactly say. For all she knew, it did something as simple as opening another passage. She doubts it since usually there's a string of magic between such a trigger and the passage being opened and while her Elemental Sight range was shorter, nothing like that was coming off of it. But most things that could be triggered would have something like that, so who the hell knows.
Given everyone else has just been confusedly talking about the statues and empty room and looking around, her intense focus on the angel statue and tablet draws Chi-Yul over, “What's got your attention so firmly Sung?”
She tilts her head towards him without taking her eyes off of the tablet, “There's some magic embedded into the statue.”
Out of the corner of her eye she sees him turn to it, “The monster language huh?” She can read it too, but she wasn't paying attention to that part, too focused on the mana in the statue, “Makes sense certainly. Let's see here, ‘The Cartenon Temple's Commandments are as follows: First, thou shalt worship God. Second, thou shalt praise God.”
Joo-Hee suddenly grabs at her coat almost desperately, before Chi-Yul even gets a chance to get through ‘second’, “J-Jin-ji.” She turns quickly towards her, “That huge stone statue. I saw its eyes move. It's been watching us this entire time.”
At the same time as she was saying that, Chi-Yul was reading the next part, “Third, thou shalt prove thy faith.”
She purses her lips, eying it critically. She's certainly seen much stranger things than something as simple as moving statues, so it's not insane to her like it would be to others. Even as she scrutinizes it, Chi-Yul continues in the background, “Those who fail to obey these commandments shall not be spared.”
The moment Chi-Yul pronounces the final word, she both feels and sees that trigger she was studying go off and with a resonating BOOM the doors slam shut.
She steps towards the angel statue quickly, even as everyone else starts freaking out about getting sealed in. She'd witnessed the trigger going off internally, but she hadn't seen anything leave so she has no fucking clue how the hell it closed the doors. She'd seen it trigger internally. She hadn't seen it send anything out.
She gets her answer once she's within the three foot range of her more limited Multidimensional Perception.
And then she wants to break something in frustration at having overlooked something like that.
Soulmates were fundamentally based on the MA energy and the wave-paricles of it that makes up the ego. The wave part of it harmonizing wavelengths, the particle part of it kinda quantum entangling. But while it's called wave-particles because it was kind of both that also arguably opens up the possibility of utilizing them.
The trigger was similar to the pseudo quantum entanglement part of soulmates.
That's why she couldn't see it with Elemental Sight.
Because it existed on a deeper level.
It was a trigger to essentially notify someone it was being read aloud.
She should've stopped Chi-Yul from doing so, but here at least, she can't feel too bad, as getting closer she realizes that buried under the others was another compulsion to brush it off if you notice the trigger condition and not mention it to anyone.
Normally she wouldn't have problems with such things, but with her Occlumency messed up, she didn't even notice being ensnared by it.
It wasn't that surprising, given Occlumens were fundamentally active magicals who unknowingly taught themselves to read the data from their own Heart Core. They noticed such things so quickly because- Well, as she'd once put it to the Yotsuba kids she'd emotionally adopted, ‘it's like you have an anti-virus program on a computer that knows every line of code that's supposed to exist or can exist from your thoughts as they occur, which makes it very easy to find the intruder and destroy it.’ the problem was, her own ‘codes’ are constantly in unpredictable flux. It's impossible for her to know on a subconscious level everything that can or should be there right now.
But it had ensnared her, and the spell was triggered alerting the master of it.
A master that was clearly now here.
Literally here.
Inside the angel statue.
A master that was definitely an S-Rank being from the power coming off of its soul.
Without hesitation, she immediately pulses the equivalent of a panic button down her soulmate corridors. And it's hard, it's so hard with her soul so unstable, but she triggers the emergency Thought Acceleration earring she'd enchanted but promised her soulmates to never use without damn good reason to compress the relevant memories for her soulmates and send them off.
A Double Dungeon. Authorization. Mana leading back to the angel statue. Studying it. Chi-Yul starting to read it aloud even as Joo-Hee grabs her attention regarding the massive statue. The doors slamming. Rushing forward to realize they're stuck in the room with an S-Rank being.
She may not have Lachesis but she feels the utter panic and horror that rips through her soulmates a split second later. They're emotions are strengthening the connection so much that she can feel Jae-Min trying to use To Have and To Hold to try and teleport to her.
She also feels him getting blocked.
It's not that surprising from a being capable of replicating part of the wave-particle harmonization-entanglement to a spell.
She turns quickly as one of the Hunters storming towards the closed doors and talking somewhat over his shoulder sinks in past the frantic whirling of her and her soulmates’ minds as they try to figure out what to do, “-stupid risk. This wasn't what the Association called us in for, and we never shouldn't have kept going. You can bet your ass I'm lodging a complaint about them authorizing-”
He's brutally cut off the instant he touches the doors, not by anyone else, but by one of the statues flanking the door whose sizes are between the ones ringing the room and the massive throned one suddenly lifts its axe and swings faster than any of them can track.
Everything from midway down his right side to the left side of where his neck and shoulder meet and above are quite suddenly nothing but blood splashed on the weapon and door.
She sucks in a sharp breath, but quickly looks away from where the body has slumped forward onto the doors and is sliding down, the friction of his body against it and the poor angle of its knees for it slowing it down, “Look, there's nothing we can do for him, but right now we have to follow this Cartenon Temple's Commandments! We were told failure to do so would result in death, and trying to leave without completing them is certainly failing to follow them!”
Chi-Yul rips his horrified gaze away as the statue slowly starts to move back into position, “I-! The first one was ‘worship God’ right?! What are we even-?!”
She shakes her head, “I don't know but I mean, I'd say big guy over there is the ‘God’ it talks about so-”
She'd flicked a glance at the throned statue at the last part, its iris’ and pupils suddenly gaining a bright golden glow and flicking down to look right at her. Given she knows that guy isn't the real master of this Dungeon, there's no way in hell it's eyes would be glowing for no damn reason.
There isn't time to shout a warning to get down and have people follow it. Pushing what her unstable soul is capable of handling at the moment to its utmost limits, she activates a gravity spell under everyone to force them down to get down even as she herself throws herself down and to the side given she's right in its path.
The beam it releases blasts right through the empty air she was standing in just a moment prior, but it does miss her.
Some distant part of her brain notes that it was probably some sort of heat ray, given the way the eyes were smoking, but in the moment of stunned somewhat hysterical silence, she can't help but note that it doesn't shoot again. Even though there's no damn reason it shouldn't be able to.
‘First, thou shalt worship God.’
Worship differed pretty heavily from religion to religion, but if there was one thing that most if not all of them have in common, it's getting on the ground in some manner. Kneeling and prostration and all that.
Quickly she scrambles to sit up and calls out in general, “Everyone, stay down!”
Chi-Yul turns to her, looking frazzled and confused, “What?”
She focuses on him voice firm, “First, thou shalt worship God.’ is the first commandment. That thing doesn't look or act like any God I can think of so we can't really judge based on any religion I can think of, but if there's one thing that the vast majority of if not all religions share, it's kneeling and prostrating. And that thing isn't shooting anymore now that we're all down.”
She's not sure if it's instinct from those who've worked with her before that know to shut up and listen when shit hits the fan pressuring those who haven't or if it's just that in the room full of hysterical people her firm unhesitating directions are something to cling to in an attempt to survive this madness, but everyone is listening.
Joo-Hee whimpers a little, “Is- Is that why it dragged us down?”
She glances over, “That was me actually. Its eyes started glowing and the first commandment and the death warning went through my head and- There wasn't time to warn everyone and have them register what I was saying and listen.”
Sang-Shik shakes his head, “So- So what, it wants us to kneel to the statue?”
She nods jerkily, “I'm pretty sure, yeah.”
A somewhat hysterical woman shouts, “Pretty sure?! Pretty sure?!”
She glances at her, “Like I said, that thing only fired when we were standing. Combined with the first commandment, what else could it mean?”
Chi-Yul swallows hard enough that she can hear it, “Okay. Okay, we need to play by this place's rules right now if we want to survive, so I guess we should kneel? Or does it want us to fully prostrate ourselves before it?”
She shakes her head as she looks around, but before she can answer, banging yanks everyone's attention to the doors. She hardly has time to even think about it before a frantic brush from Jae-Min is simultaneously letting her know its him and Jae-Hui even as he scrambles for answers to what the plan is from there, given he's been absolutely locked onto what's happening with her, so he's up to speed.
Taking a deep breath, she waves her hands downwards like she's telling them to sit even as she starts scrutinizing their surroundings, “It's fine! It's fine, it's-” Shit, she can't exactly say who it is given none of these people know above her soulmates and her soul corridors to them, but she can at least reassure them, “definitely not a monster. We cleared the main Dungeon of them all and they're just the beasts of a D-Rank Dungeon anyway so they wouldn't be something to be worried about. And it was a straight shot from the boss room to the doors, so it's highly unlikely it's something from this Double Dungeon area. It's probably emergency assistance the Association sent.”
That seems to settle the people inside at least and after a beat Chi-Yul shakes his head, “Sung is right, it's probably not something to worry about. But you never answered, do we kneel or prostrate ourselves?”
At her mental nudge, Jae-Min and Jae-Hui shout loudly through the door, calling out who's at it, making everyone all but collapse in relief as gasps of S-Ranks being here echo. She calls back just to smooth over what one would expect to happen without their soul corridor, and they go through a couple questions and answers.
Then she shakes her head, “While there are S-Ranks here now, they seem to be having trouble getting through the door so we need to do our part here if we want to survive until they can get in. As for whether we kneel or prostrate ourselves… Easy enough to work out. Kneel and see if there's a change, otherwise, prostrate ourselves. But we ought to take advantage of our current safety and see if we can't work out what we're supposed to do from there.”
One of the other Hunters asks shakily, “And why can't we just- just stay down since we're safe right now? Doing anything more just changes the situation, doesn't it?!”
She sighs as she looks at him, “I thought of that, and you aren't exactly wrong. But we also have no clue how long we'll be given time to not do what we're supposed to before it decides we're failing to follow the commandments.”
He flinches but she presses on, “Furthermore, the S-Ranks are still not inside, which given they who are S-Ranks are trying their best to break in… That door seems like it's going to stay sealed shut until it lets us go. Presumably only when we do what it wants us to. If that door stays sealed shut, we're on a clock until we die of dehydration or starvation.”
There's a beat of tense silence and she shakes her head again, “So like I said, let's take advantage of the grace period while we have it and try and figure out what else it wants us to do before we complete the first commandment.”
Chi-Yul nods jerkily, “Right. Good call. The second commandment wanted us to praise God, right? If that statue is the God in question… what exactly does it want from us?”
Another Hunter, one who she can't help but note is wearing a cross(5), swallows visibly, “M-Maybe it w-wants us to p‐pray?”
She shakes her head, “Like I said, that thing doesn't look or act like any God I'm familiar with, which makes sense given this is a Dungeon not a human place of worship. So even if we tried that, what God are we supposed to pray to? What prayers would it want? You wouldn't pray to a God of war and a God of peace exactly the same, now would you?”
Joo-Hee's voice is shaking, “Then what?”
She shakes her head, as she continues to look around, “...Some of these statues have instruments and the like.”
Chi-Yul glances at them, “Yeah. So?”
She turns to him, “Well, it's like the kneeling and prostration, isn't it? About the vast majority if not all religions I mean. If there's another thing they share…”
The guy with a cross gasps in sudden understanding, “Music! Hymns and all that!”
Sang-Shik sounds like he's trying hard to bite back his terror, but she doesn't even need the broken Detect Absolute Truth or her decades as a noble and nowadays Empress to hear it despite his attempt, “And how are we supposed to use the statues to do that then?”
She pointedly doesn't look towards the corpse leaned against the doors, not because she can't stomach it, as much of a tragedy as it may be, but because she wants to try and avoid having anyone else look that way given they may still be frantic and terrified but they're at least not hysterical and are listening. Though, chances are, they'll glance that way anyway with what she has to say, and her voice is a quiet murmur, “We already know these statues move when approached now that they're active.”
Chi-Yul also pointedly doesn't look towards the body, “That makes sense. But even if you're right, what then? What does it want for proving our faith?”
She shakes her head, “...I don't know.” There's a heavy silence for a few beats before she takes a deep breath, “Look, I'll see if I can't puzzle it out, sort everyone out and assign statues to them. Try to spread everyone out as much as possible since I mean, the variety of instruments kind of implies it wants as full of an orchestra as possible, right?”
Chi-Yul nods sharply, “I'll handle that part, if it's just- just a height limit that's dictating the rules right now, we can all crawl over to the instrumental statues.” He glances around quickly, then nods a little, “You can take that one and just focus on trying to figure out what to do next while the rest of us get into position.”
She nods, then hesitates, “Stay away from the armed statues though. If they are designed to function based on their appearance, then…”
Chi-Yul gives them weary glances but nods again, “We will.”
Then he starts sorting people out as she starts crawling over towards the statue she'd been assigned, keeping away from the armed ones, her mind already turning over the third commandment, “Third, thou shalt prove thy faith.”
Faith, by definition, was complete and utter trust in something. Proving such a thing… It has to be a test of faith of some sort, right? Confronting something frightening but believing everything will be alright. Or giving up something of value. There's a lot of religious with various forms of sacrifice, but they usually aren't living sacrifices. …Some were. And given this is a Dungeon and obviously has strong ties to the brutal monsters, it arguably tips things that way. However, it also said that failure to follow the commandments would result in death.
Promising death as punishment doesn't exactly work well with demanding death from someone. Which also implies that they'll live if they follow the commandments, and by extension, that it's not asking for a human sacrifice.
…Probably. But again, there were other types of sacrifices out there. That's not the only possibility of things to be sacrificed.
When they're all in position, each being the only one at one of the musical statues, they face the God statue and kneel. When nothing happens, they share looks before they each lean forward and down to prostrate themselves towards the massive statue.
Though her head is bowed, she's peering up through her lashes at it, so she sees when its eyes stop glowing, straightening up now that it seems done. Other people must hear her moving or maybe see it in their peripheral, given they turn their gazes towards her before glancing at the statue and seeing the same thing, hesitantly straightening up themselves.
A few beats later, the statue starts to move. More specifically, its lips twist up into a terrifying, too wide grin showing realistic teeth and gums rather than stone above eyes that change colors again. Though this time rather than just it's iris’ glowing gold, it's sclera and pupils turning pitch black as the iris’ turn a deeper orange rather than the brighter gold they were before.
Then it stands up.
But it just sort of stands there for a moment looking around before the statues they're at start doing what they're supposed to and begin using their instruments.
Then the God statue loses that terrifying grin and starts forward towards the center of the room lifting an arm palm up until the tips of its fingers are around shoulder high. Almost the instant it does, the center circle lifts up out of the ground, making a tiered structure.
It looks like an altar.
She hums, before murmuring in a thoughtful tone, “Prove your faith…”
Someone else pipes up, “What- What does it want from us now?”
She glances over before standing, “I'm not entirely sure.”
She can already see some people's minds jumping to the notion of human sacrifice given the altar and the death threat hanging above them, but again, with the fact death is the threat for failing to obey, one can conclude life is the reward for doing as they're told. It rankles a bit, she's never much been one for following orders in all honesty, but now isn't the time for that.
Still, she's confident enough that it doesn't promise death as well as has the certainty she's likely to reincarnate if she's wrong that she strides towards it confidently without hesitation.
As she passes the inner ring, a fire ignites, but its placement is strange. It's not centered on the altar, it's placed just outside of the outer ring, but it's not in any of the cardinal directions like one may expect, nor is it neatly exactly between two of them. She eyes it, not entirely sure about its meaning. Chi-Yul hurries up behind her, “Sung! That was reckless, what if-!”
He cuts himself off as another flame ignites and she understands, “Oh! It wants us all up here!”
People glance at one another nervously, and again, she doesn't know if it's due to the fact the people familiar with her have something of a policy to shut of and do as they're told when shit hits the fan or if it's because she's been serving as the voice of reason and gotten them through so far, but people trickle up to the altar.
As they do, she studies the metal magic circle set into the stone.
With each that passes the inner ring, another flame ignites until they're all up there, flames making a neat circle equidistant from one another. At the same time, more blue flames ignite in another circle just beyond the regular fires symbolizing them.
And the doors open.
Jae-Min had been in the process of striking, which is mostly relevant in the fact that she can see that while the doors open, there's still a barrier keeping him and Jae-Hui out. It doesn't seem to be keeping them in though, if the way the body that had been leaning on the doors falling out is any indication.
She's not sure if it's just panic combining with the chance to get away, but while they all stare in stunned silence at the doors for a moment as they creak open, them suddenly stilling seems to jolt some of them out of their stupor and the guy with a cross books it with a terrified sob and frantic prayers to his god. One of the regular flames goes out as he passes the outer ring.
She reaches out desperately, “Wait!”
But she's utterly ignored. And when he makes it down and passes through the doorway without the statues on either side budging an inch, others start frantically running as well.
She was more focused on the fact the doors had swung inward just a smidge when he'd gone through though.
The answer to why that happened swiftly makes itself clear as the doors inch closed in measured fractions as another person, and then another runs out. It's not hard to estimate the fraction they were closing each time compared to the number of them and reach the obvious conclusion.
It will let all but one of them out.
With a frantic glance at her, then whipping around at the stone on stone sound behind them and seeing the statues behind them beginning to move, Joo-Hee's already shaky nerves break and she books it as well.
She lowers her head a little as she stares at the now still statues before hearing another noise and turning to another portion of statues that were moving but still when she looks at them. The blue flames are going out steadily one by one in a line.
The answer was obvious.
They won't move as long as they're being looked at.
But they will march forward unrelentingly when they aren't.
Practically without communicating with one another, the four of them left each take a direction to stop them. Her mind is still firmly on the doors as Chi-Yul comments, “More of a test of courage than of faith then, huh?”
She sighs, “...Yeah. Though I suppose courage is its own kind of faith.”
He shakes his head as he pins some of the statues under his gaze, preventing them from moving, “I don't understand how failure to do this one results in death though. The stone tablet said failure to follow the commandments wouldn't be spared, and yet…”
Sang-Shik huffs, “I mean! Given where the mind obviously goes in a situation like this in a Dungeon when presented with an altar and told to prove your faith, isn't it obvious? The test of faith was approaching the altar!”
She sighs, “Not exactly. It may be the bare minimum that lets those others go free, but it's not the end of it.”
Sang-Shik's friend that she doesn't know shakes his head, “What more could there be?”
She gives him a tired glance, “Isn't it clear? It's easy enough to keep those statues from getting closer with at least four of us, and we can't exactly just take advantage of the fact they aren't attacking the people running by and book it.”
Sang-Shik asks somewhat harshly, “And why the hell not?!”
She sighs, “...The rate those doors are closing behind each person. …They'll finish closing after the second to last of us. Someone will be stuck inside. But those blue fires are acting like a timer. We only need to wait until they finish.”
There's a heavy beat of silence before Sang-Shik's friend shakes his head, “I have a wife, a kid, a second on the way. I can't die here.”
She purses her lips, “And no one needs to if we all just hold our ground with each of us watching a direction until the timer counts down.”
He shakes his head, “You don't know that! For all you know, once the timer finishes, the doors will finish closing! If coming to the altar was the bare minimum, I'm not risking that!”
Without another word, he abandons watching his direction and books it, Sang-Shik calling after him, before glancing at her and Chi-Yul and running off, and she purses her lips, “Cowards.”
But she brushes them off as insignificant a moment later, narrowing her eyes at the statues as she tries to figure out what the hell to do now that there aren't enough of them around.
A split second later, inspiration flashes, and she bites her lip, uncertain of her ability to do it in her current state.
She has to try though.
To that extent, she pulls on her experiences with making an Astral body ghost of Ariel, Parallel Existence, and her knowledge of such things in general as well as magic manipulation and peels off a thin layer of her Astral and Spiritual bodies and sends them out. It's not as hard as she was worried it would be, but she can't do that all that much before her Astral and Spiritual bodies are dangerously thin until her body and soul can regenerate them. She'd estimate twenty times if she stays in a safer margin. Twenty-three if she pushes it. Without hesitation, the two take the directions Sang-Shik and his friend had abandoned.
She can see things through the Parallel Existence connection to her other ghostly forms, but while the statues hesitate, after a beat they continue moving, though it's slower and less sure.
A sigh slips out, “Came up with a whole new technique but you guys aren't biting, huh?”
Chi-Yul huffs a laugh, “It was worth a shot though.” Then they're both quiet a beat before he continues more seriously, “...Sung… You should get going. A young thing like you has so much more life ahead of you then an older guy like me.”
She's quiet another beat, then sighs and while a lot of magic is beyond her right now given her state, she can at least manage a silencing spell over the doorway to prevent the twins from interfering even as she tunes Jae-Min and Ha-Eun out mentally since she doesn't want to hear it right now, “Mister Song, turn the audio of your camera off please.” He glances back at her, but does as she asks with a shrug as she turns her own off, “Can you keep a secret for me?”
He barks a laugh, “I owe you that at least after everything.” Then his voice turns more serious, “You have my word. I'll keep your secret.”
She nods her thanks, “Are you familiar enough with Jura-Tempest's Empress to know her proof?”
He hums, “Her transforming scythe right? I'm familiar with it and memorized the images of it Jura-Tempest released.”
She nods, then wraps her fingers around her camera with one hand as she draws her sword with the other. She knows Chi-Yul has a body camera on his left side, so as she transforms her scythe, turning briefly, she extends it past the right side of his face, though not far enough for the camera to see it.
He jolts as the weapon comes into view before recognizing it and letting out a laugh, “Oh! I was wondering why you would be bringing that of all things up! Secret indeed. I don't think you were at all what people were expecting of Jura-Tempest's enigmatic Empress.”
She shrugs as she transforms her weapon back while turning around once more and uncovers her camera, “Undoubtedly. My people did tell you all I'd been incredibly weakened from helping Feronia though, and to be honest, I've been enjoying being a more regular person.”
She sighs, “My point is though… I still don't know what triggered it the previous times exactly, so there's no guarantee but… I do have a history of reincarnating with my memories intact. If one of us has to die here…”
He sobers, “I-” Then he sighs as he lowers his head, “...Jura-Tempest did say you were rather pragmatic but also self sacrificing.”
She hums, “Undoubtedly, but realistically, between the man for whom death was completely a question mark for what happens and the woman with a history of reincarnating with her memories…”
He lets out a shaky breath, “...It still doesn't feel right. Especially given how disastrous this would've been without you. Not to mention the other times you've pulled us out of the fire.”
She smiles, “That's because you're a good man Mister Song. But it makes more sense and you know it.” He's silent, unable to dispute her. She shakes her head with a tired smile, “Get out of here Mister Song. Live a good life.”
Glancing over with her ghostly pseudo Parallel Existence, she sees him biting his lip with his eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking out, but after another moment he turns towards the door, his mouth opens and closes a couple time, but he seems incapable of saying anything, and after a few beats he gives up and heads towards the door, head lowered in a sort of shameful defeat.
She smiles at his back even as she makes another pseudo Parallel Existence to take over his direction.
As he passes through the doors, she can see Jae-Min all but screaming at her before Chi-Yul passes through the small gap left and it finishes closing behind him. It's not surprising, given she can also feel him basically pounding on the proverbial door she closed in their soul corridor. Him and Ha-Eun both.
Her ghostly pseudo Parallel Existences may not stop them, but they slows them down. They don't do that for the Golem she slips off of her bracelet out of sight of her camera and tosses behind her when it grows to full size and takes position so she calls it back without hesitation.
Not that it matters much that her pseudo Parallel Existences are slowing them even a little.
She's ninety percent sure the blue fires have started going out slower.
Which kind of implies that being behind this either wants the one left behind to reap the cost and die, or at best get close to it.
She takes a shaky breath and turns her mic back on before she forgets, just in case she needs it.
Even if she can't exactly stop the statues getting closer, she's not going to go down quietly. Peeling off three more pseudo Parallel Existences, she sends them at the statues. She's been weakened considerably sure, but they also aren't as bound by physical constraints.
Does she think they can do anything against them on their own?
Certainly not.
But nothing stops her from having them dart and dodge just so to get them to attack each other.
To that extent, she focuses on one direction, trying to take out all the ones coming at her from there. Or make them take each other out rather. Regardless, since they're the ones attacking one another, she has to start from sort of the middle of that direction and move outwards, since otherwise, there won't be any other statues close by to deal with one closer to the middle.
As she does, she keeps swapping with the pseudo Parallel Existences -maybe she should call them Parallel Ghosts or something?- to slow the statues further by altering which direction they're just slowed by her Parallel Ghosts and which are fully stopped by her.
Using those methods, she manages to take out all of the statues in two directions before they reach her.
But it's game over at that point, since unlike her Parallel Ghosts, she very much is more bound by her physical limitations, less constraining than they are for an Unawakened or not.
She coughs blood as a stone spear stabs through her chest on the right side, skewering her lung. Then it swings up, cleaving that side of her body and shoulder in two and tossing her into the air before she lands on top of the altar in the center.
Landing with a burst of pain she weakly turns her gaze towards the angel statue. Narrowing her eyes at it she huffs out, “Bastard. I know you're there. Would've passed your stupid test of faith if you hadn't slowed down the rate the timer was ticking down.”
There's a beat before the angel statue's lips twist into an amused grin as it opens its eyes but it neither moves nor says a word despite the fact it can obviously understand her.
Her gaze turns back to the statues as another lifts its cutlass before it starts to swing down at her.
It's only about two feet from her when the last blue fire goes out and it halts in an instant. She can see the magic involved in it, but even if she couldn't it would be obvious, given there isn't even a rush of air continuing on or anything. There's also some sort of magic preventing her from bleeding out or dying.
In the same instant, something starts hovering at the edges of her mind and a holographic looking deep blue pop-up suddenly appears. Sort of in the top middle there's kind of another box or banner of a lighter shade of blue with another shade of blue acting as a border above and below it but not to the sides and with white lettering reading, “ⓘ Notice.” Below that but not inside the discolored additional box it continues, [YOU HAVE COMPLETED ALL OF THE NECESSARY REQUIREMENTS OF THE HIDDEN QUEST: ‘COURAGE OF THE WEAK’]
She blinks at it rapidly, but another pop-up appears over it, [YOU NOW QUALIFY TO BECOME A PLAYER. DO YOU ACCEPT?] She tilts her head to the side ever so slightly in complete bafflement, but another appears, [YOU DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT.] Well, that's kind of full of shit, given she can feel that angel statue keeping her alive, but her disbelief at that is answered a moment later, [IF YOU DECLINE, YOUR HEART WILL STOP BEATING IN 0.02 SECONDS. DO YOU ACCEPT?]
She eyes it thoughtfully. Something that pushy doesn't seem like a good thing in all honesty, but… Her gaze drifts to the door where she knows her frantic and desperate husband is. Her gaze moves back to the pop-ups even as her mind drifts to the banging she can feel on the proverbial doors shutting off her soul corridors to him and Ha-Eun, who had visions of her soul being restored somehow.
This may not be a good thing. It may be a personal catastrophe.
Her lips curl into a confident smile.
Well, if the redwood in her blended wand and her personal history has shown anything, she tends to make catastrophes work out in her overall favor. She focuses, then directs her thoughts like she's sending a Thought Communication out, aimed at where she can feel this System hovering at the edge of her mind, ‘I accept.’
She barely has time to register the pop-ups disappearing as another takes their place, that same notice section but beneath it, [CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE NOW BECOME A PLAYER.]
A split second later, healing magic surges around brightly as she vaguely hears the doors re-open and Jae-Min shout her name desperately before everything goes black.
Notes:
Second AN: Curious how many of you clocked that the past few chapter titles are basically a countdown. Ch4: Ready, Ch5: Set, and Ch6: Go!
(1): This is in all honesty, just my brain deciding to make it a few references. February 11 = 2/11 which lines up with B=2 K=11, and 201=2:01 (not using a 24 hour clock since that would be 2am and not fit here). 2/11 2:01 is a BK201 reference lol. Briefly thought that maybe there was a contractor with the codename February 11th, but no, Amber was February when she worked with the MI-6, with the ice guy that still works with them being NOVEMBER 11th, so I was unintentionally combining them. And 2:47 is a reference from the fic series itself. 247 billion is her full EV as it was prior to the soul break event. So, not exactly random, but no deep meaning, brain just suddenly decided it was necessary lol.
(2): Yes, I am aware it's “Do not go gentle into that good night”, this is Calanthe|Jin-Ji rewording it to fit her views of death better. It's also why she doesn't say ‘fight to the bitter end’ given the whole ‘Death is the final mercy’ thing.
(3): Webtoon says 17 for the vote, anime's only indication is when Chi-Yul says “6 in favor, 6 opposed” and Jin-Woo is left as the tie breaker, and since D-Ranks are supposed to have few people, I went with the smaller number.
(4): I know weaker Dungeons are smaller, but I'm not entirely certain author took into account that there's still additional travel time when they made it 40 minutes between Cartenon Temple and the boss room.
(5): The guy who tries to pray. In the webtoon, he's wearing a cross on a chain rather than a blank chain and says he used to be in a choir.
Chapter 7: Abusing the System
Notes:
AN: Bit early, but closest chapter for this, so Happy New Year's everyone! 😁
A note about System formatting that you probably noticed at the end of last chapter. If it's a message in [brackets] or (parentheses) it kind of looks weird with “quotations” around them so I'm not going to add those, and I'll be adding brackets to things that just have a dash.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Waking up, she looks around, finding herself in a hospital room, her soulmates talking lowly nearby. Or they were, she hardly has but a moment to hear their quiet voices, but by the time she looks over, their soul corridor has undoubtedly already let them know she's awake and they're focused on her when she their way.
Ha-Eun uncurls from where she had her feet tucked up on the chair while she was leaning back, “How are you feeling?”
She pauses, taking a moment to take stock before replying, “I feel fine. A little sluggish, but that's not surprising given what happened.”
Her wife lets out a shaky breath, as her gaze drops, “Partly undoubtedly.”
She blinks a couple times quickly, “Partly?”
Jae-Min's voice is livid, “Part of it is undoubtedly you using your Spiritual and Astral bodies to make those Parallel Ghosts.” She's not surprised they know what she dubbed them, given Rowena probably relayed it. As she switches her focus to him, he shakes his head hard, “What the hell were you thinking, Xiǎolóng?!”
She sighs, “I was thinking that with Kim Sang-Shik and his friend making a run for it, I had to try something to make up for them going.”
He grits his teeth, “And sending Song Chi-Yul out when only one could leave?!”
She deadpans, “Like I told him, we may not know the trigger, but I have a history of reincarnating. He does not. It made more sense.”
He shoves a shaking hand through his hair, “Fucking hell Xiǎolóng. I fucking swear- Your damn lucky you have Fortuna I hope you know. If it wasn't more likely to find a way to get me out of the picture, I'd be locking you up without a lick of hesitation or guilt.”
She grins tiredly at him, “Yeah. I know.”
Ha-Eun quietly pipes up at that point, “I think this was somewhat inevitable and… as strange as it may sound, the correct course of action.”
Jae-Min gives her a look of utter betrayal, and not a dramatic one of him playing things up for humor's sake, “How can you say that?!”
Ha-Eun looks him dead in the eye, “Because the scant handful of visions from Moirai of her not being restored disappeared and lining up the clock in the recording with when it happened, they disappeared in the same instant she was locked in that room alone.”
Jae-Min's slightly parted in disbelief lips and jaw suddenly snap closed at that.
A heavy silence lingers over them for a few beats before she shakes her head in bemusement, “Redwood then…”
Jae-Min refocuses on her, “What?”
She sighs, running a hand through her bangs, “Redwood. I was thinking right before things finished that it may be a personal catastrophe, but when it comes to catastrophes I've always- Well, I've always done a pretty good job turning it to my advantage in the past.”
Jae-Min raises an eyebrow before dryly commenting, “I can't see you acknowledging that staying behind is something of a personal catastrophe, and I fail to see how it leads to your soul being repaired anyway.”
Her eyes drift to the pop-up that was already hovering in the air when she woke up, eying it thoughtfully even as she sends over the memory of the first ones appearing. Once they finish watching those but before a question can pass Ha-Eun's parted lips, she also sends what she's seeing right at that moment.
Kind of like the the exclamation point inside of a circle before the ‘Notice’ in that slightly lighter blue banner on the… notification screen, there's a filled in mail symbol inside of a circle before ‘Message’ in that lighter blue banner acting as a header for, [-YOU HAVE UNREAD MESSAGES.]
She takes the holographic looking pop-up in more now that the situation is less desperate and she's not on the verge of death. There's a nice little design above the top middle of the banner box drawn in that same third shade of blue as the borders of the banner itself. The curls mostly inside of one large circle above four smaller ones is sort of reminiscent of gothic scrollwork, and while less gothic scrollwork-esk, there are also designs in the corners.
She shrugs as she gets back on track with the conversation, “While I'm sure there's probably a catch to it, especially given that guy in the angel statue tweaked the timer to make it take longer which kind of implies it wanted me on the verge of death, but… Well, I would've died if I didn't accept it, so...”
Jae-Min's tone is firm as he demands, “You'll just have to live up to the Redwood in your wand yet again. You've done it before.”
She gives him a tired smile and Ha-Eun sighs, “I'm supposed to give you another evaluation now that you're awake.” At her questioning glance, she shrugs, “All of us can sense you didn't Reawaken, but the Hunters Association wanted to double check given the situation.”
She hums. None of them are the slightest bit surprised when the result is mostly the same, even if the mobile evaluator she has isn't as precise as the full thing. It's not particularly important, just a vague necessity for Ha-Eun's job, so it's hardly a side note before they get back on topic as her wife comments, “You should probably check that waiting message.”
She hums, then using the same method of essentially sending a Thought Communication towards where the System is hovering at the edge of her mind, ‘Open.’
Immediately it flicks away and another message screen replaces it, [CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE NOW BECOME A PLAYER.] (UNREAD)
[DAILY QUEST: THE PREPARATION TO BECOME POWERFUL.] (UNREAD)
She opens the player message waiting first.
[THIS SYSTEM WILL HELP THE PLAYER DEVELOP.]
[FAILING TO COMPLY WITH THE SYSTEM'S ORDERS COULD RESULT IN A PENALTY.]
[YOU HAVE RECEIVED A REWARD.]
She eyes them, and while she obviously already knew that if there was any doubt her soulmates were still peaking at what she can see so they know what the System is telling her, what wearily comes out of Jae-Min's mouth would've dashed it, “A penalty?”
She shrugs, “Probably words it so vaguely since it'd be a case by case basis I imagine.”
Ha-Eun hums in agreement, “Probably. What's this Daily Quest thing?”
She shrugs and pulls it up.(1)
Immediately Ha-Eun makes a choking noise, “Oh, hell no! You literally just woke up from a brief three day coma! You are not doing a workout, lighter than it could be at one hundred each of push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, and a ten kilometer run may be!
She eyes the part below the list of things with what she imagines are updating counters, given they have zero out of one hundred for the first three and out of ten for the run shown, “CAUTION- IF THE DAILY QUEST REMAINS INCOMPLETE, PENALTIES WILL BE GIVEN ACCORDINGLY.”
Below that was a simplified green analog clock without numbers, just dashes in the correct places and one big dial, “Yeah, it really isn't a good idea. So I guess we'll find out what sort of penalties the System is capable of.”
As she absently dismisses the window, Jae-Min huffs, “It can't really be helped. Ha-Eun is right, you shouldn't be doing things like that. Massive heal at the end or not, you still need to let your body rest.” He gives her a flat unhappy look, “Especially given the way you used part of your Spiritual and Astral bodies. Rowena says they're regenerating fairly quickly, but she estimated it'd be about a week in total, so you still have four days for that.”
“During which Rowena estimated you'll probably feel a bit slower in general given those relay information between the soul and physical body so information from the physical body will take a bit longer to reach the soul, and similarly instructions from the soul, or rather the ego half of it, will take longer to reach the body.”
She nods, "How's everyone else?”
Ha-Eun hums, “Other than some trauma which probably would've been a lot worse if it wasn't for your assistance? They're all fine. Jae-Min said you showed Hunter Song Chi-Yul your scythe and Rowena confirmed you told him to encourage him to be the one to leave.” She hums in agreement but gives her a questioning look of where she's going with it, “Just thought I should let you know he's kept his promise and hasn't breathed a word about your identity as Jura-Tempest's Empress.”
Jae-Min huffs before grumbling, “He's good for that at least I guess.” She doesn't even need to ask or prod at her husband's mind to know he's upset the man ultimately agreed to be the one to leave safety, sealing her inside, “He has been by a couple times to check on you though. So has Lee Joo-Hee. That one seemed torn up and guilty. From my understanding she has been since she found out about the fact not everyone could leave and she just abandoned you guys.”
Ha-Eun sighs, “We've been over this, there's no point holding a grudge against Hunter Song. Besides, at least unlike Hunters Park and Kim he didn't just selfishly abandon her even knowing how it worked. She had to convince him to leave since there were too few for them to watch all the statues.”
Jae-Min's expression darkens. She knows Kim is Kim Sang-Shik, so she assumes Park is his friend he ran off with. She gives her husband a tired look, “Selfish as it may have been, they were just scared, not malicious. Don't go killing them.”
He slumps back in his chair, grumbling somewhat under his breath, “You and Ha-Eun both…”
From there, Jae-Min pulls out some food he'd cooked from magical storage, and they more or less shift to less heavy or life changing topics. Some of it was just catching up on what they've been up to while she was unconscious, some of it is more focused on just spending time together to reassure her soulmates that she's fine.
However, while it's been a few hours, it hasn't been that long overall when realizes her eyelids are feeling heavier, her blinks getting longer, “Ugh. Recovery is so damn weird. How can I have been unconscious for three days yet already tired and wanting to go back to sleep?”
Ha-Eun smiles gently, “Because your body may have gotten in a good enough condition to regain consciousness, and you may have been healed, but it still needs to recover.” She glances towards the window and gets up, “We should be heading out anyway, given it's getting late enough that visiting hours will either be over soon, or already are and they just haven't been willing to kick out two S-Ranks.”
She hums as she shoots a glance towards the window and the orange light from the setting sun coming in herself, “Probably.” A yawn comes over her suddenly and she shakes her head, “I assume Jae-Min at least will be hovering enough to be back tomorrow,” Ha-Eun snorts but certainly seems to agree with her prediction, given she doesn't dispute it, “but will you be able to get out of work, or will it be a briefer visit between that and when visiting hours are over for you?”
Ha-Eun shrugs, “Chairman Go gave me time off with the intention for it to be until the doctors clear you to be released, partly due to giving me leeway as the only S-Rank who's ever joined the Association and not wanting me to leave, partly because he genuinely wants me to be able to be by your side given both his high opinion of you and just what you did to end up here.”
Her wife gives a somewhat tired smile, “Thinks it'd be crass to get in the way of someone in the Association getting time off to spend with family in the hospital because they were willing to sacrifice themselves for others since you guys had no clue you'd survive. That being said, I'll undoubtedly have to return before that if there's some sort of complication that extends how long you're here.”
She nods, “Okay. I'll see you earlier in the day with Jae-Min then. Love you guys.”
“Love you too, Xiǎolóng.”
“I love you too, Sweetheart.”
She waves them goodbye, then gets comfortable in bed. Before she lets herself drift off, she calls the window for the Daily Quest again, more because she wants to see if there isn't some hint as to what the penalty will be when she inevitably doesn't complete it she overlooked.
She's a bit distracted by the fact the analog clock on it has started to shift from green to yellow. Which, she supposes, is a sort of built in warning that she's running out of time, but it's only really useful if she opens the window to begin with, so she's not sure how useful that's supposed to be.
Regardless, even re-reading it a couple times, there isn't, in fact, some sort of hint she's overlooked, so eventually she dismisses it and shuts her eyes to go to sleep.
She's suddenly yanked awake hours later when the ground starts shaking beneath her, and a few beats after she sits up, the bed under her hand starts crumbling away to sand. It's hardly a blink later when the hospital has disappeared entirely and she finds herself in a desert in the middle of the day.
She doesn't technically know how long she was asleep for, not without asking Rowena anyway, but the only reason she can think of for the sudden strange event is the penalty for the Daily Quest, so she imagines it's midnight. Given she went back to sleep at around five, she probably got around seven hours of sleep.
Rowena hums, <Around that, yes.>
A sort of bursting noise accompanied by a sound akin to rushing water behind her has her whipping around.
There's a giant centipede that's mostly red with a kind of dull bronze-yellow bottom middle looming over her.
As she gazes at it, a pop-up appears near its face, [POISON-TOOTHED GIANT DESERT CENTIPEDE]
She immediately shoots to her feet and whirls around, figuring with the minor delays between her eyes seeing something and it being sent to her ego or a command to her body going the other way, it's probably better to get up and get moving right now. As she does, she uses a flicker of magic to activate the spells to swap her hospital clothes for her regular gear and summon her weapon in its usual sword form and sheathed to herself. She hadn't been concerned about any of it being handed over to her soulmates while she was unconscious given it all has magical tags on it to summon it back if they aren't stored inside and she calls for them.
The moment the Elemental Sight ring is on her finger, her eyes briefly flick down.
The sands beneath her looked more like a magic conjuration than actual sand.
There's a pop-up near her, probably something that would confirm her assumption that this is from the Daily Quest, but she does not have time to be looking at that right now especially given she can't really use her Thought Acceleration earring with the current state of her soul even if she could easily summon it out.
Thankfully though, Rowena must be able to see enough of it from the corner of her eye or something, given she informs her, <You're entirely right about its contents. It says: You have failed to complete your Daily Quest. You will be transferred to the ‘Penalty Zone’ for an allotted amount of time. So. I guess we're getting an idea of what penalties the System imposes.>
She smiles bitterly, <Guess so.>
Her focus shifts as the giant centipede lunges for her, though probably because it's not supposed to be instant death given it wouldn't be a very good penalty beyond a death sentence otherwise, it's slow enough for her to dodge as another pop-up appears and she moves it slightly out of the way while Rowena reads it off for her, <Penalty Quest: Survival. Goal: Survive for the allotted amount of time. Duration: Four hours. And then there's an updating countdown of time left.>
She smiles as she dodges even as she absently acknowledges Rowena. She hasn't had need for them in decades, but she'd made sure to include a harness and wires setup like Hei had taught her to use forever ago now that she can't say, use flying magic or make platforms underneath herself.
Which is relevant as while she's dodging, she tosses one of her wires to loop around its pincers or whatever they're called on a centipede. And as she'd expected, it rears up trying to dislodge it.
In the process, it throws her skyward. As she whips past it though, she notices with her Elemental Sight ring that it's not actually alive. More an elaborate magical construct.
So. As she'd suspected, the System hadn't just sent her somewhere. It made this entire place.
That also means that if there was ever any doubt, if this ‘System’ was treating her like a player in a game, then while she may not be super familiar with them herself, the vague memories she retains from what Wakaba forced onto her in her last life that she mostly deleted and her own experience with Feronia's System tells her that she should get xp from ‘killing’ this thing. Not that something that isn't alive to begin with can really be killed.
Regardless of that part though, xp means energy. Magic energy specifically. As long as she's prepared for it…
Her grin widens as she triggers the wire to unwrap from the centipede's pincer after she gets her boost while passing by its face on her way up. Flipping in midair, she draws her sword and starts to get dragged back down by gravity.
The giant centipede was staring at her with beady eyes with its mouth agape directly underneath her and she starts to gather and weave some magic.
Right before she reaches it, she releases the gravity spell to shove its head partly forward and plunges her blade straight tip down into its skull between its eyes.
It immediately starts to collapse like a puppet with its strings cut, but honestly she's more focused on the expected surge of magic rushing into her.
She has no clue what it was going to do, but she seizes it before it can do it, directing it first towards regenerating the rest of her Astral and Spiritual bodies since if she's gonna be fighting she really can't afford to have even minor response delays. It hadn't screwed with her this time, but it's dumb to assume that will remain the same.
It takes about a tenth of the xp energy to do so, but she estimates that she still has a bit over twenty-five thousand Existence Values worth to direct towards repairing her soul.(2)
She laughs as after she's on her feet from her roll to absorb the landing impact better.
A laugh that becomes a bit wild as her grin widens even further as she sees other centipedes start to emerge from the sand.
Okay then.
Very much not what the System or that angel statue guy was expecting undoubtedly, but she's definitely understanding why Ha-Eun said her getting the System erased the scant visions that don't end in her soul restored.
Well, it'll happen just while she's repairing her soul of course given its a side effect of her resisting her soul being destroyed as it falls beneath the generally bare minimum fifteen percent soul integrity, but priority goes to stabilizing her soul before trying to regain any power obviously.
Especially since that ‘fifteen percent’ soul integrity wasn't as clear cut as she once thought it was. Or maybe it's more accurate to say her situation specifically is just complicated. As far as regular human souls go, she never fell below that fifteen percent integrity to begin with. But she was well under fifteen percent for her own soul which is generally much larger given her full strength. If one based it off of her full power, she possessed something more along the lines of three thousands of a single percent.(3)
But given her soul was still unstable, her full Existence Values fifteen percent is also relevant.
So, clearly the situation with her own soul's integrity was somehow influenced by both, though how that works, she has no clue. Given she stopped being tired and all that after she Awakened and rose above the one thousand Existence Value average for a human, as well as the fact she survived to begin with, it's very much relevant to her soul integrity level.
Though given the fact Fortuna and Faithful's Fortification was very much highly relevant in her survival to begin with, if she had to guess, it should have only been fifteen percent of her full strength Existence Value. But Fortina and Faithful's Fortification somehow… pushed her towards only needing fifteen percent of an average human's soul integrity?
That's probably why it both seems relevant if she had to guess anyway.
But if she can get over twenty-five thousand Existence Values worth of power in xp from each of these guys… She'd need to kill around fifteen hundred of them to get the slightly over thirty seven million to make her full powers fifteen percent.
She's definitely not gonna get anywhere near that in the four hour time limit for the Penalty Zone, but she can get a start at least.
It's time to Hunt.
He finds himself holding back laughter at what he's observing, not wanting to tip off Kandiaru given they opened a vocal communication spell to him in slight panic when Jin-Ji seized the first surge of magic for her own purposes, “Relax Kandiaru. Have you not noticed? As miniscule as it is at the moment, her body is being strengthened on its own as she repairs her damaged soul. It may not have been the intended method, but the end goal is still occurring.”
Kandiaru is silent for a few beats, “I… suppose so. It's slower though.”
He hums, “Doubtful. If her soul's state was weakening her body, if it didn't straight up kill her if we forcibly strengthened the latter, it's likely no amount of training or leveling up with your System would have strengthened her body to begin with.”
Kandiaru sighs, “That's true…”
There's a few beats of silence before he casually comments, “That being said… you may need to tweak the System to base its levels and stats on her own strength rather than whatever your original plan was. That, and how you may have been planning to handle the possibility of hunting in that Penalty Zone, given she seems more likely to ignore the Daily Quest so as to be able to hunt in the Penalty Zones. And maybe intended rewards for the Daily Quest.”
Kandiaru grumbles a little, “It already scans her body and magic for the stats. It's more that I just need to tweak it so she levels up from kills regardless of whether she uses the energy herself or the System directs it as intended. As for the Daily Quest and the Penalty Zone… Honestly, while I could just let her hunt in it rather than implementing the next Penalty Zone as was my original intention when she got strong enough to try hunting there, it'd save me more time if I just choose a Penalty Zone based on her power. Actually, now that I think of it we may be able to speed up strengthening her body back to what we were originally planning for if I give her a ‘Hidden Quest’ reward to open Penalty Zones she's hunted in for a certain amount of time at will a limited number of times a day.”
He hums in understanding, “That would likely work, yes. I want to say five since I'm supplying the magic so you aren't short on it, but making something so extensive multiple times a day would probably be something of a strain, yes?”
Kandiaru responds quickly, “Yes sir, it would, especially given I'm already busy putting together another Dungeon that's significantly larger. Three times a day is a bit tricky, but manageable. Four would be pushing it. It would be best to let her only manually open it twice a day, just in case she avoids the Daily Quest again. Perhaps giving her some of the rewards for manually opening it that I intended to grant in the course of Daily Quests, like the black key if she does double the requirements.”
He makes a noise of agreement, “That's more than enough and gets her what you intended to give her, if not in the same manner. It does occur to me though, I don't know if you already have it built in, but you may wish to add a memory function to log notifications and quests and allow her to view previous ones in the event she doesn't have time to view them as she didn't now.”
Kandiaru him, “I hadn't had one implemented, but I was considering it myself, yes. I'll add it.”
He nods, “Well, if that's all you were getting in touch with me for, I'll leave you to it so you can adjust it with minimal suspicion.”
Kandiaru hums, “Yes, King Ashborne.”
Without another word, he feels Kandiaru disconnected the vocal communication spell.
With them gone, he lets out the laugh he was holding back.
He'd picked her because he couldn't help but admire her. So very weak yet steadfast and determined. And not only that, despite being the weakest one around in the Gates, she frequently rose to the challenges, not only in general, but even rescuing her fellows when things go poorly.
He is not disappointed in the slightest.
If anything, he underestimated her and she's even more of a hidden gem than he thought she was.
He's absolutely going to enjoy watching things play out.
It may even be the first thing he's enjoyed so fully since the second betrayal he experienced.
He hasn't felt this alive in years, that's for sure.
Another laugh bubbles out as something occurs to him. He'd watched her pull so many people out of the pit of despair and save them, yet he never expected she may very well do the same for him.
But it's looking like she just might.
Truly, she's extraordinary.
She's all but giddy with excitement as she's sent back to the hospital after her four hour limit was up.
Looking around as she works to catch her breath, she uses a low level cleaning charm to clean off the sweat and the like from herself, before swapping back to the hospital clothes that had automatically been stored in her bracelet when she called her regular gear to herself.
It's not exactly surprising that there's no sign of her being pulled away to some sort of… simulation Dungeon in a way, but it's definitely bemusing to not have to deal with sand getting everywhere.
She glances over as she gets a new pop-up notification, [PENALTY QUEST ‘SURVIVAL’ HAS BEEN COMPLETED.]
[HIDDEN QUEST ‘HUNTING THE HUNTER’ HAS BEEN COMPLETED.]
[YOU HAVE RECEIVED REWARDS FOR COMPLETING THE QUESTS ‘SURVIVAL’ AND ‘HUNTING THE HUNTER’.]
[CHECK YOUR REWARDS?]
Below that were yes and no boxes, which is kind of funny, given this thing wasn't touch interactive.
Regardless, she wanders over to settle back on her bed as she opens them up. The reward for the Survival Quest is an option between three thousand Existence Value -which definitely makes it clear whoever's behind this took the care to put it in terms she'd understand- or a Random Loot Box. As tempting as the three thousand Existence Value was to repair her soul even more, she got and will get much more so she'd gone for the Random Loot Box to see if there was anything interesting inside of them.
Using it gets her a key to an ‘Instant Dungeon’(4) which she's definitely happy with, so she's certainly not complaining about picking it, even if it's undoubtedly going to be weaker overall than the Penalty Zone. After all, there may be other interesting loot in there that she can make use of.
Besides, the reward for Hunting the Hunter is the ability to open any Penalty Zone she's hunted in at will twice a day. Not twice per Penalty Zone type, twice a day to open a Penalty Zone in general.
If she wants to push it, she could also fail the Daily Quest to get a third one in, but given she can open the Penalty Zone, she's inclined to do it at least once to see if there's anything interesting as a reward.
Her head snaps towards the door as it starts to slide open, but it's just a nurse. Mind, that nurse immediately grows a little concerned at the fact she's still a bit flushed and hurries over, “Are you alright Hunter Sung?”
She smiles reassuringly, “Perfectly fine! Had a dream I was in a desert with giant centipede monsters. But well, I'm a Hunter so it's not like it was a nightmare for me like I guess it would be for others. You know how the body can react like you're actually physically working out to some extent from some dreams though. I think it was my brain just wanting to try and get better given that Gate was nearly a disaster but since I can't physically train right now since I need to recover…”
The nurse laughs, “That's understandable. Let me give you a quick check up to make sure the increased heart rate during the dream and all that isn't negatively affecting you.”
She nods, “Of course.”
She has to control the giddiness that wants to enter her grin at least.
She can't wait to tell her soulmates tomorrow. Or well, later today she supposes given it's after midnight and all.
Semantics. Semantics that really don't matter in light of the revelation of just how she can use this System.
Her soulmates will be ecstatic.
She has to give it a few days before she can request to leave for a bit to go check out this whole ‘Instant Dungeon’ thing, but that's alright. She was busy checking out what comes from actually completing the Daily Quest.
It wasn't all that different from completing the Penalty Quest. Legitimately the only difference was a third option for a Status Recovery as well as the fact she doesn't have to just pick one but gets them all.
To that extent, when it comes to magic to repair her soul, obviously getting the Penalty Quest by ignoring it to enter the Penalty Zone for a third time in one day is more efficient, but given the likelihood of there being something interesting in Instant Dungeons, it's better overall to do the Daily Quest.
Sure, the Random Loot Box more often than not gives her something, well, random but that and the Penalty Quest are the only ways she knows how to acquire them, so. It's worth it to accept a bit less magic overall to direct to repairing her soul for the chance to get more Instant Dungeon keys and possibly good rewards from them.
Well, maybe.
She's only just getting a chance to head to the first Instant Dungeon today, so if there isn't something good there, she'll probably just start ignoring the Daily Quest in general.
She supposes the Status Recovery is a decent reason to do it, if not enough on its own, but while she can get Random Loot Boxes from the Penalty Quest, doing the Daily Quest gives her that and Status Recoveries she can bank. She doesn't have to accept the rewards all at once, and can leave them in her inbox unaccepted to snag later. Which could be useful, given Status Recovery not only restores her fatigue, but from the description can also do other things like get rid of some status effects, and even heal her a little.
That certainly makes it another decent reason to do the Daily Quest, but it's really only valuable until she starts to regain her Skills. Its ability to negate some status effects won't be worth anything once she starts to regain some of her Resistance Skills. Most of the ones she had in Feronia's System aren't really worth much, given they were usually explicitly designed to counter other System specific things, rather than that type of damage in general. Like the Ice Resistance Skill only applying to Ice magic from the System rather than being like, a general Cold Resistance that can also counter ice magic, but some of them were. And the ones she had from her third life definitely were.
Honestly, given it shouldn't take all that long to stabilize her soul if she can go into the Penalty Zone twice a day to hunt, she needs to figure out what to prioritize as far as repairing her Skills go soon but it's a damn hard choice.
She can at least rule out things like Azathoth, Elemental Sight, and Multidimensional Perception since her soul won't be able to handle those just because it's stable. Honestly, when it comes to what will strain her soul… Priority one is the Skills Diablo, Ema, and Mari. They aren't particularly strenuous on the soul, the only costly part was maintaining their presence before they gained bodies, and since that's not a factor…
Well, if nothing else, her soulmates may very well kill her if she doesn't snag them to be able to summon them to her in an emergency.
Approaching the third exit of the Hapjeong Station with the key in her hand, she's a little startled when the end of the key sparks a little before with an almost glitching wave, a bronze looking keyhole suddenly appears between the two pillars holding up the roof of the exit. It continues to glitch even after appearing.
Ignoring that and inserting the key and turning it, it disappears from her hand as a wave of electricity suddenly surrounds the entire exit as boxes unfold out to make a sort of thin deep blue membrane over the exit.
Walking forward, she gets a notification pop-up, [YOU HAVE ENTERED AN INSTANT DUNGEON.]
Swapping out her casual clothes for her gear, she begins to start down, but hardly gets a couple steps before a crackling sound like rapidly freezing ice draws her attention behind her, and she idly watches as the energy membrane over the entrance gains a more solid looking form. More out of curiosity and wanting to double check than any sort of concern, she goes back up the couple stairs to it and pokes it.
As she'd thought, she meets something solid rather than passing through it. Probably because she's touching the exit, she gets another pop-up, [YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE DUNGEON UNLESS YOU DEFEAT THE BOSS OR USE A TELEPORTATION STONE.]
Leaving the exit behind as she draws her sword to be at the ready, she starts back down the stairs only to end up blinking rapidly once she gets to the bottom. The entrance and stairwell had looked exactly like the real world version, just as maintained and all that, but at the bottom it looks like an abandoned wreckage with cracked surfaces and overgrowth everywhere, not to mention the smaller things like the rectangular light fixture right by the entrance with one dead light dangling from one end while the other flickers a little.
A smell like a dog draws her attention to her right to find herself being stared down by a red wolf as it steps out from behind a corner, [STEEL-FANGED LYCAN.]
It stares her down for a beat in which she uses a tiny bit of magic boosted by her Charity enchanted bracelet to cast a spell on herself that will strengthen her body decently for at least thirty minutes. By the time it charges at her with a ferocious snarl after a brief stare down, she's more than ready to nimbly dodge to the side even as she swings her blade to take its head off, though the momentum makes its now dead body continue on for a bit.
Even as it does, she's more focused on capturing the magic that was meant to be xp and using it to repair her soul a tiny bit more. It's nowhere near as useful as the centipedes, but that's to be expected. Those guys were around B-Rank, slightly above the average of two hundred and eighty thousand, since they seemed to be more in a range around three hundred thousand.
From what she could sense, that wolf was low D-Rank at around twenty-eight hundred Existence Value. Given she seems to get about ten percent of their strength as xp, she got less magic from it then she had. Like a fifth of it.
Nothing noteworthy in the slightest, but she was already expecting this Instant Dungeon thing wouldn't be a good way to get xp magic to repair her soul and was more interested in seeing if there was any good loot. She doubts a weak thing like this guy has anything of value.
Something she partly confirms after approaching its corpse she double checks what she saw as it passed by her, “Mm. Thought that's what I saw with Elemental Sight. No essence stone. Not that it's surprising, given this is a Dungeon manufactured by the System rather than a regular Dungeon.
That being said, she's also not entirely correct about it having nothing of value, given what she sees when she glances at the pop-ups that had appeared after she killed it.
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE ‘STEEL-FANGED LYCAN’.]
[ITEM: LYCAN FANG.]
[ACQUISITION DIFFICULT: NONE.]
[CATEGORY: MISCELLANEOUS.]
[A LYCAN'S LARGE, SHARP FANG.]
[IT CAN BE SOLD IN THE SHOP.]
She blinks, “There's a shop?”
At her prompt, another window opens, unsurprisingly one labeled shop. There's a buy ‘button’ though it's grayed out. She still finds the buttons humorous given she can't manipulate the screens with touch.
She hums, and just to find out why the buy button is grayed out, “Why can't I buy?”
The window gains smaller words below the grayed out buy button next to a sell button and above what looks like buttons to sort by type of item or an ‘All’ page that itself is above a box with slots for stuff, [YOU CANNOT BUY ANYTHING AT YOUR LEVEL.]
She snorts, finding it a little funny that it talked about ‘helping the player develop’ but doesn't potentially offer gear, when that very much makes a big difference at any level of power.
Regardless, out of curiosity as to how much the fang is worth, she sells it, getting twenty coins for it. Not that she has any sort of scale for what those twenty coins are actually worth just yet, but it's good to know anyway.
A growling noise draws her attention behind her to find two more Steel-Fanged Lycans standing in the hallway staring at her. After a beat, they charge at her.
When she swings at the first one, it actually jumps over her, and when she adjusts and swings at the second one, it catches her sword in its teeth and starts biting down.
She smiles in bemusement, “I guess you guys like metal then? Still, I wouldn't recommend that.”
The Steel-Fanged Lycan just seems to bite even harder. But with a sharp CRACK it's teeth suddenly fracture and she smiles even as it lets go with a flinch, “Yeah, sorry bud. While I won't claim this thing is indestructible I can confidently say even an entity with an Existence Value of one hundred million couldn't break this weapon. You don't stand a chance. I did warn you.”
Undoubtedly wanting to attack her exposed back, the other one lunges in again, but it's easy enough to twist out of the way and stab it in the neck before continuing her turn to take the first one's head off.
The second one lets out a howl before it dies, which is answered by a multitude of others and a not so distant trampling of paws not even trying at stealth.
Turning that way, it's not too long before she's staring down a decent sized pack in the upper twenties or low thirties.
The sheer numbers will make these guys a bit trickier, but it's not like it's that much harder than the multitude of giant centipedes in the desert Penalty Zone.
Difference is, this doesn't give her a hefty haul of magic to direct towards repairing her soul. The only thing of value here seems to be the fangs, unless there are rarer drops, but judging by the fangs, they aren't likely to be particularly good either. Not that it's surprising. Basically from the moment she got the key she was already operating under the assumption that she was more likely to get something of value from the boss or maybe, and that was a big maybe, some sort of loot room.
So. The pack of wolves are more annoying than anything.
It can't be helped though.
At least she'll get the fangs to sell to start stocking up on coins and maybe see if there are rarer drops.
After she deals with them, she glances at her inventory page, but all she seems to have gotten was the fangs, so she starts off to explore a bit to make sure there isn't anything of value before she heads towards where she can sense the boss.
Welp. There were two other kinds of creatures, a kind of monkey called Razor-Clawed Briga and a black panther beast known as Black-Shadow Razan. Those guys seemed to like to come in groups of two of the former with one of the latter. She also saw more Steel-Fanged Lycan packs. They all seem to respawn in the same places too, but she's not here to grind. So after making a few loops to kill a decent number of them to see if they have better drops, and finding a teleportation stone while she was at it, she starts off towards where she can sense the boss.
In the process, she had gotten a Title, Wolf Assassin, which increases her abilities by forty percent when fighting beast type creatures which may be handy.
Regardless, she heads towards the subway boarding platform she can sense the boss in.
Along with the overgrown and broken down look she's gotten used to, it's also flooded, though the water is all down on the track.
It also starts to ripple from down one of the tunnels the subways would go through, which is the only real warning she gets before she's having to swiftly block a fast swing of a huge scaly coil.
It still throws her back a decent bit, but at least it didn't strike her directly. With the power behind the blow, she'd definitely have cracked ribs if she was lucky.
She eyes it as it rises from the water.
She got a hint of it when it struck, but its a huge blue snake with small red diamond patterns and glowing orange eyes on red sclera, [KING OF THE SWAMP BLUE VENOM-FANGED KASAKA]
She grins at Kasaka as it flicks its tongue out. It's no centipede either, but was C-Rank. High C-Rank judging by the power she feels coming off it, since it feels like it has about one hundred and fifty Existence Value and C-Rank ended and B-Rank started at one sixty. That should net her fifteen thousand Existence Values worth of magic. There's only one instead of multiple, but she's not gonna turn it down.
Especially since it's a bit risky but not nearly as much as it was before she got the System, so she does have a trump card if things start going poorly.
Darting out of the way of another attack, she eyes the situation.
It doesn't seem inclined to come out of the water all that much.
Poor move on its part.
She's a Mage and water is highly conductive.
She's in no state for something like a Black Lightning strike, but if it's going to be so kind as to stay in the water where it's vulnerable, then adding its boost, she doesn't need something with that much kick.
Maybe she doesn't have her Molecular Manipulation Skill unlocked yet, but she got it as a reward for her achievements in manual magic manipulation in her third life anyway.
So she didn't need that either.
She does need to dodge around it a good bit sometimes regularly, sometimes with her wires while she's gathering the magic, manipulating it, then boosting it with Charity before she releases it. As she is, along with the swipes of its tail and slamming its huge body around it attempts to eat her a couple times. That's a bit distracting, if only in its strangely large metallic sword like primary fangs even if the others it has look more normal.
Seeing it take out a second pillar, she idly asks, “Are you trying to bring the roof down on our heads?”
Obviously she gets no response, but even if it was capable of one, she wouldn't have. Because her spell is ready a split second later and she launches it without hesitation.
The cooked snake smell piles one more reminder on top of the others she's been getting of the Basilisk from her first life.
…She does miss the Basilisk meat given how good it was. And can't help but wonder what Jae-Min could do with it with the cooking talent he built up in the nearly three hundred thousand years he and Ema were waiting for her to be reincarnated in their third life. Would it top anything else he's ever made?
Well, if she wanted to find out, she'd need to use those observations of Basilisk meat under Elemental Sight to recreate its makeup exactly with Synthesis.
It may be worth it just to find out what he can do with such delicious meat.
Mm. Maybe she'll have Rowena re-create the meat and they'll use some to celebrate after she's released from the hospital. Additional plus side, even if it's nowhere near as potent as kills with the System, that will give her some magic to direct towards some miniscule repairs as well.
Good food and actively adding to the repair work sounds like a damn fine day to her. Especially given it's practically inevitable that it'll put her husband in a damn good mood. Which is nice in general. But also she'll have a good night too.
That's all for later though, right now, she has a notification, [YOU HAVE DEFEATED ‘KING OF THE SWAMP, BLUE VENOM-FANGED KASAKA.’.]
[REWARDS AVAILABLE.]
There's an image of the sword in the top left of the box with the basic information to the right.
[ITEM: KASAKA'S VENOM FANG.]
[ACQUISITION DIFFICULTY: C-RANK.]
[CATEGORY: SWORD.](5)
[ATK +25]
It continues on below
[A SWORD MADE FROM KASAKA'S VENOM FANG. KASAKA'S VENOM STILL REMAINS WITHIN IT, THUS CAUSING PARALYSIS AND BLEEDING WHEN USED UPON AN OPPONENT. YOU MAY STORE THIS ITEM IN YOUR INVENTORY, OR SELL IT AT THE SHOP.]
[EFFECT “PARALYSIS”: THE OPPONENT WILL BE PARALYZED AT A CERTAIN RATE.]
[EFFECT “BLEED”: THE OPPONENT WILL LOSE 1% HEALTH EVERY SECOND.]
She hums, though while it's interesting, her own sword is obviously better. There's another item though, that one showing a drawstring pouch.
[ITEM: KASAKA'S VENOM GLAND.]
[ACQUISITION DIFFICULTY: A-RANK.]
[TYPE: POISON]
Then below the image and basic description there's more details again.
[A POUCH CONTAINING REFINED VENOM FROM KASAKA. UPON DEFEATING KASAKA, YOU HAVE A SLIM CHANCE OF OBTAINING THIS ITEM. DRINKING THIS VENOM WILL MAKE YOUR SKIN TOUGH, BUT YOUR MUSCLES WILL BE PERMANENTLY DAMAGED DUE TO THE POISON.]
[EFFECT ‘KASAKA'S IRONCLAD SCALES’: 20% LESS PHYSICAL DAMAGE.]
[SIDE EFFECT: ‘MUSCLE DAMAGE’: -35000 EXISTENCE VALUES WORTH OF STRENGTH]
She tilts her head, before looking off to the side. When she'd explored the System more with her soulmates the day after she woke up, they found notification and quest history logs. She pulls one of the earliest ones up, specifically the one for the quest reward for the quest that unlocked the System in the first place, though ironically the System doesn't mention that it itself is a reward, [-TEMPORARY EFFECT, THE WILL TO RECOVER: ANY DAMAGES TO THE BODY WILL BE RESTORED.]
[-PERMENANT EFFECT, LONGEVITY: YOU WILL BE IMMUNE TO ALL DISEASES, POISONOUS SUBSTANCES, AND ANY OTHER ABNORMALITIES IN YOUR STATUS. REGENERATION ABILITIES WILL EXPONENTIALLY INCREASE WHILE ASLEEP.]
She grins at the confirmation she was looking for. This thing won't poison her. Worst case, it's completely purged without her getting the buff, but considering it can't be used for anything else anyway, if she can't get the buff without the debuff, it's kinda useless anyhow.
She already has it logged with Elemental Sight even if the more thorough thing would be to take it into the Trunk and through to Imaginary Space to log it in those, so while she can look into potentially making more later, there's no reason she can't use it now. She's mildly tempted to rip the magic out of it when she consumes it and direct it towards soul repairs, but there's less than she got from Kasaka anyway. It's more useful as it's intended since it increases her physical resistance, and she should be safe from the lessened physical strength.
So, without hesitation she pulls the pouch out of her inventory where it was deposited, tugs the drawstring open, and tips it back to consume it.
The pouch disappears the moment it's all gone and she starts for the exit though the Dungeon disappears around her well before she can leave the platform. As she does, she turns on her magic regeneration bracelet. It's a strain, if less so since she started getting some decent soul repairs, but she's pretty sure she's gonna need it soon.
It takes a hot minute to make her way through the empty station. It being empty isn't that surprising considering what she's sensing what feels like a few streets over. A Dungeon Break for sure. D-Rank from the feel of it, which is honestly a bit strange. She can understand sometimes having difficulties with higher ranked Dungeons, but how on earth could a D-Rank Dungeon of all things gotten to the point it broke?
She hardly has time to look around and confirm the empty streets, idly noting that it started raining while she was in the Dungeon, before someone is calling out to her, “Hey you!”
Looking over, she's not surprised in the slightest to see a soldier given the Dungeon Break she can sense, “No civilians beyond this point. Did you not listen to the broadcast?”
She tilts her head, “I assume you mean a broadcast regarding that Dungeon Break I can sense nearby.” She gestures to her sword, “But I'm a Hunter, not a civilian.”
The man immediately brings his feet together and straightens a bit like he's coming to attention, “I apologize for the confusion. Allow me to escort you.” He turns and starts off, "Right this way.”
As she follows him she asks, “I can't sense any, but just to double check, did they clean up all the monsters but the boss?”
He nods from in front of her without looking back, “Yes ma'am they did. That boss seems to be troublesome though.”
She hums in understanding and they continue on silently. There may be alleys and the like that can get them there quicker, but she doesn't know the area well enough for that, and the soldier either doesn't either, or he's avoiding them to cut down on the possibility of them getting jumped by a monster that slips through with just the two of them here.
Once her magic is full again, she carefully starts pushing out the range on the Elemental Sight ring since she hasn't tested if her limits have changed with her soul slowly stabilizing yet. She's genuinely surprised when she pushes it all the way to see the conflict happening a couple streets away.
It doesn't matter right now though, what matters is surveying the situation. Eight front line E-Rank Hunters, two D-Ranks, one of which is a tank, which is both good and bad. Good in that it's better that one of the two D-Ranks is a tank to protect the rest of what seems like a hodgepodge group that was hastily thrown together if their lack of good cooperation is any indication as well as stop the boss from causing more destruction. Bad in that as one of the only two D-Ranks, it looks like it's taking longer from the fact he's not a dedicated Fighter as well as the fact that containing the boss is tying him up.
What they do have going for them is that they have three Healers, two of which are also D-Rank. The third is both B-Rank and familiar to her, given it's actually Joo-Hee.
To make the matter even more complicated, the boss seems to possess high physical resistance. Which makes sense, given it seems to be a stone golem. The problem is, they don't seem to have any Mages.
Well, she supposes it's a good thing that's what she is then. She sighs, “What a mess…”
The soldier tilts his head towards his shoulder, “Ma'am?”
She shakes her head, “Absent comment about the Dungeon Break and the boss fight. A single D-Rank tank, one D-Rank Fighter, six E-Ranks of various combat focused types, two D-Rank Healers, and one B-Rank Healer. No mages. Against a boss that seems to specialize in physical resistance.”
The soldier seems a little startled, “How do you know that ma'am?”
She waves it off, “One of my abilities.”
He's silent a beat, then he sighs, “I suppose that sword points to you being a Fighter too.”
She grins, “Funnily enough, a Mage actually. This doubles as a casting focus and for if something gets too close for me to cast at it quickly enough.”
His shoulders jolt, but he sounds a smidge more relieved, “I see. How fortunate then.”
She hums. And regardless of the reasons for not potentially taking a faster route through alleys and the like, it didn't take too long on the whole for them to start down the road the boss fight is on, given they do right around then.
Even as she was talking with the soldier, she was already going through her options. Lightning wouldn't be a good idea given the rain. Too much possibility of it being conducted by the water and hurting someone. Fire wasn't a good choice against stone in general, since you have to be able to make one hot enough to melt in and then you have molten rock as a safety hazard.
Water would technically work, but it would be a little tricky to get something strong enough in her current state to deal any significant damage.
Ice was a bit better but also a little tricky.
Acid spells were too much of a hazard with people not incredibly familiar with her fighting style around, not to mention splash could hurt one of the Hunters or other people around.
Monsters like stone golems also obviously tend to be immune to poison.
Her Light and Shadow magics are too costly at the power needed for something like this.
Same with her gravity magics.
The Rot abilities she picked up in her previous life are just all too costly.
That leaves air and earth.
Earth would cause even more collateral damage, so while she'd use it if she had to, she'd prefer to avoid it if she can.
So air magic then.
As they get about a quarter of the way down the street to the fight, she starts putting together the spell at a level she'll need and boosting it with Charity.
She draws her sword a few steps back from the people loitering around the cordon closest to her, drawing the soldier’s attention. Leveling it to be pointing at the boss's head, she launches a decently strong air attack at it. An Air Bullet based on the spell of the same name from her second life specifically, though along with translating it, she did make changes to make it more efficient and stronger and all that. If she had the magic for it, it'd be more accurate to call it an Air Canon but she doesn't. An Air High Powered Antitank Bullet is about the best she can manage with her current magic levels if one was to specify like that.
It's more than enough though, given it destroys the right side of its upper head completely.
As it starts to crumble, she turns to the surprised soldier, a bit out of breath from the magic that took, “I doubt it, but I don't suppose you know why the Hunters Association didn't send a request for assistance to Jura-Tempest if they were so short staffed they couldn't deal with the Gate?”
He straightens sharply to attention, “No ma'am! I do not!”
She nods, “I figured as much given it's not exactly your jurisdiction. Never hurts to ask though. Thank you.”
She makes a mental note to ask Ha-Eun about it as the soldier nods sharply, “Of course ma'am!”
It's about at that point Joo-Hee manages to press through the croud to her, “Jin-Ji, how-?” Then she falters momentarily, “Are you alright? It's not like you to be out of breath from a single spell.”
She huffs a weak laugh, “It's more accurate to say it's not like me to burn through basically all of my magic cramming it into one spell since I tend to pace myself. That's the only reason I'm out of breath though, so don't worry about it. I'm fine.”
Joo-Hee relaxes, “Mm. Aren't you supposed to still be in the hospital recovering though?”
She snorts, “Generally yeah. But I'm basically recovered at this point and I needed to do something so I spoke to the nurses and left for a while to handle it.”
Joo-Hee nods slowly with a frown, “In that case, if you're done, you should be heading back to the hospital.”
She nods, “I was on my way back right before this.”
Joo-Hee nods again, the frown disappearing, “Okay. You should get going rather than delay anymore.”
She hums in agreement, half turning, “Mm. Goodnight Joo-Hee.”
Joo-Hee smiles back, “Goodnight Jin-Ji.”
Without another word, she turns and walks away.
Notes:
(1): Just a note, we've established and reaffirmed that she's using Thought Communication to send a mental command straight to the System, so as you may have realized here, I'm not going to explicitly mention how she's pulling things up anymore.
(2): Not saying this is what any xp or whatever is worth, this is the raw power without the System directing it to strength the body and soul (since it can strengthen magic), which is 10% of its overall strength when it was alive.
(3): 0.003 just to make sure people understand since people have strengths and weaknesses and not everyone is good with things like that.
(4): Just got it a bit earlier than in canon since Kandiaru is trying to tempt her into doing the Daily Quest after she realizes she doesn't have to pick which reward she wants unlike the Penalty Quest rewards.
(5): With the way the System kept giving Jin-Woo daggers, you can't tell me the Architect wasn't taking his preferences into account. And when using physical weapons, Jin-Ji is more of a sword user then a dagger user, so. Get used to these kinds of weapon drops from the System that were originally daggers being altered to swords instead if/when they're potentially brought up.
Chapter 8: Moving Forward
Notes:
AN: While it wasn't the intention which was just the characters being their usual selves, between her being Guild affiliated with her husband's Guild as well as being financially comfortable between what she makes from the things she invented in this world, which she may have made cheap and widely available but still undoubtedly pulls in a huge chunk of change anyway, plus money from Jura-Tempest, and having a top tier S-Rank husband (only not counting Ha-Eun here since while she undoubtedly makes a decent amount of money, it's a whole thing in the series that S-Ranks don't tend to join the Association since they make no where near as much) and therefore having no reason to go looking for work since she's pretty financially comfortable as well as the fact one of the inventions she pulls money in on is getting tech to work in a Dungeon and be able to connect to outside, rather than “What happens in a Dungeon stays in a Dungeon” if anything they're one of the worst places to try to commit crimes due to how highly monitored they are.
All this to say much as I hate to say it since I actually do like him even if he's not my favorite character, there's really no story reason for Jin-Ho to show up.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
She sighs happily as she finishes telling her soulmates about the Instant Dungeon the previous day. Jae-Min is shaking his head with amusement, “Well, even if the sword likely won't be useful to you given you have your own, Kasaka's venom gland made it more than worth actually doing the Daily Quest and trying your luck with a random loot box.”
Ha-Eun nods, “Twenty percent physical resistance is nothing to sneeze at, especially given how weakened you are right now.”
She hums, and a few beats of comfortable silence passes before she straightens up, “Oh yeah! I keep meaning to bring it up and spacing it when you visit Ha-Eun. We should probably report that my power is actively growing with excuses right? I was thinking we stack the excuse of me being a rather… unique case as an Awakener who was unknowingly suffering from soul damage that I'm using to explain why my powers are all over the place with claims that you guys thought my mana was weird or something and suggested I go to a Xiǎo-lóng Healer to get it checked.”
She shrugs, “Then just have one of them make some paperwork about the discovery and hypothesis that my soul genuinely can't handle the Reawakening my body is trying to go through all at once. So it's like, all there and I'm not actually growing stronger, it's just slowly strengthening my soul and unraveling. It evades having to hide my slowly growing power from the Hunters Association and gives a rather tidy excuse right?”
Ha-Eun hums, “Yeah… that could definitely work. I mean, have to wait until your released from here to physically visit the Xiǎo-lóng healer to prevent any inconsistencies or holes in the timeline or people seeing you somewhere else.”
She knocks on the doorframe, causing Jin-Chul to look up, “Ah, Hunter Sung.” He flicks a quick glance at the clock, “Right on time.”
She smiles, “Always Chief Inspector Woo.”
Which he undoubtedly knows from experience. The fact there are inevitably assholes and terrible people she ran into with the Potter Luck she never shook means that not only did some of the Association start getting… aggressive with the ‘uppity E-Rank' as they kept calling her after the Red Gate, but despite the fact they were actively trying to assign her to be managed by someone less insulting, she just kept getting assholes. From her understanding, Chairman Go was kind of freaking out about it actually.
He knew full well Ha-Eun, Jae-Min, and Jae-Hui cared for her deeply. The way Ha-Eun describes it, you'd have thought he was seeing his life flash before his eyes every time her newest manager turned out to be a prick given he was terrified of not only driving three of their S-Ranks out of South Korea, but also the only one who agreed to work for the Association. That and he just seems to like her and loathes the way they were treating her.
…She may or may not have subtly baited a good few into actually threatening her to have an excuse to punch them. …Or tossing them straight out of the window of her mom's hospital room while she was getting treatment for Eternal Slumber if they gave her a Rank and Awakener type that could survive it. While she didn't kill anyone, she honestly still struggles to wrap her head around how so many that should've been sturdier were Squishier then she expected them to be and got more hurt then she meant to.
Usually, freelancers working with the Association weren't managed just themselves but rather each manager had a list of Hunters they were in charge of. When she says she was being reassigned a manager, she means she was being taken off one person's list -assuming they weren't outright fired for their conduct depending on what happened- and put on another.
But with the problems she was having with hers, while the man was busy, given Ha-Eun can't be her manager due to conflict of interest, Chairman Go had eventually got fed up and assigned the task of managing her to Jin-Chul even though he doesn't manage anyone else as he was basically the only person other than himself he could trust to handle things correctly.
From her understanding, as busy as he was in general, Jin-Chul himself had thought it was the best course of action to avoid such possibilities as driving the Association's only S-Rank out of it, or even driving her and two other S-Ranks from the country.
So, for all that he's a pretty big deal in the Association and she's technically just the weakest Hunter in the world, they were actually fairly familiar with one another. Especially since whenever she's involved in an incident, regardless of how cut and dry things seem to be, he's still obligated to speak to her, asking for her statement about it and all that.
Given that, while he's still professional, she's not surprised that he seems a bit more casual than usual, “So then, why did Mun Ha-Eun make an appointment with me for you?”
She sighs and moves forward to place a file on his desk, but also puts her hand on it first, “You need to turn off the camera in here for this. I know you can, and it could potentially cause a frenzy, maybe panic though I doubt that one, and put people in danger if it gets out in an uncontrolled manner.”
He gives her a concerned look, but doesn't hesitate to turn the room's camera off. It's not like he generally has anything to worry about. She may be recovering, but she's still very weak, and he's not only high A-Rank, but he's also seen plenty of footage and the like of her tricks, so he's got a pretty good chance of winning if she was asking him to turn them off with hostile intentions. Not that she is of course, just in the hypothetical that she was.
Once he turns them off, which while she didn't exactly expect Jin-Chul to pull something underhanded, she also knows beyond a shadow of a doubt is true now that she can handle a wider range of her Elemental Sight ring, she takes her hand off of the top of file holding it closed and slides it closer.
Wordlessly, he picks it up and starts flipping through it. It's the results from multiple evaluations due to her mana being weird lately showing her power is rising steadily, rather than being locked like it was for other Hunters. Jin-Chul stares at it wordlessly for a few beats before closing it and reaching into his pocket for his phone before speed-dialing someone, “Right! This is very much above my authority to deal with. To that extent-”
He cuts off what he was saying to her and directs the next part into his phone, “Woo Jin-Chul here Chairman Go, I apologize for the interruption but something important has come up that needs your attention. I was wanting to check that you weren't in the middle of a meeting or something.” There's a brief pause before he nods, “We'll head right up then sir. See you in just a few moments.”
Then he pulls it away and hangs up as he climbs to his feet, “This way please Hunter Sung.”
She follows wordlessly, ignoring the Association employees who are giving them various looks, barring the ones who look concerned who she gives reassuring smiles to.
It isn't very long before Jin-Chul is knocking on Chairman Go's door politely, preemptively calling out, “Its Woo Jin-Chul and Hunter Sung Jin-Ji sir.”
The response is immediate, “Come in.”
Jin-Chul opens the door immediately, stepping in but holding it for her politely, before swiftly turning towards Chairman Go's desk after she's through and he's closed it.
However, before he can say anything, Chairman Go speaks to her with a large happy smile, “Hunter Sung! It's wonderful to see you healthy with my own eyes! Given the strangeness of Cartenon Temple and its disappearing act, the footage made its way to me directly, and I must confess, even having seen otherwise on recordings and hearing reports about your survival even before I saw it, when I witnessed the recording of you pushing Hunter Song to escape and leave you behind, I was concerned for your life. It's heartening to see you well in person. Ah, but where are my manners? Please do make yourselves comfortable.”
She gives him a smile as she sits on one of the couches a bit in front of his desk on either side of a coffee table, “Thank you sir.”
Jin-Chul clears his throat lowly to draw attention back to himself, then gives Chairman Go a somewhat ridged look, which isn't surprising given how easily the poor man gets stressed, even if he keeps a lid on it and hides it well, “You'll need to turn off the cameras for this sir.”
Chairman Go's pleased smile fades as a look of concern takes its place, giving her a quick glance before hitting a button to shut them off. Without another word, Jin-Chul hands over the folder she gave him previously.
While Chairman Go is looking it, Jin-Chul steps back and while he's too controlled to collapse with other people around, she's pretty damn sure it's only that control that prevents it given how rigidly and slowly he settles.
There's a heavy silence for a few moments before Chairman Go closes the folder with a blank look on his face, “...I can certainly see why you brought this to my attention Chief Inspector Woo.”
The man nods a little stiffly, “Yes sir. As you can no doubt understand, I felt this was a bit above my… pay grade as it were.”
Chairman Go nods, “Indeed.” Then he turns to her with an absolutely baffled look, “How did this even happen Hunter Sung?”
Without hesitation, she replies, “I was born with inexplicable soul damage. My first awakening sorted it out for the most part, but I was still left personally weakened even if I became stronger than the average person. I underwent Reawakening and while it wasn't all sunk into repairing my soul, things were still iffy enough for me that it had to sort of slowly unfurl so as to not kill me.”
She sighs, “...At least, that's the rough outline of the public excuse.” At their alarmed looks, she snorts, “Don't look at me like that, it's not a maliciously rooted lie. I just wanted privacy. Previously though, I bluffed a bit regarding why my abilities were so varied, since I wasn't going to hold back and not only help less people but even put others in danger and I figured there wasn't exactly any harm since no one was really likely to pay attention to me given how weak I am, but that won't work given the new circumstances.”
With another sigh, she summons her sword, gazing at it even as she absently blocks off the area on the peripheral of her soul the System is attached to just to be safe, “For the record, only four people in this world know what I'm about to reveal, and I ask that you keep it to yourselves.”
Without another word, she shifts the sword to its scythe form, and Jin-Chul makes a small choked noise as Chairman Go sucks in a sharp breath. She gives them a tired smile, "The public excuse isn't that far from the truth, but the best lies always are. I really was born in this life with soul damage, but it was the cost of repairing Feronia, I also truly did get some of it repaired when I Awakened.”
She snorts, then dryly comments, “Actually, usually I'm stronger then even Jae-Min, and if the lightshow in the recordings of our Awakenings is any indication, I would've been this time as well, except the vast majority got sunk into repairing my soul a bit. The power I have now hardly even qualifies as the dregs left over.”
Chairman Go raises an eyebrow, “Usually stronger than Jae-Min’..? Then..?”
She nods with a smile, “He's Diablo and Kieron's reincarnation, yes.”
Ha-Eun slips in through the door, “And as I'm sure you're realizing, I'm Ema and Selina's reincarnation, and Jae-Hui is the reincarnation of Mari and Ethelyn.”
Chairman Go laughs a bit, “I did think so if Hunter Kim is the reincarnation of Empress Rimuru's husband. It certainly explains why the three were so protective of Hunter Sung if you're the reincarnations of Empress Rimuru's spouses and sister-in-law.”
She grins, “I imagine it does explain a decent bit, yes. Anyway, it's also true that the situation has changed, but it's more accurate to say that something about Cartenon Temple healing me after I completed it's commandments,” Given they don't know what's behind it and it's a bit difficult to get people to believe anyway, even Ha-Eun agreed it was better to bluff about the cause and the System, “it also repaired enough of my soul to be the tipping point of my recovery accelerating.”
She gives him a serious look, “So I technically didn't Reawaken, it's more that my power is returning to me. And as long as nothing puts a stop to it I will become an S-Rank.”
She sighs, “As things stand, while that excuse could potentially be polished, people could draw incorrect and dangerous conclusions on how to grow stronger. One of the best ways to avoid that is to prevent people from digging into it, and one of the best ways to do that-”
Chairman Go suddenly gets an understanding look, “Is to loop higher ups in the Hunters Association in.”
She nods, “Precisely. If I really need to, I am willing to release my identity, but I'd prefer to leave it as a last resort, so.”
Chairman Go nods, “You said you were bluffing before as to why your abilities are so varied.” She nods, “Would it be incorrect to assume it's due to your history?”
She shakes her head, “Not in the slightest. My Awakening is too weak to really settle into something in particular, that part is true, again the best lies are the closest to the truth, but all it actually does is a bit of strengthening. Strength, durability, hearing, healing, stamina, all that. And not even to the extent I've shown, given the reason my abilities are so varied is because I'm manually weaving mana into magics from previous lives, some of them being physical enhancers.”
Ha-Eun jumps in at that, “And no, that's not a talent we can teach. Even us other three aren't capable of it, mana is too rigid and stubborn. Eventually we may be able to and can look into teaching others, but right now, the only one capable of that trick is Jin-Ji. Not that I'm sure that's very surprising to hear if you're remotely familiar with even the basics of Jin-Ji's history in our previous lives.”
Chairman Go laughs, “Not in the slightest!” He shakes his head, “It's a shame, but it can't be helped.” Then he sighs and his gaze drops to the folder Jin-Chul had given him, “Still, you're a while yet from S-Rank, yes?”
She nods, “Yeah, but I should warn you, my soul is so damaged it's actually unstable. Once that's dealt with, there's a good chance the recovery growth will see an exponential explosion, so we likely don't have that big of a window until then.”
He looks like he wants to ask questions about the soul instability and he certainly looks concerned at that little nugget of information about just how damaged her soul is, but he lets it go without comment or question. Just nods, “I understand. It shouldn't take too long anyway, since I was only asking as I need some time to think on your excuse and how best to polish it if it's ever needed.”
“For the time being however, it would be best if officially you remain an E-Rank and we only update your file once you're S-Rank. The best way to prevent potential disaster is to just not bring up the question as to why you're different in the first place after all.”
She nods, “I was thinking that myself, but if particularly dangerous trouble occurs, I'm not going to hold back just to hide that I'm stronger than I'm supposed to be. Not if it risks lives.”
Chairman Go grins at her, “I wouldn't ask you too, nor expect you too, given what you said about Hunters ought to Hunt when the other three were evaluated. I assume you still feel the same about Hunters in those regards Hunter Sung and that the Association won't be seeing you joining our ranks when it's time to publicly reevaluate you?”
She nods, then gives him a grin, “I haven't no, but even if I did change my outlook, I'm Guild affiliated with Black Dragon, and would be obligated to go to them for a while at least.”
He chuckles and after a flash of a smile she sighs, “We got a little sidetracked though. My point was, I will use my power to protect people if I need to, and if that occurs there will be questions, so on top of figuring it would be easier to keep people from digging if I filled you and Jin-Chul in, I also thought it best to do so in case there is such an incident so you're not potentially scrambling to make excuses without warning or something.”
Chairman Go nods a little more seriously, “I certainly appreciate the heads up, Hunter Sung. Let me think about your potential excuse for a couple days, then we can set up a meeting with myself, Jin-Chul, Miss Mun, and you to make sure we're all on the same page. We can invite the Kim twins as well if you think it best, though I assume you can handle filling them in?”
She nods, “Yeah, we can. If they aren't busy though, it wouldn't be bad for them to be there. The more people polishing it, the less likely there are to be holes in it others could find. And those two in particular are pretty good at such things.”
Jin-Chul straightens a little suddenly, “Ah. I had… heard… in those history releases that in you fours’ first life…”
She looks his way, “That they were snatched up as kids by a crime Syndicate and partly indoctrinated? Yeah, they were. As I said, they're good at finding loopholes and knowing where to look to dig up things people would prefer buried. Their input would be invaluable in making it as airtight as possible.”
Chairman Go nods, “Then the Kim twins as well. Do we need to add anyone else?”
She hesitates, “Not… exactly. Not in that capacity at least, though… It may be best to loop someone into things to some extent at least to prevent them asking questions.” Chairman Go raises an eyebrow and she sighs, “I'm surprised you don't know given it's in his file, but then again, I doubt you memorize every minute detail of Hunters’ files, even for S-Ranks. ...Sung Il-Hwan is my father.”
Chairman Go looks a little surprised, clearly not having put her name together with that even though he undoubtedly personally looked her father's file over completely after he was evaluated as an S-Rank. But that was also years ago. It already had been by the time she got evaluated and they met too.
Undoubtedly, some people in the Hunters Association noticed that her file had him listed in her personal details, but given how weak she Awakened as, if they thought anything of it beyond general surprise, it was probably just thinking it was a shame such a strong Awakener's daughter didn't inherit his strength. If they're a more polite person at minimum. Those less so probably had far less kind thoughts wondering things along the line of how an S-Rank could produce such trash or something.
On the other hand, Jin-Chul jerks, “Wait, what?” Then he rapidly blinks before suddenly pointing at her, “You were his daughter from that video that chased a recruiter off!”
She looks his way, “I am, yes.”
Chairman Go's eyes are all but glittering with suppressed laughter as he oh so seriously proclaims, “Your service to South Korea is even longer than we thought then and you have our deepest gratitude.”
She snorts and gives him an amused look before her smile slips as she sighs, “But I'm weak enough right now that even smaller jumps in power are more obvious. I may live with Ha-Eun and Jae-Min, but I do go over for a family day at least once a week. There's no way an S-Rank like him wouldn't notice such a change in his own daughter. I'd prefer to leave out the truth of my identity since I've never wanted to reveal it to them and potentially change the way my family looks at me, but my dad isn't an idiot.”
“Best case, he'll think we haven't made a backup plan -well, backup backup plan since the excuse is the backup plan to just not making anything official until I'm already S-Rank- and push for one and it eventually comes out. Worst case, he'll realize we have one already and push for answers since one, I'm his daughter, and two, it's main purpose is to protect people from doing anything stupid trying to increase their own power or something.”
Chairman Go gives her a gentle look of understanding, “I can understand being concerned about changing the way they look at you, but they're still your family. Not all families are good, but from what I know of your father, while it may perhaps take a bit to get used to and wrap their heads around, they'd probably realize you're still Jin-Ji in the end, regardless of your history.”
She hums even as her gaze drifts down to the ground momentarily before Ha-Eun elbows her. Looking up, she finds her wife grinning at her teasingly, “Well! Except Jin-Ah! She practically hero worships the Empress of Jura-Tempest after all! She low-key hero worships you too given you became a Hunter despite how weak you are, and in spite of said weakness, you tend to not only pull other Hunters out of the proverbial fire when things go wrong, but barring circumstances like that, you tend to walk away without getting hurt. If she finds out you're actually Jura-Tempest's Empress as well…”
Chairman Go presses his lips together and ducks his head, as though either of those will hide his amused smile or shaking shoulders. Jin-Chul does an equally poor job hiding his own amusement looking away from them. She groans, “Don't remind me!”
Jin-Chul snorts, though Chairman Go is better at hiding his laugh in a cough.
She's not surprised her wife chose to bring something like that up now, given the initial plan was already set. They'd nail more down in a couple days after Chairman Go and Jin-Chul had time to think over the excuse more and try to figure out where it could be polished.
She just needed to meet them with the others in a few days.
…And tell her dad the truth.
Her dad is quiet and gazing thoughtfully down at the coffee table when they're done explaining.
She can't help but be tense with nerves, even if centuries as a noble and all that give her a lot of experience suppressing and hiding such reactions. She supposes she should just be glad she has experience in the latter as well, given she's utterly failing at the former. But while she'd built up familial relationships with Maya and Miya in her second life, and she's had kids, both emotionally adopted and biological, she's never had a normal relationship with normal parents before.
The closest she's ever come to that was with her parents in her first life, and they'd died when she was only fifteen months and later she only had a magical portrait of them.
After what feels like forever even if the clock says it hasn't even been a minute, he lifts his gaze to pin her with it, “When you come over this weekend, you are so having to watch that documentary about Jura-Tempest's Empress Jin-Ah has been ranting to me and you mother about with your sister for keeping such major secrets from me young lady, do you understand? And only afterwards we’re sitting down with your mother and sister and telling them the truth, do I make myself clear young lady?”
She squawks in surprise even as her soulmates and sister-in-law burst out laughing and Chairman Go and Jin-Chul try their best to hide their own laughter.
Of all the reactions to the fact she was the reincarnation of Jura-Tempest's Empress from her dad, that was nowhere on the list, that's for sure.
She's really not looking forward to what's about to happen when her dad gives them an amused look after the documentary about Jura-Tempest's Empress is over and he's muted the TV, but before her baby sister can start rambling, “Well now that that's over, there's something you're supposed to tell your mother and sister, isn't there Jin-Ji?”
She scrubs at her face, “You're really gonna make me do this? The punishment wasn't enough?”
Her mom and Jin-Ah give her confused looks from their spots on the couches next to her dad and her respectively, though it's the former that speaks up, “Punishment?”
She groans, "Watching that documentary about Jura-Tempest's Empress!”
Jin-Ah looks a little confused, though not hurt given she is familiar with the fact she isn't a fan of Jura-Tempest's Empress and the notion she was only watching it with them as a punishment. If anything there's a small flicker of understanding given she'd been more than a little surprised when she reluctantly agreed to watch it with them after her dad cheerfully okayed it originally, “How is that a punishment? And what for?"
Her dad looks amused, “Embarrassment and for keeping major secrets from her family.”
Then her mom, “Pardon? Why would watching it embarrass Jin-Ji?”
She groans again at her dad's pointed look, but wordlessly summons her sword and after a beat of hesitation, shifts it to its scythe form.
A heavy silence falls for a beat before her baby sister sucks in a breath, “Oh my gods! You're the reincarnation of Jura-Tempest's Empress! That's why you manage so well as a Hunter despite what you evaluated at!”
Rather than put out or hesitant now that she realizes the reincarnation of Jura-Tempest's Empress is her own big sister rather than some stranger, Jin-Ah gazes at her with eyes that are damn near sparkling in excitement looking like there are a million questions she wants to ask her.
She doesn't get a chance for any of them though before her mom quietly asks, “Restoring Feronia is the source behind that ‘inexplicable’ soul damage that was giving you problems when you were younger, isn't it?”
That seems to knock the excitement right out of Jin-Ah at the reminder of the perpetual exhaustion she used to suffer from, her eyes widening as she makes the connection herself at their mom's question. She sighs, “Yeah.”
Her mom looks at her with furrowed brows, “How come you never explained..?”
She gives her a tired look, “Before Jura-Tempest showed itself, you wouldn't exactly have believed me, now would you? I was in no condition to try and prove any of it since I couldn't use my magic or anything. And while the others could, the only real thing that proved was that they were reincarnations, not necessarily my own, given all that proves is that I knew of their abilities.”
“And it's not like you'd have had any reassurance that they were being honest rather than convincing me I was Rimuru and Shiraori reborn for some reason. Maybe a malicious one, or maybe even just wanting to try and protect the real one from people who may want to take advantage of her weakness by essentially tricking me into thinking I was her.”
She looks away, “After Jura-Tempest showed up… Telling you the cause of it wouldn't have changed anything. Does it really matter? It's only that and things related that I've lied to you about really.”
Her mom is silent at that, not really able to dispute her reasoning. Jin-Ah chews her bottom lip, “So then… why tell us now?”
Her dad sighs, “Because something about the way Cartenon Temple healed her has tipped the scales for her power to start repairing her soul enough for it to start gaining momentum as more and more of it is repaired. As a result, her power is steadily growing. She knew there was no way an S-Rank like me wouldn't notice something like that happening in my own daughter, and that I'd have questions given how counter it is for her power to steadily grow compared to a regular Awakener.”
“So when she was looping in Chairman Go and Chief Inspector Woo for other reasons, she realized she'd need to loop me in as well to prevent me from digging into it. And I made her sit through that documentary and tell you two as well as punishment for keeping major secrets from us when we're her family.”
She tosses a dirty look at the TV, “Still can't believe those little traitors took advantage of things like the Observation Orb recordings and the ability to pan mine to actually see me to make that thing.”
Jin-Ah's expression loses its seriousness at that, “Pfft! Traitors?”
Then she starts laughing and she looks at her grumpily, “Traitors. Complete and total traitors, the lot of them.”
Her mom's lips twitch up at that and her dad turns away to try and hide his smile.
Well, she hadn't exactly planned to ever reveal herself to her family, and she definitely wasn't expecting her dad to make her sit through that ridiculous documentary as punishment for the secret, but it could've been a lot worse.
Even if she's pretty sure her baby sister is gonna start bugging her constantly in regards to being Jura-Tempest's Empress.
It's gonna be even more of a struggle to stop her people from giving her family discounts whenever they go to the Labyrinth or Jura-Tempest for some reason or another, be it site seeing or something else.
Actually, forget discounts, they may start trying to give them stuff for free.
Technically, her family wasn't greedy enough to abuse it and seriously hurt the economy, and it wasn't as big a deal now, given she didn't have to try and come up with excuses as to why they're doing that, but still.
…Shuna and the others will be happy. She was really only insisting on it to prevent her family from realizing something was weird, but while she's been wearing Jura-Tempest made clothes practically from the moment she could get away with it without her parents being confused as to where the clothes came from, she has been holding her wearing the high quality stuff they make hostage to get them to make her stuff that didn't look so expensively high quality.
Making them choose between her wearing things of a quality they insist she deserves and their own desire to make them look like the quality they are in other words.
She's not exactly going to start wearing clothes that look fit for an Empress, but that wasn't exactly the issue she was having in getting them to listen. Shuna fully understands her wanting to keep a lower profile, so she hasn't been pushing for Royal quality and intricacy.
But there's a difference between the high intricate quality she was wanting that was still too far in her opinion and that fitting for an Empress, and it was a struggle to get her to concede the latter too.
Threatening to just… not wear stuff of hers or Jura-Tempest make in general was about the only way she could force the issue.
Got more than a couple displeased pouts and frowns, but it was worth it as far as she's concerned.
She's pulled from her thoughts as her mom suddenly straightens, giving her a stern look, “I can understand why it may be awkward if we tried to push for the sort of relationships them being your adopted children implies, that it could easily be strange if we started trying to insist on being grandparents to them, but regardless of what the exact relationship is, they're still family, so I expect you to introduce us to your adoptive children soon. Am I clear young lady?”
She blinks rapidly, then laughs, “Can't say what sort of relationship you'll have with them either, but given Veldora, Milim, and Julius have been all but harassing me asking when they'd get to meet you guys, they may just kill me in my sleep if I didn't properly introduce you guys to them and the others now that you know.”
Her mom nods in satisfaction even as her dad smiles happily, his gaze implying he's already thinking about gifts to give them, since regardless of whether they're comfortable being grandchildren to him, they are family and they've missed years of their lives while she was keeping her secrets.
Jin-Ah on the other hand, suddenly looks like she's having an existential crisis. But that's to be expected.
She did just find out that Julius is technically her adopted nephew, and she has been crushing on him for years despite her attempts to discourage it.
Not really her fault Jin-Ah didn't listen. The only solution to putting a stop to it would've been to fill her in and she was avoiding telling her family.
It'll be fine. Jin-Ah is made of strong stuff and adaptable. She'll get over the embarrassment of the realization and move past it quickly to build a family bond with him she's sure.
Still she… may need to pull Julius aside if she doesn't see him in person before that. Ask him to ignore any awkwardness and mortification from Jin-Ah since she didn't know Julius the Hero was actually also Julius her Nephew, so she didn't know better and she's either getting over it or already over it depending on how quickly she shakes the remnants of the crush that was undoubtedly shattered at their mom pointing out she's family with him.
Julius will probably feel a tad awkward as well, but he's an understanding boy. Well, he disagrees about her calling him a boy given he's twenty-seven now, but he'll always be her little boy regardless of his age. Which, due to her bringing him to Jura-Tempest so young, teaching him how to manually level things in Feronia's System, and just his general power, didn't quite line up with the age he looked, and was drifting further and further.
He looked around twenty-three at most, given he'd been subject to Jura-Tempest's evolutions and become an Enlightened human by fifteen, a Saint by eighteen, before finally reaching the final stage that the Words of the World calls a Divine Human by twenty-one. Given Divine Humans are technically spiritual lifeforms and are unaging and kind of immortal, his chronological years may be increasing, but his apparent age was halted there.
Yaana had been so upset about him being a Saint when she wasn't that it hadn't taken her long to follow. It had kind of required Hyrince to come clean about being a sort of pseudo Parallel Existence of Güliedistodiez to explain why he wasn't pursuing it or anything, but they'd gotten over the revelation fairly quickly.
Anyway, he wouldn't hold it against Jin-Ah or something. He's good at masking things like that too, and kind enough that he'd ignore it rather than humiliate her or something letting it come up.
She'll have to explain things to Veldora and Milim too so they don't bring it up out of confusion either.
Jin-Ah may be inclined to kill her too if she finds out she mentioned it to Julius, but it's for her own good given how much more mortified she'd be if he tried to ask her what was wrong and it ended up getting revealed to the whole family in the middle of dinner or something, so…
Speaking of people killing her, she'll probably have to bring her current biological family to Jura-Tempest to meet them.
While Shuna will be pleased she'll finally be allowed to make her clothes look nicer as well as be nicer, others in Jura-Tempest may very well murder her in cold blood if she deprived them of the honor of catering her families meeting for the first time.
Some things she needs to sort out while planning a big family dinner, but she's sure it'll all be fine.
She happily stretches as she makes her way to the Black Dragon raid Jae-Min had arranged for her to attend. Obviously she couldn't be publicly taking a combat job, but it was part of the plan to keep her unusually steadily rising power under wraps.
She was Guild affiliated, and she didn't exactly need money from them anyway, even if sitting on her ass wasn't exactly her kind of thing. So she was going to assist Jae-Min's raid party in other ways for a little bit. Given Jura-Tempest has magic storage for sale, the original idea of porters in the sense of someone carrying a few large bags didn't last long, but it was still helpful to have someone carrying all the gear that could distribute it as needed without potentially interfering with other work.
Just as an example, if things go wrong and the Healer goes down, the majority of raid parties invested in having a handful of potions of various strength from Jura-Tempest on hand, but if they're still under attack, if someone else had it, they'd have to abandon their job in holding the monsters off. It'd be particularly disastrous if that someone was a Tank obviously, but there wasn't a role that it wasn't bad to leave it if they have to drop what they're doing to assist the Healer.
Even a Mage who's also in the back line abandoning their job to help the Healer could be a disaster if they were proving key in their buffs or in taking some of the heat off of the front liners with their attack spells or whatever.
That is to say, technically porters were still a thing since it's still vital to have someone not part of the combat force dedicated to it, they just didn't look like they used to with large overflowing backpacks.
She was in a particularly good mood today though since while it may not reflect as heavily on how much her power has risen and how much she's redirected from the System's surges, she'd just finished stabilizing her soul with a morning run through a manually opened Penalty Zone while waiting for the early afternoon raid.
Her actual power hasn't risen super drastically, it has been, yes, but while there's no doubt it's not a one to one on how much she sinks into the repairs and how much power she starts producing -it takes more of the former than she technically gets out of it in the immediate-, there's no denying it was even more costly with her soul so unstable.
She'll undoubtedly start seeing her power rise much quicker now that it's finally stable.
Another plus, Rowena was able to restore the memories she lost during the initial soul damage event, even if they weren't exactly critical. Even if they aren't important overall, or even in the larger scale of the friendships she had with them, it still makes her incredibly happy to have those little moments like when Muraji teased her that it'd be her fault when it came out how scary she could be and her betting with him on it back properly, rather than just a sort of second hand recollection like a story she heard when there were other points in her memory she thought of said events that were gone.
Jae-Min glances over as she wanders over like a dragon satisfied with its hoard. Glancing around discretely to make sure no one can hear them and slipping a muffling spell over them just to be safe, he murmurs, “You're in an awfully good mood.”
She grins like a dragon that got the Abraxas, murmuring back, “It took almost two weeks, but my soul is officially stabilized.”
He sucks in a sharp breath, blinking rapidly as he tries to hold back sudden tears. Letting out a shuddering breath, and in an unsurprising hoarse voice, “Truly, its…?”
She nods and a beat of silence passes as he tenses. Undoubtedly he wants to hold her, probably so tight he's all but crushing her in his arms, but while she's getting stronger, she's still a little too weak.
Too weak for them to be comfortable with there to be a notable public connection between them that is. It's one thing for the Guild affiliated porter to be coming over to talk to the Guild Master, it's another thing entirely for said Guild Master to hug her within an inch of her life while crying.
He lets out a shuddering breath before clearing his throat roughly, “Are- I mean, will you have Rowena's independent Orb manually transfer your ego to a new Heart Core, or..?”
She shrugs, “I technically can now, but… If I do, it's practically a guarantee I'll lose a hefty amount of power. Who knows how much I'll need all told to get to the bottom of things here and deal with it, not to mention potential future lives. What if something similar to or even worse than Feronia comes and I'm even less prepared given I lost so much?”
His jaw tightens at the last one, “Why must such things be your responsibility to begin with?”
She gives him a flatter look, “Because I can and a lot of people would die in practically any alternative. Even if you hate it, would you prefer I'm in even more trouble trying to deal with it because I lost that power?”
He purses his lips briefly as he looks away before sighing tiredly, “No… So, what, are you just going to try to finish the soul repairs with this System?”
She nods, “Mm. That, and I'd like to see if it has anything interesting for me to learn by studying it or that I can gain with it.”
He nods slowly in understanding, “It is a valuable opportunity I suppose… Still, we're still in the dark about its true nature and intentions, so be careful.”
She smiles, and out loud she simply says, “Of course.”
Tucked behind Occlumency walls the System hovering at the edges of her ego can't access on the other hand, she sends him a message, <Don't worry. Absolute worst case, I can have my ego transferred to a new Heart Core, though if things go south, I doubt I'll need to do anything beyond forcibly pushing it out of my soul and all that. Rowena is monitoring it constantly as well.>
Some of his tension relaxes and she hums, “Who knows, maybe the opportunities afforded by the System will even let me grow stronger then I was and if something like Feronia happens again, I'll be in a better position to deal with it with less or maybe even no consequences.”
His hands twitch, and she feels a desire to pull her close and press his lips to hers then rest his forehead against her own dancing through him. He just sighs as he lets his exasperated love he's having to prevent entering his gaze flow down the soul corridor to her, “You ridiculous woman. You never stop even when you really ought to.”
She gives him a cheeky grin, “You love me anyway. If anything, given this is who I am, not just a minor character quirk or something but a more fundamental part of me and you're one of my soulmates, as much as it frustrates you sometimes, this is part of what you love about me.”
He laughs a little helplessly before admitting, “I do love you and it is.”
Her grin softens, “I love you too.”
He smiles, but before he can say anything more, their attention is called by Jae-Hui calling out somewhat teasingly, “Oi! If you're done conspiring world domination or something equally wild with our porter, everyone else is ready!”
Her husband lets the muffling barrier fade away without drawing attention as he teases back, “We're ready, but honestly you're just jealous to be left out of our dastardly plotting!”
Jae-Hui snickers and grins at him, “Best be just plotting, I'd have to kill you if you left me out of world domination after all.”
Considering the threats they can toss at each other, that one is actually pretty tame. That fact combined with the fact it was time to get to work was why what comes out of her husband's mouth without missing a beat and perfectly casually is, “You can try, though you'll have to work for it of course. I wouldn't just lie down and take it, and you'd have to survive when I fought back of course and unfortunately for you, I don't think you're quite up to that.”
She shakes her head in amusement at the usual casual back and forth that launches as she follows her husband sedately.
Hundreds of thousands of years waiting for her in her last life and some things just never change.
She jolts in surprise as Ha-Eun nudges her side with her toes with a laugh, “Do I even want to know what was consuming your thoughts so much that you spaced out so bad you've done like three hundred sit-ups?”
Rubbing at her stomach, she grins sheepishly, “I guess that explains why I'm so damn sore.”
Her wife snickers, “Yeah, I'd imagine it does. You didn't answer the question though. Do I even wanna know?”
She hums, “Honesty was just contemplating trying to unpack mana into more MA energy to speed up my recovery. Though while I did get a bit stronger, with the fact I've been sinking it all into soul repairs, I've been thinking about putting a pause on directing the energy to soul repairs for a tiny bit and focusing on directing it to increase my mana more now that my soul is stable.”
Her wife hums thoughtfully, “Well, increasing your mana would be safe to do. Given magic is fundamentally excess MA energy from the infons of the soul, now that yours is stable if not anywhere near fully fixed, it wouldn't strain it to add more infons that produce mana as its excess. If anything, since they wouldn't be damaged like the rest of your soul is, it would technically increase the percentage of your overall soul that isn't damaged, even if it would be practically miniscule compared to the rest and just increasing the percentage of it doesn't exactly have much of an effect.”
Ha-Eun pins her with a Look, “The real question is, can your soul handle you unpacking some of the mana into its raw MA energy given its density?”
She snorts, “Technically, if it wasn't for my unstable soul, I could've done it before with up to eighty Existence Values worth of mana if I wanted to push it, probably more like fifty if I wanted to stay on the safe side. I was held back by the instability of my soul though. That isn't a problem anymore, so…”
Ha-Eun chews on her lower lip, “I… suppose that's true. …If you do decide to try it, let me pry at Moirai first to make sure it isn't some sort of under one percent chance of things going horribly wrong. Even if it does its… probably not soul destruction since that's an exception to that rule, and I haven't had any visions, though I suppose arguably it could be more due to the way the timing on those can be inconsistent.”
“Still, if you've been contemplating it, it usually would've triggered if it was a risk, but I'd double check both that and that it may let your soul survive but will kill this life. I don't want any of either yours or Jae-Min's -or even Jae-Hui's- lives to end prematurely, but while it may be selfish, given your soul is supposed to be repaired fully in this life rather than taking lifetimes, even if you've already gotten a decent boost on that, I'd especially prefer this one in particular not to be cut short.”
“And even then, be careful.”
She hums, and gives her wife a smile, “This isn't something like Feronia where there are things bigger than me at stake, and when am I not careful if it's not something like that?”
Ha-Eun smiles a little weakly, “Still, even if you're stable now, it needs to be said anyway given your situation. I know technically you know it better than anyone else, but you're not as sturdy as you usually are right now.”
She sighs, “Don't I know it…”
Her gaze drifts away and she blinks rapidly, tilting her head. Ha-Eun shifts with some concern, “What is it?”
She flicks a look up, “No, nothing, it's just-”
After a beat of silence Ha-Eun prompts her, “Just..?”
She continues staring at the window, “...The System kept counting my crunches while I was zoned out all the way up to two hundred.”
Ha-Eun tilts her own head, “Really?”
She hums, “Yeah. Which I mean. If it had just kept counting, maybe I'd have thought it just did that. Constantly kept count that is. If it only did it up to two hundred, that… kind of implies there may be some sort of hidden reward for doing double on everything, right?”
Ha-Eun hums, “A bit yeah. Won't know until you try.” She starts to twist to start doing push-ups, “But. You should go soak in some hot water for a little while. After zoning out and doing all those extra crunches, even more than the potential reward for doing double the Daily Quest wants probably strained your body a little. Give it a small bit and soak a little to get them to relax and all that.”
She rolls her eyes at how pushy her wife is being, but wordlessly gets up to her feet fully and heads down from the home gym towards the small-ish pool and hot tub area in the backyard.
Though, the pool is small-ish in the sense that it's not like a huge pool like one would expect to see at someone rich's house or at a pool facility like the kinds you pay to go into. Its size is more what you'd expect from one set into the ground in some suburban houses, though their house kind of borders on a mansion. And not like, the kind of pools of higher income suburban houses either. She means the 3-4 bedroom ones that sometimes have them, that's all.
Though she didn't have a pool, the sort of suburban house her aunt Petunia lived in during her first life, that is.
Nevertheless, she goes and soaks in the hot tub for a little bit, musing over what it may give if it does give her a reward for doing double what it asks for daily.
After a while though, when she feels less sore and has for a decent bit to make sure her muscles aren't just starting to relax, she climbs back out and heads back upstairs towards the gym to get started on the rest of doubling the Daily Quest.
It's not too long before she's finishing the last of it. Even as she heads back down to the hot tub to soak after finishing her work out, the quest window pops back up even as the text reading ‘Daily Quest’ sort of looks like it turns to sand or ash before reconfiguring into ‘Secret Quest’ but that's the only change on that screen.
It's when she moves on to the reward screen things really become different. Rather than a simple Status Recovery for the first of the three rewards which at minimum restores her fatigue but may do a bit more though she's not sure, there's a Full Recovery which undoubtedly does that and presumably from the name restores her health fully as well at least, though still uncertain if it does more. The second reward has grown from three thousand Existence Value to ten thousand. The third reward on the other hand, has shifted from just a Random Loot Box to a choice of one of either a Blessed Random Loot Box OR a Cursed Random Loot Box.
Out of curiosity as to whether it would be better for possibly becoming even stronger later, she's already tried just accepting the System given Existence Value and allocating them while she was testing things about the Daily Quest in the hospital, dropping a single thousand -the smallest denomination of them- into agility since she didn't dare drop it into Intelligence which effects her mana given her still rather unstable soul at the time.
But she very much doesn't get nearly as much benefit from letting the System take the power and do its thing compatible to bracing herself and being at the ready before the Existence Value are accepted to snatch them before they can settle into her ‘Available Existence Value’ and direct their power to repairs in her soul manually.
Given it's a Hidden Quest rather than a Daily Quest, she has no clue if this is even repeatable, but if it is it's clearly the better option.
She can sit on Full Recovers in her rewards screens unless things go badly and she needs them, she gets ten thousand Existence Value to use, either for repairs to her soul or increasing her power in general whether it's her mana like she mentioned to Ha-Eun earlier or not, and finally, she seems to get better Loot Boxes from it too.
From what little raw knowledge, as compared to false memories of living as Wakaba's fake human life, frequently things like this, if they are repeatable, tend to have weaker rewards in some capacity, and in this case, she'd assume if it even is repeatable it'll be the Loot Boxes that either revert to the Daily Quest reward, or had the same name they do now, but don't have as powerful potential rewards in them.
After all, the first was just a heal, and she has no clue right now if it can regrow limbs or something like Full Potion can, but even if it can't, general healing isn't that hard.
And the System pretty clearly wants her to get stronger. It has that Daily Quest and even names it ‘The Preparation to Become Powerful’, so she doesn't see why it wouldn't be inclined to give her ten thousand Existence Value rather than three, even if she's directing them for her own purposes as opposed to distributing them via the System. Additionally, they've already confirmed via making excuses to separate from the rest of the raid party in one of Black Dragon's Dungeons that a monster doesn't have to be from the System to give her experience points and level her.
It's the last one that's rarer in general. Sure, she gets Loot Boxes every day, literally, but the vast majority of the time the things inside are pointless. She's only gotten a Dungeon key once, and it was the only thing useful from any Loot Box.
But it led her to getting Kasaka's Venom Gland if nothing else, and that was certainly valuable. But given she's only seen one Instant Dungeon key so far, they seem to be kind of rare. And in that sense, the Random Loot Boxes have the potential to be the strongest reward from the Daily/Hidden Quest.
If any of them were going to get nerfed for repeats of the quest, it would be that one she'd imagine.
That being said, if one of the two Loot Box choices did have a Dungeon key, she may have to hold onto it for a bit before using it. If its difficulty jumps too much compared to the Hapjeong Station Dungeon, she may not be able to do it yet, and with the way that Dungeon’s key disappeared the moment she used it is any indication, she won't be able to return.
She won't even exactly know how long to hold off on it, mind, since it's not like she'll be able to quickly pop her head in and see what its difficulty is and just come back later.
That's just hypothetical depending on what's in the boxes of course. Again, most Loot Boxes don't have keys, so there's no guarantee she'll open one of these and get one anyway. Then again, if the Hidden Quest is technically repeatable but weaker then the first time and it's these ones that are meant to be nerfed, it makes more sense that they are guaranteed to have better Loot.
Given Dungeon keys are the best things she's seen so far that can come out of a Loot Box, while it's possible they could actually give her something that isn't a key but still highly valuable, it makes more sense if it is some sort of guarantee. That being said, if it is possible to repeat the quest, it's mostly the possibility of Dungeon keys and things of value like it that's the main draw of the Daily Quest rather than ignoring it for a third go at the Penalty Zone.
So if it does say, switch back to a regular Random Loot Box in a potential repeat, there's no point putting the extra effort in for these quest rewards. She can easily use Full Potions for a total heal, which is even guaranteed to restore lost limbs rather than having that up in the air, and ten thousand Existence Value is basically chump change compared to what she farms in the Penalty Zone and her full power.
Well, regardless, she needs to choose which of the Loot Boxes between the Blessed and Cursed ones she wants before she can start to figure all that out.
Given she has to confirm it before it'll give them to her, she selects one and then the other. There is a brief description attached to each, but it's honestly not very helpful for deciding which to choose. The Blessed Random Loot Box just says it gives an item the player wants, while the Cursed Random Loot Box says it gives an item the player needs.
One may think that makes the Cursed Random Loot Box a cinch, given need trumps want, but… The System doesn't seem to have a good idea of what she wants or needs in all honesty. It would be giving her more Dungeon keys from the Loot Boxes or extending her time when she manually enters the Penalty Zone if it did.
Well, then again, she supposes her want and need are technically the same thing right now. She wants to repair her soul and be able to stop worrying her soulmates and to be able to help more with the Dungeons. She needs to repair her soul for the obvious reason and to regain her strength in case things go horribly wrong.
Which she supposes just drives it in even more that the System doesn't have a great idea about her want and need if it's considering them two different things. Well, assuming it's not just some sort of illusion of choice and they actually give her the same thing, but there's not exactly a way to check that.
In any case, given the System doesn't seem to really know those the descriptions were as useful as illegible scribbles.
Scrubbing off in a quick shower and changing back into her swimsuit, she heads back out to the hot tub and slips into the water before twisting around practically the moment she's sat down to rest her arms on the lip and idly watch her wife doing her laps in the pool while she contemplates it.
Her wife had left the home gym while she was busy with her own exercise and come down for the laps she does daily, even when she doesn't do other exercises or the ones she's doing change. It's part of her routine that she may not have had the opportunity to do in every life, but that's persisted since their first.
She's honestly not sure how long she's watching her before Ha-Eun is finishing up and pulling herself up out of the pool. As she turns, she grins when she spots her and starts over, “When did you finish up and come back down?”
She smiles at her, “Not entirely sure since I haven't been keeping track of the time.”
Ha-Eun nods sedately as she settles onto the edge with her legs dangling into the hot tub next to her, “So, was there anything for doubling it?”
She hums, “Yeah, though there's also a choice I'm not totally sure about. I've been contemplating it practically since I saw it.”
Ha-Eun tilts her head, “And what choice is that?”
She shrugs, “Doubling the Daily Quest requirements turned it into a Hidden Quest which has better rewards. The first two while definitely good aren't all that much stronger in comparison, so if it is repeatable but gets nerfed compared to the first time, it would be in the third which is the one I'm uncertain of.”
“The Random Loot Box turned into a choice between a Blessed Random Loot Box or a Cursed Random Loot Box. Their descriptions basically say the same thing just swapping one word and are supposed to give me either something I want or need respectively. Normally, I'd say need trumps want, but I wouldn't say the System has a great grasp on my wants or needs anyway, so.”
Ha-Eun hums, “So it's more what the System thinks you want or need…” She nods and there's a couple beats of silence before her wife continues, “I'd say go for the Blessed Box.”
She tilts her head, “Why?”
Ha-Eun shrugs, “At first the System tried to pressure you into doing the Daily Quest by sending you to the Penalty Zone and making you think you needed to do the Daily Quest but it was actually better for you to go to the Penalty Zone originally. So you definitely aren't wrong that it's basically ignorant of your wants and needs and if that's the case, it's better to just avoid the potential trouble from a Cursed anything isn't it? Flavor text or not, that's still the name it gave it, so…”
She hums, “I suppose you're right.” Her gaze drifts back to the window that's been waiting for her to accept any of the rewards, “Yeah, I think I will go for the Blessed Random Loot Box.”
Without another word, she accepts the Blessed Random Loot Box but doesn't accept either of the other two just yet, instead dismissing the window to be called back later. The box that it's become clear no one else can see appears in her hand the moment she accepts the Blessed Random Loot Box reward, and after its usual opening motions, she finds another key falling into her hand.
Unlike the green key of the Hapjeong Station Dungeon, this one is a bloody red.
Which fits, given when she looks its description over, it's apparently a key to a Dungeon that actually has its own name rather than only referencing where it opens. And that name is apparently the Demon Castle. So yeah, blood red was a fitting color for it given the name.
Actually, she didn't much think of it at the time, but the green for the Hapjeong Station Dungeon key was fitting as well, given it was all animals, and well, the color that's usually most associated with nature was green.
More interesting though was the description on it. She doesn't know if it's sheer coincidence given it does happen and this one is just different then the Hapjeong Station Dungeon, or if the System heard her thinking about it given she wasn't tucking those thoughts away where it can't reach, but it outright mentions that as long as the boss hasn't been defeated, she can leave and come back as much as she wants.
Wrapping her fingers around it, she hums thoughtfully. That's one concern out of the way certainly, but with the way she's been snatching the xp from the System and redirecting its energy to more efficiently repair her soul which needed to be stabilized first, she hasn't gotten that much stronger so she has no clue if she can handle something like that.
But if she can come back later, there's nothing stopping her from poking her head in and seeing if it's too much for her or not.
So, at minimum she'll need to swing by the Daesung Tower at Songpa-gu where the Dungeon is located later today. At least pop in and see if she can handle it or needs to come back later.
Notes:
Second AN: There's a reason the Holy Water of Life isn't brought up at the end of the chapter. I'm going by the webcomic with this, which is that Jin-Woo was already going into the Demon Castle to get stronger and discovered the recipe for the Holy Water of Life inside the Demon Castle and again he was already going in to grow stronger, not that it was the driving force for why he was doing it from the get go. It does exist in fic -more on that later-, but since I'm going by webcomic, she hasn't found out its there yet.
Also, I actually have a humor focused thing that could be a side story regarding Jin-Chul managing her, but right now it just some notes -like it has shorthand for certain actions but it's mostly “Character, maybe action: Speech” at the moment- that would need to be fleshed out and I'd have to figure out what incident he'd be going to question her about too. It's meant to be set with him coming to interview her while her mom is briefly admitted longer term at the hospital to be cured of Eternal Slumber, and I did contemplate putting it into the fic proper, but with other incidents happening in that chapter -like the Red Gate which I briefly toyed with using as the incident to save myself having to think of another he was coming to speak to her about before discarding since the chronological timeline was off-, it felt like cramming too many incident related things into one chapter.
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