Chapter 412: A Renewed Promise Between the Two.

Chapter 412: A Renewed Promise Between the Two.

Welcome to the 11th floor, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you had your fun on the 10th floor, for that was quite a gamble considering what you had to do to overcome the challenge. Risks need to be taken to achieve your goals, for fear of failure is the doom of progression. The fear of the unknown is what prevents the world from growing! As such, let this be a lull moment. No particular rules, but to get out of this floor and onto the next, you must find your way through a maze of portals leading to everywhere but also nowhere. Nowhere for you, aside from that one door everybody can use to get out. Also, to note, those artifacts are defunct now so throw the empty husks away before I blow them up. Ive also sent your rewards to everybodys current position and more will await you if you continue down! Or, you may find that one portal which will let you out of this nightmare, but where is the fun in that, little cheaters?

Gruuuh I let out a deep moan, before grabbing my head, as I felt such a pain rushing through my brain and into the back of my skull, giving me this terrible uncomfortable feeling I wanted to punch out of myself. Unable to stop groaning, I pushed myself up, finally able to see my hands pressing on the ground, causing me to smile.

Urgh, survived another stupid fever.

[Arcane Fever] successfully survived; well, thankfully it hadnt gotten to the moderate stage thanks to the fulinoe tea and dragorade I drank en masse during that entire portal ordeal. Still, this hangover-like feeling wasnt pleasant, no matter how often I lived through one. It couldnt be helped since it was necessary this time, and once again, I couldnt be more thankful to be born with insane mana growths and arcane corruption resistance.

Thank goodness for my [True Draconic Lineage].

[Master!] Out of nowhere, a signal appeared below me as that voice entered my mind, only for my strained body to be assaulted by the head of a tiger jumping out of my shadow, striking me back onto the floor as he rubbed against me.

Raakaah?! My eyes widened as I heard my voice, instantly realizing I was still in my minor form. Now that I thought about it, my snout was quite long. [Rajah, stop! Haha, Im happy to see you too but my head hurt.]

I pushed his purring face back into my shadow, finding it increasingly hard to keep this overgrown kitten from acting as if he was still a lap cat. Still, the power of cat rubbing seemed to have cleared up my head a bit. I stood back up, stretched a bit, and I suddenly noticed there were more people behind me than I remembered before I fell unconscious from the [Arcane Fever].

I turned around, noticing Tatsuya, Kyouya, the Ankoran King and his party, and VifiYok but Franz and the students werent around Oh, or the knights either, of course. Couldnt forget about them, of course.

Lass, youre awake. The king waved at me while the two elven rangers bowed, greeting me with what looked like a thick white-sauce stew with carrots, meat, and mushrooms. Asked the lads what you liked to eat. The elves prepared something for us while we waited for you.

Reintroducing himself as Astello, he pulled off his hood and mouth mask, revealing his short lime-colored hair marking him as a wind elf. The freshness can be argued with, sadly, your grace. Still, it should be to your taste. Melted mottra cheese from our finest milk mothscreamy on the tongue, light on the stomachdried venison, vegetables and fungi to energize your body with sufficient nutrients, and, of course, seasoned with care but abundance.

We are but humble rangers, your grace, so we apologize if it doesnt reach your standard. Ihrwin, a high elf, stated almost as a precaution, looking slightly unconfident in what they both created. We are not used to cooking for royalty, well, the mundari king doesnt mind the quality too much, so we arent too sure. However, we assure you we put our all into it out of respect for the forest and lives we used for this meal.

Oi, yfleis! With his samurai helmet off, King Fugnaruss samurai bodyguard, Ungi, shouted at the two elves as he cleaned off some white sauce from his beard. We dont need knife ears to hear ya! The shame these Saelari throw at us after we shared our finest wines and sake with them! Aye, mates?

The three dwarven earthshakers raised their mugs, toasting each other with a loud Aye before they drank some of it. With a loud moan in satisfaction, they agreed with Ungi's proclamation.

Since when have we tazongs devolved into rats, aye?! Nothing beats a drink with a fine meal, and we have tongues to figure that out!

Aye, for shame! From our own drinking allies! Didnt even bother bringing some wine to share, just to hog all we brought with us!

Throw the bottle at those bootlickers, I say. Not like we ourselves made some meat loafs to contribute! one of them commented sarcastically, pulling out a wooden plate with a near finished meat pie showing it off before he placed it back on the ground.

Your food culture was made from miners and smiths! We wield the gifts of the forest to prepare something for a princess! the elves fought back. The stew is ranger and traveler food, but we didnt just stuff up that pie to make it filling! There is an art to cooking, mundari! Learn something from your soba and noodle masters; the fine arrangements of a noodle soup would be brilliant here!

Oi, all of you, shut up and eat! Finally having enough of all this shouting, King Fugnarus stopped everyone's grumbling by ramming his axe into the ground, splitting the ground. He then pulled out a clay pot cooking from inside the camp fire they made, opening it and revealing some steaming rice. Come on, lass. Eat. A day probably has passed since you passed out.

At this point, passing out after some extraneous activity should always warrant time passing Its as bad as my bad luck with encounters.

While I did want to eat the stew, I handed it back begrudgingly. Instead, I turned back into my moderate form and faced Tatsuya, Kyouya, and VifiYok who had been quiet for the whole conversation. Hearing me address my party also silenced the rowdiness of the dwarves and elves, making me doubly suspicious of what was happening here.

[Humanize (Moderate)] inflicted on [Young Sunfang Dragon, Hestia Atsuko Kargryxmor]

Where is my cousin? Where are the other students? The knights? I composed myself, but everything still felt extremely off since not even a single student was around.

Cousin? The dwarves and elves reacted to that, but I ignored them. I had kinda forgotten I hadnt told them about Franz yet.

The boys spun their spoons as they looked at each other, not making this situation any easier on me. With conflicted expressions, they nudged VifiYok with their feet, causing the demonkin to let out a deep sigh, looking more annoyed than frustrated. She looked into my eyes.

Just dont get mad, okay?

If you keep stringing me along, I will. I tried to keep up a smile, but dropped it as I had a feeling this wouldnt turn comical. Just the truth. Like I told you before, I only want the truth. Dont hide things from me.

Shrugged before picking up what looked like a party bracelet from where she sat. I swore I saw it before, somewhere.

That makes this discussion of ours easier. Just I tried to stop him. She shoved the party bracelet onto me and told me to access the notepad function; however, when I tried to access it, the bracelet mentioned how I didnt have the correct mana signature for it. Only the person who owned it could.

The normal functions like making a party and sharing exp was available, but I couldnt access any of the additional features like inspecting an ID, making notes, or even opening my Quest list with it. VifiYok suggested I could unlock the bracelet since I had a [Crystal of the Divine System], but I didnt know how to do that.

I can do that. The Ankoran King stood up and walked over to me, prompting me to pull out my crystal and hand him the bracelet. Just to tell you, its illegal to actually de-register a party bracelet without a proper reason, like death of the owner, them giving it up, or due to a law. In fact, as a private owner, if you were to break that law, you would have to give up your crystal and pay a fine! An elf once abused the crystal so much, we were forced to make it an international law!

I stared at him with a horrified look, remembering the cost to create and buy this thing. However, he bellowed out a laugh and patted me on the back.

No worries! We arent on Ankor-Nazta grounds right now, so I cant enforce those laws. We are in Manethalas land.

With that chilling remark showing how much he respected Manethalas rule over his dungeon, he invoked a blue screen before calling me over to read it with him. He pointed at a section of it, explaining that performing any ID creation was also strictly regulated by the governments of the local lands.

You dont have any power in that field, understand? Once again, some elf ruined it all for everybody so we have to enforce these laws to make sure we dont have a similar situation like in the past. The books described the incident as just a giant mess, financially and logistically. Once he was done with that warning, he returned to the process on hand. Now, when it comes to party bracelets and IDs, all of them are made with a piece of a dungeon core. Regardless of the size, they all work with a crystal, no problem, but you usually want to use some special tools to make the process easier. Well be doing it the old way.

You know a lot about this, I noticed.

Surprisingly though, the Ankoran King suddenly went silent. With a small frown, he shook his head. Well, I had to listen through the entire lecture once. Too enthusiastic to stop, but I guess thats how we tazongs act when were passionate about our craft. Forget about it. Look.

He pointed at a few icons on the blue screen, where I noticed there was a Connect to party bracelet function there. King Fugnarus explained how everything revolved around the [Crystal of the Divine System] and the numerous manatech nowadays, which used dungeon core pieces to connect to the Divine System itself, surprisingly.

As I learned pretty early on from Tasianna, the System adapted itself to the worlds inhabitants and what they wanted to do. The entire backbone with the Job and Quest System and how it functioned nowadays with the Crystals was due to the System adapting itself to everything. This knowledge meant the development of manatech was all thanks to the deepening understanding of the Divine System.

It reminded me of how the mages guild was currently trying to innovate on the current messaging system. To get messages from one area to the next the fastest, it was dependent on messenger birdseither mechanical or livingand couriers. The mages guild wanted to create a device that could send messages to a different location similar to the way an internet forum or a social media direct message worked on Earth.

In any case, after some menu moving, King Fugnarus removed the ownership over the braceletFranzs. I knew I recognized it. Keeping my word to not be angry at VifiYok, I didnt question her and instead opened the notes function of the device to only find a single one stored. I opened it, showing Franzs message to me through a blue screen. It was filled with typos.

Dear Hestia,

I know finding what happned through this mesage wouldnt be the most ideal method, but I had to rush. as such, please, excuse the mistakess I made.

To put it plainly, since I noticed a few times how suspicious you loked at me, yes, I did not find about you purely due to the Berliners. My associates, theos who told me about the demonkin, and I have made a deal. I am allowed to utilize their facilities, trainers, netowrk, contacts, and other benefitsalthough, I do not trust themin exchange, I will join their organization as a commander. I will be bringing the others under me, although I have a feeling Takuma wont be too accepting of it. Hopefully, with us revealing the truth to them and also knowing who you are, they will be cooperative.

I also want to admit, I had wanated to meet you at a different time. The call from the church to assassinate you was not planned, in fact, until I saw your dragonewt form after your first encounter with the dargonslayers, I did not know who you truly were. I am sorry for being discreet about it.

I am sorry I cannot join you. I very much want to. However, at the same time, you deserve a better lifea better chance on everything so the same mistake wont happen again! But, I also witnessed how you arent that same Hikari Ive always known, despite being the very same Ive come to love as my cousin. I wont babysit you; youve your own goals, plans, and objctives that only you can fulfill. I too have the same, and to assure my issues and ambitions will resolve themselves, I have to be away from you. I have to be in the Empire with this organization.

I apologize that I left when you fell asleep, but the circumstances did not allow me to stay. Dont worry, the dungeon rules allowed us to leave however we wanted without any consequences.

And, to end it all, you probably cant remember it, but while you were drowsy, I promise to you: I will change the Empire, while you change the Church of Aurena. To fully reconstruct the Church of Aurena, you have to also influence their largest supporter in the Folschreck Empire. However, doing this alone is reckless, and you dont know enough about the Empire to do so.

I do, even if I am still ignorant. You cant change it in a short period of time, the nation is far too large to do so, but that is why I will help you in my own way. I will set the foundation for when you have to make the radical step, for when you enter the Empire as Champion and Idol of Aurena. As one of their blessed. I will not allow the scum and corruption of this despicable country to spoil that light youve regained after so long!

That promise we made for each other when we were still kids I want to see you perform, and I will help you achieve it in the Empire. The greatest star but for that, I have to leave you. Hikari/Hestia, this is from Franz Akabane. I am your cousin, even if we do not share blood any longer. We will meet again.

P.S. I know about Valeria so thats blackmail my associate is able to use to deal with her in case she betrays you. I recommend you keep her close. Her strength might be useful.

I clutched the bracelet, feeling so unsatisfied after reading all of it. This organization he mentioned wasnt even named; he was keeping their name hidden from me. Did he trust me, or what was he planning to do here?!

Franz

I turned to VifiYok. You mentioned trying to stop him. How did they escape?

A void-touched is on their side, someone whos far better than you at the magic. They opened up a giant portal to transport the students out. VifiYok frowned a bit when she mentioned that other person. I had to prompt her to continue, seeing as she might possibly know him. Hey, Im not trying to lie here, okay? They concealed their face, and I honestly have never heard their voice before.

Whats the blackmail?

She froze up when I mentioned that, eyeing the dwarves and elves, prompting me to tell them I would cast an [Air Shield]. King Fugnarus told me he would let me, but he did want to be briefed about it in the future. Considering we were allies, I had to acquiesce to his demand. Regardless, once the shield was up, VifiYok spoke.

That void-touched somehow recognized me before your cousin could tell him who I was. It shouldnt have been enough time to use [Telepathy], I think. The blackmail itself is related to him knowing who I am and implying he might tell Lord Wrath. Unless youre a demonkin in his platoons or one of our helpers you shouldnt be able to recognize me that easily. I was quite new as a Warbringer.

Hes really showing signs of being his father's son. Tatsuya commented from the side, causing me to snap my head over to him. Surprised by this, he apologized and explained himself. His father is known to use literally anything and everything to gain an upper hand. Blackmail, threats, instigating small incidents to discredit people. Worse part, he represents a lot of shady organizations and firms just because of the money.

Kyouya nodded. We already talked about it, but that father is the reason why Tatsuya hates Light, I mean, Franz. Caused a scandal for Tatsuyas father just because he was a business rival for somebody. Well, considering how we now know what Franzs attitude is towards his father, I can guess he must be talking about some corruption within the Empire or something. If we had the chance to speak to Aiko, or any of them, we probably could have figured this out.

So, a shady organization, somebody with [Space-Time Magic], and they are demonkin sympathizers Its a bit early for me to make a guess, but something is telling me the answer is already on the tip of my tongue. I grimaced as only a single name came to mind. Yanderu Eluseuss Of fucking course, they would ruin my life once again. One of their underbosses, Eithalr, bought a ton of the Berliners I first sold there

Eithalr, huh? Streiga mentioned that name once or twice when he talked about you, VifiYok noted, but her composure suddenly changed as she gulped. She looked at me. I

However, the one to bow their head was the former.

Be warned, Manethela, if you fail once again, my master will assure your precious belongings will be destroyed. Your wealth, your memories, everything! The crazed drooling of the dwarf kept going and going, slinging out threats left and right to intimidate the massive being before him.

Was it fear that made the dragon bow, or was this just a chance to bolster the ego of an already broken man before striking?

Work! he shouted before turning around. Yes, that dragon will die, hehehe. Grimnir will die, too, hahaha! Ahahaha, Broggart, you will be avenged by your father and the glory you lost to that damnable nephew of mine will be restored! I will help you! Soon! The ultimate weapon! Just a bit longer, my son; listen to father, ehehe.

Pitiful puppet

Manethela did not fear the dwarf walking away, as he was nothing more than a disillusioned maniac. Still, he listened, for he feared the puppet master behind the deranged and grieving father, for if he were to fail in his task, everything he loved would be lost forever.

He touched his dungeon core, the item he thought of as the only other life he could value was quivering as if it was in pain. The usually azure-blue color was nowhere to see, tainted black by the many deaths happening above this room. Usually, a dungeon would be happy for the many dead visitors, for it would be able to feast on all the mana left behind, but at this moment, it was gaining none of it. Everything was being siphoned somewhere else.

A blue screen appeared before the beings face, revealing a large text log notifying him that the participants on floor 10th had successfully survived the gamble he set up. He couldnt help but smile, for his own play was successful. The people he needed were here, brought to him by the Event Quest.

Chihiro, you junior reincarnator is here. So close. It was fate that we met, but this time, the puzzle pieces are aligning perfectly. All I need to do is to push the rest in.

He clicked a button, opening multiple portals throughout the Event dungeon. Each presented people a trial to take on, allowing them to all skip right down to the eleventh floor.

Chihiro, you might be gone, my beloved, but I will protect your workshop until my dying breath!

A note from AbyssRaven

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Saturday, July 1, 2023 6:47:51 AM Germany [Member of Zard Skwad]

Bio: Hey there, AbyssRaven here. I'm just an avid Light Novel and Fantasy story reader who randomly thought of a story and began writing about it.

I eventually found out that I've been spending a bit too much time with building, planning, and researching for the story, that I've decided to just share it with others.

Writing is mostly a hobby for me, but I would still love any kind of criticism to improve on it.

I'm also german, so please excuse anything that sounds a bit weird...I wouldn't mind you pointing it out though.

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