“Can I come with?” I asked curiously. “Want to see how you manage things around here. I mean, it’s got to be a lot of work to do on your own.”
Irena’s footsteps paused after I asked that, and she seemed to be struggling to decide. After a moment, however, she nodded her head slightly. Following that, the two of us proceeded to move out of the bedroom and into a long hall, at the end of which was a single door. The hall had a simple wooden floor with white painted walls and ceiling, so there was not exactly a lot to look at.
However, when we made it to the next room, I saw a throne in the center of a large room. The throne was seated atop a raised pillar, which Irena flew up to. Since I was here to simply observe, I didn’t go up there to join her. I would likely only be getting in the way if I did so.
* * *
“You may enter.” A cold voice rang out beyond the door to the palace of the Goddess of the Underworld. This caused the figure standing there to shake uncontrollably. It was not that she normally had a caring personality, but the Goddess seemed worse than usual right now.
“Y-yes.” He said, hurriedly opening the doors and stepping through. As usual, he found the Goddess upon her throne, but this time there was something different. At the back of the room, next to a door that nobody ever uses, was a daeva that the man had never seen before. He just stood there calmly, looking between Irena and the man, as if watching a performance.
“You have something to report?” Before the human spirit could think about this new character for too long, the Goddess’s cold voice snapped his attention back to her. He could see barely restrained fury within her eyes, and knew that delaying would be… unhealthy.
“Y-yes. This one has been tasked with providing a report to your majesty.” The spirit bowed down low, as if breaking eye contact would direct the fury he had seen to go elsewhere.
“Get on with it, then.”
“Of course.” Even with his body being already dead, he could feel a cold sweat gathering. “Today, a large number of an unidentified race has appeared at the borders of the city, and we felt that this matter should be brought to your attention.”
“I am aware of the matter already.” She spoke briefly. “Is there anything else.”
“A-ah. Yes… this..” The man tried to figure out how to ask what he needed to ask, the second reason he had been elected to talk to the Goddess. As a member of the governing council, he had the chance to converse with the Goddess, and the obligation to do so in emergencies. “This voice that everyone is hearing-”
He did not even finish his words when a heavy pressure forced him to his knees. Looking up, he knew it was from her. “You do not need to know of these things.” He could feel the venom in her voice, and knew that if he tried to press the subject, he might not live to regret it.
“U-understood, Goddess.” His entire body shook, trying to force himself to his feet, but simply being unable to.
“Is there anything else?” He barely managed to lift his head to look at her, seeing that her patience had almost reached its limit. There had been other matters he had been sent here to discuss, but he knew that he had no chance of going over them at this time.
“N-no. That is all.” As soon as the words left his lips, the pressure on him changed. From pushing him to the floor, it wrapped around him and flung him out the door before he could even make a sound. By the time he noticed he had even moved, he was slamming against a wall over a hundred meters away from the palace.
After he recovered, he couldn’t help but think about the figure that had calmly stood at the side, in a place none had dared to stand before. How that figure had simply watched Irena, as if measuring her. He felt an all new series of chills running down his spine at that.
* * *
“That seemed a bit extreme.” I spoke after the elf spirit had been abruptly tossed from the room. It was obvious that he was afraid of Irena, and that she seemed a bit upset. Most likely, she hadn’t planned on anyone interrupting us.
“Sorry.” She said, turning her head away. Though, her voice had lost its coldness, becoming a bit more gentle. “Really, though, you do seem to enjoy making things difficult.” She uttered that last bit with a sigh, just barely loud enough for me to hear.
“Huh? Did something bad happen?” I was confused by that statement, not knowing what she meant.
“Those announcements, of course. Though, I guess you probably didn’t have another way to do it easily, did you?” Ahh… well, I could have had the pantheon pass down the information, but this seemed more efficient? “Wait, you did?” She saw the guilty look on my face, and performed the underworld’s first facepalm.
“Uhm… maybe? But it was either that, or repeat it to every god and goddess, and have them do it. Seemed like a better idea to just do it myself.”
Irena let out another sigh. “Well, looks like you’re stuck doing that now. Two announcements like that in a single generation, the image has already been set.”
Oh… “Didn’t really think that far ahead… Any other crucial mistakes I should be aware of?”
Irena seemed to think about it far longer than I was comfortable with. “Not that I can think of right now.” She shook her head and stood from the throne. “Now, where were we?”
“You were just about to explain how the Reaper class powers worked.”
Smiling, Irena nodded her head once. “Aha, that’s right. Well… actually, the Reaper class is pretty complicated. For a soul spell to trigger, you don’t simply need an image of the spell. You need a complex image, and you need to pour your will into that image. From what I’ve seen, there are some ways to identify patterns between the images, but I have only managed to take it so far.”
“Would you mind giving me a demonstration?”
She nodded her head again, flying down to land in front of me. “Alright. Let’s start with a simple one, a spell I made myself after analyzing what other Reapers were able to produce. This is the image needed for that spell.” Irena held one hand out, and above it was a floating golden wheel with six spokes.
“And the spell it produces… Don’t worry, this doesn’t hurt.” Uh oh, I didn’t really like the sound of that. As the image above her hand faded away, six golden rods of light slammed into me from all sides, pinning my body in place. Surprisingly, they held no physical presence, but simply having them in contact with my body seemed to paralyze me, even the parts that were not touching them.
I had to wait for her to cancel the spell before I was even able to talk. “W-what was that?”
“I call it the Binding Wheel. You can already guess what it does, so I won’t bother with that explanation. Essentially, the image you produce in your mind will have an impact on the spell. I picture a wheel with six rods, and six rods hold you in place.”
“Oh… I see.” This is not how I expected the Reaper magic to work. I thought that it might use spell diagrams like the living magic, or work purely based on imagination, but not… whatever this was. “I think it might be better to stick with the Spirit Hunter class…” At least that one I was able to use whether I was in the afterlife or the living world, and it seemed considerably easier to manage.
Irena nodded her head softly. “That’s understandable. Is there anything else you want to do while you are here?” Her voice seemed to hold some hope, as if she wasn’t ready for me to leave just yet. It’s understandable, really. I mean, when making her personality I made it so that she loved me, and this was the first time we had ever spent an extended period together. I’d be surprised if she was ready for it to end so quickly.
However, a thought did occur to me. “Well… there is one thing I want to do, but I need to get an answer from you, first.”
“Of course, anything you need.” She seemed happy that I was not leaving yet, but I doubt she would do anything more than secretly pout if I had.
“When a Spirit Hunter makes an item, is there any way to recover the Spirit Energy they use in it, aside from absorbing the
item back into themselves?”
Irena thought about that for a short moment, but then nodded her head. “Yes, as long as you are within the underworld, your Spirit Energy will recover at a natural rate. If you are in the mortal world, you would have to acquire the energy from other sources.”
I nodded my head slightly, and then considered the total SE I had at my disposal. “Alright, then I’d like to make something. Think of it as a decoration for your house.” Irena’s smile brightened when she heard that, but her jaw dropped when she saw me moving to the door.
“Y-you mean outside?” She asked, her voice seeming to indicate she was practically panicking.
“Yeah, is that a problem?” I asked curiously.
“No…” She said after a long moment. “But, we should take steps to make sure that you aren’t seen. Or, do you want your reputation to climb even higher?”
I… hadn’t thought about that. “Okay… do what you have to do.” I gave her my approval as I began walking to the door again. I had barely taken a step outside when a large black wall rose up around the courtyard, completely sealing off the palace. Sheesh… a little overboard?
* * *
A strange sight occurred that day in the underworld, in the vicinity of the Goddess’s Palace. First, one of the leading members of the council had been forcibly thrown out. Then, not ten minutes later, a man had emerged from the palace, one nobody had ever seen before. As soon as he emerged, as if to hide his identity a massive wall was raised around him. None could see through the wall to know what was going on, and they could not tell whether it was the man himself who created the wall, or their Goddess.
All they knew was that a wall had been formed as soon as anyone could see his face, and that when the wall was gone, a work of art appeared in front of the palace that astounded everyone. A large, stone pillar over five meters wide and ten tall stood at the center, with ten figures surrounding it. The pillar itself was unimportant, but the figures left everyone speechless.
Standing facing away from the palace was the Goddess Irena, whom everyone recognized. Among the other nine, many people were able to place names to them, despite having never seen them before. They were all the gods and goddesses, who were known to each of their races the moment they were born. Each one facing away from the pillar, as if protecting it.
What, then, did the pillar signify? Was it the world, with the gods and goddesses protecting it from harm? Some thought that might be the case, but many had a different opinion. Many believed that the pillar was someone whom even the gods must obey. They stood, not to protect the pillar, but to simply stand with it. People began imagining that an eleventh figure stood atop the pillar, standing above the gods themselves. However, no such figure had been created with this work of art, leaving them confused for its true purpose.
Chapter 37
“Dale… did you have to make something so showy?” Irena asked me with an almost pained sight after I went back into her home. What? I’m rather proud of it! Thankfully, this worked to finish my old quest to put Terra’s image into the world, though I currently didn’t qualify for the priest class, due to it not being available for the daeva and spirits.
“What’s the matter with it?” I asked curiously, watching as she lowered the giant black wall around the building.
“Nothing, really… But why did you arrange them like that? Doesn’t it look a bit… I don’t know what to call it…” Irena had her eyes directed outside still, and I knew she was looking in the direction of the new monument.
“Hmm? I thought it made the most sense. I mean, all of the gods should have an equal standing, in order for nobody to be prejudiced. And with them arranged in a circle around the pillar, it shows that they can watch over the entire world.”
“I see…” She merely sighed, reluctantly accepting my explanation. I wasn’t sure why, but she still had a somewhat conflicted look on her face. “Is there anything else you wanted to do while you were here?”
I thought about that for a few moments, and then nodded. “There’s not much I want to do while here, but I’d like to ask you a few questions, make sure I understand how the afterlife is being run.”
Irena nodded, leading me back towards the bedroom. “Ask away, then.”
“Alright… First, I guess this has been bothering me a little bit, but how do you handle families here? I mean, often only one or two members of a family die at a time, so it’d be easy for them to get separated here.”
Irena glanced at me for a moment before providing her answer. “That is a… complicated subject, and one I am not entirely equipped to handle. My powers do not currently extend to being able to read everyone’s family ties. If they don’t die together, I imagine that many families are separated upon arrival. In the case where a family is strictly needed, such as for a child waiting for their rebirth, I have a council that puts them with families that will care for them.”
I nodded my head at that. With the number of children dying every day, it’d be hard for Irena to personally find homes for every one of them. “Then, what about monsters? Surely they are still a problem after coming here?”
Her brows furrowed a bit at that question, as it seemed to be a touchy subject. “Yes, they are. Many of them try to attack as soon as they are brought to the afterlife. I have considered splitting the afterlife to allow a land for the monsters to exclusively roam, that way the sapient ○beings do not have to fear them.”
“Are… you able to do that?” I looked to the goddess in mild surprise. Something like splitting the entire afterlife, which was essentially a whole world, seemed like something that only a Keeper should be able to do.
“I… think it’s possible. You made this entire realm my domain, so I feel as if I am able to do anything here. Though, I do believe that I have limits. For instance, I can’t look into the minds of any of the daeva or spirits. I can look into what they were doing immediately before death, but aside from that I am left to my own devices. Upon arriving, they have a mark on their soul that shows how evil or good they had been in life, but I believe that is a feature you put into the afterlife itself, not one of my powers.”
I nodded my head slightly. That did fit with what I had described this afterlife as to the system. Maybe I should add in more systems to support it? Something like a karma or alignment system. Stuff like that should already be readily available on the market,
“Is there anything else you wanted to ask?” Irena’s question snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, well. I guess there’s one thing. Is there anything you’d like me to do to make the management of the afterlife a bit easier for you?”
Irena looked at me in shock at that, and then sank deep into thought as we arrived at the bedroom. “I think most of my problems will be solved after society advances a bit more. However, do I have your permission to isolate the monster spirits in a separate section of the underworld?”
I blinked rapidly, turning my head to look at her. “Why are you asking me for permission? This is your domain, as you said.”
The daeva goddess smiled slightly. “True, but this is a decision that will affect the course of history. It is not something I can arbitrarily decide on my own.”
What, so only I am allowed to make arbitrary decisions like that? I sighed inwardly. “Sure, go ahead. It should make things easier for you here.” I nodded my head, and Irena smiled, closing her eyes.
* * *
Throughout the underworld, several villages had been set up. Though none rivaled the size and population of the capital city, where the Goddess herself resided, they were by no means unpopulated. However, they were also more prone to attacks from the monster spirits who held no regard for the Goddess’s rule.
Every village raised people of great fighting ability in order to defend their village. This was because, if a monster spirit got ahold of you, they would eat that spirit, consuming its life force to become stronger. Although the Goddess would personally intervene if a part
icular monster became too powerful, many villages were left to themselves.
That was, until one day, when many of the villages had been attacked by the standard hordes. However, this time, before any real damage had been done, the monsters seemed to vanish from existence, fading into the mists surrounding the village. Moments later, some of the furthest villages from the capital noticed a truly remarkable sight.
A giant palm came down, turned to the side as if chopping through the air. Where it passed, the grey mist ripped apart. When that hand struck the ground, the land shook. Afterwards, when the hand faded away, it seemed as if there was no longer anything beyond where it had struck. No monsters, no grey mist, nothing. The afterlife was safe, or so it would seem.
On the other side of the fence, the monsters scurried back away from that hand, which had cut them off from their primary food source. Some who had devoured various spirits had gained a semblance of intelligence, and then turned their hunger towards other monsters. Seeing this, more of the lesser monsters followed this example, and the monster’s side of the afterlife became a hellish pit of constant fighting.
World Keeper: Birth of a World Page 28