The youngster mumbled out a thank you. Dawn continued after a firm ‘mhm.’ “Our chosen are around. They function as end bosses for all the current continents. For the moment anyway. A few are very much out of place. Manny, for example, really doesn’t want to be in Midgard, but what do you expect after a multi-millennia crush on Zelia? The flirting is awful. It’s so sappy, but veiled in threats and venomous rhetoric. If you heard them talk, you would swear they were political adversaries out to murder one another. That’s just how they show the other affection.”
Rubbing her forehead, she tried to tally the account. “Let’s see… you likely want to know about yours. We met Vol. Cute kid, complete monster. Joined all the other dinosaurs when they were moved en masse to Jotunheim. We also finally got the dumb realm pressure problem somewhat under control. We can put anything anywhere now, Incarnate bodies rock. Oh, except Hel. The goose rules Hel, with an iron honk. Do not challenge the goose.”
Clearing her throat and dropping the finger she had up from that last statement, she returned to the topic. “Vol will always be a beast beast. He doesn’t care for the idea of honor like the others do, and he just grows differently. Not a shred of interest in humanization. He’s all dino-brain. Yuki’s Incarnate form is a thing to behold. She’s a Jotunheim end boss option, but she hangs out in Asgard because Odin never really stopped being Odin. Halcyon is the combination of everyone’s mother, and resident caretaker. She can be an end boss option? It’s not her thing. She prefers making sure everything works as intended on a social front. Then… there is Zelia.”
From the deep breath the Fire Soul needed to take as she pressed both her hands to her chest, Artorian knew this was going to be a doozy. “Zelia is special. She already had the ability to be anywhere she wanted, but in an Incarnate form? Sweet Cal. I thought I could get mad at someone. She roasted Cal. He had nowhere left to hide. She is the current active end boss on Jotunheim, but she runs a massive secretarial substructure that keeps a great amount of hidden functions working as intended. If you thought the Fellhammer Inquisition was thorough back in Skyspear. *Fwhoooo*. They were banging rocks and making smoke signals in comparison. Zelia is thorough. After that spat with Brianna, Zelia has been the picture of zeal.”
Artorian enjoyed a good laugh. It sounded like his dears were all doing well. He pulled up his status just to check it. Two things of note. One, Dawn had not noticed him do so, and didn’t appear to see it. Two. A particular title was still slotted, and active. “Pleasant to hear. Well, teach me how to walk. Let’s work on this level one business after. One can Calor me interested!”
Dawn groaned at the terrible pun, happy to have something else to work on.
Chapter Twenty-One
Two years later, Artorian had a late epiphany about just how right Dawn had been on his decanting day. There was always something else. Not that this was a great time for reminiscing, as matters were rather chaotic, and he was once again the only voice of reason. “Tom! Slow down. I will not go at your ridiculous pace. Either form up and be a good tank, or die with Henry as you both go gallivanting off into the hordes of poppies.”
The charging duo of Berserker and Folk Hero both chose to ignore the twelve-year-old designated as party healer. Mr. No-Longer-Wrinkles just didn’t carry the authority he’d had as an old man. The things that appearances could do were astounding.
The healer slapped his forehead, turning around to do his best to walk away. It was more of a loose stumble, as travel was still difficult. He barely understood the new system, but his current difficulties had to do with his stat line showing as 0.3s and 0.4s of the normal base average. Artorian stifled grumbles about the treatment even days after puzzling the meanings of this lineup. He could technically tap into his old cultivation and actual mana, but doing so was frowned upon, so he abstained.
These numbers did not represent basic cultivator attributes. They represented basic human attributes. Complete with all the demerits for being a child. Cal could have at least set him at 1.0 to start, whatever that meant, and not make him needlessly suffer. He bet Cal had done it just so he would need to hold Rose or Marie’s hand for long-distance trekking.
Sure enough, he stumbled over harmless grass and a minor difference in elevation. Rose caught him by the scruff of his everwhite robe, and Artorian pulled a dissatisfied scowl when he hung in her grasp like a cheap handbag. She was easily able to lift him like a bundle of arrows, sans quiver. He grumbled. “This is embarrassing.”
Rose laughed at his mumbles, tossing him a few feet into the air so she could draw an arrow; nock it, mow down a line of killer poppies, and catch him on the way down in a single set of fluid motions. Rose and her darn 3.0 modifiers on all her darn stats… She looked over her shoulder, then spoke to him with amusement. “Sunny, looks like you’re up again.”
Artorian just buried his face in both his hands as Rose carried him over to a downed, poppy and posy-covered Tom and Henry. His sass flowed like water. “Let me guess. Tom swung his warhammer, and either missed or forgot that a smashy-strike doesn’t do much against a swarm. Henry was just glad to be out of the capital and decided to forego tactics in favor of fun, because the supposed challenge of the poppies is laughable. They’re now both lying on the ground with their status bars in the red.”
Marie cackled behind them. The kid hadn’t even looked and he’d guessed it in one. Well, not much of a guess when it kept happening. She smiled, but kicked Henry in the foot to get his attention. It didn’t do another point of damage as expected, but the healer was here so it would be fine. “You really need to stop being so haphazard just because you have a title slotted that lets you be resurrected by a relevant ability, regardless of its level or supposed limitations. Lion-phoenix-boy. Or is it gryphon now? You’re relying on that thing far too much, and look at what you’re doing to our poor Artorian.”
Hans appeared with his face next to the boy in question. His voice low, and whisper deep. “I could just assassinate them for you. Poof. No more headache for a full day. We’d all get to go home. Doesn’t that sound lovely. You c—ow!”
Rose bopped him on the top of his head. “You hush! You just want to spend more time with me at home. I see that twinkle in your eye, mister. We are here to practice and test the basics of this temporary zone. It’s not going to exist for much longer and I want my report to be complete, or did you forget how we make money now? Get out there and pick them up!”
Hans pressed his hand to his chest, seemingly offended with a dramatic pout. “I care only for everyone’s greatest well-being. Including that of our poor, poor healer. Yet, as you wish, my love.”
The pirouetting rogue danced into the flowery field, performed a dagger flourish, proudly smiled, and fell over dead. Marie and Rose saw it happen, but didn’t believe it even when Hans’ health bar blinked red. It momentarily cracked to gray as it emptied, Hans remaining flopped on the ground. Rose blinked. “Was that supposed to happen?”
Artorian, being turned the wrong way and unable to see, ventured a guess. “Is he lying down with them to be all dramatic? I bet with one of the posies bardically held to his chest so he can play dead. I heard the flop.”
Marie waved her hand to the poppy field, and activated an ability. “Inspect.”
She remained quiet for a moment, then turned and took off running. Leaving a very confused Rose to turn around and frown as she watched her teammate bolt. “We just reminded Hans that…”
Marie didn’t have time. “Rose, run!”
With the archer turned, Artorian swung his own Inspect at the poppy field. The statuses of the very much dead troublesome trio appeared, along with some disturbing status effects. It wasn’t three allied blue screens that worried Artorian as much as the roughly three hundred forty-something red ones did. Those poppies weren’t a swarm at all! Each was a fully individual monster. Only now that he was within nose-touching distance did he see the relevant information links, as his pathetic Novice level ‘Inspect’ worked for a ch
ange. Another ploy by Cal no doubt, to force someone’s nose so close to a threat that it could jump them.
Artorian instantly agreed with Marie. “Run!”
Rose bolted. Unfortunately, in her haste she also dropped her spare quiver. Having forgotten that said spare quiver was Artorian. He *thunked* against the grassy knoll with an *ooof*. Welp, he couldn’t get back up. He knew this was a party wipe as he read the red screens. These poppies had several ‘fun’ little abilities. Among them:
‘Act as One’: Any number of poppies may share sensory data and active memory, allowing them to share information and act as a unit.
While an individual poppy was as harmless as one might expect, the conjoined abilities made for one evil Cal-quality trap.
‘Strike as One’: Any number of poppies may share their attack feature, combining the resulting damage into that one single strike. As a balancer, the cooldown for the strike also stacks.
Fabulous. Even if a single poppy did at most a single damage, none of them save for their front liners currently had more than a few hundred health. Yet the poppies wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the third ability. Finally, there was:
‘Poppy Possum’: This creature can make it seem that a downed foe is merely ‘dying,’ and their health measurement will show as ‘in the red’ rather than remain shattered to gray.
Artorian had a quick glance at the three blue screens, and saw they were all afflicted by the ‘possum’ status. While he’d initially seen Hans’ health as gray, it now flickered in the final stages of red. Source being the poppies. Yup, that was a personal Cal touch if he ever saw one. People would come attempting to heal the fallen, and they’d only join the pile instead.
“Ah well… so much for this test.” Moving as a unit, the poppies rushed over his prone position to chase after the escaping duo of archer and caster. Given that his perspective blacked out, exited the Eternium dungeon Core, gathered in his Silverwood Core, and reformed in his resting twelve-year-old Incarnate form stationed in Midgard… Artorian figured it was best to call it a day.
“That wasn’t fair, Cal!” Sunny’s ear twitched as Henry yelled at a disembodied entity after getting his Spirit body out of the reclining chair. Which was specifically meant to hold them while they went to go test. “Those were first level enemies and they downed us like chumps!”
Cal was on the nose about the matter.
Henry fell on his butt attempting a rebuttal, nowhere near used to his Incarnate form enough to use it properly. He scowled, and shot the empty air a nasty look. Though, Cal wasn’t there anymore. “This is awful! I figure out how to waddle here, and then get moved to testing where I lose it again. I get the hang of it in Eternium, and then I die and have to re-learn it again once I’m back in this thing.”
Henry’s Aura fielded itself in response to his rant, laying itself heavy on the surroundings. It served only to further detail how defeated he felt. “Then there’s this pain in my Cal! I am never going to get my Aura under control at this rate! *Argh*!”
Artorian quietly snickered, and controlled his own Aura to give the man an example of how it worked. Given that Henry was paying attention… Artorian didn’t get a shred of respect in his child form, so offering lessons had proved fruitless. They just didn’t want to listen to him. Fine.
Tom offered the semi-snickering youth a hand. “A well-fought battle! Youngblood. My thanks for chasing us through the fields. It was a glorious time, and I do not count your support as negligible. I am sorry for my behavior. The exhilaration of new experiences is intoxicating, and I indulge freely when I know there is no true harm that can come of it.”
Cal popped in without warning, his voice concerned as he heard something he didn’t like.
Tom pulled ‘Thud’ off the ground, resting the massive warhammer across both his shoulders. “Of course! Being in the other dungeon Core? It puts us in what I think of as a… a spare body. It’s me, but it’s not me. It’s expendable, and even if I die, I will wake up here. There is no downside to just going wild and having fun, because I will just come back and be free to try again. I have no reason to try to remain serious, and Henry caught onto that fact. I know the rest of our practice team is trying to be all serious, but I simply cannot find the threat to be realistic. No matter the harm I take, and no matter the threat of death. It simply does not matter, and I see the journey only as an opportunity to have fun.”
Cal grabbed his own body and pulled it into the present space. Cale then rolled his shoulders, and strolled up to the bulky Northman. “Tom? Just so I understand you right. You find no challenge to the game? Even if the enemies are tricky, or special, or clever?”
Tom laid his heavy hand on Cale’s shoulder like he was welcoming a brother back into the hall. “Cale! Indeed. Having faced true threats, and having risked my life for far more dire consequences, this facsimile of danger you present at most makes me chuckle. I do not believe it will matter what type of foe you make me face, because when I am in Eternium, I cannot see those fake things as challenges. Whether I live or die does not matter. There is no cost to failure, and there is no enjoyment to the success. There is only my exhilaration for trying out yet another body. Like my friends, I have gone through many now. I see the game you have made only as a challenge in terms of practice for when I am back here. In a place where my true progress matters.”
Cale clearly didn’t like this mindset, but found it hard to rail against it in the current moment. “Well. That’s not what I want. Do you have any suggestions for how it could be more engaging? I understand your mindset, but this feedback is horrible for me since I want to keep people engaged of their own free will. If you go in and start from a place of apathy, I am quite stuck.”
A very frazzled Marie woke up with a gasp from her chair nearby. She was frozen in the moment, but eased when she realized where she was. Stumbling off, she picked up a nearby rock just to angrily throw it onto the ground. “They got me! Those flowery vagrants! I will burn every single poppy I come across, for the rest of always!”
She calmed when she saw the other supervisors looking at her. “I won’t actually… I’m just… venting. I ran out of stamina and the flowers caught up to me. I don’t know how Rose got away.”
Rose woke with her own gasp, and performed the exact same rock smash move Marie had. She would have whined, but Marie addressed her. “Poppies get you too?”
Rose shot her a sharp look. “No! I fell through the floor!”
“Uh oh.” Cale swallowed, choosing this moment to be the perfect time to puff out and not be here. He had some flooring to look at.
While Rose and Marie fired up girl gossip on their grievances, the boys had a huddle. Even Artorian got to be included. Tom started first, a little concerned. “Did I upset Cal?”
Henry shook his head and patted Tom’s back. “No, the way we want to tromp around in Cal’s Eternium just isn’t what he envisioned. My friend, the problem is that you’re correct. It doesn’t work great for us. Hans, do you by chance have a good explanation? I feel like I’m going to fall over my own words.”
Hans smiled like a child handed candy. “Oh yes. It’s like this, Tom-boy. We have been in real, life-threatening situations. The simulated ones don’t register for us as a result. How can something that can’t possibly hurt you be a threat? Especially a place where we have to start over from scratch as a normal, boring nobody. We have spent years, decades, centuries on our cultivation progress to not be where that game starts us. That process is ingrained in us, and when I appear in the fake world, I too feel like being snide for no other reason than: I feel slighted.”
Hans tilted his face, squeezed his lips, and gave a playful mock glare. “
It’s not fun. It’s not a challenge. It’s just being put back in a place we left long ago and have no real interest in. It’s not like it was in Cal’s Soul Space. When we were tromping around in Midgard and making actual friends, progress, and abyss, our own Guilds, I loved that. I love being a Guild leader. Even if I had to merge the bards into my assassin cabal. This? Abyss this.”
Tom nodded in agreement, and Henry couldn’t find a rebuttal. He looked down to see a very pensive healer holding his tiny chin. “What’s on your mind, kiddo?”
Artorian decided it was fruitless to tackle the way he was being titled, so he just got on task. “In my deal with Cal, I essentially promised that I would help him with everything needed if he helped me with my growth. He has helped me with my growth. The A-ranks isn’t nothing, and the early Incarnate form, while an abyss of a pain to get used to, isn’t a demerit either. So when Cale mentioned he wanted us to test this, I was gung-ho and on board from the get-go. Even if I neither understand the way things work in Eternium, nor have a grasp on the math. I really do want to uphold my end of the deal, but if I am being honest, it’s you lot that are giving me the worst of it.”
The trio frowned, and Tom wanted answers. “What do you mean? You are an excellent healer!”
Artorian needed to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment before he could reply. “My friend. There hasn’t been an opponent in Eternium that should have made you need any healing, much less resurrections. I have been killed by horned rabbits, flowers, and the backlash of Henry’s Lion-Phoenix martial arts. Out of those, I needed to resurrect the entire party twice while facing three standard rabbits. I was entirely unable to do anything with the posies, and Henry, that air backlash on your snap kick is so wild that I wonder if you even noticed I was there. I’m not struggling with Eternium because I don’t understand what’s going on, or don’t see the point. That’s not my box of toys. I’m struggling because you’re all being bigger children than the body I’m currently stuck in.”
Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6) Page 17