Rupegia

Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu – Part 1

Today is the 12th.

Yunia wakes me up, making me all giddy when the first things that I see are her deep blue eyes arrogantly looking at me. With her hair straight, she looks even more stern than usual.

Hmm…! Please step on me, onee-san!

She lets my virgin-killer flop back on the bed and swallows with a smug smile, then Alissa immediately dries her lips with a handkerchief.

She then cleans her own mouth and is the first to give me her good morning kiss, like the loyal elven slave whore that she is.

The girls share their own morning kisses, too, and I take pleasure in using [Bind] to make sure that everyone has a good taste of Alissa's tongue.

My [Wind Magic] increased by 2 (now 3+4), my [Redirect Mana] increased by 1 (now 5), and I learned [Piloting] with 1 point.

Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 4+26). Ciel increased her [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 12+18). Lina learned [Water Magic] with 1 point.

Breakfast is the usual charcuterie board, but since the weather is quite warm, we mostly eat fruits and have something similar to Yunia's muesli.

After that, we spend some time maintaining our equipment. I have to "heal" the cracks in my wooden chestplate while the other girls resharpen and oil their weapons. Aoi has learned how to sharpen her claws, so they might as well be considered daggers now.

The golems have quietly been practicing magic while we sleep, so they've improved their [Earth Bullet] quite a lot. It's now at a level where they don't need to use the boulders anymore; they can just cast it and reshape the bullet whenever they need a blunt weapon.

We observe Hana test Jarn's melee skills while Roxanne measures the power of their [Earth Bullet]s. I wish that I could spend more time developing their bodies, but currently, my priority is increasing my and the girls' personal power.

"Why don't you make a golem army?" Yunia asks.

"Because of my memories. These three golems have all of my memories; it's why they're so smart," I answer.

Yunia frowns. "I see… but can't you remove those memories from them?"

"Maybe. I haven't had enough time to research that because I've been focused on other things."

"If we remove their memories, won't we need to teach them everything, then?" Alissa asks.

"Yup, there's that, too. They aren't summons, so, if I create a golem army, I'll need facilities to train them," I respond.

"Then you likely won't create any more like them?" Yunia asks and nods towards the golems.

"Yeah. It's too dangerous to risk my memories being taken, especially now that I know so much more, and in the future, it'll only be worse. Imagine if you had access to all of the memories of a Lord. How much harm could you bring to them because of that?"

"You'd have a limited time to act, but it could be fatal," she answers.

I nod. "And we know that there's a hidden enemy targeting us. The last thing we need is having a golem stolen while we have our backs turned."

We warm-up, then we get ready to return to the dungeon, but we just have a small problem that we didn't foresee: the Hollys I left there are reporting a heavy sense of distress due to the ridiculous amount of mana that the orb has leaked. It managed to avoid creating a storm, but it absolutely filled the room with mana. It even stopped leaking any more because if it did, it would then go past the saturation point and collapse like a black hole, creating a mana storm.

I guess I was too vague. Either it has no frame of reference for how much mana a humanoid can handle, or it's just way too simple-minded for original thought.

First, we teleport to our secret base outside of the dungeon. It's atop an egg-shaped ginormous tree, among the leaves. Quite a comfy place to camp. I half expected that the limbs of the Brutes I teleported would still be here, but since everything disappeared after we cleared the Looping Winds Station, I'm not surprised that there's no sign of them.

Now that we're close to the dungeon, the mana cost of [Gate] going in or out is minimal, allowing us to all cross through at the same time if needed.

I cross the [Gate] first and try to pull in a breath. I feel like I'm going to suffocate, crushed by some sort of pressure and the overwhelming feeling of fear and danger. It's like I'm surrounded by a sea of acid while standing still on an island only as wide as my body. The sea may look innocent, but if I make one wrong move, I'll fall to my death.

I think about bringing the girls and taking the ship outside the Eye, but I'm not sure if turning on the large [Fly] gem is a good idea right now.

"Only Alissa should cross through, the other should stay put until I finish this," I say through [Bind].

The girls grumble a bit, but I apologize and calm them down.

Alissa crosses the [Gate], then gasps and immediately hugs my arm, shaking in fear. I give her the stiffest smile that I've ever smiled and groan, which was supposed to be a forced chuckle that failed to come out.

Her Blessing helps with my concentration, allowing me to increase my focus and better resist the effects of this suffocating amount of mana that's currently overwhelming my senses.

"Calm down," I say with [Godly Language]. The sense of pressure still remains, but my heart rate slows down, and my mind clears, allowing me to focus on something else besides my fear. I could use [Godly Language] to stop feeling fear, but I think that might mess with my decision-making a bit too much.

Alissa is affected by my voice, too, so she calms down and stops shivering.

"I'll start now," I whisper, and she nods.

I spread out my soul all over the room and hesitate for a moment.

This is actually "a little" dangerous. There's going to be a lot of mana radiation once we begin.

I slowly start to morph my soul, making it as similar as I can to the orb's mana, but not exactly the same.

Gify pops onto my shoulder. "Gih."

"Alright."

"Gih."

"Giih…"

"Gih gih."

She guides my attention towards the unstable points, where my soul is too similar to the orb's or where it's too different. Making a homogeneous soul is necessary to prevent the mana from spiraling out of control and forming into a storm.

I start sweating from the tension and effort. I haven't even started the disruption, and I'm already struggling.

"Hngh…" I moan as Gify suddenly starts her massage. My control over my soul almost slips, but then the massage pulls me the other way, helping me focus, instead.

"Gih."

"Alright."

I close my eyes and start meditating, slowly drowning out my unnecessary senses at the same time that Gify reduces the intensity of her massage. I feel like I'm starting to dissociate from my body, as if I'm watching it through a screen and controlling it remotely with a joystick.

My senses fade away until the only one that remains is my "vision" of my soul. Now with enough free mental capacity, I start to become able to differentiate between each of the hundreds of thousands of mana particles inside of my stretched soul.

Little by little, I patch my soul, morphing it closer and closer to the "imperfect" copy that I need.

Suddenly, a part of my soul changes without my command, becoming more similar to what I'm trying to do, then I feel another "presence" near the "me" that's controlling the real "me." I sense a faint image of pointy ears twitching as another part of my soul changes.

Alissa…

Then another presence helps me, and I sense a fearsome smile.

Hana…

A part of my soul is poked, and it's also changed, becoming closer to my goal. I sense a pointy tail doing the poking.

Roxanne…

My soul is shyly touched, as if the person touching it is afraid of breaking it. I sense gloomy, droopy eyes staring intently at me.

Lina…

Then a part of my soul is roughly twisted, becoming less similar to what I want, but it's immediately released. Then, another, much gentler twist comes, and this time it helps me. I sense a toothy grin being sent to me in apology.

And Aoi…

We all work together, meticulously changing my soul with the utmost care, except for Aoi, but she eventually improves her rough handling of my soul.

I lose my sense of time, so I don't know how long it takes. I only know that my mind is getting way too tired.

"That's enough; we don't have much time left," I say through [Bind], and their presences become stronger in my mind as they all pay attention to me. "Now, since you're all here, help me with this. Spread out and follow my lead."

I focus on a chunk of the mana covered by my soul and start exerting my will over it. I "wish" for it to move closer to the orb while carefully reducing its size. The other girls do the same, causing some minor mana leaks, though not enough to cause a chain reaction yet.

Thankfully, the source of the spell is right above the orb, so its soul won't interfere with our attempt, making our job much easier.

Exerting all of my remaining mental capacity, I hold the mana in a small spot, about the size of our "harem-sized" bed. The density is high enough that someone casting a single spell nearby would be enough to make me lose control. The amount of mana is absolutely astounding.

While I wait for everyone, I manage to observe the mana changing. It slowly becomes more similar to my mana signature the longer it remains in contact with my soul. Quite curious.

Our focus starts to slip, and as a consequence, the leaks increase. My feeling of danger intensifies as the velocity of the leaking mana particles increases. If things keep this way, we'll soon have a repeat of the situation with the Light crystals in the Looping Winds Station.

Fortunately, it doesn't take much longer for the girls to be ready. It's time to start the "dance."

I squeeze and expand the mana that I'm holding, creating a "turbulence" all throughout the area that I control.

The orb's spell trembles, immediately feeling the pain of the interference, then the girls follow my lead, increasing the trembling.

The amount of mana leakage skyrockets, but that's slightly beneficial to us, as that mana will bounce back and add to the chaos.

"It's time to cook up a bomb!" I exclaim through [Bind].

I decide to use brute force to "crush" the mana, increasing its density even more.

My will starts to transfer to the mana, giving it a chaotic and explosive aspect. The girls feel my emotions, and their mana starts to gain the same aspects, too. The spell may be divine chaos, but it's certainly not the same as some good old explosions!

The spell's integrity starts to take a hit, and its "black hole" presence in our minds starts to deform. Its control over the islands declines, and the cycle of creation and destruction is broken.

I start to receive some worried feelings from the girls as they lose control over the mana.

"On my mark, we crush it once and release!" I order.

Disrupt, annihilate, defile, desecrate, sacrilege. I fuel these feelings into the mana to act as the complete opposite of the spell. Of these, I'm very familiar with at least one of them.

I watch the mana closely, then I finally sense it: the vertex, the knee in the curve. The mana has a perfect balance between my signature, the orb's, the explosion aspect, and the divine spell's aspect. Interruption efficiency: maximum.

"NOW!"

We crush the mana, then release it. I hug Alissa and open a [Gate] back to the other girls. The mana explodes with pure chaos, the particles attract one another and whirl into orbits around the spell. The aspects given to the mana prevents the particles from quickly calming down, and their density causes the shock waves to echo repeatedly through the center as they collide, continuously bleeding off any speed that the particles may have gained.

Like throwing a wrench into a machine, the spell suddenly cracks, then violently breaks apart into huge chunks. The spell spins out of control for a moment, but then its "constructs" fade into nothing since the orb can no longer manipulate them.

The volcano islands become mere husks, completely exhausted of their violent eruptions; the crashing islands break into multiple, uneven parts, which causes them to lose stability or fall out of the sky because the remaining crystals aren't enough to hold them aloft anymore; the drifting islands lose their speed and stop, becoming inert and harmless; the elementals are no longer fueled by the divine spell, weakening them until they die and return to being just another part of the elements; last of all, the fury of the wind is snuffed out, and it stops blowing, leaving the surviving islands in peace.

The shock waves end, but now there's a mana storm all throughout the Eye, and it's so powerful that it might even be lethal for us if we stay there for too long.

But the ship…

My body is fine, but my mind is exhausted. I've spent so much time concentrating and using my will to control my spirit that I feel like I've pulled a muscle inside my brain or soul. But it's not over… almost, but not yet. There's still one last thing that we must do.

"HELP ME CONTROL THE STORM!" I yell, worried about our ship.

I open a [Gate], and we all cross through, then we immediately use [Redirect Mana]. We struggle to hold the mana back, feeling like powerful waves are repeatedly hitting us from all directions. We first take hold of the mana nearest to us, making it stop, then use it as a shield against further waves.

Once things calm down a little, I notice that a tornado is forming above the orb, where the divine spell was before. It starts sucking in the air, which also brings the dense mana with it, then the tornado bends forward and sends all that mana-rich air outside of the Eye.

With the orb's help, it only takes us two minutes to send the mana storm out of the room. The storm will continue for a short while, but now that it's in the open, its lifespan has been shortened by a lot.

I check our "Status," and see that we each lost a few health points. We also have "Mana Radiation Sickness" in our "Status Effects," so Ciel and I spend a short while casting [Heal]s on everyone until that goes away.

Lina looks at the ship and says, "I'll inspect the gem."

"Alright," I respond, and she scurries away.

Enchantments can be weakened or even fully destroyed if left for too long inside a mana storm, so we have to check the ship for any damage.

Now that things are calm again, we turn to the orb.

"So… now that the spell's gone, is there a better way for us to communicate besides using the platforms?" I ask.

We spend a few moments in silence, waiting for an answer, then the platforms around us start to move.

They all suddenly float up, then aggregate above the orb. They break and grind against one another, being forcefully shaped by an impressive amount of force coming from the orb. Over just a few seconds, the mass of broken rocks takes the shape of an androgynous face. Its expression is neutral and a bit gentle, but it's also as stiff as a statue.

"Hello…?" Ciel greets it tentatively.

The bald rock-face tilts gently in acknowledgment but doesn't say anything.

"I assume that you can't speak?" Yunia asks, and the… Core nods.

"Were you forced to keep that maelstrom spell going?" I ask, and it nods. "Do you know why?" It shakes its head.

"Are you a person?" Ciel asks, and it shakes its head.

"Wow… are you like a golem, then?" Roxanne asks.

The head tilts to the side, probably to indicate confusion.

"Is there a reason that you wanted to have the spell interrupted instead of us just destroying you?" I ask, and it nods.

A small amount of mana starts to gather in front of us. We get a little tense, trying to understand what is going on, then I sense that it's related to [Space Magic].

A small dot appears, then it grows into a vertical black disk, similar to a [Gate].

Wait…

It keeps growing until it's twice as wide as our ship, then it suddenly becomes white and blotches of color start to appear, as if it was a canvas being painted with watercolor. After a few seconds, it finally becomes recognizable: we see the Looping Winds and an unfamiliar sky behind it. The Core just created an [Eternal Gate].

We see some huge islands in the background, and we notice that a few of them seem to have towns on them.

"That's… the urban islands," Lina says.

"It's a huge shortcut," I say, and she nods.

Not destroying it now will have us pass up on possible Experience, but we'll still receive it one day when we destroy the dungeon's core. This [Eternal Gate] is also likely to save us a few days, but we'll lose out on any loot that would've been on our way.

"Is there anything valuable to us that we might miss if we take this shortcut?" I ask, and it shakes its head. "Wait… do you actually know what's out there between us and the exit of this [Eternal Gate]?" It nods.

"Will this [Eternal Gate] help us skip something dangerous?" Alissa asks, and it nods.

"What did the Scanner detect between the maelstrom and the urban islands?" I ask Lina.

She pulls out the maps that we made and starts inspecting them.

"The long calm, the huge asteroid, the spikes, the colossi, the spiral, and the valley," she answers, listing off the names we gave to those areas.

So, those were probably environmental challenges instead of combat ones… except for the colossi?

"I wanted to see the colossi," Hana says tentatively and grins without shame.

The colossi are six island-sized winged beings fighting an eternal battle around the Looping Winds.

"Well, seeing them and flying in between them are two completely different things," Yunia says with a wry smile.

"To be honest, they looked really impressive in the Scanner," Lina shyly says.

"See?!" Hana exclaims and points at Lina.

"Don't encourage her," Ciel says in a low tone, and Lina pouts.

I massage my temple with my palms. I'm so tired that I can't properly make a decision right now.

"I think that we should just cross the [Eternal Gate], but I'm way too tired to think straight, so let's rest for a bit first," I say.

While I lay down on the sofa and Hana gives me a brain massage, Ciel and Yunia try to understand the Core a bit better.

It's a rather single-minded being whose only wish is to keep its islands safe and sound. Before we interrupted the spell, it also wished to stop it since it kept destroying their islands. Even though the spell also made sure that new islands were birthed, the Core wanted to prevent them from being destroyed in the first place.

It really does remind me of the golems, but it's far "stupider," and it also doesn't have any of the memories of its creator. It's like someone managed to isolate a sub-process and then inserted that into the core.

"It's kinda cute," Roxanne says.

"Almost like a pet," Hana says with a gentle smile.

"A pet has a far greater capability to learn," Ted says.

"But it doesn't have such a developed understanding of speech," I say.

"It's understanding of speech is unnecessary since the Core has too few functions," Suzy says.

I smile and turn to face the golems. "Jealous?" I ask.

"We do not feel jealousy," Ted says.

"But we do understand the Core's limited usefulness," Suzy says.

"The Core does not have the aesthetic value required for a pet, and neither does it have the intellect required for a servant," Jarn says in her echoing voice. Her metallic body distorts her voice a little.

I give them a shit-eating grin as I say, "We could use it for an interesting experiment. It would certainly entertain my scholarly curiosity about artificial intelligence for a while… like a pet project."

"A pet is not the same as a pet project," Ted says.

"But you understand that the Core can entertain us?" I ask.

"Yes, but the Core does not meet the requirements to be a pet or a servant," Suzy says.

I tug my chin and ask, "What about you three?"

"We are both," Ted and Suzy say in unison.

"I am only a servant," Jarn says.

"Please give each of us an attractive body so that we can fulfill more of your needs," Ted asks.

"I will," I respond and chuckle.

Lina pats Ted's head. "You'll be beautiful, one day," she says.

"I think that going for cute fits the two small ones better, but Jarn definitely needs a killer body," Hana says and smiles as she imagines how hot we could make Jarn.

"I'll keep that in mind," I say with a wry smile.

My headache eventually fades, and we decide to move on.

"The shortcut is just the best bet overall," Yunia says.

"But the colossi…" Hana moans.

Ciel smiles wryly and says, "I'd like to see them, too, but the Core says that there's little to gain by going the long way. Well, besides learning how to pilot the ship better."

Hana pouts and nods in defeat.

We activate the ship and start to fly towards the [Eternal Gate]. Lina says that the gem lost some efficiency because of the mana storm, but it'll be fine.

We wave to the Core, and it creates a small rock-hand and waves back at us.

We cross through the [Eternal Gate] and get back into the Looping Winds. The gate stays open, but we're moving pretty fast, so it quickly gets left behind and shrinks into the distance until it disappears from our sight.

Onwards to victory!