“How long does it take for someone to monsterize?”
The rest of the room fell silent at that. It was the young woman he was attempting to study who responded.
“It… takes weeks… months for some… I’m not sure… but it usually is a month or two,” she replied with some trepidation and despair.
“Months? But…”
Then… it’s not… something else is happening. How … focus… focus.
Joe turned his attention back to solving the problem and swapped out his unneeded jobs and added education theorist and faith theorist. The education theorist would offer information about diagnosis and possibly how to implement it better while the faith theorist might be able to help him with some curses. As he wasn’t exactly sure what questions to ask for the educational issues, he focused on asking faith theorist about curses.
Faith guidance, explain to me all data pertaining to curses, their causes, consequences, results, efforts to cure them, process of curing them, and how to identify curses so as to cure them. Give me everything about what curses are.
Joe wanted nothing to do with the help anymore with how unhelpful the whole thing was and went for overkill. I’ll just read it all if I have to. Faster than having to try to ask the right freakin’ question to get the answer I need. Joe sighed and waited patiently for a few moments until a rather large box flipped up in front of him. He smiled. Finally, something useful.
Curses: Curses debilitate the user in a variety of ways. There are a variety of curses. Curses are caused by an individual or an item created by an individual. The consequences of a curse are varied and many.
Curing Curses: Apply the appropriate cure curse of the appropriate god or goddess or combination of appropriate gods or goddesses. Simply enact the cure curse to create the desired effect.
Identification of Curses: Find the result(s) of the curse, method of curse generation, and / or area of curse affectation to discover the gods or goddesses needed to cure the curse. Or, have an appropriate identify skill. Or, enact your #&$& (#&@ $&@*. @()&# @)*# $&$ @@& ! @&$^ @)#*@. Final option unavailable to Aelthron’s Cradle.
Specific Curses: See list of curses.
OK. Maybe not so useful… basically what we already know. Joe frowned, grateful for the information shown, but at the same time finding it to be utterly useless for what he needed. He knew what a curse was. He knew the basics of how to cure it, and had the generic information about it. Three options to discover the cure, two unavailable to me… no identify skill and last one… can’t be used in this Cradle? Here? Why? That’s… Joe dismissed that piece of information and continued on. As his eyes panned down the box, his fingers automatically itched to hit the link to the list of curses, but then stopped. That’s a rabbit hole I don’t need right now. I’m looking at an unknown curse… useless at the moment… and tens of thousands long, at least… if every god and goddess has their own curse plus every combination of gods and goddesses! That’s insane! That would be…. Ooh! Faith guidance, who are the gods and goddesses?
Gods and Goddesses (Currently Available): Othen, Sigyn, Freya, Plutus, Frer, Eros, Fenrir, Frigg, Tyr, Sors, Baldur, Idunn, Angrboda, Mimir, Bragi, Saga, Enki, Thur, Joro, Loki.
Currently available? There are ones not? Or… why wouldn’t they… And even then… twenty gods and goddesses… that’s… twenty factorial… that’s… that’s a LOT of combinations… gotta be like… over a million? Even a billion… maybe? Way too many to just… randomly guess at it. Twenty times nineteen, times eighteen, times seventeen… that’s… twenty squared is four hundred… hundred squared hits sixteen thousand… yeah… we got another six numbers over ten… that’s another six zeros minimum… so… already a million… just multiplying by ten… not the actual number… were looking at well over a million… even over a billion!… I would guess… I wonder how much? And if order matters! Then… that’s just, so we gotta … If we … no… no… not important now! On to other things
Joe once again shook his head free from distractions and turned back to the problem at hand. His mind began clawing at the problem of getting his diagnosis to work and struggled to formulate questions that could help him. As he thought, a commotion came in from behind him and a couple of priests of knowledge came into the room. Joe glanced back but Kukurnal was already standing and moving to their side, including the rude priest from before. The two quickly began speaking to the new priests and Joe decided to give his mind a rest and asked the question he had before.
“Do people who have become monsterized… because of breeding… do they have cores?”
One of the new priests stepped forward, glancing at Kukurnal before beginning, “Yes, eccentric, although they do take some time to grow a core.”
Joe cocked his head at that, “I thought they died?”
The priest nodded, “They do. They die when the core is formed.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Joe blinked, surprised, “Oh! That… OK… guess that makes sense.”
Joe paused at that, then glanced back at the girl he’d been testing. He thought back to the monsterization percentage and then felt his face fall, growing grim. He turned to look at the woman.
“I am sorry… this is not pleasant, but could you tell me if there are other’s who were here longer? Or … are you…new? I… Please.”
She looked at him, her face falling slightly before she nodded, “I am not the longest. There are many others who have been here longer.”
Joe nodded, standing and leaving her, “Give me a moment. I’ll be right back, but… I need to check the others.”
He stepped up to the room and knocked on the door hard, “Is everyone decent? May I come in?”
There was a scramble of movement on the other side of the door before a guard opened the door and poked her head out, “It would be best if you did not. Allow them their dignity.”
Joe nodded, but then shook his head, “Some are close to monsterization. I need to make sure they are OK.”
The guard shook her head, “We found them. It is taken care of.”
Joe blinked at that, then growled, “You killed them?”
“Yes.”
He grimaced and pushed the door open, “Get them covered and out of my way! Move!”
The guard struggled against him, pushing, but was unable to do anything, but quickly stopped when Gwenvair ran up.
“Allow the eccentric in. Allow him his work.”
The guard looked at Gwenvair before bowing and stepping back, “Of course, First in Line for Matriarch.”
The guard stepped back and let Joe through and he quickly stepped in but stopped to give the girl’s time and give a warning, “Please cover yourself quickly, a man is coming in. I need to check your monsterization levels. Please.”
There was a renewed commotion of movement, some sobs, and soft cries of endured pain. Joe grimaced at that, “Do not kill anyone else! Stop!”
Joe refrained from entering, but he did tremble at the threshold for a few moments until the shuffling movements ended and he stepped in, stepping from person to person while casting diagnose on each woman and speaking.
“Please do not despair. I’ve already revealed that there is a curse and we can see it on your status. If you wish to check, please open your status and go to the curse page. You will see a curse displayed there.”
About half the girls around the room opened up their status, and he took a moment to point out the new curses tab and when they opened it, several of them began crying, but a couple seemed surprised and a small light of hope lit in their eyes. These women quickly turned to the others crying and explained while one young woman was brave enough to confront Joe directly.
“You… you found the curse?”
Joe nodded, not looking up or stopping as he moved from woman to woman sending out diagnose after diagnose, “Yes. It’s the curse of mana corruption. I am now attempting to find a cure. I hope I can do so rather quickly, so please, do not… do not lose hope.”
There was a clatter of whispers and exclamations but Joe ignored them, cataloguing each girl carefully by their monsterization levels. He struggled to ignore the corpses of the few women the guards had already killed. He stifled his sigh and returned to classifying each of the women’s monsterization levels. About half way around the circle, one of the women asked to see her curse, and obliged, pointing out the curse tab and the curse. The woman clicked her curse and its explanation window came up, displaying the information and a corruption of sixty eight percent. When his diagnose completed, he noticed that her monsterization was also at sixty eight percent. Huh… Wonder…
He then began having each of the girls as he continued to bring up their curse information as well, and he was able to quickly verify that the corruption and monsterization seemed to be linked… or identical? Same thing? Not…
After going through all the girls, he nodded and stepped back, “These three girls here are the closest, but they should still be quite fine, I believe. Please give me time.”
The women listening nodded, a bit more hope coming into their eyes before Joe looked to the three girls he’d pointed out as the worst.
“Do you… you have been here for quite a while, yes? The longest?”
Two of the girls were too shell shocked to respond, but one was strong enough to follow along with Joe’s comments before and she quickly nodded, “Almost two months, eccentric.”
“You are certain?”
She nodded firmly.
“Anyone else longer than you here?”
“I do not think so, eccentric, but it was… difficult to tell… how we were held.”
Joe grimaced and nodded, “Thank you… I will do my best!”
She smiled, “Thank you. You do so much… for us. I am very grateful. We all are grateful, eccentric.”
Joe smiled and nodded, “I will do my best.”
Joe then turned and left the room, the guards already moving the three girls Joe pointed out off to the side away from the others. When Joe made it outside, he went back to focusing on the young woman he’d been first using all his exploration on and returned to his efforts. He had her bring up her curse window as well, keeping it open. Her curse was still at the same percentage as before. So… if I can figure it out… great… otherwise, focus on getting information from the curse. So… then… what are my next questions… maybe… hmmm… I need to figure out the time necessary and how to better use my diagnose… that’s… that’s all education guidance… um… Education guidance, how do I know how much time is needed to reveal curse details using diagnose?
Curses and Diagnose: Reveal how much time is necessary with each use of diagnose upon each curse or seek out knowledge.
Oh come on! Seriously… what the… Joe grimaced and cut off his anger, heading to his next question. Education guidance, how do I reveal time to completion on diagnosing a curse?
Curses and Diagnose: Maintain diagnose within your Presence and apply Presence to your diagnose, then reveal the time through diagnose’s reporting construct.
That… ok… uh… that’s actually useful! Why is that… never mind. Can do. Next question. Education guidance, how do I add… uh… no… um… I mean…
Education guidance: inarticulate input.
Alright… you know what? Ha ha! Very funny… pot calling kettle much? Joe swiped away the newest box and quickly reiterated his question. Education guidance, how do I extend the time of diagnose?
Diagnose – Extend time: Add more mana to initial construct creation. Or add mana to constructs throughout diagnose operating time. Or connect diagnose constructs to mana source to be powered throughout diagnose operating time.
Hmm… then… can I… uh… Education diagnose, can I combine all three of these methods to extend diagnose time?
Diagnose – Extend time: Yes
OK… I got this… so… first… uh… try to add the time display? I think that would be… well… do I want time or just a progress bar? A percentage? Hmm… percentage would be nicer… just a number… add it to the reporting construct… uh… need my presence first then…