What I did was run away from there. I tried not to think about it, tried to act normally, but the truth was that the destroyed city gave me the creeps. The Black Dragon King was a necromancer dragon that cast a curse to zombify an entire kingdom. Even though I collected most of his blood when I killed it, what seeped into the Earth created an undead Dungeon, an open-air one. The crater now filled with water was an order of magnitude worse than that.
What the fuck did I do there? I knew I had blanks in my memory, I knew I screwed up over and over. It was driving me crazy, so crazy that I barely interacted with the elves aside from introducing them. I might've overreacted with the priests too. I have no idea.
I used a fairy gate to the easternmost fairy ring in Fulgen and then slipped into the Ethereal. Then I flew to the plains. Home. I landed on a hillock and decided to do something about my anxiety.
I checked my System notification backlog. I rolled back to the arena. The rank-up message to rank 2 after Pandora got the new aspect. Everything before that seemed to be untouched. Then I replayed the notifications one by one. Murder, murder, murder, level up message, more murder.
Skipping to the day of the explosion, I found the messages when I activated my auras all at once. There was nothing about my combat with the golden-dragon-armored [Paladin]. Or about my fight with the tentacle monster. Neither the zombies.
There was no message about the spell I used to destroy the city. Was that me? Enantinos said so. Nenandil hinted at it. Worse, if I killed all that people, where are the Exp messages?
I had two answers from the System about queries I made. One returned "twelve", the other "nine days". Without the context, I had no idea what they were.
"System, can you give me the command for the last query I made that returned 'twelve'?"
> ACKNOWLEDGED. The query was:
>
> COUNT(*)
>
> FROM TABLE.recently_killed
>
> WHERE _level = 0
>
> AND _status = CONST.DECEASED
>
> AND _killer_id = [REDACTED]
>
> AND _attack_id = [REDACTED]
Level zero people killed by me, probably. Basically how many children someone killed. It happened right after the massive blank after activating the auras. "Nine days" should be the age of these children. I killed them, probably. There are twelve silk-folk babies in Enantinos' keep. It matched.
From the end of the "Mad Bounty" and there, we had just little more than a week. Damn, I killed everyone in town. I felt terrible. Next, there were some trashy notifications not worthy of note, and a call. I pulled the call log.
> [Administrator Hotline]
>
> CALL START
>
> Wyxnos: What the fuck did you just do?
>
> Snowdrop: Good evening to you too. Why ask something if you know the answer?
>
> [REDACTED]
>
> S: Not proud of it.
>
> W: You better. Do you have any idea how many angry deities I have yelling at me? Congratulations, you pissed the entire pantheon.
>
> S: So, is there a point to this call, or are you just going to yell at me? I'm fine with either.
>
> [REDACTED]
>
> W: Are you having prophetic dreams?
>
> [REDACTED]
>
> W: We changed some things to the System. Attribute boosts will now only go as high as doubling your score. They'll cost more too. And scaling multipliers will now be restricted to half your Magic Attribute.
>
> [REDACTED]
>
> Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
>
> CALL ENDED
I had no idea how many messages were deleted from the log. But even without context, I can tell Wyxnos was mad at me. And that I was mad at myself. Did we talk about a dream? Was that the reason for the gap in the notifications even though I remember the fight? Most of it. It has some blurry moments. I recognized the armor Ernest used immediately, but what was it? I don't remember any golden dragon armor in this world.
I should move forward before I lose heart and give up trying to understand it. I don't want to live with this kind of self-doubt.
Next notifications. I was offered Pekothas. I conquered Pekothas and then a call that was entirely redacted. I had no idea of even who called whom. Then another blank and some guy named Kortareon gave me a Perk and fifteen proficiency points in [Spellcaster].
How the hell did that happen? I had no kill notification for anyone named Kortareon, so I didn't kill him. Or his kill notification was erased. Another call entirely redacted a few hours after I got the Perk from this Kortareon guy.
Then nothing worth of note, but normal notifications I usually ignore. I killed the merchant, and everything after that is normal. The blanks in my memory end with me in that strange hallway with the statues. I looted it all, didn't I? Oh, wait.
I searched my item box for "Kortareon's corpse". I got a result. Bringing it out, I examined it. He was a mage, a wealthy and powerful one. Almost everything he wore was enchanted. The body was as fresh as the moment he died, it was even still warm. No bleeding, no wounds. No burn marks or spell marks. Nothing. Not a single broken bone, no internal bleeding. This is not one of my kills. I have no idea how this man died.
I had dozens of mage bodies, not as posh as Kortareon but with the same symbols, in the same state. Dead but without any apparent cause of death. The Symbols match what I've seen in that underground complex. Why did I have these bodies? I didn't remember getting them.
I sifted through the stuff I got from the complex. I had several mentions of Kortareon. He was an Archmagister. Mind mage. Right. These guys were the mind-benders that kidnapped the centaurs!
Something happened in that complex that erased my memory. Were these mages this powerful that they managed to do such heinous damage to my mind? But it does not explain the redacted [Administrator Hotline] calls. They would never even see it because they don't have enough privilege to do so. Much less the expertise to cut off choice portions of the talk but not the others.
The mages didn't do it, neither did the Gods.
I'm missing something... What did Nenandil...
Not only the voucher but also thirty points in [Spellcaster].
Smart little fairy.
Now that I've seen the wound in the very flesh of the planet in the Ethereal, I could put things in context. I didn't just destroy the city. I did it using a most heinous thing. Something universally hated. Let's try to recreate the spell. What would I use to destroy a whole city at once? I saw scorch marks near the lake. Soft molten metals. Fire could do that, but it wouldn't have the pressure to reach that far.
I shifted back to the normal world and flew as high up as I could. There, I tried some elemental combinations, because I was certain a single element wouldn't do that. Fire with Lightning caused plasma. Useful to know, but it didn't explode that violently. Fire and Wind caused an explosion and even a shockwave, but it wasn't that hot. Fire and Light made a bright firework that sparkled and rattled with secondary explosions. Also useful, but not what I made. Fire and Force didn't explode. Force anchored the Fire.
Honestly, the city looked like it had been nuked. But I didn't have a nuke. Or a way to recreate it with magic. I had an ability, one they wanted gone so badly they gave me a Unique voucher. One that could emulate an explosion similar to a nuclear blast.
Hypothesis: I had the power to create nuclear explosions.
Fact one: The site of the explosion caused damage to the fabric of the world. It wasn't ordinary magic.
Fact two: My memory blanks are all from the moment right before the explosion to after the mind-benders all died.
Fact three: What I did angered all the gods. They didn't bat an eyelid when the Black Dragon King zombified an entire kingdom and I just destroyed a city. Therefore, they weren't angry at me destroying the city, but at the methods used.
Fact four: The Gods came from Earth. More than one from the USA, like me. They retain their memories and upbringing. They probably still have the same "universal hates" from Earth.
Fact five: The System is fair in its dealings. I gained a Unique voucher and thirty points in Spellcaster. That means the voucher is for probably the ability, and the proficiency compensates the magical knowledge I lost.
I mumbled while I glided over the plains, "Occam's Razor. No fact gathered so far disproves the hypothesis, and it explains everything without making too many assumptions [1]. I nuked a city."
I had a sharp headache, almost fainted, and fell to the ground. At an unladen sparrow's terminal velocity [2], a fight between the ground against my dozens of millions of HP. The ground lost.
"I'm the worst! I nuked a city, dammit." I shouted at nobody in particular.
Another headache. I recovered and looked around. Some al-Mi'raj were sniffing around, trying to see if bird-me was edible.
One last thing. I focused on the golden armor Ernest wore. Trying to keep the memory sharp in my mind, I created an illusion of it floating before me. Now that I could see it before my own eyes and not as some hazy memory, I filled in some blank spots and it clicked. That was the armor Ernest used in my dream. And I knew it very well.
"Motherfucker. That's Incursio's [3] final evolution."
----------------------------------------
[1] A/N: I would like to remind the reader that's the POV character's line of thought. I make no claim that their logic is sound.
[2] No matter if European or African, we can assume that a bird's terminal velocity is slower than a person's. Feathers cause drag.
[3] The armor/weapon used by the protagonist of the anime "Akame ga Kill".