Morning soon arrived over Gardard, as everyone started to get up from their living quarters and head towards the kitchen to receive breakfast. Luna helped Lina to make a full-course breakfast while Tiki helped herself with a glass of milk and cookies, being convinced to stay away from the kitchen by Enemy, who was told everything about Tiki's kitchen mastery by Yuno. Yuno simply ate an apple while sitting on the counter, taking advantage of his small size and Enemy ate some leftovers.
"So...where's the meatbag?" Tiki wondered.
"Go search for him if you wish, I just woke up and I ain't moving until I finish with this." Enemy scratched her head, trying to straighten her awfully puffed hair.
"Yeah, I can tell. Your hair betrays waking up." Yuno said.
"You're absolutely lucky there's a kid in the room, otherwise I'd fu-", Enemy cleaned her throat, "Mess you up." she corrected herself, menacingly looking at Yuno.
"Please avoid using foul language while in the presence of a minor. Especially when that minor is my little sister." Luna said.
"Don't worry big sis, I know a lot of those words! Miss Tiki says them all the time, so they're easy to memorize!" Lina happily and ignorantly said.
Everyone took a dead straight look at Tiki, obviously signalling her to apologize for messing up.
"Look, can we start this whole debacle at, like, 10? It's 9 in the morning." Tiki said back.
"Wait, you know what the word 'debacle' means? What the hell?" Yuno said in surprise.
"Yes, I do, because if you really think I'm as one-dimensional as I look, spoiler alert, I'm not. But for someone stuck up between sticks for his entire life, I'd have no issue believing your social interaction skills are a total zero."
Enemy was surprised as well, "Constructive criticism? From you? What the hell?"
"Oh my fuc-you know what, if you guys are about to turn it to shit like this, I'm taking my breakfast to that balcony area." Tiki angrily said, rubbing her forehead and trying to wake up.
"Ok, ok, relax. Don't take it that personally." Yuno calmed her down.
"I suggest that you finish your cookies and milk before committing to other actions," Luna advised her.
"Yes, I will." Tiki started angrily eating her breakfast, "And where's the diva?"
"I think I saw her sitting with mister Dante in the kitchen last night when I woke up to use the bathroom. They looked like they were serious about something..." Lina said.
"So basically-", Enemy was stopped by Dante entering the room.
As everyone's eyes fixated on Dante, he simply walked up to the counter and readied his usual breakfast of cereal with milk, placing everything he needed on his seat on the table. He then readied a big beer glass with a ton of coffee and milk while adding a massive amount of sugar to it and placed it next to his bowl. He then forcefully dragged himself onto his seat, struggling to stay awake.
"Wow...you look like shit. Did you even sleep at all to prepare this giant thing with coffee?" Enemy said to him.
"No sleep." Dante yawned.
"I mean, he looks worse than Enemy's hair," Yuno said.
"He really does." Tiki drank her milk, sneakily trying to shift the subject from her to Dante.
Dante then proceeded to pour milk in the bowl he said before him, not minding everyone's words against him. He finished by preparing his breakfast and pouring his cereal into the bowl. Everyone froze as they looked at Dante with a fearful look, of him not realizing what he had just done. He couldn't take a bite before realizing that others were looking at him with fear in their eyes he, too, was scared to be stared at with such looks.
"This is...not right." Luna broke the silence.
"My god...meatbag, what the actual hell are you doing?!" Tiki looked at him dead in the eyes.
"You goddamn monster." Enemy said, also frightened by the sight she just witnessed.
It took but Dante a few seconds to realize exactly what he had just done before he also gazed at his sin.
"No...No way..." he sadly said.
He had done what he should've never done in his life. Because of fatigue alone, it was an unfixable mistake. He poured his cereal over the milk. He had created milk with cereal before everyone's eyes. He promptly threw the bowl away into the sink, as he then proceeded to chug on the box of cereal, after which he downed his entire coffee in one go. He had successfully averted a crisis of major magnitude, everyone starting to relax after it was all over. To his favor, the rush of adrenaline from the shock of the vile act and the caffeine woke him up completely, getting rid of a long nights restless anxiety.
"No one say a god damn word. You know it was a mistake, so we will keep it at that.", he looked around.
"Agreed.", everyone said.
And so it was that they silenced themselves on the matter almost immediately, then deciding to carry on with their day as usual.
"So...what exactly happened between you and Terna last night?" Enemy asked.
"Hmm? How do you know?" Dante wondered.
"Lina saw you two last night," Tiki answered him.
"Conveniently placed, wasn't she?" he mumbled, "Nothing. She just couldn't sleep and decided to start throwing random memories back at me."
"So was she looking for small talk or did she have the 'I'm going to change the world' thought in the middle of the night?" Tiki asked after she finished her breakfast.
"Ask her when she's back. Probably out on a long walk." Dante shrugged Tiki's commend off.
Just then, Drima and Magi entered the room, looking around and grabbing a quick breakfast of their own, before standing in front of them at the door.
"Good morning everyone, I hope the living quarters served you well yesterday. I'm not used to visitors, so they're quite bland, but you can probably personalize them to your liking if you find the time." Drima announced.
"No problems mister Drima! Everyone is a-ok and ready to go!" Luna happily answered.
"That's good because we have a really long day ahead of us. As compensation, tomorrow can be a free day if you like, since the operation we talked about will apparently commence in two days. Plenty of time to get our shit together and practice. However, overworking you two days in a row sounded bad in my ears so I convinced Dr. B over here to let you off with one day. Think of it as a workout, one day work, one day rest." Magi said.
"Doctor B? But wait...shouldn't mister Drima be Doctor D for his initial?" Lina wondered.
Magi chuckled as Drima blushed, "Nah kiddo, it stands for 'Doctor BDS-"
Before Magi could finish her sentence, Luna performed a flawless smack down on her, preventing her from finishing her words.
"Crisis averted.", Luna acknowledged while pinning Magi down.
"Wait, if big sis attacked, does that mean training starts now?!", Lina excitedly said.
"No.", everyone reluctantly answered her, fearing for another devastating performance from Lina.
"And I don't think I'll be doing any test runs with you, Lina. It's a little bit of an adult thing we need to do. Because of that, I going to have to ask of you to stay back and watch for this time and if you're really good, who knows, I might scale it down for you in the future, who knows." Drima hinted.
"Alright, thank you mister Drima!" she excitedly said.
"Hmm.", he nodded back at her, "Now, let's get to the point. Today's training will be conducted for two reasons. One is so that I can study up close how your powers work to their core. I will basically allow you to freestyle any combative maneuvers and abilities, to see exactly where you stand. Based on it, I'll be more than capable of creating even specified MODs for you in the future. As of now, the only ones who will be wearing MODs are Tiki, who got it under no one's supervision and Dante whose MOD I worked on for years on end leading up until this point. Luna and Lina, however, I've got something special for you. Specified clothing catered towards your preferences, so you will be able to get rid of the lab subject rags you're wearing right now and for Luna specifically, a new weapon. A scythe, as I've obviously seen you use and carry around, but both stronger, conductive and more discrete, in case you find yourself in special circumstances. As for 'Enemy'...nothing. I am at a loss for who or how I should invest resources, since there doesn't seem to be a specifically predominant self. You and Hikari hold equal terms as it looks like if one of you isn't severely injured and in need of the other taking over, that is."
"I understand, it's not like we fully know everything behind this either. So long as we survive, nothing really changes." Enemy acknowledged.
"Alright then, that being said, I want Dante, Luna and Lina to head towards the changing rooms to receive what I made for them. The rest of you, come along with us to the training area."
As they nodded in affirmation and headed to the areas they were directed at, Drima took the lead and headed out first to make the final preparations needed. In the changing rooms, Dante was guided to his booth by a couple of maid bots, while Luna and Lina were treated the same in a separate area. As soon as Dante entered his booth, he gazed at a casemate with items prepared exclusively for him. Entirely new clothing consisting of his usual style, with black cargo pants, boots and a slick pair of gloves. Additionally, he saw two major things next to his clothing. A massive casing with a sizable edge to it, obviously crafted for his giant sword and a smaller blade sitting next to them both. He didn't know what the other edge was for, but then calmly proceeded to change his outfit to the one given to him. He then took down the casing from the wall and looked at it for a brief second.
"So, are we going to go on with this idea?" Mellistar appeared behind him in his legless armor form.
"Not like we have any other choice. Give me the sword."
Mellistar obliged as he summoned and gave Dante his blade, and he brought them close to each other.
"I really did think you were...going the other route." Mellistar worryingly said.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Hmph. Even simple-minded 20-year-olds have more brains than you all think, right? I could go down several different routes, but since I don't know which one yet, I'll just go along with it. So long as I can find answers to how exactly the world works with the people in it, my intrigue will be there. I just hope we can reach that point fast.", he sighed.
As Dante pressed his sword inside the massive case, a small zap of red lighting surfaced from inside, almost as if it was pushing the air out of it. A few metal parts then appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, before clinging themselves onto the case, finalizing its designed purpose.
"Can you morph this in and out of reality too?" Dante asked Mellistar.
"Let's try with both blades."
Mellistar successfully managed to morph both blades in and out of reality, showing that the equipment was truly one of a kind towards Dante.
"Alright, good. That means I won't have problems while fighting." Dante grabbed the big sword case, "There seems to be a pocked for the smaller one here too. Nice...and the last thing is this. A gun?" he awkwardly looked at the pistol.
"Any form of ranged combat is nice. Your lack of experience with firearms shouldn't be that big of an issue, it's a simple pistol."
Dante picked up the pistol and put it in its case next to his hip, "Whatever. Let's just get on with it."
When Dante exited the changing booth, he met back up with Luna and Lina. Having gotten rid of her old weapon, Luna had changed into a more urban style that didn't betray at all what her background was like, and Lina was the same with a bit of a twist. Long gloves were worn on her hands, almost as if she wore gauntlets. Luna was instead holding on to a weirdly short holster that had a small blade-looking item in it.
"Fancy the new style. But about Lina..." Dante looked at Lina.
"Doctor Drima insisted via a message given to the maid bots that Lina does not forcefully exclude herself from using standard Obsulyte weapons and abilities, as that will only damage her future combative and living standards. He convinced me to allow her to wear these as a form of both limiters and weapons." Luna explained.
"So there is a catch to this gears. They act as conductive equipment and limiters. Interesting." Dante wondered.
Lina jumped in front of them, "You two are so slow, and I'm off! I've gotta go to the training area and maybe even convince Mister Drima to give me a session like yours!"
Lina excitedly ran off to the training area, leaving behind Dante and Luna. This time around, Luna didn't try to make a stopping effort to her little sisters excited running away, something that surprised Dante.
"You're not gonna stop her before she goes haywire again?"
"Negative. I see no reason in stopping her while she remains in a controlled environment. Additionally, I have decided to lessen my restraints on her."
The two started walking towards the training area together.
"Why the sudden change of heart? It's a bit too much if you ask me."
"It would appear as if my reasoning for Lina's restraint relaxation is abnormal. However, after witnessing my little sister in what I haven't ever since I could remember. Normal clothing."
"Wait, really? That's the reason behind it?"
"Dante, it would appear as if you yourself cannot find meaning behind my actions, but I will have to sincerely ask a question. Since you are aware of my past with Lina, the situation that devolved into children's experimentation and the eventual passing of them precisely because of the aforementioned subject...what do you see us as?"
"What?" Dante curiously asked, being caught off guard.
"It is a simple question with a complicated answer, but I have to really know. I am fully aware that while Lina can be easily passed as normal which I personally will never do because of my inability to properly process emotions and my thorough surgical procedures that eventually caused the way I'm currently speaking. I was looking to get an answer to further understand more things about humanity's outlook on us, as I cannot bring myself to give a proper answer to this subject, without the assistance of third parties."
"It's a tough question to answer for sure but...why chose me all of a sudden? You realize that I'm not in the best place right now either, right? My answer could be clouded or worse yet completely out of touch with what I'd normally say. If I were to put it lightly, a lot of dark thoughts are going through my head right now, about both what I did in the past and what I'm thinking of doing now...none of it is too pretty for others to bare either."
"Despite monitoring your mental state, which has gotten progressively better since yesterday's events, I am still abundantly curious about an answer, even if clouded. You are the perfect subject chosen because of my acknowledgement of your past and vise versa, your acknowledgement of our past. I chose to follow and bring my sister along with you all because you seemed like a party of people capable of sharing affection, unlike the assassins sent after us that I had to fend off. Not only that, but a personal connection was made with you by my sister, which further inclined me to follow to avoid hurting her emotionally. So what do you see us as?"
Dante gathered his thoughts, "People. Good people. I can empathize in the sense that what happened to you was definitely not deserved as it did with me, to an extent. To me, humanity's answer towards you would be that you are a good, caring older sister and a clueless and innocent little sister. Now, that's good to an extent, because I can see very easily that you're way too over protective of Lina. You raised her within a bubble and it really shows, however, you can't be blamed for it again. If ever again you can feel emotions and process them the way we do...talk to her. Not for actual life lessons or training tips, but just simply tell her that you love her and all that. Really helps, you know. But again, don't go around thinking that my answer is the definitive one. Different perspectives born out of different people can vary heavily, and humans, animal or non-animal hybrids, are weird. I can admit to that since I tried to avoid most of everyone before they injected themselves into my life...something which I still don't know if I'm regretting or I'm happy about, given what path it leads us all down from the looks of it. Generally speaking, if they find out you're different in any way, prepare to be pushed aside. No one will ever really care for your feelings the way Lina or those close to you will, or understand you have any in the first place. Beware that not everyone will be willing to help you...quite the opposite. Most people will turn a blind eye and ignore you for not wanting to get involved or join the majority. "
"That is something which I cannot understand. I have attained those augmentations at a very young and problematic for me age, which only adds a complex layer of curiosity for your words that are based in emotional understanding. Why would there be a need to eliminate something not deemed a threat for your personal termination, over abnormalities in their feels or like with the ongoing state of Obsulyte versus non Obsulyte users?"
"I sometimes wish I could be wholly mechanical, to be honest...most of the things I tell you are personal experiences. Hell, I'm not normal, like any of us here. And I'm making that statement by casting the obvious Obsulyte running through us all aside. If I were to say who's the most normal out of all of us, Anya would take the cake, despite her furry transformation because of her utter stupidity days ago. She drinks, laughs and ignores most negativity. She acts exactly as you would expect her to normally act where she's at, abusing the few privileges that come with being just barely of age. I really do wish that sometimes, we could all look a little more like her."
"It would appear as if there is a fundamental flaw to your logic. Sorry for the rude interruption, but you saying what you did before, and then saying that about Anya has a certain tone of forceful extraction of her from a general statistic revolving mostly around us." Luna said.
"Don't worry about rudeness. Conversations with a little bit of meaning behind them rather than idle chit-chat interest me. I'll accept your take on the matter if you do mine. And no, it's not that I'm making a whole category Anya is plucked in by herself, despite me really wanting to when she pisses me off at times. Just that...she looks happy, is all."
"Thank you for understanding me. What I intended on pointing out is the need for you to obtain the characteristic traits of others. It comes across as nonsensical to me."
"It's called "looking up to something". Now whether you want to copy-paste yourself from your heroes to you, that's a thing you'll have to eventually find out, but getting certain traits from them ain't half bad either. Considering, of course, who that "hero" you're looking up to is. I know that I certainly had a few people I idolized before it all went to shit when I was younger...fast forward a decade and a legal drinking age later, I'm having a ton of questions and second thoughts about them, which I really, really shouldn't be in a sense. Part of me still wonders if I'm actually mature enough or as experienced as they were to even ask these questions before answering them myself."
"So is Anya your "hero" in that sense?"
Dante chuckled briefly, "Hell no. Why would I want to be a pissed drunk behind a wheel with a mind that only hunts adrenaline and old ruins with things to sell for my next dopamine hit?"
"You have confused me. You are talking lovingly one time and then turn it to a rant at another. Right now, it would appear as if you are talking with general disgust about Anya. Why would you hate her but also want to inherit her traits?"
"I don't hate her!" Dante angrily answered, "I just...it's complicated to explain. If only I could have one of the shitty traits then we could probably find some middle ground."
"Then, if Anya is considered a normality upon others but not you specifically, judging off the way you are speaking, why are you almost desperate to inherit a characteristic you like attached to her, but not on yourself, to attain normality based on a general opinion that doesn't fit your thinking in the first place?"
Dante looked at Luna briefly, stuck in his mind as he thought about everything 10 times over a million times before finally answering her back.
"That's a sentence and a half, but I...I don't know." he tried his best to find an answer but failed, getting stuck on Luna's bland but truthful words, "Anyway, we're here. Let's get on with the training session. Drima said I'm first so I'll head in there."
"Understood. I will be joining the others upstairs so good luck on your training session."
As Dante and Luna went their separate ways, he was greeted with a massive, white, empty room with nothing in it, other than the lights at the top and an observation window at the wall in front of him.
"Hello, can you hear me?" it's working. Now what do you need from this?"
"Alright, good. I need to further collect data to properly categorize everything with live examples. The area you're standing in right now is entirely engulfed with what I like to call "Imaginary Drives". I will brief you on this later, but what you need to know is that this will create a fake reality that you can stand inside and train in by causing a temporary rift between our world and the Imaginary Space. Not to worry, as I have a big red button that will instantly cause the reality created to break by cutting power for a split second, causing it to fall apart. Even if something goes wrong, there's always that option. What I need you to do is take down any practice target however you like. If possible, I'd like you to use more and more power as you go on so that I can progressively see how exactly this will affect everything you do as well as your physical and mental state.", Drima thoroughly explained.
"Basically, the monster spawns in front of you, kill the monster, and we're happy." Tiki simply said.
"Sounds good. Let's go then."
"Do your best Dante!" Lina encouraged him.
As soon as Drima activated the cores, reality around Dante started to bend and shift, eventually settling and solidifying exactly where Enemy described. Flying metal parts and cubes along with energy waves were all around, engulfing him and the world around him.
"Are you guys still here?" Dante asked.
"We're right here kiddo. Think of the entire place as a box with four walls. We ain't going anywhere, but you can go anywhere. It's science stuff so, just roll with it!", Magi said.
"I'll just do what I have to do.", Dante prepared himself.
A bunch of Enmities and Shadowers appeared before him, all rearing and ready to attack him at a moment's notice.
"Remember this, through my studies. Enmities are the opposite of Shadowers. They need the energy to survive and possess a physical body while Shadowers are hunting physical bodies while being pure masses of energy." Drima told him.
"Doesn't matter, they all die the same anyway. So how do I kill them? Small sword or big ass sword?"
"When you unsheathed your blade in Dirunon, a massive surge of energy burst flew by that miraculously just missed Anya and Magi. That energy blast completely eradicated all form of life that couldn't withstand it and severely destroyed all its surroundings. That was the beginning of your burst state, so I highly encourage you to start with the small sword first. The big sword is currently concealed within your case and unable to help you obtain any form of the mass-energy surge, but you can still use the case. It's a sharp end, handle up top and everything we're specifically designed so that it can be used as a weapon without the need of being unsheathed. There's a little edge part at its base too, which can be used to trap sharp objects and launch counterattacks by drawing the actual blade. Your and every MOD consists of semi-casual wear that I tweaked with nanomachines that limit your Obsulyte abilities while simultaneously feeding off them as Mellistar does. They are like cells, reproducing their own kind via obtaining your energy and dying off when you decide to lift the limiters off and enter that burst state. Special care has been put into your boots and gloves, since that's how everything disperses most Obsulyte and normal energy, from their limbs. That's all I have to tell you, now training starts." Drima quieted down and instructed the rest of them to do the same, giving Dante maximum focus on the task at hand.
"Sounds simple enough. I'll take them on."
The monsters then, as if they were released from a cage, all started to run directly at Dante, signifying the start of the training session.
"Heya!" Dante landed a wide forward slash with his sword case and moved forwards, delivering a massive X slash that decimated all enemies it came into contact with.
More and more monsters started to appear from left and right, all heading directly at Dante.
"Alright, time for you to do something other than watching," he called upon Mellistar.
"Ain't it my pleasure?" Mellistar appeared above Dante's head, holding his own massive sword in hand.
"Now!", Dante pinned his small sword to the ground, and grabbed onto the big one, delivering a combo slash around him with Mellistar following along his movements and covering him from behind, "How about I switch it up, this thing is a different blade altogether.", Dante reset his position, now holding the smaller blade with a reverse grip and the big one next to him as if it was a mere feather.
More monsters came in again, this time directly in front of him.
"Heh.", he exhaled quickly as he delivered slashes in front of him, not letting a single monster get away, "I sometimes indeed do feel kinda good when slashing through some monster looking foe with these. Makes it better than just slightly tightening my grip on a funny looking trigger of a gun. Now, on with it, I want to try and play a few games after this is done as well."