Chapter 416 - The Weakest Monster

It was early in the morning when Claire first woke. She rose around sunrise as usual and got up from her bed with a bit of a yawn. Had they not been in Cadria, she would have grabbed her fox and gone out on a morning flight, but the habit had been put on hold for the duration of their stay. There wasn’t enough space to fly freely within the castle’s barrier, and she had to deal with the guards every time she wanted to enter or escape it. It was just too much of a hassle and she spent most of her mornings on meditation instead.

For a moment, she considered doing just that, but she got to organising all of her things after a twitch of the ears reminded her of the date—not that she had much luggage to begin with. Sleeping fox, lizard, and spider in tow, she walked out into the common room, where most of the others were already awake and waiting.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the brief vacation, the party’s members were in a less-than-perfect condition. Krail and Jules were still hungover, and Arciel seemed far more tired than she was upon their arrival. Allegra just looked bored.

Lana and Chloe were the only two who looked even the slightest bit rejuvenated. The former was much better rested than usual—the bags under her eyes were gone—while the latter was a bundle of energy. She was happily running around, humming a tune as she checked everyone’s luggage and ensured that there was nothing left in any of the rooms.

“We have gathered much earlier than expected,” said Arciel. “I was under the impression that some of us would be inclined to sleep in.” She hadn’t specified the time of their departure, only that they would be leaving come morning.

“Oh, fuck off,” said Jules. “I know I let myself go, but it was just a few goddamn days.”

“If you want to blame someone, I would rather you blamed the Cadrian king,” said Krail. “The drink he supplied was impossible to resist. You’d understand if you just had a sip. It was one of the single best drinks I’ve ever had.”

“I was not condemning your choices. It is important to rest when it is possible to do so. But seeing that we are all present, I do not believe that there is any reason to wait for much longer.” The queen hid a smile beneath her fan. “As many of you have seen, Cadria’s fighters are fierce. As we are at this moment, we are incapable of measuring up to their elites. However, that is not to say that we haven’t the potential.” She took a moment to look around and lock eyes with each party member in turn. “I have convened with Allegra and discovered that many of Cadria’s most powerful endured periods of explosive growth. Though their warriors possess centuries more experience, it is during a few key battles and efforts that they earned much of their power. Overcoming them remains as simple as inciting such periods of growth in ourselves, and Allegra has produced an agenda to serve such a result directly.”

Pointing her fan at the Cadrian magus, Arciel stepped away from the spotlight and allowed her to take her spot.

“The plan is pretty simple,” said Allegra. “We’ll be hitting three dungeons on our way north, and as Claire had originally proposed, we’ll be heading into the Langgbjerns to maximize our experience gain. Fortunately, winter is when the northland is safest. Many of the most powerful predators sleep it away while the weaker monsters roam through the mountains unchecked. Still, even some of the prey species can go as high as level 5000. They only remain mortal because they lack the divinity to become celestial.” The rabbit adjusted her glasses as she walked the room and handed off a series of notebooks. “I’ve made a few copies of one of our best encyclopedias. I’d like each of you to review it during our journey north. It will cover all over the known routes and areas, as well as some details about all of the monsters that we might encounter along the way. In the meantime, I’ll be working with everyone individually to improve your abilities and better tweak them for upcoming duels.”

She continued to go on about something or other, but Claire soon zoned out of the lecture. Thoroughly defeated by the excess of words, she was only barely awake both for breakfast in the mess hall and their turberi’s retrieval. Only when it was time to say goodbye did she snap back to reality.

And even then, it was just for a moment to wave goodbye to Rubia.

She cared little for the pleasantries that Arciel exchanged with her father, and even less for any of the looks that he gave her as the carriage started on its journey. All that mattered was that they were back on the road.

Cadria was far larger than any of the countries they passed along the way. There was still a ways to go before they reached the bitter north.

___

The point of eternal life was to be free from the constraint of time, to escape its constant creeping and its endless encroachment. Immortality was a blessing that brought respite to the overworked and joy to the despondent, a blessing that would allow a drone who had spent a lifetime slaving away for some corporate overlord or other to finally live the sort of slow, laid-back life where an assignment was a rare occurrence. Or at least that was what Olethra had always believed.

When she was born, as the first child in a family of seven, she found responsibility thrust directly into her hands. It was difficult to describe her parents as the most hardworking or intelligent.

Her father was the average farm lad. While her homeland, the land that eventually became Cadria, had certainly developed many socioeconomic programs in time, government-sponsored, compulsory education remained absent throughout her father’s formative years. And thus, he became the sort of typical blockhead who spent his day out in the fields, applying the few bits of knowledge that his own father had passed on before him.

Her mother was even worse. She contributed nothing, neither in terms of income nor work. Instead of doing the typical things that one expected of a housewife, she wasted her days in town, socializing with the other parasitic wives that stood at the top of their village’s social ladder.

And thus, it fell to Olethra to manage the household. She took care of all of her siblings in her mother’s place. Cooking, cleaning, babysitting and even managing the house’s budget. Everything fell to her.

Looking back, she knew that to be precisely how her dream was shaped. She still remembered looking enviously out the window and finding the other children in the midst of enjoying their spare time. She recalled wishing to experience their liberties, to know the joy of free time. She wanted to be lazy, for someone to take care of all her needs while she laid back and relaxed.

At first, she thought she had managed to change everything for the better when she won over the local lord’s son. He wasn’t even a true member of the nobility, but he had been entrusted with a small patch of land, and his household had the riches to match. All of the chores were handled by the servants and as his wife, she needed to do little but live the pampered high life.

Or at least that was what she had thought at first.

As a man, her husband was a wonderful person. But as a landlord, he was not quite up to par; he was often bedridden by his weak constitution and denied the ability to work full time.

She had always suspected that there was much more to be done than what he was able to handle, but after learning to read and write in her newfound free time and subsequently inspecting his documents, she discovered that the situation was far worse than she could have ever imagined. The domain was at risk on account of his faulty management; they owed so much money that the interest payments themselves were nearly enough to make them go bankrupt. As her husband’s dutiful wife, she had no choice but to step in.

Upon taking matters into her own hands, she found herself busier than ever. She poured all her time and effort into inventing new industries and improving the resident’s lives, and surely enough, under her guidance, everything was put back on track.

Just like that, ten years passed by. Her husband succumbed to his disease without giving her a child, and she was left to carry on the legacy that his family once held. She couldn’t do it alone, however. Without his influence to back her, she lacked much of the punching power to continue on as she had. And so, she found new allies in the church of weights and measures.

In her time, it had been a fairly influential organisation. Though not quite as widely worshipped as the gods who gripped each region, Tellius was known across the land as the divine arbitrator who ensured the fairness of trade and exchange. It was he who managed the restrictions around trademarks and patents, he who determined the value of grain, and he who controlled the global currency shared across the land. His church’s backing provided Olethra enough power to maintain her policies and better her people’s lives. And for a while, she felt as if she could see her old goal beyond the horizon—it would not be long before her successor, her brother’s nephew, reached the age of majority and claimed her position. Finally, she would be free from the infernal chains that bound her and allowed a moment of respite.

Alas, it was not meant to be. The aid that the church had offered her was not one-sided. The deal was for them to help each other through trying times, and the organisation at large soon found itself in need of assistance. For from the mortal realm had risen a fresh god of merchants, one who threatened to depose the deity whose name the church had hailed.

On the day that her nephew inherited her husband’s legacy, she set off for her god’s home base and began her work in his service. Driven by the oath she swore upon her honour, she worked night and day to see the church of weights and measures placed ahead of the mercantile temple. Her contributions were crucial to turning the tide. Through the excellent rates she offered the common folk, the bribes she paid to the merchants, and the strength and will she demonstrated to the warlords, she was able to tip the scales against the usurper.

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But it was not without cost.

Nothing was ever without cost.

All of the time she had spent in the church’s service, the loyalty that she had displayed, only came back around in the form of endless promotions. She moved rapidly up the ladder, going from acolyte to priestess, priestess to bishop, and bishop to apostle. Before she knew it, she sat amongst the cardinals as their highest ranking member. All because her policies had proven every bit as effective as she hoped.

Perhaps because of the monster hunting routine she often leveraged to blow off her stress, or perhaps because of the many physical conflicts that the mercantile church had brought her, it was also around that time that Olethra acquired her fourth ascension. As a reward for her service, she was christened the aspect of shoestring budgets and made to serve as her god’s mortal symbol.

Just like all of the others she had experienced before it, it was yet another position that came with an increase in responsibility. And just like every other time, she bottled up her desire for freedom and served with an earnest heart.

As the years passed, as conflict continued to rock the continent, and as she continued to serve her duty, she continued to grow in power. At some arbitrary point in the past—she could barely remember exactly when it was, given the tens of thousands years that she had lived—she took the penultimate step and became a timeless celestial.

She thought that shedding her mortal shell would finally spell an end to her infinite work, but that was hardly the case. More and more piled on top, until Olethra reached her limit. It was clear that her superior, the god that she had served for so long, was doing it for the sole purpose of harassment, and she would stand for it no longer.

Declaring her allegiance severed, she challenged Tellius and defeated him in single combat. Taking his divinity as her own, she became the goddess of weights and measures. And in doing so, she discovered that he had never harassed her at all.

The tired smile he flashed in the wake of her declaration should have clued her in. If anything, he was shielding her, taking on most of the work for himself and leaving her only the simplest of tasks.

Despair.

Despair was all she felt as she felt as she looked upon the endless stream of transactions queued up for her explicit evaluation.

Only then did Olethra understand the look of peace that had adorned Tellius’ face upon his passing and the ease with which his defeat had come. And only then did she curse the cunning old bastard for taking the out that he had.

Tellius had never wanted to defend his throne.

Like her, he was a tired soul with too big of a burden thrust upon it.

That was why he had raised her into a celestial in the first place—so he could lessen his workload—and that was likely why had allowed himself to lose. Between obliteration and the endless stream of work that awaited, the former was far and away the superior option.

Olethra tried at first to fill the seat that she herself had emptied. But she only lasted another few decades before deciding that enough was enough. Even if the goddess of order would look upon her unfavourably, even if the many who relied on her system would cry out in protest, even if the whole world would curse her as a villain, she decided to abandon her post.

There was no point in eternity if she would spend it chained to her desk.

Her former contacts tried their damned best to return her to her duty. They visited her space in the mortal realm—she had chosen an obfuscated place in her homeland, hoping that no one would find her—annoyed her over world chat, and even got all the priests in the world to pray to her in tandem. But she ignored them all. Burying her paws in her ears and forcing her eyes shut, she ignored the world around her until she was left alone.

Some of the more persistent kept trying. There was a man who had lost half a kingdom’s worth of riches, a woman whose savings were robbed, and even a few gods who saw their coffers scrambled. But Olethra continued to shut them out until the voices were silenced.

Finally.

Freedom.

It was what she had always wanted. A moment to catch her breath without someone breathing down her neck. A brief reverie where she could do as she pleased. A glimpse of the life her mother had lived, oh so many millennia ago. It was everything she pined for, everything she had dreamt for as many years as she could remember.

For the first time in her eternal life, there was nothing on her mind.

No tasks came as she sat around and waited. And with no words left to drown out, the world was nothing but silent.

She kicked back and enjoyed the natural world. She built a house, laid out a field, and sowed her seeds with all the ridiculous velocity that her divinity had bestowed. And then, even after napping for the better part of two weeks, she found that there was nothing to do but wait—wait and wallow in her misery.

Paradise quickly became another living hell.

Because the only thing worse than being busy was having nothing to do.

Still, she remained where she was. She didn’t dare return to her duties after shirking them for so long. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to bear the accompanying shame.

And thus, she suffered in silence, in what seemed like an eternal boredom as the seasons passed her by.

She didn’t harvest her crops or even work on her fields anymore. There was no point. As a goddess, she didn’t need to eat to live, nor even live at all.

Everything blurred together as she lazed around, sleeping and waking haphazardly as the forest reclaimed her fields, her house, and even her physical form. Soon, she had nothing left but her own hubris and depravity. And yet, the clock continued to turn.

Until she awoke to a distant voice.

Somehow, even though it had been five thousand years since she was last worshipped, there was a mortal calling her name. She wasn’t exactly happy to be called upon, and she was even more unhappy to be mislabeled as the goddess of hidden riches, but she was bored enough that she decided to appear in front of him.

A frown on her lips and her face in her hands, the goddess of weights and measures manifested. It had been a long time since she had last taken shape. Having already half lost her sense of self, she found the result distorted. She almost looked half like the woodland that had swallowed up her body. Though her overall form was still that of a humanoid parasaurolophus, her furthest extremities had all been turned to wood.

The man who had summoned her was overjoyed. Falling to his hands and knees, he cried his heart out and besought her for her aid. Frankly, the power and influence he asked for was completely out of her jurisdiction, and the last thing she wanted was for one of her old compatriots to come knocking, after she unskillfully encroached upon their domains. So she gave him the one thing she knew.

Gold.

Money rained down into the space in front of him, seemingly appearing out of thin air.

In reality, it was not that. She was merely recouping the amount that would have remained in his possession had he optimized his spending and tightened the strings of his purse.

Though a little confused at first—her subsequent disappearance no doubt played a part in that—he soon began to revel in the heaps and piles of coin that she had bestowed upon him. And soon, he began telling tales of his experience in earnest.

He drew in more mortals with his vigour and spun a tale of her origin. It was an outright fabrication. Her name was the only part that rang true. But Olethra did nothing to stop him.

By the time she realised, a few miracles later, the man had grown her following into something of a cult. It was certainly a bit of a questionable outcome, one that the other gods would certainly criticize, but Olethra reasoned that the fault was barely her own.

Her followers seemed upstanding before her. Never once did they conduct any strange rituals in her presence—it was only by waking more frequently and spying upon their deeds that she recognized their clinical insanity.

Still, the goddess was unconcerned.

The most that she did to combat their madness was to occasionally ignore their prayers. And yet, their faith refused to wane. Perhaps because they were cultists to begin with, and perhaps because they had failed to recognize that she was a part of the pantheon, they assumed that her power was limited.

She never corrected them. In fact, she never spoke to any of them at all or bestowed any revelations, despite her so-called pope claiming otherwise. She simply didn’t want to be involved. Her infinite boredom remained the only reason she continued to answer their prayers.

Or at least that was how it was before everything changed again.

One fateful day, some five years after her name was rediscovered, she awoke to a peculiar series of sounds. It took her a moment to recognize it with her mind all hazy, but the clashing of blades was unmistakable.

Projecting her consciousness and peering through the cult’s headquarters, she found her worshippers in the midst of an enemy raid. Though some of them were surprisingly high level, the cultists could do little when faced with the invading trio. They were simply too powerful. The tiger and the man worked as one, while the woman was practically a steel tornado.

Perhaps realising that victory would certainly elude them, the leader of Olethra’s cult scrambled to the altar and fell to his knees. He begged for power, to be named her champion so he could turn the tides against the hunt god’s chosen.

The goddess was hesitant to do him the honour, but at the same time, though entirely misguided, he was her most fervent adherent. She would certainly still live even after her cult’s destruction. Even as a champion, there was nothing the lion-marked man could do to pose a threat to her person. But at the same time, the self-proclaimed pope was the only source of entertainment she had. He was the one person capable of providing her a break from the endless monotony that was the flow of time.

And so, she eventually complied. Bestowing her mark—a pair of silver coins—within the man’s eyes, she transformed him into a champion, a fighter blessed with the might of an ancient deity.

But even then, it was hopeless. The pope soon fell to their blades and damned her to another eternity of silence. Or at least that was what she had thought before the hunt god’s chosen turned his eyes to the place she had projected her consciousness.

“Olethra, goddess of weights and measures.”

She felt her vision clear as he evoked the title she had lost to time. All of her dull senses awakened at once, flooding her mind with a strange sense of excitement.

“Join us on our journey, and we will alleviate your boredom.”

She didn’t know how he knew. She had never told anyone about the curse with which she was afflicted after abandoning her duties. It had to be some sort of trap. Else it was too perfect, too good to be true.

And yet, she manifested regardless.

Accepting his extended hand with her own, she found her purpose anew.