As it turned out, Viktor had designed the chicken nurseries like a subterranean network. Each of the larger churches throughout the city had one of these so-called “underground coops,” and each coop was connected to the two closest other coops, producing a root-like structure of interconnected tunnels. At their very center, lying the farthest below the city’s surface, was Viktor’s laboratory—the mad scientist’s lair.
Riding on the back of Vra’ta in a slimmed down version of his bus form, Momo, Viktor, Grimli, and most notably, Baryte the chicken, made their way to that epicenter. They lit the way with Viktor’s so-called beak lanterns—devices which had small indents in the bottom shaped like, well, a beak. These slots looked like the kind of thing where you would traditionally expect a battery pack to be inserted. Instead, Baryte simply slotted his beak in for a few seconds, and voila: the device spurred to life, crackling electricity spurting from the lightbulb-like center.
“I don’t understand,” Momo said, staring in jaw-hanging confusion at the gadget as it brightened the cavern, casting her shadow across the wall. “I know he has that magical stone—baryte—inside of him, but how is he generating electricity all on his own like that? Does he work like a battery?”
“A what-now?” Viktor said, affectionately patting Baryte’s bony head. “I don’t know much about a bladdery, but I can tell you how it works scientific-ally. You see, once Baryte became undead, I was able to much more easily experiment with his baryte core. I kind of just slapped different materials onto it until something reacted, and then—boom!”
He attempted to convey a nuclear explosion with his hands.
“I discovered that if you put good, hardy dwarven metal on one end, and bad, corrosive elvish metal on the other, he generates gnomic currents like no one’s business. All I have to do is hook him up to something, like one of these lanterns, and it’ll brighten up like the sun.”
Momo stared at him blankly. So… a battery.
“It was the discovery a lifetime,” he continued, grinning widely. “It even caused me to win the Mole City Grand Prize in Ingenuity. I was honored.”
“Isn’t that a prize… you gave out?”
“Does it matter?” he huffed, crossing his arms.
Seeing as it would take at least another five minutes to get to the laboratory, Momo decided to finally handle that annoying courier from before. Even if her plan to leverage science against magic worked, she’d need all the help she could get in the inevitable fallout.
“System, can I receive my mail now?”
As quick as the words left her lips, a piece of parchment burst through the stone walls of the cavern, slipped through Vra’ta’s window, and landed in her lap.
“What on Alois was that?” Grimli jumped. He had been consumed by his lute. He was playing a gentle lullaby for Baryte, who was snoring soundly on his lap.
“An especially noisy courier,” Viktor commented brusquely, turning in his seat to glare at Momo and cover Baryte’s nonexistent ears. “Won’t you keep it down next time, Momo? You’re scaring the chicken. Although I’m sure you couldn’t help this one—my lecture on gnomic currents probably just leveled up your Intelligence quite a bit, didn’t it?”
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Momo rolled her eyes. Luckily for her, a bit of good news was waiting for her on the parchment.
Greetings. In the time it took for you to finally open this message, the Goddess Morgana finished her extended session of slamming her head against the wall, as is her new hobby, and approached us, The Nether Association of System Administrators, to deliver a final verdict on your awarded experience points.
While we disagree with the resolution she has chosen, our hands are tied. We tried to appeal the motion, but it turned out that the Appeals Court, once a dependable governmental body, is now just seven copies of Valerica. So you can guess how that went. Congratulations.
You have been awarded the maximum amount of experience possible for Action Type 3LB4D2R, or, in mortal terms, Killing a Lesser God Of The Same Faction or Domain. You have gained three levels in Nether Dokkaebi. I hope you’re happy.
“So passive aggressive,” Momo muttered, but she was excited. Three levels was even more than she expected to get. She flipped the page over.
You have gained a level in Nether Dokkaebi!
You have gained a level in Nether Dokkaebi!
You have gained a level in Nether Dokkaebi!
You are now level 6 in Nether Dokkaebi.
You have gained the following skills:
[Body Double]: Using your mastery over Nether manipulation, you can temporarily pull a version of yourself from a different dimension. Given that it is a real person, you cannot mind-control this double. It will simply act as if it was you, with all the accompanying personality traits and quirks. This skill works within a 30 foot radius, and lasts for 10 minutes. When the double is on the verge of being killed, it will despawn.
Momo grinned, pumping the air with her fist.
“I got a body double skill,” she cheered, completely mentally bypassing the fact that she would be summoning a real life, alternate universe version of herself. “Like the one Valerica has. Super useful.”
“Congratulations, your highness,” Grimli said. “That sounds most beneficial.”
“Great, more of you,” Viktor huffed. Grimli nearly smashed his lute over the man’s head. “I don’t particularly see the use for that skill, seeing as you have the skill [Summon Lesser Familiar], do you not? That’s far more wide-reaching. You could summon yourself with that easily.”
“No, actually,” Momo mumbled. “That skill always causes whatever I imagine to come out looking pretty deformed. Plus, Nether summons are always colored completely black. Any enemy with an Intelligence above 2 would be able to tell the difference.”
Momo awaited a response, but Viktor was already preoccupied with something else, sketching madly in his notebook. As soon as he realized he was wrong, he had stopped listening.
She sighed, and kept reading.
The following skills have received upgrades:
[Possess] → [Possess II]: Previously, you could only possess things that weighed up to 40kg. That number has been increased to 800kg.
Huh. Okay. So I could possess like… a car? Maybe? Ugh. I have no idea how much 800kg is. Why is this in kg? Doesn’t the system know I’m stupid and also American?
[Soul First Aid] → [Soul First Aid II]: You can heal as many soul chains as you’d like simultaneously, but this is limited by your mana count.
Wait… what? Momo trembled, her fingers clenching around the feeble paper. She reread the skill description several times over, her heart pounding. I must be missing something.
She read it twice more. Held it upside down, twisted it, asked the System to clarify.
But nothing changed. It was plain to see—she was reading it correctly. This was the skill she had been waiting for.
She was going to undo Sera’s death box.