Lunch was another opportunity to show off as well. Many of the dishes were light, made of fruits and vegetables they’d managed to get growing, which was far more efficient than the meat which he had to create directly. All of the animals in their dungeon were either guests or inhabitants, Except for the creatures that lived in the muck, and those would have to be hunted if they were to be used somehow. Not something Mordecai was ready to deal with. He also took this chance to present them with a mead made from their special honey, which was certainly a hit with most of them. None for Shizoku of course.
It was also time for Mordecai to work on solving something. He’d thought Kazue’s exhaustion after creating the library was just normal mental fatigue from a project that size, but now he wasn’t so sure. Part of the problem in figuring out that there even was a problem, was that he didn’t have all of his knowledge and memories currently accessible. He’d mentioned to Kazue and Moriko that he’d had to fold away a lot of his life, but this didn’t really express the true depth of what he’d done. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t even explain to himself exactly what he’d done, because that was part of the knowledge that he’d folded away. He couldn’t so much as name the types of math involved, and he had a feeling most of it was irrelevant to anything that was not a dungeon core or some form of reality warper.
Mordecai didn’t even have the knowledge to replicate many of the things he’d done to help Moriko climb as fast as she had. Nor could he replicate any part of the ritual binding the three of them, assuming he had the power source to try. That kind of knowledge wasn’t going to be helpful once the overload was gone, so he’d stored copies of the knowledge in the very shape of the energy they’d been carrying around. How? Well, that was gone too. Choosing to reshape that hacked ritual to include Kazue had also consumed the energy that was holding the information on how to do it, as well as several other patterns he’d packed in to give himself options once they were out. Mordecai hadn’t even anticipated that there would be a direct use for retaining the details of the hacked ritual, he’d kept it in case he needed to fix anything before they ran out of juice.
So as their mingled core had grown, Mordecai had been very carefully pulling on strings to unfold just the knowledge he needed and could use. This was rather less information than he was capable of holding, because he didn’t know when he’d need to know something else, and he couldn’t repack the memories. Hells, he didn’t even understand how he was unpacking them, he’d created a tool to simplify the task and left it embedded in Moriko’s ring, then duplicated the folded information and the tool from her ring into his new core when he’d merged with Kazue. But now it was time to see if he could finesse out just the information he needed for some context because there was a nagging familiarity about Kazue’s need to use her core to supplement her avatar’s focus.
So as he chatted and socialized, he sent out a request to the laganthros to set up a watch rotation at the entrance, then used most of his core’s attention to start hunting down a thread. It took a while, but eventually he began to tease out the experience he was seeking. It was from his first gnome avatar. They were generally a cheerful, energetic, and excitable folk, and he’d created a body of flesh and blood that would trend that way. The only reason Mordecai had a clue that something was wrong was that he’d had so many avatars before, and none of the other races had been quite so distractible, nor did other gnomes seem quite so badly off. Still, it was a new experience, and that seemed part of the point of having an avatar in the outer world, so he waited to talk to anyone about it until he had a gnome friend that knew a lot about how bodies worked. Someone whom he was fairly certain would not be offended because it sounded a touch biased to ask ‘hey, this trait of mine seems weird because I haven’t experienced it before as other races, so is it weird, or is it just a gnome thing?’
Well, as it turned out, it wasn’t a gnome thing. His attempt at building a gnome body and brain had not created a model within common parameters. Mordecai skipped as much of the exploration and experimentation as he could, that was not the critical information. And there. He pulled on a couple more strings, and he had what he needed. Not everything, he couldn’t cope with the depth of knowledge, but enough to get started and cut out a lot of false leads. Assuming he was correct. Time to test.
“Here love, I’ve come up with a tea blend that I think you’ll like.” Mordecai inserted into a gap in the conversation between Kazue and Akahana and conjured a cup of a special brew that was not entirely made from tea leaves. “I need you to go in blind on this, I’ve tried to sweeten it enough to cover up any bitterness.” Kazue stared at him a moment in surprise, and he could feel Moriko give him a frown as she picked up on what was passed over the link, but both recovered quickly, and the kitsune gave him a smile.
“Thank you, dear.” She replied, taking the cup from him and giving it a sip. “Hmm, that is certainly interesting, but I think you’ll want to tweak it a little bit.” Which was entirely a cover for, “Wow, that tastes like it wants to be a medicine. I don’t know if you could ever add enough honey to make that palatable. I am going to want an explanation in detail later.” Still, she soldiered on and managed to eventually get it all down.
And she would get one, but for now, he was going to watch over her. And now that he wasn’t hunting memories, he could split his attention to watching over the dungeon once more. Most people were done now, so it wasn’t too much longer before the six soon-to-be explorers were guided back through the shortcut to the entrance area. There was another delay, however.
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“Alright, now before we get started I need about an hour of meditation. I’ve been mostly focusing on being a mother and a gardener for 20 years, I need to get my mind in the right place and make sure I have everything.” Akahana announced, which gave the other five members time to explore the shrines, meditate themselves, check their gear, or even just take a nap. The druid went outside for her meditations of course, and Mordecai was happy to have the extra time to talk with Aia.
When everyone else was upstairs, Mordecai, Kazue, Moriko, and Aia convened in the outer room of the dungeon’s private suite. Mordecai opened up the conversation with “So, how many ‘greats’ should I be using?”
Aia laughed softly, and her manner changed radically as she allowed herself to slouch into a comfy chair and relax. “Just two, oh honored great-great-grandfather.” She had very clearly stopped being The Matriarch while they were someplace private.
Kazue just sighed. “Of course. That would make me the step-great-great-grandmother of my own clan matriarch.” She shook her head, then slid onto one end of a small couch. “I should have figured out that something like this was coming. Any other surprises like this?”
Moriko had a more specific question. “Wait, didn’t Traxalim say something about the royal family?” she asked with trepidation as she took the other end. Which invited Mordecai to take the center, which he certainly didn’t mind.
“Oh, that’s rather more distant.” Aia replied. “I’ll try to cover this quickly. My great-grandmother, Mordecai’s daughter Norumi, had found a personal path to longevity, as many people with great magical prowess do. In the aftermath of the devastation, there were a lot of smaller city-states and a few tiny kingdoms that would barely be a barony now. Anything bigger than a city was a rather fragile affair however, and she had no desire to try ruling anything. She did however protect a forest, what is now known as the Azeria forest. To the communities near it, she was more of a forest spirit than anything else, but as long as they were respectful everything was fine. And to greatly abbreviate a romance that I would love to tell in full later, there came a time when a corrupt priest tried to send a talented young man rising through the ranks against the ‘wicked forest spirit’. He was wise enough to not be so credulous and talked to Norumi when he found her, they formed an alliance with each other, ousted the priest, fell in love, and all this eventually led to them needing to fend off other forces, forming political alliances, and founding the start of the kingdom. There’s also a blessing from the gods and a special event that deals with the story Orchid told you about the marks, but you will not hear the details from me, it is very much not my story or secret to tell.”
She paused to take a breath and put together the next part. “They had several children together, but at this point, she was choosing to blend in and wore her human form constantly. While this did not harm her, it made their children come out as essentially humans with some small amount of kitsune ability. And her husband was not so long-lived as she was. When he passed away, she couldn’t stay there, nor did she want to remain in human form. So Norumi fled back to her forest, where she eventually put out a call for all clan-less kitsunes to join her in founding a new one. This is the clan she helped out with her ritual to help everyone live longer, with the side effects I believe you’ve heard about. She then called upon her son to recognize the clan and forest as a sovereign entity, and eventually took lovers so that she could found a matriarchal line. When she was satisfied that she had done what she could, she abdicated and then disappeared.” Aia sighed softly. “I doubt she is still alive. As far as I know, she had entirely stopped aging, but she never recovered from the grief of the loss of her husband, and the children she’d had with him had much shorter lives than the kitsune of the clan she founded. I think she finally let grief claim her.”
“But at any rate, a thousand plus years of human lifetimes puts some twenty or more ‘greats’ in front of Orchid, I’d have to dig up a genealogy to figure it out. I think that’s far too distant to worry about any loops regarding your relationship to the royal family, Moriko.”
“Hah, you’re the lucky one, Moriko,” Kazue said, then yawned slightly. “Excuse me.” She said, then leaned back, relaxing into the couch more. “So, to make sure I’m not misreading anything when we’re alone like this, you aren’t clan matriarch? Do you want me to just call you Aia?”
The nine-tail beamed at her. “I’d like that actually. I didn’t want to be formal around my own ancestor, and it seemed best to just include the both of you. I was a little worried that you’d have trouble using my name, given how you’ve often reacted around me.”
Kazue flicked a thoughtful ear. “I guess dungeon life is just agreeing with me. I can’t say I am not a little nervous calling you Aia instead of Matriarch, but I’ve got a handle on it.” She grinned impishly. “I am sure I’ll get better with practice.”
Moriko was just relieved that she didn’t have to figure out navigating what her relationship to the princess was. “Mordecai, love, being married to you is making life complicated.”
He chuckled softly then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’d apologize, but I suspect it’ll only get worse in that aspect before it gets better.” Kazue whapped him on the head with a tail, so he turned to kiss her too before refocusing on their guest.
Aia eyed the three of them fondly. “Kazue, I am very glad you have found happiness here, though I am terribly sorry about how it came to be.” Then her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “And I’ll be sure to arrange for all the special books a newlywed wife might want to help make her home life as happy as can be.”
Kazue blushed a little then sighed. “I was hoping I had been a touch more subtle than that. But it’s not like I can just discreetly go do it myself right now.” Then she leaned forward to look across Mordecai at Moriko. “Besides, I’m not the only one who I think will appreciate them.”
The half-elf rolled her eyes. “All I have to say is that you had better watch out for yourself, I will have my revenge. But I doubt our guest wants to be inundated with our flirtations.”
Said guest chuckled softly. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ve been around for a long time, and seen my fair share of interesting relationships, and been in more than a few myself. But perhaps it is best if I don’t pry into the private life of my great-great-grampa. Ah, but perhaps you can update me as to the progress of your challengers?”