Aiko didn’t have time to think of anything, she just thrust both of her tiny clawed hands out at the falling bits of branches covered in flames and she screamed! “NO! Don’t!”
All at once, the branches stopped mid fall and righted themselves in the burning pit before falling inwards harmlessly. Aiko could hear screaming and yelling but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Her vision blurred and tilted sideways before going dark as she passed out. Her saving grace being the perch she was snuggled into, between Atha’s breasts and her clothing.
In the heavens above and beyond
After having spent weeks getting the many magical systems and a trove of thousands of skills, abilities, gifts, and blessings integrated into the new system idea that Kaori had developed, most of that work was done. The thing that the system team was left with were a million more of those to go.
For every job there would be dozens of skills or abilities. On top of that, each of those required some gauge for the aptitude of skill somebody had in them. This was where the team was currently engaged. It was going rather slowly too.
The only jobs that they had categorized so far were the ones that were already being used on the planet below. They didn’t even have a complete list of the skills and abilities required for each of those jobs yet.
The next step was going to be all of the jobs that weren’t yet present on the plant below. All of the jobs that would be required for technological development and then they were going to have to get all of the skills and abilities for those jobs figured out. And if there were going to be any gifts or blessings where those jobs were concerned, they would have to update that list to include those as well.
In order to do that they were going to have to figure out every job required for that technological development and they were going to have to find examples of every possible off branch. They were then going to have to find people that had already done those jobs and they would have to categorize the abilities or skills needed for those jobs and any possibility of advancement that that might entail.
Altogether, that was going to be a lot of work. At the time, they didn’t even have all of the branching abilities or skills for various combats styles of the various weapons already being used on the planet below categorized. Then, there was one overriding problem with all of this, they didn’t have nearly enough personnel to accomplish this monumental task!
Lethris and the team had been very, very, busy trying to get all of this sorted out and put together in a cohesive manner. The largest priority for Lethris and Foglat had obviously been the magic systems that would have to be integrated into the system. After working diligently on this project for months, they had finally managed to see through the final launch of the system with Kaori-sama.
Unfortunately, they still had a whole host of other magic types that were going to have to be entered into the system. Including any off branches, all of their skills, abilities, any gifts or blessings that they might include, and the interaction that they would have with other magic abilities within the system. All of that, before they could even begin to scale all of those various magic types. They also had to make sure that the scaling of any type of magic showed its power when compared to other magic types as well.
Right now, the team was working on the hunting profession. This particular profession was very, very, very hard to nail down due to the number of different variants that it had. In any given environment, there would be any number of different game that could be hunted. There would be any number of different weapons that could be used for hunting each type of game with overlap and different skills or abilities needed to use it on that game. There could be any number of different methods used for hunting besides just weapons, like traps or poisons.
All of this was very confusing and complicated but this was what Kaori-sama wanted the system to be capable of doing. As such, there was nobody on the team who would be willing to give up on the project or even do a half way decent job. Lethris was proud to look around and see that everybody was giving the project 100%.
The problem was that help was going to be needed and sooner rather than later. They were going to need experts in hunting and then they were going to need experts in everything else! Also, lethris did not feel the need to turn every single expert into a god. It was at times like this that she was all the more in awe of the spectacular foresight of Kaori-sama.
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Because of the PDI system that Kaori had left in place, she would be able to get in contact with the head goddess and get an answer in a matter of minutes. After leaving a message asking for a direction in the matter of hiring experts it only took a handful of minutes before she got her response.
Kaori-sama had replied to her to use the afterlife system and consult with the experts that they already had in the afterlife directly, without drawing them out of the afterlife. She said that if more experts were needed, they should check in the various limbos and see if there were any more souls that could be swiped from those soul storage dimensions. She also sent a short reminder to be sure to fill out an application for Godhood for every so that would be taken from another dimension. Lethris got a big smile on her face, it was time to go back to work.
In the elven village on the planet below
There were quiet murmurs all around with a few voices barely loud enough for their conversation to be picked out. “Is she going to be all right? / Do you think she did that? / Can I go see her now? Is she still not awake? / Can I just leave these here?”
Aiko came around slowly and began to open her eyes. There was an intense pain somewhere between her ears. As her eyes cracked open, the light seemed to make the pain that much worse and she quickly shut them again. After a second of listening to the various murmured conversations around her, Aiko decided that she had to go ahead and open her eyes. She slowly forced her eyes open through the incessant pain and tried to look around. One word could sum up the entire experience. “Ouch.”
As she looked around their bleary eyes, she could recognize the room she was in. this was Atha’s house and she was in bed. Suddenly she realized that the house was more filled with people than she had ever seen it before. And it seemed that every one of them was looking at her.
As Aiko looked around, she spotted Atha moving her way through the crowd of people. The young elf Shaman was carrying a bowl of something steaming and held one of the leaf wrapped sabu-sabu in her other hand. “How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts a lot but I think I’m okay. How are the children? Did they get hurt?”
Suddenly the level of murmuring amongst the elves got noticeably louder. Atha just smiled as she leaned over and did something she had not done before. She placed a light kiss on Aiko’s forehead before sitting on the side of the bed holding the food. “No, the children are just fine. I suspected that you were the one to thank for that. I don’t know how we can thank you enough.”
Suddenly the room erupted into a sea of cheering and thank you’s! Aiko was stunned to realize that everybody was thanking her. As she looked around, she saw that many of the people around her were crying tears of joy and there were presents stacked on the bedside next to her.
As Aiko continued to stare around in wonder, a young elf mother came up to the bed pushing her two children in front of her. Aiko instantly recognized these two as the ones that the burning branches were about to fall on. At the mother’s prompting both of the children walked up to the bed and each 1 placed a small bundle of flowers next to her.
The young Elvin woman then leaned over and placed another kiss on Aiko’s forehead before leaning back with tears in her eyes. “I just had to make sure that I told you thank you myself. I don’t even know what I would have done if my children had gotten hurt. I just… I… Thank you! Just, thank you so much!”
Over the course of the next few minutes, Atha fed Aiko a bowl of rich, hardy stew and one of the thumb-size bars of sabu-sabu. She also took a moment to push a little bit of healing magic into Aiko’s head and cleared up the headache. It took a bit but, most of the village was there and took turns thanking Aiko Profusely for protecting the children. To Aiko it was very, very, embarrassing.
After all of the villagers left Atha spent a few minutes explaining that Aiko had been out for hours. Several of the villagers had seen what was about to happen to the children but nobody was in a position to do anything about it. All of the people that didn’t know what was about to happen to the children were alerted when Aiko yelled out. Immediately following that, Aiko slumped over and passed out.
Only one villager had been in a position to see Aiko and the children at the same time. What he claimed he saw was nothing short of miraculous. The Elf Hunter said that he saw a glowing purple line leave Aiko’s hand, reach out to the branches that were falling towards the children, and push them back into place. He further said that as she began to pass out that the goddess herself leaned over and kissed Aiko on the head. Of course, this young hunter’s testimony caused a huge uproar.
Once the house was clear of people, Atha began going through all of the presents that everyone had left for Aiko and showing them to her. Aiko shared her name with the shaman girl for the first time and they talked for hours. The subjects ranged from Aiko’s wandering journey to the elven village to the many mundane happenings in the village.
The subject that they had the most fun discussing was magic, which Atha had much more experience with. They both decided on a regular practice schedule for the two of them going forward. Aiko was really looking forward to it.
Finally, after all of the conversation had died down, Aiko was able to open her system notifications that had been patiently waiting for her to acknowledge them. There were seven notifications waiting on her.