“How… trite. Of course you wouldn’t get it. You think the world relies on natural chance. It doesn’t. The fact that a person self-sacrificial enough to almost die to save somebody just so happened to show up right before we entered the dungeon is proof enough of this. The world revolves around what I think will happen.” My grip tightened in response to his arrogance.
“Listen here you little prick. You wanna know what the goddess really thinks of you reincarnators?” I threw him at the ground and ordered the armour to peel itself off me as my eyes stared directly at him. I once again applied holiness to myself and glowed with a light he would recognise as holy. “You are nothing. I am the true chosen one. I have been given but a small fraction of her powers of alteration. You have been given simple, brutish strength.” I slowly faded out of my holy form, and the armour enveloped me once more. Before the boy could speak again, Christian got in between us.
“Look! I don’t get what’s gotten into either of you, but this ain’t how either of you act. Sam made a mistake. Leave it at that and stop talking weirdly. We just survived the strongest dungeon in the world! We should be drinking ourselves to death right now.” He… was right. The holiness made me a lot more self righteous than I intended to be. I’d have to consult the nano-chatte on its effects on my thought process. Sam quickly got up and dusted himself off.
“You. Come see me after those two have drunk their stress away.” Sam said before being grabbed by Christian.
“Come on little guy! You think we’re letting you go off sober tonight?” Christian said even as Sam tried resisting. He shouted obscenity after obscenity at Christian, who just ignored him and kept walking.
“Well, it’s just the two of us now.” Anna said before remaining silent, waiting for me to say something.
“So… you still haven’t mastered magic swordsmanship?” I said. The both of us already knew the answer to that question. I was just trying to tiptoe around the topic, as I ruined her plan of either mastering magic swordsmanship or die trying.
“Does it look like it?” She said back, almost snapping at my attempt to discuss the situation. She took a deep breath, and started talking again. “Look, it doesn’t matter. I know you’re sane and smart enough to understand our situation just got even worse. Your armour filled me in on your situation, and you’re utterly fucked.”
“Don’t trust that thing. It doesn’t have enough hope in me. Remember how it said we couldn’t beat the necromancers?” The nano-chatte shocked me after I said that, and then took control of my vocal cords while I was dazed from the electricity coursing through my body.
“You couldn't do it according to the knowledge I had! How would I know you got to level 10?” The nano-chatte spoke through me with a voice filter before I regained control and forced the nano-chatte back into my mind.
“With simple math! You know how much XP necromancers drop, so just add that to my current XP total.” Before me and the nano-chatte could continue, she slapped me back into reality.
“That doesn’t matter! Not only is the king of the world after you, but so are the guilds. I guess the guilds are more of a shared problem between our party, but I’m not fighting the king of the world to protect you.” Guilds? Why would I have been worried about guilds?
“Is there something I don’t know about guilds? Wouldn’t they try recruiting us?” I said before she grabbed and pulled me face to face.
“What's the problem?! Are you stupid? Ugh, fine let me explain. You either have to side with a guild, doesn’t matter which, and be hunted down by all the rest, plus the socialist resistance to the guilds. Or you side with socialists and be hunted down by all the guilds. You’ll have to side with one of their little sub ideologies so their infighting can start up again after the guilds are dealt with.” Ah, politics at their finest. I suppose the Revifier forgot to dumb down the people so they’d just accept monarchy as the finest form of government.
“So we’ll be hunted down by everyone who isn’t on our side?” She nodded. “Well… what if we don’t side with anyone. We make everyone sign a secret contract with us. Sure, they’d find out eventually, but that would give us some room to breathe.” Her eyes slowly go wider as I keep talking, and soon enough she actually looks like she’s thinking.
“That… wouldn’t be a bad idea if you were the only person in our party. Christian’s already in a guild, Sam is probably a megalomaniac so he wouldn’t keep our contract hidden, and I would rather be caught dead before working with a guild.” Why are these people in the same party? I’m sure they could find other people suicidal enough to enter the hardest dungeon and with similar ideologies
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“Guess I’m on my own again.” It would be just me, the nano-chatte and the world. Like it was always meant to be.
“What?! No! You’re even stupider than I thought. You can’t solo the entire world. And don’t ‘Nobody believes in me, but I always prove them wrong’ me right now, it isn’t always right. The king of the world handed your ass on a silver platter, and fighting everyone in the world is probably harder than beating the king.” The nano-chatte laughed internally as she said that. He very much disagreed with her, but arguing with the angry redhead was my problem.
“How do you know about that?” I said as she let me go.
“The amour and I were linked. All its memories were mine, and vice versa. I’ve seen most of your journey. Now, you will be coming with me, and your loyalty will only belong to me. You clearly don’t know what you’re doing. Sure, you’re strong, but you don’t use that strength right.” I scoffed. Who was she to order me around? She has no power over me. “Oh, and if you even consider betraying me, I’ll expose your true power to the king of the world so he considers you an immediate threat.” I stopped immediately, and even if I didn’t, the nano-chatte stopped my movement mere microseconds after she said that.
“What secret?” She smugly grinned. This was the first time I’ve actually seen her smile, and it was a wicked smile. For a brief moment, I was reminded of the Revifier and the sheer coniving aura she exuded.
“Ohoho, don’t play dumb. The armour holds an immense amount of knowledge. It knows all about your blessings and powers. I have a good memory, so I remember each and every thing it knows about you.” This was her when she had control over something. I already saw how depressive she felt when she couldn’t control her magic swordsmanship. She was fully ready to die to try and get some control over it. And now that she had control over something, her whole mood shifted into a maniacal glee.
“Oh, so that’s how it is. Why don’t I just kill you then?” She chuckled and slowly walked back to the town.
“I’d like to see you take on three of the strongest adventurers in the world.” Sam and Chrisitan would most likely take her side if I randomly attacked her. All they would need to do is distract me until Sam used his holy beam, and then I’d be nothing more than a memory. “Hurry up Ian.” My heart stopped for a moment. Ian was my actual, true name. She actually knew who I was, and didn’t just recognise me from somewhere.
“Y-Yea… Give me a minute.” Once she was out of hearing distance, I threw the armour off me and let the nano-chatte reconstruct itself. “What the fuck!? You utter idiot!” It was all its fault. That dumb machine let her access its memories. Why in the name of god would it do that?
“Look, let me explain–” I shot the nano-chatte to shut it up.
“No! You don’t get to explain. I already know all of your possible justifications and have a simple argument that’ll disprove them all. You can literally read me like a book and vice versa. We can feel each other’s emotions, and thus, what powers them. How did you not realise control is what she wanted and what drove her depressive state, and then thought for a second and realised what she would do with blackmail.” The nano-chatte turned itself into a puddle for a second, and then popped right back out.
“What proof does that cunning primitive even have?” I shot the nano-chatte back down.
“She doesn’t need proof. The king of the world would kill us just in case she was right.” The nano-chatte stayed down, not even bothering to reform itself as it shrunk back into a cube. “Come on, get back on. I need the armour so nobody recognises me.” The nano-chatte sucked up a bunch of sand to refuel its mass reverses and glued itself on me and we started walking back to town.
Before we even arrived, I saw several knights clad in golden armour step out of another, smaller pillar of light and head towards the tavern. They immediately stopped after they saw me, and then the tallest knight commanded another knight to head towards me.
“Adventurer of unknown guild or level or class. Please follow me.” I shrugged and followed him as I was going to follow my part anyway. Anna was arguing with the leader of the knights,, but immediately stopped and grinned as she saw me enter.
“Ian! You have no idea how happy I am to see you. These people are trying to recruit us.” Couldn’t the universe let me have one moment of peace?