Chapter 37

Belua's Realm

I opened my eyes to see that I was standing at the edge of a sunlit clearing, the world around me felt peaceful, a slight breeze tugged at my fur. I could hear the mana, and the nature of the place begging me to play. Sounds and scents of children of all kinds engaged in energetic play filled my senses.

I looked ahead and saw an impossible number of young creatures, all running, tumbling and wrestling with each other. The place filled me with an intense joy, I stood and watched for a moment. There seemed to be only one young specimen of every species, there were many beasts that I recognized from earth, or legend. I watched as a gryphon cub wrestled with a hatchling dragon.

Myriad children of the sapient races were present as well. They came in so many different forms that it made me wonder just how large the world I was living on could be. There were many children whose forms I recognized from fantasy, others looked very different.

I saw to a circle of children that included a creature who stood on four massive tentacles, the large serrated beak on their face snapped open and shut while they gestured wildly with four arms that seemed to have far too many joints. The eight long fingers on each hand looked extremely dexterous. The children surrounding them were just as unique, but I found myself unable to focus on them for long.

My eyes were drawn all the way across the impossibly large clearing to take in the only adult present besides myself.

I could see her clearly despite the distance, she struck me as the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She was a tiger beastkin woman, with white fur, black stripes, and a long fluffy tail. I noticed that she had small horns growing on her head, she looked like she could be my demihuman form's mother. She felt like it too.

I yearned to go to her, felt called to her, I felt like she was something I had been missing for this whole new life of mine. I started towards her, as I moved, the world around me seemed to grow in time with my progress. I sped up, and the growing of the world sped up with me, soon I found myself sprinting towards the woman, but still not getting any closer.

Eventually, the world stopped growing, and I began to make progress, my strides had become somewhat clumsy. I barely noticed. I was gleeful to finally be moving towards the woman, my sprint turned into a playful bound. I wanted to make it to the woman, who felt like safety, protection, love and joy, but once I actually started to move through the clearing I also felt the overwhelming urge to play.

At one point I took a tumble, my clumsy limbs not quite up for the feat of bouncing athleticism that I was attempting at the time. I let out a high pitched mew of frustration that shook me out of the influence I had been under, at least enough to look at myself. I had large paws on short stubby legs, my body had grown chubby, my fur was softer and fluffier than usual. It dawned on me that my body had changed to that of a cub, I was the same age as all the other children in the clearing.

I wasn't bothered, it seemed natural in this place. Everything here was youthful joy, and peace. Only one being here had to carry the burden of adulthood, and I was heading towards her.

I resumed my journey, I was interrupted a few times on the way, the first one came as a surprise. A large spirit beast panther cub pounced on me, I wrestled with him, instinctively playing the game. Neither of us won, the cub got distracted by another playmate. I was sad to see him trot off after a fawn that had headbutted him mid-wrestle, sending him sprawling off me.

It went like that as I made my forward, I realized I had no need to hurry, time had no real meaning here. I ended up in many, many playful scuffles with all sorts of creatures. Sometimes I would get tackled, sometimes I was the one who did the pouncing. No match lasted long, and no match had a winner, we would just play for a short while, and move on.

Eventually I came upon a disturbance, I don't know how I hadn't seen them before, but put it down to the magic of the place.

A young human boy sat on a blanket covered with plates of sweets, across from him, also on the blanket was a little elf girl. They were staring daggers at each other. The disruption of the mood caused me to stop and stare. The two children didn't seem aware of the world around them.

Suddenly I heard a familiar female voice come from above me. "King Emeritt, and Queen Odollam. I draw their subconscious minds here every night, in hopes that the peace and joy of this place will influence them. So far it hasn't seemed to have any effect."

I felt large, warm hands grab hold of me, and lift me off the ground. I forgot all about the two angry children. The woman, who I now knew was Belua herself, held my small form in her arms.

I felt incredibly comfortable being held by her, she was safety incarnate, nothing bad could ever happen to me in her care. I began to purr as she walked, carrying me the rest of the way to the rock she had been sitting on.

After she sat down, she silently held me in her lap for a little while, petting me gently. I felt relaxed and joyful at her touch, my purrs only grew louder. I wondered why I was here, but felt no need to hurry her, I knew she would tell me eventually, and I had long ago felt how time had no real hold on this magical place.

Belua tickled my belly, and I grabbed her arm with my paws, playfully biting her fur covered hand, it seemed like such a natural response.

I heard her giggle, the sound was musical to my ears, I doubled my efforts to hold her tickling fingers in my mouth.

Stolen story; please report.

Her voice filled my consciousness as she spoke, the beautiful sound captured my full attention. "You really have taken to your new body well. I was worried, you know, putting a new contractor in an bestial form. I even paid extra mana to the System to give you help learning how to live like that. I took the risk, because after so many lives, contractors tend to lose their will to care for the mortals around them. An older contractor would have done the job, but they would be unlikely to form any bonds with the people they were working with."

She removed her hand from my grasp, and began scratching the top of my head, right between the nubs that my horns had shrunk to. She paused in thought while I simply enjoyed the sensation of what I discovered was an absolutely fantastic spot to have scratched.

When she stopped scratching, and removed her hand I let out a mew in protest and reached out a paw to bring her hand back.

She sounded sympathetic when she spoke. "I'm sorry little one, I need you to try really hard to listen to me with your adult human mind. I can't help how I've affected you, here's some free advice, avoid picking up the Concept, mother ."

I put all my effort into fighting my impulses to play, and nap in the comfort of her presence, I was mostly successful. I was paying attention to her words at least, but more like a cub paying attention to its parent, than an adult human listening to their boss.

She smiled radiantly, her sharp teeth didn't disturb the current me at all. "That's better, now I brought you here to talk about a few things, the first of which was what happened tonight."

She pet me along my back, obviously rewarding my attention.

"There are a few reasons that I don't have the Achievement System active on my world."

"The first reason is power scaling, achievements bring such drastic increases in power to those who gain them that they can be incredibly unbalanced. This isn't a problem with the ones you received, not really, they just help you do what you already could, but safely."

"The second reason is because they encourage risky behavior, I can't stop the System from rewarding such things on milestone levels. But I'll be damned if I give someone instant gratification for, say, surviving a fall that should have killed them."

"The third reason is a big part of why we're having this little chat, cost. Everything the System does is powered by the local deity. There are no rules against sharing that information with you, but it is seldom spoken of openly. Listen closely as some of this will likely aid you in your path. We give up much of the power we could use to directly interact with our worlds to allow the System to do its work guiding our populations to prosperity."

"The System allows even the weakest sapient races to counter the influence of mana, and survive the monsters it often creates. Every class, ability, and boon is constructed out of Concepts. Those Concepts provide the defense most people require to avoid the intrusion of new Concepts from outside themselves. Leveling is simply the act of the System using the local diety's mana to empower those Concepts. It really is quite brilliant. You'd realize that on your own quickly enough once you got used to using your new sense, so it only saves you a small amount of time to tell you that now."

"But back to the situation at hand. I allowed the System to activate the achievement System for you temporarily. That took far more energy than I had earmarked for you." She frowned a little, but kept stroking my back.

"I will have to ask you to work a bit harder for me now. You already mentally agreed to do me a favor with your coming fight in less than a month, and I thank you for that. But you need to grow stronger, much stronger, to look good in the future. Your little assistant told you that you had to be level 100 to stand a chance, and I agree with his assessment."

Belua tapped me on the nose to make sure she kept my attention. Which was sadly necessary, as the influence I was under made it hard to follow what she was saying. I found my thoughts easily devolving into a simple enjoyment of the sound of her voice, rather than her words, even though what she was saying seemed quite important.

"I do not want you to stand a chance, I want you to be certain of your victory. Soon enough you'll need to do much more than just practice new things to level. I want you to get out there and do your job as an adventurer."

I nodded, instantly wanting to do as she asked, but there was a problem. I spoke to her for the first time, my mental voice was transmitted to her clearly and easily.

"I don't think I can. Something happened recently, people were hurt, I'm under orders to stay in town."

She smiled a little, and tickled me playfully. I mewed at her lightly in annoyance.

"Who do you think I am? When a deity tells you to do something, no other orders matter. I know all about the wendigo that almost killed your guildmates. Your two poor guildmasters are going to have a hell of a time hunting it down. Particularly since they refuse to use that little Ezekiel's tracking skills because they are rightly afraid he'll be hurt."

"I will give you two days to practice with your evolved class, then I will use your mark to lead you to worthy prey outside town. Do not worry about the wendigo, I will make sure your mark never takes you to something you can't handle."

She tapped her finger to her lip, clearly thinking. "I will apologize ahead of time for how the mark will make you feel, its compulsion will have to be strong enough to counter the decree you are under. I want you to take that nice young couple with you too. I think the Brightwood guild adventurers could use some more levels, and you could use some experience working with others."

"Since they are right at your level now, they make the perfect choice. I'll send the System the extra mana to put them on the swift leveling program with you while you work together. Do apologize to them for me, as my influence will be necessary on them as well."

She looked down at my small form in her lap, and smiled a little. "Would you like to stay here for a while? I've never had a Mana Beast in my realm before, it was quite amusing watching you play. So much so that I think I'll give you the option to enter this place every night. How about it?"

When a literal goddess asks you nicely to do something, you say yes. You say yes every single time. I didn't even think of saying no, Belua's realm seemed to remove all worries from my head. It filled me with childlike wonder and joy. Of course I said yes, enthusiastically even, I was a kitten being given the chance at extra play time.

She giggled at my response, and set me on the ground, with a "Go play with the other children, you'll know if I want to talk to you."

I bounced off to do just that, I knew the realm had a profound effect on my state of mind. I knew the childlike joy was because Belua's presence made everyone into children. I could feel a mountain of Concepts at work. I didn't care, who wouldn't want a chance to be a child again for a while?

When time took its hold on me, and I was finally forced to wake up, I felt like I had experienced the best rest of my lives.