In the end, they decide to learn more about the ‘lore’ of this universe before they decide to commit to any larger expansion on the field of diversity of their servants by, say, trying to spawn a [Hamadryad] or some spiders.
And they only have a single person that they can currently ask any questions to - namely, Aeonia.
And, for the record, ‘they’ doesn’t involve Tomura Shigaraki, who not only is allergic to the very concept of lore but also believes that asking those questions to Aeonia might betray just how weak and inexperienced they are.
Which, to his slight confusion, Izuku does find as a relatively logical counterargument, just one that in their opinion didn’t outweigh the arguments in favor of that plan.
And, once again, ‘they’ doesn’t exactly involve Toga, as she at this point was glued to Uraraka and if the wolfgirl told her to jump off the cliff, she would likely do that instantly and with no hesitation.
That was somewhat disturbing to watch, really. And Izuku definitely had to ask Uraraka what she felt about it, because as far as his knowledge of his best friend went, he was 100% certain that she wasn’t sure what to think about it and that made her incredibly confused.
All of that led to Uraraka and Toga visiting Aeonia, officially under the guise of having to take a bust or two from her sanctuary to further the process of unlocking the [Muraekai Burial Site] biome.
“So, uhm, are you perhaps fine with answering a few more quick questions?” Uraraka asks the deity-turned-daemon, who was sitting on her throne (again) and observing her guests with a look of faint amusement on her face (also again).
She didn’t seem to be bored of it yet. Then again, she probably couldn’t feel bored by design if being alone in a locked room for centuries not driving her insane was anything to go by.
“Once again, I don’t think that I have anything better to do, and I do find filling the gaps in your master’s knowledge somewhat entertaining.” Aeonia replies. She was sitting with her legs crossed, slightly leaning on her right side, her right elbow resting on the armrest and supporting her head. “Go on.”
“Alright, so what exactly are the Wild Courts?” Uraraka asks, Aeonia giving her a faint but definitely smug smile.
“Which one of their servants have you slain?” She asks instead of answering.
“A hamadryad!” Toga announces cheerfully. To Uraraka’s surprise, the look that Aeonia gives them in response is that of… satisfaction?
“Good.” Aeonia replies, the tone of her voice confirming that yes, she was happy that the slaying occurred. “My ties with the elves are much looser than in the past, but the deep disdain for the fae remained.”
Fae? Huh.
I figured out that elves and the fae would be buddies, but I guess it’s not the case
Uhm, what are the fae?
Lol
“What you’ve slain was a minor tree spirit.” Aeonia continues. “There are stronger nature spirits above it, lords of entire forests and other lands where nature is plentiful. We call those the Wild Lords. Every such Lord has an entire entourage of lesser fae and magical animals following their will that we call their courts, and through their masters and mistresses’ titles, the Wild Courts.”
“Uhm, are we going to be in trouble?” Uraraka asks. “We’ve slain one of their servants, and…”
“This is unlikely, child.” Aeonia interrupts her. “If you’ve managed to slay it, it was likely just a singular hamadryad. Not a courtier, not even an outcast from a court, just a wayward spirit that either crossed into this world on its own or was born here in an ancient past but was awakened only recently. If it was tied to one of the Wild Lords, it would be too strong and smart to be defeated by you in your current state. It was probably unable to speak and was merely lashing out against the intruders, didn’t it?”
“Yes.” Uraraka replies after glancing at Toga to see her nod. “The next question we have is about something called the ‘Rampant Bloom’.”
And this time it becomes immediately obvious that Aeonia doesn’t like that name. The frown of disgust that takes over her face leaves no doubts there.
“You must have had an encounter with Occasa’s abominable brood for you to ask that question.” The Pale One replies, the dislike and disgust dripping from her voice. “What was it?”
“Spiders.” Uraraka replies. “Giant spiders.”
“Could be worse, although not by far.” Aeonia replies while shaking her head lightly. “The name that the elves of Old Vestiria had for the Rampant Bloom translates into your language as ‘Locust-That-Walks’, which I find apt, even if some of its members are capable of flying.”
That name’s pretty high on the ‘names to run from really fast’ list tbh
You know what? I agree with you.
“Rampant Bloom is the polar opposite of the Wild Courts.” Aeonia continues. “Where Courts seek to preserve nature, Rampant Bloom seeks to destroy it. All their servants are invasive species by design, devouring and multiplying until they run out of food or are slain to the last, in the former case leaving only desolate wasteland in their wake.”
“But… why?!” Uraraka asks the right question in Izuku’s opinion. “This can’t be sustainable.”
“It’s not supposed to be.” Aeonia replies while lightly shrugging when Uraraka gives her a shocked look. “The Rampant Bloom is a corrupted force of nature embodying its ‘survival of the fittest’ part above all else. To them, scarcity of food is desirable because it weeds out the weak.”
“Absolutely disgusting.” Uraraka decides. Judging from the look on Aeonia’s face, she agrees with the wolfgirl. “One of those we’ve slain looked half-human.”
“A common feature among the servants of the Hierarch of Desolation.” Aeonia replies. “All the females there are partially humanoid and usually more intelligent than their male compatriots. Although the theological and cosmological reason for it is… not for the faint of heart.”
I feel as if my entire gender was just insulted
Internet back at home would have a field day over it
Avoiding that field day is perhaps the only positive of being isekai’d in my eyes.
“Try me.” Uraraka replies, while staring defiantly at Aeonia’s eyes. The Pale One sighs.
“Occasa herself is always depicted as a beautiful and pregnant woman with almost her entire body covered by insects.” Aeonia eventually replies. “And if you dig deep enough into the assorted theology you’ll realize that the reason her female spawn is more vaguely humanoid and more intelligent is because they inherited more from their female progenitor.”
Holy fuck
Wait, what? What does that even mean?
“Wait, so you’re telling me that Occasa and those insects covering her are…” Uraraka then speaks and only at this point does Izuku realize what Aeonia meant. And he immediately agrees with Tomura’s reaction to it.
“It’s merely an approximation of what occurs there, Occasa being a transcendental being, a primordial force of reality more than a person, one that we only imagine as having a body resembling us.” Aeonia replies while shrugging. “Guess there are a limited number of ways for a fertility goddess to fall from grace, and none of them are very pretty.”
“... sorry for putting it that way, but all the gods we’ve heard about thus far sound absolutely horrendous.” Uraraka then says. Aeonia, thankfully, takes the blasphemy taking place right in front of her with nothing but yet another shrug.
“If you’re looking for quote unquote normal gods, you’re looking for them in the wrong place.” Aeonia replies calmly. “There are sixty High Gods governing the Creation. Forty of them do their job and are almost oddly sane about it, while the remaining twenty are various flavors of insane. Luna, Nex, Calamitas and Occasa are all from the second category.”
“Aren’t you serving two of those insane gods?” Uraraka asks confusedly.
“I never said that I’m not insane.” Aeonia shrugs once more. “For gods and daemons, sanity is a matter of perspective. I’m perfectly fine where I am at, but I know that my past self would have considered the current me insane and wouldn’t be wrong about it. But from my point of view, her beliefs and actions were insane and nonsensical.”
Izuku can’t help but wonder if there is anything, anything, that can break Aeonia’s composure.
“I see.” Uraraka breathes deeply before moving to the next question on the list. “What exactly are daemons?”
“A complicated question with nothing resembling a short and abbreviated answer.” Aeonia replies calmly. “To give you a full answer I’d have to roughly summarize the entire cosmological system that the Creation is, including a very abbreviated version of the story of how it came to be. It might take a while.”
Please no
Please yes.
“Go on.” Uraraka replies. To her, it sounded like the sort of necessary information that they needed to not surprise the locals by how little they knew about this world.
“Very well.” Aeonia replies, moving straight into the creation story of… Creation. That actually sounded a bit weird to Izuku when he put it that way. “Before everything existed, there was nothing. Quite literal nothing, that the conventional theology describes with a single word: Silence. This period, if you can call it that way as time didn’t exist back then either, lasted until three deities emerged from some unspecified place beyond the Silence. Two of those deities are today known as Honor and Tyrannus.”
This is shaping to be some sort of One For All x All for One story ffs
The latter’s name is giving me the same vibe as All for One’s entire existence
Who the hell calls himself ‘Tyrannus’
I have absolutely no idea.
“The former is the head of the Exarchs, so what you would consider to be the ‘sane’ gods.” Aeonia continues. “Tyrannus in the meantime used to be the head of the Hierarchs, at least until Luna and a handful of others managed to overthrow him. He’s still believed to be the strongest among the Hierarchs, but it’s more of a first among equals situation. Hierarchs themselves have also split into multiple lesser pantheons like the Rampant Bloom, Shadowlight Covenant or the Breathless Tide.”
“And the third god?” Uraraka asks. “What’s their name?”
“No one knows.” Aeonia replies, leaning back in her seat. “It sacrificed itself to end the Silence and breathe life into the Creation. Honor and Tyrannus took its body and used it to craft the World Engine, the beating heart of everything that exists, with even its very name and identity being used in the process. Though it isn’t without its own progeny, for out of the World Engine, the first of the Anarchs were spawned. More about them in a while.”
Anarchs? That definitely sounds like something in my vein lmao
Order is for the boring ones
You do realize that if you brought an end to society, the rate of producing new videogames would likely skydive?
Uhm
That has kind of never crossed my mind.
It’s far from being alone in that category.
I thought that you couldn’t hurt me more than by Detroit Smashing my face, but somehow your Verbal Smashes hurt me more than any physical injury ever could
“Today the entire Creation is shaped in a way resembling a letter S.” Aeonia continues. “In the middle of that S lies the World Engine, surrounded by the Aetherial Vortex, the raging whirlwind of energy that is too great for everything that isn’t a High God to handle. The energy emitted from it forms two streams called the Aetherial Currents, which are shaped like the rest of the letter S. Once the energy is dispersed at the both ends of the letter, it begins to be drawn back towards the World Engine, changing S into a lemniscate, the symbol of infinity, which is also sometimes used to picture it. Following thus far?”
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
“I think so.” Uraraka replies, painfully aware that Toga was already getting lost. “Continue on, please.”
“All universes and planes of Creation are undergoing an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth.” Aeonia continues. “Once a newly created universe is spit out of the World Engine, it resembles a blank page more than anything else. While it goes down the Aetherial Current it is shaped out by a group of Anarchs, called the Demiurges, who include High Gods of plains, mountains, seasons, plantlife and animal life and so on. They form its surface and make it habitable, changing it into what we call a Primal World, one of untamed wilds and raging elements. This lasts until such a world is spit out of the Current, which is when and where sapient life usually develops and when it changes into the so-called Material or Physical World.”
“And this is where we are at, right?” Uraraka asks for confirmation.
“Correct.” Aeonia replies. “Those worlds are the most stable ones, following all the rules of the material world and its natural sciences, but with a certain degree of magic influencing them, one drawn from the World Engine either through what’s dispersed around it by the Aetherial Current or borrowed from the gods or other higher order beings. From then on, such a world is slowly drawn upward, where it over time changes into the so-called Spiritual World. Such worlds are illuminated by the light of the World Engine to the degree where they become fundamentally more magical, making rules there much more… fleeting.”
“Like… inside a Dungeon?’ Uraraka asks a moment before Izuku can ask the very same question.
Aeonia seems surprised by the deduction. Considering how little they knew about this world, she must have considered them to not be very smart, now that Izuku thinks about it. But it was clearly changing.
“Correct.” She nods after a moment. “Dungeons draw energy from outside of their worlds, forcefully attaining a higher energy level, thus operating on rules of a Spiritual World rather than those of a Material World. This leads to things such as death being a negotiable state, things being created ex nihilo and so on. At some point in the distant future, Dungeons will become obsolete as the entire universe will work like that.”
I really hope that it’s a very distant future
Same. It sounds like an ‘End of the World As We Know It’ scenario.
“Eventually those worlds drift further upward.” Aeonia continues. “It is believed that some of them are subsumed into the Radiant Worlds, personal realities of High Gods and afterlifes for their followers anchored at the very edge of the Aetherial Vortex, while others are swallowed by it, the raging energies of the World Engine wiping them clean before spitting them out through the Aetherial Current, thus completing the cycle. Still following, I presume?”
“Yes.” Uraraka nods. “Where do the daemons come in?”
“Daemons are all sapient beings born and inhabiting a Spiritual World.” Aeonia replies. “We are something fundamentally different than beings of a Material World like you. To begin with, our very existence is built out of mana, which is the raw energy exuded by the World Engine. This is sustainable only when there is enough of it around, which is why to manifest ourselves in a Material World we require some conscious effort. The first option is to be summoned by a mage that is temporarily providing us with mana he or she gathered - although Dungeons can do the same thing, but theoretically forever.”
The actual word she used wasn’t mana, but aether. However with their knowledge of local languages being somewhat mechanical (due to it being bestowed to them by the Dungeon) it seemed to autotranslate some words to better fit the words and terms known to them from Earth.
First time something like this happened. Then again, they didn’t speak with the locals often.
Oh, right. That was the ‘spiritual’ form of the hamadryad. What about the physical form?
“The other way is to adapt ourselves to a Material World.” Aeonia continues. “This requires finding or constructing an appropriate body that we shape to work according to the rules of such a world in every way that it can, which massively lowers the amount of energy we spent merely on existing. This is the ‘physical manifestation’. Before you ask, I’m physically manifested. It’s the only way for me to be around for so long.”
“So, this body of yours, it’s not actually yours?” Uraraka asks. “You just borrowed some flesh and shaped it that way?”
Izuku can’t help but remember how summoning the hamadryad physically required a bunch of wood and plant matter for it to construct its own body from. And how despite being built from such a material, she resembled a woman (at least before Toga mutilated her so much).
“Not exactly.” Aeonia replies. “This body has been mine for so long that it is mine. The face you’re seeing is identical to how I look in my spiritual form. But before I manifested in this universe, it belonged to an elven priestess that sacrificed herself to summon and anchor me in this realm.”
Sacrificed?
Local religions really are hardcore lol
Yeah, I can’t deny that.
“I’m weaker here than I’d be in a Spiritual World, but in return most of my body operates by the rules of biology, just slightly altered by magic.” Aeonia continues. “That means that I don’t have to spend an egregious amount of energy, at least by local standards, to keep myself existing. I only have to spend it to keep my body working a bit better than biology dictates and to use my powers outside of my body, so for example attack someone or command the undead.”
It made sense to Izuku, to some degree at least. Spiritual form was costly because you needed to keep everything both existing and working with mana. Physical form in the meantime was the equivalent of having a body and just having to use mana to spawn some calories for the machinery of the body to keep working.
“I see.” Uraraka replies while thinking deeply. “That’s still kind of, err… muddy? I mean, what are the lesser undead we’ve met then? Or those giant spiders?”
That was also a good point. They were definitely very magical, yet of local origin. Right?
“This is where the classification does indeed become muddy.” Aeonia agrees with her. “The spiders and the undead can be encountered in the Spiritual Worlds claimed by the Rampant Bloom or the Breathless Tide respectively. In fact, it is entirely possible to summon such creatures here from a Spiritual World like you would a daemon, although as non-sapient entities they are classified as ‘shard spirits’ instead of ‘daemon spirits’. However, if such a spiders manifest physically in a Material World, it is usually capable of reproduction, creating locally born giant spiders that are still a part of the Rampant Bloom, but aren’t, technically, spirits anymore.”
Which somewhat limits what can be done with them - when compared to Hamadryad we’ve ‘caught’ - if only because they are fully material beings lacking a daemon-like soul. Which is also probably why we can copy them freely but can’t do the same to daemons.
I think I’m more or less following it.
“There are in fact entire sapient species or races that are born because at some point in the past, humans or some other species interbred with physically manifested daemons.” Aeonia adds, before shrugging one more time when Uraraka stares at her in confusion. “Yes, it’s messy. But perhaps a better way of picturing it is by imagining mortal species as daemons of their respective Material Worlds, just as local animals and plants are forms of primitive shard spirits with little to no magic in them. As the world drifts closer and closer to the World Engine, everything will slowly turn to resemble spirits more and more, until everything will become a spirit. What happens to mortals after death is perhaps an even better image of how it works.”
“And what is that exactly?” Uraraka asks calmly, as if learning what happens to you postmortem wasn’t a serious deal.
“When a mortal dies, their soul becomes unchained from its world and drifts towards the World Engine much faster than the worlds do, eventually reaching a Radiant World of their respective deity.” Aeonia replies. “However, many of them take a detour through an aligned Spiritual World, where they construct themselves a new body, becoming daemons. And eventually, those worlds will become subsumed by the Radiant Worlds, making such a daemon end at their final destination and join their High God in their afterlife.”
I’m really curious how such a certainty of life after death influenced the inhabitants of this world.
Then again, I remember a certain elder and that tells me a lot about it.
I sincerely disagree with that
People are people
Even if someone thinks that God exist they can still be dicks because they don’t perceive themselves as dicks
I think that this sort of ‘certainty’ only influences the world by making fanatics more fanatic, while doing much less to random schmucks
That’s… an option as well.
Uraraka, relay a question from me.
“And are there any worlds that go so far outside of the World Engine after leaving the Current that there is just… no magic there?” Uraraka asks a moment later. Aeonia raises an eyebrow at that question.
“That’s an interesting question to ask.” She eventually replies. “But it is believed by some that the answer to it is yes. Such hypothetical worlds are called ‘Blank Worlds’ or ‘Mundane Worlds’ by the theologians. Whether they’re eventually moving upward and become Material Worlds as we know it or if they just keep drifting away is much harder to tell.”
Wait a fucking second
You think that Earth is a Mundane World
And quirks are a sign that it’s drifting upward?
I genuinely don’t know.
But Luna had to copy us from somewhere, right?
We can as well be zigzagging around the multiverse, developing completely different forms of ‘magic’ and whatnot.
Or maybe there’s just a bunch of powerful daemons/lesser deities messing with us for the laughs and creating the quirks at random.
Lmao.
I just imagined AFO dying and waking up in Luna’s realm, where he is the eternal court jester because he resembles Tyrannus so much and it’s hilarious
You know what?
It kind of is.
“And gods?” Uraraka asks.
“Most of the gods are just daemons that became worshiped by mortals, although it does empower them and makes them something fundamentally different.” Aeonia replies. “I was but a simple deity, the lowest of low, a close servant of a god more than a god itself, offerings to me being seen as offerings to my patron with me as a proxy. It’s common for such lesser deities to be enshrined locally. Think of it as a patron of a village, a deity of some location, like a nearby mountain and so on.”
So… a majority of shinto deities, got it.
“Above the past me are regular gods..” Aeonia continues. “The weaker ones live in the Spiritual Worlds, the stronger ones in the Radiant Worlds but you can expect them to have some presence in the Spiritual Worlds as well, usually through some form of an avatar that does their legwork for them. They are too powerful to manifest themselves anywhere in a Material World, but can still grant boons to their followers and usually have some servant spirits of their own to go there in their stead.”
And that feels like stock fantasy world polytheistic gods for me
Yeah.
“Then there are High Gods, who are far beyond that.” Aeonia says as she shrugs. “More akin to concepts given form, fundamental powers of the Creation. I think only Luna supposedly steps into Material Worlds from time to time, and no one really knows how they do that. If that’s even the truth. ”
Yeah, supposedly.
Supposedly indeed
“So, are there any other… religions around?” Uraraka replies with another question. “This one’s definitely messy. And the amount of gods feels a bit overwhelming to say the least.”
A question probably best asked before we get Ibara Shiozaki.
Oh, yeah, that token religious person from the UA
Almost forgot about her
Tokoyami’s religious too, his family is running a major shinto shrine.
Religious, just edgy.
Very, very edgy.
“Yes, but it’s… complicated.” Aeonia shakes her head. “This is the subject best talked about another time, as it goes very, very deep. But in simplest words, not the entirety of this particular universe that we’re currently in is governed by the religious system that I just described to you. It’s a contested ground between several cosmologies, each of them equally true in their own domains but just as false outside of it.”
Now it’s just giving me a headache.
Sounds like a semi-standard ‘all religions/myths are true’ setting to me
I’m genuinely impressed by your ability to accept it all on the face value
Heh, I just focus on what’s important rather than try to break my head over the lore
It also makes my theory about Earth being a Mundane World a bit more… unclear.
Yeah, but it’s still pretty logical tbh
“So this particular part of this world is a part of this Creation that you’ve just described to me…” Uraraka replies with a question. “...but if we move far enough on it, we might move to another land, which is dominated by another religion, and that’s part of a completely different multiverse?!”
“If it makes you feel any better, you’d have to cross an ocean to get anywhere close to a place not governed by the High Gods.” Aeonia replies. She really doesn’t seem all that concerned about the theological and existential implications of what she was just describing. “An ocean or almost an entirety of a continent. For an average person out there, those ‘other religions’ are pretty much something out of another world to begin with.”
“I’d say that merely knowing they exist makes things theologically complicated.” Uraraka replies. Toga is at this point looks completely confused and lost.
“There were civilizations in the past with their own gods that had long ago passed, the gods taking the last of their faithful and leaving forever. So it gets deeper.” Aeonia decides to drive the nail deeper. “All things considered, it might just be that the world we’re in is on an intersection between multiverses, or perhaps it just drifts through them and got close to a few so each of them has developed a presence here. Frankly, does it really matter for as long as the religion you follow is true? At some point in the distant future, the lands of Karadia will become a Spiritual World, leaving everything else here behind, and then continue its drift upward towards the World Engine. Joining those past civilizations that left this world forever. For me, that’s what matters.”
“I…” Uraraka blinks. “I think I need to spend a long, long while trying to wrap my head over it. I, errr… if we have any more questions…”
“I’m always here.” Aeonia interjects. “And I have nothing better to do than to answer your questions. Although… I should probably warn you about something.”
“That being?” Uraraka asks, suddenly on guard.
“Rampant Bloom hates Dungeons.” Aeonia replies. “For them, your very nature is an aberration. Endlessly renewable materials are an anathema to them. And while the creatures following Occasa are usually too animalistic to plan ahead, the same cannot be said about their mortal followers.”
This time Uraraka needed a longer while to comprehend the very concept of someone willingly following such a religion.
“Bloom has… mortal followers?” Uraraka asks, still wanting confirmation.
“Unfortunately.” Aeonia replies dryly. “Misguided souls. So misguided that they’re killed off to the last in any civilized place, usually with everyone in their family tree just to make sure that the blood tainted with the horrid touch of Occasa is truly purged from the world. If the outbreak that you’ve encountered is large enough, it’s possible that some of those wretched beings are guiding it, trying to make their sickness grow away from civilization before it can be unleashed upon it. It’s probably a small group, but if they notice a Dungeon around, they’ll definitely try to kill you.”
“And what if that happens and it’s too much for us to handle?” Uraraka asks.
“Feel free to send someone to unseal me and guide me back to your location, if you can.” Aeonia replies. “I don’t need to be a part of you to deal with some of Bloom's annoying menagerie. Nor do I need any additional incentive, to me it’s going to be a pleasure. But you’ll have to hold your ground until my arrival.”
Which, Izuku and Tomura realize immediately, might be a problem when your entire Dungeon is so small and it’s much quicker to just walk through it than to reach Aeonia, much less come back with her.
Sigh.
They’ll have to work more on their defenses and hope that none of the hypothetical Bloom’s worshippers connected the dots. Or that if they did, they and the beastkin end up having a free for all outside of the Dungeon.