“Here?!” Aeonia, for once, looks absolutely floored by the description that Uraraka just relayed to her, simply freezing in the middle of the corridor. “Why is one of them here ?! They shouldn’t be here!”
Well, shit.
That doesn’t sound very good
Yes.
I didn’t even know that she could be this shocked
“Are we in trouble?” Uraraka asks immediately, staring at Aeonia and being as shocked by this sight as Midoriya and Shigaraki. “Should we rush back to the Dungeon?”
According to Izuku, the intruder was still busy defacing the shrines, so if they all rushed back, then maybe, just maybe, they would make it in time!
“No.” Aeonia replies as she recovers from her brief moment of shock. “No, you shouldn’t rush back there, Without me with you, you don’t have a chance at defeating her as you’re right now, and I don’t intend to show up anywhere close to that woman.”
Aeonia not wanting to fight her brings the situation straight to the realm of ‘oh shit, we’re fucked’
Vulgar.
But correct.
And I still want to know why we’re so, uhm, deep in troubles.
“As for whether you’re in trouble, that depends.” Aeonia continues. “Is your master someone who lived a virtuous life before landing in this world? Was he kind, brave, diligent, helpful towards others and generally indulged in all sorts of goody-two-shoes behavior?”
She doesn’t sound as if she was particularly hopeful about that subject. Nor as if she considered those qualities to be anything particularly noteworthy. Huh. Well, she was a servant of one of the local dark gods, they shouldn’t expect a lot on that field…
“Yes.” Uraraka replies immediately and with complete confidence. Of course, she’s only talking about Izuku. “Yes, he was. Most of us were like that, we were training to become… well, the type of people who were supposed to keep nasty people away from innocent people. ”
“Then it’s likely that you’re not in trouble.” Aeonia replies, clearly deciding not to address the rest of her words. Izuku is genuinely surprised by her reaction. He expected being heroic to be a problem, at least considering how spooky the intruder - who had just finished destroying the shrines and was now taking a casual stroll through the elemental maze, no-selling all attacks without even retaliating, all while clearly looking for the entrance to the second level - looked. “From your description, it seems that she’s one of the khardic purifiers.”
“I know neither of those words.” Yaoyorozu replies, clearly hoping to learn more.
Aeonia obliges.
“Khardism is a monotheistic religion from Telya, the small continent to the west of Karadia.” Aeonia replies. “It’s another cosmology entirely. Purifiers are their… religiously motivated errant knights, of sort. I don’t know what this one is doing here, but they’ve likely seen the shrines to some Hierarchs and immediately decided to kill the Dungeon who consorts with them in any way.”
Without asking as to why they are there?
“Yes.” Aeonia replies when Uraraka relays the question. “Khardics are… their religion is an extreme one. Tolerance towards anything that they consider evil is counted among one of the worst sins. For them, there is no such thing as excessive brutality when it comes to destroying evil.”
“... how bad is it?” Uraraka asks. Thus far it sounded to her as something akin to more combat-oriented pro-heroes, really. At least when it comes to what that particular religion expected from its worshippers.
Most worshippers never got anywhere close to what their religion demanded from them, unfortunately.
She has no idea how wrong she was, but Aeonia doesn’t let her stay like that for long.
“When a group of fanatic worshippers of, say, Honor finds an evil overlord oppressing the local people, they’ll slay him and help the people recover, before departing.” Aeonia replies. “When a group of fanatic worshippers of the khardic Overtyrant finds such a person, they’ll creatively torture him to near death, flay him and his supporters alive, then have the previously oppressed people watch in horror as they dance around the pyre where their oppressors are being burned alive while wearing their skins before concluding the celebration with a cannibalistic feast in which they consume whatever was left of the tyrants they’ve just overthrew. Then they'll tell the horrified witnesses that if they follow in their former rulers’ footsteps and start oppressing others in the future, they’ll come back and subject them to the exact same fate, before they depart from the scene to do it all over again elsewhere.”
…
Everyone in the corridor stares at her in horror, too shocked by the presented scenario to speak.
…
…
You think she’ll do that to All for One if I ask her?
what
He killed Mon-chan
And my family too
And a lot of other people too I guess
Besides, look me in the face (metaphorically) and tell me that you don’t think that All for One deserves that
He… he narrowly doesn’t deserve that.
What if he, hypothetically, had a spy planted in 1-A by giving them a quirk and then murdering someone in cold blood right in front of them and their parents and telling them that it’ll be them if he doesn’t get enough intel about the school and All Might, and that they can’t hope to hide from him, ever?
what
Hypothetically ofc
I
why have you even said that
To see if you were ready to permit such a thing happening to someone who harmed your classmates, as I’ve already established that you’d do that for someone who harmed your mom.
In such a hypothetical scenario, I’d be severely tempted to… errr… look the other way.
Not even denying that you’d do that against someone who harmed your mother, alright.
I didn’t deny that for a simple reason.
?
I do not like to lie.
… uhm
You scare me sometimes.
Truly a failure on my side, as I should scare you always.
Now, cough it out.
Who is it?
The french guy.
There’ll be pain.
Wait, you’re going to punish the spy for that?
What? No! I’m going to punish All for One for that, somehow.
Aoyama-kun is my friend.
He even gave me cheese.
I don’t know much about the French, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to trust Hagakure when she told me that sharing their cheese with people is their sacred ritual of friendship and brotherhood, but I’m still absolutely INFURIATED at someone threatening my classmate and his family.
Especially as I now realized how much of his strange acts towards me must have been motivated by guilt.
All for One is going to suffer.
Oh, well
pog
Thankfully, when they wanted to do it, they could talk with each other extremely quickly. So quickly, in fact, that this entire exchange took them less than two seconds. Being a Dungeon sometimes had its perks.
“How does… how does someone end up like this ?” Yaoyorozu manages to speak out, and asks the right question.
“Their ancestors were treated even worse by a group of aberrants with a god complex for centuries before casting off their shackles thanks to an aid by an even greater power.” Aeonia replies. “Violence and suffering were so common in their life that they simply didn’t know how to live differently, resulting in their culture and religion being the way it is. Their greatest change there was that one they focus all said violence and pain on people who in their eyes deserve it.” She shrugs when Yaoyorozu gives her a confused look. “I might disagree with them, I consider their religion to be a horrible joke and I know what she’d do to me if she could, but I can as well be honest about it.”
Probably to maintain her image of a helpful supporter of their Dungeon. Or so Izuku suspects. She was the exact opposite of altruistic, but at least she was consistent in her actions and clearly ready to uphold her word. That had to be enough.
“And you want I… our master to confront her?” Uraraka appears to be the most shocked by that part of her talk, huh.
“Yes.” Aeonia replies calmly. “Her holy magic capabilities scale off depending on how guilty their target is in the eyes of the Overtyrant. If your master is even close to what you’ve described him as, he’ll turn out to be immune or nearly-immune to it, proving to the purifier that the Dungeon doesn’t deserve to be killed. If he is exactly how you described him to be, the magic will backfire at the purifier, her god backhanding her for daring to raise her hand at someone who is less guilty than she is, and all while invoking his power and name to do it.” She sighs loudly. “If that happens, just have your master tell her about the Webmistress Family and where to find it, preferably in Itavian. Mention the Rapturous Ecstasy holdout too, while at it. If he proves himself to be a better person than she is, she’ll immediately consider this a worthy cause and go slaughter them all or die trying. Buying you some much needed time to expand.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I… are we actually sure that the cult deserves SUCH a punishment?
Oh god fucking dammit just GO
Better them than us
Okay, okay! I’ll spawn myself on the second floor and go up to confront her.
Shigaraki, guide me to her position.
Alright.
***
It works pretty much exactly as Aeonia said that it would.
Izuku gathers up his courage - even after all that he went through back on Earth he really needs that to face someone so deranged as the knight making her way to him - and goes out to meet her.
She sees him stepping out of the Level Change Room and immediately realizes that he’s either a servant of the Dungeon or a Dungeon Lord in person. She points her sword at him and casts some sort of spell.
For a millisecond or two, Izuku can feel a… presence . An overbearing presence looking down at him, something akin to what Stain emitted back in Hosu, but a hundred times stronger. Looking down at him, scrutinizing him and everything he ever done in his life.
But then it ceases. And he discovers that when Aeonia compared the spell backfiring to getting backhanded by god, she meant it literally.
It’s as if the knight suddenly received a slap in the face, potent enough to make her stagger solid two meters in the direction of the wall, clearly stunned by the blow… before spitting out a bloodied tooth onto the floor.
And staring at Izuku, with clear shock written on her face. Someone didn’t expect that to happen.
“I…” He clears the throat and decides to do it as Aeonia suggested. “There is a cult of the Rampant Bloom in a forest valley to the east from here. They’re focused on the spiders, and are wearing this sort of robes.” He says as he pulls a Dungeon-replicated robe of the Webmistress’ Family out of his backpack and shows it to the knight. “There is also a Rapturous Ecstasy holdout in the mine close to it. It’s… it’s a mine from the Labyrinth that has accidentally breached into the surface in one place, the entrance is barely visible, but if they try to expand onto the valley, it should be easy to follow them back to their base.”
Silence in the corridor. The knight is staring at him without a word for a few seconds, and he is increasingly terrified that something’s going to go horribly wrong, only for the woman to turn on her heels and run back towards the exit of the Dungeon.
Still without saying a single word. Was she just… mute? Or did she make some sort of vow of silence?
Damn, that was scary.
He immediately despawned.
Did it work?
Yes.
She ran out of the Dungeon, looking as if she just found her life’s calling and went out to murder people as a part of it
Which is probably what happened.
Anyways
You just received a top grade on your moral state from a monotheistic god of good, who declared you less sinful than his own devoted follower
How do you feel about that?
That god is alright with his followers eating the sinners in cannibalistic feasts and wearing their skins while at it.
Shigaraki, be honest with me.
Are we the baddies?
You fucking dumbass
If you were a bad guy, I could actually fucking tolerate you
Oh, uhm.
Thank you!
Shut the fuck up.
***
When they inform Aeonia about the development, she seems briefly surprised by Izuku measuring up to the Overtyrant’s judgment to such a degree, before immediately telling them that they’re supposed to be extra careful about locking her sanctuary.
“You’re… afraid of her?” Uraraka asks, surprised by it.
“I’m certain that I can kill her, especially as she’s far from the strongest among her kind.” Aeonia replies. They have no idea how she could tell that merely from a brief description of her. “What I can’t be certain of is that I’ll walk out of it uninjured. And that holy magic of hers can cause injuries accompanied by excruciating suffering, ones that will take me lifetimes to heal.”
“Fair.” Uraraka decides. That was a rather wild interruption, but it was the end of it for now. Unless the Family or the Ecstasy manage to take them down, the purified would likely become relevant again, but for now… for now they’d do best to focus on their short-term issues. “So, the Mourner?”
“Yes, follow me.” Aeonia replies, before turning around and continuing their walk through the corridors of the tomb. She seemed relieved that it was over too, just emotionally scarce and dignified about it.
Soon after that they arrive at the destination. One more set of otherwise completely unremarkable sealed doors. Aeonia points them at it and tells them that what they came for is there, before turning to Yanagi.
“So, why have you decided to choose that particular profession?” She asks as the others begin to unseal the door in the background.
“I always thought that ghosts and other things that scare people are cool and interesting.” Yanagi decides to be honest about it. “In our world, it was all legends and scary stories. Here, they are real.” Aeonia says nothing, Yanagi tilting her head a little to give a questioning look to the much bigger woman. “Is my motivation a problem?”
“No, it is not.” Aeonia replies. Yanagi decides that she believes her. “Other Hierarchs demand things from their followers. Rapturous Ecstasy demands hedonism. Gods of the Shadowlight Covenant demand chaos and anarchy. Gods of the Nine Hordes demand war. Nex, however, demands nothing.”
The others open the door and storm inside, the fight clearly starting. Yanagi feels pretty bad about missing out on a fight, but…
Occult knowledge, alright? That’s important to her.
“I’m not sure if I can believe in a god offering such powers for free.” Yanagi decides to point out instead. She learned enough about the occult to not expect freebies. “There is usually some fine print to such offers.”
There is a terrifying, ear-piercing scream coming from the burial chamber. Yanagi can only wonder how bad it was to hear it up close.
“Correct, because Nex doesn’t offer us anything.” Aeonia replies, completely ignoring the sounds of battle. “You know about the Calamitas, the other High God of the Tide, yes?”
Yanagi nods.
“Calamitas is what she is because she was cursed by the Engine Aspects, the three eldest of the Anarchs dwelling in the very World Engine, for attempting to enter it.” Aeonia replies. “For as long as she lives, all she does will inevitably end up in failure and disaster. Now, what are the spells that you know?”
That was a clear change of subject that Yanagi didn’t expect. Or… was it really? Aeonia was definitely heading somewhere with this.
“Life Tap, Shield of Negation, Black Bolt, Vulnerability Hex, Reanimate Corpse, and Summon Skeleton.” Yanagi replies.
“Black magic of the necromancers is split into two aspects. The first one is the aspect of death, containing spells that create and control undead, and sap the lifeforce of your enemies away from their bodies.” Aeonia replies. “The other one is composed entirely of curses. They work by invoking the power of Calamitas to strengthen the target, which due to the curse that she is suffering from instead makes it weaker . Now, can you tell me why exactly Calamitas is considered part of the Tide?”
Ah, a test. Occult was usually about connecting the dots. Yanagi can do that. And it truly does seem that the earlier change of subject was a meaningful one.
“The curse works for as long as she ‘lives’, right?” Yanagi asks, Aeonia nodding. It seems that she passed the test.
“Nex doesn’t actually lead the Tide.” Aeonia replies. “Instead, he works relentlessly on turning Calamitas into something otherwise impossible - a high god that is neither alive nor dead. The creation of necromancy and undeath as a whole is merely a side-effect of Nex’s work on breaking the natural order of things. We look up to him as the source of our powers and our very existence, but we do not follow him in the traditional sense.”
“So, we can do whatever we want, but for as long as we’re doing that as necromancers or undead, we’re a part of the Breathless Tide?” Yanagi asks, tilting her head lightly. That sounds much more reasonable to her.
She wanted to become a necromancer, yes. But she wasn’t planning to commit any atrocities along the way. At heart, she was still the person who wanted to become a pro-hero. And didn’t plan to change that.
“Correct.” Aeonia replies. “Cults and sects of the Breathless Tide can have vastly different outlook on the world. Some seek to end all life, seeing it as inferior to unlife. Others wish to dominate the former with the latter. Others still are fine with life and unlife coexisting, and there are also those for whom necromancy is merely a tool to achieve their personal goals. That’s why to me, there’s no such thing as a bad reason to become a necromancer.”
Huh.
And then Yanagi remembers that Aeonia believes that her current situation as a necromancer was fundamentally temporary. In her eyes, she was only given a free trial of what they could do, and was currently doing her best to sell it all to her permanently.
Aeonia expected Yanagi and the others to eventually disconnect themselves from the Dungeon and become normal inhabitants of this world. But if one of them would experience the power that necromancy could give you, and was clearly alright with using it in the first place, why wouldn’t they try to become a necromacner again, this time for real?
You could only wonder how she’d act if she found out that thanks to Luna’s ‘cheat code’, Yanagi could easily become a necromancer permanently. And, perhaps, an extremely powerful one.
And that she was actually considering it.
Huh.
“I see.” Yanagi nods and before bowing her head a little. “If you’re interested in helping me become a good necromancer, then I’ll be in your care.”
Aeonia had no idea that the doors that she was trying to break through were unlocked. But if she was adamant to do that, then Yanagi was determined to get as much out of it as she could.
“Are you alright with spending a lot of time in one room with corpses? A lot of them rather fresh.” Aeonia then asks. “It’s, unfortunately, a prerequisite for when one wants to become a necromancer.”
“My parents worked in a morgue.” Yanagi replies calmly. “When I bugged them about it enough, they did let me see how a dead person looks once I was old enough. I think that it was pretty disappointing. So I think that I should be alright.”
It happened around the time she was accepted to the UA, when she could argue that if the best school in the country thought that she was adult enough to battle giant robots, she’s definitely old enough to see what a dead human looks like.
Especially as she would sooner or later see one in her work. Although to be honest, she just wanted to see what characters of so many scary stories did. She expected herself to be scared by it.
She wasn’t.
It was somewhat off-putting, but for as long as this wasn’t anyone that she once knew… then she was alright with that.
“Very well then.” Aeonia clasps her hands with a smile on her face. “You’re definitely well-prepared for the job. Now, let us move over to explaining the basics to you.”
Yanagi nods a few times quickly.
She was learning a true occult lore from a deity that has fallen into daemonhood. Just how cool, no, how superb that was? She could never hope for that to happen on Earth. She might have missed all her friends and family, but…
This was amost as great as all that she lost when she was ‘born’ here. And, to begin with, did she really lose what she, as merely a copy of herself, never had?
They, unfortunately, barely manage to get through the basics (the types of the lesser undead, how to create them and how to preserve corpses for later use) when Uraraka emerges from the mourner’s burial chamber.
“It’s done.” She announces to Yanagi and Aeonia. “It was a bit… err, well, you weren’t wrong when you said that it’ll be easy for us with our current numbers. No one has even gotten injured.”
“As I said, mourners depend heavily on their allies.” Aeonia replies calmly over Yanagi’s head. “The curses that they can wield are rarely powerful enough to kill their enemies, and they aren’t physical enough to finish them off themselves. With nothing but a group of skeletons by her side, she wasn’t much of a threat.”
“Yeah, uhm.” She briefly looks back behind the door of the burial chamber. “You could have told us that the mourner would change into a pool of liquid when she died. Monoma is trying to put it all in a bottle right now, and I don't think he's doing very well.”
“IT’S A DEVELOPING SITUATION, ALRIGHT?!” They all hear Monoma yell from the burial chamber.
“I could.” Aeonia replies, ignoring Monoma entirely. “But I was simply curious if the knowledge from your world would let you know what a mourner is, and if you’d ask how you deal with an immaterial enemy.”
“It… wasn’t quite immaterial.” Uraraka decides to point it out. ”Kirishima severed it in half with a swing of his log.”
“It’s making sounds.” Aeonia replies calmly. “It thus has to be at least somewhat material. There are purely mute spectrals who are fully immaterial, and there are those who can speak and make sounds. The latter are made from a special form of matter known as ectoplasm. It can be cut apart, though stronger creatures will easily regrow what they lost or merge it back. And it can also phase through certain things.”
“Right.” Uraraka sighs. “Like, say, non-organic matter . I tried to stab it with my spear and the metal tip went right through it. If not for the fact that the wooden part of it actually connected with it, I wouldn’t have the idea to yell at Kirishima to hit it with his log.”
“There are also certain non-organic materials that can cut through ectoplasm even easier than that.” Aeonia replies calmly. “Other than that, yes. And I expected you to figure it out on your own. No one was injured, right?”
She clearly didn’t consider what happened to be a problem. Then again, neither did Uraraka. Just some additional training in dealing with unexpected things. And to them in a fantasy world, almost all things were unexpected.
“Right, right.” Uraraka sighs, deciding not to push the subject. “Anyway, we think that we can get another burial chamber done today. Anything you have for us?”
“There is one with two deathblades.” Aeonia replies. “Siblings, formerly. There are also quite a lot of lesser undead there, meaning that it’ll be a tough fight, and some of you will likely die in the process. And there’s nothing for you to get, as you have already unlocked the deathblades.”
“It still counts as a training exercise.” Uraraka replies, suddenly looking pumped up. Hard fight, followed up by return to the Dungeon so that she, Izuku and Himiko could act all lovey-dovey? Yes, please. “We’ll go there once we’re done looking through the stuff in this chamber to make sure that we won’t miss any collectibles, and once Monoma finally manages to deal with, well, you know what.”
“I HAVE TO SCOOP IT UP WITH MY HANDS!” Monoma yells from the room. “IT’S FREEZING COLD AND SLIMY! DO YOU WANT TO BE THE ONE DOING IT?!”
“No, not really!” Uraraka shouts back.
“THEN AT LEAST STOP COMPLAINING!” Monoma shouts back.
“Fine, fine!” Uraraka sighs loudly before mumbling ‘drama queen’ to herself and then turning her attention back to them. “Anyway, how’s the necromancy lesson going, Yanagi-san?”
“Extremely well.” Yanagi replies with a faint smile on her face. “I think that I’m going to become a necromancer in my second life. Permanently.”
Aeonia looks satisfied with that. Yanagi can’t help but hope for further guidance. It was going to be absolutely awesome.