Uraraka, to put it lightly, had a lot to say about the newest revelation, making Izuku congratulate himself on doing it right now. When Uraraka has openly invited him to come out with things that he was hiding from her.
Being angry at him about it would make her feel bad, and a bit like a hypocrite, so she didn’t. But she still asked more questions. A lot more questions. Discovering such things as the fact that when he suddenly exploded with black tentacles during the Joint Training with 1-B it was because he started to awaken the quirks of past Holders, and that was one of them.
“Wait, Izuku could spawn tentacles back on Earth?” Toga, naturally, focuses on that. And there is a very, uhm, new blush on her cheeks. “And I missed out on this?!”
She is ignored.
“So you’re telling me that All Might-sensei has given you his incredibly overpowered quirk and his instructions on using it was to tell you to… clench your buttocks and yell SMASH?!” She says, and the unspoken accusation against All Might immediately switches on Izuku’s Fanboy Mode.
Insulting All Might isn’t allowed in his presence. Just, no. Even when it’s Ochako and even when she’s making those insults be more like unspoken accusations.
Make no mistake, actually meeting the man has changed Izuku’s outlook on All Might greatly. To him, he was no longer a divine patron of Heroism. He was no longer a perfect demigod.
He was just a very, very good person, with their own faults just as all people - even the best ones - had. And you could say a lot about him, but not that he wasn’t aware of said faults and wasn’t doing his best to fix them.
In other words, he was still his idol, but he was now a human idol.
In practice, it somehow changed almost nothing. He was still looking up to All Might, and felt perfectly justified in that.
“Ochako, in his defense, for him using it came completely naturally.” Izuku replies. “You can’t blame him for not adequately preparing for an issue that he had no reason to suspect would occur. Especially as when it came to the issue that he had reasons to fear, he did his best to prepare me for it. I’ve done some of the most extreme training regimens you could possibly imagine before getting to UA to strengthen my body enough for it to be able to withstand the quirk. And he was there for me every step of the way.”
“Wait, so it could be worse than just breaking your bones?” Uraraka asks, staring at him in shock.
She has thrown her clothes on, deciding to have a very serious talk about what Izuku just shared with her. And apparently it’s not something that one can have when they’re naked. Which is perfectly reasonable and also makes Izuku feel a tiny bit better about himself.
Although Himiko clearly didn’t care about any of that, as she was still naked and still enjoying some head scratches from Izuku. Then again, her relationship with the concept of clothes was a rather… loose one, occasionally.
“Well, a-apparently my limbs might have… entirely came off if not for the training with All Might.” Izuku admits, Uraraka’s eyes going wide. “And when it became clear that it’s not exactly working as intended, he had me train with Gran Torino, his old teacher that helped him figure out One For All. And it worked! Since then, I could actually use the quirk without accidents! From then on, I only broke limbs when circumstances forced me to go beyond my own limit to survive, like when I had to go all out to fight back Muscular during the Training Camp.”
Uraraka considers his answer for a while, eventually arriving at the conclusion.
“Alright.” She says, clearly conceding the point. “That’s a point for All Might, I guess. I’m just… I’m just absolutely angry about all the injuries you suffered, alright? I’m just looking for someone to blame them on. However illogical that is.”
“I know, I know.” Izuku sighs, Uraraka coming closer to wrap him in a hug. Himiko was still enjoying herself with the head scratches, having clearly decided to not butt in for now.
It feels really nice to have Ochako care for him so much. It’s… just nice, alright? It’s warm. The best kind of warm. She cared for him even before, obviously, but… the romantic developments somehow made it better.
Warmer.
“So, how exactly did a quirk like this get born?” Uraraka asks as she pulls back a bit. “I never heard about quirks being transferable. Even in any of your rambles, and you were really talking about everything when quirks were involved.”
Oh, boy, it’s going to be a mess.
The tale goes on, and Uraraka even admits that it sounds like something out of a heroic fairytale, at least until she reaches the point where it turns out that the Quirk Thief was really a thing, and it was actually the Kamino Villain.
“Wait, did All Might tell you that there’s an invincible super-supervillain after that quirk before giving it to you?” Uraraka asks, immediately activating Izuku’s All Might Defense Mode. Again.
It’s completely automatic for him.
“He lost his lung and his stomach while battling said super-supervillain, and ended up destroying his head so thoroughly that it was missing entirely.” Izuku retorts. Because yes, he did ask about the details at some point in the past. “And it’s not like he just left it there. While the corpse was stolen, it was after hours of missing its head, and after it was tested multiple times and it was conclusively confirmed that its quirk factor was dead and its heart had also stopped.” Izuku sighs loudly. “To this day, no one has a clue just how did All for One survived and I can’t blame All Might for not telling me about the Quirk Boogeyman if he was completely certain that he was dead, right?”
To him, it’s just the absolutely logical thing. And he fails to even imagine someone coming to a different conclusion with that information in mind. They’d have to be really biased against All Might to do so.
Like, Tomura Shigaraki-level of biased.
“I guess.” Uraraka sighs while leaning back, her back resting on the wall of their living room right next to Izuku. “He probably wanted to let you become a smiling, optimistic hero without all that baggage, right? I can’t even imagine how it feels to fight the Quirk Thief, a man with who knows how many quirks gathered over decades. For so long. And win against him twice. Somehow it just makes him feel cooler as a hero. Actually…” She glances at him, squinting a little. “If you don’t know how All for One survived, can’t you just… ask Shigaraki about it? He might know the answer, right?”
… why didn’t Izuku think about it? Oh, right. It’s because he generally tried to avoid talking with Shigaraki as much as possible.
“Shigaraki, are you there?” Izuku asks, but gets no answer. “I guess that he manifested as a Dungeon Lord too, and he’s doing… well, something. I’ll ask him later.” It’s just idle curiosity, really. Unless they can somehow send a message to themselves on Earth.
It was unlikely.
“Alright.” Uraraka nods. She’ll satiate her curiosity later. At least that part of it. For now, there’s another thing that she wants to find out! “And, uhm, if I may ask… how is this quirk transferred? It sounds absolutely fascinating, it’s like a… holy sword of a fantasy world’s hero! There has to be some sort of super awesome ceremony or something, right? I can’t help but…”
Izuku was absolutely waiting for it. And so, as Uraraka was talking, he pulled his hand off Himiko’s head (making her look up at him, clearly saddened by the sudden lack of pleasure) and pulled off one of his hair strands.
Before doing his best All Might impression.
“EAT THIS!” He then says in All Might’s voice with that smile on his face, making both Himiko and Ochako freeze instantly, which lasts until the latter realizes that this was a recreation of how the transfer of One For All actually looked like.
And she completely loses it, doing her adorable ‘pffft!’ thing before collapsing into a wild giggling fit and starting to roll on the floor right next to them.
***
So, I’m back.
Have you done anything interesting while I was away?
Yes.
And it was much more interesting than whatever you did.
… okay?
And what was that?
I played with a dog.
The gravehound.
It’s a good boi.
No Mon-chan, but a good boi nonetheless.
Uhm… okay?
Good for you.
Anyway, I have a quick question.
How exactly did All for One survive the first fight with All Might? I figured out that while it’s no longer really relevant for anything, I’m just… curious.
Cellular Reconstruction.
Huh?
His main scientific sidekick had access to a proto-noumu with a quirk that could make a corpse - or even a living being that was missing some of its flesh - reconstruct its missing parts
It didn’t resurrect it if it was already dead, and no attempts to resuscitate the corpse afterwards could produce anything other than a vegetable, but AFO discovered that it also briefly reactivated the quirk factor of the target during the reconstruction
Oh
So it reactivated his quirk factor briefly in the process of reconstructing the missing chunks of flesh according to the data stored in his DNA, which made the supposedly extinguished Hyper-Regeneration quirk kick in, and actually resurrect him, restoring his brain activity to a previously saved state
Not the Hyper-Regen, if AFO had it back then he would be back to his peak form, just some much weaker regeneration quirk that did manage to resurrect him, but barely and changed him into a talking potato
It was basically the final contingency plan for a situation where all else failed
he definitely didn’t expect to ever use it, that’s for sure
Huh, fascinating.
Anyways, I gotta ask the lampades about something.
That being?
Just listen to the talk.
Uraraka will have it for us.
***
“Physically-manifesting daemons?” Lanna asks as Uraraka asks the question. “It’s not really a problem for Dungeons. I wish that I could say the same thing for the world outside of them.”
Not exactly the answer that they hoped for.
“Yes, but this Dungeon is still learning things.” Uraraka replies. “And it wants to know exactly how this occurs.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The lampada raises an eyebrow at her, clearly confused about the very question. What Uraraka doesn’t know is that this isn’t the first time that lampada was severely confused by the actions of the Dungeon today.
“Daemons can manifest permanently in the Physical World by reconstructing their body from the local materials.” Lanna replies. “The better the quality of the materials, the better the result. The more the material resembles the daemon, the shorter the time that’s needed to form the body.”
“Alright.” Uraraka nods a few times. “I need both of those statements defined a bit more.” So did Izuku.
How nice it is to have a representative in real life that somehow reads your mind. Ochako was awesome, and Izuku accepted no other statements.
“Don’t you have two novice mages among your group?” Lanna asks, even more confused by the entire inquiry. “They might be hedge mages, but they should still know the answer to that question. It's common knowledge.”
“Special circumstances.” Uraraka shrugs. “We were all very sheltered. Frankly, we’ve got all our skills from the Dungeon and we barely know more about the world than it does. We’re still-developing blank slates, really.”
“Oh, that… that makes sense.” Lanna says while nodding to herself. Uraraka congratulates herself on how easily she managed to persuade the lampada. “First, the similarity. If I’m slain and my physical body is destroyed, I can recreate it from a sufficient amount of flesh. But it doesn’t have to be flesh of mortals. In fact, for the servants of the exarchs, it isn’t.”
“Wait.” Uraraka replies. “So the body in front of me is…”
“Technically, my flesh is that of a cow that was offered to Mors as a sacrifice.” Lanna interrupts her with her answer. “Of course, I have long ago made it my own. However, if I were to do the same again, to just some random bovine out there, it could take months. Weaker daemons and spirits could as well spend years carefully shaping their new body to resemble them.”
“So what made it happen so fast?” Uraraka asks back.
“The flesh belonged to a cow that was ritualistically slain and sacrificed to Mors.” Lanna replies. “It was thus made more aligned with her servants, and with the cow dead, there was no mind and not even the flimsiest of souls inside to resist me. Both of those things contributed to making it much easier for me to mold. Dumping a lot of aether into it and thus forcefully filling it with mana can also accelerate the process.”
Looks like we know what’s that ‘aether’ used for
One of its usages, at least.
“Then there’s the matter of material compatibility.” Lanna continues. “Flesh works best, usually. But earth elementals, for example, can only construct their bodies from earth. Spirits of the Wild Courts prefer plant matter. You have one here, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Uraraka replies. “A hamadryad.”
“If you want to physically manifest her, just make a large enough chunk of wood, leaves and so on, and have her possess it.” Lanna replies. “While in Dungeon, everything is heavily saturated with magic, making matter much more malleable for spirits. It should take mere minutes to get it done. If our gravehounds are slain, just gather up enough flesh and have them inhabit it.”
If the doggos are slain, I’m going TO GO ON A FUCKING CRUSADE
AND JAM WHATEVER SHARP IMPLEMENT OF DESTRUCTION I WILL ARM MYSELF WITH DOWN THE FUCKING THROATS OF WHOEVER HURT THEM
Okay.
You need help.
Much more than I thought.
DEATH!
DEAAAAAATH!!!
“As for me and my fellow lampades, you can use any flesh you want too.” Lanna continues her lecture. “But it’ll be even faster if you give us the body of a mortal. The Dungeon should be able to mass-produce those, and it already did for you if you were slain even once while in its service.”
Oh, makes sense.
Just make a soulless puppet of a mortal being of any gender, and then just have the lampada possess the corpse.
Got it.
What about the ‘quality of materials’ that she mentioned earlier?
“What I just described only works like that for weaker spirits.” Lampada replies when Uraraka relays the question. “Stronger spirits need more powerful containers to be able to use their power fully. Or, to be exact, closer to what they’re capable of in a Spiritual World. Although with enough time it’s possible to upgrade the body closer to that state, like what I did with my current body over the decades spent in our tomb.”
“So, when you want to physically manifest a daemon that the Dungeon identifies as having an estimated threat level of twenty five, you’d do best to provide them with a corpse of a mortal that has the race, skills, abilities and so on that the Dungeon qualifies as the estimated threat level of twenty five?” Uraraka asks before Izuku can digest what Lanna just said.
Oh, that made sense.
“I don’t know what that ‘estimated threat level’ means…” Lanna replies. “... as I didn’t get to interact with any Dungeons in the past. However, using a body of comparable baseline strength to daemon inhabiting it is a sound principle.”
Once again, that makes sense.
I’d ask ‘why couldn’t Luna just leave us with a fucking tutorial’ but I guess we all know that they just find our struggles funny
Yes, yes they definitely do.
I fucking hate them
Oh, really?
Counterargument: with some time and effort you can gather every single type of dog (giant or not) that this multiverse has to offer in this Dungeon, and build your very own dogtopia.
I
am I in Heaven
No.
There’re a lot of people that I think deserve it, but you’re definitely not on the list.
Wait a moment
You were groomed into evil by All for One, which is a big extenuating circumstance all things considered
Is this a Purgatory and have I somehow become some sort of… parole officer for you?
…
I wanted to say that Toga being here means that it can’t be it, but then I realized that you’ve already found even more extenuating circumstances in her and decided to redeem her like some annoying shonen protagonist you give me the vibes of being
Oh, uhm, thank you?
Although in this case, you did that because Uraraka was very, very horny for Toga and you’d try to redeem literal Satan if she found him hot
Aaand I’m back to hating you.
And just to annoy you more, I’d be alright with redeeming even you, for as long as you’ve given me any reason to believe that it was possible.
Yuck
Thankfully I don’t have any
Except for being a victim to All for One’s mental manipulations and grooming.
And your love for dogs which makes it even more clear that you have human emotions, it’s just that you’re emotionally scarred so much that you only really know how to open yourself up to dogs
You need therapy
STOP TRYING TO RUIN DOGS FOR ME
No.
I mean, yes.
I’m not even trying to do that.
Our school’s guidance counselor has a dog quirk, would you at least consider therapy with him
No
It’s not the same thing
I’m sure he’s able to bring a therapy dog with him.
Uhm
no
you considered it for a moment
FUCK OFF
“Speaking of, is there any particular reason why this Dungeon has two Dungeon Lords?” Lanna then suddenly asks a very dangerous question. “My experience with Dungeon might not be a large one, but I have never heard of such a case.”
“Look, it’s, err…” Uraraka is a surprisingly good actress, managing to convey the ‘I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it here, but… “You know how sometimes people end up having a split personality? I just think that it’s something like this with them, but since Dungeons are heavily magical, the split just went much further than that.”
your gf just called you my split personality lmao
I’m not even angry, that was just a good… well, a good way of fooling Lanna, really.
The word you’re looking for is ‘deception’. Or just a ‘lie’
“That… makes sense.” Lanna immediately confirms that Uraraka’s deception was successful. “Was one of the fiends of the Pentagram involved? This sort of corruption of one’s nature is something up their valley, though I can’t imagine them stopping halfway like this. Then again…” She looks vaguely confused by it for a moment. “One of them did act a bit strange.”
“I know.” Uraraka says, once again pretending to be embarrassed to admit it aloud in the Dungeon. “The one you’ve encountered? I think he’s a bit… you know. A bit slow in development.”
“That makes… some degree of sense.” Lanna admits.
She
Did she just
Yes.
I hate you all
As you should.
“I also wanted to talk about your… accommodations.” Uraraka then decides to change the subject. “Do you need anything?”
“We don’t really need anything in particular.” Lanna replies immediately. “We do not require any sustenance, even our physical bodies are doing fine as they are. Mors wants us to guard places of burial, so they are all somewhat saturated in her divine influence, making it a natural habitat for us. It’s not as nourishing in mana as a Dungeon is, but it’s enough to help us exist, even with no other amenities provided.”
“Yes, but don’t you want any amenities?” Uraraka then asks back, refusing to take a step back. “I don’t know about our Dungeon Lords, but I’d definitely feel guilty to have you just stare at the wall in-between Dungeon invasions.”
Lanna looks genuinely surprised by Uraraka’s words. But definitely in a good way. Which, of course, shouldn’t be that surprising, considering the fact that lampades were the servants of a good local deity.
Izuku isn’t sure how good they are exactly, but he at least expects less evil than from their dark counterparts.
“It’s a… complicated situation.” Lanna replies eventually. “We can eat and drink, but it’s not easy to find things that we can truly enjoy on a Physical World. Most things here lack mana, making it fundamentally be less than everything you could find in the Spiritual Worlds of our origin.”
“So you’d have to eat and drink something really magical to enjoy it, and otherwise it would just feel… bland?” Uraraka asks for confirmation, Lanna nodding back. “And what about things like beds, chairs and tables?”
“Well, we… we wouldn’t mind that.” Lanna admits after two or three seconds of thinking. “Not beds, as we don’t need to sleep. But a table and some chairs, maybe a couch or two would be nice. Not necessary, but nice.”
“Great.” Uraraka nods. “We’ll get you those. Anyway, we’ll probably be giving you a proper Level, even if it will involve the undead, I’m afraid. Just the fake ones.”
“Even Lorae agreed with that, even if none of us like it.” Lanna replies. You didn’t need to hear her words to know her opinion on it, the look on her face said it all. “Just… please. Don’t have any of those creatures be present in the same room as we are. I understand that they’re merely puppets resembling actual undead, but… it’s not something that we’d like to constantly see.”
“Sure, sure, that’s what we planned to do either way.” Uraraka replies. For now, they were put in the Boss Room of the Cynocephali & Gore Munchers room. The atmosphere of pure disdain when they were crossing the room full of Gore Munchers - disdain that was going both ways - was almost palpable. “Next subject is the payment that we’ve promised.”
“Our tomb can wait.” Lanna then immediately surprises her. “It has stayed like this for decades and it can definitely stay like this for a while more. If there’s truly a battle that’s going to occur soon in this area, you’re free to focus on that.”
“Really?” Uraraka blinks at her. “I… kind of didn’t expect that.”
“We’re interested in restoring our tomb to its appropriate state, yes.” Lanna replies. “But we’re not unreasonable about it. To expect a Dungeon to prioritize supplying us over ensuring its own survival would be straight up delusional.”
I feel insulted
You should instead feel ‘appropriately described’.
I’d prioritize giving them what we promised, after all.
dumbass
Alright, so what do we do next?
You’re actually asking me?
I’m surprised.
Shut it
and speak
… so do you want me to speak or be quiet
get to it ffs
Alright, alright, fine.
I think that we should check out that Amazon daemon for some additional firepower, then add a new level for the lampades to inhabit
Which should at the very least improve the available Ambient Mana Level enough to let us rearm Ochako and Tokage-san.
Oh, right, the whole spear & sword combo
Yes.
makes sense