The next thing on the list is Komori’s official ascension into daemonhood. Up until now, she was a daemon but she could still back out of it. Become a human again. But this was going to change now.
It should have been a Big Thing on its own, however Komori was taking it extremely chill, to the point where it was making Izuku vaguely uncomfortable.
“Sure, I’m fine with that.” She replies when Izuku asks her about it one more time. She already had that talk with her former classmates, but Izuku wasn’t there to see it. “I mean, what’s even the problem with that? I like my new self. It’s cool!”
You could borrow the body of a stronger daemon.
They don’t grow up in strength at the same timescale that mortals do.
You will probably end up getting defeated by adventurers over and over again.
“Meh, I know what death is but it doesn’t really apply to me anymore.” Komori replies while shrugging. “They could kill me ten times a day and it would still barely be an annoyance to me. Frankly, what is death to me? The worst part of it is probably losing out on something that’s happening elsewhere or what I was doing at the time. If the worst part of getting stabbed to death lies in not being able to keep reading the book you just started while dead, death becomes a brief timeout corner.”
I… guess that’s one way of putting it.
“Oh, don’t act like that, I know that it’s weird.” Komori shakes her head. “But it’s my human memories of death being serious business at work, not my current self. Besides, it’s better for me to become a hamadryad rather than wait for a stronger daemon. Those are all, you know, actually sapient.”
Good point… it would be pretty much murder, now that I think about this.
Isn’t it still murder?
The hamadryad might have been rather animalistic and hostile in behavior, but she was still theoretically sapient
I can’t hear you.
The connection’s breaking down.
Dick
Komori-san, we’re doing it right now.
“Alright!” Komori grins.
They all expected something crazy to happen after seeing Luna being oddly interested in it, but they didn’t expect it to be this crazy. Which, in hindsight, was pretty stupid of them. After all, Luna was kind of a Big Deal in this world.
Whatever she was intrigued by had to be a big thing.
The moment they merge Komori’s soul with the hamadryad’s body/soul, she warps, her entire body changing itself completely in an instant.
A second before, she was a hamadryad wearing Kinoko Komori’s face. An admittedly beautiful woman covered by moss and plants, with a pair of wooden antlers on top of her head and her hands completely empty.
A second later, though, she was a significantly taller Kinoko Komori with white strands mixed into her hair, wearing a short dress, thigh-high socks/stockings/boots and elbow gloves. All of her clothes were snow-white, the reason for which Izuku discovered a moment later when he noticed that her clothes weren’t made of any form of textiles known to man.
They were made from mycelium growing all over her and shaped into clothes.
She was also holding a staff that definitely wasn’t there before. It’s long and decorated with a small piece of white rock lodged between a Y shape protrusion at the top, that’s…
… actually a dense cluster of mycelium growing around a crossbar connecting the two sides of the Y shape, now that Izuku looks at it more closely. Huh.
Komori extends her hand, looking at it intensely as her white glove blooms with mushrooms of multiple species, growing up in an instant. It really reminds Izuku of her old quirk.
“That’s so damn cool!” She coos at the sight. “What happened to me?!”
Sometimes my genius is almost frightening.
Quoting Top Gear now, really?
Why can't the Dungeons make food?
What?
I’ve decided to ask this question the second Luna shows up again. So that they don’t vanish on us without answering.
And so I did.
Huh.
Totally arbitrary limit established by the Powers-That-Be to ensure that the Dungeon Lords aren’t completely self-sufficient, even if it’s about such largely optional things.
Wanting to eat tasty stuff, drink alcohol and enjoy yourself in general works as a motivation.
It also prevents Dungeons from making their neighbors completely dependent on them by becoming their main source of food.
Even if you set up a full farm in yourself, you won’t be able to produce enough food for more than a small town, and even that would require a long time.
And forget about being able to just mass-produce foreign cuisine, so you gotta get acquainted with the locals and import some ingredients/hire a foreign cook to get this done.
Alright.
Back to Komori-san.
What happened to her?
Why don’t you check your [Entities] list and find out ;)
They both open it at the same time and almost immediately discover that the [Lesser Hamadryad] was gone from the list. But there was a completely new entry, titled the [Mycelium Singer].
In the newly opened subcategory, titled [Archdaemons].
Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.
What, how?!
I think that you’ve realized by now that the various ‘species’ of daemons are the equivalent of a mix between a mortal’s profession/religious belief/social status.
It’s just that the daemons’ identity is reflected by their body, mind and the way they influence the world around them (so, their ‘powers’).
So?
Archdaemons are what happens when a daemon obtains perhaps the rarest trait of them all.
Individuality.
Their skills, their beliefs, their perception of self is one that cannot be conflated into the crowd, that cannot be categorized per pre-existing categories.
There are tens of thousands of pro-heroes in your old world, having more or less identical jobs, facing more or less identical opponents and playing more or less identical roles in society.
Their quirks might be different, their outfits might be different, but in the end, they are just that. Variants of the same thing, shaped by minor differences in their environment and upbringing.
But then you have people like Miruko, Hawks, Endeavor and All Might. Individualities in character, skills and stories, powerful enough to have others want to be like them.
Archdaemons are to daemons what those top-heroes are to pro-heroes.
And since each and every one of us come from another world, one completely different from what you can usually find in the Creation, we’re individualities by definition.
Oh, shit
Yep! ;)
I suspect that most if not all of your former classmates, companions in crime and the pro-heroes/major villains that you have the souls of will inevitably become archdaemons if they are permanently fused with a daemon’s souls.
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the more successful of your mortal selves would have a shot at becoming archdaemons in their eventual afterlifes.
And what are the practical consequences of it?
There’s a handful of those.
Archdaemons have their own personal set of skills (and potential loot) that’s unique to them.
They can also split parts of their power to create their own shard spirits, even if it weakens them for some time.
They can also ‘convert’ daemons into their servile daemons, which is basically a separate daemon ‘species’, usually smaller versions of themselves.
Although this happens pretty rarely because it’s not easy to do - for daemons, their beliefs are a core element of what they are.
It’s a bit more common, at least in a Material World, for an archdaemon to just have children that function as their servile daemons.
Also, a small bit of info that Shigaraki should find hilarious…
???
… another local term for archdaemon is ‘daemon lord’ ;)
Oh, fuck
Not this shit again
kek
Anyway, she’s only as strong as the [Lesser Hamadryad] was, basically the weakest archdaemon ever (or close to it). If she disconnects from the Dungeon, someone will kill her and harvest her organs quickly.
But if you keep her in the Dungeon, she’ll grow in strength, much faster than one of the more ‘mass-produced’ daemons would.
Hey, in a few decades she should be strong enough to leave the Dungeon and settle somewhere at the verge of civilization, strike a deal with a local settlement about protection in exchange for offerings and she’ll become a lowest-ranked deity in no time!
And you suspected that this would be the outcome of this ‘experiment’ from the start, didn’t you?
Yep ;)
We’re cheating the system here real hard.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I’ve basically converted you into an archdaemon printing machine lol
Or maybe it’s more like a proof of concept for it?
If needed, I can just kidnap (isekai is just a fancier term for kidnapping and we all know it) a few more characters from your world or maybe another distant world, and then I’ll be able to turn them into archdaemons.
Imagine the chaos that this would bring!
… right.
Is that all for now?
Yep ;)
Looking forward to seeing you deal with the shitstorm that’s about to hit the whole area.
And to you checking out what will happen if you give Ibara Shiozaki the same treatment ;)
Have fun!
***
Kinoko Komori’s reaction to being elevated into the status of a daemon lord was one of pure excitement.
“That's so damn cool!” She coos again. “I mean, damn, can you imagine how popular I’d be on Earth if I could introduce myself as a daemon lord? And if I actually was a daemon lord and I could prove that to people? The public would be all over me on the internet!”
God I wish that I could record this moment just to show it to All for One
Imagine the physical pain this would give him
We can always reenact the whole scene, preferably once we do it a few more times, just to have him face a world where a bunch of hero students have stronger claim to the throne of the ‘demon lord of Japan’ than he does.
I hate you and everything you stand for but this is just fucking brilliant
Right.
So, what can you do now exactly? Aside from making mushrooms grow?
“Oh, I know exactly what I’m capable of.” Komori grins. “It’s like I was given the full manual for myself. Then again, if I didn’t know that I could do it then I probably wouldn’t be able to do it, right?”
Good point.
It seems to be working like that for daemons.
So?
Komori says nothing. Instead, she puts the upper end of the staff closer to her mouth - and sings.
The staff amplifies her voice, making it work like a microphone. The song that she’s singing is a pop song that was popular in Japan right before they’ve gotten kidnapped from Earth, the chances of any local hearing it and understanding a word are pretty slim.
If anything, it will probably feel rather otherworldly.
A second after she starts singing, she glances in the direction of the distant wall of her bossroom. That very instant, a mushroom blooms. A white puffball that takes less than a second to violently erupt, creating a small cloud of what Izuku presumes to be spores.
It vanishes pretty quickly though, around the time that Komori stops singing.
“Those spores are poisonous, albeit not lethally so.” She announces with pride in her voice. “I can have them grow in any place my voice reaches, for as long as I know the outline of that area. And check this out!”
She touches the wall with her hand. In an instant, the several square meters of it are covered with rapidly growing mushrooms.
Izuku didn’t have a lot of memories to compare it with, but he was almost certain that they are growing much faster and thicker than they used to.
“I pretty much got my quirk back!” Komori exclaims cheerfully. “But it got stronger and is now tied up to my second most favorite thing, singing! I can do so much stuff with mushrooms right now, this is so freaking cool! I gotta show it to Tokage-san and the others!”
Sure, sure.
Why not?
Work on your choice of songs, tho
Beating people up to the tune of uplifting pop music songs straight from a karaoke club is fucking weird
Can you imagine dying in combat while someone’s singing J-Pop songs in the background?
Ugh
“Oh, don’t worry, I get it, I get it.” Komori waves her hand. “Decorum and all that. If I end up having to beat someone up, I’ll pick the calmer and more atmospheric songs. No latin chants, though, I bet a lot of locals can actually speak that language.”
Great.
Sigh.
Wait a fucking second, I just realized something horrible
Wait, you too?
Uhm
Go first, I want the pain to end asap
Alright.
If we put Mr. Compress’ soul in one of the daemons, the result would likely be the world’s most terrifying clown daemon, one that also steals stuff, gets high and gets laid.
Oh fuck
This is going to come back to me as a nightmare, I just fucking know it
I’ll suffer too.
So, what was your terrifying realization?
Shoto Todoroki’s older brother definitely didn’t have a girlfriend while his oldest brother was still around.
…
So, Dabi was stalking the Todoroki’s.
Okay, I actually didn’t notice that at the time.
But it seems so.
Wow.
And so, this opens up another question
That being?
Is he, like, actually Touya Todoroki or just pretending?
Pffft.
Don’t you dare fucking laugh at me!
You better get your friend to stop being so good at gaslighting people
I don’t even know what’s the fucking truth anymore
I think it’s his face.
He is always so serious-looking and expressionless that no one can tell if he’s lying or telling the truth.
Huh
So is he serious about thinking that Dabi’s just a stalker or not? You know him better, so you should be able to tell if he’s honest or lying, right?
I’ll be honest with you.
I have absolutely no idea.
***
“Midoriya-kun, I have a question for you.” Todoroki asks some time later. He seemed to have already realized that merely by referring to him like that you can summon Midoriya’s attention.
It just worked like that, at least in the Dungeon.
Yes, Todoroki-kun?
“It has come to my attention that you and Uraraka-san have developed a romantic relationship.” Todoroki says, entering the subject that Izuku wasn’t exactly comfortable talking about with someone else. “Does that mean that the position of your best friend is no longer occupied?”
… uhm
I guess so?
“Can I apply for it?” Todoroki then asks.
Todoroki-kun, you’ve publicly declared your readiness to kill my enemies.
I don’t think you have to apply for it.
“Wonderful.” Todoroki nods. “That pleases me greatly. We should hang out at some point in the future. When you won’t be busy with Uraraka-san. And… Toga as well?”
And finally, this subject is brought up. Ugh. Izuku just isn’t comfortable with it yet.
… yes.
She’s pretty likable when you’re not at risk of getting stabbed.
“I see.” Todoroki replies calmly, making no indication of his opinion on the subject. “Well, you’re probably pretty busy with that and your job, but as I said, when you want to hang out, just tell me.”
Sure!
Uhm.
What about Dabi?
“What about him?” Todoroki asks, raising an eyebrow at the question.
… you know what, no, let’s not have that talk.
Just remember that if you decide that you need to talk with someone about it, I’m always there for you.
“I haven’t doubted that for a second.” Todoroki replies.
***
What happened next was the necessary expansion of the lowest level of the Dungeon. They needed it. The new members of their group were totally homeless right now, that alone just couldn’t stand.
It took most of the next day to slowly gather up the necessary energy to get the entire lowest level vastly reshaped, which included the first version of Midoriya’s mana power plant. For now, most of that was just empty rooms, as filling them all with the Nodes was going to take them a while.
However, they were being very optimistic about it. It was definitely going to accelerate their expansion and, in the long term, finance their attempts of making the commercially available levels much wider.
image [https://images.squidge.org/images/2025/01/29/image.png]
It was large. Very, very large. This level, to be honest, required solid renovation for a long while. However, it kept being pushed for later due to them having to deal with the battle.
They had the power plant as stated, they gave Yaoyorozu (and Spinner) a separate room to work on the golems, gave another personal workshop to Hatsume and put a smelter alongside the full set of unlocked tools for blacksmithing, leatherworking and other professions that they’ve given her skills for.
She seemed completely unconcerned with Reiko Yanagi butchering human corpses literally next door.
They ended up moving their quarters to a lower level of the same Level - with just a normal stairwell going up and down instead of complete Level Change. They’ve decided to limit the number of apartments on a single level to a grid of 3x3 for now. But put it on several levels.
If it grew too much, they’d just add another stairwell and through it, another ‘apartment block’. To prevent people from having to walk an ungodly distance to get anywhere.
Proper training room was probably next on the ‘to add list’, Uraraka was clearly getting impatient about binding her soul to her body and once that would happen, she would definitely need it.
The library was now right next to their common room. For now it was a very empty library, but at some point in the future it would maybe become a ‘proper’ library, allowing them to do something fun in their free time.
There was also a proper kitchen right next to their commons room, with a connection to the butcher’s workshop next door. Satou was going to have a place to store any future ingredients.
On the opposite side of the corridor to his kitchen they put an [Underground Ecosystem], filled with one large [Growing Area] taking full advantage of the fake ceiling letting in some fake sunlight to grow plants.
For now, it was [Growing Area] because they lacked seeds to set up a [Farming Area] to produce things such as flour on their own. Of course, to get that done they’d need people with farming skills.
And they still weren’t quite sure how quick they’d be growing. [Growing Area] was definitely pretty quick, though. So they were optimistic about it.
We’ll probably end up bringing Maina Furasu as an alchemist next and give her her own workshop. We don’t know what alchemy actually is in this world, and the faster we start figuring it out, the better.
Well, it can definitely help if we ever decide to enter the… drug industry.
Have you ever considered switching your job from hero to heroin dealer? It’s basically the same thing, just some added letters.
No.
Well, suit yourself.
btw, what are we doing next?
The beastkin are still occasionally dropping some corpses and at least some of them are burned so I guess they are trying to smoke the leftover Ecstasy forces from the mines, so that place is out.
Aeonia’s tomb maybe?
I don’t think that visiting your girlfriend right now is wise.
Uhm
Actually, are you sure that she isn’t a tsundere that was influenced by her long solitude more than she admits, and this is why she’s so talkative when we visit?
That
That would actually explain a lot.
I see, well, we still shouldn’t visit her right now, it’s best to not make the beastkin aware where she is, just in case.
Maybe we should sneak away from the valley and check on the remaining locations from Lorae’s list?
Well, that’s a decent idea I guess
But probably tomorrow, it’s getting late.
Their plans get derailed when the Purifier shows up in the middle of the night with a very important message for them. One concerning the Next Big Thing that Luna mentioned.
So much about resting or returning to their normal operations.