Chapter 29 | The Hunt 4

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The dungeon was being continuously developed as the monsters kept building every hour of the day. The schedule laid out by Alisha was being carried out and her abilities to manipulate items in her slime storage proved very helpful in speeding up the process. Guide had also learned to manipulate slime and combined with the dungeon’s Mana Engine made forming complex parts very easy.

Industrial fabricators were machines committed to making something from metals and other materials. Combined with slime magic, the process from design to replication in mass was simple with the dungeon’s resources and mana.

A cog could be made into a machine that made more cogs. This was a basic principle of industrialization. Early on, Alisha attempted to use electricity to power some of the machinery and found what the scripture said was true, electricity didn’t work on Theia.

When Alisha built a battery and tried to run a current, there was no response or reaction. It was truly bizarre. Were the basic laws of physics broken here? This situation seemed to only be the case on Theia because the Cities of the Old Gods, which were on the moons, had electricity.

Her Monster Sight wasn’t good enough to see molecular interactions and she wasn’t particularly good at computers or electronics; she only knew the basic principles. She gave up on building an electronic computer after this setback.

And so, she turned to microgear computers. It was much easier to just replicate an object than to build one from scratch, especially one from ‘unproven’ technology. While she could replicate and store inorganic objects, it was hard for her to make anything that was complex. She already absorbed and replicated several microgear computers.

These computers would be good for computing and designing the things she wanted that needed more precision, aiding production, and automation. She could also combine these computers with a spell for mana light projection to rudimentary displays to show vast amounts of data.

Alisha predicted that the rate of progress could have the microgear computers running at one-hundred mega-hertz by the end of next month. Soon, these computers could calculate anti-magic circles within microseconds. Anti-spells were just the inverse of normal magic circles and casting it could cancel any spell, potentially even holy magic. It wasn’t possible for humans to incorporate anti-spells in combat but maybe she could.

The magic circle for a spell appeared for only a moment when a spell was cast. However, her Time Dilation plus Phone spell plus microgear computers could be used to calculate the anti-magic circle and transmit the resultant almost instantaneously.

Within the central hub of the dungeon, there were sites for processing ore, making weapons, chemistry, research, storing information, general leisure, and much more. The dungeon was a self-sustaining city.

***

Alisha walked down with Reinold to the makeshift cage for the Knight. Gale seemed to be awake now but was slumped over with a depressing look on his face. It was the face of a prideful person’s defeat. He didn’t touch the eggs and bacon Guide delivered for him. She felt a bit insulted. Alisha didn’t build a kitchen so she had Guide go through the extra effort to please a picky eater. Her guest was being rude.

As soon as they entered the room, Gale went into a frenzy. He rushed towards them but was quickly held back by the chains. “Reinold, you traitor! You betrayed the Empire, the Order, and ME!”

“What I’ve always done is to protect people. That hasn’t changed. I was never loyal to the Order,” Reinold explained coldly. Alisha looked at Reinold with slight confusion, weren’t they friends of some sort?

“You align yourself with a demon and you claim to protect the people?” Gale said with disgust.

“I too thought she was a demon the first time I met her. But she’s kind and full of life. If I interpret all her actions with demonic intent, then I would give up on this world,” Reinold said without a hint of irony. It was so embarrassing that Alisha blushed just as hard. No one had ever told her this before.

“…If you have truly gone to darkness, I will kill you, Reinold,” the human behind the bars said. He then stared at Alisha with the same hateful gaze. They both left the room together, shutting the door behind them.

Alisha was still blushing a bit and asked, “Did you mean what you said in there about me?”

“Yes, I meant it. Is there a problem?” Reinold said teasingly.

“No. But don’t say something so embarrassing,” she said. It was a line reserved for movies because saying it in real life was too much.

“Do you not like being complimented and praised?”

“No, I do… But… SHUT UP!” Alisha exploded and Reinold laughed hard. To make things worse, he patted her head, making her tear up. This was humiliating. Her emotions boiled over and she eventually punched Reinold in the gut. He reeled over and Alisha was upset.

Reinold was still a bit giddy when Alisha shifted the tone, “I’m going to interrogate him.”

Reinold gave a difficult expression, “Don’t kill him.”

“I won’t.”

“He’s still my friend.”

“I know,” Alisha gave Reinold a sad smile and entered back into the room alone. Gale was still sitting in his pitiful state. He didn’t look up at her.

“I was thinking of what to do with you. Reinold doesn’t want you to die,” Alisha said plainly. Gale stayed silent. “You should make yourself comfortable. You’re lucky I healed you at all. Eat, you’re not doing yourself any favors.”

Gale then threw the plate of food suddenly and it crashed against the bars, splattering the eggs on her feet. She sighed and unleashed some slime from her body to clean up the mess.

She got close to the bars and sat down on the floor. Alisha began, “How did you find me?”

“Even if you kill me, demon, there’ll be more of us,” he spouted more dribble.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Alisha takes a spell gem out of her pocket, “This right?”

As a monster, Gale probably didn’t expect for her to recognize the spell formulation.

“I found this and four more of these continuous tracking spells on you and your dead comrades. I find it funny that you don’t weep for them.”

“We all fight for the greater cause. We knew the risk of fighting evil.”

“I know that neither you or your group made these tracking spells. The aura within them doesn’t match any of you. However, they do match one person who came into Riverside a few days ago. Perhaps I should pay her a visit,” Alisha said, provokingly. Her spy slimes were doing good at informing her about what was going on in town but they didn’t have the facilities to know what to report. It took a few hours every night to review the footage for anything important. The NSA wasn’t a match for her.

“Damn you, demon!”

Alisha chuckled to herself, “Why are you calling me a demon?”

“You are a monster from another world. Your eyes are empty and devoid of humanity.” Gale’s comment caught Alisha off guard but she didn’t let it show. Her irises were white at this moment, a symbol of her absolute contempt of Gale at the moment. She blinked and the color returned to its normal hazel.

“People say that the eyes are a gateway to the soul. I suppose it’s quite literal.”

At least Gale was talking now.

“How is me being a former human a bad thing?” Alisha asked.

“Human spirits who are reincarnated cling to this world and defies the will of the gods. You should’ve stayed dead where you belonged, demon.”

“How am I a demon?”

“You are an existence which feeds off the fortune of others and spreads misfortune. You damn the people you meet and consume souls. If that’s not a demon, I don’t know what is.”

“Who sent you to Riverside?”

“God did.”

“Bullshit! Your superiors did. Who are they?” Alisha immediately responded.

He snickered, “I expect nothing less from a godless creature like you. My mission is to do god’s work on Theia. I am the sword and shield that protects the creations of the Old Gods and New.”

This was going nowhere, Alisha thought. “Unless this involves a dream of a well-dressed man floating in space named Zephon, I don’t want to hear it.”

Gale attempted to hide his surprise when the Devil Slime mentioned the name but Alisha saw through it. She saw his aura in disarray. This confirmed it in her mind. Zephon was involved with the Inquisitors.

Her calm tone contradicted her boiling anger, “So, it was Zephon… He invades people’s dreams to get them to do what he cannot do himself. What happened to my choice? I guess I never had a choice to begin with…”

She twitched with anger and sadness. The pseudo-god didn’t seem so real before this moment. He was the overseer of this world and was against her. At first, she thought it would be enough to just ignore him but his threat just turned very serious and imminent.

Gale was visibly intimidated now as sweat ran down this sideburn. Alisha unleashed a dark aura as her irises turned white again. She grabbed Gale by this collar and slammed him to the wall. “You will tell me everything you know!”

Gale couldn’t get a word out as she began to suffocate him with her slime wrapped around his neck. He began kicking and his face was turning red. The force around his neck was cutting off the blood supply to his brain and putting pressure on his spinal cord. One thought and she could end his life.

“Alisha! Stop!” Reinold shouted as he ran in. Black turned and realized her mistake.

She was seen.

Her dark aura subsided and her eyes turned to normal. Alisha dropped Gale to the ground as he gasped for air. She turned to Reinold and saw the horror in his eyes.

Was he now doubting her? The part of herself that she hid from Yuli and the others was seen by Reinold. Alisha turned and began walking out of the room with her face down. Reinold grabbed her shoulder and called on her, “Alisha.” But she shook him off.

She exited with a blank expression and ran away.

“Why didn’t you warn me he was coming in?”

“I did, Madam…” Guide said.

***

Alisha laid on the grass field of the central atrium and was staring at the lights from the crystal ceiling. The spray of mist from the water flowing down was calming.

The world was against her.

Not like she didn’t know that already but it seemed like she couldn’t even hide. There was no safe place. With the Network, Zephon held the ultimate authority in the world. The world could bend to his will and have already done so. Alisha knew what the Network was capable of, Black especially more so, but for him to actively seek her out like this was the worst-case scenario she wished wasn’t the case.

She had been so mystified by the kindness of the Altons that she thought her measures were enough. Now, she was unsure. How could you play a game where the game master makes all the rules and can change them at any time?

How could she rely on the Altons if her enemy was a god? Wasn’t she condemning them too?

Why was Zephon putting so much effort into hunting her? It wasn’t like she was the only reincarnated person in the world. When she heard of the Phoenix and of other reincarnated, she thought her troubles with Zephon were overstated but clearly, it wasn’t. She was being targeted specifically.

Why was she so special for him to pursue her like this? Was it because she was a Dungeon Master? It was possible. However, Black stated otherwise. There was little reason to consider her access to the Network as a threat.

Then what? For what reason did she have to suffer like this?

As she pondered this, Reinold was approaching her. He didn’t say much to Gale after Alisha left and went out of the jail chamber quickly, asking Guide a question, “What happened?”

“…I don’t quite understand it myself. But from what I know, I cannot tell you.”

“…I understand,” Reinold said and looked upon Alisha who was laying on the field and squatted the other way with her back turned towards him.

Reinold walked slowly down the stairs and on the tiled ground to her. The floor was wet with water. While his mind was preoccupied with what to say, he couldn’t help but see what was different from the last time he was here from only a couple of hours ago.

The dungeon changed.

He could taste the mana in the water spraying from the ceiling and in the air. The aura coming from the walls and docks of water was pulsating in a rhythmic pattern. The air was gentle and seemed to emanate in spiritual power. As Reinold walked closer to Alisha, he could see figures on the upper levels of the atrium gathering around the ledges. They seemed like animals. Not monstrous or demonic in any way. However, they carried themselves with intelligence as they moved to look upon Alisha and Reinold.

This was a symphony of life.

He approached her and found she was holding a small animal in her arms and petting it intensely yet softly. Reinold saw it was a small white wolf.

Was she comforting herself? He looked on her and stayed silent for a few seconds.

“Do you think I’m a demon?” She asked. “Do you think I’m a monster?”

“Honestly?” She didn’t reply. “You’re not a monster. But a demon? Maybe.”

This was obviously the answer she didn’t want to hear but Reinold continued.

“The church says that demons are evil spirits from the other plane. They come to this world to possess people as their own vessels. I don’t think you’re evil, Alisha. But I felt darkness in you and I want to understand you.”

Alisha calmed herself and listened while holding Jun in her arms. Reinold took in a deep breath and sighed.

“When I was a freelancer with Alan and Lycus, we came to a town called Lemonbrook. It was a town of simple farmers. But when we arrived, we found that the place was raided a few days ago. They killed everyone they found, the men, women, and children. A few survivors helped us to track down the bandits who did. We didn’t take any payment for the commission, we just thought it was the right thing to do.

“But it turned out that the bandits weren’t bandits at all. Not really. It was the local militia of another rural town. They had a bad harvest and so they raided Lemonbrook for their supplies. They used it more like an excuse than anything else. One thing led to another and we ended up killing a whole lot of them.

“I keep seeing that mayor’s face when we confronted him about the raid. It was pure evil. So, Alisha. I know you’re not evil and you’re not a monster. I find what you do is admirable. You want to be better and you work hard to overcome the darkness inside you. This is what makes us human.”

Alisha listened to every word and found Reinold’s story quite dull despite the amount of emotion invested in it. But Reinold got the message through and she was glad she got to know a little more of him today. She wasn’t a demon, at least she didn’t want to be. Alisha sat her body up slowly with Jun in her arms. She smiled sadly at Reinold and yet still wide and lively.

“Reinold, I have multiple personalities,” she began.