Bete’s expression changed into a mixture of disbelief and blatant derision when he heard this. As a veteran adventurer, he was all too aware of how hard it was for someone of a higher level to reach even greater heights. His original challenge at least gave the man in front of him a sliver of a chance - who knew Isaac would throw even that away instantly.
When he studied his opponent’s face carefully to expose his foolishness, however, Bete only discovered absolute faith. Isaac seemed to be fully convinced of such a preposterous statement, to the point where arguing with him or showing him the reality of the situation wouldn’t have any meaning at all, he would just be met with deaf ears.
Loki, on the other hand, didn’t think Isaac was simply boasting without having any plans to rely on. She had already been shocked enough by his Status’ ridiculous improvement. By now, she wouldn’t belittle this new child of hers any longer. Still, she was very curious as to how he planned to complete such a seemingly impossible task.
“... Fine. I’ll be waiting.”
Having decided to teach the wimp a harsh lesson once the time was up, Bete left behind these words before he left the study with an unsatisfied scowl on his face. As that was pretty much his default look, he most likely already had put this encounter behind him for the time being.
Isaac was very well aware of what Bete had been thinking about just now. Still, there was no point in arguing, he would just have to produce results to shut the proud werewolf up in the future.
Now that this was over and done with, he finally had time to take care of the last problem he needed to deal with. For now, at least.
“Loki, I need your help with something.”
These words snapped the distracted goddess out of her preoccupied state of mind. She had tried to think of anything that could be the foundation for Isaac’s confidence but couldn’t come up with anything for the time being. Seeing how he had just asked her for help, she hoped it would be related to this trump card of his.
“Hmm? What is it?”
Sadly, Loki would have to be slightly disappointed this time. Instead of relating to his path to strength, Isaac was simply about to request for his newest subordinate to be allowed to stay here.
“I’ve tamed a talking Jack Bird today. Can I keep it in my room and let it live in the Twilight Manor? I’ll make sure to educate it properly.”
Nevertheless, although it wasn’t the topic she had wanted to talk about, Loki was anything but disheartened. Instead, she thought Isaac was just full of surprises. Positive ones, at that.
Contrary to the vast majority of people, she was indeed aware of the very rare possibility of dungeon monsters showing much more intelligence than usual and a few of those oddities even being able to talk. This was such an uncommon phenomenon, however, that one wouldn’t get to know about it, unless they had a certain amount of influence related to the dungeon. It was hard to encounter such monsters, so there were mostly only notes left behind by people who had such an encounter.
As for the reason why these monsters existed or what they were, Loki wasn’t privy to this knowledge. She had an inkling that Ouranos, Zeus, Hera and a few others might know, but as she had only descended upon the Lower World relatively recently, 27 years ago, to be exact, she hadn’t yet gained as much experience related to the dungeon as Zeus and Hera had before their downfall.
Hearing Isaac talk about encountering such an interesting specimen and even taming it, Loki was very excited, so much so that she almost forgot to reply to his question. Well, almost.
“No problem at all! Just let me see it later. Where did you encounter it? How did you tame it?”
Seeing the mad desire sparkling in Loki’s eyes, Isaac was honestly a little spooked. He had been aware that this world’s deities were basically starved entertainment addicts. Still, his goddess was almost drooling right now, wasn’t this a little bit exaggerated? Why would anyone get excited to such a degree simply when something relatively novel was mentioned?
There was no use wasting more time thinking about such things, so Isaac just gave Loki a run-down of everything that had happened earlier today that was related to Averin. Of course, he didn’t mention anything about his own secrets. There was no need for her to know about them, after all.
By the time this discussion finished, there were only twenty minutes left until the familia’s dinner would commence. Before Isaac had an opportunity to get up and leave, Loki quickly took this chance to inform him about something she had previously forgotten to mention, as she had been way too distracted.
“You know that to reach a higher level, an adventurer has to fulfill two criteria, right? First of all, they have to reach at least D rank in one of their stats. Secondly, they have to perform a feat that impresses even the gods.”
In order to not interrupt Loki’s explanation, Isaac obediently nodded and kept quiet, already more or less aware of what she was going to tell him.
“That second part is actually not something we gods can influence. Once a person performs a feat deemed very, very difficult by the world itself, we gods will recognize this when updating a Status. From that point on, we can rank up the adventurer any time we please.”
Although Isaac hadn’t been able to confirm this fact before, he had had an inkling. The gods of this world had always seemed more like immortal beings manipulating certain systems that were already in place, rather than true gods. To him, at least. To be fair, for the mortals, there wouldn’t be much of a difference, really.
“I’m telling you about this, because you had already fulfilled that second requirement when you beat a kobold with the pitiful amount of stats you had before. Don’t even mention the dungeon lizards, okay? Even a goblin should have been extremely hard to defeat with your previous Status, so such a ruling isn’t really surprising. So, well. I just wanted to tell you about that, so you know you’ll be able to rank up soon, should you so wish.”
Finally, Loki’s slightly lengthy explanation came to a close. Having his initial suspicions confirmed, Isaac smiled brightly. No matter how easy his feats felt, this world would obviously not judge everything by his standard. He was an outlier, someone who shouldn’t even exist in this place. Still, with this, he had confirmed that he wouldn’t be bottlenecked by rank up requirements, as expected.
“Thank you for telling me. I don’t want to rank up until I have maxed out the stats I can gain, though. So it will be a little while before then.”
Whenever one grew stronger, they had to build a sturdy foundation. Sure, it was faster to just rank up whenever one had the chance to. A higher level meant vastly improved strength, after all. Still, if one got many more stats than others in lower levels, while it might not enable one to fight while transcending levels initially, after a few levels of accumulation, the additional stats one had gained would be able to bridge the vast gap in strength a higher level provided. Because of this, Isaac wanted to accumulate as much strength as possible before ranking up. If one included the fact that one’s stats would basically be multiplied by a certain amount any time one ranked up, that made someone ranking up while having close to maxed stats even more terrifying.
Because of all of this, Loki was really happy to hear Isaac’s reply. The more strong familia members there were, the safer all of them would be, after all.
Ten minutes before dinner time, Loki and Isaac left the study and ‘coincidentally’ met up with Ais on the way to the canteen. While the two of them had been conversing, Ais had sent Isaac messages via the system, informing him of her return. So after she had taken a shower, they made their way to dinner together happily.
-----
After dinner, a group of six girls was following Isaac and Jakk back to their room. Normally, such a situation would have most males very excited. But Jakk wasn’t having any of this. If one of the aforementioned females hadn’t been his goddess, he would have probably even openly voiced his frustrations. Now, though, he didn’t really have a chance to say anything.
Loki and Isaac had already struck a deal pre-dinner, which stated that he would introduce Averin to her after they had eaten. Then, during their meal, the girls Isaac had shared a table with had been made privy to the odd rooster’s existence because he had told Ais about it. Of course, they had all wanted to take a look and so Lefiya, Tiona, Tione and Elfy came along as well. If Isaac hadn’t put a stop to it, they probably would have invited even more of their friends…
So although Isaac was feeling a little apologetic when he saw the downtrodden bunny boy, whose only retreat was about to be invaded by a group of noisily chatting girls, he had already prevented the ultimate MCA.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The target of all the girls’ interest was happily dozing off at the foot of Isaac’s bed when the group barged into the room. Annoyed at having his pleasant dreams interrupted like this, Averin cawed unhappily.
“Who dares to wake the great Averin?!”
This arrogant voice immediately enabled everyone to pinpoint Averin’s location, however, which only accelerated the rooster’s ‘doom’.
“Whoa, this bird is really talking!”
Before he knew it, Averin was already caught by Tiona, who eyed him curiously. Not even a second later, the content of the rooster’s field of view changed from a flat board to a mountainous valley, as Tione had snatched the bird from her sister.
“It’s so fluffy and cute!”
Once these words left her mouth, the rest of the girls swarmed around the busty Amazoness and took turns admiring the poor, confused animal. Even Loki didn’t forget to join in on the fun, mostly because she found Averin’s misery amusing. Also, she wouldn’t pass up the chance of poking and prodding at such an unusual monster, especially because everyone around her was a capable adventurer. She was completely safe to do so.
While Ais had been a lot more subdued than the rest of the girls, she also ruffled the fluffy feathers, her eyes brightening up ever so slightly at the comfortable touch.
By now, Averin had finally caught a glimpse of Isaac through all the surrounding girls. He was truly terrified. While a few of the weaker girls were ones he could get away from if he was able to freely move, about half of them were so strong that his instincts were telling him they could squish him like a fly any time they wanted. Being surrounded by such a fearsome pack right after waking up almost made the poor rooster go insane. So when he saw his final ray of hope, he grasped on to it desperately.
“Master! Please save me!”
In response to the watering eyes of his subordinate, Isaac could only feign ignorance, as he had no real way to deal with this curious mob. Inwardly, he mourned Averin’s suffering, although he was aware that the situation wasn’t nearly as dire as it would seem to the bird.
At that moment, Jakk walked up next to Isaac. He had been observing the situation for a while now and a weird glimmer could be seen in his eyes. A knowing smile spread across his face, then he elbowed his roommate slightly to get his attention, before whispering.
“What masterful innuendo! Six girls surrounding and playing with your co-”
Before he could finish, Isaac had already forcefully shut Jakk up. While he was keeping the bunny boy’s mouth shut with his hand, he could feel a trickle of cold sweat running down his back. He was very well aware that one’s senses would vastly improve when one ranked up, that was why he really hoped that no-one had heard Jakk’s words just now.
Thankfully, the girls were still way too obsessed with the fluffy rooster to pay any attention to the two actual residents of this room. Because of this, a bloodbath had been avoided.
Pointing out certain aspects of an innocent situation and making it seem like something vulgar. This was the power of a pervert.
While chiding Jakk heavily via eye contact, Isaac realized for the first time what kind of a ticking time bomb he would be around for the foreseeable future…
-----
The sun had already set a few hours ago. In this period of darkness, beneath the clear and starry sky, a man, a woman and a rooster were sitting on one of the roofs of the Twilight Manor, relaxedly taking in the beautiful view.
Ais, Isaac and Averin had come here after the introduction of the rooster had come to a close. Thankfully, it hadn’t taken the bird long to calm down and resignedly accept the shower of affection. After being questioned by Loki about his origin and goals, he had been allowed to live in Isaac’s room officially. Loki would make sure to tell everyone that the talking rooster was the newest familia member’s tamed monster, so nobody should get too surprised when seeing him.
Still, the group had spent almost an hour in the small room, talking and laughing. Jakk had been extremely relieved once they actually retreated for the night to go to sleep. At that time, Isaac had asked Ais whether there was some way he and Averin could get on a roof of the manor, to have a look around. As the Twilight Manor was very tall compared to most of the buildings in Orario, the rooster would be able to get a very good initial look at the surface he had longed for.
Ais chose the roof closest to her sleeping quarters and brought the man-rooster duo there, joining them as well.
After letting Averin stare at their surroundings in wonder and marvel for a few minutes, Isaac finally broke the silence.
“Your wish had been to go to the surface. Now that you’re here, did anything change?”
Hearing his master’s question, Averin’s eyes were clouded by confusion and he replied, deep in thought.
“Not really…”
When he saw that the damn bird didn’t want to elaborate on this any more, Isaac continued questioning him.
“So, what is your goal now? You’ve already achieved your old one, after all.”
As if a veil had been lifted, the confusion in Averin’s eyes disappeared as he stared at Isaac with an excited look on his face.
“I want to see more of this world. As much as I can!”
It was such a simple wish that Isaac had to suppress the wish to laugh by smiling awkwardly. He had expected the bird to have higher aspirations than being a simple traveller. Nonetheless, in some sense of the word, Isaac himself was just a traveller himself. Because of this, he responded with a particular promise.
“In the short term, that won’t be possible. But I promise you, after this initial rough patch, not to mention this one, I’ll let you see many different worlds.”
A normal person would have frowned at such a statement or taken it to be an exaggeration. But Averin was just a monster who had grown up in the dungeon. He was still very young and had pretty much no common sense. Paired with the close connection he felt to his master thanks to the laws of this world, he took Isaac’s words as facts and got even more happy.
While Averin was dancing on the roof because he couldn’t contain his excitement, a system notification appeared in Isaac’s field of view.
Averin’s loyalty has increased by 5.
Suddenly, Isaac could feel Ais gripping his sleeve tightly, so he turned to look at her, only to see her with an unusually concerned and slightly fearful look on her face. He instantly realized why his words had caused her to react this way and her following words only confirmed his suspicions, making him feel a little guilty.
“Will you leave me behind?”
He should have been aware of what kind of misunderstanding his words would cause, therefore Isaac showed Ais an apologetic smile before gently taking the hand that was grasping his sleeve. He hoped to calm down her fears at least partially with this action.
Ais blushed slightly, but she didn’t have any averse reaction to this little bit of intimacy. After all, holding hands was entirely harmless. Additionally, because Isaac was one of her loved ones, she quite enjoyed this showcase of affection. Coupled with Isaac’s next words, her worries evaporated.
“Unless you want me to, of course not. Also, I’ll be staying in this world for quite a while, as I still have goals to accomplish. One of them being to see you accomplish yours. If you want to come with me after that, I’d be more than happy. I have to warn you, though. The journey could very well end up taking an eternity.”
Being made aware of one of Isaac’s goals being to help her warmed Ais’ heart profusely. Even his cautious warning was filled with nothing but care for her. A wide smile spread across her already breathtakingly beautiful face, making her seem even more ethereal.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
For a few hours, a woman and a man with a rooster nonchalantly sleeping on his shoulder spent time beneath the clear and starry sky, enjoying each other’s company and the lovely scenery.
They hadn’t stopped holding hands this entire time.
-----
An hour before midnight, Ais had gotten ready to go to sleep. Or, well, she was planning to experience ‘Isaac’s Past - Episode 2’, which she had purchased from the system today. Due to her astonishing monster slaying speed, she didn’t have a shortage of Achievement Points whatsoever.
Because of her already having done the same thing yesterday, she was very relaxed and excited, not anxious at all. She laid down and closed her eyes, commanding the system to replay the memory for her to look at.
But instead of being transported into that strange yet familiar world yet again, a system notification appeared.
Cooldown until ‘Isaac’s Past - Episode 2’ can be experienced: 5 days 23 hours 37 minutes 4 seconds
Ais couldn’t help but be baffled at this. A cooldown? Why did she have to wait?
In response, the system gave her a short explanation.
If one’s mind is disconnected from reality for too long, experiencing a different world or timeline, it will be hard for one to distinguish between that and the reality one came from.
The longer one spends in such a disconnected state, the more severe the consequences.
A safety mechanism has been included by the creator, which forces someone experiencing his past to recover their minds for one week in between episodes, to prevent any accidents or mental repercussions.
Although she was a little bit annoyed at not being able to already experience more of Isaac’s past, the system’s explanation made sense to her. When she had returned from the memory the last time, she had been quite confused, after all. If she were to spend more and more time away from here, from where she belonged, without rest and reprieve, she could pass the point of no return without noticing.
Frustratedly, Ais gripped her bedsheets. If Isaac hadn’t thought about such a thing happening beforehand, she would have made a horrible mistake. While she was happy about his foresight being this impressive, Ais was still disappointed with herself for not thinking about this. Especially because she had felt the confusion and disconnection merely one day ago firsthand.
After a while, she decided to let it go and learn from this experience. It had been a close shave, but the disaster had been avoided. There was no need to further dwell on ‘what if’ scenarios.
Consoling herself like that, Ais soon fell asleep.