“Thanks, Aurivy!” Dana called out as she materialized from a plume of golden mist in the first layer of Fyor. She was standing within a great hall, monitored by over a dozen soldiers. Within the center of the hall was a towering pillar of crystal that rose up and pierced through the ceiling.
Dana rolled her shoulders for a moment to adjust to the gravity on the lowest floor, clutching in her hands not one, but four crystal spheres. While she was grabbing the level limit orb from the twenty-fifth floor, she decided that she might as well go all the way. With Aurivy guiding her, she found the last two class orbs, as well as the remaining level orb.
The level orb for the twenty-fifth floor was actually placed quite precariously at the top of the level, in the ceiling amidst the menacing insects. When she saw that, she shook her head, unsure if the residents would have ever located the object on their own. Afterwards, she found the pilot orb at the bottom of the ocean, resting within a giant clam.
From there, she went to the twenty-fourth floor, where she actually had a bit of fun. Both of the orbs were stored together within a large museum, treated as ancient relics. Rather than swooping in and snatching them away, leaving her identity as someone of the lower floors to create hostility, Dana took her time to plan the heist.
Disguising her figure as one of the solii, using the air vents and monitoring their patrol routes, it took her two days to pull off her little stunt. Of course, she had no doubt that she was caught on at least one surveillance device, but with her body disguised as a solii she did not believe that they would immediately blame the foreigners.
When the guards within the great hall saw Dana appear from a puff of golden mist, they at first held their weapons, preparing for battle. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone with nefarious methods had tried to take control of the central spire. Such a thing had even happened during the downfall of the Council, and was the reason why there were so many guards present at all times.
Although they were not meant to stop anyone from approaching the spire itself, they were not to allow the spire to be attacked. So, when they saw the four crystal spheres in Dana’s hands, they immediately became shocked.
One had to realize that the most effort spent when exploring a new floor was to find any of these crystal spheres hidden on them. Since the dawn of the world, Fyor had been behind other worlds in terms of the classes available to train. This had allowed it to become a world where others frequently visited to ‘boost’ their base stats.
Over time, this gap was gradually closed, however. At this point, there were only two known classes that were not yet accounted for, as well as two level orbs. Aside from those four objects, everything else had been properly acquired. And.. this elven girl suddenly appeared with what seemed to be all four.
One of the guards stepped out of line, walking over to greet Dana. His attitude was cordial, seeing that she would likely be bestowing a great boon to the entire planet. “Is there anything I can help you with, miss..?”
“Jafer. Dana Jafer!” Dana smiled, holding her hands out to pass the crystal orbs to the guard. “Would you mind taking care of these for me.”
In truth, Dana had originally been born ‘outside the system’ due to her nature as an unbound aeon. She could grow in power and gain the equivalent of levels by feasting on and refining spiritual energy. It was only after she became formally connected to Tsubaki as her familiar that she was accepted once again, and able to gain levels.
Ever since then, she had been giving it her all to train, to reach a level where it would make Tsubaki proud. Now, she was nearing the goal that she had set for herself, and was eager to get back to her training.
The guard looked dumbfounded at the crystals before him, shaking his head. From this distance, he could confirm the authenticity of these objects. “If you insist, I can. However… are you aware that using these orbs provides the user with benefits from the system? For instance, anyone who uses a level orb will get a tenth of the limit provided.”
Dana’s eyes went wide at that, and she looked at the orbs in her hand. “Hmm…” She divided them into two, handing the class orbs to the guard while taking the level orbs to the crystal herself. Another twenty levels would bring her that much closer to meeting her goal.
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Maybe she ran into an accident? Petra asked in concern, standing at the edge of the camp and watching the construction of the base. It had been days since Dana had departed, and there had been no announcement yet.
While taking days to find those objects and take them to the center of the world was not at all uncommon, it was a different matter entirely when one was borrowing the power of the Goddess of Travel. In actuality, Petra had been expecting the announcement to spread through the world in a matter of minutes, an hour at most.
Someone of her strength… an accident is unlikely. Given her personality, I think there’s a far higher possibility that she was simply distracted. That, or she was called away before being able to send the orbs to the first floor. Thelsa’s voice spoke back to her in a gentle tone.
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Well… I guess that it doesn’t really have anything to do with us anymore. If it comes, it comes, and if not… we’ll have to find them ourselves later. Petra nodded her head as she thought of that, setting her hammer down next to herself.
After Dana left, Petra was forced to explain how the girl, a servant of the Keeper, had decided to slay the monsters by herself. While most of the adventurers didn’t want to believe that Dana was able to do such a feat, the field was still dyed red with the blood of the third giant. Had the other two not dissolved into motes of light, the scene would have been far more gruesome.
Meanwhile, the dovah guildmaster was ecstatic. Dana had not asked for any payment, and was not a member of the guild. Although he still had to pay a fee to cancel the emergency order, it was far less than if he had to pay the adventurers themselves to fight against the giants.
Petra let out a light sigh, shaking her head at the tight-pursed guildmaster. With the threat of more giants returning, an additional retinue of guards had been hired, and construction was being accelerated to its limits. After two days, the Magic Tower had been completed, gathering and refining ambient mana to create fuel for the buildings that would come afterwards.
Now they were hastily working on establishing a permanent portal, one that wouldn’t need to be replaced after each use. Once that was done, the floor would officially become ‘open’ to the general public. As Petra was thinking about that, a quick series of notifications appeared in front of her face.
Level Limit +100
Level Limit +100
The Advanced Class, Perfect Self, has been made available!
The Advanced Class, Pilot, has been made available!
Petra’s eyes twitched as she saw the series of messages that had appeared in front of her. Due to the shock, one of the workers had dropped the casing for the permanent portal, causing it to crack against a protruding stone. The demoness turned her eyes towards the dovah, who somehow seemed to grow pale under his black fur at the sight of the damaged casing.
Okay… maybe she was just grabbing the rest of them… Petra sighed, shaking her head at the realization.
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“Tsuba, I’m back!” Dana called out as she entered the citadel, humming to herself and skipping into the palace. When she walked in, she found Tsubaki kneeling as usual before the Keeper’s throne. However, that Tsubaki didn’t turn to greet her. Instead, another avatar of Tsubaki appeared, smiling at Dana.
“Welcome back. I assume everything went well on your side?” Tsubaki asked as she held Dana’s hand, leading her down the halls of the citadel.
“Yup! I got about forty levels while I was over there!” Dana explained, grinning broadly as she boasted. “There were some really big giants, and one of them had the ability to absorb magic. I let it eat and eat until it got big and went pop!”
Tsubaki simply chuckled, shaking her head. “Well, at least it sounds like you had fun.”
“I did! And there was this really neat girl there, too. She had some kind of shadow power that let her have an entire army’s worth of souls inside of herself! I told her that she can come to the citadel sometime if she needs to, is that alright?”
The kitsune seemed to think it over for a moment, before offering a small nod. “If she’s someone that you feel is trustworthy, then it is fine. Have you gotten any new inspirations?”
“Yup!” Dana nodded eagerly. “I thought about this while I was in the solii layer. You remember how we made the Reality Gems? What if we applied the same principal to other base energy types? Ki, natural energy, and spirit? Then, would we be able to use one of each as the pillar to create a larger, independent world?”
“With the four primaries serving as the foundation in a fourth tier array, we should be able to create a full-sized world that isn’t any smaller than this one! Though… as for life or whatever, I can’t predict how that evolution would play out…”
Tsubaki considered Dana’s idea, finding that it did seem to be valid. “There is the problem of time. Even at the fourth tier, I can’t find a time mechanism that would accelerate by more than a factor of a thousand. Assuming we make this world like you said, we’d need to wait a long time for life to flourish.”
Dana furrowed her brow, trying to come up with a fix for this issue. “What if we import plants from Spica? The ones that can flourish in any environment. As long as the basic planets form, we should be able to kickstart the terraforming process and make a single planet livable. Then, even if animals don’t grow there, it would be the perfect place to establish a research base!”
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“I get the strangest feeling that Dana should never be allowed to meet with Chel.” I chuckled to myself, watching Dana return to her workshop after parting with Tsubaki. The two of them would get along great if they did meet, but that was part of the problem. They’d get along so great that they might end up destroying a universe or two in their experiments…
Dana was already considering the feasibility of anchoring a world with the prime energies. And now that I thought about that… didn’t James say that he had to go through several worlds like that when he was exploring Fyor? Is that a feature that was created to help stabilize the unique nature of that world, or would every universe have similar extraplanar realms?
If it was the former, then Dana’s experiment was likely to create a second Fyor if they followed the right formula. If it was the latter, then… I couldn’t really predict what would happen. I just hoped that it didn’t blow up in their face and wipe out a planet with the backlash of four Reality Gems of different energy types.
“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Terra grinned, ever the maker of mischief. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I think I just heard a flag being planted.” Now I definitely couldn’t let those two meet.