I gently put down the iron urn back where I had lifted it from.
Even though I shouldn't have been able to see it, it felt like the broken surface of the container was covered in tear stains. Those long grooves of fingers which moulded its surface looked like they wavered constantly, like the movements of a person who had no choice but to do something she hated and feared more than anything in the world, yet still dedicated herself to it fully.
There was no way I could understand the feelings that went into the creation of this urn. Yet perhaps because of how strong those emotions were, it felt almost as if I could feel a tiny bit of it when I touched those rough lines as I gazed upon the fingerprints that had been pressed into its surface.
"So, I guess you brought them here after she...died?"
It might have been insensitive of me to ask, but by the time I had realized such a fact the words were already out of my mouth.
"That's right. By the time I found you, your body had already turned to ashes. I collected them and brought them here. Aside from us, nobody else had come this far yet. I thought you'd like to rest in your favourite place, where nobody could disturb you."
She was right.
I hadn't really thought about it, but when confronted with the thought, I would prefer for my remains to be placed somewhere I could rest without being disturbed. If that place was somewhere I was deeply connected to, the better.
If I really was the reincarnation of the same Scarlet as those ashes belonged to, then it was really ironic that I was the one disturbing my own resting place.
But that was something that couldn't be helped at this point. The best I could do was to be as respectful of these ashes as I could.
I had wanted to move my home to the hundredth floor fountain room, but if this urn was here, I wasn't going to desecrate it like this.
Pulling out some strips of cloth, I went around and thoroughly cleaned the room up. As it had been centuries since this place was disturbed, there was a thick layer of dust on everything, like all the fountain rooms before.
It was further ironic that the [Purification] skill I had recently upgraded due to those maids in the previous floor was coming into use like this. It only took me a handful of minutes to properly scrub every surface in this room until the stones which comprised of this place was sparkling clean.
Wen I was done, with my cleaning tools put away, I knelt in front of the fountain where the urn was placed.
Putting my hands together, I bowed my head.
"Master, what are you doing?"
"Praying. I think. Is this how it's done?"
It was the first time I had prayed between both of my lives. I've seen the form many times on various shows and movies, but as to how to do it, I had no idea. All I could do was some sort of pale imitation that might have been closer to a mockery of actual praying than anything, but I had no idea which way my actions leaned towards. That was how little I understood about praying.
What do I do? What do I think? Was there some sort of special methodology? Who was it to, and who was it for?
I didn't know any of that.
But despite that, I felt like I had to do something. Just cleaning this room wasn't enough to make up for the mistake of disturbing this woman's eternal rest. At least the rest of her physical form.
"I don't know. I've seen people do something like that before, but I didn't know what it was for."
"Alicia?"
[I think your form is right. Now all you have to do is give your thanks to god.]
"But if I want to apologize then, rather than give thanks?"
[I don't know. Mom and dad never prayed like that before.]
It was probably asking too much then. Claret wasn't the sort to really know that sort of thing, and Alicia was separated from her original parents too early to really understand this sort of thing so deeply.
"I see..."
I lowered my head even deeper as I did the best I could think of to pray.
(Scarlet, if you're not me, then I hope you managed to find happiness in your next life. I'll make sure those you left behind are as happy as I can make them in your place. Sorry for disturbing your resting place. I wish I could say it will be the last time, but I'll have to pass through at least one more time in the future.)
Despite my best intentions, I didn't have the time to reach the next floor before I had to return to work, so I would have to come back to this room at least one more time before I could let Scarlet's remains rest undisturbed.
When I raised my head and opened my, the sight of Claret kneeling beside me appeared. Except she was kneeling towards me, not the urn.
I wanted to rebuke her for that, but this wasn't the place to do it.
"Alright. Let's head back. We've got work to do."
"Yes, Master!"
For some reason it looked like some sort of fire was lit in my cute little familiar's eyes. I could only hope she didn't direct that determination in some weird way.
Fortunately when I got out of the dungeon, the sun was only starting to glare over the top of the trees. It was still before the guild would open, if only by a bit. I quickly made my way through the well trodden path to the first building of the town.
Right before I could enter though, the sound of arguing reached my ears. Further down the road there was a group of dragonkin forcing one of their own along with them. Considering they had their weapons in hand, they were probably just about to go hunt for breakfast in the dungeon.
The figure at the back being practically dragged by the others was one I could recognize. It was Magni, the one who had pledged himself to me back when I was asked to hunt the monster that was disturbing Firestone Mountain near Knossos City by Peitho.
While my intent at the time certainly wasn't to hand him off to the others of his kind after he went through so much to run away from his own tribe members, when their chieftain had learned that I was basically sheltering one of her kind, I didn't exactly have much of a choice but to use him as a sacrifice...or rather, donate him.
Our eyes met, and his clearly was pleading for me to do something, but all I could do was apologize with my own.
It was far too late for me to intervene. I could only hope that he would one day grow up strong like he had always dreamed of. Though he was already an adult.
Ignoring how his claws scraped the packed dirt even harder than before, I entered and greeted the other workers in the Hunter's Guild then placed a set of adamantium ingots along with the relevant request form on one of the secretary counters.
"Can you have this processed for me?"
"Yes ma'am!"
I watched the young worker grab the strip of bark and went to work before climbing the stairs to my office.
There was already a small pile of paperwork waiting for me to correct on my desk.
First thing, though, I went over and opened the window. Some fresh air would help me work more efficiently.
The window in my office was different from normal ones. Rather than being made of glass like Earth, or being covered in an oiled cloth or simply being freely open with wooden shutters like in this world, my window was on a lever system which pushed out a wooden board which sealed my windows when closed. When opened, they still blocked any direct sunlight from entering, but allowed the wind to pass through relatively unhindered.
This mean that my office was pretty dark on the inside, but I preferred it that way. Unlike the other races, having it this way would cause me to suffer from less eye strain.
Once I was satisfied with how the window was set, I went to my desk and go to work. If I didn't hurry and clear out these forms, the requests on them might not be dealt with until the next day.
"Yahoo! Scarlet! Let's play!"
"Did you only just wake up now, Orphne?"
The air was filled with the scent of old alcohol. Most likely the fairy who just flew in the gap in my window was just gotten past her hangover in the last few minutes.
"It's still light out! Plenty of time to play!"
"And what about work? Aren't you supposed to be patrolling around for any monsters that get too close to the southern settlement?"
"Nah! That's tomorrow! I think."
Her words didn't inspire confidence in the slightest.
"Fine, but if you get in trouble for skipping work, I'm not going to be helping you!"
"C'mon! Hurry! Bring out your doll!"
"Fine. Gimme a sec."
I quickly finished my current document. Thankfully most of the current paperwork had been finished. It wouldn't be a problem if I took a break.
With a wave of my hand, my bag floated up from a nearby shelf and I reached in, only to pull out a simple fairy sized doll made of orichalcum.
The doll itself was similar to one of those artist posing dolls, except it had articulating fingers and was lightly decorated. In addition there was a face and its body proportions were based on my own, if a bit simplified. But due to those details, it was at least wearing a simple dress, even if it was only an undecorated sleeveless one piece.
"Ooh! You fixed it up a bit!"
"Yup! It looks good, doesn't it?"
"It does! It does!"
Orphne was referring to the hair I had made from attaching a bunch of hunter spider silk then tied back like a pony tail with a thicker thread. It was actually quite a bit of work placing the individual strands into tiny holes then squeezing the holes shut with magic. There were thousands of strands to make up the hair, and in the end I wasn't sure if it looked alright, but it seemed like it at least passed this fairy's eyes.
"Okay! Hurry!"
"Wait! Not with that!"
"What? But it's so much nicer!"
"But you'll break my doll if you use your usual spear. Use this."
I tossed her a simple wooden spear made to roughly the dimensions of her usual spear. For my own doll, I put a long two handed axe modelled after the one that Njordr had given me beside it.
Finally, I pushed my shadow through a small hole in its back and filled all the crevices inside.
With a bit of work, I got it to move as I wanted, and my doll dexterously picked up the axe, spinning it around with a flourish to confirm that I had things right.
Moving back, I sat down on the floor so that Orphne and my doll had plenty of space on the ground in front of my desk.
"Here I come!"
Too eager to wait for a proper starting signal, the little fairy rushed towards my doll with her wooden spear held close to her body.
Controlling my fairy sized doll, I used the butt of the long axe handle to knock Orphne's spear point away, then continuing the same motion the axe head fell from above. With a strong flap of her wings, my opponent jinked her body to the side and sailed past before turning around. She stepped in and swung her spear horizontally.
Maintaining my momentum, I reacted to the attack from behind by brushing the wooden blade up and over before continuing with an upwards slash.
With her attack broken, Orphne jerked her body backwards to avoid the rising axe head before leaning in to rush at me.
But being a fairy, she wasn't well adjusted to fighting on the ground despite her trying her best to keep the duel fair by staying close to it. Despite the lag of just finishing an attack, I had my doll kick off the ground while adjusting its grip its the pole axe to maximize its reach while maintaining the rotation I had started at the beginning of the fight.
"Bwah!"
Just as Orphne fixed her posture and got ready to attack again, the dulled blade of my axe hit her squarely in the chin and knocked her airborne. Putting aside the fact that she had been airborne virtually the entire fight, the little fairy's body lifted up before slowly floating down on her back.
There was a red mark on Orphne's chin, but it looked like there wasn't any real damage. It really was a testament to the power of levels. If a person from Earth had received a blow like that, then they would have been left with a broken jaw at the minimum.
The fairy knight merely had a glazed look in her eyes for a few moments before her focus sharpened and she started to flail her arms and legs around while crying out lout.
"Aaargh! You got me again!"
Thirteen out of thirteen, I had beaten this little fairy at this little game we came up with.
Originally she wanted to try fighting me directly, but I convinced her that it would be more fun if we tried something a little different. My idea was something a bit closer to a fighting game, or maybe one of those robot battle games.
By using a proxy that was the same size as her, it would make the fights a ton more fair and more like a game. Things would have been even better if Orphne had some way to control her own doll, but despite being a fairy who were almost universally magically inclined, she was one of the few who's magic was only passable by fairy standards, and excelled quite a bit more in the physical arts.
Even if we found a way for her to control her own doll, it would've been such a handicap that it wouldn't have been even slightly a fair fight.
"Grrr! If only I had my own doll!"
"You tried using mine before, but you could barely make it walk."
"Yea, but if it was mine, then it would be different!"
"Well, it would belong to you at least."
That really was the only bit that would be different. That, and I'd have to make another doll. Maybe two.
But regardless, if such a thing could be practically implemented, it would be interesting. Once I had asked an artisan that specialized in making magically powered tools, and his response was that while it was possible, there were two problems. The first was finding a way to control something so complex. The other was that making even a golem of this size move fast enough to fight would require an expensive mana crystal, and it would need to be replaced quite often.
In the end, it wasn't really possible, as the exact same thing, but on a larger scale, had been worked on for centuries. Making large golems which could fight as well or even better than normal soldiers. On the rare occasion such a thing had made it to battle, but rarely more than one and only for a short while.
Nobody had figured out a way to make it work on a practical level. And so he had no ideas as to how to make such a thing, even on the scale I was asking for, to work.
"Anyways! Again!"
As if that little tantrum hadn't happened in the first place, Orphne got back onto her feet and raised her spear.
"Orphne~! Are you...hey! I wanna play too!"
But before she could start another duel, a few more fairies had popped in through my window. It seemed like they were looking for her, but it seemed like...
"My turn! My turn! I wanna play next!"
"Then I'm after! C'mon! Hurry Scarlet!"
Whatever business they had with the knight leader, it looked like it was completely forgotten. I could only hope that it wasn't something serious, but considering the fairies, it probably wasn't anything worse than shirking a minor duty.
Hopefully.
"Ah! I was here first! It's my turn!"
"You already had a turn Captain!"
"Mumumumu!"
The wooden spear ended up being passed to the next fairy, after quite a lot of resistance, and the duels continued.
As we played, one of the fairies would sing one of the random video game battle themes I had taught them on a whim. It was a little frustrating that their renditions of them was quite a bit better than my own, but I was more one who enjoyed listening to music than performing in the first place.
Their a capella rendition of dancing mad was especially amazing, but I couldn't help but think that the actual duel lost out completely to the epicness of the music instead.
In the end, my paperwork was left forgotten on my desk. Even my subordinates who came in to bring more got captured by the sight of little fairies fighting a doll and they started to cheer back and forth like this was some sort of fighting competition or something.
"Alright then! I'll see you all in two days!"
I waved goodbye to my subordinate at the Hunter's Guild who was watching over the counter as part of the night watch.
Somehow I barely managed to finish a reasonable amount of work after the fairies tired themselves out and went home.
The sun had almost finished its retreat for the day, and I was leaving later than normal, but since the next day was a scheduled break for me, I needed to make sure that things could run as smoothly as possible without me.
As for the reason for the day off, there was something I absolutely had to do, and only recently things were running smoothly enough that I could take a day off. Though I was still nervous about letting those guys go without any supervision at all, this was something that had to happen, for all of our sakes.
I returned back to the dungeon.
While night was the time of activity for us vampires, it was still a bit early for me to head off, so I figured I'd finish something else important before then.
Hopefully it wouldn't take much time.
Returning to the hundredth floor fountain room, I quickly apologized to Scarlet's ashes for disturbing her again before passing through the other side.
The sight that greeted us was a hallway made up of broken stone.
The aesthetics were similar to the previous floor, but this time everything was indoors. There was some water seeping through parts of the walls, leaving wet spots on the ground. Unlike before, there wasn't any signs of greenery anywhere growing between the cracks of stonework, but occasionally roots or mushrooms broke through the mostly even walls and ceiling instead.
Along the walls, there were also evenly spaced torches dimly lighting the way, though here and there the torches had gone out due to water damage or by falling off the walls and being smothered on the ground.
As I quickly made my way through the cramped hallways, it didn't take me long before figuring out what sort of floor this level was.
The first monster I encountered was a floating orb of blue fire. It looked similar to a monster I had encountered on a shallower level, but this monster wasn't faded and ephemeral. The flames were bright and even crackled from the moisture in the air.
Apparently it was called a will-o-the-blaze, and was level 250.
When I approached it, the thing started to dart around erratically, making it hard to aim at.
Annoyed at its quick movements, I thrust out a hand and grabbed it the moment it was within range. Despite it not even starting any sort of attack, my hand burned, and I almost reflexively let go. But at the same time this was the perfect opportunity so I simply bit down on it and sucked its essence out of it.
The flames of its body burnt my lips but it quickly weakened until I couldn't even feel any residual heat as my mouth filled with the taste of chili and dark chocolate.
I couldn't say it was a flavour I was fond on in my previous life, having had a chocolate bar of the same sort of flavour, but this time it was strangely addicting. Like the sweetness and bitterness of the dark chocolate somehow tasting even better than normal after the sharp edge of the chili or something.
Unfortunately, after I sucked its essence out, all it left behind was a single mana crystal, bigger and more pure than the ones I got in the previous floors, but nothing else.
I continued my way through the floor, battling more undead spectres of one for or the other.
Fortunately, each fight didn't take long, and since I wasn't too concerned about proper exploration this time, and the lack of any skills nor drops that stood out to me to be farmed, I quickly reached the boss door.
The inside of the boss room was like some sort of wide ritual hall. A round room with pillars along the outside, and a stone basin on a raised stand in the middle with blue flames rising up from inside like it was trying to lick the air above.
Behind the basin was a pale figure holding its hands over the flames like it was obsessed with it for some reason. The figure was wearing a ragged cloak with a hood, but the blue flames flickered enough light to see what was hidden underneath. It was an extremely gaunt face, or rather, more like a layer of skin draped over a skull. The hands as well were only bones. Fortunately everything else was covered. I wasn't very interested in seeing the lower body at all.
The figure was an arc-lich, level 255, according to Alicia's display.
Stepping up, I went for a quick kill, not really interested in properly learning a fight which I wouldn't bother doing a second time.
I condensed and solidified the air itself into an ice lance longer than I was tall before firing it with all the force I could muster at the lich. The undead creature raised its head towards the supersonic object before it was impaled in the chest.
Whether due to the velocity of the lance or from the boss's high resistance, the ice lance shattered and rained down like wet snow all the while the lich staggered from the impact.
I rushed the skeletal figure while rapid firing normal ice lances. Perhaps because the first hit had done significant damage, or maybe the super cooling had a greater effect than I thought.
Either way, the arc-lich couldn't act until I got close and bit into its neck, proving who was the better undead monster.
Though if someone asked, I'd refuse to acknowledge being even slightly undead or normally dead.
Or a monster or any sort.
But the lich did taste like birthday cake ice cream.
Ninetailed_Furball
Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (^o^)丿
How'd you like today's chapter!
I felt like I owed you (and me) some more fairy action, so I managed to sneak some in! Rather than Aurae or Anthousai, it's Orphne! Frankly, unexpectedly Orphne didn't show up nearly as much as I had originally planned in comparison to Aurae and Anthousai in the previous arc.
She was originally supposed to be more prominent! (／ロ°)／
Oh well, no regrets! They're all great after all! (^.^)/
Anyways, a few chapters ago, someone said something about chapter 124, but it looks like I'm going to be able to beat that prediction. Probably. I think it'll work.
That aside, the prayer bit was something I've been wanting to put into a story for a while (it's actually in another story as well in an even more relevant way, but that one's never been published and I don't think I'll have time to ever finish it). Being someone who was raised atheist, I once got into an argument with a friend in elementary school. He couldn't understand the idea of not praying, while I was the reverse. In the end he stated "once you've done everything you could with a big problem, what do you do if you don't pray?"
We were pretty young at the time, but it was an interesting argument despite nothing getting resolved. Years later, I was actually at a Shinto temple, and when I got to the offering box to pray, there was something funny that had happened. Despite watching anime for almost my entire life, I had no idea what to do. I mean, I knew HOW to pray, but what for didn't come to me at all. In the end, I left without really praying properly because I didn't know what to pray for.
Anyways, enough funny stories inside of another story.
I hope everyone's doing alright! Seems like the COVID stuff is kinda getting better, maybe worse in some places.
Good luck in your everyday life everyone! (V)o￥o(V)
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