I sat there, my eyes drifting left and right, then back again.
My two daughters sat in my lap as they played with the stuffed animal that they had received on their birthday.
Miraculously, the thing was still intact despite the amount of abuse it had gone through. With some luck, it would survive until their next birthday when they would likely receive a new one. If someone didn't gift them one, I'd probably do it myself though.
In front of me was a large crowd, but for once I wasn't the focus of their attention.
To be exact, I wasn't he sole focus.
There were three others that they paid attention to, along with two objects. The other three were surrounding one of those objects, what appeared to be like a large round table.
The table filled almost half of the width of the large room we were at, the main room of the huge public hall which was erected more than half a year ago. The place had been used for quite a few events, and now it was playing host to the latest.
The table had a miniature terrain built up on it, resembling a hilly field with an open plains on two sides and some larger hills built up on the other sides. There were two people at the sides of the open plains.
One was a demon sitting on a simple armchair with his hands placed on a pair of orbs on the end. He was wearing a common set of hunting armour popular in the dungeon at the moment. It was probably because he could get into the mood better wearing that rather than something more comfortable.
The other was Orphne, also sitting at a similar chair. But due to her size, she was sitting on a riser topped with a miniature seat made for her size. For some reason she was wearing armour as well, though this one wasn't a set she normally wore. In fact, I hadn't seen this set of armour before. Nor did it look very practical as it would inhibit her movement, yet didn't really cover her very well.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Those of the dark, as well as the light! Welcome to the first ever demonstration of our elder, Scarlet's, latest invention!"
(I wasn't the only one to work on this you know.)
But I held my tongue. As people cheered, it was obvious they didn't really care about details like that. It was better to inform people about all the others who helped work on it at a later date.
Maybe include a list of credits or something where it was visible to all?
Either way, the dokkalfar announcer was wearing a modified traditional outfit with a bunch of sparkling ribbons hanging all over the place excitedly waved her arms as she projected her voice using magic.
Above her head, was the other important invention that was being used today.
It was a large flat panel, and the dark skinned announcer's image was projected on it in real time.
Bending space and opening up a little portal to the other side, I peeked through it and saw that the angle of the projection was set up so that I was in the shot together with Alicia and Fate. Despite the fact that it made the announcer appear off centre, I seriously doubted it was done by mistake.
(And I purposely adjusted my seat off to the side as well.)
I could only sigh as they needlessly drew attention to us when the real stars of the show was elsewhere.
The announcer continued her little speech going off on a little tangent regarding my personal history over the last two years which was probably already known to everyone here in the first place as they had lived it alongside me.
It didn't do anything to lessen the warmth oh my cheeks as I got embarrassed at being the focus of so much attention for no good reason. Turning my head away from the camera where our image was being transmitted from didn't do anything to elicit any fewer cries of excitement.
Eventually, she finally got to the real point of it all, the new invention and its public release.
The invention was basically the large table that was placed as the centre piece for today, along with the things on top of it.
Along with a few others, the two who were chosen to showcase the new invention were the testers up to this point. As they were the best at using the new magical items, they were obviously chosen as the ones to show it off as well.
Though there was quite a lot of arguments to have me be one of the participants, I managed to convince them otherwise that it wouldn't be good if it didn't look like it was something anyone could use. The whole point of it was entertainment, and it wouldn't be nearly as effective if people thought it took a lot of practice to learn to use it.
Though my own motivation for making this argument was that I just wanted the spotlight to move away from me. The things I had done these last two years had firmly put me at the centre of all discussions for the average person.
I was a celebrity, even more so than the other leaders.
As someone who hadn't ever desired such a position, the attention was tiring. Having people show up, wanting to get a glimpse of you whenever possible, to talk to you the moment you stepped out of your home, to shake your hand the second you came close to them...
Well, it never got that bad, but it wasn't hard to tell that every time someone saw me, they were holding back the desire to do something like that.
I needed everyone to divert their attention elsewhere before things really got back. And this new toy would hopefully be able to take that role.
"And now I present, Elder Scarlet's new invention, the Goddess's Realm!"
Along with some loud cheers, both inside the building and outside by the crowds watching on, the projection finally changed to the large table and the two seated at either end.
From then on, the announcer gave a brief overview of the new game, Goddess's Realm.
(Why that name though?)
Originally it was supposed to be called Golem Build Fighters, but somehow this alternate name got snuck in. It felt like Elli was the first one to use that name, but the first time I heard anyone use it, it came by so naturally that it felt like people were already using that name behind my back.
Frankly, it was an embarrassing name. It was obvious people were referring to me with the 'Goddess' part.
I hadn't realized that I had been promoted from Elder to Goddess at some point.
That said, it was ironic since the gods were trying to kill me.
The fact that now Alicia and Fate were getting big enough that I wouldn't feel worried leaving Claret and Orphne to care for them for short periods meant that I could finally farm some XP, even if it was only for a little at a time.
It wasn't nearly enough, not after the encounter with those assassins last time, but it was something.
For now, I was just playing with ideas with the hope of finding the thing that would solve my problems. This latest toy was just something that came from that.
There were a few more, but none were that promising.
I was starting to worry that I'd have to bet on finding something in the dungeon, but it felt like a long shot. The dungeon in Knossos didn't really give me much special, but it wasn't nearly as deep nor as difficult as the one here in the Hourai Mountain.
As to why the Hourai dungeon was so deep, frankly nobody knew when I asked.
The fairies said that the mountain was a forbidden place, though they sure had no problems settling down in this area despite knowing that. The dark races told similar stories as well, though they chose to live here precisely because it was forbidden. Risking a curse or divine punishment for settling down here was better than losing most of their numbers in the perpetual wars between dark and light.
By settling where nobody else would be willing to go, they effectively traded a known risk with an unknown one. And when they left this area three hundred years ago originally after the original Scarlet was killed, it seemed like they decided that it wasn't the place itself which was dangerous, but the path to reach it was. Hence, they came back when the survivors reached their limit of continuing to sacrifice their own to the war.
That all said, the really strange thing about the dungeon was its multiple entrances. No matter how much I asked, nobody had heard of a dungeon like that. Combined with how deep it was, far deeper than any other known dungeon by either side, I couldn't help but wonder if the two facts were connected.
And if there might have been more than two entrances.
Sadly, it turned out I was right. There were two more entrances when I spent some time to look around. A northern one and an eastern one.
I immediately covered the two up after confirming that you could pass through them to the other entrances. I built up tall and thick walls around them then camouflaged the entrances to make them look like any other part of the mountain. They shouldn't be easily found even by people who knew what they were looking for.
I could only hope that these other entrances haven't been discovered by anyone, or if they had been, that the work I put into sealing and hiding them would be enough.
As far as I knew, there hadn't been a single report of an unknown person being discovered inside of the dungeon, and I've never seen anyone else in the time when I was by myself or with only Alicia.
(But still, it is weird that there's more than one entrance to the dungeon. And that there's even four of them.)
No matter how much I checked, I couldn't find any more than those four entrances, so I was reasonably confident that there weren't any more hiding around the base. There weren't any signs of any more entrances further up when I had did a cursory survey either.
But it did bear to question, if maybe there was some sort of relationship between the extra entrances and the depth of the dungeon?
The Knossos dungeon was thirty floors deep, so I multiplied that with the number of entrances to the Hourai dungeon, it would suggest that I had almost twenty more floors before clearing the dungeon.
Other dungeons apparently had a similar range of floors to Knossos as far as the stories went, so it was possible that this was the connecting point between the oddities of the Hourai dungeon.
(But it didn't answer why it had such oddities.)
My only guess was that it was connected this area being a forbidden place.
With some sort of sacred legacy attached to the mountain, it was possible it was connected to the dungeon. But it was only a speculative answer at best. I had no proof at all, and my only clue to finding such a proof was to reach the bottom of the dungeon.
(Maybe I should prioritize that more than before?)
If there was something actually special about this dungeon, it would be found there.
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