Chapter 226: First Tour. Final Wake.
[Blood Heart has reached Level 85!]
[Regen Heart has reached Level 84!]
[Demon Wings has reached Level 84!]
Elfernando kept on glancing all around us as we left the healing room. He knocked on every wall, and easily noticed that they were made of bone. He cared not for appearances and dropped to his knees to taste the floor. The elf practically had stars in his eyes every time we came across a particularly fleshy hallway. He kept on taking sneaky glances at me, before guiltily averting his eyes and keeping himself under control.
I sighed and shook my head. “So, you want to know more about Pandemonium, right?”
“Yes! Ah! But! You’re all grieving right now, so it can wait…”
He looked so disappointed.
“Don’t worry about it,” I reassured. “I have less to grieve because of you.”
“And yet you still grieve. It’s a deep pain. I’m not trying to force you to do anything here.”
“And I’m not being forced,” I said firmly, and then began my explanation before he could protest further. Elfernando predictably listened with rapt attention as I spoke about how I created Pandemonium. From my imprisonment that earned his deepest sympathies, to the ritual that took years to prepare by leaking my blood and mana into the previously mundane manor.
“Whoa! I didn’t know you could make rituals like that! I’ve never heard of anything like it before!” Elfernando paused. “Well, I know of large constructions, at the scale of a building, being made as part of a ritual. So that’s kind of similar. But you didn’t even make this building! You just… infused mana into it, basically. That’s not how rituals work! The mana is just the initial energy used, but you need to express your idea for what it must do. And how can your blood spread across the whole structure, even? If that’s part of it, then shouldn’t you bleed out across every hall!? Make it make sense!!!”
“Yeah…” I looked off into the distance wistfully. Which was very hard given that we were in a particularly short corridor! “Those were my limitations back then, being sub-Level 40 and all.”
Elfernando laughed, and I just smiled until his laughter finally trailed off. “You’re… joking, right?”
“Nope!” I denied giddily. I couldn’t help myself. It felt good to do the impossible, and to flabbergast even an ancient elf of vast and unknowable knowledge. “Not at all.”
He stared at me, and then glanced at Arx and Moonwash for confirmation. Neither said anything.
“You promise you’re not joking!?”
“Yes. I promise. I mean, almost all of my Mutations were at Level 40 back then, but I hadn’t evolved them yet.”
“Then it counts as sub-Level 40!” he agreed. “I can only believe it because I’ve seen you move, and you shouldn’t be that fast. That and Pandemonium is already an impossible existence to begin with! It’s a living manor! I’ve never seen a lifeform like it before. Unless if… you dig a hole into a tree and make a home there? Does that count?”
“...I don’t think so? It feels very different. Wood is, funnily enough, one of the materials Pandemonium doesn’t actually have.”
“A tree can’t move itself like Pandemonium can,” Moonwash suddenly supplied.
“Yes!” I snapped my fingers. “Exactly that!”
“The Father Tree can!” But Elfernando had a counter prepared!
Moonwash paused. “I’ve never seen this Father Tree in the Grandest Forest. But if it’s a living thing that’s massive and can freely alter itself to house people inside it, then you might have a point. But only a little. Pandemonium has way too many traits that even a moving tree doesn’t have. It incorporates completely inorganic materials into itself like stone and metal for one. And I'm pretty sure that these things are counted as genuinely a part of its body, unlike how a golam might just ‘wear’ or anchor ore deposits into its flesh.” My girlfriend turned to me. “How much can I tell him?”
"The close friend package." I gave her a thumbs up.
"Gotcha."
Moonwash proceeded to detail how anything that’s considered part of Pandemonium’s body had a reaction to healing magic, including stone and metal. However, no part of Pandemonium could be healed by us at all.
“I think this because Pandemonium has no set shape, therefore there is no state with which to heal it towards.”
“How about biomancy then?” Elfernando asked the walls around us. “Can I try, Pandemonium?”
My friend readily obliged, and provided a mass of kidney for the mad scientist elf.
Not beating the mad scientist allegations, Elfernando did exactly as he claimed, elongating part of the kidney with his magic, and turning it into a thrashing tentacle.
“Whoa! This is so easy to work with, actually. Must be because it’s so low-level… sort of. But it’s also weirdly tough just from how it dropped from the ceiling without a problem earlier.”
Elfernando put the kidney back together, before Pandemonium then showed off by turning it into a heart, and then an eye afterwards.
“Amazing! It can do Biomancy too. But… only to itself? Otherwise it would’ve just healed Moonwash and Arx by itself, instead of needing my help.”
“Pandemonium uses a lot of magic,” Moonwash said. “I think it’s necessary for the manor to be able to move at all. It’s even using something that’s possibly parallel to biomancy to shape stone and metal.”
“There is Earth magic, so it’s very possible to shape stone,” Elfernando supplied. “That’s not biomancy.”
“It’s biomancy when the stone and metal of Pandemonium reacts to healing magic. But only while its attached to Pandemonium.” That was something the golams did not do.
“Seriously?” Elfernando questioned, and immediately tried it out. How does he even have so much Life Mana? “Whoa! It actually works!” He laughed, surprised, when a lump of Pandemonium’s boulder actually did react to his magic. But, as expected, the material proved to be too much of a departure from the powers of even the all-powerful Life Magic.
“The greater mystery here is how Pandemonium possessed no element that should be capable of half of what it’s able to do,” I said as we moved on to the library. “The manor has special rooms like how we might have Mutations, but none of those seem to fit its full set of capabilities either.”
Oh well. It’s just a curiosity. I’m just happy to have a strong friend.
Even I don’t know how to win against Pandemonium. And I can’t picture how those damn archangels might do it either.
~~~
The fun experiments continued as we marched across Pandemonium’s halls and explored its many rooms. Elfernando gushed over the healing pods again, like he hadn’t just been working with them for the past few days. He was no smith, but he tried out the hellforge anyway when we reached the smithy. The elf was enamored with everything we’d stashed underground in Moonwash’s ever expansive lab.
“You wanna fight?” I challenged him once we reached one of the sparring rooms.
“Nope!” Elfernando responded cheerily, and way too quickly.
“Eeeh, but why not? You’re super strong, and I wanna have a proper battle. It’d be good training for both of us.”
“Well, sorry. Maybe some other time, Haell. I’m just not feeling it. I’m a lover, not a fighter!”
“Oh please.” I snorted. “You couldn’t have possibly gotten to that level by just loving.”
The smile fell from his face. Elfernando clamped up, and an awkward silence passed.
I winced, once I realized how I’d tried to pry too deep into his business. “I’m an asshole! I didn’t mean it that way. No need to tell me anything.”
He shook his head. “Yeah. We’ve all done a few crazy things. But people change. I like my life now. I don’t want to be a fighter again, though life is never that simple.”
“Totally fine. Perfectly valid. Forget I said anything!”
The smile returned to his face. “Sure!”
~~~
“Instead of some tree, I think Pandemonium is more like a Wonderzone than anything,” I said in between bites of my pasta. We were currently having dinner, and my parents plus Berry had just gotten done expressing their eternal gratitude for what Elfernando did to save our friends and family.
I totally understood.
“Ah, yes, I’d like more of the stew please! Thank you,” Elfernando accepted the whole pot from my father and dug in, before turning back to me. “I can certainly see the resemblance. It’s a territory that’s very saturated in mana.” A territory that’s growing even larger. It’s getting more and more out of hand… and Granuel’s no longer here to help me handle it. “Pandemonium… fits the description in some ways, but not at all actually! It’s fully and truly sapient, for one. Wonderzones do sort of feel like they have a Will of their own, but none are actually able to act so directly and actively.”
“I wouldn’t say so. Lost Reflections can be very active. But aside from that, I say Pandemonium’s kinda like a wonderzone, because of dragon-run ones. The process by which they were created are similar, even if Pandemonium is very extraordinary even by wonderzone standards.”
“Ahhhh. So you posit that that ritual to make Pandemonium is more like the dreams of a Dragon, rather than rituals as we understand it? I can maybe see a resemblance to what you did. I don’t know if we even call what the dragons do a ritual–they’re just sleeping–but it’s certainly a magical phenomenon. A very interesting one that I wish I knew more about.” The elven man wiggled in his seat. “Aaaaahhh! I wish I was there when you made Pandemonium! I wish I could’ve seen it! OH WAIT! Not that I want you to be tortured or anything, Haell! What am I saying!? I would’ve totally helped you out of that situation!”
“It’s okay. I get what you mean.” I laughed. “Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite replicable for me to make another Pandemonium, no matter how much stronger I’d gotten since.”
“Hmmm… Is it even replicable for dragons? I’ve only ever heard about them keeping to one territory, one wonderzone.”
“Now that is a very interesting question.” The steak fell out of my fork.
~~~
My entire body shook as I clenched my fists while staring at Granuel’s preserved corpse deep under Pandemonium. My breathing grew increasingly ragged as I remembered that moment, that day, when the archangels attacked. It was the last time I saw my friend; he was so happy then, he was in his element.
I thought I’d gotten way too strong already, but I was still nowhere near strong enough. I was there, yet I could do nothing to save him.
I regretted ever going. I should have never gone to that stupid party. It’s clear that I was the primary target, that first arrow-bolt was aimed right at me.
…Arx was also targeted, possibly even Moonwash. But Granuel was truly just collateral. The presence of New Grandera’s finest was supposed to be all the security anyone would ever need, we were unable to protect anyone. We–I fled while our allies were still in chaos. I was weak.
Fuck. Fuck, FUCK! I finished my bottle of beer, and grabbed another. I stayed in my shadowed corner, stewing.
Someone came up beside me, and I only felt worse.
“Baston,” I sighed his name. “I’m sorry…”
“For what?”
“For…” getting Granuel killed? Not having protected him? “...what happened.” No one here believed that I was responsible. Saying so would only be an exercise of my own ego.
“Yeah. I’m very unhappy about it too.”
Of course he was. He loved his son.
“Mhmm.” That was all the response I could choke out.
We continued to drink as we just stared at our dead loved one.
“I can’t even attend his real funeral,” I eventually sobbed. That’s why we were having a wake for Granuel here. The archangels could attack at any time. My presence would only bring danger, especially for such a known and scheduled event.
Baston shook his head. “This is the real funeral. The one we’ll hold up there is just for show. It’s for my son’s public persona, his business partners, those who only knew him as Granuel the head of the Angelslayers. But the people right here, right now? We are the one he actually cared for, and cared for him in turn. This is real.”
I choked up. I looked around with teary eyes at Arx, Moonwash, Berry, and the rest. There was the belfegor woman who was Granuel’s latest girlfriend, and even a few of his exes were here for they still cared. Enough to come deep in Pandemonium, whose curse was only growing stronger, now that I’d evolved.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I still would’ve liked to come anyway. No matter how many funerals it may take, I would’ve gone to every one.”
“I know. But these are the enemies you guys chose to make. Ones feared and powerful enough to make you scared of the open sky.” My long-time friend locked me in a firm gaze and asked, “Was it worth it?”
“It’s… what Granuel died for. So it must be.” Fire burned in my Devil Eyes. “I’ll make sure to finish it.”
He gave me a pat on the arm. I’d gotten so tall, that Baston couldn’t even reach my shoulder now.
“It’s what he would’ve wanted.”
He raised a toast to his dead son, as did I.