Chapter 251: Hero Party?
———Karra———
<10: 31 am>
“It ended quicker than I thought. Did someone interfere?” Kenni remarked as the situation seems to have already been solved.
“Naturally. Such a conflict doesn’t end so soon even with magic in the equation.” Emmie chimed in. Was it Wiina? She split off into three bodies, but she could just tear a chunk off and have that go and intercept the invasion, even less than a percent of her current strength is more than enough to deal with that. “A battle on a scale of at least a hundred people simply doesn’t end under thirty minutes, more specifically if everyone is within the same ballpark in terms of strength. We don’t know anyone with such significance in that area, do we?”
“Certainly not. We would’ve heard about it just like we did for the people who are attending this party.” Gregori said while pointing backward, not at anyone in particular. “With them being so close to this area they would’ve been sent an invite already, or at least know about it.”
“There was that guy with a big ball helmet, but he’s kinda lame, really.” Kenni remarked. I think Wiina talked about that guy before, but he lived in a different town from the one being attacked. So even if he has that kind of sauce he probably wasn’t the one. “I mean. Who are the people missing? There’s a few not at this table right now.”
“Seni, Malk, Qyunda, Jeyst, Jennla, and Jeff aren't here.” Orrel answered. Any of them could rush in to rescue them. Wouldn’t be out of character for any of us. I just hope that it’s not specifically Seni with her, otherwise things might get extremely ugly real quick.
“Hmm… Well, whatever. I don’t really care that much as long as they don’t invite trouble to our group.” Kenni said without a hint of shame in her voice. Did she forget what happened not too long ago? Everyone is looking at her like she’s absolutely nuts… I guess she is, but that’s besides the point.
“By the way, how do you think the other classes are doing with the current class project?” Gregori suddenly asked, as if to shift away from the topic.
“Who cares. It was easy as hell anyway.” Kenni said, clearly not interested in the school assignments since they were all a piece of cake anyway. We never really have a problem with any assignments so that topic rarely came up. “Do we really have nothing else interesting to talk about?”
“Well, there’s that doll that’s still roaming around.” Gregori stated. Can we stop bullying that poor thing already? It doesn’t help that without context it looks especially bad.
“Let’s not. She’s a bore anyway.” Emmie said. “Unless some sort of development came up that I’m not aware of.”
“Nah, still a defective pile of scraps. Not that any of us have checked recently. Wanna do that now?” Gregori replied.
“We have plenty of time to mess around with that junk. It can wait.” Emmie responded. Guess they’re not planning anything nefarious right now. If anyone overheard what they said we’ll look even more like villains than we already are. As much as I’d like to think of us as heroes we are considered such an oppressive force by our peers that the title just doesn’t hold to cross. “Hmm… I can’t wait to see what. more instances will do. Perhaps more casualty? More strong fighters to come out of it to wreak chaos?”
“Well we can’t really do anything except wait.” Kenni replied while scratching her head. “…We really don’t have much to say on this big day, so we?”
“Maybe don’t say something objective for a conversation starter?” Nicks snarked at her. “I want to know one thing though, about the earlier topic. I thought we were supposed to leave her alone? I thought those big shots wanted to play with her instead.”
“And we got nothing despite also figuring it out? Not a chance.” Gregori said with a smug expression. “Besides, I’m focusing on robotics as a career path, why shouldn’t I try to dissect the one coming into the lion’s nest?”
“Please stop talking like that. We’re not villains, you know?” I spoke up as the conversation started to escalate again. This is sounding insanely bad out of context. I really want them to stop talking like that.
“Can we even be considered that? We’re not the ones sending an experimental model made from doing who-knows-what to a kid about our age or even younger to spy on the school.” Gregori said without any remorse. Do we really forget about the concept of victim blaming? Come on dude.
“Do we really have to get involved though? Those guys are dealing with it just fine.” I know that girl’s attitude doesn’t help, but can’t we chill?
“I personally want to see that facade of hers break. I want to see her expression when she fully breaks down into nonexistent tears.” Kenni callously said. “Aren’t you curious what the sound of a fancy broken toy will be like?”
“I don’t think we’re getting to this point, I’ll be honest.” Even Gregori can’t agree with what she’s saying.
“Ohhh… I want to see what the faces of those who commanded her to come here are like as well.” She said, doubling down on it. Please, let’s just change the topic already.
“Come on. Enough.” Useph said, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. I think he is still thinking about that one time his mother encountered her and kicked her so hard a chunk of her torso and left arm were sent flying. If she wasn’t mainly made out of metal she probably wouldn’t be hit that hard.
“Hey. Hey guys.” I need to say something so we can finally shift the topic. We have no plan for her anyway, nefarious or otherwise.
Uhh… What should I say? I don’t really have anything in mind at the moment. Come on Karra, think of something and don’t sit there like a doofus!
“...Just because I was the first one to turn her into a pile of scraps doesn’t mean you guys can do it. I did it out of self-defense, you know?” Damn it! I just ended up continuing the topic anyway!
“And you don’t think that warranted a death sentence? I’m surprised she hasn't been put in a trash compactor already.” Kenni said with a smirk. I mean, it is surprising that Wiina hasn’t done anything to her outside of a few warning shots, but I guess she is aware that she basically has no agency at this point, so it’s hard to fault her.
“If nothing like that happened, then it shouldn’t. Let’s leave it at that.” I firmly stated while trying to think of something else to talk about. “Hey. Jass, are you awake yet?”
“Huh? Wha?” ‘Jass’ muttered, pretending to wake up from a nap. “Ah man. I had a nice dream too. Something about… Uhh…”
“Hm? About what?” Kenni quickly shifted her focus, looking to pressure the one who had been out of the conversation. Considering she knows the secret, she probably thinks what is going to be said would be a clue for future events for her to plan around, even though it’s just something ‘Jass’ said to steer the conversation to a different path.
“Being in the sky and… Oh! Right. I was thinking about the floating island. That place also has multiple instances, remember?” ‘Jass’ said. I didn’t even realize that. It has been many months since we went there.
“Huh. You’re right.” Gregori said. “I guess there was always a precedent for this… That island is still around, right? The difficulty is way higher than ours, and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. We haven’t been there for a long time since the incident…”
“Karra, do you remember the details on that?” Gregori. “What was it about again? Finding something extremely dangerous?”
“I already said I won’t talk about it.” Especially with the person in question around, I shouldn’t talk about it. “Rico is going to kill me if I let anything slip. How many times do I need to tell you guys that?”
“Oh. I know full well. I tried asking her personally.” Kenni shamelessly said. I bet she was laughing her ass off when you tried to ask. “Doesn’t look like those two are letting anything slip either, which is quite telling.”
“Hey. Why even go after those two?” I asked, not really liking her idea of roping in those two poor sods. I know many of us have encountered the duo a few times, be it out and about on the streets or inside a dungeon, but that doesn’t mean we should rope them into all the crazy stuff we’ve been subjected to.
“Come on. I ask them nicely. I know full well they aren’t afraid of snitching if things go south.” She said while shrugging her shoulders. “...Oh! I just remembered something! Remember that expedition not long after the Eclipse? One in… the Arctic?”
“Antartica.” Gregori corrected her.
“Yeah. That. Do you think we’re ever going there? We know less about it than the island dungeon.” She pointed out.
“Never, is my guess.” Orrel spoke up. “If Wiina’s assessment is correct, then it’s simply a place we can never hope to enter without dying. That one sentry alone was enough to fight the military force of multiple nations, that alone should tell us everything.”
“I mean. If we’re stronger than all those militaries combined then we’ll be set, right?” Kenni said, sounding somewhat like an idiot.
“Considering that they don’t even scratch it, I wouldn’t consider that requirement to be enough.” Gregori chimed in. “As it stands. It’s just not a place for us to step into. Chaos Tower, right?”
“One hell of a name for a place that only exists and nothing else.” Useph remarked. It is true that the place doesn’t seem to be a source of anything. It just exists, and no one can enter.
“It does look like a villain's lair, let’s be real.” Kenni said while leaning back. “It just screams ‘You can’t do anything about it’. I think the chance of the perp behind the Eclipse being in there is pretty high.”
“Even if that’s true, I doubt that’s gonna matter much.” Gregori pessimistically said. We already know at this point that whoever cause it hold immense power. That palace was basically a flex. If I were to guess, they probably already have a hideout somewhere already, this is just them letting the place appear on the map as a taunt.
Still. There are some details that Wiina said that makes it seem like it’s not a one-person job. In fact, she said quite clearly there are at least two. I didn’t end up talking about it in detail. I didn’t talk about it being related to gods, whatever that means.
Now that we know magic exists, the concept of divinity is definitely not off the table, but how does that work? How do you even categorize gods?
There are definitely a lot of things that we still don’t know, so there is still a lot of stuff we still can’t really talk about. It’s actually kinda annoying how little we have to do outside of shooting the shit. Homework is easy, we never really struggle in fights that matter, there’s a bit of a lack of purpose at the moment.
One thing to sorta envy about other classes is that they have a lot more to bitch about, but that’s probably not something I should ever say to any of them. I think I would become public villain number one if I said that.
…I’m sure the school will come up with something to do, and we still haven’t checked the updated dungeon, even if all it does is give more opportunity for everyone to grind. There’s still something for us to strive for…
I should probably do a dungeon stream, maybe in a few hours. Right now I’ll just procrastinate and eat some fancy snacks.