Chapter 34: Stream? Now I Can Stream?!
A few hours had passed since her wild night with Aria.
The demon had made use of the lull to wash and dry their clothes with a bit of magic, sheets included, before getting dressed again and gathering her things. She had no intention of dawdling any longer before the big departure, and had already gone off to expand the dungeon’s entrance labyrinth.
Freya, for her part, had sprawled sideways across the bed, chin cupped in her hands, spending her morning watching the girls train in front of her.
Or so she told herself.
In reality, her attention kept drifting toward the same spot in the room, and that spot happened to line up exactly with Mei and her sword.
Laïa held her pink flame in the hollow of her palm, brow furrowed, jaw clenched with concentration. Beads of sweat ran down her temples, and her small hand trembled with the strain. The exercise was clearly wearing her out, but Aria had been categorical: it was the only way to stretch her mana reserves little by little, and there was no shortcut.
A little further off, Naïa was going over her arithmetic. Sitting cross-legged, a parchment on her knees, she reread the lessons the demon had written out for her in advance and worked through the calculations one after another, without complaint, with the seriousness that defined her.
Against the wall, Freya’s fountain pen was training too, guided by Aria’s instructions, in the hope of finally weaving its flying carpet without leaving a trail of ink everywhere.
Aaaah, I can’t wait to fly around on that thing~~~
And then there was Mei.
Mei, who knew only one movement, and had been repeating it tirelessly since the start of the session. She’d raise her heavy sword high above her head, pause a beat, then bring it straight down in front of her with a diligent breath, before starting over. Again. And again.
The problem wasn’t the movement.
The problem was that every time the giant hauled her weapon toward the ceiling, her chest rose with it, straining her tight black armor to the very limit of what was reasonable. And every time the blade came back down, that same chest, far too heavy to be contained by anything at all, dropped all at once before bouncing back with force, the two masses clapping against each other in a motion Freya could no longer tear her eyes away from.
Up.
Down.
She followed the rhythm without even realizing it, head slightly tilted, gaze glassy, hypnotized by that slow sway that resumed with every swing of the sword.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
"Ahem... ahem."
She cleared her throat, wrenching herself free of her contemplation, and wiped away with the back of her hand the thin thread of drool starting to bead at the corner of her lips.
You depraved wretch! Get a grip, Freya, for heaven’s sake! Your mother didn’t raise you to go drooling over your own subordinates’ chests!
She forced her attention elsewhere, anywhere, away from that training session she deemed far too indecent to stir the slightest interest in her!!!!
Which, incidentally, brought her back to the boredom she’d started with.
Aria was about to leave, the girls were absorbed in their exercises, and she had little left to do with her ten fingers while waiting for everything to be ready.
Right. When there’s nothing better to do, might as well go see what’s being said on the chat, I guess.
[ Private Faction Chat ]
[ IronMaw ]: anyone actually managed to grab a vacant dungeon or is it just me struggling? — +12... +47...
[ Kalypso ]: too early bro, nobody even knows where these dungeons are — +9... +38...
[ ShoeSize ]: OKAY people big personal update: I just hit Dungeon System level 2!!! — +22... +95... +203...
Oh, nice. Good for her.
[ ShoeSize ]: and unrelated but I grabbed some mithrite from a certain "Maid"’s shop, dunno if any of you know her? shame there was only one left tho :( at least I’ll keep it as a precious relic of my dungeon! — +7... +29...
The message pulled a fond little laugh out of Freya, before one word snagged on the way past and made her raise an eyebrow.
Hold on a second. The last one? What do you mean, there was only one left?
She opened her own shop right away to check, and realized her entire stock of mithrite had ended up selling off, down to the very last piece, without her paying it the slightest attention.
[ You have sold all of your mithrite. Receive 400 mana points? ]
"Yes!"
The number climbed at once in a corner of her vision, and a satisfied smile came to her lips. It was more than enough for what she had planned, namely finally arming her labyrinth with traps.
She hauled herself off the bed and headed for the entrance labyrinth, where Aria was already at work, determined to put this fresh mana to use before the demon set off.
There, the two of them set about arming the corridors together. It was no small task, since each trap had to be placed in just the right spot to leave nothing to chance, and they spent a long while debating every position before settling on it. A spatial trap hidden at a junction, another at the end of a straightaway too tempting to resist, a corridor trap right past a blind corner. In the end, five spatial traps and five corridor traps came to furnish the maze, for a total bill of three hundred and seventy-five mana points.
Once the last trap was primed, she waited a moment for the window that should have followed laying down all those traps. It didn’t come.
I’ve placed all my buildings and summoned all my Mycofoxes, absolutely everything the system has unlocked for me so far. So why does it still refuse to move to level 3? What’s it waiting for from me? I must be missing something somewhere, but what?
For lack of an answer, she checked her mana.
[ Mana: 712/1000 ]
Between the day gone by at ten mana points an hour, the four hundred points from the shop, and the faction’s 1% I just received, it’s shot right up. She narrowed her eyes. Except that brings me a whole other problem. Assuming the answer even arrives before I hit the cap, it leaves me less than a day before the 1% comes back around for the third time.
Either way, there was nothing she could do about it right now, and fretting over it wouldn’t make the elusive window appear any faster. So she set the problem aside and headed back to the room.
She’d barely returned when the girls crowded around Aria, eager to show her their progress one last time before her departure. Freya took the opportunity to grant herself her little daily pleasure, and launched the Gacha.
[ Initiating Gacha! ]
The instant the wheel materialized in the air, every gaze locked onto it. Even the girls suspended their exercises, hypnotized by the whirl of letters and symbols spinning faster and faster before beginning to slow.
[ Congratulations! You have summoned a skill, Streaming Butterflies, Rank C ]
Streaming Butterflies, huh? And what exactly does that do?
As if in answer to her question, a second window unfolded before her eyes.
[ Streaming Butterflies — Allows the summoning of up to three butterflies at once, which relay what they see onto a screen the host may summon at will. ]
Freya let out a delighted sigh. It was exactly what she needed, and it landed at the precise moment it suited her most.
Which, on closer thought, had something unsettling about it.
Wait. Isn’t this a little too perfectly convenient? Way too convenient, even? It’s almost like the system rigs the odds to land right on what I need, at the best possible moment.
A worried crease crossed her brow.
Could there be someone, somewhere up there, actually deciding what I get with every pull?
She turned the question over for a moment, then eventually set it aside.
Well, as long as it tips in my favor, I’m not going to complain. Nothing to object to, after all.
"So? So? So? What did you pull, madam?" Laïa pressed her, unable to hold still.
Rather than answer, Freya held out her hand and let a butterfly take shape in the hollow of her palm. Its spread wings were a deep blue veined with silver, dusted with a fine luminous powder that shimmered with every beat, and two little golden dots gleamed at the edge of each wing. She sent it to land on the tip of the girl’s nose, and Laïa froze at once, eyes wide and crossing as she stared down at the insect.
"It’s... it’s beautiful." she murmured, no longer daring to move.
"And you haven’t even seen the best part yet. Watch closely."
With a wave, Freya unfurled a screen in the air, on which a close-up of a face immediately appeared, zoomed in to excess on two big round eyes in the middle of a blink.
Laïa took a second to understand, then touched her own cheeks.
"But... but that’s me??????"
"Exactly! Each of these butterflies relays back to me what it sees. In other words, we’ll be able to follow Aria’s adventures down there live, comfortably settled in right here."
The girls were left speechless, and Aria seized the chance to add:
"What’s more, combined with my own familiars, these butterflies will let us communicate in real time while you watch, so you’ll be able to pass along your directives as I make my way through."
"Oooohh~ This skill really is a dream come true." Freya adopted a mock-thoughtful air, a smirk at the corner of her mouth. "Which just goes to prove, once again, that rank means absolutely nothing the moment the Gacha gets involved."
The jab, offhand as it was, landed far harder than she’d expected. The all-powerful demon of knowledge, the very one who claimed she could bring down a demigod, puffed out her cheeks, crossed her arms and turned her head to the side with a small, sulky "hmph" utterly unbefitting her rank.
Laïa burst into a great fit of laughter at the sight, and even Naïa couldn’t hold back a smile, hidden behind the hand she politely raised to her mouth.
As for Mei...
Mei, for her part, kept right on swinging her incredible... her sword. Her sword!!
Freya jerked her head away, for the umpteenth time that morning.
Honestly, there is nothing, and I mean nothing at all, enjoyable about watching this training!!!!
"Be that as it may, it’s time for me to go." Aria declared, pulling her from her inner torment. "The mana won’t wait, and I’ve a long road ahead of me."
"Yeah. Now that everything’s in place, you can leave with peace of mind."
The demon conjured two more butterflies, which she sent to perch on Freya’s shoulder. Then, her relay firmly established, she stepped forward, gently closed her hands over her mistress’s shoulders, and sank her violet gaze into hers.
Freya held that gaze, and felt a pang of worry quietly knot in her chest despite herself. Aria was venturing alone into a world still unknown, one they knew almost nothing about, and powerful as she was, the thought only half reassured her — especially given what Freya herself had gone through down there last time.
"Take good care of yourself down there." Her voice had softened more than usual. "Don’t take any needless risks, and come back to me alive. That’s an order, you hear me?"
A smile lit up the demon’s face, tender and sincere, one of those she showed to Freya alone.
"As you command, mistress."
Then Freya rose onto the tips of her toes and pressed a kiss to the corner of her lips, light, almost timid given the night they’d just shared.
As always, the girls clapped their hands over their eyes with a giggle.
And as always, Mei’s face — she who, for her part, hadn’t stopped swinging her sword for a single instant — turned a red far too crimson to be entirely honest.