Chapter 39: New Skill? Time to Draw!
Freya was still on the floor.
A few minutes had passed since her breakdown, and she raised a hand toward the ceiling of the Heart chamber, as though she could reach Aria through all that rock.
"Aaaaaah..." she breathed, letting her arm drop back onto the stone.
The girls had told her a fair number of times while she was catching her breath, and they weren’t wrong, because Aria most likely wasn’t dead. She had imagined the worst, which could well turn out to be true, but which could just as easily turn out to be completely false.
But why am I this attached to Aria, anyway?
Alright, fine, we’ve slept together several times, and it was... pretty great.
Fine, she’s useful to me for just about everything, a genuine jack-of-all-trades who runs half this dungeon without me having to lift a finger.
Fine, she was there to support me when I needed it most, physically as much as mentally.
Fine... stop it, Freya, what are you doing? You’re perfectly entitled to love a woman even if you haven’t known her long!
She knew perfectly well, in any case, that time wasn’t everything when it came to feelings, and that intensity counted for far more, since you could grow more attached to someone in a week than to someone else in a whole year. With Aria, she’d lived through and shared more than she had with most of the people she’d known in her old life.
Even so... it hit me just as hard for Kyū.
And that was how she ended up putting a word to what she was feeling, because there was the grief tied to the affection she had for them, but there was also something else underneath it, something less flattering that she was finally naming for the first time.
Possession, plain and simple.
After all, the only real thing Aria and Kyū had in common was that they belonged to her.
She sat with that idea for a while without quite knowing what to do with it, because it wasn’t very pretty put like that.
Calamity of Greed, huh.
The system had seen the sin of greed in her, and she’d sworn ever since to rid this world of everyone who tramples others to own more and more, so ending up on her knees because something that belonged to her had been taken away was hypocritical enough that she felt a little ashamed of it.
And since she had no particular desire to sit around holding that shame, she did what she always did in these situations, namely look for a cause somewhere other than in herself.
Maybe it’s tied to my new body? My mind has already changed with it, so it might have triggered some kind of reflex toward my subordinates, possibly amplified by the title. Or maybe not, and maybe I’m just making excuses for myself because I’m simply a big sentimental mess.
She had no idea, and something told her the real question wasn’t where it came from, but rather what it would make of her in ten years if she let it run.
What’s certain is that I’ll have to deal with this side of myself later.
Thinking that way, theorizing, rambling, it had at least had the merit of calming her down, so she finally got to her feet, keeping one eye on the butterfly screen still watching the labyrinth exit.
The girls smiled at seeing her upright and immediately came over.
"I’m sorry, girls..." she said, a little embarrassed at having put on a display like that.
"It’s alright, you know! I’d be sad too if my husband died one day."
The words had barely left Laïa’s mouth before Naïa smacked her on the top of the head.
"You idiot, have a bit of tact, would you! Just wait until we’re done with this monster, I’ll be seeing to your education, believe me!"
"It’s fine, Naïa, you know how she is, and it’s what makes her charming." Freya cut in, catching her arm before a second smack could land.
"But madam..."
"And besides, we have to stay positive." She forced a smile so as not to worry them any further. "This is Aria we’re talking about! She’ll be fine, there’s not a shred of doubt about it."
"Well said, madam!" Laïa exclaimed, already back in high spirits.
Freya’s gaze was already climbing back toward the screens, though, the labyrinth one first, but above all the other two, still black, still without the slightest news.
I really hope you’re alright, Aria, so come back to me like you promised, and I’ll wait however long it takes.
The hours passed like that, waiting on the monster.
Laïa had eventually fallen asleep sprawled across three Mycofoxes who no longer dared twitch a whisker, and Mei had stayed on her feet the whole time near the scythe propped against the wall, never once sitting down, as though she feared she wouldn’t get up fast enough when the moment came. Naïa had taken up position in front of the screens and watched them in Freya’s stead with the seriousness of a sentry.
Freya, for her part, was pretending to keep busy.
She checked figures she already knew, went over trap placements that hadn’t shifted since the day before, except that every couple of minutes, without meaning to, her eyes slid to the right and landed on the two black screens, and each time she took a second too long to pull them away.
Still nothing.
She was starting to think the silence was the worst part of it, because bad news can at least be dealt with, whereas the black gave her absolutely nothing to hold on to.
It wasn’t the monster who arrived first, in the end.
It was the two Researcher Mycofoxes, Jūsan and Jūkyū, every bit as delighted as Jūyon had been when she’d come to fetch her about the sword, except that these two had a cry all of their own.
"Kyu! Kyu, kyu kyu kuu!"
They held out a scroll to her, and Freya, who already had a fair idea of what it might be, opened it eagerly to find diagrams and a series of calculations devoted to the mine buildings, which she read through to the end.
She’d barely finished when a notification opened in front of her, then another, and another after that, until they formed an entire chain.
[ Congratulations! Your workers have analyzed and improved your mining technology! ]
[ Mine buildings can now be raised to Level 2! ]
[ Your Worker Mycofoxes have received the instructions needed to upgrade them! ]
[ Congratulations! You have reached the threshold required for the dungeon system to evolve to Level 3! ]
[ Dungeon System — Level 2 -> Level 3! ]
[ Upgrade of the Upgrades category to Level 3 available: 500 mana points. ]
[ Mana capacity increased to 10,000! ]
"Ooooh~ So that’s what I was missing for level three."
The notifications didn’t stop there.
[ Congratulations! Your existence rises alongside your dungeon, and you grow stronger! ]
[ You have acquired the skill: Skill Gacha! ]
That was when her body responded, exactly like the last time.
Warmth ran through her chest and spread all the way to her fingertips, her temples pulsed once, hard, and then everything settled back differently. The grain of the stone floor came to her with a sharpness she’d never had before, she could hear Laïa breathing asleep at the far end of the room, and the weight of her own body suddenly felt half as cumbersome as it had a minute earlier.
She slowly closed her fist, watching her hand.
She had nothing left in common with the ordinary human who’d arrived in this world a few weeks ago, the one who’d been knocked flat by a beast and had to win from her backside, and the gap had grown far too wide to measure.
Then she looked down at the two little foxes waiting patiently at her feet, noses in the air.
"You two!" She crouched down and scooped one under each arm to lift them up to her face. "Do you realize what you’ve just done?"
"Kyu! Kyu!"
"My dungeon just hit level three thanks to your scribbles! You’re monsters, both of you!"
Their caps flared bright pink as they wriggled in her arms, each as proud as the other, and Laïa, woken by all the commotion, came running over to scratch their heads too with delighted little cries, while even Naïa allowed herself a smile watching them.
Freya set them back down, where they circled her ankles two or three times before trotting off toward their workshop, no doubt already busy hunting for whatever they could improve next.
She straightened up with a smile still on her lips, and her eyes fell back on the butterfly screen.
The monster had just appeared on it.
He was moving down the final corridor, fists clenched, half his body blackened, heading straight for the labyrinth exit.
And it lands on me now, of all moments.
She looked at her own hand for another second, then at the screen, and realized she no longer had much desire to hide behind her traps for this one.
She opened her new skill with a thought, just to confirm what she’d already guessed.
[ Skill Gacha: allows the host to obtain a random skill, from Rank G to Rank SSS, for a duration of 24 hours. Can be activated once every twenty-four hours. ]
"Very well." She lifted her eyes back to the stream and cracked her neck. "Then it’s time to draw."