Chapter 90: What a Beautiful Life I’m Living
While Aria, with Kaguya and Laïa’s help, was loading crates of violet pepper and mithrite onto a cart she had brought back from Evangel, Freya was busy with dinner alongside Naïa and Mei.
On the menu, a silverfish caught in the river that very morning, a species whose scales kept their shine even once cooked, served with vegetables gathered from the forest just above the dungeon, sweet roots, fern shoots and a few mushrooms Mei had insisted on picking herself after checking several times over that they were genuinely edible.
If only we had a little rice...
She still hadn’t seen a trace of it anywhere, neither in the inter-dungeon shop nor in Evangel, and she really hoped to come across some eventually, because it would make an excellent nutritional addition for everyone on top of pairing beautifully with the river fish.
While she was slicing a vegetable, a fly went past her.
She killed it with a simple backhand without even interrupting her motion, because her body, her vision, her reflexes and everything else had gone up again with her dungeon’s latest level.
She was in fact very impatient to ask Aria what rank she currently sat at, which featured prominently among the questions she fully intended to put to her that evening.
And so the girls ended up eating all together, enjoying a thoroughly lively meal, something they hadn’t done in far too long.
Afterward Laïa took the opportunity to show off her new skill once again, getting up in the middle of the room to perform her rotation with far too much enthusiasm, so much so that the pink flames grazed the edge of the table and made Naïa jerk backward.
Aria congratulated her warmly while stroking her hair, telling her to keep training and above all to work on holding her flame for as long as she possibly could.
Then Laïa went off to play with Kaguya in a corner of the room.
Which left only the grown-ups at the table.
Well, technically Kaguya was a grown-up too, strictly speaking, except that she had a thoroughly childlike mind much like Laïa’s, which was surely tied to her lifespan and very probably also to the time she had spent sealed away.
Anyway, let’s refocus on what matters.
It’s time~
Freya felt her whole body heat up at once and her mind race with the sheer number of questions she had lined up, except that she took a deep breath on her own this time, without waiting for any outside intervention.
Calm down, Freya!
One thing at a time!
"So, Aria, I have a few questions. I feel ready now, and I’d like you to accept that."
"Very well, madam. I know how much this means to you, and I’ve delayed the inevitable, so I beg your forgiveness."
"No, that’s fine. First of all, I wanted to know, roughly what rank does my improved body sit at now?"
Aria brought a hand to her chin and looked Freya’s body over from head to toe, very slowly, exactly as though she were seeing her entire being completely naked.
For some entirely inexplicable reason, that made Freya’s cheeks go red.
"I’d say somewhere between B- and B."
"All right, I see..." Freya answered, slightly deflated.
Aria, seeing this, added something as she always did to bring her smile back.
"But that’s only the physical side, madam, and you must have understood that long ago. Your strength doesn’t lie there."
"You’re right! But before that, I also have a question I couldn’t ask you before because you were refusing me everything!" Freya said, pouting and folding her arms.
Naïa once again let out a stifled laugh at Freya’s thoroughly childish behavior, followed by Mei who laughed behind her hand as well.
Freya nearly reacted, but caught herself immediately.
Let’s keep our Overlord dignity! Let’s simply rise above it like a grown woman!
She let out a breath, then continued.
"I’ve stockpiled quite a number of runes since last time. For instance, there’s one that improves passive mana regeneration by 50%, so who should I use it on, in your opinion?"
"First of all, you need to make the distinction properly. Passive mana regeneration is the base favorability of Quantimana. In my case, for example, if it’s as effective as it is, that’s mostly due to my skills related to it and not to my base favorability, even though that does play a small part."
She let a short pause pass so Freya could take it all in, and when she nodded, Aria continued.
"As for you, I apologize, but you won’t be able to use them on yourself. You’re a body of mana, your body is above all the Heart of the dungeon, so you aren’t truly a physical entity, even if you may believe otherwise given that you bleed and so forth. So that rune in particular, I would place it on Laïa instead, or even on Mei."
"Aaah... So I can’t put any on myself?"
"No, I’m sorry, madam."
"It isn’t your fault... thank you..."
Well, at least that’s settled. Now, next topic!
"As for Mei here, I’d like you to teach her a style, or a movement, or something before you leave. It would really mean a lot to me, please."
Freya had asked with a certain apprehension about Aria’s reaction, but it mattered so much to her given her new relationship with the giant that she quite simply hadn’t been able to stop herself from bringing it up.
"I will, madam."
"Thank you, Aria! You’re the best! That’s why I love you!!"
She sprang to her feet, went around the table, took the demon’s face in both hands and kissed her straight on the mouth, then moved on to her cheek, her forehead, her other cheek, her nose, and then back to her mouth again, to stifled laughter from the rest of the table.
Then she sat back down and cleared her throat while tucking a strand behind her ear, as though absolutely nothing had just occurred.
"M-madam..."
Mei had straightened up in her chair, both hands clasped tightly together on her knees.
"Thank you... thank you so much. And thank you as well, Aria. I-I’ll do my very best, I promise."
"Of course, Mei."
Freya had said this while laying her hand quite naturally over the giant’s.
A small murderous aura swept through the room at that, so that Mei froze completely and began to tremble without daring to move a single finger.
Freya smacked Aria’s arm.
"Cut it out, you’re frightening her!"
"Ah! Uhh... yes, sorry!"
The demon had answered with a hesitation entirely unlike her, visibly caught off guard by the fact that Freya had reacted this time, when she had let that particular behavior slide since the very first day of her summoning.
"Don’t apologize to me, Aria."
"...Sorry, Mei."
"It’s nothing, m-madam!"
But why are you calling her madam too, Mei??? You should have gotten the upper hand on her for once, it was the perfect opportunity!
Well, I suppose that’s enough for now.
Freya knew it, she should have handled things more intelligently in Aria’s presence, but it was a good thing in a way, because after all the demon needed to learn to control her emotions whenever it concerned her, and Freya knew perfectly well that she had absolutely no romantic feelings toward the giant.
Little by little, I’ll change her, I suppose.
She looked at Aria for a moment as she thought that, then carried on.
"Anyway... right! Now let’s get to the heart of the matter! If I can move Quantimana within the flow, that means I can grant it to a person and temporarily expand their mana reserve, or that I could even grant a temporary favorability to, say, Naïa right here?"
"Yes."
Freya’s eyes lit up all at once, as did Naïa’s, who had just set down her cup considerably faster than necessary.
"But be careful! For the time being, do not attempt it without me. After Evangel is taken, once we have the time, I’ll train you personally."
"Why can’t I do it on my own?"
"If you rub the Quantimana together too hard by sending them in a direction contrary to the flow and to the laws of this world, you can blow the entire area sky-high..."
"S-so, if we take the problem backward, that means I can also create a Quantimana bomb powerful enough to level an entire area?"
"Yes, that’s right, madam. But it would still only be a small area, nothing terribly impressive."
Freya put her head in her hand.
What on earth is this system thinking, handing that to thousands of Dungeon Lords, seriously?!
On that answer, Aria decided it was high time to put an end to this series of questions, judging that it was quite enough for one evening.
So she pulled a bottle of wine out of one of the crates she had brought back from Evangel, and the four women drank together.
They laughed a great deal.
Mei opened up even further than she had lately, to the point of genuinely letting loose, standing up in the middle of the room to swing her sword in every direction under the influence of the alcohol, missing the ceiling twice and the table once, all while explaining to anyone who would listen that she was going to become the strongest in the dungeon.
Naïa, for her part, became even more teasing than usual, which by the end made her completely unmanageable and utterly insufferable.
As for Freya and Aria, they didn’t stop flirting openly for a single moment, without a shred of shame left between them, although Naïa did eventually have to remind them, in a tone and with a choice of words that were thoroughly mocking, that there were children in the room.
Those two other girls, meanwhile, were happily working through frozen mangoes and fruit juice in their corner, laughing along with the four women from time to time while playing board games Freya had bought especially for them, a complete set some Dungeon Lord had put up for the modest sum of 1,000 mana points.
Which perhaps went some way, once again, toward explaining how she had managed to spend roughly 6,000 mana points in six days.
Then came the moment nobody in that room would forget any time soon.
Because Aria rose from the table, a cup of wine still in her left hand, and gestured for Mei to join her at the center of the room.
"Dance of the Drunken Goddess. A divine sword style."
"A-a divine style?! For me?!"
"On your feet, Mei."
The giant stood up, nearly knocking over her chair, grabbed her enormous sword in one hand, and came to stand facing the demon.
"The principle is simple. You never seek balance. You lose it deliberately, and you strike during the fall."
Then Aria began.
She had no sword, so she mimed one with her right hand, and her entire body went into motion, tipping to one side so far that you would have sworn she was about to fall, before her foot came down exactly where it needed to in order to launch her back the other way, her cup of wine not spilling a single drop the whole time.
"WOOOOH!"
Laïa and Kaguya had already abandoned their board game to come sit cross-legged in the front row, and Naïa had straightened up on her armrest with her eyes wide open.
"Your turn, Mei."
"Y-yes!"
And the giant launched herself.
It was catastrophic the first time, since she did indeed tip over but never caught herself, so that she ended her movement on all fours on the rug to enthusiastic applause from the two youngest.
"BRAVO!"
"HAHAHA, that was beautiful!"
"Hey! Stop... uh... stop making fun of me... okay?" said Mei, completely hammered and already picking herself back up.
Which only made the girls laugh harder, while Aria simply added, "Don’t mind her. Again, Mei!"
She started again.
She fell once more, then again, then a fourth time, and on the fifth she tipped, let her weight go, and her foot planted itself in exactly the right spot to launch her back, so that her sword traced a complete arc across the whole room and made the lantern flames shudder as it passed.
The entire dungeon erupted.
"AAAAAH!"
"SHE DID IT!"
"MEI! MEI! MEI!"
"GOOD MISSION, MEI!"
Freya had gotten to her feet without even realizing it, applauding wildly, while Naïa shouted something entirely unintelligible and Laïa bounced on the spot waving both arms.
And Mei stood there in the middle of the room, sword still raised, breath caught, wearing the widest smile anyone had ever seen on her.
"Again," said Aria.
So they started again, together this time.
The two women placed themselves side by side, and what followed no longer really resembled training at all, because they tipped at the same moment, relaunched at the same moment, circled one another while chaining movements in an order nobody else could follow, the demon with her cup and her imaginary sword, the giant with her enormous blade which she now handled as though it weighed nothing whatsoever.
Then, at some point, Aria caught Mei’s arm mid-motion, and the two of them quite simply began turning together, arm against arm, feet striking the floor in rhythm, each carrying the other through her own fall only to launch her straight back up again.
Which had strictly nothing left to do with a sword style, and looked exactly like what it had become.
A dance.
So the other girls got up to join them, and the rest of the evening unfolded in complete disorder, between the laughter, the spilled wine, the trampled board games and a Kaguya who kept trying to learn the movement while getting absolutely everything wrong on every single attempt.
Then the girls fell asleep one after another.
Naïa and Mei because of the alcohol, the first sprawled over the arm of the couch and the second flat on the floor with her sword still in hand, and Laïa simply from exhaustion, curled up against Kaguya in the middle of the board game pieces.
Aria in fact had to wake the latter in order to take her along.
"Hmmmh... I wanna sleep..."
"We’re leaving, Kaguya."
"Hmmmh..."
She never fully woke up, so much so that the demon eventually just tucked her under one arm and carried her out to the cart, the dragon demigoddess still curled into a ball and thoroughly asleep against her side.
Freya walked them both out.
They stood by the cart for a while, talking about things of no importance whatsoever, until Freya finally caught Aria’s collar with her free hand to pull her in and kiss her.
The kiss lasted considerably longer than the situation called for.
Freya’s hands traveled up the back of her neck to lose themselves in her hair, Aria’s back came to rest against the side of the cart, and neither of them seemed to remember that they were outside, in the middle of the night, on a dirt road, with a sleeping demigoddess tucked under one arm.
"Hmmmmm..."
Kaguya’s grumbling, still wedged under Aria’s arm, made them break apart, and they both let out a small, complicit laugh.
"Take care of yourself."
Freya had said this while straightening the collar of Aria’s maid uniform, then smoothing the fabric over her shoulders with the flat of her hand.
"Always, Freya."
She kissed her once more, then again, then stepped back while still keeping her hand in hers until the distance forced them to let go.
By then, Kaguya had emerged from her brief nap.
"Bye bye, big sister!"
She was now settled at the back of the cart, giving her an enormous wave with her whole arm swinging above her head.
"Goodbye, Kaguya! Take care of her on the road!"
"Understood! Good mission!"
And the cart pulled away into the night.
When Freya came back into the luxury bedroom, she found everyone exactly where she had left them.
So she went and fetched blankets.
She started with Naïa, whom she tucked in against her armrest while slipping a cushion under her neck, and the young woman mumbled something incomprehensible before falling straight back asleep.
Then Mei, whom she first had to disarm with a certain amount of caution, before covering her entirely and noticing that the giant was smiling in her sleep.
And finally Laïa, whom she covered last, prying a game piece out of her still-clenched fist along the way and pushing back the strands stuck to her forehead.
Then she stayed there a while, standing in the middle of the room, watching all of them sleep in the low light of the lanterns.
What a beautiful life I’m living.