karami92

Author's Corner: As a reminder, Fanmail will be released with the chapter on the 28th. As of the 25th, I will no longer be accepting questions, so keep that in mind!

Tsubaki sat quietly in her bedroom of the Citadel, her eyes closed while her mind was focused. She already knew precisely what domain she wanted to receive, and had already planned out her third one, should she ever have the time or means to achieve it. While she knew that it was possible to get a domain through cultivation on Lorek, she did not have the time to spend decades, perhaps even centuries going through the process. After all, a crisis would rarely leave her such time to respond.

Several days had now passed since her divinity had been ‘forged’, and she could sense it merging with the rest of her energy. However, despite this, she did not move during this entire time. Ever since she returned to the Citadel, the only movement she had done was to synchronize with her Virtual self.

That was not to say that she had done nothing, just nothing physical. To be precise, her divinity was repeatedly being honed. At times, her energy would seem to fade away into nothing. Other times, her physical body itself seemed to blend with the room around her, almost like she was losing herself in her meditation.

Thankfully, that was not something that needed to be seriously considered in her case, as she kept her mind just as clear as ever. All of this was merely the meticulous process of her training her own divinity in preparation for the new domain. And when she received it, there was no great fanfare, no pillar of light visible in the sky. The energy around her shook for a few moments, before simply stabilizing as a new window appeared in front of her.

Tsubaki nodded her head in satisfaction, reaching for her watch to synchronize with her Virtual self again. Although it was not according to their usual schedule, she felt that this was an important moment to do so. After the brief flood of new memories, she rose from the floor, dusting herself off and smiling. It was time to get back to work.

As she was leaving her room, she felt a presence suddenly appearing behind her. Her eyes blinked twice, and she turned around to offer a deep bow. “Lady Irena, I wasn’t expecting you.” She greeted the winged goddess, who offered an uncharacteristically warm smile.

“Maybe not, but I think we have some things to talk about, you and I.” She said with a faint nod, gesturing for Tsubaki to return to the room.

Lifre’s method of training her divinity was… far more active than that of Tsubaki. She did meditate… for about an hour. This period was mostly used to determine exactly what method she wanted to use to train the domain that she had in mind. After that first hour, she was starting to shake in impatience, and rushed out of her room to begin training.

She left the Citadel, spending her days flying around the world. Her eyes scanned every beast and monster she discovered, doing her best to remain within areas far from civilization. Every now and then, she would suddenly point at a creature, firing off a beam of pure, golden energy. This beam did not destroy the creature, but rather sank into its body and strengthened it.

“Just a few more should do it… wait! Shouldn’t I find someone to fight them before I’m done, to make sure that it works!?” Lifre suddenly began to panic, feeling that her divinity was becoming more and more complete. She had decided on this path for her advancement from the day that she had received the Adventure domain, and did not want to risk veering from her course.

“Ah, I know!” Lifre smiled brightly, before closing her eyes and focusing on sending a mana transmission. Dana, can you come help me for a quick moment? I need an assistant to verify my divine training is working.

As she asked that, she immediately began flying towards one of the first creatures that she had marked, as well as one of the strongest. In the meantime, Dana sent a rather simple response. Sure, just send me the coordinates and I’ll go over to help.

Lifre hesitated at that, struggling for a moment to remember how to identify her exact coordinates. There was a spell that they had created to do so, but it took her several seconds to remember the structure for that spell. In the end, she eventually managed to pull it off, sending the coordinates back towards Dana.

“I’m going to have to make a magic item to do that now, aren’t I?” Dana asked in an exasperated tone when she appeared, knowing from Lifre’s sheepish smile that the slime had all but forgotten the location spell. Still, it was a relatively easy enchantment for her at this point, so it’d only take her a short time to get it made.

“Sorry.” Lifre clapped her hands together, offering an apologetic bow. “Anyways, all I need you to do is kill that guy for me.” Lifre suddenly pointed off to the side, where the pair could see a particularly large and ferocious wyvern, its scales streaked with golden lines. “That’s the trial that I set up this time.”

“Trial? Not an adventure?” Dana asked, lifting a brow in confusion, though Lifre simply nodded.

“That’s the new domain I’m going for. An adventure focuses around the challengers, strengthening them to overcome the crisis. A trial is the crisis. I figure… if I use my divinity to enhance the opponents, creating a harder adventure through the use of a trial, I can provide better benefits to my challengers. That wyvern over there was enhanced with increased strength, dexterity, and stronger fire.”

”The benefits of a trial will grow over time, gradually becoming more difficult until it is overcome. Once it’s overcome, the boosts should transfer to the one that passed the trial.” Lifre explained with a wide smile.

“So, I should get a stronger affinity with the fire element?” Dana asked, letting out a sigh. “I don’t even use fire, Lifre…”

“I know!” The slime girl puffed her cheeks out. “But none of the early trials I set up were shadow based monsters, so this was the best I had available for you. And the level of benefit scales with the original monster, so I couldn’t use a weaker one to test you, or you might not even feel the boost!”

Dana simply shook her head with a wry smile, looking towards the wyvern. It was currently puffing its chest out and flapping its wings towards them as if trying to scare them away, but it was clear that it was being intimidated by the presence of the two. “All I have to do is kill that guy, right?” She asked, Lifre nodding her head. “Alright… let’s see if this works, then.”

Dana’s shadow began to spread out along the ground, a draconic maw extending upwards. Lifre’s eyes went wide as she saw the body of a much larger dragon emerging from the darkness at her feet. “You… that’s cheating!” She complained, the enhanced wyvern turning in an attempt to flee.

A gust of wind threatened to knock Lifre off her feet as the draconic figure lunged into the air, immediately catching up with the terrified wyvern. Its golden scales were crushed within the jaws of the larger creature, which immediately began to tear it apart. Dana closed her eyes in focus, feeling how the divine energy from the wyvern flowed not into her, but into the dragon that had emerged from her shadow. Sure enough, she felt a slight increase in its strength, its fire becoming just a bit more powerful.

“Well, it works.” Dana nodded her head in confirmation. “Just make sure that you don’t enhance anything too strong. We don’t want to make a monster king that will terrorize a country or anything.”

Lifre gave a small, sullen nod at that. Although her trial had been successfully passed, she felt no real joy. After all, where was the thrill in crushing something weaker than oneself? The trial is meant to challenge people to reach greater heights, so seeing it cleared that easily left a bad taste in her mouth. “Anyways, thanks… At least now I know it works.”

Lifre did her best to cheer herself up with the knowledge that most of these trials would just be scattered monster bosses in the world. The rest would be activated in tandem with her Adventure domain, allowing her to control the level of the challenge. At least in doing so, she wouldn’t face another situation like this.

Dana offered her a comforting smile, patting Lifre’s shoulder before returning to the Citadel. Just as Lifre was about to fly off, she heard a new voice from the empty space behind her. “Combining Trials and Adventures… now that would make a good story.” She heard, turning to see a redheaded felyn grinning in her direction.

When Dana returned to the Citadel, she immediately set off for her workshop, preparing to make the enchanted item she mentioned previously. As long as they had that, they wouldn’t need to worry about transmitting their coordinates anymore. She rolled her shoulders, booting up her terminal to load the program that she had written to create spell diagrams.

“You know, no matter how many times I see it, that’s really an amazing piece of software you made.” A voice suddenly spoke from off to the side of Dana, causing the elven girl to glance over in surprise.

“Lady Ryone, I wasn’t really expecting you today.” Dana smiled, turning to face the Greater Goddess. “Is there something that I can do for you?”

“Actually, there is… but first, there’s something that I want to do for you.” Ryone nodded towards Dana, summoning a soft black chair for herself to sit on. “Myself, Terra, and Irena are all preparing to give the three of you something, and in exchange we have a very important favor to ask of you.”

Dana gave a solemn nod, knowing that any favor from the Greater Pantheon likely implied a threat to the world as a whole. “I’m ready.”

Ryone watched Dana, her lips tugging upwards as her eyes revealed a playful light. She extended a hand placing it on Dana’s shoulders. “You shall carry my blessing as the Goddess of Magic, for so long as you serve the Keeper. May your efforts in this task be rewarded in kind.” She muttered, and Dana could feel a divine energy pulsing in her body, causing her mana to expand.

Dana’s eyes went wide at the unexpected blessing, feeling as if the challenge ahead was perhaps more daunting than she had imagined. “This is… is something the matter?” She asked, partially in confusion and partially alarmed.

“From now on, I want you to set aside one day every other week.” Ryone said in a somewhat stern tone. “I will personally be tutoring you on magical theory and application during those days. If you choose to accept it, you will become my apostle within the mortal world.”

“Your… apostle? Lady Ryone, is the threat really that great?” Now, not only did Dana fear that the world was in danger… she had the suspicion that even the Greater Pantheon might fall in the face of what was coming.

“Danger?” Ryone asked in a mischievous tone. “Oh, dear, there’s no danger here. The favor I want to ask of you is… to be my bridesmaid.”

“What!?” Dana shot to her feet, eyes wide as saucers. She felt as if she had been struck by a bolt from a clear sky, her body shaking. “Your bridesmaid… then, does that mean?”

“That’s right.” Ryone nodded her head happily. “It’ll happen at the next big meeting.” Clearly, Ryone was incredibly excited for this event, and Dana could fully understand why.

“But, you said Lady Terra and Lady Irena were involved as well… all three of you?” Dana sported a playful smile on her face, the implications of that becoming clear.

“That’s right. In fact, Terra was the ‘first wife’. It was just never made official, so I somewhat stole her thunder when I had Leowynn.” Ryone confirmed again. “We know how dedicated you are towards Dale, and that none of you harbor any romantic interest in him. We’ve each verified that numerous times over the years. If anything, you all treat him as a kind uncle, or an older brother.”

“In the past, Tsubaki was personally trained by Irena. The heroc still have legends about the winged fox wielding a scythe of bones. As for Lifre, her domain coincides with Terra’s theme quite well. And you, Dana, are a genius of magic. You even handle most of the Sky Citadel’s finances!” Ryone giggled slightly when she said that, shaking her head. “So, we decided to come down here and grant you each our blessings. Each of you will become an apostle for one of us, receiving personal guidance.”

“And in return, you want us to attend your wedding?” Dana asked, to which Ryone nodded. “You know, I’d have been happy to attend either way. But as for the apostle position… I will gladly accept it.”

“Good. Then, shall we get started? Let’s go over this enchantment you’re building first…”