“So, good news and bad news.” Eve told Lilith, “The bad news is that, while you were out, our Skills and Classes were in a read-only state. Given the fact that our very being was busy healing and undergoing extensive repair, further modification in the form of the system tinkering with us was out of the question. The good news is that modifying the dungeon counted as just “using” abilities and not changing things, so we were able to progress a fair bit in that regard, as you might have guessed from Saria’s existence.”
It was the afternoon of the day Lilith woke up, and she and the Parallels were all gathered in a room, discussing the plan of action now that Lilith was awake again. Gathered mentally, anyway, physically it was just Lilith and Eve and…technically Mae, but her body was just an extension of Lilith’s, so it didn’t really feel like it counted
Eve sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. “What this means is that we no longer have the edge in terms of raw firepower, not unless all of us are working together. If we were to just look at our stats, each of us is about as strong as mama is now. If you add in our Skills and other abilities, then we would be the undisputed victor, but what I’m getting at is that we can’t afford to just bulldoze our way past everything.”
“Where does that put us on the universal power scale?” Lilith asked, furrowing her brow, “I never did have a good grip on that.”
The disparity between people has narrowed quite a bit, but that puts us in the lower high reaches of it. The other four Perfect Chimeras are on top, followed by really old beings like Titania, then there’s the dogs, us, and our parents, followed by most other dragons, and then it really starts opening up to other things. Mae informed.
“Again, all in raw stats. Adding in our abilities I would put each of us on par with Titania, and as a group we’d probably barely be inching our way into the realm of the other Perfect Chimeras. Which isn’t bad, considering we only had three or four months of time where we were really able to raise our abilities before you went under. Give it some more time and we’ll be back on top, no sweat.” Eve added.
More than enough to deal with our current enemies, especially if Isa helps out. And she’s always willing to help if there’s a good fight in it for her, even if that fight is just a spar with our teachers. Nuwa said. Speaking of enemies, right now we’re in a waiting period. No one has publicly made any attempts to disobey us since Elenoa, but the Society has been amassing power the whole time. They still haven’t technically done anything super wrong or even made any concrete plans to, but they’ve been testing how far they can go. We had to go and give some warnings and shut down a couple of their more heinous operations a few times during the year after the Shift, but they’ve been relatively quiet since. Judy’s been monitoring them for us, and we’ve been training the Adjudicators to deal with general terrorist scenarios, so we’ll be prepared the moment they make their move.
Lilith nodded. “Good work. May I ask as to how many Adjudicators we have and how strong they are?”
Lilith could feel the pride radiating off of Nuwa as she began to talk about them. I’ve got two-hundred “standard” Adjudicators and counting, each of which are individually weaker than most dragons, but their squads should each be able to take two or three dragons-class beings no sweat. Then I’ve got a 14-person elite squad, each of which is sentient and dragon-class, and, while I haven’t had much opportunity to test them out in high-level combat, I’m confident in saying that they could hold their own for a little bit against even the four of us working together. They definitely wouldn’t beat us, but they could tie us down for a while.
Finally, there’s Saria, and she’s in a class all unto herself. She is about as strong as one of us, and I’ve been throwing as many Skills as possible onto her, so she’s like a perfect-chimera lite. Like all Adjudicators, she’s unspeakably loyal, but she’s also cute as a button, so I really think I’ve outdone myself!
Lilith smiled. “Thanks, Nuwa. You mentioned that you were making more standard Adjudicators, how fast can we make them?”
We have a passive income of five to six a month from the spawners I’ve been able to afford, but if I was to dig into my resource caches then I can probably make another fifty or so immediately. Now that the elite squad is fully formed, I’m aiming at making one normal Adjudicator an elite every two months and purchasing an additional spawner for the regulars once every three. I’m still tinkering with Saria, so she’s going to remain the only “special” Adjudicator for the time being, but eventually I want to make a few more.
“Good. Eve, what’s the status on the whole Queen of Monsters thing? How close are we to going public?”
“Very close.” Eve replied. “The army and my castle are ready, it’s just a matter of making me strong enough to handle things. I’m estimating six months tops if I focus all of my energy into levelling up. We’ll also need a way to get the other Perfect Chimeras to leave it to other people, and we’ve already got half a solution that’s just waiting for your approval.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
“Isa’s easy,” Eve said, “ All we have to do is let her in on the truth. We’re confident that she won’t willingly divulge secrets, and it’s not like anyone could make her divulge secrets, so we just tell her a bit before we go public and have her go on a “trip” now that she’s not tied down protecting the cities. We bait her with knowledge of where to find all the good fights and if she wants to have a go at us again, we just let her.
“Winston is also pretty easy. He already left on a trip and is out of contact with everyone but us. So long as he doesn’t come back during the year or two we’re expecting this campaign to take, we’re set. He seems to be setting up a cabin way out in the wilds of Haven, so we don’t expect him to be back any time soon. If he does, then hopefully I’ll be strong enough to take him on and make a public display of strength, put him out of commission and “lock him up” or something.
“The real problem is the other two.” She said with a sigh, “We just don’t know enough about them to accurately predict their response. They vanished during the war, and thanks to Kali we’ve been able to locate them, but that’s about it. They’re together way out there in Haven with quite a few other people, and that’s all we really know about them. Any time Judy tries to get anywhere close to them with some of her spy animals, she just loses all contact with them. We haven’t even been able to get flies in there.
“Kali’s been cagey about them too. Says she wants to see how we handle the situation, and that she’ll step in if things get too out of hand, but we need to grow too, so even now she can’t hand us all the answers. Still, she has given a few of hints. The first is that we can’t let our guards down around them. Ever. The second is that they are completely on their own side. They don’t care much what happens to Haven or Earth. The final hint is that they’re strong. She said that Mai is the strongest person out there now that we’re not top of the list, and Errus is a somewhat distant second.
“In addition, when we released the Sin and Virtues to the public a year back, we found that we were able to tell who has what, and Mai has five of the Sins. Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, and Sloth. Errus has Charity and Abstinence, which will be extremely problematic if he tries to mess with people around us. After some testing, we realized that Absent Alarm doesn’t go away. Most other stealth Skills or spells will end their effect if you do anything too big, but the only ways to stop Absent Alarm are for the user to end it, the time to run out, or for them to be hit by something that muffles Skill usage, which basically has to be a manually aimed area of effect since it’s impossible to trip a trap with it on. The only marks the user makes on the world are the ones they want to make, so they don’t weigh anything for the sake of pressure, they don’t have a physical substance for the sake of any other sort of sensor, everything juts ignores them. And while that’s useless on us, it’s a massive issue if anyone else has to deal with him.”
Lilith frowned. “We’ll have to figure out a safe way to get a Watch on them, then. After that we can monitor them semi-freely, even if they’d be able to tell we had some way of scrying on them. That aside, who has the other Skills?”
Yamato got both Pride and Humility. Mae said. He’s the acting leader of the Council at the moment, and the Council is now the biggest player in the UN, so he’s got a lot of power at the moment. And he’s, well, humble about it. Turns out it’s actually easier to get Humility if you have Pride and meet the requirements.
To no one’s surprise, Isa got Wrath, and that rounds out the Sins. Winston got Patience and Diligence, while Kindness changed hands for a while but eventually ended up settling on the pope. He made serious efforts in reforming things since Elenoa was outed and has been a major player in smoothing relations between Earth and Haven.
“And Chastity?”
Ooh, let me say it! Nuwa said quickly. This one’s my favorite. It ended up going to this random incubus, and the more I looked into him the better the story got. His wife got killed in the war, and he ended up swearing an oath that she would be the only woman he ever would love in that way. But he somehow ended up the director of this soup kitchen, and no matter what he tries, only women will work for him, and they’re all thirsty. He’s an actual honest-to-goodness harem protagonist, and he’s been dodging his staff’s constant advances for centuries now. And the kicker to all of this is that it’s his wife that’s responsible for this. In her will she specifically told him to move on and find happiness elsewhere, and even put her fortune into a foundation dedicated to making sure the guy gets into these situations.
It’s been building up its wealth for years now and based off of interest alone it’s become huge. And it’s always looking for ways to use its money to hook him up. For example, any time he tries to get a new male employee, the foundation will always make a far better offer to the candidate. The foundation also helps fund his life, allowing him the leisure to operate said soup kitchen, but it’s just a hilarious situation all around.
“I’m pretty sure at this point he’s doing it less as for the vow and more as a way to remember his wife. The moment he gives in is the moment the foundation is dissolved and he gets all the money, so I think he’s keeping it around as a memento.” Eve said, “But we’re getting distracted. The point is, we don’t have the knowledge or capabilities to deal with those two if they start causing problems. Right now, we’re banking on them keeping to themselves, but we can’t rely on that.”
“Right.” Lilith said, “We’ll figure something out. Any other roadblocks?”
“None.” Eve confirmed. “We’re looking good in that regard.”
“Alright, then I think we can safely close out this meeting. Thanks for all your hard work while I was out.”
“No problem. Now, I have to go make my final preparations for my adventurer debut tomorrow, so I’m going to bounce.” Eve replied, making a hasty exit.
I’ll be going back to improving the dungeon. Nuwa said. Just call if you need anything.
And I’ll be here as always, mistress. Mae said. If you’re looking for something to do, Thiala’s school ends in a few minutes and she generally stops by when it’s done, so you could get ready to surprise her.
Lilith grinned impishly. “Sounds like a good idea.”
Thiala hummed as she finished the day’s schoolwork, fingering the symbol in her pocket excitedly. It was almost the part of the day she looked forward to the most; leaving behind the stuffy atmosphere of Tunem’s school and heading to the dungeon to meet with her friends.
Her parents had taken little convincing to allow her this. Lilith and her family had already watched over Thiala for quite a while, and Lilith’s dungeon was perhaps the safest place in existence, so all they had wanted was to meet everyone living in the dungeon and check it out for themselves.
She typed the last few letters of her essay and saved the document, then tightly gripped the symbol, charging it with Mana. It was her own personal teleporter, keyed so that only she could activate it and be brought straight to the dungeon. Then, if she used it while she was already inside the dungeon, it would bring her to the last place she had used it from outside the dungeon, making it a very handy tool for not only getting to the dungeon, but for if she was ever in a dangerous situation and needed to leave immediately.
She blinked away the disorientation she always got when she teleported and was greeted by…Mae, oddly enough. Normally no one was there when she teleported in, not unless they just so happened to be passing through the area anyway. But Mae looked like she had been waiting, so something was probably up.
“Mae, is something wrong?” Thiala asked, tilting her head slightly.
Mae walked up to Thiala, knelt down, and then scooped her up into a hug. “I think you’ve got the wrong person.” She said, smirking.
It took Thiala a moment to process that. “Lilith?!”
“Got it in one. Man, you’ve grown since I last saw you. You get the same thing Raphi did?”
Belatedly, Thiala realized that she hadn’t returned the hug and did so. “Yeah! When did you wake up, and how are you feeling?”
“This morning, and I have a slight headache but other than that I’m fine. How’s school been? Has anyone been picking on you or anything?”
Thiala giggled. “School’s fine, and I haven’t been picked on. Not even Raphi’s old henchmen will try anything, I think they’re all too scared. I’m friends with you and I’m stronger than they are, so no one even tries.”
Lilith grinned. “They better be scared. If I heard they’d been picking on you I’d have to give them another beatdown.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ll never believe what happened!”
“What?”
“Well, you remember Nashra, right?”
“That girl that I was roommates with for a while? Yeah.”
“She became a teacher!”
“No way, her?”
Thiala nodded. “Yeah! When I asked her about it, she said that it was “so she didn’t have to get a real job”, but I think she’s regretting it.”
Lilith laughed. “I’m sure she is. I’ve heard teaching is a lot of work.”
“And they’re already teaching about you in class. I mean, they teach about all the perfect chimeras, but your section is just as long as the ones who played major parts in the war and they’ve been around for forever. Tunem took in a bunch of kids from Earth this past year, and I’ve been called into their classes a couple of times to talk about you. It’s weird, you know?”
“I’ll bet. What do they have you do?”
“I mostly talk about when we got sent out to the wilds and met your mom, and then what we did during the month after the Shift, but that only takes a few minutes so then the rest of the time I just answer questions about you. Oh, and I haven’t given out any information that people don’t know, so don’t worry about that.”
Lilith finally let the hug go and stood up. “I wasn’t. Now, do you have any specific plans for the day or are you free?”
“Not really, I just come here to hang out, maybe level up if I feel like it.”
“Perfect. I’m supposed to be resting the rest of the day, so I’m free too. You want to hang out with me, Raphi, and Emily? We need a player four.”
Thiala grinned. “I’d love to!”
quick question is there a limit to the number of masks//parallels lillith can have at the same time [just reread and this is a question that stuck in my mind]
Good question, there is no limit aside from that of getting each Parallel to agree to introduce a new Parallel, and, were these abilities to be used the way they were "intended" instead of having Kali basically custom-make them, issues that might come from having too many alternate personalities around (such as plots to take the original's place, internal power struggles, etc).
Right now what's limiting them is mostly that they would prefer to introduce a new Parallel only when it would be much more useful to do instead of just delegating a task to an existing Parallel. It would, technically, be pretty optimal to make as many Parallels as possible, but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth (And also creates unreasonable character bloat), so I'm saying it would leave a bad taste in the character's mouths as well.
Who's Thiala again?
Smol elf girl who made friends with Lilith waaay back in the school arc and basically got dragged into this whole mess by Elenoa because she was too much of a friendly person. She hasn't done much because, of the three kids that were with Lilith during their little lockdown, she's the most childlike and not really into all the big stressful planning.
Once their lockdown ended she moved back out and went back to school, but she visits because she wants to see her friends.
So a couple of things. First of all, the Chastity guy, that scenario sounds so hilarious and planned out that I almost want a spin-off series set in this world that revolves around his day-to-day life. Second of all, do ghosts exist or not? Wasn't this sort of answered way back in the school arc about how Winston was able to seemingly turn into mist or something due to having some specter-like mist mode or am I not remembering correctly?
I'm going with a yes for now, you're 100% correct about the Winston thing, I totally forgot about that. Yeah, now that I'm thinking while not being tired ghosts totally make sense so I'm not totally sure what my thought process was before lol
Thanks for the chapter!
Thanks for the chapter
Yay! Lilith starting to show her prankster colors lol!
Thanks for the chapter