In the <Observatory>—
“Okay, so we can watch over her from here?”
“That’s right. The telescope’s screen can track one dispatched hero at a time. If we want to track others, we have to manually adjust the telescope each time...” Svilran shuddered. “Considering how many hours it took us to find nine worlds...”
“Yeah... We’ll have to hope we can track more simultaneously in the future.”
“I’ve locked it on to Elma. Oh, look, look! She landed in a forest!” Svilran pulled out papers and examined them.
“Papers instead of menus?”
Svilran shrugged and smiled. “I like the feel of paper. Anyway! The premise is that there is a newly discovered dungeon, and the locals are doing a ‘Treasure Rush Festival.’“
“Do we have information on what the festival entails?”
“Not really. What we know is that the fledgling hero will be attending. There seem to be certain treasures in this dungeon that could really help the hero jump-start his potential. If he finds any of them, his prospects will greatly improve.”
“How do we know that? The future’s not decided, right?”
“It isn’t. As for how we know, worlds have the ability to calculate potential futures. In the case of the worlds we help, there’s a system in place that activates when we gaze at them, and it tells us this kind of information. The worlds can also calculate the failure potential of a Hero, which is was causes them to ask for help, so to say.”
Huh. Something was nagging at me. “Do the Imaginal Gods—specifically the gods of the world, not the Imaginal Will—know we’re accessing this information?”
Svilran chuckled nervously. “They might not... For a lot of them, we’re sort of like an outside party acting under the radar. It’s hard to say how aware the Imaginal Will are too...”
“Hmm...” I leaned back in my seat as I wondered.
“Fainn?”
“Hey, your superior. He’s not just a superior, right? I mean, he’s like a super superior. The one you work for is really high up there in the hierarchy... Am I right? He has to be that great to be able to act under the radar.”
Svilran sighed. “My superior is. You have no idea, actually.”
“But he can’t interfere and save these worlds himself?”
“It’s complicated because of all the Divine Laws in place. You should think of it more as we are my superior’s hands.”
“Okay... I’m starting to understand this better... That’s why we have to unlock things... We have to prove to your superior we’re worthy of being able to ‘act as his hands.’ It’s like when a leader needs to have trusted followers that can carry out tasks without bringing shame to the organization.”
“Maybe...” Svilran muttered.
She looked scared. I bet she was under some kind of vow of secrecy. Understanding this superior—he probably locked things behind some milestones I had to reach. A Leader wouldn’t want to just divulge organization secrets to some random neophyte some recruiter pixie brought in. But that made me think of something else... To be in a position where information was given so strangely... Preventing us from knowing what we could get in the future... To be playing that kind of game when evil was apparently surging...
“Hey, Svilran, you said we’re your superior’s hands?”
“That’s right.”
“Hmm. I know of many gods with many arms.” I smiled at Svilran, and she started sweating. Her eyes were the widest I had ever seen them. She was stammering too, but I cut her off while looking at the screen. “I wonder if your superior is like that.” I laughed to help soothe her nerves. “Ahh, he’s probably way more than I can imagine. I’d probably get a migraine trying to look at him.” I glanced at her. “He’s probably that unfathomable, right?”
Svilran looked at me, slack-jawed, but then took a breath and smiled. “I would say divinely majestic myself!”
“Noted.”
We went back to watching Elma make her way through a forest.
“Hmm. I wonder if she has any tracking skills. She was in a dungeon her whole life, so maybe she’s not good at traveling through woods.”
“Hmm, maybe. There’s a facility that will let us see a person’s skills and proficiencies and the like. It’s expensive, though.”
“What’s it called?”
“The <Status Shrine>.”
“Huh... Another game-like element...” I muttered. “What would you say the benefit to that is?”
“The most obvious thing I can think of is that it would let us discover proficiencies and skills the Hero themselves may not be aware of.”
That got me by surprise. “And here I was thinking it would just allow us to dispatch the right Heroes more easily.” I grinned at Svilran. “Good point. I had my reservations about you after that prank, but you’re a good partner. I’ll need to step up.”
Svilran giggled as she wiggled her hips. “Oh, come on, you don’t mean that. You’re just buttering me up.”
This girl’s here talking about me buttering her up when she’s the one softening my heart—ahh—I felt incredibly happy for a moment. That happiness came out in the form of a chuckle—one that made Svilran pester me.
“Why are you laughing?” she playfully asked.
“No reason... Anyway, how many more heroes can we raise at any given time?”
Svilran got serious and gave me a straight answer. “It’s based on how many livable buildings we have. So the <Dormitory> has three floors with four rooms on each. This means we can hold twelve permanent heroes currently. There’s no cheating allowed. If we bring a thirteenth hero, we can’t just make them share a room with another. The building itself is what opens the slot, not the rational logic.”
“I see... So the ‘space’ itself is just a superfluous factor, like the washing machine. The valuable factor is the slot it opens... I get it. The ‘space to house more than twelve’ is there because that amount of space is what corresponds with the concept of a dormitory.”
“Wow, you pick up fast.”
“I’m trying to listen to you as much as I can.” I leaned forward and looked into the eyepiece. “So, should we look for another Hero?”
“Actually, Fainn, I need to inform you of something.”
I didn’t pull my face from the piece. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “There’re points associated with summoning, and we’ve run out.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Do we get those points when Elma succeeds?”
“Yes. That’s the only method available to us now, I think.”
“Damn. So many points to collect... Fine. It’s still valuable to look around, though, right?” I adjusted the many knobs along the telescope and its control panel. It looked like I landed on some lava world. “Dang it, this thing is tough to drive.” I hit the button that would scan this world for any missions—if I was going to be wandering around, I needed to make it worth our time. “No missions on this one... Would be nice if we had a hero search feature.”
“But, a prospective hero wouldn’t be identified when they are unrecruitable, and given that we can’t really recruit someone until they are moments from dying...”
“Even if we found them, they might not last long enough for us to pull them later. How frustrating.”
Something occurred to me, and I jumped out of my seat.
“Fainn?”
“I’m going to try something.”
A few minutes later and I was standing in front of the <Wishing Fountain> with a bunch of watermelons under my arms. Svilran had followed me out and was looking at me apprehensively.
“You’re going to make a wish, Fainn?”
I smirked at her. “Yup. We don’t have time for this. So, time to make some wishes and pay-to-win.” I looked at the watermelons. “Or something. It’s a term from some exploitative games. Look, we need to get lucky.” I tossed the watermelons in, watched as they sank into the bottom like it was mud, and made my wish.
Svilran shuddered. “I think we already got plenty lucky yesterday, though...”
“There’s nothing wrong in trying again, right?”
She timidly shrugged. “I guess not, but... We might also be struck by some misfortune. The entities we’re petitioning can be fickle...”
Suddenly the ground below us started shaking, and Svilran screamed. She ran into my arms and hugged me tightly.
“Faaaiiiin! I don’t remember if I told you, but we have to be careful with the Imaginal Will! They don’t understand Order and can most certainly wipe out our Hub without meaning to! Even my superior won’t step in to save us if we tempt fate!”
I looked at the starry sky. A bright, purple light was coming. I put my arm around Svilran and held her tightly. “Brace yourself.”
The light made an impact about a hundred feet from where we stood, raising dust and shaking the earth in the process. A dimmer light twinkled from within the smoke, and a figure gradually became visible.
“Well, look at that,” I said with a smile. “It’s not so bad after all. Hmm? Is that a nun?”
The dust was settling, and the womanly figure was clear. She was wearing a nun’s habit and was dressed head to toe in black. She was gray-skinned, and the most striking thing about her was the old-fashioned lantern hanging on a stick behind her—was the stick part of her?
“F-F-F-Faaaiiin,” Svilran whimpered. “I’m not sure that’s a nun—she doesn’t have a mouth!”
“Come on, don’t be so... ridiculous...”
I looked closer—there was definitely no mouth. She suddenly opened her eyes—
“AHH! FAAAIIIN!”
“Holy crap-ton—“
Many black tentacles burst out from her bleeding eyes, and the skin covering where her mouth would be, tore apart slightly so that her blood-curdling scream could torture our ears.
Svilran screamed as we both covered our ears.
The bottom of her habit squirmed, and the lantern started emitting an ominous black glow. Massive black tentacles covered in greenish bulbs on tiny stems surged out from the bottom of her habit like they were raging waves.
One of the tentacles lashed out at us, and I immediately dashed behind the <Wishing Fountain’s>, having caught something out of the corner of my eye.
“Fainn!” Svilran cried as the tentacle crashed against the <Wishing Fountain’s> barrier. That barrier repelled the tentacle and earned us a few moments.
“Svilran, you can’t do anything about that nun, can you?”
She was absolutely terrified. “I’m not a Battle God, Fainn,” she cried, snot and tears streaming. “I’m just a facilitator.”
I held her closer and tried to calm her down. “Hey, listen, the <Wishing Fountain’s> —will anything bad happen if you jump into it?”
“Huh? No.”
I picked her up and threw her into the fountain. Another tentacle struck the fountain’s barrier, causing a thunderous boom that drowned out her cries.
“Nice. The structures of the Hub World are stronger than this nun.”
The barrier seemed to completely encircle the fountain. As long as she was within the barrier, she would be fine in the event that things went badly for me.
I stepped out from behind the fountain and locked eyes with the wailing nun.
“Fainn! What are you doing?!”
“It’s okay. I’ll use the thing that made you pick me at the start of all this!”
“Huh? Wait, what—how does that help—“
“Don’t worry. I’ll figure this out. It might take a while, but I’ll get there.” I held out my hand and pressed my fingers together, ready to snap. “The thing that let me survive that apocalyptic hellscape— +Nightmares ARE Fiction+.”
I snapped my fingers and trapped the nun and myself in a small black dome.
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Why do I feel like she's being dishonest about her superior and he's nowhere near as powerful as she makes him seem?