Perks of choosing a safe journey, and in perspective of later events. Doubles like one of the very rare uninterrupted days when Hunger was just straight up safe and confident in his power for an extended amount of time.
He'd finally had a chance to examine the treasures they'd extracted from the King Fish. Gisena had concluded that the jade pearl and scale might sell for a considerable sum, but the map in the bottle offered more precipitous value. Drawn in quicksilver ink that shifted with the light was a map of their immediate environs in the Voyaging Realm, and a route to which they could reach an ancient ruin named the Temple of the False Moon.[/QUOTE]
I wonder who actually made the bottle-map. Is Moonring sitting down by some river, creating aetheric bottles with messages in it? Does Moon Civ specifically allows such things to leak into outer world in order to attract adventurers?
There was no particular reason for them to pursue this lead, but his instincts told him that something of great value resided within, and his Rank-assisted intuition had rarely been wrong in the Voyaging Realm. The map was slowly disintegrating in the oxygenated air outside its bottle, so it was now or never. Even re-stoppering its container had failed to halt the degradation.
And why it self-destroys like this. This does not seems right. Is the creator limited to conjured matter? Is it something allowed by moonciv in order to attract more meat for their grinders to process?
Gisena was characteristically enthused about the prospect of magical treasures secreted away, and Letrizia, having dueled the blue swordsman directly, felt badly that they needed the strength: so, ill-advised as it sounded, they set out for the Temple directly. At any rate it was only a few days' travel.
Oh Gisena, you innocent sweet summer child, you.
...Well, actually it is Hunger who generally gets shafted hard by the Temple, but whatever. Details.
Wait, she also got knocked out against The Magus. Nevermind, poor Gisena. And we failed to get any sort of magical knick-knack so far, too; only a vague promise of a Ring. Hopefully, at least that one is good.
The hours passed slowly as they wandered, a warm and sullen-sweet haze like a daydream on a summer's afternoon. Verschlengorge lumbered through pastoral fields of green, rolling hills beneath clouds like dolloped cream, past dirt roads and cottages of grey stone where farmers' children emerged, gawking crudely at the cruelly angled giant. Packs of them scurried gleefully in its dust-cloud wake, waving to the pretty Sorceress on its shoulder.
"Aren't they adorable?" Gisena gushed, hands clasped to chest. Letrizia answered with an affirmative chirp through the machine's speakers.
...I wonder if natives of Letrz land think Armament to be a tool of terrifying, unyielding oppression, or at least a remainder of constantly brewing cold war. Maybe it is unfounded, but I just have those sorts of suspicions about her civ. Meanwhile to these people, it is just a friendly giant passing by. They are not even particularly scared.
Giant robot in high fantasy is such goddamn cool idea. I kinda wish if we had a quest just about this one thing.
Hunger, laid flat on the opposite shoulder, kept his eyes skyward. So much had changed these past five days. He'd nearly died, then become a Cursebearer, gifted with power and obligation beyond reason. Aside from the Apocryphal Curse, the yoke of his dooms had sat lightly on him so far. For that he could count himself lucky.
All of this is pretty shocking, yes. Probably even to Hunger, who is an actual isekai hero thrust into unfamiliar land to fight a tyrant of strength beyond any typical measure. Although he did forget most of his life... Oh well. There is a lot more from where that came from, Apocryphal curse is going to make sure of that.
And yes, all things considered, Hunger has been lucky. Actually, you could say we had been lucky, considering the sort of shit we got up to later on.
He spoke sparingly to the populace, and Gisena was well-aware of how to navigate the Tyranny. The Decimator's Affliction he'd been proactive in mitigating, and was successfully free of it for a time. And the Geas of Indenture, though it promised a thousand trillion, trillion lifetimes of servitude, stretched long into the uncertain future, a problem for tomorrow's Hunger, not the languid beast of today.
"Looks at things Hunger got up to barely day later"
"Languid beast of today", pfft. Hunger never was a languid beast of anything. If anything, he always was the Elder Beast of Trying Too Hard.
Anyway, it is kind of a pity we didn't get to talk with normal people of the voyaging real for a bit. It is a pretty curious setting, getting their perspective could have been rather neat. Hearing people be all amazed at the sign of Versch maybe not particularly useful, but as good as any sort of guilty pleasure.
He was, if not content, at least occasionally happy with his lot as it presently stood. Some might resent the cavalcade of trials that the Apocryphal presented, but that was a small enough price in his reckoning, when so recently ago he'd been reduced to nothing. His companions were able and only infrequently annoying, and his powers had expanded with explosive speed. In a year's time or less he might again be the man he once was. What might he be in ten year's time? A hundred? He could scarcely imagine it, even though his benefactor lay even further beyond; far, inestimably far beyond the span of finite years.
Well, to be entirely fair most of his life basically was Apocryphal curse. The tyrant, hidden masters, an entire prophecy was made to ensure that it would remain so. In some ways, actually-possible-to-mutigate Apocryphal curse is thousands times better than something you have entirely no power to deal with.
Would his companions of this first month still be beside him, when he repaid the Accursed's favor? Assuming - and it was by no means certain - he survived, would he be some juggernaut with merely the countenance of a man, so far removed from mortal concerns as to scarcely resemble the creature he once was? Given the trajectory of his projection, it did not seem an unlikely outcome. Very nearly inescapable, in fact, with an early demise his only alternative.
Well, Accursed himself isn't. Honestly for things like that, Accursed is probably the best sort of therapist from those suffering from acute cause of "Transcending mortality, losing my humanity, wat do" sort of existential drama. I wonder if his rates are good, and if he has any special discounts for his Cursebearers.
On an unrelated note, imagine actually paying off Geas of Indenture eventually.
And yet there had been humanity in the Accursed, after all. Perhaps that was the calculated facade of a being so far beyond human comprehension that mere reason and causality found no purchase against its abilities, but he liked to think otherwise. What need had such a being to offer so generous a bounty of power with his burdens? Why design the Cursebearer's systems with such care, as if to nurture and foster their growth? He was raising an army, but it was not a faceless one.
Yes, cosplaying Odyssial-senpai is good idea in almost all situations. A being such as him does not have a need for such mind games anyway, and Cursebearers potentially get up to level of power that is only infinitely lesser than his, instead of infinitely x infinitely lesser.
A peal of thunder broke his reverie and he looked ahead to see clouds towering like stygian anvils, gathering angrily in a mass upon the horizon. Rain fell upon their bucolic expanse, pouncing like a nimble invader, its onslaught sudden, brisk and overwhelming. Gisena cried in joy and tilted her head skywards, catching the water on her tongue, while he grunted and shifted to an upright position, the Evening Sky sheltering him utterly from so trifling a concern
.
Man, this is the very picture of "Goddamn I am just so fucking happy to be alive right now." Gisena got hit really hard by her encounter with the Hero. Pity we got dragged into this temple moonciv mess, she really could have used some time away from bullshit adventure nonsense. She needs a vacation. Such a good thing we have an opportunity for one right now.
Monsters down upon them from the clouds, eyeless myrmidons with skin of thunderhead-grey, whose blades were plumed like water-drops, set upon chariots of twisting fire. They charged in their dozens and tens of dozens, and Verschlengorge roared in response, an echoing shock of sound as to drown out all thunder, blasting the children away, deafened but alive.
"Shit." Letrizia cursed. "I've seen these guys before. I hope we didn't attract them to these people..."
Versch seems to be actually pretty good at controlling collateral damage; with its size forcibly getting civilians out of the combat zone is hard-hard
very hard. I wonder if it is Letrizia's influence or Versch own nature? It likes Letrz, so it probably leans somewhere to the Noble Good alignment, of the "not actually stupid" variety like Fairbright.
Anyway, Letrz seems to be relatively unused to having civilians inside of the Astral harassment zone. Sounds like she rarely operated in populated centres proper, and Letr'z civ did good job making sure Armament's side effects and constant monster incursions are under control.
Hunger grimaced. "It is what it is. Kill them quickly and you've nothing to be sorry for."
They died, quickly. Almost surprisingly so. Their movements lethargic to his eyes, their strikes middling, bereft of passion, even of desperation as he scythed them down. Halfway through the moment of carnage he finally realized. He wasn't exhausted any more, nor injured, and now held Seralize's speed and all the power he had accumulated these past days in its fullness. His pressure poured forth upon them harder and heavier than the storm-rains, the well of his spirit like a spigot turned open to drown them in fury and might.
Happy time when our regular enemies were that much weaker than us. The kids seeing this probably had been blasted with so much "Wow I wanna be like that when I grow up" that you could power up another Moon Civ with all that childish wonder and fascination.
For a time, he was king of the battlefield, and though he knew it would not last, that more and greater enemies awaited, still for a moment he exulted that his sword-arm was strong enough, his eye sharp enough, his fury swift enough, that he would lose no companions today. But all good things, as they say, come to an end, and ill things no less so. The battle concluded, the storm begrudgingly dissolved, and short hours later they came upon the Temple, having slaughtered their way through a trail of Astral monsters, none of whom was a match for his Blade.
I wish we had been King of the Vanreir's battlefield, but what can you do. I'll hold moments like this, when instead of almost dying, we just encounter a new enemy and then proceed to blow them away with trivial ease in my heart, dear and treasured.
All too quickly their journey was over, and the porcelain towers of the Temple loomed large against the silk-panel blue of the sky. A foreboding came over him, and over Gisena as they saw it; impossibly high and vast, spires like a claw made to clutch at the heavens, tear free the moon and leave only a wound weeping into the void.
I still wonder if this has any sort of purpose, or is just a pointless display of wealth and power. There seems to be some sort of an industrial complex inside of the innermost temple, but at the same time the middle temple is a medieval slum and the outer temple is wastefully inefficient membrane that keeps only the weakest adventurers out. There is also the fact that one of the updates was called "ritual ground."
...Wouldn't be surprised if whoever holds the ring, a person or a group of people actually have some sort of a long-term plan in motion that will eventually result in some sort of expansion of influence and power for the Moon Civ.
