"I am assuming your expressed unhappiness indicates yet another problem with my Status," Queen Administrator said emotionlessly.
It's too bad the deadpan was accidental. That could've been funny.
"Anxious frown," Hestia corrected. "I'm not unhappy as much as I am
worried. The reason we need to keep your Status secret isn't just because the other gods will be interested. Not anymore. It's because they'll be
jealous. All of them had to bury children, and then you come along with enough skills for every member of a small Familia. They won't stop hounding you until they find out how
they can do it, too.
"Your Basic Ability growth is
even worse. I think a normal person would get five points in each of a few stats on a
very good day, and enough of those in a row would force them to relearn their body's limits. The normal Basic Ability cap for an adventurer is 999. You earned over four hundred points of Magic in
one day where most people would take years to manage the same, and then you got a suspicious skill that raised the cap even further. I'm amazed you can even
walk! And, and,
and there's the part where you haven't even killed a monster yet. That drifts away from the realm of mortal heroes and into the fictional absurdity of amateur authors trying to make their heroes seem special."
Queen Administrator assumed her usual questioning posture.
"I do not believe my Status is replicable. Gods can detect the truth; will they not leave me alone if I inform them of the pointlessness of attempted coercion?"
Hestia shook her head.
For someone who threatened genocide, you're remarkably optimistic about the nature of people.
"You underestimate spite. I don't want to scare you, but most mortals who enter the Dungeon die there. Even the well-prepared often fall."
Queen Administrator's posture didn't change. Hestia resigned herself to a long, depressing explanation and took a deep breath. She didn't like horror stories.
"Your advisor could give you a better picture; I don't know all the exact numbers. But even in established Familia, they aren't very good. You can have a higher-level guard acting to keep others safe from goblin ambushes, but that won't save the rookies from a lucky arrow through the eye. Those without such escorts can die in a normal fight without ever returning a single Magic Stone. On floor six, ambushes from War Shadows can doom the unaware without even a fight.
"Floor seven is even worse and is called the 'Rookie Tomb.' Even as one of the stronger level ones, you could have a Killer Ant grab and shear right through your gear; you can whittle down a foe's health and have a Blue Moth restore them completely; or you can win all your duels and still have a Purple Moth kill you with poison. And all three of those are introduced on the same floor. Overall, maybe one in five adventurers manage to survive long enough to rank up to level two.
"People say it gets better then, but I think there are just fewer people to notice dying. Orcs are tough, strong, and will happily strike while you're distracted by the screeching bats accompanying them. Hard Armored will shrug off the attacks of weaker, nimbler adventurers and will just keep attacking until they win from attrition. Infant dragons can kill people by
breathing and even touching them will burn you. And the entire Dungeon is like that. That Anzo was wrong about how to approach it, but he was right about one thing: the Dungeon hates everyone and wants to kill them. Just because it's no longer a blight upon all the world doesn't mean it isn't still dangerous."
Queen Administrator plastered a smile upon her face. It was too abnormally still to be anything other than deliberate.
"I can make my Friends do everything on that list save for the healing of allies. I will be quite interested in learning how they do that. With an escort of my Friends, I believe I can handle any and all challenges the Dungeon presents to me. There is also Aiz's tutoring to consider."
She didn't get the intended lesson at all, did she? The goddess groaned and threw her hands up in the air.
"That's the only thing I
don't doubt these days! I'm worried about
other people, Adm—Queen Administrator, not the Dungeon! Down there, you can try to pace yourself and make sure you only face appropriate challenges for your strength. That isn't true up here; Ishtar was far from the only deity who enjoys squashing weaker people just because she can. A stupidly fast rate of growth only helps you catch up, not face people who are already stronger than you. Cursing people only helps
after they've harmed you."
"We will be fine," Queen Administrator reassured her.
"I know better than to instigate active conflict until I can at least survive it."
"You don't
have to instigate fights! They'll come for you entirely unprovoked!"
"That would be incredibly stupid. Ishtar's fate should serve as a warning of the consequences of such an action."
"Plenty of gods are incredibly stupid people!"
"Idiocy is self-correcting. They will drop to manageable levels sooner or later."
Hestia buried her face in both hands and hoped she was at least getting through to her other child. It sounded like everything she said was going in one of Queen Administrator's ears and out the other without interacting with anything between them.
~ ~ ~
Dreamer wondered how she could've ever been afraid of the Fates. If all three goddesses were like the first of their number to accept her invitation, Lachesis, then they would collectively possess all the menace of a litter of inebriated kittens. Dreamer wasn't even sure the black-suited, silver-haired woman could speak in anything other than past tense.
"Called us a bunch've old ladies," Lachesis ranted. "Jus' 'cause we didn't get to go out to parties. Did they think we
wanted to slave over a room full of spinny wheels all day?
Did they? Did they?"
Her arms were waving through the air without any regard for the wine she was spilling from a summoned bottle. Dreamer honestly regretted letting the goddess know they could conjure things other than tea; the Fate had wasted no time in conjuring alcohol and quaffing it like a desert-dehydrated amnesiac who also
didn't need to breathe. It hadn't even been
five minutes and she was already utterly smashed.
"Of course they did, the bastards," the Fate mumbled.
"Everyone got to look forward to vacation, but we didn't. Tried taking days off and came back to great big
knots and walking corpses spewing corrupted magic everywhere. Everyone blamed poor little Hades, but it was us. That was the last party we attended for over
six hundred years."
Lachesis rested her head on the table and eyed the now-empty wine bottle despondently, apparently forgetting she could refill it at will. Dreamer chose not to enable the goddess with a reminder. The teenager also had yet to receive any answers on how much they knew of her studies or how heavily they could influence the mortal world. She was starting to think the Fates were limited to what they'd seen her do though, which… actually wasn't as relieving as it probably should be. That would only let them invoke curses against Ishtar, grant Dreamer's guest-self a skill she already possessed, possibly grant the occasional new spell, and rewrite the flavor text of skills Dreamer would already give herself. The Fates seemed as though they could use more agency than that would give them.
"Have you considered mortal assistants?" Dreamer ventured.
Lachesis snorted and glared balefully at the girl before her. Dreamer didn't feel particularly threatened; the goddess couldn't even focus on Dreamer's face for more than two seconds at a time.
"Course we did. We were vetoed; everyone else said our jobs were too
important and
inscrutable. Always fell asleep during our presentations, too. Wasn't that complicated. Jus' made sure mortal strings didn't go flopping about when they ended. Wouldn't even let us drag engineers into the office; Atropos had to learn alllll the maths herself just so we could keep up, and we
still needed to sleep in shifts t'clip stubborn threads. And they even enforced the dress code!
We had to wear the men's shtuff just to avoid caught skirts!"
Dreamer jumped in her seat as Lachesis shot to her feet, the Fate aimlessly waving her empty wine bottle around once more.
"They didn' even know what'd happen if we stopped, an' they
still ignored us when we said the strings were getting worse! Wasn't a damned
omen, we meant it! Cake n soma n the promise of vacations an' everyone ignored how the workload was only getting bigger. They didn't even realize we could've ended it all just by
stopping!"
The Fate collapsed onto the table, her formerly-black suit turning red and brown with spilled wine and Dreamer's newly-ruined tea.
"We could've ended it all," Lachesis sobbed drunkenly.
Dreamer reached out and awkwardly patted the crying goddess on the back. The shard hoped she didn't end up like that when she grew up; Heaven sounded more like Hell the more she learned about it.
~ ~ ~
"I give up," Hestia sighed, slumping. "I'll make Aiz explain it to you. Let's just go to bed."
"Weren't we supposed to keep my Status a secret?"
"
Generally keep your Status a secret," Hestia corrected. "At this point, you've drifted well beyond the limits of most mortals. She'll notice. Ask her to keep it a secret, tell her someplace
very private, and —
this feels so wrong to say — try to learn any useful things that nonetheless don't boost your Status very much. At this point, I'll consider it a victory if we can put off your level-up for a whole month. It'll be a
miracle if we can manage two."
"Isn't that still twelve to six times faster than Aiz apparently managed?"
"My standards have fallen a bit high lately,
okay?"
"Isn't it normally 'fallen a—'"
"Yes. Yes it is. You know what else isn't particularly normal?
Over four hundred points in a day. It's not your fault and other people are the ones making it a bad thing, Administrator, but... please
try to tone it down?
"
"As I am still not sure how this has occurred or why it is problematic, I cannot make any promises. I will still attempt to use your request as guidance."
Hestia rubbed at her face with one hand and sighed.
Ten-day level-up, here we come. We are going to get into so much trouble. Although, maybe I can get her to slow down if she has another Familia member to look after...?
