Chapter 131: My Lady Always Finds the Best Way
Twelve hours.
That was all the time her mistress had, with each death, to carry the victim from wherever they had fallen to the heart of the dungeon on the tenth and final floor, the maximum the system allowed her for now.
Na?a closed the heavy door of the storage chamber behind her and settled the basket against her hip. It was filled to the brim with several dozen hearts lying pressed against one another, dark and still, cold from the vault she had just drawn them from.
Beside her, La?a lifted hers with a small grunt.
"It’s heavy today."
"It was a good night," Na?a replied.
"Good is one word for it..." La?a propped the basket against her stomach and blew at a strand of hair falling into her eyes. "We’re going to have to make several trips..."
They left the chamber and its luxurious hangings and stepped out onto the last floor. Soft light bathed the meadow, the great tree spread its branches over the grass, and a little farther on, the surface of the lake shimmered without a ripple. Side by side, they set off down the path that led to the heart.
Every morning, this had become their task. At first, their mistress had wanted to assign a worker Mycofox to it, but Na?a had pointed out that, for now, they were short-staffed and that the two of them could handle it just fine. It hardly cost them anything.
And when Kaguya was available, it was even simpler. She opened a portal between the storage chamber and the heart, and all they had to do was toss the hearts through one by one.
Still, Na?a liked these walks on the days Kaguya wasn’t around. She liked them most of all because, every time, she couldn’t help thinking back to how all of this had been put in place.
Because this problem had been one of the hardest their mistress had had to solve while establishing her floors.
"This world isn’t like the stories!" she had proclaimed with a laugh the day she realized it.
Here, mana and dungeon points didn’t flow straight to the core or the system with every death without anyone lifting a finger. Nothing came on its own. Another way had to be found, and their mistress had done what she always did in situations like this.
She had studied.
She had approached the phenomenon through theory, bombarding Aria and the system with questions for hours and cross-checking every answer, until she reached a conclusion. The mana’s favorability toward the anchor that was the body, the one that vanished after twelve hours, wasn’t tied to the whole body, but to only one part of it, the center of every living being.
The heart.
So it was enough to carry the dead person’s heart to the dungeon’s heart, not the whole body, to recover the mana.
La?a started humming a tune that went nowhere, swinging her basket lightly in time with her steps.
"Stop shaking it," Na?a said.
"It’s not like they’re going to complain."
Na?a sighed, but couldn’t hold back a smile.
That left working out how to do it. That was how the Mycofox tunnel network had been created, or rather restored. On every floor, at carefully chosen and well-hidden key points, behind the thick walls, beneath the floors and above the ceilings, ran their galleries. They also led to the mines, the only things their mistress hadn’t been able to move because of the mithrite deposits. Those mines had stayed on the first floor, hidden behind its walls.
Next, the chimeras had to be trained. They learned to recognize the hearts, not to devour them along with the rest, and to bring them to the key points. There the Mycofox collected them and carried them to the storage chamber closest to their floor, chambers their mistress had cleverly spread throughout the dungeon. The contents of each one could then be taken out directly on the last floor, just as the two of them had done a moment ago.
Of course, there were losses. Some hearts never arrived in time, and the mana they held faded away on the road. Their mistress always said it was the best she could do.
Na?a didn’t agree. To her, it wasn’t the best her mistress could do: it was simply the best way to do it. She had always thought so, and every time she carried this basket, she grew a little more convinced.
"Na?a, you’re drooling again..." La?a said.
"What...?!"
She wiped her lips with an embarrassed swipe of her hand. La?a, basket under her arm, had stepped a pace ahead and turned to look at her, eyes narrowed, not at all convinced by her big sister.
"I hope you weren’t fantasizing in your head again with your ’my lady is wonderful’ stuff, huh!"
Na?a looked away, her cheeks turning red.
"What are you even talking about, you pervert?!"
La?a stuck her tongue out at her before speeding up, shouting and laughing at the same time.
"Pervert~! Na?a’s a pervert~! Pervert~!"
Na?a watched her run off and simply sighed.
"Me, a pervert... what nonsense."
Then her thoughts drifted off again, toward the nursery this time.
Because if the Mycofox were now enough to keep the whole network running, it was thanks to their population explosion. They had started breeding at a frantic pace, births had multiplied, and their numbers had climbed at a dizzying rate. To be fair, much to their mistress’s surprise, a pregnancy lasted only three days.
Na?a snorted despite herself. She still remembered their mistress’s face the day she found out, and what she had said, half amused, half resigned.
"Magic world, so anything goes, I suppose?"
When she finally reached the heart, La?a was already waiting there, her basket at her feet, still humming.
Na?a walked up to it, lifted the first heart from the basket and pressed it against its surface. It vanished at once, absorbed, and she felt the mana flow into the dungeon. Beside her, La?a did the same with hers.
They carried on like that, one heart after another.
Yes, it’s the best way to do it, Na?a thought. My lady always finds the best way to do it.
She turned her head toward her lady.
Their mistress stood a few dozen meters away, alone in the middle of the grass, and this time her body was crackling with lightning. Thin bluish arcs ran along her arms, curled around her fingers, then died out only to spark again a little farther on. Na?a had never seen anything like it, but she suspected her mistress was training to master a new kind of magic, without saying a word and without sparing them a single glance.
Isn’t that right, my lady? You’ll always do what’s best?
She tore her eyes away from her lady and turned them back to the heart, her own clenched tight in her chest, and went on taking hearts from the basket and placing them there, one by one.
Despite herself, her thoughts drifted back to the night before, when their mistress had come home with yellow eyes. There had been a disgust in her gaze that had made Na?a shiver. It didn’t seem aimed only at those standing in front of her, but at herself too, and even at the whole world for daring to bear her existence.
Kaguya hadn’t said anything. She had simply looked sad, then left straight through a portal without a word.
Then La?a had opened her mouth, as she always did, but the answer hadn’t been as kind as usual. It had been quite the opposite.
Na?a’s gaze left the basket and settled on her little sister. La?a had kept smiling, kept humming, kept all her cheerfulness, but Na?a knew that deep down their lady’s words had hurt her.
And yet there she was, working without a word, her face focused, placing her hearts with care. A smile formed on Na?a’s face.
Despite everything, you’ve really grown.
Seeing that gave her a little hope too, and she had no choice but to hold on to it. This was their new family, built so quickly, and their new everyday life. So yes, she hoped their mistress would come back to herself, that she would once again be that woman as pragmatic as she was clumsy, the one who treated them like members of her own family, sometimes even at her own expense.
The Freya they loved so much.
La?a, who hadn’t gotten lost in her thoughts, had almost finished emptying her basket had turned her head back toward their lady.
And she froze.
"Na... Na?a."
"Yes?" her sister answered without looking up, placing her last hearts into the dungeon’s heart.
"My lady!"
It wasn’t the word that stopped Na?a mid-motion. It was the distress in her sister’s voice, the sister she had thought so strong only moments earlier. A shiver ran through her whole body, a cold sweat slid down her back, and without even realizing it, she turned her gaze toward their lady as well.
Their mistress lay on the ground, on her side, facing them. The lightning was gone. Her eyes were wide open and completely white, and there was nothing behind them anymore, no trace of the one who had inhabited them only a moment ago.
Na?a dropped everything.
The basket fell into the grass and the hearts still inside rolled at her feet, but she didn’t even see them. Before her mind had time to understand what this meant, or to think about what she should do, her body had already taken over, and she was running toward her lady with all her strength, toward that body lying in the grass that no longer moved.
Behind her, La?a saw her big sister panic, and the sight made her panic even more. She broke into a run too, half stumbling, never taking her eyes off the figure stretched out in the distance.
They reached their mistress almost at the same moment and dropped to their knees on either side of her without losing a second.
Na?a slipped an arm under her shoulders and lifted her against her. Their mistress’s head fell back without the slightest resistance, and her arms dropped limply to either side of her body, lifeless and strengthless, until they touched the grass.
An icy shiver ran straight through Na?a. Nausea rose in her throat, and her hands began to shake on that body, so light and so limp, that no longer responded to anything.
"MY LADY!" La?a screamed, tears already in her eyes.
She seized one of her hands and squeezed it with all her strength, but the fingers stayed open in hers, never closing, without the faintest pressure in return.
"My lady, wake up! My lady!"
Na?a patted her cheek, gently at first, then a little harder. She brought her face close to hers and searched for a breath, a heartbeat, anything at all. The white eyes stayed fixed on the empty air above her, never seeing her.
"We have to... we have to call Aria," La?a stammered, shaking the limp hand. "Or Kaguya, someone, anyone... Na?a, what do we do? What do we do?!"
Na?a no longer heard anything. She held their mistress against her, one hand on her cold cheek, and her own tears began to fall, dropping one by one onto the motionless face.
"Freya..."
For the first time, the name slipped out of her with no title, nothing else.
"Freya, tell me everything’s fine... that everything will be fine... please..."
Her voice broke.
"Please! Please, I’m begging you!"