Chapter 51: Detective Freya
[ Private Faction Chat ]
[ IronMaw ]: anyone got salt to put up in the shop ? i cook stuff for fun now and then but there’s really no joy in it without salt... — +11... +43...
[ Kalypso ]: wait don’t you have salt turtles ? — +9... +37...
[ IronMaw ]: have what ? — +14... +51...
[ Kalypso ]: salt turtles, my base summons, big as a dog with a shell made of salt crystal — +19... +68...
[ IronMaw ]: kalypso i’ve got golden beetles that dig, i’ve never seen a turtle in my life — +26... +87...
[ Kalypso ]: HOLD ON they’re not the same for everyone ?? — +31... +99...
[ Vermillon ]: apparently not, mine are snakes, boa types, except the scales change color depending on what they touch — +27... +89...
[ GrimoirePhysique ]: bats with glass wings here, they make this chiming sound when they fly in a group, ngl it drives me completely up the wall — +19... +67...
[ Ashvane ]: i’ve got praying mantises the size of an arm with forelegs that actually cut, i love them but help me please i am genuinely never relaxed — +24... +81...
Freya sat bolt upright on her throne, her eyes bright.
Now that is fascinating.
[ Maid ]: Foxes, on my end, with a glowing mushroom on their heads that changes color depending on their mood. — +31... +98...
[ Kalypso ]: ok that’s officially cuter than my turtles — +17... +61...
[ Selenith ]: Boss you have FOXES ? i’ve got toads with phosphorescent spots — +23... +78...
[ Brackwater ]: mine are big crabs with translucent blue claws, they snap their claws when they’re happy — +25... +82...
[ Vermillon ]: brackwater do yours work well ? mine are great at slipping through tight spots but the second something heavy needs carrying it’s hopeless — +20... +69...
[ Brackwater ]: they carry fine but they’re slow, you’ve got to be patient with them — +15... +54...
[ Ashvane ]: mine are fast but they break everything they touch, i’ve given up on having them carry anything fragile — +22... +73...
[ Kalypso ]: but then why do we all have different stuff anyway ? what’s the logic behind it ? — +29... +94...
Oooohh~ What an excellent question!
Freya pressed the like with undisguised satisfaction, and watched the counter tick up a notch.
— +29... +95...
[ GrimoirePhysique ]: our personal theme maybe ? like tied to our skills ? — +22... +73...
[ Kalypso ]: i’ve got a "salt" theme ? seriously ? — +34... +102...
[ Selenith ]: and me a toad theme, great — +26... +85...
[ Ashvane ]: doesn’t work anyway since my skills have nothing to do with insects — +19... +66...
[ Vermillon ]: does the rest change too then ? like are your buildings the same as ours ? — +24... +79...
[ Brackwater ]: forge, mine, storage, farm, yeah mine are all standard — +15... +55...
[ Selenith ]: same, and the tiers are identical too since i unlocked the same things at the same levels as what you were all talking about last time — +21... +70...
[ IronMaw ]: and the Heart’s the same for everyone, mana generation too, so it really is only the summons that change — +21... +71...
[ Vermillon ]: ok so the system isn’t handing them out at random, there has to be a reason behind it — +19... +66...
[ Ashvane ]: or it is random and we’ve been chasing our tails for ten minutes — +17... +58...
[ GrimoirePhysique ]: hold on what if it’s tied to the environment where our dungeon is planted ? — +38... +113...
[ GrimoirePhysique ]: i’m in a deep cave network and i’ve got bats, does that strike you as a coincidence ? — +44... +128...
Freya went still, and a smile slowly rose to her lips.
Oh, oh, oh, of course.
[ Kalypso ]: i’m on the ice sheet and i’ve got salt turtles — +41... +119...
[ Vermillon ]: jungle here and my snakes, that’s literally jungle camouflage — +39... +115...
[ Brackwater ]: coast and crabs, well there you go — +33... +101...
[ Selenith ]: swamp and toads, i think we’ve got it — +35... +106...
[ Ashvane ]: ok i take back what i said since i’m smack in the middle of a tall grass plain and i have mantises — +37... +110...
[ IronMaw ]: desert and beetles that dig through sand, but doesn’t that mean we could’ve had literally anything depending on where we landed ? — +42... +124...
[ RamenLord ]: i’ve got little polar bears, with fur that freezes the air around them! — +45... +131...
What an incredible ability, I’m almost jealous...
Then she thought back to her adorable little Mycofoxes, to their little caps that shifted color, to their noses coming to sniff at her fingers and their delighted "Kyu"s.
No! No! Nothing compares to my beautiful little Mycofoxes, deep down, oh how I looove theeem~~!
[ Kalypso ]: i could’ve had a bear and i got turtles — +47... +134...
Freya couldn’t help laughing at that message, though come to think of it, producing salt through your own summons really wasn’t a bad deal at all, and she had the proof of it right above, since salt clearly had its place on the inter-dungeon shop.
Then she let the information settle, and applied it to her own case.
The environment, then, the place where the Heart took root determines what the system gives us.
My Mycofoxes are surely tied to the magic forest right above, that much seems obvious, with that density of mana, those impossible species and those luminescent mushrooms everywhere.
Except there was something else, right beneath her, and not just anything.
But if the location matters that much... might Nymeria not have influenced mine as well?
The idea made her straighten up.
Because if that were the case, if her foxes had been shaped, even a little, by that underground world saturated with mana where creatures lived that could stand up to demigods, then her summons weren’t simply foxes with mushrooms, but might well be sturdier and more promising than anything the others had in their hands.
If my summons are tougher thanks to Nymeria, that would be absolutely insane, so please let it be that, please let it be that~!
She held back from typing the question into the chat, because there was no question of mentioning Nymeria in front of anyone, ever, nor of giving away a single scrap of information beyond what she’d already let slip about her Mycofoxes, and therefore, by extension, about her location.
Still, while she was at it.
[ Maid ]: Since we’re here, one last word. It’s high time you all cut loose a great deal more, every one of you. On my end, I’m about to launch the conquest of the kingdom I find myself in. And don’t forget that I’ll soon be naming four generals, to whom I’ll grant authority over the entire faction. Good luck to each of you. — +63... +204...
And as was her habit, she closed the chat at once, without looking at a single one of the reactions.
But with a few conclusions in mind.
The first was that some, within her faction, had clearly thought things through a good deal further than the rest.
GrimoirePhysique, for instance, had used the word "theme," picked up at once by Kalypso and then Selenith. Which suggested they too had reached the same conclusion she had, namely that the skills handed out by the system rested on a theme unique to each of them, exactly as hers and her Gacha pulls did. That single word therefore now confirmed her theory absolutely, and proved in passing that others had pushed the reasoning as far as she had.
Ashvane, on the other hand, had followed up by writing "my skills." Which meant he had probably never established this theme theory on his own. It might seem perfectly trivial, but someone who had built that theory in their head would almost certainly have answered by picking up the word "theme," not "skills."
Well, then again, I might be getting carried away, so these are only guesses!
She decided that in any case, beyond learning that certain members of her faction were proving every bit as shrewd as she was, it was time to move on to the next subject.
Trust.
Ever since that notification about the event, the one that had set off the simmering war between Dungeon Lords, she’d expected wariness and caution to become the rule, despite her own warnings. And yet, right in front of her, they’d just given away information about themselves without the slightest scruple, however vague it might be.
Because last time, she’d found the region BlackFlame was in simply from the monsters he hunted.
Well, mostly thanks to Aria, who’s literally a walking cheat, let’s not kid ourselves.
But the demonstration was there. With very little, in this world, you could deduce an enormous amount.
She’d experienced it herself just now, when she’d written about her adorable little Mycofoxes to show them off, torn between the urge to shout her babies’ names to the whole world and the fear, on the other side, of giving away even a shred of information about herself.
That clearly wasn’t the case for her faction. Or at least, not for those who’d been talking just now.
Good.
And on that word, she closed the "Detective Freya and her faction chat" parenthesis.
Freya rose from her throne, fully intending to go have a look at her new buildings.
Except Anubia was still lodged in her forearm.
She tugged at her once, gently, to absolutely no effect. She tried again, a little more firmly, then took to outright swinging her arm back and forth, forward and back, with the bee riding along without ever letting go, clamped onto her with utterly unshakeable determination.
"WILL YOU LET GO OF ME ALREADY?!"
She shook her arm harder still, over and over, until the stinger finally came out with a sharp jerk, promptly followed by a spurt of blood that caught her square in the face.
Anubia, for her part, flew off calmly, with a distinctly delighted "bzzz bzzz~" and an air of perfect innocence.
"GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!"
And so it was that the terrible Calamity of Greed, her face speckled with her own blood, went tearing across the Heart chamber after a fifty-centimeter bee cheerfully fluttering just out of reach.
After a few minutes of this little routine, out of breath and thoroughly disheveled, Freya finally gave up the chase, wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, and remembered she did have rather more serious things to attend to, starting with a look at her brand-new Silk Spinnery.
The room was worth the trip. Large, with a high ceiling, it was filled with big dark wooden machines covered in still-empty spools, lined up one behind the other, with stone basins along the walls and rails in the floor to move everything around. The air was warmer in there than elsewhere, and it still smelled of new wood everywhere.
Ooooh, it’s magnificent.
Freya made a slow circuit of it, one hand trailing over a machine as she passed, and a silly smile rose to her lips.
So many beautiful things belong to me since I came to this world, it’s really magnificent.
[ Word of Greed skill activated. ]
She waved the notification away irritably, without so much as breaking stride.
Yes, yes, thank you, I got it.
Which was, at least, proof that the system had kept its word and restored the display, something that reassured her as much as it annoyed her to have it popping up at every turn.
She then took a look at her reserve.
[ Mana: 59/10,000 ]
So two hours have gone by since I caved at the shop.
Which, all things considered, left her enough for what she’d come to do.
"System, summon the Spinner Mycofox, please."
[ Summon x1 Spinner Mycofox for 20 mana points? ]
"Yes."
The little fox materialized at the foot of the nearest machine, and Freya spotted at once what set him apart from the others. His forelegs were far finer and longer, almost delicate, ending in fingers of impressive dexterity, and he had a small tuft of very soft fur at the tip of his tail, which he clearly used to smooth the thread as it passed.
She crouched down in front of him to scratch him between the ears, then gently took hold of one of his forelegs, curious, and moved it with the tip of her finger.
The little fingers folded and unfolded with remarkable precision, and the Mycofox tilted his head, before letting out a puzzled "Kyu?" at this whole performance.
"Sorry, sorry. It’s just fascinating, those little hands of yours."
She let him go, stood back up, and gave him a small wave.
"All right, good luck, Sanjūsan. Show me what you can do."
The fox trotted over to his machine, hopped up onto it, and set about inspecting each spool as if he’d never done anything else in his life.
Freya watched him a moment, then made her way back up to the upper floors.
Right, I’ve done all this a bit out of order, I’ll admit.
She took stock as she walked. The Crystal Mine was already running and starting to stockpile, which was something at least. The Silkweavers, for their part, would cost her thirty mana points each, so one hundred and eighty in total for the six, which, with the thirty-nine she had left, meant waiting nearly six more hours before she could summon them.
After that, their silk would be spun right here, in the Spinnery, then stored away pending the Weaving Workshop.
So by then I’ll have crystals on one side, silk on the other, and both quietly piling up in my reserves while I get the rest of the chains built.
Which, when she thought about it, was exactly what was needed.