Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6)

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  Tossing her hair, Dawn hovered away after pushing up on her toes. S-rankers didn’t care about gravity. This still felt like a setup to Artorian, and the edge of the cliff had not yet been reached. This was akin to the Fringe kids herding him onto the river-hill, before a very wet fall. It felt like it was such, even if he didn’t have the details of this scheme all put together. “I am supposed to be hard at work gathering iridium!”

  Dawn’s voice rang from afar. “Far ahead of you. It’s in the vault! Now quit stalling and get in here before I drag you Phantomdusk style!”

  Yuki caught herself, holding back a chortled snort from the haste and speed the youth suddenly discovered in spades. His strides were short, tiny legs zipping him over the reflective flooring as he made a beeline-rush to the very baths he’d… caught… Odin in.

  He was expecting the playful trip from Dawn, and dramatically stumbled over the outstretched foot hiding behind the opened doors. With matching flair, he exclaimed his mock surprise. “Oh no~o!”

  *Splash*!

  With a mighty wave of hot, steamy water, the baths rocked and gained waves as the liquid tried to balance out all the extra density and force it had just been smashed by. A tiny satchel hurled from the raging waters, and a smirking Dawn caught it. Taking the single Iridium Li coin out of the bag, she admired it for a moment. “Nice to see you have an affection for my gifts of old.”

  Yuki strode past her and controlled the situation with a flick of her wrist. The waves swirling in the chamber halted mid-motion. To Artorian’s soaked surprise, not one droplet of it froze. It all just… stopped. Like a painting he could walk through.

  He didn’t get the chance as it all came crashing down on him. The soaked youth shimmied up the provided stairs, soppily escaping the baths. Artorian trudged right up to the two women who were trying to contain their heaving giggle fit. “Alright. You got me. I can’t figure this one out. Where is the setup? You essentially ambushed me in the middle of work. I have several realms to see, followed by the Eternium versions. I have a special appointment in Alfheim. So why the… this?”

  He motioned his arms around, but received a fresh towel to wear rather than an immediate answer. Yuki was smiling at him. Why was that so incredibly unsettling? Her voice was even… lukewarm? “For no reason other than we are pleased to see you again. All work and no play… well. Even for me, it does only harm. So we planned the interruption. One we painstakingly did our best to get by Zelia, who was dead set on avoiding giving you additional distractions. We did not agree.”

  Dawn was clearly a main culprit of this plan, as she smirked wide and picked up the thread. “This was, granted, easier to do given her absence during the last iteration. In our view, you returned only to throw yourself into work. We didn’t like that, so have cut your tasks short. I gathered any iridium that may have been in Eternium, and the remaining iridium from all the realms we figured you would check last. I didn’t expect to get them exactly right. Maybe you’re becoming predictable!”

  The youth mumble-grumbled, taking his current robes off just to dump them in Yuki’s waiting hand. Wading back into the waters, Dawn snickered as she could measure the temperature increase by a full degree, just because he was in it. Silently fussing.

  She spoke further. “The gathered material is in the Asgard vault, which is where I’ll be taking this sizable chunk. There is far more here than meets the eye. Honestly, I’m surprised you were able to carry it. How did that pouch not tear? That’s the real mystery.”

  Artorian’s mind was spinning. The pouch! She was right. It shouldn’t have been able to… No. This was a distraction! She was… gone. “Crackers. Pulled the wool right over my eyes.”

  He sighed, sunk into the water, and just made bubbles while scrubbing himself off with a provided rag. He mumbled out a sour question, since Yuki was sitting nearby being all happy with herself. “What’s the difference between the A and B-ranks?”

  Without missing so much as a beat, Yuki replied. If she had done that because she expected it… He didn’t want to think about it. Being accused of becoming predictable only made him blow bubbles more aggressively. “The A-ranks are a much easier explanation point. A-ranked Mana is solid, rather than fluid. Where B-ranked Mana is a fluid that must be willed and shaped into temporary solids before being retrieved, A-ranked Mana is a solid that must be willed and unshaped for proper mobility and energy transfer.”

  He blinked, completely having forgotten he was washing. “It does what now?”

  Yuki flicked open her fan, covering the movements of her lips. “Hmm? You didn’t notice? *Tsk tsk*, my Dreamer.”

  The sour expression was right back on his face. He was being toyed with, and treated like a child! “Is this all just because of how I look?”

  The fan did not move. “Would you expect otherwise, from your chosen? Can you resist the once in a lifetime opportunity for the quip?”

  His sour leer dropped to the hot water, suddenly very interested in the foamy bubbles moving over the surface. His reply was one of dejected defeat. “…No.”

  Had there been a tiny rock to kick, he would have half-heartedly punted it a few inches away. “Fine… Madame currently a cool A-rank nine. What’s so different about A-rank solid Mana? I haven’t had noticeable problems.”

  Yuki nodded. That was also expected. “I was told that this information was mentioned to you in passing, but in the A-ranks—especially the upper echelons—the identity and idea of your manifestations becomes paramount. Launching techniques without an in-depth grasp of what it’s supposed to do becomes detrimental. You can outright brick your body and abilities if you don’t give this denser Mana the proper input. I’m sure it loves your Invocations. Yet to an ordinary cultivator, including someone with ice-carved skills such as myself, A-rank Mana is entirely unusable without the proper context. I will admit, I also despised the compressions. Including feeling like I was being packed into the size of an ice cube when making the stronger connection. Dawn was there for me as well. She was there for all of us.”

  Artorian needed a second, but believed he’d caught up. “From that… can I safely take it that almost all the chosen are at or near your current ranking?”

  Yuki sounded abyss-blasted chipper. *Mhm*!

  Artorian slapped his forehead. “Of course they are… I’m surprised I didn’t notice. Then again, I had to really stare at you for a while before the inkling dawned on me.”

  Since he was going to touch his face again for a sigh anyway, he just scrubbed it with the rag. For a moment he considered loudly yelling under the water, but didn’t feel like it the second after he had this passing thought. “Here I was convinced the identity thing was S-rank territory.”

  The frost princess nodded again. “Oh, it most certainly is. The A-ranks are merely preparation for the complete dive. If you cannot climb the A-ranks due to a gap in your ability to control yourself on a more cerebral level, you have no business Incarnating. It was wonderful fun to prod at Zelia when she first made the leap. She was bricked for a week. Couldn’t move a single muscle. We drew art on her because she was so statuesque.”

  Yuki snickered again, and something about the tiny laugh just made Artorian’s heart feel warm. It was nice to see her just play around and express pleasantries. That seemed out of reach, based on his prior memories. It was awful to miss such massive swaths of time.

  Alas, that’s the boat he sat in. Sighing, he created an orb of Mana. Just to really dig in and look at it. “Right, well I’m sure she gave you all a goosening of a time when she figured it out. Though I really don’t see a difference. It feels the same, acts the same, responds the same. It feels more dense? That might be the extent of it.”

  Yuki sat nearby, dipping her feet into the hot water. Artorian had expected some kind of reaction, but again there was none. Wasn’t she freezing all the time? He should be glad for it, he supposed. Better a hot bath than an icy one.

  Yuki answered. “For you, that may feel like the ext
ent of it. The tier of your Law plays a great role here. For us gentle souls below tier thirty, these small changes you feel are vast and daunting. Your tier, given the heights of where it rests, has always pressured such a hidden burden in density upon you, that an extra category is meager snowfall while you are in the lower ranks. Now, as you continue ranking up, the pressure you experience in your Mana—that density you feel—will grow.”

  The youth held his chin, observing the Mana ball that he turned into shape after shape. It was mimicking Dev’s forms. Artorian was starting to gain a fondness for these dice shapes. Maybe he could do something with it in the future? It reminded him of Rota, the Dwarf who loved his dice and blew up some Gnomes with them. What a pleasant fellow he was.

  Artorian got back on topic. “So, because currently I’m A-rank two, the feel of my Mana isn’t so different yet. As the main hurdle is something I passed long ago. The concept is flipped from the B-ranks, but given that the main hurdle is building the identity of your actions and will from the ground up is something I do each time, it’s not a difficulty on my end. I expect that people who are used to aimlessly throwing fireballs around without a care in the world will suddenly find themselves… What did you call it?”

  “Bricked,” Yuki delightfully informed him, her feet kicking at the water slightly. “Due to the concept of the A-rank version being the bricks, and the B-ranked version the mortar. The compression that occurs leaves many people feeling stuck, if they survive it when the process completes. Still, it can be the case that when they do, they are unable to move ever again. Action without thought is folly. This is the lesson of A-rank zero.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  *Clang*.

  Cal’s Soul Space shattered like a mirror. The event came sudden, unannounced, and as a total surprise to everyone. Soul Space residents were suddenly mired in a landscape of sharp lines, which indiscriminately sliced through existence like indestructible piano wire.

  Artorian registered the impact late, even when his face suddenly attempted to smash through the ceiling. Which didn’t hurt as much as he expected it should. It wasn’t the jarring and sudden journey up that had been the problem. It was the world around him which had suddenly decided to spring like an excited kitten, only to haplessly fall off the table’s edge from a miscalculated jump.

  As far as Artorian was concerned, he hadn’t moved an inch from the baths! Landing was the dangerous part, as the severed space represented by mirror-fracturing piano wire directly crossed his downwards trajectory. He was going to hit it!

  Or not? He could have remembered to engage his ability to fly, but Dawn had already caught him mid-fall. He could swear that sometimes it felt like there was barely a difference between being a mortal, and being a Mage. Maybe he was getting used to it?

  An indent of his face marred the metal ceiling, which he briefly saw before being whisked to safety. He coughed out a paltry mouthful of water after he was set down, wiping his mouth clean with the back of his hand.

  Wasting no time to search for answers, he stepped right into the senate.

  Dani answered frantically.

  Tatum’s mote appeared, joined swiftly by Marie, Chandra, and Dawn. The rest of the supervisors were oddly absent. Wouldn’t this be something important to show up to? Their world just fractured around them!

  Occultatum filled in, sharing Dani’s haste.

  Dawn and Tatum immediately vanished from the senate, along with Dani. Off to the mysterious ‘workroom,’ no doubt. Marie felt queasy, and it showed clear and plain in her voice.

  Chandra’s mote zipped to her side, helping to steady the sickened Mage. Her voice tried to be soothing.

  Artorian hurried to the other side of Marie’s mote, assisting in the steadying. He didn’t need to ask Chandra to continue, she just did.