A Grim Reminder - Part 4

"C'mon... open the next one, I'm ready!"

"That was the last one," John said. He heaved a long, grateful sigh as silence finally reigned in the open training area, leaving the five of them with a moment's rest for the first time in hours.

"What?! No way it's been eight hours," Lerianna said, seeming genuinely annoyed. "C'mon, I'll cool off if we wait too long."

"It's not about the time. We still have three hours left, but I just capped out my level," John elaborated. "I'm not going to get any more benefits from it."

"What, are we just gonna sit around the rest of the evening 'cause of that?" The bunny-girl cocked her head, frowning slightly. "Go ahead and Reincarnate. We can do a couple lower-level dungeons, y'know. Guard you until you get your level up. Won't be a problem for us; you're pretty tough even after a reset by now, right?"

"Well, yeah, actually. But I have to do the lowest-level dungeons at some point anyway. With five more days to go, we'll easily clear the whole range. But since I'm the only one who gets completion bonuses, there's no point in making all of you follow along. Why don't you…"

John stopped himself short of telling them all to take a breather. Lerianna seemed genuinely frustrated to be ending early. Whether it was her endorphins being able to really run wild or just her nature, Lerianna hadn't let the slip-up and close call affect her mood in the slightest. Even her performance had been on point since then.

And though she was the most surprising, she wasn't the only one eager for more. Shishun always looked determined, but the look in Sophia's eyes resembled a predator's searching gaze, not the weary eyes of someone struggling to stay upright. Orria was slightly disheveled, but otherwise as fresh as ever. Her abilities always ensured she remained chipper up until the very end. Even commandeering some of her mana with Siphon to heal up the rest of Lerianna's wounds hadn't seemed to slow her down much.

"You all gain benefits from training in dungeons, whether I'm there or not." John nodded to reinforce both the words and himself. "You even get the loot. It's hard to tell if it's quite as efficient in terms of experience, but if you want to keep going, I'm not going to stop you. Orria should be able to handle the Barrier process. Shishun, you know how to make them now too, right?"

"Yes, Master," the serpentine woman said, bowing dutifully at the sound of her name. "The Shapers of my clan ensured I was well-rounded. I'm quite proficient with Barrier techniques, though I admit, the things they taught me were more relevant to protection and entrapment. I'm still somewhat new to creating the types that you prefer for our training, but I can certainly assist if needed."

"Father, are you sure you wouldn't rather have at least one of us accompany you?" Sophia offered, looking at the others almost curiously. "We can always scale the strength of our foes down as needed to accommodate another absence."

"No, that won't be necessary. The extra help wouldn't benefit me as much as it would slow everyone else down."

John had already considered the idea when planning ahead for this rotation. The limited upsides—no risk of dipping further into their healing potions, and roughly doubling the clear speed of the trash mobs he would be facing in the starter dungeons—weren't entirely superficial. But they were insignificant in comparison to the time and energy spent for minimal personal gain, not to mention the loss of a fourth for the other training group.

Sophia gave an obedient nod in a response, her eyes scanning over the others. "I understand. In that case, the rest of us should be off. We will continue until the established time, or until we can no longer continue. Orria, can you adjust the strength of our foes to accommodate Father's absence?"

"Oh, definitely," Orria said, hands already alight with mana. "And I can give us something more pleasant to work with, I think. I'm thinking less purple this time, and a little more green…"

John wasn't sure if Orria caught the roll of his eyes before they all vanished inside of the Dungeon Barrier she'd formed. Left alone, John didn't sit idle for long either. He tabbed through his menus, only giving his inventory and the massive piles of Greater Arcane Dust they'd accumulated a bemused glance before focusing entirely on his stats page.

"All this work, and still not even up to Lord Brighton's level," John grumbled. "Before he activates the Rose. With all of us working together, we could win, but…"

The memory of the duel in the courtyard still played in John's head sometimes. Spells that would've been incredible hurdles for them to overcome as a group, all being thrown about almost casually while Adantia and Lord Brighton pressed each other. And all of that while still dueling physically, with enough **** to shatter warriors like John and his allies in a single blow. It would take every trick in John's skillset just to survive an onslaught like that long enough to understand how fucked he was.

"That's why we're doing this. Why we're not stopping until I can stand at that level."

John's jaw set in anticipation as he activated his Reincarnation. His legs tensed when the mana pulsed and ebbed away, holding firm against the wave of weakness and fatigue as his strength flowed out of him.

Reincarnation complete. Level reset from 91 to 1.
90 Stat Points available for allocation.
New Maximum Level: 118

The point distribution wasn't any more difficult of a decision than it had been the last time. The difference this time was simply in the distribution—an emphasis on physical stats across the board, with Intelligence and Wisdom getting five less points comparatively. Dungeon crawling for so long with such short breaks in between had proven how dangerous relying on spells could be. They were useful, but taxing, and he could drain his entire mana bar in minutes if he was careless, and mana potions only went so far. That meant he had to be able and ready to cull as many foes as possible with pure physical prowess.

He did hesitate a moment over his Libido stat. The singular point of his prior Reincarnation, a lone protest to the idea of living a life only filled with war, was surely no more significant this time than it had been before. Yet he lingered achingly over the confirm button. Lerianna and the others were giving it their all. She'd gotten up from having an entire section of her torso atomized and thrown herself back into the fray without hesitation.

"It won't make a difference," John tried to convince himself.

"Unless something goes wrong. Then you'll tear yourself apart over every little point."

Frowning, John rescinded the point and put it into his Agility, evening it out with Strength and Endurance at twenty points each. His finger drew to a halt again over the confirmation button, but now he **** himself to press it, locking in the changes before he could waste any more precious training time paralyzed by a singular point.

"It's not about accepting that this is all there is... it's making sure when the time comes, I don't have any regrets," John told himself, shadows lingering over his features as he tapped away from his stats menu and opened up the dungeon interface instead. He wasn't sure if he was trying to convince himself, Gaia, the universe, or all of the above. With only a jarring silence echoing in his mind and the air alike, he'd have to settle for one out of three.

---

Over the course of the next two and a half hours, John managed to clear out every level of dungeon up to level twenty-two. The arcane shadows that had been so deceptively quick despite their stocky and ethereal forms were now replaced with arcane wisps, miniscule balls of mana and magic that could scarcely react before their untimely demises, even when the freshly de-leveled John came at them from across the length of a full chamber.

Sophia and the others were still in his party, and he even met up with them a few times, his lightning-fast dungeon clears giving their interludes plenty of opportunity to overlap. Orria was always careful to heal them completely between their clears before forming another dungeon. He still couldn't help but wince at each new injury, though he was, to his standards, commendably successful at not monitoring their status bars like an overprotective nanny.

They were still going when John finally called his own training to a halt. Thankfully for all of them, they only persisted long enough to clear one last dungeon—shortly after he'd settled in at home, their health bars stabilized a final time, and then the lot of them vanished from the party one by one. They came through the door just as John was presenting Aclysia with the impressive mounds of arcane material all of them had gathered from the long day of grinding.

"Our share of the efforts," Orria said, sounding quite pleased with herself as she approached. She deposited a bundle of oversized leaves and branches onto a clear spot on the table. The bag quickly unraveled itself, revealing a smaller but still impressive hoard of gemstones and what appeared to be finely ground plant matter. All of it glistened to John's passive Observe, and at a glance, none of it seemed likely to have the sorts of side effects he'd been worried about with necromantic reagents.

"Goin' to bed. Wake me up next week," Lerianna grumbled. For all her bravado, now that the high-octane fighting was over, she was clearly feeling the effects of the long day. Her steps were so uneven and sluggish that John almost worried she'd fall asleep mid-stride.

"We will be ready tomorrow, Father," Sophia promised, her own fatigue just a bit more well-hidden. "Thank you for this."

"I should be thanking you." There was no reply as the others slowly shuffled off, leaving him alone with Aclysia once more.

"This is quite a large amount of materials. Would this not be better used to forge stronger weapons and armor for those stronger than I?" Aclysia seemed nervous, but she still continued to munch away at the materials presented to her despite her objections, alternating between her bare hands and the utensils John had provided. The sight of the artificial woman lifting spoonfuls of what was effectively sand into her mouth still made John feel somewhat uncomfortable, particularly when she bit down.

"The new weapons and armor that Kim and Moira had commissioned for all of us are more or less as good as we're likely to get on short notice," John reassured her. Aclysia had been visibly nervous when he'd shown her the grandiose haul, but having another satchel added seemed to have pushed her guilt to the point of vocalizing it. "I already picked through most of it for things that I've seen mentioned in potion recipes, and I'm saving a portion of it, but getting you up to speed is the most effective use for most of this, by far."

"If I'm able to reach a level of parity with the others, will I be able to accompany you when you go to war?" Aclysia asked while she was between bites, cautiously lifting a vial of liquid arcane essence toward her lips. "I would like to assist you where possible, Creator John."

"You just worry about the training for now," John cautioned. "For now, we haven't even seen just how fast you can level with strong materials. And since I just reset my level, we won't be getting materials this strong again for at least a couple of days. We'll spend the last two days before we leave planning and making our final preparations; we can talk more about who's staying and who's going then, okay?"

Aclysia nodded, accepting the logic without hesitation. John had no intentions of bringing Aclysia along, regardless of what level her days of feasting brought her to, but he didn't want to say that outright. The artificial woman was still naive to so many things, and so accepting of any explanation when being taught something new. With him, that was acceptable, even good. With the Nekos, at worst, it was troublesome.

But with strangers for "allies", mages so treacherous that Adantia risked limping off into the woods rather than seeking a healer's treatment? Even the thought of it set John's jaw with a simmering rage. Worse, Aclysia was a valuable item—in a very literal sense. All of his creations were at risk, as he had been told and shown countless times, but Artificial Spirits were something known, something familiar. There was no telling who might try to get their hands on the crystal, if not on the woman herself.

Getting some experience with the real world and people outside their private new world, even the corrupted realm of the Abyss, would certainly be good for her in the long run. But he was certain that the front lines of a war were one of the worst possible places to begin that education.

Neither of them spoke further on the matter, and Aclysia focused herself entirely on devouring the objects splayed out before her. It wasn't very long before the Nekos arrived to break the pause in conversation. Maera came first, Mithra a few minutes later, and then, in a tumbling stream of fur and friendliness, the kittens. Having been corralled into their rooms for most of the night, they were even more energetic than usual.

It worked to their favor at first, the lot of them too busy playing and running around with each other to find any time to plead for attention. After a rolling scuffle between Miriam and Miya nearly toppled the lounge's table, though, Mithra gave a single hiss that sent the clowder of kittens scurrying outside in mere moments, and set Maera to giggling.

"Nyaa. Should have started disciplining them months ago," Mithra sighed. "Sorry, Myaster."

"It's fine; they never cause any real problems, and they're so hard to stay mad at," John said, glancing out the window nearest the door. Every few seconds he could catch a rambunctious blur as a cat-eared teen zoomed by.

"Dunno, she's kinda right, Myaster. They're getting way too old to be so worked up all the time," Maera said when she managed to tame her giggles.

"You two are probably the ones here that get worked up the easiest out of anyone here, and you're both fully grown," John pointed out dryly. Maera didn't let herself shrink in the slightest under his accusatory gaze.

"Nyaa, exactly! Now just think if we were still kittens!" Maera sniffed, crossing her arms. "We'd be pouncing on you and running around so much, you'd never be able to get anything done at all, Myaster!"

"Mmm, I don't know," John drolled, lifting one brow at the ever-confident airhead. "If you think a lack of discipline is the reason for them, maybe you just didn't get enough of it when you and Mithra were kittens. You two still learn new things all the time, maybe it's not too late. What do you think, should I try giving you a little discipline, or are you a lost cause?"

Maera froze on the couch, sensing the danger behind John's challenging smirk. Fortunately for her, Aclysia chimed in, saving the white-haired catgirl from having to answer the loaded question. "Was that the last of what you harvested, Creator John?"

John twitched as he shifted his focus away from the distractions and back to the matter at hand. While he'd been handling the feline aftermath, Aclysia had ingested all the remaining materials, including the satchel that Orria had deposited. John eyed her sheet to check how much progress all of that work had given her.

"Holy shit!"

John must have done a poor job of concealing his shock. Although he'd been careful to point his menus away from the others as he inspected her status, the subtle ways that Aclysia's eyes moved were easy to notice on the stoic woman. Even the Nekos had a note of curiosity in their gazes as they leaned forward, trying to angle themselves around the display without bursting out of their seats.

"Was my progress notable, Creator John?"

"More than notable," John confirmed as he hastily double-checked that Aclysia's sheet was the only thing he'd opened. "If we learned nothing else, it's clear now that your leveling speeds up just as much with higher level dungeons as it does for everyone else. It's just a matter of having you eat the rewards…"

"Nyaa, pretty good, you're almost as strong as me!" Maera cheered as she finally lost enough patience to hop down, pawing her way over to lean across the armrest beside John.

"Maera, do you even know what level you are?"

"Nope, but Myaera's the best, so she's obviously still stronger," Maera purred arrogantly, craning her neck for emphasis. "But those numbers look pretty good to me!"

"Well, she's right, even if she is just guessing to act smug." John gently patted Maera's head, giving her scalp a massage that washed the pride away in an instant and reduced the ivory-haired woman to a purring puddle draped over the armrest. "But barely, and only because of how much we've all been training lately. If I could distribute those unallocated points, she'd be almost dead even! Then again, I haven't had anyone distribute their Growth Points since we started, either..."

"I will do my best to make use of the strength I have acquired thanks to you, Creator John. I won't let the materials you gifted to me go to waste," Aclysia vowed, nodding deeply.

"Yeah, I... I admit, I wasn't expecting you to catch up like that," John said absently, mentally cursing himself for not paying closer attention during Aclysia's feast. Now he wondered just how fast she'd been leveling, especially near the end. How efficient was training her? Would a few more days of grinding be enough for her to actually surpass the others? It seemed unlikely, but the question was there now, and he'd have to bring her another sack full of materials to be able to answer it.

"Are we gonna get going, Myaster?" Mithra dared to ask, earning a fierce glare from her twin.

"Right, right. Let's head out. We'll meet up with Vallya and start right after," John acknowledged. He and Aclysia stood in unison, Maera's protests fading into the background as the four of them made their exit, some more reluctantly than others.

None of them caught sight of Magnus, poking his head out of his door. Nor was anyone left to witness the hurt in his eyes and the scowl on his face once they left, as he slowly retreated into his room.

---

They had only passed a handful of trees, still well outside the true boundaries of the forest, when Vallya emerged from the treeline. She floated down to them at an eager pace, though there was an appraising look on her face as she took in the approaching group.

"Glad to see you again, Master," Vallya tutted, lifting up the frill of her skirt a tiny bit as she gave him a curtsy. "This Star Guardian is ready for action! Assuming we are going to have some tonight, yes...?"

"We're full-throttle tonight," John confirmed. Vallya gave a 'whoop' and did a full spin as she leapt off the ground, pumping her fist in the air. John's lips twitched upward, a surprised but enthusiastic grin growing in response to her reaction.

"Woohoo! Finally get to cut loose! Better make sure I'm ready for this," Vallya murmured, going out of her way to make some exaggerated stretches. "I've been keeping up the training on my own, but it's so much more effective as a group. More intense, too!"

"I noticed," John said appreciatively, smiling a little wider when her stretches turned into slightly more... enticing motions. "Even with us going as slowly as we have, you've gained quite a few levels in the last couple of weeks."

"Really? It's always so hard for me to tell when you're not around." Vallya stopped her warm-up and strode over to join them, her ears twitching with unconcealed interest. "Can I see my sheet?"

"Sure, I don't see why-" John opened Vallya's sheet up carefully, but found himself confronted by unsettling information all the same. "-not..."

Vallya's expression darkened when she saw John's reaction. Her feet left the ground, abandoning walking in favor of floating over anxiously. When she finally saw it for herself, her reaction almost mirrored John's, set apart by the streaks of fear and guilt that ran beneath the surface. "Well, that's... definitely different than it used to be. Did it change after you talked to Jiina?"

"Yes. But not to this," John murmured, eyes reading and re-reading the text. "Jiina left a message in there, but it was different. She said that it was 'just you' in there now, except for a little piece she couldn't 'scrape out'. The rest was just a goodbye, a vow not to interfere, and saying she'd never forget me. This is much more…"

"Cryptic?"

"I was going to go with ominous." The creases around John's frown deepened as his eyes traced over the words one more time. "I don't know who wrote this one, but it's almost apologetic in how defeatist it is."

"Does this happen a lot with our sheets?" Vallya asked, tails drooping, her boisterous energy now long gone.

"They get updated, but usually just with new info or things that have happened. This is more troubling." John spared a glance to the now-somber foxgirl. All the guilt had risen to the surface now, and his words only seemed to make it worse. A little spark of anger flared in John, and he closed the menu with an angry huff. "But who gives a fuck about that? I don't care who left it, even if it was Gaia herself. We already know what we think about their little message, don't we?"

"We do?" Maera chimed in. The words were swiftly followed by a startled grunt as Mithra elbowed her sister in the ribs.

"We do," John repeated. "Right, Vallya?"

"Ah, right." Vallya's words came out in an uncertain whisper at first. It wasn't until John put his hand on her arm and gave it an affectionate squeeze that she found herself again. Then she turned away from the brooding note at last and gave a steady, far more confident nod. "I mean, right! No more outside influence. Not from anyone, even goddesses!"

"Hell yes!" John shouted, loudly enough to make the others jolt. "We make our own fates. I marched halfway across the country to fight against Moira's. You can be damn sure I'll do even more to fight whatever nonsense comes for any of you, got it?!"

"Yes, sir!" Vallya chimed in, giving a picture-perfect salute with her other arm. "Star Guardians can handle anything!"

"I'm counting on it. We're starting on the lower side of the dungeons tonight, but all restraints are off from now on, everyone," John said, sweeping his gaze over each of them in turn. "Aclysia, you're a hell of a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you've learned a lot. Still, we're going full throttle tonight. We won't be standing by anymore. I want you to try to keep up with us, alright?"

"I'll do my best, Creator John," Aclysia vowed. She lacked the subtle tells of an organic being, but there was an intensity to her eyes that showed just how nervous she was, how seriously she was taking his words.

"That's all I ever ask. I know you can do it," John affirmed as he pulled open the Dungeon Barrier menu.