Truthseekers

hi TheDespaxas here! Like the great Mark twain once said "the news of my **** were greatly exaggerated.", here's a long awaited chapter which I wish will be the first of many now that my brain is back in writing mode. (I even started working on a new project for which I have chapters written but need to polish a few things out before making public.).

John brushed the sweat off his brow. He was pretty proud of his result. He felt a bit guilty about Cali getting hurt while patrolling the kingdom without adequate protection. He had finally finished the project that he had been working on for a while. All that was left was to break the good news.

He made his way to the Lab, followed by Vesta who was holding the finished product with pride. He found a very irritated Cali being inspected by a rather agitated Tricia.

"What kind of bullshiterry did you summon now? This fluid and these creatures don't make any sense!" yelled Tricia.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Let's start with the fluid. Beetles of some species use this technique to spray other animals with acid, toxins or liquid forming an exothermic reaction. The idea is to incapacitate it, to get a chance to escape or attack. This goop! Well... It's neither hot, toxic or corrosive. But it's completely stupid. It sticks to your skin like crazy but not to other things, and once you get some on your hands, it feels oily and slippery, making it impossible to scrape it away yourself. It doesn't wash away with water, soap or ****. If we didn't have your cleaning spell, it would be hell to get rid of. And now the effects... It's a mild aphrodisiac and makes you itch, then if you scratch yourself, it tickles..." she explained.

"That's not really a very effective weapon, but in a sense that could be useful as distraction," he admitted.

"Then there's the beetles themselves, a lot bigger than the normal ones. You have never seen any like these, so obviously modified. Bigger, right, but made nearly harmless. The small ones have mandibles that will slice through skin and tear flesh from bones. On these it looks like everything that could hurt someone has been smoothed, they are even colored in bright, impossible to miss, worst camouflage ever red. Why would whatever you trapped escape, modify creatures to make them harmless and then send them away to attack people? Even the normal sized bugs pose more of a threat when in large numbers," she went on.

"Let's hope we'll get some light on this when they arrive. But for now, I have something for you, Cali. I'm sorry I wasn't finished in time for this, but from now you'll be better protected," he concluded, showing the caramel skinned elf what her porcelain skinned sister was holding.

Cali was nonchalantly sitting naked on the observation table in the lab, having spent all of her previous life without any taboo on nudity. She jumped off and picked up the items offered. After a few moments trying to figure out how all the leather straps worked, she stood in front of the group, fully clad in her new armor.

"It's an enchanted, runic armor. The boots have some mobility boost like my own, the bracelets have some precision as well as strength improvement, and the rest has some protection runes. Rather than being heavy and sturdy, this set of armor spreads its protection through magic to your whole body, even on the parts that are left bare," he explained. To showcase what he was saying, he threw a small rock at her leg where it bounced off, revealing a shiny golden layer on her bare skin.

"Amazing, I barely felt that!" exclaimed Cali, moving around and stretching to check what freedom of movement was afforded by the light armor. She seemed satisfied, but from her reaction to simply walking through the room, it was clear that she was dying to go out to try running around in her new boots.

John was distracted for an instant as he dismissed a notification.

"They're here," he said. He made his way to the entrance hall, followed by everyone else.

Kim, having ditched her training clothes for her slayer outfit (some elaborate robes with a clear Asian origin but unlike any official traditional costume he had seen in the mundane world), was standing guard in front of the gates of the castle, her long sword resting on her shoulder. She had kindly offered to help defend the castle while John was busy in the forge and they were waiting for the help.

Speaking of help, just as he finished climbing down the stairs, three persons blinked into existence at the center of the hall. Anna was back, bringing with her Moira in full battle mode, donning her dark red full bodysuit covered in armored plate, shield and hammer at the ready, and Lorelei wearing a rather simple light blue dress and for once without anything to cover her eyes.

"Welcome, I'm thankful for you agreeing to assist us," he declared.

Moira looked around. Daphne entering the room holding a tray of refreshments; two elves, one in armor, the other wearing a mix of various modern clothes; John wearing some simple shorts and a t-shirt; Kim and Tricia made her raise an eyebrow. She seemed perturbed by their presence.

"I see you have been networking, far gone is the late bloomer that had no clue about the Abyss. Redesign too," she told John. "Moon, we should talk, later. Don't forget your obligations, Miss Gorbachev."

"I assure you that my research partnership with John won't be an obstacle to my duty of assistance to the Order, Warden."

"John, is it? Alright, care to explain what this is about exactly? Your message and Miss Klein were only insistent on Lorelei's presence."

"There's this box I found in the depths under the castle. A puzzle box, a cube, one with a different lock on each face, and it will seem weird to say it, but it's the strangest thing that I have seen so far. I couldn't identify it, I couldn't affect it with magic, or put it in my inventory. It was absolutely inert or impervious to magic. Some of the locks were rather easy, maybe because I always loved puzzles, others were based on symbols that probably helped solving them but I was unable to read. And I am supposed to be able to understand any language in my kingdom, it's one of my perks," he explained.

"I remember, I couldn't recognize them either and neither could anyone I asked about in the Order. What is it about?"

"Well... I know it will tarnish my reputation as the wise King of this place, but... I don't think I can resist an unsolved puzzle, ominous weird box or not. I kept trying to get them open by either random moves or going through all combinations. Worked until the last one, it was too complex. I think it worked like a safe lock, based on successive moves rather than the final position. I ended up putting it aside, I had more urgent things to deal with," he continued.

"Then he left it unattended and his derpy familiar somehow opened it, unleashing some sort of strange creature that fled underground and is probably behind an outbreak of weird aggressive yet rather harmless monsters in the kingdom," interjected Tricia, followed by a loud sigh from Moira. "I have specimens for necropsy in the lab."

"And since when do you, Mister Newman, have a familiar able to unlock unsolvable puzzles and unleash eldritch abominations?" replied the now clearly pissed off Warden. "And what the hell do you mean by derpy?"

"Hello! New friends?" asked Dargon, who was hiding in the staircase leading to the basement until now.

"Moira meet Dargon, Dargon here are Moira and Lorelei, some good friends of mine. He's not technically a familiar, he's supposed to be guarding the treasure vault. He’s... I think he's either a prank from Gaia or a glitch. Oh, by the way, if you want to pretend to be formal in your righteous fury, it would be King John the First or Your Majesty, this is my kingdom. Mistakes and unforeseeable things just happened; I'm faced with a foe I don't know, can't find and don't understand. So I call upon the pact of protection we entered and require your assistance to identify, find and neutralize this threat to my subjects and friends." The speech would have been more formal if he hadn't been wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but it was good practice for learning to sound regal.

Lorelei had not spoken yet. She had been moving around, looking amazed at things John knew her eyes couldn't see. She was currently kneeling next to Dargon and patting his head, to his greatest delight.

"What is this place? How did you manage to... Everything... It looks so much like what you saw... Have you started on this path yet? No... This is too soon..." she rambled, trying to get the measure of a place that was everything but what it seemed to be.

Moira was more focused on her duty than on the fantasy castle and the marvels of the kingdom.