Chapter 46: Meeting of the Gods
Chapter 46: Meeting of the Gods
“Well, once Terra wakes up, can you gather everyone together? Feel like it’s about time for us to have a proper meeting.” Ryone nodded absently after I said that, so I walked out of the room. Looking down the hall, I thought about what I wanted to do until the meeting. Ultimately, there was one question that still needed answered, but I wasn’t sure how to go about finding out.
In the end, the only real choice was the direct approach. Walking over to Bihena’s door, I knocked on it and called inside. “Can I come in? Would like to talk.”
“Alright, whatever.” Came the somewhat hurried voice from within the room. When I opened the door, I found that the decorations for this room had been slightly changed. The bed had turned a deep blue, and there were mounted weapons such as spears and axes along the walls. Bihena was sitting at a desk in the far corner of her room, the chair turned to face the door. “So, what is it?”
I shook my head as I walked in, closing the door behind me. “Just wanted to know something. Why are you so hostile to me? I mean, I don’t want this to be a problem or anything, and I don’t understand why you were so angry at me as soon as you saw me.”
Bihena raised her eyebrows as she watched me, chuckling slightly. “Was wondering when you were going to ask, or if you’d already figured it out. Guess not.” I only continued looking at her, waiting for her explanation. “Keep your pants on, I’m getting to it.”
She took a deep breath, before looking me square in the eyes. “Do you know what the single most infuriating trait about someone is?” I shook my head. “It’s when you aren’t able to control your feelings towards them. Yes, I admit it, I like you just like the other girls do. But, unlike them, I don’t appreciate my feelings being forced into me. So yes, I like you, but at the same time, seeing you reminds me that I have no real control over my own emotions.”
I nodded my head slightly. “Sorry about that. I didn’t really think that would turn into a problem.”
She scoffed lightly, smirking at me. “That’s another thing, you don’t really think too hard about these things. Yeah, sure, you do your best. And not all of your mistakes can really be blamed on you, but maybe think about things a bit more from now on.”
I could only nod again, before doing my best to show my good intentions. “If you’d rather, I can change that setting–”
I didn’t even get to finish my offer before Bihena sent a vicious glare at me. “Touch those settings once, and I swear I will rip apart your world. I’m not joking here, Dale.” I felt a cold sweat flowing down my back as she spoke. “I can get over the initial problem of being made to like you, but if you mess with my mind anymore than that…”
“I get it, I get it. Forget I said anything.” Her eyes calmed down as I said that, and she nodded her head. “Still, it’d be best if we were able to get along? This hostility won’t be good for anyone.”
Bihena nodded again at that. “We can get along. But, don’t expect me to go crawling around for your affection. If you want me to ever act on these feelings you put in me, then you’re going to have to show that you are worth it.”
I smiled bitterly, but agreed. “That’s fine. Anyways, we’re going to have a meeting in a little bit. It’d be best if everyone shows up.”
At that, Bihena seemed to smile slightly. “It seems he can be taught, after all. Now, go ahead and get out of here. I still have some stuff to take care of.”
After that, I left the room, moving to the living room to wait for everyone. To my surprise, it only took about a half hour before Terra woke up and everyone was called together. Looking around and seeing everyone, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that this was the first time that they were all in the same room.
Terra lazily stretched out, waving a hand to dismiss the current living room furniture, instead summoning a long table. Around it were six chairs, as well as what looked like a small cloud of fluff. The girls and I all sat in the chairs, while Tryval navigated his way onto the fluff cloud. Terra sat on my right, between myself and Ryone. Across from her was Aurivy, flanked by Irena and Bihena. Finally, Tryval sat at the end of the table, as he needed more room.
“So.” Tryval spoke first, looking towards me. “What is it that you called us all here for?”
At his words, everyone else also nodded, looking for me to answer. “Well, we’ve never really had a meeting like this, and I thought that it would be good to start doing them on a semi-regular basis. As you all have probably noticed… I’m not too good at the whole planning aspect.” There were a few discreet snickers from around the table at that, mostly from my side of the table…
“Anyways, I wanted to get together with everyone and decide on a general plan. To help develop the world eventually, I went ahead and bought a new race for us to use.” Focusing my mind, I created a set of papers in front of me with the information about the dungeon core race. I even checked one of the papers to make sure that it didn’t come out blurry or anything.
Everyone grabbed one of the papers when they were slid to them, and looked it over. Ryone was the first one to speak up, a small smile on her face. “I want one.”
I tried not to imagine this as a request for a sex dungeon, and looked at her. “For?”
Her smile spread a bit wider as she saw the questioning look on my face. “Where am I going to find a better field to practice new magic? It’s hard to properly gauge power in the admin room, so a dungeon down in the world would be the perfect solution. Maybe I could even take it as a student eventually.”
I had to nod at her reasoning. It made sense. And, it got me to stop imagining her with a sex dungeon. “Alright. You can place one down in the world, as long as it’s not somewhere that it will be easily found in the future.” She nodded her head quickly at that, and I looked to the rest of them. “For the dungeons, I want all of us to share this job, rather than creating a single ‘dungeon god’. It’s too easy for dungeons to be seen as evil creations, so making them into a domain for any of you would only make it easier for people to see you like that as well.”
Terra nodded her head slightly, a small smile on her face as she heard that. “That sounds cool. We should place a few down as experiments first, see how they work.” I was a bit surprised by her sudden suggestion, but the confident look in her eyes made me think that there might be some defect with the dungeon that I don’t know about.
“Alright. We’ll do it that way. Next, I wanted to make an announcement.” Everyone looked at me seriously, even Aurivy. It’s weird to see her looking serious. “With one of Ryone’s domains being Wealth, I wanted to put her in charge of managing the points, so that we don’t run into any bad situations.”
Irena glanced at Ryone, nodding her head slightly. “It does make sense. Can she even buy things from the market with your permission, though?
Terra shook her head in response. “Only the Keeper can make purchases. But, any companion can browse the market. So, she can find systems that we need, and list them out for Dale to review.”
Ryone’s smile grew even wider when she heard about her new job. “Very nice. I take it that means you won’t be aimlessly spending points anymore?” She pointedly looked at me with that last comment.
“Well… I might make small purchases. But, I’ll try to keep any spending in the triple digits on hold until I verify it with you first.” I didn’t really trust myself enough to say that I would entirely let her handle the budget, because sometimes there were things I wanted to get without really thinking too much into it. “Anyways, on this subject, there is a system that I wanted to introduce. I’ve been working on it in my spare time for a while, so it is a bit more detailed than what I usually come up with.”
Once again, they looked at me seriously. This time, I manifested seven folders, each one holding a few papers. Then, I slid the folders over to them, keeping one for myself. Opening up the folder, I spread out the papers in front of me to make sure that I had accurately copied down the system I had saved on the notepad in my computer.
Spoiler It took a few minutes for everyone to finish looking over the papers. Terra let out a low whistle when she finished. “Really wanted to make a flexible system, didn’t you?” I nodded my head. “Well, it’s good. There are some storage devices already, like bags of holding, but nothing this complex. It should be able to earn a fair amount of points.”
After Aurivy was done, she decided to speak up. “Oooh, can we get this? It’d really help everyone down below!” As she spoke, she highlighted a few lines with her fingers, causing those lines to light up. Words floated up off the page, showing everyone what she chose. In essence, she chose a basic game inventory system, with one hundred slots.
However, Terra only let out a knowing smile. “Well, how about we find out?” She looked towards me. “Go ahead and submit it. Then, we can see what kind of price tag the market would put on what she wants.”
I nodded my head, mentally submitting this system to the market. As soon as I did, Ryone began working as well, waving her fingers around. Like with Aurivy, words floated in front of her, the same ones that Aurivy herself had chosen. However, once the options were all set, she made a small gasp of astonishment. Finally, a number rose up below the words. 2205.
“That’s how much it would cost, Aurivy.” She said with a regretful tone. “We won’t be able to afford that for a long time, unless this sells particularly well. However, if I may make a suggestion…”
Once again, Ryone fiddled with the system, causing words to fly up. Unlike Aurivy’s game system menu, what Ryone was going for was the enchantment option. Along with it, she chose the cheapest choices for slowing time, size, and weight. At the end, the number 320 appeared below the list of options.
“With this, it is an enchantment that we can apply to items, rather than a new system. Am I understanding that right?” She looked to Terra, who nodded her head. “Then, am I correct in assuming that the system would make it so that this is possible?”
Terra smiled slightly, nodding again. “As long as it does not completely contradict the world. For instance, we couldn’t get the digitization options, because computer code would be a completely foreign concept to the current Earth. As long as it is even remotely possible, the system will adjust the natural laws to make any purchase applicable.”
Ryone’s smile grew again. “Then, am I correct in assuming that, once those changes are made, it will be possible to improve upon them?”
Terra couldn’t help but laugh at that, reaching over and putting a hand on Ryone’s shoulder gently. “Within reason. But, for what I think you’re wanting, yes. It should be possible.”
“Alright!” She made a victorious fist bump into the air, then turned to look at the rest of us. “So, I want to get this. With the options I chose, we can use it as a starting point to develop better ones. Using the time aspects, we can evolve it to frozen time, with the weight aspects, we can evolve it to weightless. And naturally, we can expand the capacity as well. We can’t afford it quite yet, but that should be taken care of once word of this system spreads.”
The others all nodded, though Aurivy still looked upset that her suggestion wasn’t chosen. Bihena smiled down to the little goddess, patting her back. Aurivy quickly looked up in surprise to Bihena, and leaned over to give her a hug, surprising her.
Tryval watched the scene, and then turned over to look at me. “My liege, since we are in this meeting…” A grin slowly spread over his face. “I would officially like to ask for permission to mingle with my people again.”
“Uhm… why?” I asked, confused. It hadn’t been very long since I placed those restrictions on him, and he was already asking for them to be removed?
“You see, you gave me the Fellowship domain. However, I am still forbidden from being with my own race. Is that not contrary to the power I was given?” He explained confidently, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“I… guess so? But, there will still have to be rules.” He clicked his tongue when he heard that. “We can’t have you going around spreading half-gods everywhere. It’d be best if they didn’t know it was you. At times, you can reveal your identity in order to act. However…” I gave him a stern look as I spoke, wanting to make this clear. “Each time you do so, you will have to remove yourself from the public for fifty years, to allow the news to die down. When you come back in, it will be with a new face and a new identity. And you are not allowed to leave behind heirs.”
I got an approving nod from Terra, but only a grumble from Tryval. “Fine. I will accept these terms. It is still better from being forced to remain in the shadows.”
I nodded at that, then turned to look at the others. “Does anyone have anything that they want to bring up?” The girls all shook their heads, so I let out a sigh. “Then, the first meeting is adjourned. Let’s go see how these dungeons work.”