Azaria 3-1

GOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING! Sorry for shouting. Thank you to those of you that voted in the poll or commented. It helped me settle on the direction for the lance side of things. So, stay excited! Now then~ On to the chapter! 

Azaria Book 3

Dimensional Hopscotch

Chapter 1: Status-quo and Browsing the Web

Azaria

A few days had passed since the little adventure into the other dimension that technically didn’t happen. Thanks to Zaria’s sacrifice, I had most of my memories of the events that led up to us be flung back to the starting of all the craziness. A few things were dodgy in my mind, but I felt that was due to not only my future past self’s memories, but the double of Zaria’s memories as well. There were times that I was still trying to make heads or tails of which set of eyes I was looking through when I thought about to certain events.

With the help of Starburst, I had studied magic like crazy to understand what exactly happened. The cube had activated to take us back like I had intended. The hiccup was an ability on Lance’s side that caused the entire incident to go sideways. I had a feeling it was the same skill that had caused the woman she captured in my dungeon to go boom.

Either way, I hadn’t been in contact with her since I merged with my future self. She had been busy joining a gang or something before the shit hit the fan. I assumed that was still the case since I didn’t think she had a way to retain her memories after the shift. I planned to reach out to her soon, but I had no pressing need for her at the moment.

Another development that had no real explanation was that my aura over the city had changed slowly over the last few days. When the merge first happened, I had covered most of the main city and a good portion of the suburbs. Quite simply, it was a lot. During the past few days, the top layer, or the portion above the surface had recoiled to a degree. I had probably only lost a few miles overall.

“You sure you’ve never heard of this thing?” I asked Starburst for probably the hundredth time since we started studying it. I had wanted to do it myself, but after the first hour I knew that was a fool’s errand. I simply didn’t understand enough about magic and Aether in general to make heads or tails of the intricate parts of the device. My dungeon… instincts allowed me the knowledge to operate, but not understand it.

“Girl. There are an untold number of universes out there. If I knew of every magic artifact from them all. I would be the most powerful being there was ever known,” Starburst said waving me off like an annoying fly.

“Alright, Jafar,” I retorted sticking my tongue out at him. “While I want to use it to explore new and exciting worlds, I would like to understand it first.” That was certainly part of the reason, but I really wanted to search for more power. I knew the gods were converting this world to their energy and it would eventually die. Even if the humans found a way to resist the gods, there was Goulderlia, or Dellomana that they would release on the Earth.

Starburst ignored me and peered closer at the cube floating next to my core. “All I know is that it is powerful beyond anything I remember seeing when I was a god. You said a dungeon core had this on another plane?” he asked.

“Yep. Their planet was being… eaten?” I paused as I considered if that was the right word. The tentacles did have a lot of mouths, so I’m going to assume that was its objective. “By a monster. I’m not sure but the dungeon that came by it was unique in a few ways. For one, she had made an island with an entire city fly.”

“Moving dungeons are on the rare side. We generally don’t like them to be able to move as they will usually devour everything they get their hands on.”

“Whatever the case, it’s mine now,” I said brushing my fingers against the strange literally unearthly metal. A shiver went down my nonexistent spine as a jolt of energy flickered between my finger and the cube.

“When are you going to open a gateway?” Starburst asked, ignoring my possessive actions. Yes, I knew what I looked like, but I had technically watched my parents die once for this cube. I wasn’t about to let it out of my grasp easily, nor was I not going to use it. Queen had shown me the path I could find myself on. I wanted to avoid that if possible.

“Soon. I want to understand it a bit more, as well as create some more minions that are more suited to exploration. Plus, I want to make sure the lovely Terleza isn’t going to catch on anytime soon. For that, I need another power, so I need another level.” Terleza was not someone you picked a fight with unless you were sure you had the fight in the bag. I needed power, allies, and time to gather those.

The cube would hopefully help me gather all of that and more. If we can find doomed worlds, I could consume the monsters. If we found worlds that were resistant to the gods, we might be able to ally with them. The agents on the planet were powerful, but I knew their homeworld had to be even worse.

“Going to be hard to gain levels if the humans never come into your dungeon,” Starburst commented glancing up at the ceiling of the cave. I mentally followed his gaze to the tents that were set up in the old parking lot that had serviced the subway station here. Other than the original one that the Association set up. There were several more that were set up by Neo’s organization, the Night’s Hammer.

The two organizations had been bringing in all sorts of equipment to try and figure out just what had caused the sky to momentarily split open. The fact that quite a lot of energy had emerged from my dungeon to ‘close’ the hole, no one was willing to dive my halls just yet. If I couldn’t absorb Aether from the underground river that flowed through my bottom floor, I would be starving right now.

I returned my presence to my core. “I’m sure they’ll start letting people in soon. I’m not sure exactly how the money situation works in the changed world still, but I assume you don’t buy something if it doesn’t have any value.” I was annoyed by the fact that Neo had bought my dungeon, at least according to the people in the city. That feeling had been magnified a few times from the merge. If I wasn’t careful, I found myself going off on seething rants.

“I certainly hope so. I’m afraid I might grow rusty,” Starburst complained clenching his fist a few times.

“Then you should go get some more training in. I know Tenderheart is always up to lend a paw,” I said with a smirk. Of course, the bear would try and hug Starburst for a good ten minutes first.

“Maybe next time,” he replied shaking his head. I pouted in disappointment but didn’t press the issue. “I’ll find something to pass the time. If you’ll excuse me.” He bowed before he flew off into the dungeon. I watched for a minute then turned back to the cube.

The inner workings were going to take some more time to figure out. It was in a language that was simply called the Magic Rune Script. Starburst said that it existed even before his people started calling themselves gods and had been present on many worlds before theirs. It was a fascinating tidbit of information, but one that served me little use. For one, I never thought I would have language classes after the apocalypse.

I had learned one thing that I felt was important. The cube was technically called the Pacryx Dimensional Key. Adeptly named given its powers. Watching the shifting metal could be mesmerizing if I wasn’t careful. To avoid being distracted, I pushed the cube back into my core then opened my status screen.

Azaria Highlock

Level: 4

Race: Dungeon

Type: Doll

Subtype: Goddess’s Chosen

Aether: @#&%$

Floors: 5/6

Skills: Creation

Deconstruction

Summon (7/179)

Teleport Matrix (1/2)

Enchanter’s Melody

Uncontrollable Proliferation

Mirrored Perception

Total Domain

Pacryx Dimensional Key - Unknown

Achievements: God Killer – Killed a God, albeit a weak one.

Reigning Power – Permanently enhances abilities by ten percent.

The Surface – When a dungeon reaches the surface, the world opens up to them. Aether hourly gain (+10)

Encounter of Powers – You’ve seen things that don’t quite make sense. Fate will react strangely around you. Careful.

I had giggled a little when I saw my newest achievement. Whatever the magic that governed the status screens was, it knew that something a bit strange had happened to me. I wasn’t sure exactly how fate will react strangely but given my absurdly high luck I had high hopes that it will be interesting.

Closing the screen, I cast my gaze out. Having a large portion of the city in my field made a lot of things easier. Namely, spying and eavesdropping. The humans didn’t appear to notice that my field covered the city yet. Until something came up that forced it, I planned to keep it that way.

Looking down over the tent, I inspected the displays of the computers set up. A few graphs appeared to indicate that the Aether in the area had gotten thicker. One screen showed a list of numbers I had no reference for. Some of them got quite high though. A yawn drew my attention to the scientist working. It was sometime after midnight, and he was here more to make sure nothing happened to the equipment.

I glanced around but didn’t see anyone else. Moving my ethereal form next to the man, I held up my hand close to his ear. With some Aether, I lulled him to sleep. It took only a few seconds given that he was already close to passing out. With that done, I formed my body. A new trick I had my past-future self to thank for. I wasn’t sure of the reason, go figure, but I could form my body at will now, though with some Aether as requirement.

Pulling the keyboard and mouse toward me from the sleeping man’s station, I used it to check the state of the city and the world in general. I had been in the dark about a lot of things since I had woken up. Lance had told me a few things, but during the questions, she had exactly trusted me as a dungeon core.

Looking at the local news first, I found that everyone was keeping their head down after the recent sky cracking. The agents, what the humans called the gods, I realized at that moment that they were part of the Association. I smirked at that. What better way to keep people off your scent if you present yourself in the first place? Terleza was even listed as the Prime agent for the area.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the article. The agents were telling everyone it was just an Aether manifestation. An easy story to think up and hard to refute. I closed it and moved on to other news. Lance’s accuser was declared dead yesterday. Calls for her capture had increased for a few hours, but I could see it slowly fading to other articles.

The scientist jerked in his sleep. I glared at him until his snoring settled. Turning back to the computer, I checked more of the country at large. Neo-Chicago appeared to be doing relatively well compared to the rest of the country and even the world. New York was little more than a crater while reclaiming the country appeared to be a task seemingly thought of as impossible.

“Why do monster spawn out in the wild but not in the cities and towns?” I murmured to myself. A wall had been built around the city and it looked like most of the other cities in the world that survived more than a few months had done the same. My question was why bother having monsters spawn in the wilderness if you needed to convert the target planet’s energy into Aether? I thought it had to be done through the dungeons to make it to their homeworld. Maybe it was a side effect?

Humans clearly didn’t have the answer, so I shifted to the next topic. The humans in Neo-Chicago were a limited resource. A sad way to put it, but the way I had to given that they were basically soldiers that were unaware they had been commissioned. Checking the map, the nearest surviving city was Detroit followed by Indianapolis and St. Louis. Or as they were now called, Glacier Fall, Heaven’s Peak, and… St. Louis. That one hadn’t been changed by a ten-year-old boy it seemed.

Much like Neo-Chicago, these cities had survived the one-year mark and were ruled with more or less an iron fist of a Powered. That allowed them to exist, but it made them their own countries. Keeping more than a hundred miles of land for farm and whatnot took almost more effort than it was worth. Most of the cities were subsisting on food gathered from dungeons.

I checked to see if there was any way to get to those cities, but from scant amount of information that I found, it was impossible for all but the top of the top Powered. My mother and father had made the trip to most of the cities around Neo-Chicago over the last year. They were probably the only Powered that could do it with ease.

I continued to browse until I noticed a light start to bleed into the tent. I put the computer back on the initial tab the man had opened then dismissed my body. I had spent a good deal of Aether, almost a thousand, but I thought I had gotten more than enough information to make up for it.

Plus, I had reformed one of the cellphones that the divers used. It might have been formatted but using the settings on the computer I was able to log it into the Wi-Fi that they had up around the tents. I couldn’t take it that deep into the dungeon, but anywhere in the manor was good. Apparently, Neo didn’t skimp on equipment.

“Too bad I don’t have any numbers,” I mumbled tossing the cellphone up and down in the air. Doing that without a body just made it look like the phone was possessed. I giggled a little at the thought before I stowed the phone and moved to wait to see what the day had to offer.

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