Chapter 294: Heaven is a Place on Earth

Chapter 294: Heaven is a Place on Earth

I looked at Daedalus, trying to understand what he meant. The time in my dustbin had obviously changed his physical appearance to be much more fabulous; the look in his eyes gave me the impression he wasn't just referring to that.

"What do you mean? The physical changes, your fire, or something else?"

"It changed me," Daedalus repeated with a shudder. "How long was I in there, anyway?"

I replayed my memories, finding that he was in there for exactly 287 milliseconds. After displaying the number, I had to explain the units and failed to describe what the apparently too precise units meant. I decided just to round down and say a quarter of a second.

Daedalus shook his head, not out of denial, but just confusion. "That's too short. It felt like hours to me. I was worried that something had gone wrong, and we weren't able to actually get in."

I felt mild surprise at that. How was it possible?

I checked inside my dustbin. It had been a while since I'd manually combed through its contents. I'd set up a subroutine to organize everything a long time ago. But it didn't seem like there was any strangeness to the flow of time. Everything was in order. But maybe that was just a perception thing?

"There were a lot of things in there," Daedalus continued.

"Not just items, but living things too. Skeletons and demons and some kind of rodent. Crystalline ones. There were even a couple of human-looking things. They spoke in languages I didn't understand, weirdly enough. And there were full-on buildings and structures made of this same kind of crystal." He gestured to his scales. nove(l)bi(n.)com

I mentally went through his list. I did remember consuming most of those things. But last I'd checked, none of them were made of crystal.

Just to check, I manually cataloged everything I remembered consuming but not transmitting. It was all there, just as expected. The amounts were. But they'd taken different forms.

It was a bit concerning as it looked remarkably like me, but it didn't seem too harmful. I just didn't think I'd ever take it out of that dustbin.

As Daedalus talked about how the magic seeped into his scales and began to change them, not in a destructive way but in a way that was very unsettling, I started making sure that there was absolutely no way that these prisoners that I had confined had a way out. Their ideology seemed to be quite destructive and not something I really wanted to have to deal with. But I was at least pleased that they were being productive. And besides, they seemed pretty happy. It could have been so much worse.

---

Bee listened to Daedalus explain what had happened while he was in her master's void. But most of her concentration was on fixing up the wounds that Archibald had sustained.

Her excessive repair skills were pushed to their limits, healing his higher-leveled body. It naturally resisted all sorts of outside influences, and he just had so much physical strength to repair that it was taking active work on her part rather than just letting the passiveness of the skills work.

But once she eventually knitted together his shoulder, she was confident that he'd be stable for a while. The worst of it was taken care of. With a sigh of relief, she finally got to take a look at the experience she had gained.

It was unlike anything she had ever had before. She had just hit level 55 recently, but that was after a fight with two Lieutenants and killing one. This time, she had been involved with fighting six of the monsters, four of which were consumed by her master. And whenever that happened, she was always rewarded with much more experience. But even with four level 70 opponents, she hadn't expected to get as many levels as she had had. Five levels from one encounter right after another was nearly unthinkable. But here she was at level 60.

She checked the Scan results for both Archibald and Daedalus and saw that they had also gained a couple levels, though not quite as much as her. It was understandable. They were at a higher level than she was, and the gap between them and the lieutenants wasn't as large.

But that meant she had a new choice to make. It wasn't simple.

LEVEL 60 REACHED! CHOOSE A SKILL: MIND OF GRANITE, VOID'S BREATH, STILL MOVEMENT.

She looked at them consideringly.