Azaria 29

Chapter 29: Peace and Quiet

Azaria

The commotion outside had completely died down by the time the sunset, so I moved out onto the roof. While Zaria knew me inside and out, it didn’t appear to want to join me on the roof. I was sort of glad though. It gave me an odd feeling being around it for long periods of time. Like looking in a mirror that is following you around.

Secretly, I hoped the boy would show up. He was honestly the first person that hadn’t tired to use me, attack, or kill me. He might look sickly, but I found him relaxing to be around. Biting my lip, I worried it might be some sort of trick, but I didn’t want to look at everything with jaded eyes.

Watching the moon lazily drift up into the sky. I heard a soft cough. Glancing next to me with probably more hope than I should, I saw the boy from last night. “You came back!”

“Somehow I knew you wanted the company,” he replied with a smile. I could tell it took him some effort to make the smile but the reason eluded me. I hoped it wasn’t because of me. Maybe he heard about me destroying another paltry earlier today and didn’t like that. He was one of them in the end. 

“Are you sure its not you that needed the company?” I asked crossing my arms as the last thought had made me slightly defensive. I knew it probably wasn’t the case, but the thought had already taken root.

The boy looked at me for a long moment without changing his expression. He made the same smile then nodded. “You are right. I did need some company. Because of some things in my life, I am rather lonely most of the time.”

“Want to talk about it?” I asked happy that it wasn’t my fault.

“No, that would just bring the mood down. That would be rather ungentlemen of me considering I’m in the presence of a such a cute girl.” 

I pursed my lips but didn’t press the issue. This was only our second time talking. I wouldn’t want to talk about anything happening around me either. “Alright.” I let the word hang as I really didn’t know what to talk about. I was trapped in my own dungeon, cursed by what I had become. I couldn’t get out and explore or send the day around the city, not that I ever had the chance to do that anyways. At the end of the day, I was a rather boring person. “Tell me something fun.” I said though I could hear the own desperation in my voice.

He grinned and I was sure it was real this time. He pointed in a circle around us. “You might think we are landlocked, but I still managed to get to the beach the other day.”

The image of him sunbathing nearly bent me over from the laughing I ended up doing. He didn’t seem to mind though, and looked like he was enjoying my laughter. I coughed and sat back up. Then as elegant as I could, I gave him a small go ahead gesture like a lady at a ball from an old movie might. “Please continue,” I finally said with a blush.

“There is a dungeon in town. Some friends of mine helped me reach it since they thought it would be good for me. Never mind the four floors of monsters that wanted nothing more than to help me be free of my flesh. We finally reached it after two days inside. I’m not sure how it did but the dungeon managed to recreate the beach with such accurate detail that I was sure it had been before. At least until the sharks walked up on the beach and tried to kill us all.”

“What’d you do?” I asked leaning towards him. When I realized it, I quickly leaned back. 

“My friends decided it would be a waste to turn back and slaughtered everything in sight. After close to ten minutes, rather than a picturesque day in summer, it reminded me more of a horror movie nightmare.” 

“That’s horrible!” The image made me cringe, but as a dungeon I thought the dungeon was pretty clever since a lot of people couldn’t swim after all.

“In the end, I couldn’t rest and had them take me back. Two days wasted.”

“Sorry to hear that.” I thought I might make a beach for him when my dungeon leveled up again. It might be a while though. I barely got any experience points from people that died in the first floor. The caves did give me a nice boost when the party died in there, but I didn’t intend to let people get lower on purpose.

“Yes, it was an experience that I will likely not forget about for a while. Either way, it made me want to come see you.”

I wasn’t sure if I had to cover up a blush, or if I was even able to blush, but I looked away all the same. “I don’t mind. It’s nice to get to talk to people,” I said, not adding the ‘that didn’t want to kill me’ part. I played with my fingers as I thought about what to say. “I guess your friends are divers then?”

He nodded. “Yep. We’re not the strongest but we get along fine.”

I gulped as I thought about how I wanted to ask my next question. I was sure he knew I was the dungeon, but to admit that seemed to admit defeat for some reason. I decided to go a different path and pointed down at the manor. “Do you plan to dive this dungeon?”

He glanced at the roof we sat on and gave me the sad smile from earlier. “Its possible, but not for a while. We decide our dives on our needs. One of our members needs a new weapon, so we’re in the middle of retrieving the metal for it from a different dungeon.”

I breathed in relief. I just couldn’t see this boy surviving in my dungeon. He looked so weak. One wrong move and I would lose the only person I felt I could actually talk with. I doubt that Starburst would be too happy if I forced the dungeon to spare him, plus he might realize something was up. I could tell he was intelligent from his eyes, though that might have just been me.

We sat there in silence for the rest of the night, broke only when we had short bursts of conversation about off the wall random topics. I saw some pink start to dye the sky and knew it was time for him to go soon. Sure enough, he stood up and stretched. “I feel much better after spending the night with you. Until next time.”

I shot forward and grabbed his hand before he vanished again. “Wait! Tell me your name.”

He returned my grip and gave me what I thought might have been a genuine smile. “Thomas.” He gently pushed my hand back then as a ray of sunlight hit the roof, I blinked, and he was gone. I couldn’t hold back the sigh that escaped my lips as I held my hand to my chest.

~~~

The rest of the day was filled with thoughts of Thomas. For some reason only one party entered the dungeon during the day. Not only that, but they took forever. They entered just after dawn, and didn’t leave until it was well past noon. 

They were so cautious in their dive, that it took them an hour just to clear a single wing of the manor. Even as I complained about their speed, they were the first party not to have any casualties and make it to the second floor. They stopped there though and turned back for the day. I was more disappointed than I had thought I’d be.

Looking outside, there were plenty of people surrounding the dungeon though. Periodically, I could feel burst of Aether hitting my aura, but it felt more like they were looking for something rather than trying to hurt me. 

“They probably can’t afford any more loses,” Starburst said shaking his mane.

“I hope that’s it. Humans are good at making weapons. I’d rather them not drop a nuke on me.”

Starburst laughed with a few neighs mixed in. “They can’t use on of those in the middle of the city.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” I mumbled with a shrug.

I flew down to the third floor to check up on Emelia and the amusement park. I would need to smack Lance next time I saw her. She still hadn’t delivered the information about the theme park. How hard was it to print a few things off the internet? 

Looking around, I found Emelia had put a lot of work in. I was feeding her all my excess Aether, so she had a lot to work with since I’d gotten back to full. I couldn’t overfill anymore either for some reason. The third floor reminded me of a theme park, had it been horror themed.

The few rides she had completed were the ones I told her about. She must have figured out how to make them work. For now, there was a roller coaster, a merry-go-round, and Ferris wheel. She had already created the layout of the floor, which had a central plaza surrounded by what I assumed were supposed to be shops, that then branched out in various directions. It would be hard to see from the ground, but up here in the air, I saw that it resembled a spider web.

Emelia and her workers were working on a fourth ride that looked like a tower. I moved over to her slowly, as I didn’t want to interrupt her work. While I did so, I decided to check my status as well to see if anything had changed since the last time. 

Azaria Highlock

Age:18

Level: 3

Race: Dungeon

Type: Doll 

Sub-type: Goddess’s Chosen

Aether: 3,700/3,700

Floors: 3/3

Skills: Creation

Deconstruction

Summon (7/123)

Teleport Matrix (1/1) 

Enchanter’s Melody

Uncontrollable Proliferation 

Mirrored Perception

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 (+1)

The night passed with nothing happening. No Lance, no Thomas, nothing of note happened. To say I was more than a little depressed that Thomas didn’t show up might have been an understatement, but from his stories it sounded like he didn’t just look sickly but was actually a bit under the weather for some reason. If he couldn’t sneak out often then it was only understandable that he couldn’t show up every night.

Thus, I spent the night trying to ignore my thoughts of Thomas while working on the dungeon here and there. There really wasn’t much I could do to improve the upper floors more. I understood quite a few items, weapons, and armor now thanks to the divers continuously dying inside my halls. I thought about giving some of those to my toys, but the first floor was starting to be too easy for the people that make their way into my dungeon. 

I decided to boost my toys defense at least. They were quite easy to defeat if you could get up close to them. Creating some amulets that boosted the strength of their fabric and plush, I realized that if any divers got ahold of them, they could use them on their cloths. After some thought I decided to leave it but added a small degree of chance as it would make a nice reward for people coming into the dungeon. 

I could use the amulets on all my toys, but it would take more Aether than I had at the moment to hand them out like that. I settled for the bosses, and a couple of the normal ones that were chosen at random. Once I was done with that, my Aether had dropped to about a thousand as I didn’t want to use it all up in one go then needed it. 

Glancing outside, I was disappointed to see that it wasn’t even midnight yet. With a groan, I wished I could sleep and settled into watch the stars by myself tonight. I wonder if I could use a cellphone if Thomas or Lance brought me one. Something to ask about latter.

~~~

The morning came, but no one entered the dungeon. I was actually starting to get worried that the people in charge had decided I was too dangerous to let people dive. I mean I felt bad about killing all those people, but I had little choice in the matter. 

It was around two in the afternoon that I spotted Lance among the crowd of people that always hung around me dungeon. She was with a party of men that while the looked presentable, it was hard to say they were good people. At least, my dungeon hadn’t been banned or something like that.

I flew over to Starburst. “Some people are about to enter the dungeon. They have Lance with them, so be prepared for part of the dungeon to explode again.” 

“I, for one, will be happy once the deal with that person is finished. She is a bad influence to have around.”

“Okay, thanks dad.” I said giving him a hug while faded memories of my parents flashed through my head.

“Someone needs to keep you in line.” I stuck my tongue out at him before moving to the instrument room. Other me was already there waiting for me. I knew I should absorb her soon, but something inside me wasn’t sure about having to go through all the experiences at once and was dreading it a little. Though, the longer I put it off the worst it was likely to be. 

Everything went like normal as they came into the dungeon. One of the men walked next to Lance at the back of the group as the four other men walked at the front. I couldn’t really tell what their positions were from their dress. They wore a decent amount of armor, but nothing like the people that would wear full plate that would normally defend the party from the front.

I found out why a few seconds later as one of the traps went off but stopped as if it got stuck in mid-air. I glanced around and found that the man next to Lance held his hand out as if grabbing something. He tightened his outstretched hand into a ball and the axe that was hanging in the air crumbled into a ball. 

I looked at Zaria. “This will be interesting.” 

“Yes. It is the first time you have dealt with something like this,” Zaria replied.

I shivered from the strange way she had the exact same voice as me but moved past it. I grabbed the violin and we started our performance. The trance quickly overtook me. Lance’s party moved further into the dungeon. The four men barely lifted a finger, letting the man at the back do all the work. 

Not that he needed any help. He was decimating everything they came up against with ease. It was actually starting to piss me off how easy they were going through the dungeon. Stella and Lucy each managed to give one of the men a few scratches but that was the extent of the damage.

They made their way up to Starburst’s room with confidence. I couldn’t blame them considering how they have easily made their way through so far. I noticed that Lance seemed to want to attack the man but couldn’t find a good chance. Of the four men, one of them would almost always be near him. Me and Zaria decided to just watch to see what happened.