Fox Tale Of A Dungeon Boss

Xandra raised an eyebrow at Kai, and Helena smiled. "Amnesia? Better than what I expected of you."

Kai mentally sweated. 'Yeah... note to self: never let Helena know Amnesia was my third try, and NEVER let her know the names I tried before it!'

"Anyways... Layla is still asleep?" He looked to Xandra, who nodded silently.

"What about Michael? He doesn't strike me as the type to sleep in."

Helena shrugged. "I dunno, I still haven't seen him come out yet is all I know."

Xandra looked back to the door from the great hall of the Association, where past the door was the stairs up to their rooms.

"I tried to wake Pedro up, and he near clawed out my eyes for it, so he'll take an hour of agony to be on his feet I'd guess."

Helena snorted. "Shouldn't have drank so much."

Kai winced sympathetically. "Yeah... well!" He jumped to the previous thought. "I'll go check on Michael, he really should have been up by now."

The other two nodded. Indeed... as an automaton, who would think he would be tired from activity or gotten drunk? Could he even drink alcohol?!

So him still not appearing was actually quite worrying once it was pointed out.

Kai hurried into the halls and up the stairs, to their common room, and ignored the parrot leaning against the toilet with an endless string of curse words coming from his mouth.

"-f.u.c.k.i.n.g a.s.s f.u.c.ker of a mothers donkey yellow-bellied shit-faced cunts.u.c.k.i.n.g bitchass c.o.c.kwhore-"

Okay... he was TRYING to ignore it. Who would expect the calm-faced and serious parrotkin to drink like the Scottish, with the terrible constitution of the Chinese, and to swear like a sailor!

(The Scottish and Irish are well known for drinking enough to kill most, and Asians are also well known for not handling their alcohol well, such as the Japanese, Chinese, or Koreans. It should be noted these are only stereotypes used for humor, do not ban me please )

Kai looked at the four doors he had yet to check, as he knew Helena was in the far left, Layla in the far right, and Xandra was just to the left of Layla. He was just to the right of Helena, so Michael had to be in one of the four doors in the middle, since Pedro had temporarily taken the bathroom as his own and did not yet have a bed room.

Kai went to the one next to Xandra, since Michael came back with Layla and Xandra had followed, it would make sense for him to be next to them.

He opened the door-

"AH!?"

He screamed and jumped back as Michael's big metal body simply stood in the doorway facing him!

Kai took deep, heaving breaths.

"In the dark, standing like that, you look like f.u.c.k.i.n.g NIGHTMARE FUEL!" He exclaimed!

Pedro g.r.o.a.n.e.d. "Shut the f.u.c.k up you crazy red-furred bitch!"

Kai glances at Pedro and his shock became dampened by pity. "...sorry." He whispered reticently, before turning back to the open doorway... and Michael standing there, silent.

His core had no white light pulsing... he was like a statue?

"Michael?" Kai walked you to the automaton and tapped his plexiglass exterior.

Previously it had been slightly warm to the touch, like the metallic life within him made him stay the same temperature as the living, but now it was cold and hard.

"...Michael! Wake up!" Kai shook him slightly, and he teetered slightly like a big statue.

'God! How do I wake up an automaton?'

Kai eventually looked at Michael's core.

"That's where Michael actually is... not the rest of the body. The rest is a suit he has built around him to interact with the world. It runs off mana...'

When had her felt mana?

The masked man had made the portal to the place they woke up vanish, and made the air solid to stand on.

Pedro and Layla had instinctually used it to glide and "thrust" distinctly.

And the toilet had pulled a small bit of Kai's away to power itself.

Kai knew how it felt in the air...

And how it felt to have it pulled out.

He shut his eyes, and something happened, his breathing settled and his mind cleared, a small trigger pulled in his mind bringing absolute focus.

'I used to meditate. No... at the very least my mind has been trained to be clear and focused at the drop of a hat.'

Such a strange discovery about his past self, that he had apparently trained his mind to the point where he instinctually could focus, should unsettle or surprise him.

But it was merely a reflection in the pond, not not a ripple or obstruction.

His mind was clear... and the air was not.

He felt the buzz in the air, the weight of the world as it whispered to him.

It wasn't words, so much as impressions, intuitions and thoughts of something so far beyond him it was mumbled muttering in his mind as he soaked himself in it.

The ether breathed its vast expanse, and he felt its breath upon himself.

And he reached into himself, not a source of energy in his stomach or mind or heart.

It wasn't a container of some source called mana. Mana was already everywhere.

It was him.

He reached for himself, and he extended it, just like lifting a hand. You did not have a container of all your blood, it just flowed through you.

And he took it, and it flowed as all power must.

<Power flows with purpose... mortals are the beings that give it purpose. This is the meaning to mortal life.>

It wasn't a voice or a text box, but he heard the words of the thing he called his status, the system of this world, and he felt it.

The word of order born of chaos.

The system was order. The system was the world itself, manifested as the ultimate form of order. Everything labeled, categorized, understood in levels and states of being.

But life was more complicated than that.

Kai opened his eyes, shining with a l.u.s.ter within their yellow iris, and pressed his hand to Michael's c.h.e.s.t, a flow of orange-gold energy flowing through Kai's hand, lighting it up from the inside as though his hand was held over a high-power flashlight, the light shining through his skin, and it pushed into the automaton, swirling like smoke through the space between plexiglass skin and metal bone and wire, pistons and gear muscle-

It reached the core, and the core pulsed with white, drawing the orange-gold in as breath.

And Kai stumbles away as Michael's body tumbled to life, the shutters opening in his eyes as he shuddered, and a coughing sound echoed out.

"Kah! What...?" Michael caught himself against the doorframe, and Kai's eyes glazed in a daze, the ether man voices fading as his mind fogged, the whispered mysteries once again a mystery.

'What the... hell?'

Kai shook his head, his eyes clearing. 'Was that... magic?'

Michael shook himself, his core pulsing white, but a faint touch of gold-orange could be seen that slowly faded over the next few seconds.

"What did you just do Kai?"

Kai shook his head, feeling a bit numb in a way he couldn't explain by any words he had, it felt like nothing he'd ever felt before.

"Uh... right... you were statue. I... jumpstarted?"

Kai blinked, and Michael's shutters squinted in concern. 'He sounds drunk?'

Kai shook himself again, his fur standing on end as his tail swayed quickly and his ears stood up tall. "Gah!"

"SHUT UP!" Pedro screamed, before heaving again in the corner of the bathroom.

Michael looked over at the sudden yell... and saw the parrotkin suffering even more from the strain of yelling and from hearing his own voice so loud.

"Sorry... I didn't set up a specific time to become active again because I wasn't sure when everyone was getting up... I thought I'd just start up again when morning came I guess?"

Kai looked at him in disbelief. "You mean you might have just STAYED shut down if I hadn't jolted you?"

Michael stepped back awkwardly. "Uh... yeah."

Kai shook his head. "We need a way to put you in a 'sleep' mode instead of a full shutdown, so outside stimuli wakes you up. I'm not sure how I even did that, much less how to repeat it."

Michael nodded. "I'll have to look through my settings again I guess."

Kai twitched an ear. "Your... settings?"

Michael nodded. "Yeah... it's like a sub-page of my <Status>. Don't worry about it, I didn't look to hard cause I misunderstood what 'set to wake upon outside activation' meant."

Kai winced. "Yeah... be more careful."

Michael took a few steps out his room finally, Kai moving aside to allow him past, and Michael looked to Pedro.

"So... are we going soon?"

Kai shrugged helplessly looking at the hungover parrot. "I... give him some time? Or get a doctor..." he trailed off as his mind patched into that.

Doctor. Healer. They had a healer. Helena was a healer. She could heal.

He looked at Michael. "Helena."

Then he rushed off out the door, while Michael winced in sympathy looking at Pedro. "Yeah... don't worry bud. Help is on the way..."

~ ~ ~

Helena awkwardly stared. 'Holy Note is my healing/damage spell against good/bad targets respectively... so do I just sing or something?'

Pedro g.r.o.a.n.e.d, and Helena sneered. 'Even if it doesn't heal him... at least the high notes will teach him a lesson about drinking!'

Kai raised an eyebrow as he caught the flicker of evil thoughts in Helena's eyes.

'Is she-'

Helena opened her mouth, and she didn't sing so much as simply... vocalized. Like how opera singing works, a high and crystal clear voice sang out a note, dipping down after an initial high before the tone and volume rose again into a ending high!

The sound could almost be felt, like a wave of vibrations passing through them, yet somehow comforting in it, like the rumble of a cat purring against you as you held it.

Pedro blinked, as his complexion darkened a bit as the paleness faded, and he became more steady.

"...whoah." Pedro looked up at Helena in shock. "That was... effective."

Helena nodded, and coughed slightly as she turned away. "Cough! Yeah... well I'm gonna pray while you all figure out what we're even supposed to do now."

The others blinked. 'Pray?'

Kai shook it off, looking at the others. "Well, when we're ready to go we can head down and we'll get some basic gear, like a standard common weapon essentially. And our first mission is apparently prepared before hand, just like for the others. So we just gotta go and take this first day as training!" Kai pumped his fist, trying to inject some energy into the others.

"But uh... I guess we'll wait for Helena?"

The glanced to her again, where she sat in prayer, and she broke her silence in an exasperated sigh. "I use holy-attribute mana, which comes from the celestial plane, so I can't recover mana just by standing around. Prayer is how my class regains mana."

The others nodded slowly. 'Okay... weird class mechanic, but makes sense from a logical perspective.'

So they just awkwardly waited for Helena, who spent about three minutes praying before getting back up. "Wow... we are really weak right now I guess... Holy Note took a larger chunk of my energies than I thought it would?" Helena looked to the others doubtfully.

"So you're all good?" Kai asked to make sure.

"No, I still am missing a bit... but I ran out of things to say in prayer, and silent meditation doesn't work, nor does repeating myself in the same prayer it seems."

Kai frowned. "Your class is kinda troublesome..."

Helena shrugged. "There's probably some tricks or advantages to it, there always it. Now let's get going downstairs! Adventure and all that, right?"

Michael chuckled at that, and Xandra shrugged. "Alright... sure. Let me just wake up Layla."

The others froze as Xandra moved.

'Shit we almost forgot about Layla!'