Side Story - Kiro 1: A Change of Plans

 AN: Hello, it be the first side story. Time wise, it's happening while Aperio is doing her space walk.

Kiro rolled onto his back, staring at the wooden ceiling. Who is she? The thought had not left his mind after he had been... He shivered and held his blanket a little closer. There was no proper term he could find for what he had gone through, no way to describe what it had felt like. What it had looked like. What it had sounded like when the winged Elf — Is she even an Elf? — had brought the full force of her might down onto his head. The ones who had also been present claimed he had been unmade, somehow, and then remade, but that, too, felt somehow insufficient.

Continued contemplation of what had been would only add to his discomfort, so he switched tack somewhat. Was the woman an Elf? He wasn't so sure of that. Thus far he had not seen anyone else with actual wings. Projections and other magic yes, but no real wings.

And her weapon... Kiro still had a lingering headache, not from any physical injury he could determine, but merely from having stared at the blade that had come down for his life. The sharp edge that seemed to slice through reality itself. Odds are, she's not an Elf. ...Not anymore, at least.

Mayeia had sent him to the dungeon – it felt so long ago, now, that his journey had started – to meet a prospective party member. A strong Elven mage, one who he was told would accept his challenge, and give a good fight into the bargain. I ran into the wrong one.

The comment he had made before the... the fight... it had probably not helped. Why he had spoken such self-assured words to someone who was, while during a state of rest, oozing more mana than he had ever seen was still beyond him. He had simply acted on an instinct of false bravado that had previously helped him in his new life. Like with Jerien.

At least she had left him her sword, a weapon of much higher quality than what he had before. Sadly, it was still stuck in the courtyard where she had rammed it into the ground. How is that even possible? That's not Excalibur… Or is it?

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Thus far, very little of what he remembered of Earth had appeared on Verenier. I should have gone with the God of Knowledge, after all. The choice of Patrons had been a hard one, but the prospect of getting help from the Goddess of Magic had been too inciting.

His Patron-Goddess was nice, all things considered. She had given him access to skills others couldn't get, along with a nice boost to his intelligence stat. She had told him to not get cocky, that others may carry similar or even greater blessings. Advice he had taken to heart for the first year of his new life, but once he had reached level two hundred ninety, Kiro had started to dismiss the warning as it seemed to be no longer relevant.

Everyone around praised him for his rapid rise in power, telling him that he was a prodigy. No matter how he looked, he had never found many who had any sort of comparable blessing to that of his own in strength. Until he met that winged Elf, that is.

"Still brooding?" Jerien asked, her head poking through the open door that led to her room. "You know that she cheated, right? That glowing thing had to be her getting help from some God."

Kiro's mouth turned up in a half-smile at his friend's attempt in cheering him up."My [Mana Sight] would've picked up on that. Mayeia gave that to me for the explicit purpose of finding people who drew on the power of their Gods. Whatever that was, she did it with her own power." Whatever that was, I want it.

"Are you sure you can call a Goddess by her name like that?" Jerien asked, looking around the room as if she was trying to find where the Goddess of Magic might have been hiding.

The young man could only sigh at the question. "Yes, she still doesn't mind. You can ask her yourself the next time we meet; you would be surprised how ungodly she is. Most of the time she is lying somewhere in her temple writing down new theories about the System."

That was also the only real obligation he had to his Patron-Goddess. He was supposed to find more information about the System and, if possible, its creator. Mayeia had made it very clear that despite their claims, the other deities were not its maker. Kiro had once heard it insinuated that the Goddess of the Sun was, perhaps, the daughter of the Creator. Following this potential lead, he had tried asking some priests of Ferio for information.

He had not gotten much from that meeting, just the tip to pray to the Goddess himself to ask. Kiro had tried, multiple times, but had never gotten an answer; only a headache. He had chalked it up to the System not liking cross-faith prayers.

With another sigh, Kiro swung his legs off of his bed and stood up. "I need something to eat."

Jerien stepped into the room at his words, her robe dragging on the floor behind her. "I'll join; Jinjo is cooking today."

Kiro did not respond. Instead, he pulled a shirt on and headed to the door. It groaned as he opened it, the old hinges begging to be oiled. Living in inns made from some weird fantasy tree might sound nice, but it was a lot more problematic than he had first thought. He sorely missed the more solid constructions from his previous life. At least they have showers here.

How exactly those worked, he did not know, but neither did he really care. The thing that was on his mind most of the time was why he ended up here. Kiro did not get run over by a truck to be reincarnated in a new world, neither did he get summoned by a kingdom in dire need for a Hero. No, he was walking home, opened his front door and then suddenly found himself standing in a gilded hall with a small blue window hovering in front of him.

It had presented him a list of Patrons to choose from, listing their name, Domain, and a brief description of the God or Goddess. A few choices had been greyed out, ones he would have thought were the traditional choices. What he didn't know was if they were not selectable because someone else had chosen them already or if they were simply not compatible with him.

His mind wandered back to the winged Elf that had beaten him. There was a chance she was like him, just with a stronger blessing. Or she has been here for a long time. He had asked his Patron-Goddess why he had been chosen, what he was supposed to do. The question had gone unanswered, only earning him a sceptical look from Mayeia.

"Why are you so gloomy, Kiro?" Jerien asked. "Just because you lost once?"

"No," he replied, waving her off. "It just made me think of something else."

The Beastkin sighed at his words. "Will you ever tell me about your past?" Indeed, Kiro had not told her where he had come from, just that he had a blessing. That he did not tell her of his origins despite having known her for more than a year was a point of contention between the two. She was right, of course. He should tell her. But who would believe him when he said that he came from a different world? One without magic or a System.

"I don't know," Kiro said as he passed through the open door and made his way to the stairs.

"You know, I liked the confident Kiro better. Losing once isn't the end of the world."

Further conversation was cut short by Jinjo's booming laugh. The large Beastkin was talking to a group of adventurers as he went about his business in the inn's kitchen.

The main room of the inn was sparsely populated, only a few of the tables actually having patrons. Jinjo was the only one in the kitchen too, moving back and forth between his stoves and occasionally tugging the curtain back behind its holder so he could keep an eye on the floor.

His bear-like ears pushed against the hat he wore, giving the large man a comical look that never failed to cheer Kiro up at least a little. Kiro still wasn't quite sure why Jinjo was cooking on the fiftieth floor of a dungeon. He knew so much about monsters and the world in general, but whenever he asked him why he was no adventurer Jinjo would switch the topic.

Kiro waved at him, causing Jinjo to say his goodbyes to the group of adventurers he had been conversing with and grab a couple of bowls from a shelf out of view. He filled the first one with whatever he had been making, and placed it on the counter for Kiro to take before he asked, "You gonna leave as well?"

"Probably, I doubt the one I came here for will remain now that the dungeon is empty." When the first reports had come of the monsters being frozen throughout the dungeon, that had been weird enough. But when all potential enemies had vanished, well, that was that. Why adventure in a dungeon that provided no loot or combat experience? Most others in the fiftieth floor's haven had already packed up and left. They either feared that whatever force or being had taken the monsters would take them as well, or they had left because there was no more money to be made.

"Ah, well. Sad to hear that, your little duel thing really brought people here." The words were accompanied by a smile and another laugh. "But, I doubt the Guild will keep us here much longer either if no new monsters come."

"Did you manage to find out what caused this, Jinjo?" Jerien asked. "I tried asking around, but I've only gotten some weird theories of the Gods deciding that dungeons should no longer exist."

The cook just shrugged and filled the second bowl for his fellow Beastkin. "All I know is that Menko said he let some people with removal tokens through. Two women: an Elf with wings and a Human he thinks is a priestess of Ferio. He also said they gave him the creeps. Not to mess with 'em."

Kiro grimaced at the mention of the Elf and her companion. "Yeah, don't mess with her. But to kill a dungeon? From what I have been told, they can't be killed." And that was a Goddess saying that.

Jinjo just shrugged. "How it happened or who did it doesn't matter in the end; just that it did."

"Yeah, but I find all of this a little weird," Jerien said. "First there is this… presence? That settles over the dungeon, and then it dies? I don't think that's coincidence."

"You think it's that Elf, right?"

The Beastkin woman nodded at that. "What she did was not something I have seen or felt before. Just standing near her made me feel like I was breaking some ancient law by not dropping to kneel. And she wasn't even focused on me, quite the contrary even. I think the priestess did something to lessen the burden. Wonder which God she serves."

"Anything you noticed, Kiro?"Jinjo asked as he produced a glass from somewhere beneath his counter and started cleaning it.

Kiro remained silent as the memory of being sliced apart and reassembled flashed through his mind again. Just thinking about what had happened caused the headache that was forming to pound harder against his head. He was increasingly sure he had died there, only to be revived so his torment could continue. She had called him weak, and overwhelmed him with her mere presence. Even her voice was more powerful than he could comfortably stand, hurting every time she had spoken, grating against his very soul.

"She made short work of him," Jerien offered. "Used some form of space magic to tear him apart and put him back together. I don't even want to know what that felt like."

"No, you really don't."

Jinjo just grunted and placed a bottle containing a blood red liquid on the counter. "Did she give you a name?" he asked, retrieving three glasses and arranging them next to the bottle.

"No, at first I thought she was a noble of some kind," Kiro mused, taking a glass once Jinjo had filled it. "Drunk on her power and easily angered... like I was. Jerien did her insulting thing she does with every noble she finds, but that just caused her to tell us off.

"She broke my sword with her hand and took my [Sire of Shards] without flinching. Only when I wanted to use [Body Enhancement] did she react. I don't know what she did, but it was far beyond anything I could do." For now. He would do anything he could to achieve power like that.

"So what are you going to do now? Go on a wild chase to find out who she is?"

"Yes."

"And where would you start looking for her?" Jerien asked in her infuriatingly cheerful manner, sipping at her own drink. "I somehow doubt she is still in this dungeon."

"And when would she have left? The entrance to the lower floors is in the middle of town, we would have noticed if she came through here."

Jinjo grunted at that, putting the bottle away after he had poured himself a glass as well. "You know Joshua? Mage, usually in the guild hall doing paperwork?" After he had gotten an affirmative reply, he continued. "He was the first to spot her. Well, he spotted a winged Elf, but I have only ever heard of this one so I assume she's the one that fought you. Anyway, apparently she created a portal from the entrance to this floor to the middle of town, ignoring all the wards and other measures the guild took."

Kiro's eyes widened. "So, you're saying she could have just taken herself and the priestess somewhere else, and we wouldn't even know?" Such power...

"Yes, that is what I am trying to say," Jinjo replied, emptying his glass in one go. "Not everything is worth the chase, Kiro; this is one of them."

Kiro placed a few pieces of copper on the counter and took his bowl. "I will keep that in mind." With those words, he emptied his own glass and moved back towards the stairs leading to his room, leaving Jerien and Jinjo behind.