บท 462: Party Issues
Hera was in the bathroom of her private room brushing her teeth for the fifth time of the day. After talking to everyone and explaining how she killed the elf, her nerves got the better of her, and she started throwing up. Luckily, she realized it was going to happen fast enough and rushed to the bathroom not to make her private room dirty and smelly for the rest of the time they would have to stay there. Between the moments when she was retching, Hera pulled up her tablet and sent a message to Luna, asking about what was happening. It seemed like she wasn't the only one curious about that. Most of the guys were asking questions about what was going on in the room and if she was OK. She did her best to reply to the guides, but she made it clear that more people were with her in her room. Something told her that the guides wouldn't be able to come to her room while other people were there, but she figured it was better to let them know instead of risking having one of the guides show up.
At the moment, Hera was feeling somewhat better, or at least well enough to believe she wouldn't throw up again. Luna had answered her question explaining that there was an attack and that someone somehow brought several high-level monsters to the room. Currently, everything was still a mess. The centaur was still fighting against a few explorers, and she seemed to be pushing them back. There were still a lot of monsters in the city, and the madness was still making everybody try to kill each other. A few people inside the towers were high level enough and had the right type of spells to neutralize large groups, allowing them to contain the situation before it devolved into what Hera saw in the red tower. However, the number of casualties was already in the thousands, and Luna expected that number to keep growing.
Hera asked if she could tell anything about that madness or the reason for the attack, but the guide couldn't answer those questions. She had no idea what was the reason for this attack, and since the madness was someone's spell, she couldn't share that information even if she knew how it worked. That being said, Luna told her they would be fine as long as they were inside the room but advised the explorer not to return to Dzviery until the centaur was no longer an issue. The way Luna spoke about it made her confused. She wasn't sure if the issue was the centaur or if the centaur was maintaining an effect to make people crazy, but she took the advice to heart.
After flushing the toilet one more time to clear any pieces of vomit that were left, Hera washed her face again and walked out of the bathroom. Her entire party was waiting by the door to see if she was OK, and since the explorer had used the privacy spell, they had no idea what was going on inside the bathroom.
"Feeling better?" Blue asked.
"Not really. But my stomach stopped being a bitch, so that's something," Hera shrugged, "Also. I asked Yarnball about the room, and it told us to wait here. I don't know if any of you had any idea about going back out there, but we should stay."
"I had no intention of going out. I mean, I really don't wanna go back there, not after everything I saw," Alex shivered.
"Same. We should wait for things to get fixed in here," Blue nodded.
"I'm worried about what might be happening outside, but I know we can't do much about it," Helena sighed.
"OK, we will stay here then. Hopefully, the guild will manage to fix everything soon," Bonnie walked back to the living room and sat on the floor.
Heron nodded and went to the living room, sitting besides Bonnie and started staring at the glaive by the door. She couldn't bring herself to think of anything else now, and although she knew the weapon wasn't responsible for the man's death, she had mixed feelings about it.
"Hera… don't beat yourself up. It was self-defense," Bonnie spoke in a soft voice.
"So? That doesn't change the fact that he's dead. Even if it was an accident, I still killed him. Maybe I should have let him bite me or something," Hera hugged her knees.
"Are they zombies now?" Blue asked, unsure if that was how it worked.
"I don't think so. But they were trying to bite people," Alex wondered if the madness was infectious somehow.
"I don't think it is. But he was trying to bite me and claw me. Maybe I shouldn't have used the glaive. Maybe I should have just avoided his attacks or let him hit me."
"That wasn't going to happen. Your court wouldn't let it," Daskka said.
"What do you mean? Only Ooze and you were out, and you told me that you can't summon other blades unless there were some specific conditions. Is that one of them?" Hera asked.
"No. But I wasn't going to let him hurt you. You are not just the empress. You are my mum too."
"Daskka… it's one thing to protect me. Another is to kill people."
"Doesn't matter. If the choice is you or someone else, we are choosing you. Every single time."
"Daskka. I don't want you Ki…."
Before Hera could finish the sentence, Daskka put her tail on top of the explorer's mouth, "Don't give me that order. Not that one. Please, I don't want to not be able to do anything if you're about to die."
"I'm not giving you an order. I'm asking you a favor. You know how I feel about killing people, And I hope you avoid doing that the best you can. I'm trying not to say the words, so the legacy won't understand this as an order but consider that only a last resort because you know that if you kill someone, I'm the one who killed them. I mean, you are part of my court, and an item that I have, so it's technically me, the same way that it wasn't the glaive that killed someone, it was me."
Daskka nodded, "Promise. Kill people when no option," She made a point of not speaking through her legacy this time. Hera understood that this was a way for her to show that she was being serious and taking her words to heart.
The rest of the party didn't say anything while Hera talked with the snake. Even if they couldn't hear her, they imagined that Daskka was trying to cheer her up, and the two of them had a connection that none of the other party members shared. If anyone could understand her feelings and help her go through that would be Daskka.
When Hera stopped talking and snuggled with the snake, Blue turned to Alex, "So, in the end, did you get what you're looking for?
"I did," Alex nodded.
"Right. Can you tell us what was so important about that notebook? You don't have to if you don't want to, but I would like to know why I risked my life to go to the hotel," Hera turned to the assassin.
"Well... I can tell you guys a little bit, and you have to promise you won't be mad," Alex scratched the back of her head and positioned herself by the bathroom door.
"What did you do?" Bonnie asked.
"So, you guys know about the curse that I have, right? I've been having some dreams about it, and I'm kind of keeping a dream journal to see if I can figure out how to get rid of it. But I'm not sure if I want to get rid of it anymore because it's been helping a lot."
"Are you fucking serious right now?" Hera gasped.
"Yeah. I know what Kirouhebi said, that the more I look into it, the worse it gets, but I know a lot more about it now. I don't know how much I can tell you guys without passing the curse to you, but I figure out what's its origin and if that is really the case, it is something amazing! And for the help, it stopped the madness from affecting me, and when we were in the No Hotel, it showed me which doors I should go through. That's how I got to the room so soon. It happened before we split up, but I couldn't think of a way to tell you guys," Alex explained.
"Alex, what the actual fuck?" Hera was staring daggers at her.
"Look, are you really going to accept what a random dragon told us? This might not be that bad, and it's helping me, so I don't see what's the problem. Besides, there were never any notifications telling me I'm cursed or something," Alex shrugged.
"So? There wasn't a notification telling us that we were mad either," Bonnie got closer to Alex.
"Well yeah, but that was a temporary thing, this was supposed to be permanent. I really doubt that the system wouldn't let me know if something was going on," Alex took a step back and placed one hand on the bathroom door, ready to jump inside in case the rest of the party got a bit too angry about the situation. Maybe it was because of the madness that she had just witnessed, but there was a part of her worried that her friends would try to kill her to get rid of this curse.
"Alex, are you telling me you think you can use something that wiped out an entire room? You saw how big the Waperath Jungle was, and Kirouhebi said it destroyed all of it. People had to be evacuated and everything. What makes you so special that you can survive when the entire Kingdom couldn't?" Hera asked.
"I'm not special. But the world is. We have a lot more information now. Back then, if you got sick, you were probably gonna die. There was no medicine or ways to figure out how to cure something or make something unless someone close to you knew about that. But now, we have the Internet. Knowledge is shared across the entire world and the entire maze. I'm not saying I'm special enough to survive a curse that wiped out a Kingdom. But we as a society are probably strong enough to deal with this mess. And who knows. Maybe we can learn something good from all that. If this curse is this powerful, maybe it will be enough to kill the people responsible for this attack. Like a biological weapon to wipe them all out," Alex sounded confident in what she was talking about, and that scared the rest of the party.
"Alex, did you talk to anyone else about your curse? 'Cause if I remember correctly, some of the things you say can infect people, right?" Helena asked with a calm voice.
Alex shook her head, "No. I know how potentially dangerous sharing this could be. Even if I think some people might help me, I know that putting this online would be the worst idea ever."
"Good. At least you still have a brain," Bonnie crossed her arms. This entire situation was making her angry, "Just a question. How dumb can you be? You explained to us what happened with the curse. And you still think you can do something about it even after hearing all that? And not just get rid of it, which is something we are already looking into, But you want to use it as a weapon? You want to use something that made everybody in the room run away? You really need to get your head out of your ass."
"Well, excuse me. I'm just trying to make something out of this situation. I got screwed just because I looked at the wrong thing, and now I'm gonna have to die because of it? No, no, no, I'm doing something with my life. I'm not just gonna wait for this to kill me."
"But you're not even talking about it killing you. You're talking about using it. It's not just getting rid of it. That's embracing it and turning it into a tool. I may not know the story but I'm pretty sure that's exactly how this started!" Hera got up in a huff, and even Daskka was staring at Alex angrily.
"And what am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life scared of this? I'm not you, Hera. I can't live my life in fear of doing something with myself,"
"Alex!" Blue and Bonnie gasped, while Hera just gave her a confused look. She couldn't even remember the last time she was too scared to do something, and what Alex said just felt nonsensical. Something someone would say when they were losing an argument.
"OK, OK. Let's stop here. This is getting personal; going beyond it will only worsen things. Girls, we don't know as much about the curse as Alex, so she might have some better insights than we do. Let's give her some credit," Helena turned to the group before looking back at Alex, "Alex. Can you promise us not to do anything without letting us know? I'm not saying you shouldn't try to figure this out yourself, but we're here to help you, and considering the situation, it's good if we are aware of the things you're trying."
Alex nodded, "As long as you don't try to stop me from doing what I want."
"That's fine. But promise to at least hear us out with an open mind, OK?" Helena pressured.
Alex shrugged, but the mood in Hera's private room was still heavy. Trying to change that, Helena clapped loudly, "OK, we had a long day. We went to a dungeon, then the attack and everything. Let's just eat. Whoever wants to take showers can take showers and sleep, OK? I think we all need that right now. Also, I'm just gonna add, don't leave here without talking to everybody. We don't know what's out there, we don't know what's going on, and we need to be safe."
The mention of food seemed to grab everyone's attention. They spent a long time in the dungeon and just now realized how hungry and tired they were. In the end, there was nothing else they could do. They had to wait for the storm to pass, so to speak. And that's exactly what they did.
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