Chapter 118: Ch. B3 – Waiting in Perpetuity

I check on my comatose wife still sleeping on my lap, and pat her head. Lucy is still flicking in and out of existence every now and then, but it is becoming way less frequent. Can't be too much longer until she's cured and hopefully wakes up again. Please...

"That story is all nice and good, Eclaire, but I asked you why you haven't taken any additional classes yet, not about... whatever that story was."

She hesitates for a moment, "Oh, uh, isn't that obvious? Before you agreed to marry me this morning, Lucia still had to pay my full upkeep, and we were not sure if we can afford to give me more classes under these circumstances, so we simply haven't made any decisions yet, it wasn't relevant, we had more important things to take care of. Also, we thought it would be more fun if you were present as well."

Hey, don't blame me for this! This was your idea! Or Lucia's, allegedly.

Maybe Eclaire's class choices are relevant to Lucy's plan and that's why she has to wait. Spirits have fewer restrictions on which classes they can take, they only need the slot for it. And thanks to our engagement and Lucy's [Unholy Matrimony] she should now have plenty. That one is clearly part of the plan but where does that lead? Do they have a specific class build in mind that exploits a loophole I don't know about?

Hmm... no clue, too many possibilities with what little I know about her plan. There are thousands of classes and skills, too many to guess the correct one.

It seems like mulling will get me nowhere, "Fine, we can deal with that later."

Maybe now is a good time? Eclair should know what Elly is doing

"Say, do you kn-"

Eclaire cuts me off before I can finish my question, "No, I can't tell you."

"That was suspiciously quick."

She responds after a moment of collecting herself, "You were about to ask about Elly, right? I... left her out for a reason when listing the whereabouts of your other spirits. But thanks for picking up the cue back then, this is a sensible topic."

"That's not very helpful. What has happened? You make it sound like something big is going on with Elly. Tell me at least why you can't tell me anything, I think you owe me at least this much."

She sighs, "You see, I wasn't present. I only know what Lucia told me. It happened when Lucia revealed her plan to both Elly and Therese - no one else. Even now, only we four know about the plan. Well, from what Lucy told me, Elly suddenly flew into a rage during the explanation and attacked them. Obviously, this amounted to nothing and Lucy simply unsummoned Elly, she is detained in the Spirit Prison since then."

Spirit Prison? She probably means the space where spirits end up when we seal them away. Like I did that one time when she went too far with her nagging about titles. She didn't take that one too well...

But no matter how much I think about it, I can't believe Elly would just go berserk like that, so far she was way too level-headed for that. She even tolerated me playing with the glitched Class Core, begrudgingly but still. There must be more to this story than mere disapproval.

"Plan this, plan that. The more implications I hear about the plan the more I fear it would be in our best interests to stop it."

Eclaire shakes her head and shrugs, "No can do. Not anymore, it is already underway. The only way to stop it now is to kill both you and Lucia. And obviously, nobody wants that."

Yeah, that's not happening, not even in part. Lucy is mine and you won't take her from me!

...and there's the red string strangling me again. Damned title.

"That's not really reassuring. Look, I know you're trusting Lucia more than Elly but consider, she's a spirit. As such she's forced to be loyal to us, and going for the kill is as far from loyalty as I can imagine. There must be more to that story."

She sighs in frustration, "I can't tell; as I said, I wasn't there. But if I had to guess, I'd say it is simply very likely that the glitches in the atmosphere - or in you - got to her and drove her crazy. I've already seen enough people tear into each other recently. Non-familiars in a panic over the unknown situation, due to sleep deprivation or fear of the more monstrous Hybrids, some outcast Hybrids that went mad for no reason and went on a rampage; at this point, Elly's case is just that to me. One case of insanity among many."

I try to protest, "But she's-"

"If you have to know, just wait until Lucia wakes up. Blindly guessing will lead to nothing but unnecessary frustration", she says while taking me into a hug and pressing my head against her chest.

If she intends to distract me with that then it doesn't work.

Or maybe it does. Sandwiched between my two wives like this, I give up - but only for now, "Maybe you're right, I'll wait. But can you at least tell me anything else? What happened to our servants? I haven't seen them yet, did they make it?"

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Eclaire sounds happy that she doesn't have to deal with the previous topic anymore, "Oh, yes, certainly. Once she found out that you can go beyond the familiar cap thanks to your weird skill, Lucia got to them. She said it was because good personnel is hard to come by. But if you ask me, she's taken quite a liking to them, even if she'll claim otherwise. Except Carl, he's...", she trails off with no conclusion.

Carl? Who was that again?

Oh, right, the Dwarf-Elf. He was supposed to become an assistant, easing our workload. Shows how much of an impression he left on me...

"What is with him?"

Eclaire takes a moment to gather herself, "You would've found out soon enough anyway. Lucy couldn't free him from his slave status. Apparently, Anna was a one-time deal."

I know; I tried back then to make a still-slave a familiar, didn't work. So if you add the current hostile environment...

I feel cheated, I wanted to put the slavers out of my misery personally, preferably bloody, and not just get Diabolus-Ex'd on that front.

Consider yourself lucky, Ludwig, you get to choose a different profession instead of becoming a stain on the wall. I'm totally not vindictive, just stay under the radar or else... I might give you two seconds of a headstart, maybe three if I feel generous that day.

No, gotta calm down again. This is the wrong topic for now.

So why couldn't Lucia free the slaves? It was because of something the lich said, right?

"Because of DP?"

She nods, "Yeah, how did you figure?"

"Just a hunch I had. Initially, I believed she simply had elevated rights thanks to her divine class, but once the lich Basluth dropped the concept of DP on me and hints about what you can 'pay' with it, it wasn't that much of a stretch that they are related."

She forces a smile, "Yeah, it is... and Lucy tried to keep it a secret from you because... of how she made me kinda alive again. She did that with the last few remaining DP she had. She was afraid to disappoint you if she couldn't free the other slaves."

"I guess so. And thanks to what is going on now, she'll never gain any DP again, right? Given what we know about Glitches and Hybrids, this probably won't change even if we can revert the atmosphere of this world. No more miracles for us, I guess. Not that we got many. Speaking of, we didn't get to it in the meeting but do we know anything about how to end this dungeon? We've got no exit to just leave, at least."

She hugs me even tighter, "We know nothing about how this fake dungeon works. Well, aside from that it is frequently expanding."

"It is growing? So... not only our fortress is in danger but - again - the whole area, if not the continent or the entire world. Great, and here I thought we could take our time with solving it. We're supposedly immortal now after all. I had a faint hope we could just train here until we're strong enough to overrun whatever obstacles are between us and the alleged demon artifact. But obviously, even that is now off the table. So how fast does it grow?"

"That's the thing, it doesn't exactly grow at a constant rate. Most of the time the dungeon border stands still and then suddenly the next moment it jumps ahead and absorbs several hundred square DUs. We've several troops on patrol outside that keep watch on the development in case it gets close to another settlement."

"I see. I guess they have orders to add the survivors as familiars, right? Do they have any methods to hide the non-human traits and prevent panic?"

She shakes her head, "No idea, that's something you better ask Therese or Darius during the next meeting tomorrow."

"Alright, I understand. But what are you doing then if you aren't involved with those affairs? I doubt Therese would let you sit around idly."

Eclaire chuckles, "Why, I'm living up to my class of Holy Maiden and working at the church. For some reason, a position of church head recently opened up, and who better to take charge than the current chosen one."

That's gotta be some form of cosmic irony. The head of church that sent the saintess to her death was replaced by the successfully(?) murdered saintess, and was put to death himself. How the turntables.

And since when can spirits hold divine classes?

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