Chapter 55: Chapter 53: Guidance

Raphael looked around the wide plain around her in wonder. “This is all in that little box?” She asked.

Lilith laughed. “No, it’s another plane, just like Tunem or your grandma’s place. The box is just an easy way to get here and back.”

Raphael scanned the area, looking for…anything. The only point of interest she could see was a large black spire that Lilith was walking over to, but aside from that it was…barren. “So, why did you bring me here?”

Lilith didn’t respond, instead stopping at the obelisk and putting her hand on it.

Nothing happened, so Raphael got to thinking. If this was the training cube, and Lilith had brought her here for something Raphael would ‘really like’, did that mean…“Are you going to train me yourself?!” Raphael blurted out excitedly.

Lilith turned her head to give Raphael a smirk. “Sorry, but no. I promise you it’s better than that, though.”

Raphael pouted. “Can’t imagine what, especially with all the nothing that’s going on right now.”

Lilith looked a little puzzled herself. “You’re right. I checked with Kali and made sure this would work while other people were here, so I don’t know why nothing’s happening…”

She trailed off as a figure stepped out from behind the obelisk. “That was a test, and you failed. You should have been able to sense my presence, even if I was trying to hide it. You’re slacking on keeping up extra senses.”

Lilith looked down. “Sorry.”

The figure, a tall angel man with short blond hair gave a sigh. “I’ll let your lapse go for now, it’s a special occasion.”

There was something…familiar about him. Raphael couldn’t quite place where, but it felt like she’d seen him before. As she tried to puzzle that out, he turned and walked over to Raphael, crouching down so he was at eye level with her.

“Hey there, sport.” He said warmly. “Name’s Raphael.”

It all clicked. She’d seen him in a portrait her grandma kept on her desk. “G…Grandpa?”

He smiled broadly. “Got it in one. C’mere.” He held out his arms, and Raphael flung herself into them. He held her close for a moment, then lifted her up, swinging her around and planting her square on his shoulders. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you.” He told her. “I know you haven’t exactly had the best life, so I really, really wish I could have done something but…” He trailed off, then gave a little chuckle. “That doesn’t matter now, though. What’s important is that I finally got to meet you.”

“I understand, grandpa.” She said, giving his head a little pat. “But you did the right thing. I’m proud of you.” She felt…comfortable around him. She was sure part of it was how much he looked like her dad, but beyond that there was just something about him that put her at ease. Maybe it was because she felt like she already knew him? She had grown up hearing all these stories about him, and her parents had even named her after him, so it was amazing to finally be able to meet him. “Um…how are you here and…physical, though? I thought you were dead.”

He gave another chuckle. “Sure am. Like all of Lilith’s teachers, I’m dead as a doornail. For some reason, Kali decided to take me to that afterlife of hers, and so I volunteered to help teach. That spire over there is powered with Worship and lets us teachers be physical while we’re here.”

Lilith smiled, and touched the obelisk again. An absolutely huge dragon, easily the biggest Raphael had ever seen, appeared behind it. “I’ll leave you two to catch up.” And with that, she flew on top of the dragon and the two flew off.

“Who was that?”

“That was Tiamat.”

“The Tiamat?!”

“That’s her. Her reputation’s been way overexaggerated, though. She’s really nice once you get to know her. I can take you to meet her and the other teachers later, if you want.”

“Really!?”

He laughed, grabbing her and putting her down in front of him and then squatting down so they were at eye level again. “Yes, really. What kind of grandpa would I be if I didn’t spoil you a little?”

Raphael hesitated. “Do grandpas usually spoil their grandkids?”

He frowned. “All grandparents should, if you ask me. Your grandma isn’t exactly the best example. But let’s not talk about her right now, let’s talk about you. I want to get to know you a little better.”

And, so she sat down, and began to tell her Grandpa all about her life.

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Lilith, the Parallels, and all her teachers, were gathered in the classroom building that they had been using when they weren’t training her physical or magical skills. They had sent Raphael home after a couple of hours with her grandpa (along with the assurance that, yes, she’d be able to come visit again some time), and were now gathered to have a thorough discussion on the teacher’s evaluations of her Skills and the plan with them going forward.

Raphael senior (whom Lilith still hadn’t been able to bring herself to call “Raph”), had taken point on this discussion, and was currently writing on the whiteboard in the front of the room. “So, the way I see it, your Skills are split into a few main categories. The first category is, of course, your High Arbiter Skills, and for the sake of this discussion we’re going to be ignoring them. The goal is to not have to rely on them too much in combat and instead use them as punishments, so we shouldn’t be trying to build a strategy around them.”

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He handed the marker to Tiamat, who stepped up to take his place. “Then there’s your transformation Skills, most notably Eldritch Abomination.” She said, writing the header “Transformation”. “This is probably the category that you utilize most often right now, but I think you’re still not using them to their fullest potential, especially your secretions. We’ll get into those in other lessons later, but for now we can put acquiring more transformation Skills pretty low on the priority list. Eldritch Abomination is versatile enough to cover most things, and what it can’t you’ve got covered with other Skills.”

She wrote a few Skills on the board then passed the marker to Arthur, who wrote “Physical”. “You are fairly lacking in Skills that enhance your body, though. Aside from very generic speed increasers and a couple of other things like your water breathing, you have precious few Skills that make you stronger or more durable, and you have the potential to get a lot of those. It’s my advice that a large portion of your remaining Skill Points from your Racial Class levels goes into beefing yourself up as much as possible. You should, at the least, be able to make yourself pretty resistant or outright immune to most common elemental attacks, which will be a pretty big boost to your survivability.”

He tossed the marker to Lancelot, who caught it effortlessly. “Then you have your weapon Skills.” He nodded at Artemis, who was pacing restlessly near the back of the room. “This is mainly Skills for guns and some for swords that Eve’s managed to pick up. You seem to prefer relying more on other Skills to supplement your weapon attacks, which I can understand, but you shouldn’t neglect these Skills either. It’ll take some getting used to, but you need to learn to be able to adapt your fighting style quickly. As a Perfect Chimera, and especially with Skills like Ruler’s Right, you’ll be getting new Skills often, so it’s my opinion that it’s going to be important for you to know how to incorporate them into your repertoire.”

He finished his writing and pressed the marker into Oberon’s hand, and gently pushed him towards the board. “Um, you’ve got some pretty decent mental Skills, too. Your calculation ability is top-notch, so, uh, you should all probably learn to use that more instead of just letting Mae do everything. Y-you might not be as effective as her, but if you can manage at least some of it without getting distracted, then it’ll…probably be helpful? And, uh, you’re pretty good with illusions and stuff thanks to the Skills you got from Titania, so that’s good.”

He hurriedly finished his writing and passed the marker to Solomon who was, for some inexplicable reason, wearing glasses. She pushed them up and began to write. “And you’ve got a couple of the single most unfair magic Skills I’ve ever seen with Decipher and King’s Knowledge. Your ability to obtain information on new subjects is simply astounding. Over the course of the few weeks before the big fight I will, of course, be making you read my entire collection of spell books, but I’m also going to pound some theory into your head so you know how to properly use what you’re going to learn.”

She finished what she was writing and put the marker down, pulling some sort of list out from some unseen storage space. “But, it’s vitally important to strengthen your body as well. You have what is so far the unique capability to choose what you want from any Racial Class, so at Arthur’s request I’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of things to get.”

Despite her glasses not looking at all loose, she pushed them up again and began to read. “First off, photosynthesis. It’s extra recovery to everything while you’re in sunlight. Recovery is much harder to come by than other stats, so grab what you can. Then, stuff from extremophiles, especially magical extremophiles. From what I can tell, that’s your most cost-effective source of resistance to the elements, and the pressure resistance from things living in the deep ocean will also serve the purpose of making you tougher to blunt force. From there, we’ll take a couple of skin hardeners from things with scales to better round out your physical defense, and don’t worry, your skin won’t actually get harder. I checked with Kali, something about magical toughness letting you keep the softness of your skin while increasing durability anyway.”

As she listed things off, she wrote them on the board along with the projected cost in Skill Points. “So, as for strength enhancers, a lot of insects are quite strong for their size, so I’ve outlined a few of the most notable…”

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Judy looked in awe at the beast in front of her, its massive frame taking up the entirety of the view from the reading room. “What…is that?” She asked, watching as it swam after what looked to be a pod of whales, though they were dwarfed in size by the thing.

“I call him Levi.” Kali said. “I don’t know if I mentioned this to you, but Haven was actually a plane I begged off of one of my friends, and Levi was one of the pet projects he was working on. I was fortunate that I didn’t have any sapient species that outright required to live in an ocean, because there’s a good chance he could have singlehandedly wiped them out. Instead, the aquatic sapient species take residence in a lake in one of the three cities.”

She coughed, looking to the side. “As embarrassing as it is, Levi here is a serious contender for the title of strongest living thing in my planes, and he probably would be absolutely uncontested, if he wasn’t content to just laze around, eating only enough to survive.”

Levi opened his mouth, and suddenly he was a few hundred yards forward, mouth closing over the whole pack of whales. There was a rush of bubbles and turbulent water in his wake, the sudden movement having left a gap that the water was rushing to fill.

“The friend I mentioned chose to leave him here as a sort of insurance for me. He’s got a control switch built into him for if I need to take control of him, but honestly, I’m not very good with it. It’s really complex, and I’ve been busy enough that I haven’t had the time to spend a few dozen years perfecting it.”

Levi turned his enormous head and stared at the two. Then, he opened his mouth and rushed forward again, massive jaws closing around the invisible, intangible observation platform. There was a brief moment where all they could see was the inside of his maw, but then they were suddenly far away, likely at least a mile or two, though Levi was still easily visible in the distance.

“Sorry about that.” Kali said, placing a comforting hand on Judy’s shoulder. “As I said, he was one of the Administrator’s pet projects, and he’s got the feel for Worship. He could generally tell when that Administrator was looking, and I’m a lot less subtle than he is.”

“You…could have warned me.” Judy said weakly.

“I uh, kind of forgot. I’m pretty used to his antics, so I stopped noticing once I put in the system that automatically teleports this place once he tries to “eat” it. I think he thinks it’s some sort of game, but rest assured, there’s no way for him to actually hurt us. He’s harmless so long as we’re in here.”

Judy took a moment to regain her composure before speaking. “So…what are you going to do with him?” She asked.

“I’m honestly not sure.” Kali replied. “The old Administrator was in the process of making him able to exit the sea, but I’m not so sure I want that. I don’t have enough control over him to make sure he won’t try and eat everyone, so I’ve mostly been leaving him to his devices. Now that people are going to start expanding, though, I have to figure something out. The aquatic people are for sure going to want to explore the seas, and he’s for sure going to want a taste-test. Still, it would feel like a massive waste to just kill him, and not only would using Administrator cheats to do that cost more Worship than I can comfortably afford, he’s probably unbeatable while he’s in his home turf. None of the Perfect Chimeras are used to the sea yet, so he’s got terrain advantage, and while he might not have much skill, his raw stats easily beat out Lilith’s.”

She shook her head dismissively. “But that’s quite enough of my rambling. Is there anywhere else you want to see before we get on with everything?”

“Can you take us somewhere relaxing before we start?”

Kali nodded, and soon they were atop a lush mountain, a light rain pattering against the viewing area.

“Is the rain actually hitting us? That seems like kind of a big design flaw.”

“No, that’s just an effect I made because it didn’t seem right for the rain to just silently pass through. It’s something originating from inside the room, so don’t worry. Now, go ahead and lay down, I’m going to render you unconscious while I give you the Racial Classes, just to make everything a little easier for you.”

A bed sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere, and Judy obediently laid down on it.

“Alright, now I’m going to count backward from ten. Ten…”

And she was out.