Chapter 2145: A Changing World

My mother-in-law interrupted Shade's words before he could continue.

"Is this really what we should be speaking about right now?! Who cares about gods or whatever the fuck else? Let's just be happy the girl is safe and sound and here with us! Let's move slowly, one step at a time, okay?"

"We can worry about such things once they actually come," said my father calmly. "Worrying endlessly is only going to make us go mad after all. That's true."

"See? See? So let's just take it easy and focus on what we must do right now, in the present," said Nepheline with a firm nod.

"Yeah!" Aquarina added quickly. "Sylphy, please don't worry."

"Hm..."

Although I nodded, that simple "don't worry" ended up working against me in the end. I had lowered my guard so much that a monster like Dimenion had just spawned out of nowhere and almost destroyed everything we held dear.

It's really complicated. The more I think about it, the harder it becomes to find ways to stop myself from being tormented by the countless responsibilities, expectations, and dangers that keep piling up around us.

I might even be a little traumatized by everything that has happened.

But they're not wrong.

Dwelling endlessly on these things won't do any good.

We won, and that's what is important. We're alive right now. We survived.

And we're stronger too because of it.

We just have to work on improving ourselves so these kinds of surprises won't happen again, if possible.

Dimenion's sudden appearance happened because of an unsupervised dungeon combined with an alliance between the Evil God of Dungeons and Lolth, allowing him to be teleported right in front of us when we least expected it.

I'll conquer all these dungeons and turn them into my own domains instead. I will do the same with every dungeon we can find within our territory.

I'll go take care of those within Agartha as well, just to make sure everything is properly in order.

Like this, over time, it should be possible to weaken that bastard step by step.

And I am also going to lay back and relax and enjoy my slice of life whenever I can!

Yeah, is it even possible to do both at the same time? I'll try my best.

"Anyway, now that we're done eating..." my mother muttered, glancing around the table. "I suppose we should go to Evercraft so we can explain to everyone else what happened."

"Yeah," I nodded in agreement. "I suppose that's important... Soooo, um, did I make myself clear about everything? I think I explained everything already, yeah."

"Yes, we understand better now," said my mother with a thoughtful nod. "Still, so many changes... so many things that happened... Dimenion's defeat... his origins. We still know so little about who he really is, or how he even managed to show up like that."

"Hm, yeah, we can talk about that once we're with everyone else," I said. "But he served the Evil God of Dungeons, if you didn't figure that out already."

"Dungeons..." Our parents nodded slowly, but my mother in particular became rather thoughtful. "We used to rely on them so much for everything. To think we've been actively relying on someone so vile for all this time... it's wrong. The entire order of this world is wrong..."

"It sure is," I sighed, feeling the weight of her words. "But it is still the world we're living in, mom... so yeah, we gotta just roll with the punches for now."

"Well said," my father said as he stood up from his seat. "Alright family, let's march."

As we prepared to leave, Aquarina continued speaking to me quietly about what had happened during the time I was gone.

"Ruby's father was healed and returned back to normal," said Aquarina. "Looks like Lolth did actually let him go in the end."

"I'm glad! How did that go through?" I wondered, relief washing over me. "So they just reconciled? That's about it?"

"Yep," Aquarina said with a small smile. "It's a little more complicated than that, but her father kind of opened his eyes after living through all of that awful shit. I mean, he turned into a monster and everything..."

"Hm," I nodded. "Well, I'll talk with her about what happened once we're there. But I'm happy that she's reconciled with her father. I don't really want to force her to come with us though, once the Academy begins and so on. So we could leave her behind if she really doesn't want to leave... right?"

"Um... I doubt she'll want to be left behind! But suuuure," Aquarina shrugged lightly. "And... well, the world's changing. In these two weeks, reports about intelligent monsters have begun spreading everywhere."

"I-Intelligent Monsters?!" I asked in disbelief, my eyes widening. "Ugh, so when he said he stole the formula for that, he wasn't lying?"

"We don't know yet for certain," my mother suddenly interrupted us. "But there are reports. The dungeons they emerge from are random, but the monsters are intelligent and work together in groups. The bosses are even stepping out of their chambers now... it's slow though, and still manageable for the moment. As intelligent as they can be, we have cultivated a large quantity of both soldiers, knights, and many adventurers and mercenaries over the years."

"Hmm..." I nodded, already making mental notes. "I'll have to investigate that myself in its due time then..."

"There's something else that happened," said my mother, her tone growing more serious. "When Dimenion died..."

"Ah yeah!" Aquarina said, jumping in. "When Dimenion died, his Divine Essence rained all over the planet..."

"D-Did that do something dangerous?!" I asked quickly, a spark of worry rising in my chest.

"Small changes have been detected," said my mother carefully. "Divine Essence is now flowing through the flora of some areas, and it has slowly begun to appear in wild beasts as well... of course, that's dangerous by itself. Some dangerous zones might start to appear, containing concentrated divine energy... monsters there might be several ranks stronger than they originally were because of that. But it's under control, for now."

I honestly didn't know what to think about the current situation.

I was worried as hell, but at the same time this was just too incredible to fully process.

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