Chapter 93 — Y4: A Well-Lit Box

Ah, there you are!  Are you ready for the movie?  Special production, straight from my cybernetic horns!

Great!  I’ve just managed to adjust the footage to manage a third person perspective, too.  Go on, sit down, I’ll get some popcorn ready~

Hm hm hm~  Here we go~

You’re really comfy, you know that?  Let me just -- get into a better -- there, that’s lovely.

Hm?  You’ve never minded before.  What’s wrong with wanting to sit on your lap?  I’m short!  You’re tall!  And this way we can both easily get the popcorn!

That doesn’t sound like a me problem.  If you need a break to jack off or whatever just let me know.

Oh, oh, also!  If I have things to say, I’ll pause the recording.

Ready?

Here we gooooo~!

Elizabeth looks startled, standing in a cubical room made of a sea-green metal.  A wooden chair is behind her, with a nice cushion.  There are no visible sources of light, and no visible shadows.  And in front of her is Argenta, Goddess of Alchemy.

She has a dry smile on her face, equal parts annoyed and relieved.  “Well.  It’s about time that worked.  We have some things to discuss.”

Elizabeth pauses for a long moment, her eyes darting around the empty room, before finally settling on the goddess with a weak smile.  “Ah -- we do?”

Argenta’s initial response is an impressively flat expression.  “Yes,”  She drawls out, letting the word linger in the air.  “We do.  And don’t play dumb, it doesn’t suit you.”

Silence fills the room.  Elizabeth clearly doesn’t know what to say, while Argenta remains silent, staring at her.

I, ah, I should note that Argenta?

Yeah she’s really bad at social stuff.

And I'm good at it.

She expected me to start babbling, and I admit I was scared, but…

…Well, why would I volunteer anything?

The silence remains for a solid two and a half minutes, before Argenta just slumps in her chair slightly, swearing under her breath.

“...Okay.  You.”  Elizabeth snaps to attention.  “Tell me why everybody is so interested in you.  Now.”

“Uh.”  Elizabeth gives Argenta an odd look.  Like she’s not sure what to say.  “...No?”

“...”  Argenta purses her lips, her eyes narrowing.  “...Yes.”

“...Noooo… no.  No.”  Elizabeth nods as she speaks, getting more confident.  “Why would I?”

“Because I am a goddess and I’m trying to save the world you imbecilic sex addict!”  Argenta snaps out, making Elizabeth flinch from the sound and motion she makes as she stands.

The goddess pauses for a moment, before she takes a deep breath and sits back down.  “...Apologies.  It’s been.  Frustrating.  For me.  I don’t exactly have a lot of options available to me, and this will burn what’s left of my influence amongst my peers, but I don’t have a choice.  So, again.”  She leans forward, eyes narrow.  “...Why are you at the center of everything?  What am I missing?”

At this point, I’d like to note that Argenta hadn’t actually used any simulation-time to try to manipulate me.  Which I was -- not expecting, to be frank.  Given how angry she was at the situation, and how badly she wanted to know, I was expecting her to pull out all the stops.  …Well, uh, actually -- here, let me just resume…

“...And if I don’t?”  The mortal cautiously floats out.

“Then I erase your memory of the encounter we’ve had so far, and I try again with more blatant manipulations,”  Argenta says, voice cold.  “And if that doesn’t work, then I erase your memory again and try drugging you.  I will continue escalating as necessary.”

“...”  Elizabeth stares at her for a few moments.  “...Would you torture me if it got that far?”

Argenta’s lack of a response is more telling than any word would be.

Elizabeth flinches slightly, at that.  “...Why are you starting with honesty?”

“Because I try to avoid crossing moral boundaries.”  Argenta’s teeth almost grind together in frustration.  “And when I do, I do so thoughtfully.  Aware of the damage that it will cause, how long the damage will last, and try to mitigate it.  If one wanted to get self-righteous and philosophical, the fact that I’ll be erasing any damage could be said to mean that the damage doesn’t matter.  But I’m not a moron, so I don’t.  I have you at my full mercy here; I know how to manipulate the time slot system so that we won’t be done until I get what I need.  The question isn’t if I’ll get what I want.  The question is how bad it will get until I do.”

“...”  Elizabeth bites her lip a bit, instinctively posing in a manner to show off her breasts.  “Can I have some time to think about it?”

At Argenta’s wave of her hand, she leans back, and does just that.

I’m going to fast forward here a bit.  There was a lot to think about, after all.

Now, I was pretty sure that whatever I told her?  She’d try to get out of me again, after erasing my mind.  She’d probably do so multiple times, in different ways, to ensure that she got accurate information, and not information that I made up in the moment.

But she was unaware of my latest augment.

It would take time to process saved memories, of course, but I could easily have it remind me to say ‘something’ when asked for the truth until I was freed from this situation.

So that’s what I did.

I made sure I wouldn’t mention Dignity.  I would mention Modesty, but downplay her importance.  And the only thing that I’d give away was my superlative knowledge of the Land Grab.

When asked how I had that knowledge -- I’d answer with ‘I don’t know’.  Nice, blank, and completely plausible as another goddess doing something without telling her.

It was enough to explain the interest the goddesses had in me, but, hopefully, not anything Argenta could use.

So, yes, I talked.

…With a side goal of getting her to talk more.

“...Alright.  I’ll tell you what I know, but… in exchange, can you answer a few of my questions?”

Argenta just raises an eyebrow at that, her disdain for the suggestion blatant in her closed off expression and stance.

“I mean…”  Elizabeth tasted the words as she said them, like trying out a new recipe at a bakery.  “...If you’re going to erase my memory anyway…”

“...Why do you care if you won’t remember anything?”  Argenta asks, her eyes narrowing slightly.  Leaning forward in worrying interest.

“...”  Elizabeth pauses for a moment and fidgets.  “...Because I’m really fucking curious, okay?!  This is an Atlantean alloy you have me trapped in!  Gods can’t manipulate this stuff!  How did you make this room?!  How did you bring me here?!  How are you here?!”

After some time to process the explanation, Argenta actually looks a bit pleased.  And a bit smug.

…More than a bit smug, as time goes on.

“Yes, this is impressive, isn’t it?”  Argenta says, leaning back in her chair with a confident expression on her face.  “Very well.  But only since you’ll forget when you’re gone.  Who do you think made Atlantean alloy impervious to the divine in the first place?”

Elizabeth stares at her, her face almost blank at the realization.  “...What?  No.”  Her face grows more shocked as it begins to sink in.  “No way!”

The giggle is a surprising sound from the goddess.  It’s not as -- tired, or threadbare as her voice usually is.  It’s delighted, it’s happy.

She grins.  “Yes!  Well.  Mostly, at least.  To be more precise, I taught one of the Atlanteans enough to do it themselves.  They were a clever girl… even managed to identify and work around the backdoor I intended to be in every scrap of the alloy…"  ”

It was like a switch had flipped at this point.  She just wouldn’t stop talking about it.

It was fascinating.  A combination of an arrogant kid glad to see their science fair project getting praised, and a neglected scientist with clear relief that their research hasn’t been ignored.

I’m pretty sure she’s wanted to brag about this for literally millenia.  And hey, if she wanted to talk, I’d happily be the one she talks to!

I like to think of it as ‘opportunistic diplomacy’.  'Flattery' is just, well, unflattering, you know?

Argenta preens, almost seeming to fluff up like a peacock.  “It was tricky, but you can work around it.  You can, instead of saying ‘teleport here’, say ‘teleport here, and I ensure that these coordinates are safe’.  That’s how I got you here, by the way.  The former will check the location, to make sure it’s safe for somebody to go -- and that’s when the command will normally fail.  But by ensuring it’s safe beforehand, it doesn’t bother to do so!  It just tries to move you to the correct location!  …That’s also why you might have fallen a bit when you arrived, it’s harder to do manual teleportation than automatic.  Of course, if you fail, you end up with something akin to a nuclear explosion, but I’m smarter than that.”

Elizabeth’s eyes lit up more and more as Argenta talks.  “That’s fascinating!  But then -- how did you make this room?  How did you get me here while you were in this room?!”

Argenta no longer ‘seemed’ to fluff up like a peacock.  Now, it was as if she was a peacock, a fine male specimen of bird, showing off his colors for all and sundry.  Showing that clearly, clearly, he is the best bird to mate with.

“Now that’s a fun one.  See, ‘Atlantean Alloy’ can not be touched, this is true.  Not without removing the little hack that my student put in, which would remove the entire point.  But the metals that the alloy is composed of, well.  Those can be messed with with ease.”

She smirks, almost lounging on her chair like it’s a throne.  “Simply create the metals and forcibly fuse them, and remove any interference the moment before it becomes a proper alloy.  In a similar manner, it’s easy to simply destroy things, so long as you say ‘destroy whatever is in this location’ instead of ‘destroy this item made of this material’.  I actually created a subroutine that lets me mess with Atlantean Alloy as easily as any other metal, using rapid destruction and creation instead of the normal process.  That combined with early safety confirmation for teleports, and I can do whatever I want.”

She purses her lips with a slight frown.  “The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to detect the alloy.  The remote observation functions run through the world shard, which means even trying to work around the limitations end up crashing.  And forget seeing what’s inside a container made of it.  I can’t even tell what’s outside this box.  We could have been found by now for all I know.

“I’d have to go inside the container myself, but that’s… risky.  I’d rather avoid exploding due to teleporting into space that’s already occupied, or accidentally destroying something valuable.  And as I said, once inside, I’m completely shut out from everything outside.”  Her eyes lit up again.  “Which actually brings me to how I brought you here!  See -”

I’m going to fast forward here again, because she just.  Does.  Not.  Stop!

Yes it’s clever to set up a festival game where the winner was almost certainly going to be me, with the prize being set up to use an early safety confirmation teleport upon being touched.

But I don’t need to -- okay, well, um, to be honest.

I was into it at the time, but there’s, ah, a lot here to cover.

So I’m skipping forward to when things got really interesting.

We talked a lot, after all.

After she shared with me details of how she got me in the box of alloy, I shared with her some of the details of why others were interested in me.

Namely, my unnatural knowledge.

Not that it came from a game -- I didn’t even share that I was from another world, though I’m pretty sure she at least suspected that -- but that I just… knew things about the world in general.

She interrogated me a lot after that, and I had to share more than I was comfortable with.

Nothing that would really impact things, but I didn’t like sharing how broad my knowledge was.  Argenta wasn’t -- uh, she usually wasn’t one for obvious moves, so I doubted she’d be able to use any of it.

Of course, I shared her this information while being kidnapped, so.

I even shared my plan of becoming a goddess with her, which she -- well, let me show you.

“Good.”  Argenta relaxes a bit, leaning into her chair.  “That’s -- that’s good.  You seem reasonable, unlike most of my peers, and we need as many as we can get to outvote our lord god.”

Elizabeth tilts her head at that, just a bit, scratching slightly at her neck as she visibly mules those words over.  “...What do you mean?  About the -- reasonable part, I mean.”

The goddess’s face turned sour.  “...Nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing…”  Elizabeth holds up her hands in surrender as Argenta glares at her.  “I’m just saying!  You can vent at me if you want!  I’m curious!”

Argenta’s glare deepens, and for a moment she looks to be truly angry… before she sighs and slumps in her chair.  “You know what?  Fine.  Fine.  At least somebody will listen to me.  And we do have the time… fine.  Okay.  So, there I was, bright-eyed and eager new goddess to the worst boss imaginable, and it turns out my job was to ensure that girls wearing glasses were attractive.  This was not a great start.  At least I had some allies in…”

She went on… for a long while, so I’m going to fast forward a bunch and only show the most important bits.  You can watch the whole thing later if you really want to.

“So there we were.  The five of us, the five goddesses, ready to execute my plan.  The massive loophole in the foundations of this reality that our lord god failed to even notice remained untouched… until I touched it.

“All of us were suddenly frozen, unable to move, because one of us was a traitor.”

“...Of course, look at it from the outside.  I was the only one skilled enough to execute the final step.  I was the one that knew all of the essential details.  And when I touched it was when our lord god’s trap went off.

“And to top it all off, after that, I was put in charge of alchemy itself!  One of the most important and broad features of this world!

“Oh they didn’t say anything.  Not to my face.  But they suspected me.  That’s when it started to go downhill.”

“And this second wave of goddesses?  The ones that Modesty came in with?  They were.  All.  Morons!  They didn’t even seem to care that the foundations of the world were as solid as wet sand, they would rather the people have nice lives as their very world around them crumbles!

“And they refused to listen to me!  I told them! I told Modesty herself!

“Do not, under no circumstances are you to ever underestimate the depravity of our lord god!

“Oh they knew he was an ass, alright.  They knew he was an abuser, and a rapist, and an ignorant buffoon.  They knew enough to hate him.  Hate him to the depths of their souls.

“But they didn’t know enough to fear him, and they only learned that when it was too late.

“And they still don’t listen to me!”

“When I do bad things, I at least try to limit the damage that happens because of them.  I don’t have many options, but I at least try!  But Modesty and her friends?

“They don’t care so long as things seem like they’re a better option.

“Like that moronic crusade of hers.  Do you know how much economic damage and suffering that put the other continent through?  Armies are not cheap, and they do not produce money!  Not unless you have them pillage but even then it’s not what I would call a ‘smart idea’.

“Oh it was obvious she was looking for something, that much was clear.  Probably a divine shard.  But there were better ways to go about it!  Make assassin cults or something.  That's what I've been doing!  Have them look for the divine shard, get it, grab it, then burn them.  Not perfect, no, and yes, cultists like that always want something vile.  But it's still less damage than a fucking crusader army!”

“Oh I’d be fine with working with Modesty.  So long as she accepts that I should be in charge.

“That fucking Fratlord is a moron, but at least he’s controllable.  There are ways to mitigate the damage he inflicts on us and the world at large.  He’s predictable.

“But if Modesty was in charge, sure, she’d probably make things seem better… but I doubt that reality would last even two centuries under her rule.

“Besides.

“She doesn’t deserve it.

“I have worked the hardest, I have worked the longest, and I have done the most out of every goddess to keep this reality from crumbling into the void!  I have done so without complaint and without help, working for countless years to ensure that what errors show up are dealt with or at minimum contained for later!

“If there is any of us that deserves the throne, it is me.”