{ Lord Momonga, we have a situation that requires your attention. } Souei suddenly reported - nearly startling the undead skeleton despite his constantly suppressed emotions.
{ What happened? }
{ I just retrieved a group of… what seems to be monsters captured by the Free Guild. They were apprehended in three separate human nations near Ruberios for petty crimes such as theft and disturbing the peace. Initially, they were assumed to be from Tempest thanks to their unusual appearances. However, according to their testimony, they were released from their confinement by Luminous and teleported to the locations where they were found. } the kijin explained, his tone measured.
Momonga tapped a finger against the armrest of his office chair. { I see. Are they hostile? } he questioned. 'So, she sent monsters to cause trouble. Luminous' methods are growing more desperate by the day.'
{ No, they have been cooperative thus far, especially after I provided them with food. } Souei assured.
Deciding it would be best to get some answers directly, Momonga teleported to the detention center, with Rubedo mirroring his actions. The facility was bustling with minor offenders, but only a select few needed to be interrogated by inquisitors or sent to prison. Even fewer warranted his personal attention, but the group before him certainly did.
The detained monsters and demihumans were an odd bunch, to say the least, and he could understand why they had been accused of what they had been. Among them was a dwarf, an amalgamation of stone, metal, and flesh, a messy combination of crude magitech welded into life itself. There also appeared to be an elven woman who was oozing black liquid from her eyes. That by itself wouldn't have been too strange, except when one observed that she had dozens of eyes embedded throughout her body, constantly flooding the area near her with the stuff. The wolf lycanthrope beside her had abnormally large spikes growing erratically all over him, while the fox lycanthrope displayed three tails of various sizes and an extra pair of slender, oddly angled arms.
Momonga felt as if he was experiencing a moment of deja vu. '...Haven't I seen this before recently?'
"You stand before the Supreme Overlord of the Tempest Hegemony. Show proper respect," Souei commanded the bizarre assembly.
The fox lycanthrope tilted her head, her multiple tails swaying, "How should we do that?"
"We don't know what any of it means," the dwarf added, his voice a mix of confusion and defiance.
Predictably, the guards were raring to beat the captives into a pulp for the perceived offense and started reaching for them, but a simple gesture from Momonga halted them.
"I will let you explain yourselves," he declared with utmost authority. "Worry not about maintaining decorum, your information will determine how we proceed."
Sensing the imminent danger, the wolf lycanthrope crouched down defensively, covering his head with his arms. "W-we have not been taught anything," he whimpered. "Since our creation, we have been kept in cages. F-forgive us."
"Who created you? Was it Luminous?" Momonga inquired.
The male elf chimed in, "No, she was created by the same man, the same person. Unlike her, we were deemed failures, unfit for future experimentation or continuation of who we were created as," he explained, eyes darting away the moment he was done. Momonga couldn't help but notice the constant motion of the elf's hands, picking at the invisible threads on his skin.
'They are ancient,' he thought, a flicker of intrigue passing through his non-existent brain. 'Could it be that they were kept imprisoned all this time and Luminous just released them, seeing them as nothing more than failed experiments to cause trouble for us?'
The room was silent, save for the elf's incessant twitching. Momonga considered the creatures before him - not his responsibility, yet abandoning them could provide political ammunition for his enemies. 'I doubt any of them will be of much use. I could give them to Demiurge to figure out how their creator failed, and then that information could be used for our ends.'
There was no clear answer as to what to do with the group. However, deep down, he felt that he could somewhat sympathize with them, being a heteromorphic undead himself, 'Perhaps they could be used to publicly smear Luminous. But what would be the point in that now? Hmm… Ramiris should know more about them. She's at least as old as Luminous.'
The pixie, after receiving an explanation of the situation, materialized beside him and shook her head solemnly, "I never knew Twilight had any failed experiments and that they were kept imprisoned for this long. Boss, what do you plan to do with them?"
Momonga remained quiet for a moment, weighing his options as the flames in his eyesockets burnt brighter. "I'm not sure. They aren't exactly Tempest's responsibility," he finally replied.
"Oh! How about Pandora and I take them in and work on fixing them? It could be useful for further medical research?" Ramiris suggested, her eyes sparkling with a mix of determination and compassion. "Once we figure out what's wrong with them, we can help them out, and they seem more than amicable so long as they're treated decently."
"I see no reason not to give them to you. But if you allow them into the public, teach them the basics, for their own sake."
"Got it, boss," Ramiris saluted. She then turned her attention back to the group. "Is there anyone unaccounted for?"
"Only one. The summoned beast," The female elf whispered, and Momonga would never have heard her without his sharpened senses.
"Summoned beast?" he immediately questioned, slightly concerned at the chosen terminology. It brought his thoughts to world-level enemies, who could pose a great threat even with all the growth he and Nazarick had experienced over the past few years.
The fox lycanthrope spoke up timidly, "Before us all, there was the beast the creator summoned. She was different from us; she had a name. Luminous was afraid of her, and Twilight was the only one not scared of her. Made the beast sign a paper not to go back to her lands. She is the one who freed us before we were suddenly brought elsewhere."
"Do you remember any other details?" Momonga pressed, discerning the gravity of the situation.
"Brown skin, sharp teeth. Smart. She rarely spoke to us. We were lesser than her. She wanted to eat us," The lycanthrope continued, frowning as she did so.
"Hmm, that doesn't sound good," Momonga stroked his chin, deep in thought. "Souei, be on the lookout for her. The last thing we need is a monster attack pinned on us." 'I'll tell Demiurge to spread a warning about a monster the church has released.'
"As you command, Lord Momonga. We will find this beast," Souei bowed after receiving the order.
Ramiris sighed, a complex blend of emotions crossing her face. "Luminous surely was hiding some dark secrets."
She and the ancient vampire weren't exactly friends, but Luminous was never a particularly cruel or malicious person from her perspective. Why Luminous would treat the poor souls left behind by Twilight Valentine in such a careless manner was beyond her understanding, even though Ramiris knew that Demon Lords were capable of great cruelty.
More importantly, there was another revelation she had to think about now. 'It wasn't Lord Veldanava who taught Twilight how to create mortal races. He must've found the source of this knowledge from the beast he supposedly summoned.'
This would need to be pondered and investigated. It could hold huge ramifications for how life came into being and, by extension, could offer information on how to fix herself. With a newfound sense of urgency, Ramiris teleported the trio of demihumans with her to her labyrinth, her mind racing with the possibilities of what this could mean for her own existence.
Figuring out how old the NPCs were supposed to be took some time, but in the end, Momonga, Pero, and Buku managed to pin down both the ages and birthdays of everyone after a few hours of discussion and laughter. It was unanimously agreed to assign them birthdays according to the date they were activated as NPCs and give them their ages according to YGGDRASIL lore, their custom settings, and their approximate physical and mental age.
By this new standard, Aura and Mare were both twelve with their thirteenth birthday just a week away. Shalltear, now twenty, had somehow accelerated her growth - presumably by utilizing the same growth spell as Ramiris - a mystery that had left the Players bemused. Maturing past the mid-teenage years so subtly was a feat that left him shocked. Pero had chuckled at that, declaring that she just wanted to be a hundred percent legal as fast as possible for Momonga, to which the skeletal mage could only groan and move on.
Albedo was decided to be twenty-six and Demiurge twenty-seven, primarily due to physical reasons since their extremely high intellect suggests something much different. The rest of the floor guardians presented their own unique challenges. There was no point trying to assess the age of Gargantua beyond his birthday, but he was deemed to be seven, the same as Victim, due to his young mental age. Cocytus was declared to be one hundred and five according to the lore of his species, mostly because there was no equivalent in the current world to compare him to - unlike the elven twins who now aged at the same rate as humans and elves till their adulthood.
Sebas was now thought to be sixty-four and Pandora around twenty-five. The Pleiades ranged from seventeen to twenty-nine, with Aureole and Yuri being the youngest and oldest respectively. The Homunculus maids ranged from fifteen to twenty-two, as none stood out to be much more mature than the rest and their ages were mostly aligned by how old they appeared.
With the majority of Nazarick's natives reviewing clearly defined dates of birth, celebrations were bound to be a common occurrence, especially when Momonga announced that everyone would get a day off on their birthday - although there were a few mutterings of dismay from the denizens, typical of their workaholic nature.
During the first week of this declaration by players, there were a few celebrations here and there, but the main event was the upcoming thirteenth birthday of Aura and Mare, both of whom had agreed to their newly calculated age.
It came to no one's surprise that Buku went completely overboard with preparations and Pero was more than happy to assist her. Both still remembered how uneventful their own birthday celebrations were while growing up, at best getting a trip to a fast food joint with a few friends and getting a small token cake, which usually was comically tiny and tasteless compared to the ones they saw from the old TV shows. They would certainly bring what they couldn't have to their legacy, and lack of resources wasn't holding them back like their parents had.
Momonga wisely decided to let them go wild, knowing how much it meant for them even if the celebration vicariously lived through their children. He had long since abandoned his own birthday celebrations, brought on by the doom of the 22nd century of his past world. Despite that, he understood the joy Albedo and the rest of his consorts brought, playfully suggesting to turn his birthday into a national holiday. As others also chimed in to include their desire for such a thing to happen, he couldn't help but feel a warmth that had nothing to do with the glow of candles on a cake.
Editing by aidan_lo and Zprotu.
Proofreading by Sluethen, Malguis, aidan_lo, Thea, Cakeeight, NuggetLover, and Zprotu.
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