NOTE: I added Images of more characters.
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MChapter 52
10/6 13:09 (Autumn, Night, Midrar)
The changes were immediately visible to be mostly in the way that informations were shared with the Beings by the System, showing Luna her own Vital Mana Quantity, her own Vital Mana Quality, her Control over it and her natural Recovery; additionally it showed her Affinities, in her case only her No-Attribute Affinity, and her Resistances to both Damage and Status Alterations, things that before she, as well as mostly everyone else, needed to guess at.
This alone would not be worth of much attention however the newest Rules changed other very relevant things.
First of all, the presence of both the Essence Points, or EP for short, and Existence Value, or EV being similarly shortened, raffigurating one the stability of the owner's Soul, body and mind while the other represented the Floor the owner operated at, their natural state it could be said.
Second relevant change, Skills no longer could store Magicules and Skill influenced by their Grade now were influenced instead by their owner's Grade while, as Luna tested by swinging her left arm at empty air, their Grades alone influenced now their power even if at a much greater magnitude then before, a way that actually helped out naturally weaker Beings more than anyone else.
The third and most promising major change was the new type of Skill presented on everyone's page, the Title Skills that Luna had as an empty list, at least for right now.
And about this list, someone unexpectedly spoke up.
"I have a title!" Sabel exclaimed in surprise, surprise that grew when, betraying her expectation, none of her Mates had one too, being greatly surprised when all three of them looked at her in curiosity.
"Am I the only one?" She asked hesitantly at the three pair of eyes stuck on her only to recieve an affirmative feeling throught their Bonds from all three of them, despite the three being much more Unique Beings than herself, a simple Human with the only anomaly being an inherited Innate Skill "Status Effect Resistance", yet of the four she was the only one that had a Title.
"Don't keep us in sospense, what do the Titles do?" Amber moved towards her and poking her chest in curiosity again and again, pushing her to answer and satisfy their inquisitiveness immediately.
"I have the Title Skill "Adventurer", it doesn't have a Rank and increase my Essence and Existence by 1%." She finally answered, pulling herself together despite the repeated pokes near a very distracting place in her body.
Luna, seeing her reaction, smiled amusedly before moving to the red faced black haired one's back, embracing her from behind and kissing her Mate on the neck once, enjoying the chaos she was able to cause in her little Human's mind with so lacking of an effort before commenting her thoughts.
"The goal of this Rule Change probably was the addition of the Titles themselves. However it would not make sense if the only Title is a single one, one that increases Essence and Existence alone and only by 1% at that."
"I am at C-Rank, a Phoenix and a demi-Demon so we can probably assume that there is no title directly reguarding someone's Race or Rank." Amber commented, excluding some possibilities, maybe hurriedly but with an high value of certainty in her opinion.
"None of us are nobility, so we don't know if that matters and with a single example of Titles we have no idea behind the criteria of the acquisition of Titles." Mafel affirmed before continuing. "I have no Title derived by my profession as a Medium nor my past as a Dungeon Boss but I believe that actual Dungeon Bosses, or at least the final Boss of a Dungeon, will have one."
"The next thing to figure out is the Being responsible for the change in the Rules. The previous change was accelerated by the presence of a Lunarian, even if the Moon does not consider me such yet, on Gaea itself but would have happened by the next Red Moon." Luna expanded. "But the second happened because someone took advantage of the temporary instability after the recent one to enforce a new one."
"Changing the Rules is an issue derived by both power and knowledge." Amber expressed what all three of them knew very well before continuing. "We can safely exclude anyone that isn't in the Top 50 as the massive amount of Energy needing to be Channeled for this phenomena would instantly kill everyone lower in power and at least the bottom half of the weakest ten of them. We can also exclude the Top 5 as while they have the power and the knowledge, certaintly, to do that, they wouldn't bother."
"Number 10 is still in their Sealed Sleep and none of the Vampires currently active knew anything about the incoming change, however a couple of Vampires -" And here Luna considered, as did every single Ancestor, Dhampirs to be Vampires. "- in various Guilds, those both high in Rank and trusted greatly by the higher ups, were advised to be free around now. So I suppose Number 9 is either involved or at least aware that something would happen."
"Mother is stated to reach A-Rank before the next Red Moon and mom is quite powerfull, a Lust Demon and an expert when it comes to make someone speak their secrets; the two of them would have told me at least something if either of the two knew anything about it at all and it would be hard for them to not know something so important."
"Maybe they did know something but they didn't know it would be important. After all this is the first time the Rules were directly changed by a Person instead of by the World and I don't believe it would be easy to narrow the possibilities to, well, what happened in specific." Luna affirmed.
"In that case our primary suspect would be the Grandmaster, correct?" Mafel asked rhetorically before concentrating fully on said Guild Grandmaster, searching through this World's Records for their intent on altering the Rules or any strange movements recently, moving to their bed and being embraced by Sabel, already waiting there from the very beginning of their conversation.
The Human, well accustomed by this point to the mental stress such an in depth search without a relevant Anchor would cause the Elf, started to caress her hair all the while humming a calming song to help her out.
The World slowly faded away, the former Boss Monster's mind falling down, deeper and deeper, the voices of her Mates being muffled ever more as what felt like water fell down upon her, first in dripplets then in intense rain that seemed to drive her down, down to the ground and even further down as the rain became a waterfall trying to drown her under the weight of this World's knowledge.
This was only natural, a Medium normally had an Anchor, that is something belonging to the deceased Person that they are planning on Calling upon, and a Being that is close to said dead to tune the Medium to recieve only the memories relevant to the Being's questions and safeguarding the Medium from the phenomena she was experiencing right now, being buried under the weight of the World followed soon after by her Soul being drowned in what was colloquially called the Sea of Souls, in what was in some places and time a form of ritual suicide.
The pressure increased ever more as the waterfall became first a lake, a sea and then finally in a vast ocean that pushed her down, deeper and deeper, in the cold abyss that was its depth, her senses useless by this point as the massive amount of water drowned everything else out under its enormous weight.
Not that the Elf's senses worked at all as she was no longer in the material World but as a Soul alone and the only reason why she was able to understand the situation around her as she could was because of her Innate Skill "Soul Gaze" ereditated by her Specter-Self but this would not matter as it merely meant that she would die being able to observe the reason.
Data inondated everything and by sheer quantity alone, even without any hostile intent present at all, threatened to make her Soul forget the direction of her body and mind, trapping the Medium's Soul within it forever and slowly proceding to dissolve and add her to the Sea of Souls itself well beyond Luna's capacity to rescue.
Fortunately, however, she had no need to worry as demonstrated by how, even or more precisely because she was a Soul alone, Luna's Mark shone brilliantly in all colours in the same place as on her body, iridescent stars that she could see high in the sky that she alone could see beyond the "surface" of this Sea even with the distance between them, marking the way back to her body.
The Spectral Elf turned away from her Mate's directions, looking towards the depth and "swimming" deeper.
She focused her eyes on the waves of informations, trying to narrow down the waves of data around the period of the last three months, seeking any informations about the Guild Grandmaster.
An immense amount of information fell upon her, overwhelming her processing in an instant and slowing down her analysis to a crawl, the process starting in the same way that the World recognize information, strictly cronologically and starting instead from the newest informations to the oldest belonging to every individual at once.
Despite the challenge, however, Mafel did not hesitate in starting to analyze the flood of information, her Skill "Soul Gaze" rappresented by her eyes, closed off and opened again a couple of minutes later, trying to adapt to the equivalent of being repeatedly forced to look towards the Sun in a process that actually disrupted her analysis.
However, around one hour later, her "Soul Gaze" Skill sharpened enough for her to deal with the light while she became more effective at dealing with the massive amount of knowledge trying to overwhelm her, allowing her to start searching for her target.
The Spectral Elf groaned, her eyes closing as despite her being stronger than before, she only had an increase tollerance to the light, tollerance that had its firm limits as she was right now experiencing a period of intense pain, pain that wrecked her Soul, making her tremble.
All the same once the pain receded, she immediately returned to analyze the data as much as she could in as long as possible in a cycle of analysis, pain, recovery and analysis again.
Time passed monotonously as her attention started to drift even against her will and her continuous tentative of refocusing, a droning sound reaching her ears, a call, a call that grew progressively fiercer and more insistent, dragging her attention away from the mass of data, a violent challenge and promise at once.
"What is…?" She asked, before widening her eyes in alarm as she felt herself being grabbed and forcefully dragged away from the depth and to the surface despite her efforts.
There she saw the three stars rappresenting her Mates, vibrating just a step above the surface, releasing that keening sound and bringing her back to beyond the surface.
Mafel opened her eyes immediately, her eyes meeting Luna's red ones before her lips were pulled in a soaring brief kiss before she looked around herself, noting how both Amber and Sabel were holding her by either side with Luna laying on her, all three of her Mates' Aura surrounding the four of them and Luna's Marks shone on their bodies.
"Next time, you at least tell me you are going something I can't bring you back from." Luna commanded, her eyes narrowed before kissing her again.