Kaori had heard the title of the mysterious old one being used once or twice but she never quite picked up on the conversations that it was being used in. To be fair though, she wasn’t being nosey and prying into other people’s conversations. To do that would be incredibly rude.
Another thing to keep in mind would be the wide array of odd titles she’d been privy to since coming here. God of the hunt, The lustrous wonderment, Great wrath, Mysterious old one, and many more. The application of titles didn’t seem to mean as much when actual deities were being discussed but having context in which to put the name, Kaori was very intrigued!
The next half hour was spent discussing Earth and how it differed from every other world. Kaori was surprised to find that many gods had been to Earth to see what the Mysterious old one was doing with only a single world. Descartes noticed that she thought the statement odd and explained that there were legends about the number of worlds that the old ones administrated over.
There were also legends that say that the old ones were the ones that created the universe and that they were the ones that set up the world creation system. Descartes also threw out that the old ones never confirmed nor denied any of the things said about them. He told Kaori, Pedri, and the small crowd that had gathered around them about how the old ones had mostly all left the bounds of the universe and that the places they went couldn’t be reached by any means that the gods left had ever devised. However, all of that was billions of years ago, long before most of the current deities were around.
Kaori for her part was very bemused. However, she quickly made up her mind and acted upon an idea that she had been putting together. Bringing up her PDI she looked over a schedule that she had gleaned from the Internet and a mischievous grin spread across her features. “Descartes, how would you like to join me for a little trip?”
Over the next hour and a half Descartes, the excitable dragon goddess, and a small group of her own hard-working team as well as her daughter all secluded themselves in her apartment. After a lot of laughter and many very confused outbursts, the entire procession left her apartment in a number of regalia that most teenagers and Otaku would very much recognize. Having scoured all of her most recent purchases from her favorite manga store. A few of her retinue had to be outfitted in costumes from the pages of dojinshi but most of the group were able to find a suitable look in the pages of mainstream manga.
Kaori made sure that everyone was equipped with a polyglot skill and then opened a door that most of them had never been through. Descartes was exceedingly curious but having some notion of what Kaori had in mind he kept his thoughts to himself and simply watched on with a wry smile. A few moments later his suspicions were confirmed when Kaori opened one of the doors along the back wall of her realm onto a back alley of a busy street. Even though he had never been to the place he was quite certain of where she had taken them.
As the group made their way out of the back alley, they were greeted by the sight of large crowds bustling in and out of a very plain-looking building of mostly dull concrete with a few decorative fountains around the lower courtyard area. All of the parking area around the building had been cordoned off and there were now pavilions and temporary stalls set up in that area and some even inside the lobby area of the mundane-looking building.
Everyone quickly came to realize that the costumes they had been rushed into creating let them seamlessly blend into the crowd. As they walked amongst the busy pathways leading between stalls and set up pavilions, all of which brightly proclaimed ownership by varying manga and game companies, they began to see the utility of their costumes as they recognized and were recognized in kind.
After a couple of hours of mingling, buying, chatting, and a few impromptu photo shoots, everyone was ready to make an exit from the bustling crowd at the comic con. Kaori walked her group across the street to the rather plain-looking building which she explained was the hotel that was hosting the event. Everyone was a little curious about why they were heading for a hotel and she explained that most hotels in Japan had excellent restaurants and those that were hosting an event such as this were used to seeing the people in their restaurants dressed for the event. She proudly proclaimed it’s so we blend in!
Once her group of twelve were seated and the waitress had put in an appearance to get their drink orders, Kaori got down to business. “I thought that it might be interesting for everyone to see the world I came from and perhaps the reason why I have some of the ideas that I do about the way I want to run my world. I hope you can all see at this point that I’m not nearly as clever as you give me credit for. Most of my ideas are recycled from my home world. I’m not saying that it’s not a lot of work to translate the ideas from Earth technology into deific or magical technology but you should at least know that most of my ideas aren’t original. I must apologize if anyone thought that all of the ideas were mine alone.”
After Kaori stood and bowed low to the group, Descartes waved her back to her seat. “Oh, none of that. I’ve long known that you weren’t working from creativity alone but you bring much more than simply ideas to your posting. You can’t claim that it was because of your life on Earth that you thought to employ the cast-off ghosts in the various purgatories or that your handling of your employees is simply the product of your past career. I am well aware of the kind of person you are and I offered you the position because I saw potential, potential that you have exceeded at every turn.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Pedri chuckled a bit and lifted the veil of her costume taken from a story about a doctor who treated monsters. “I was very impressed with her before but Mally, you didn’t tell me she was this precious. She just makes me want to snatch her up and keep her in my hoard! She’s more precious than any gems or treasures I have there!”
“Dear, what Descartes says is true. I brought many talents to my job and for many years I thought that made me a superior goddess. It wasn’t until I began looking at the talents of those around me that I was able to grow and learn to be a better goddess. What took me centuries, you have done in a handful of years. You have much more to be proud of than simply the systems that you have developed based off of things you already knew from your past experiences. Take that to heart and grow strong.”
Kaori was blushing a dark crimson by the end of Pedri’s little pep-talk and the snickering of her daughter and underlings wasn’t helping her control her embarrassment one bit. “S-speaking of systems, I had one I wanted to talk to you about.”
Descartes cut her off with a slightly raised hand and a warm smile which had been modified by illusion magic to look like his teeth were fake. “Before that, I have something I need to speak to you about. There is a senior deity coming to inspect your realm soon. It’s nothing much to be worried about, just a routine inspection. I just wanted to let you know ahead of time. You should probably… Actually, just be yourself. You can dazzle and impress the inspector if you like or you can ignore them entirely. For their purposes, I doubt it will matter much.”
“Also, I wanted to be introduced to your daughter that you told me about! We can talk about your latest creation after that.”
At the mention of her daughter, it was like a switch had been flipped and Kaori was positively beaming. “I would be delighted! Let me introduce Aiko, my daughter.”
Kaori walked around the table and stood behind the seat of the fluffy young girl who had accompanied the group. Descartes was a bit confused because he had seen that this girl’s original appearance before magic manipulation was extremely short and he couldn’t see how she had any of Kaori’s traits. The girl in question seemed quite flustered and after peeking back at her mother for support, seemed to come to some kind of conclusion, whereupon she bowed deeply before introducing herself. “M-my name is Aiko. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance!”
Everyone was interrupted by the return of the waitress with their drinks. Kaori took the liberty of ordering lunch for everyone and then launched into her narrative of her time leading up to and on Islandia. They were interrupted a bit later by the arrival of their meals but Kaori continued after the waitress was done. Everyone seemed a little bemused by the dishes laid before them but Kaori’s explanations and assurances won them over.
Kaori had ordered the appetizer platter with tsukune, hiyayakko, yakitori, Yaki Onigiri, and edamame. The assortment of finger foods made it easier to share with the curious deities and also to take and finish bites between recounting her and Aiko’s story. “That’s when I found a flaw in my carefully curated world of challenges. The Drake was too difficult a challenge for the area that our group had made it to.”
“Aiko used her talents to their fullest. All of our party did exceptionally well but the stupid lizard was just too much. In the end, it ended up costing Aiko her life and broke the will of the party pretty badly. After that, I brought Aiko to the divine realm and separated from her.”
“And there I was, left with a predicament. I could have absorbed my precious Aiko back into my own consciousness but that didn’t appeal to me as much as keeping her a separate person. In the end, I decided that I wanted her as my daughter and brought both her and Brass to my divine realm as demigods. I’ve been teaching them how to be good deities and I figure that I will apprentice them to one of the longtime deities.”
Pedri rocketed to her feet. “Kaori dear, Would you be amenable to letting me mentor your daughter? Also, if you don’t mind, could I set a gateway door from your divine realm to my own? If I were to tutor the children it would be a good idea to have an easy way back and forth but if I’m being honest, I would just love to come visit you more often.”
Kaori was slightly taken off guard by the proclamation of the senior goddess and realized it must have been showing on her face. After schooling her features, she thought it through for a moment before replying. “I would be honored to have your wise counsel and more so to have your tutelage for my dear Aiko and Brass.”
“That still leaves the issue of my system. I designed it so the residents of my world would have a visual confirmation of their path through life. It is set up so it will display the magic, skills, career choices, and special talents such as proficiencies with various weapon arts of the person as well as how to reach the next level in most of those things.”
“We still have a lot of careers and weapon paths as well as me needing to buy a lot more skills and such to put into it. I figure it will always be a bit of a work in progress and may need constant updates but what do you suppose my system would sell for in the Deific catalog?”
Kaori had been looking at the last few morsels left on her plate as she spoke. Finally deciding on the last Yaki Onigiri, Kaori popped the delightfully crunchy grilled rice ball into her mouth and covered it with a napkin while chewing. After a second of looking at the rest of her meal, a resounding quiet registered and she looked up.
Descartes and Pedri were both staring at her like she had grown a second head while the lesser deities that she had brought with her all had knowing smiles and grins plastered on their faces.
Descartes finally seemed to get his voice back. “Oh, is that AAAAAALL your new system does? Dear gods and goddesses above me! You certainly know how to make my life more interesting don’t you?”