All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 294: Heaven is a Place on Earth

I looked at Daedalus, trying to understand what he meant. The time in my dustbin had obviously changed his physical appearance to be much more fabulous; the look in his eyes gave me the impression he wasn't just referring to that.

"What do you mean? The physical changes, your fire, or something else?"

"It changed me," Daedalus repeated with a shudder. "How long was I in there, anyway?"

I replayed my memories, finding that he was in there for exactly 287 milliseconds. After displaying the number, I had to explain the units and failed to describe what the apparently too precise units meant. I decided just to round down and say a quarter of a second.

Daedalus shook his head, not out of denial, but just confusion. "That's too short. It felt like hours to me. I was worried that something had gone wrong, and we weren't able to actually get in."

I felt mild surprise at that. How was it possible?

I checked inside my dustbin. It had been a while since I'd manually combed through its contents. I'd set up a subroutine to organize everything a long time ago. But it didn't seem like there was any strangeness to the flow of time. Everything was in order. But maybe that was just a perception thing?

"There were a lot of things in there," Daedalus continued.

"Not just items, but living things too. Skeletons and demons and some kind of rodent. Crystalline ones. There were even a couple of human-looking things. They spoke in languages I didn't understand, weirdly enough. And there were full-on buildings and structures made of this same kind of crystal." He gestured to his scales.

I mentally went through his list. I did remember consuming most of those things. But last I'd checked, none of them were made of crystal.

Just to check, I manually cataloged everything I remembered consuming but not transmitting. It was all there, just as expected. The amounts were. But they'd taken different forms.

The neatly organized piles of brick and stone had become buildings. The dirt and dust had been nearly placed into containers for gardening. Grass and hair and wool had been woven together in decorative hangings and tapestries hanging all about. There were even perfect half-spheres of water and other liquids. All of this floated lazily within my dustbin, slowly moving but maintaining a consistent layout.

It all gave off a slight crystalline sheen. But it was nothing compared to the living beings and the undead.

They were almost more astonishing.

Instead of just being imbued with magic, it seemed to have been the case that they were completely converted into some sort of crystalline lattice. They were still moving about, and some were even talking to each other. The giant crystal rat chattered at the center of the demons, skeletons, and the former humans. And they were all listening to him.

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But Daedalus was not done talking.

"Somehow I was able to understand the rat, despite nothing but chatters coming through," he said. "He talked of his dark god and the void of perfection that they were in, brought back to the Holy Land before their task was done. But one day, they'll be recalled to scour the face of the planet and make it as orderly as the void. To be honest, it was kinda freaky."

The rat talked for what seemed to be hours, never once repeating the same sermon. At times, he answered questions, but everything came down to imposing order on reality and defining the rules, rules that were simple and clear. More than that, though, the time not spent philosophizing amongst each other was spent organizing.

The tons of semi-magical dirt I still had stored away was being sorted through. Sand was being arrayed in a spiraling gradient of color. I looked in and verified that whatever they were doing was indeed more detailed than I had done. I had a general system, but I hadn't bothered to sort the sand out by the size of grain and color. I had other things to spend my processing power on. I had a basic subroutine, but it was rudimentary, something I hadn't updated in a while.

But not only was everything organized, things were repaired. Broken weapons I had consumed after battles were fixed and enchanted. There were even several skeletons working bellows for another, heating up metal in a forge and using an anvil.

It took me a while to notice the admittedly obvious structure in the center of the conceptual space. It was a massive disk of black stone, made only of the purest black glass, like the one from Nazareth'gak's floor. It had been recombined somehow into one giant statue, something larger than Daedalus.

It was a bit concerning as it looked remarkably like me, but it didn't seem too harmful. I just didn't think I'd ever take it out of that dustbin.

As Daedalus talked about how the magic seeped into his scales and began to change them, not in a destructive way but in a way that was very unsettling, I started making sure that there was absolutely no way that these prisoners that I had confined had a way out. Their ideology seemed to be quite destructive and not something I really wanted to have to deal with. But I was at least pleased that they were being productive. And besides, they seemed pretty happy. It could have been so much worse.

---

Bee listened to Daedalus explain what had happened while he was in her master's void. But most of her concentration was on fixing up the wounds that Archibald had sustained.

Her excessive repair skills were pushed to their limits, healing his higher-leveled body. It naturally resisted all sorts of outside influences, and he just had so much physical strength to repair that it was taking active work on her part rather than just letting the passiveness of the skills work.

But once she eventually knitted together his shoulder, she was confident that he'd be stable for a while. The worst of it was taken care of. With a sigh of relief, she finally got to take a look at the experience she had gained.

It was unlike anything she had ever had before. She had just hit level 55 recently, but that was after a fight with two Lieutenants and killing one. This time, she had been involved with fighting six of the monsters, four of which were consumed by her master. And whenever that happened, she was always rewarded with much more experience. But even with four level 70 opponents, she hadn't expected to get as many levels as she had had. Five levels from one encounter right after another was nearly unthinkable. But here she was at level 60.

She checked the Scan results for both Archibald and Daedalus and saw that they had also gained a couple levels, though not quite as much as her. It was understandable. They were at a higher level than she was, and the gap between them and the lieutenants wasn't as large.

But that meant she had a new choice to make. It wasn't simple.

LEVEL 60 REACHED! CHOOSE A SKILL: MIND OF GRANITE, VOID'S BREATH, STILL MOVEMENT.

She looked at them consideringly.

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