The Protagonist System

294 Friends And Enemies

Ryuu gave me an odd look and I laughed as I handed her a sandwich and a water bottle. As she ate, I gave her a verbal primer about magic, and how versatile it was, then I taught her the simple switching spell using my nearly empty water bottle and her nearly full one. She cast it on the first try and looked shocked that it had worked.

“I'll let that lesson sink in while Aiz teaches you Dash like she promised.” I said.

Ryuu nodded and was shown the skill, then shown it in slow motion, and then told how to perform it when she needed it. Again, she was shocked when she achieved it after only a single lesson. “H-h-how? How can you teach so well?”

“It's a gift.” I said and Aiz nodded. It was also a part of the party system and one of the options to share skills and knowledge easily.

I started a lesson on transfiguration magic and Ryuu was stunned that it was so easy to change similar things into other similar things. Clothes to clothes? It was child's play and you were only limited by your imagination. It was when you tried to change things into different states of matter that you started running into problems and needed more theory and background information.

“This is great and all; but, we need to get to work.” Tsubaki said and stood as she handed the sandwich wrapper and empty water bottle to me. “We have a lot of floor to cover to confirm these floors lack the resources we need.”

The others agreed and I cleaned up, then picked up the ward stones and stored them.

“Raaahhhhh-URK!” A monster roared and Aiz dashed and lopped its head off.

Maybe they aren't as smart as I thought they were? I asked myself as Tsubaki joined in on the slaughter. Lili gathered the monster stones and I felt some relief that they were normal blue ones and not the more valuable red ones that I knew the smarter monsters had inside of them.

We moved on as a group and there were only a few spots with some ore and wasn't worth digging up for such a small amount of normal ore. When we neared the floor's exit, a brown harpy was sitting in the middle of the cavernous room. Yes, she was sitting. Both Aiz and Tsubaki were on guard and were sure it was a trap.

I put a hand on their shoulders to stop them and they gave me surprised looks. “Let me handle this.”

“Are you going to show off?” Lili asked.

“Maybe.” I said and stepped forward.

The harpy had her wings spread out over the ground to show she wasn't going to attack. Her top looked like it was made of cloth and covered her human-like breasts, which monsters didn't normally care about, and on her neck was one of those expensive stones. Her yellow, green, and blue hair looked more like feathers than anything else and her mostly yellow plumage reminded me of a parrot.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

The harpy looked up at me. “I am Ray.”

The girls with me gasped at her talking.

“I was chosen to speak as the least threatening member of our group, the Xenos.” Ray said.

I took a deep breath and let it out. “Why us?”

She smiled at me. “Because of you.”

“Because of...” I cut myself off when I realized something. “You know what happened.”

Her smile grew. “If anyone can be the bridge between us and the surface, it is you, God-killer.”

I heard someone curse and I had to ignore it. “Is that why? You think I can keep them from killing you all as soon as you appear on the surface, despite all the hate and fear that monsters have caused humanity for centuries?”

“Yes.” Ray said, confidently.

Lili cursed under her breath again. “Bell, you can't seriously think...”

I held up a hand to stop her rant. “Give me a minute to think.”

Lili closed her mouth and nodded, albeit reluctantly.

I walked over to the harpy and she was relatively pretty, in a monster-like way. I knelt on one knee in front of her and looked into her eyes as I let my telepathy out to play. I already knew their desires to live in harmony with the humans and to stop the unnecessary hunting of their brethren. What I didn't know was how many of them there were.

Inside her mind was everything I needed to know. The Ikelos Familia on the eighteenth floor were poachers and had taken many of their kind over the years to harvest them for money and resources to further their task to build a labyrinth even more grander than the dungeon. Their captain, Dix Perdix, had been cursed to complete it by any means necessary. He was also Level 5.

The old me wouldn't have had much chance against a much more experienced opponent, even with a higher level. Now? I could kick his ass without even trying. I also saw where he was keeping the ones their Familia recently captured and Ray wanted my help to rescue them.

I briefly used my clairvoyance power to pinpoint where they were and they were in a large cage inside the town of Rivera on the eighteenth floor. I waved my hand and formed a large portal inside the cage and behind Ray. Shouts of fright came from the ones captured and from my party.

“It's all right! You're all safe!” I shouted to stop anyone from attacking. It actually worked and Ray turned her head to see her fellow monsters.

“G-g-god-killer.” Ray whispered with tears in her eyes. “Th-thank you.”

I reached out and touched her shoulder and she looked back at me with a happy smile on her face. “You don't have to thank me for doing the right thing.”

The various monsters hiding nearby came out to comfort the ones that had been kidnapped and I could feel the disbelief from Aiz, Lili, Tsubaki, and Ryuu. There were nearly 60 of them and all of them could talk and moved around as if they had training and knew what they were doing.

There were lizardmen, an actual griffon that was half-eagle and half-lion, several rabbits wearing uniforms, a large frog and several smaller ones, a troll, several orcs, a large wyvern with green scales, something that looked like a grey wolf, several goblins, a snake woman and several snakemen, a couple more harpies of different colors and feathers, a satyr with a goat face, hooves, and a human torso, and a few wingless dragon people, including one girl in particular that didn't have a name.

“Rhea Vendemia!” I stated, just to prove to Ryuu that the wide area healing spell worked.

All of the monsters made surprised sounds as they glowed and all of their wounds healed, even the old ones they had from battles fought long ago.

“Bell, what are you doing?” Tsubaki asked me.

“I'm fixing a problem before it becomes one.” I said and took a deep breath and let it out. I wasn't sure how big of a mistake it was going to be; but, I couldn't allow them to be hunted and suffer like I knew they would be if they stayed here. “How many of you want out of the dungeon?”

All of the monsters put up their hands and other appendages.

I nodded and pointed at the wall of the cavernous room and a portal formed there to my mansion in the Underworld back in High School DXD. “The portal will take you to a new land where you can live in peace and don't have to worry about being captured or slaughtered for your cores.”

All of them let out sounds of happiness and started going through it.

I kept my hand on Ray's shoulder and created a letter for Grayfia. “Give this to the beautiful silver-haired business woman when she appears.”

Ray looked at the letter and held up her wings.

I chuckled at her not being able to grasp it and held it down to her clawed feet. I tied it to her ankle and stood up, then helped her stand as well.

“What will happen if another is created?” Ray asked me.

I tapped my temple. “I'll keep an eye out and will send them along if they are.”

Ray smiled at me and then blushed, looked a little scared, then she leaned in and kissed my cheek before she spread her wings and dashed through the portal to a new life.

I closed the portal and turned around to see three shocked looks on the faces of my teammates. “Well, let's get going. The floors aren't going to check themselves or make maps.”

They didn't move, so I picked them up with telekinesis and ran over to the floor's exit and descended to the next floor. We really did have a lot of work to do before we had to go back home.

*

Ouranos, the god in charge of the dungeon, was at a loss to say anything about what just happened. His Captain, the skeleton monster named Fels, wasn't.

“That was an interesting solution to the brewing war between smart monsters and adventurers.” Fels said with a chuckle. “Stop it long before it starts.”

Ouranos gave him a pointed look. “His magic bypassed the dungeon's protections as if they didn't exist. The monsters should have had to fight their way out from its grasp, not simply walk away from the binding magic that kept them inside the dungeon, despite their desire to reach the surface and make more of themselves.”

Fels shrugged his bony shoulders. “I think his wide area healing magic did a lot more than fix their physical injuries.”

Ouranos lost the pointed look and sighed. “I suppose we don't have to worry anymore.”

“Not about that, no.” Fels said. “When they announce the ability to travel to any floor above 40? We're going to have a stampede on our hands.”

Ouranos shook his head. “They won't announce anything until they defeat the juggernaut on 30.”

“Why would they have to defeat it?” Fels asked him.

Ouranos opened his mouth to say that was how they would level up one of their party members, then he realized Bell Cranel's odd abilities let him and his party bypass the restriction of getting a god's attention. “Tradition?”

Fels laughed and poured out a large stein of wine from the barrel Bell had delivered only a couple days ago and it was already half-empty. He handed the drink to his god with a salute.

Ouranos accepted the metal cup and drank deeply from it. He sighed with satisfaction and sat back on his chair to enjoy a little peace and quiet with one of the better vintages of Soma's confiscated wine.

*

Grayfia appeared in Issei's mansion to spend the night with him after she had tucked Millicas into bed and kissed him goodnight. She had been showing him a lot more affection lately and her son basked in it. He also really liked that his dad had somehow became a woman and was just as affectionate with him as his mother now was, instead of the usually cold or impersonal way they used to treat him.

The Satan Leviathan felt all of the new energy signatures around the mansion's grounds and went outside to see what was going on. She found Issei sitting on the outside patio furniture with several pretty bird women and others were scattered around the lawn and sparing with the Stone Valkyries.

“There she is!” Issei said and waved to her. “Hello, dear!”

Grayfia walked over to him and gave him a quick peck on the lips.

“This is for you.” The mostly yellow feathered one said and used a wingtip to push a letter across the table.

Grayfia opened it and read it. Her eyes took in the words and she needed a few moments to come to grips with it, then she smiled and nodded as the letter burned up in her hands. It made sense that someone as powerful as him had to travel to other worlds to save them from his previous mistakes and from their own problems when necessary.

It brought his actions in their world into a new light and Grayfia felt her love for him grow. She had to settle for his dimensional clone and she would be happy with that, because he would get those memories and would know how much she loved him. Her hand rubbed her belly bump and she sat down on Issei's lap.

“Have you told them about Peerages and the Rating Games?” Grayfia asked. “I can see that a few of them would enjoy the battles a lot.”

“I was about to get into that.” Issei said and hugged her. He saw the envious look on the parrot harpy and had to smile at her. “I'm sure we can help them all find the most compatible people for them to share their very long lives with.”

The monsters exchanged surprised looks and then listened as they were told about reincarnation and how their usually very short lives in the dungeon would be extended to about 10,000 years. All of them knew then that they had made the right choice when they trusted the God-killer Bell with their future.

*

I had a hard time not laughing at everyone's shocked faces as I used a car-sized pan to panhandle in the large streams from the giant waterfall that covered three of the floors in the dungeon. I did cheat a bit and made it magnetic as well, just in case, and dumped out my latest find onto the shore and Lili snapped out of her shock as she grabbed the huge pile of gold ore chunks to stuff into her backpack.

My prediction that a majority of the ores were in the sediment of the water was spot on and I was gathering huge amounts of them by doing such a simple thing. It was definitely a lot less work than having to dig the ore out with picks and shovels, which we would also use when it was necessary. Some of the chunks were too big to fit through the opening of the pack, so they had to be broken up.

Lili didn't mind the extra work, though. We would finish up here a lot sooner than either of us thought we would, thanks to my cheating with magnets, and we would move on to Floor 28 and Floor 29. We would stop there, because there was no way I was taking Ryuu to Floor 30 on her first day with us. That would be cruel and too difficult for her to face the monster that had killed her entire Familia.

I remembered Momma Mia telling Ryuu to not trust us, because we would make her fight when she didn't want to. Since I didn't want to lose her trust, we weren't going to fight it. It would take a lot of convincing for both Aiz and Tsubaki to not attack the thing when it appeared, so I had my work cut out for me there.

Maybe I could delay it for a day or two? Or skip it entirely? Yes, skipping it seemed like the best idea. Who needed to stand around to fight the thing when we could go to the next floor instead? We were resource gathering as a primary anyway and could worry about clearing out the floor bosses later.

Aiz needed something special to push her over Level 8 and up to Level 9, maybe to Level 10. There was only one thing I could think of that would give her that big of a boost in a single shot with her level already so high. The third great quest given to humanity. The very one she had been training for all her life to complete. Defeating the One-Eyed Black Dragon and saving her mother's soul.