Agnisotra: Origin Tails

It was 7:57 and there was no water. Hayley and Woofus were still sleeping. I uncurled and wondered if I was wrong but this means we can go up a floor. My clones notified me that as far as they could tell, there was no movement in the cubes while I was asleep. Either nothing happened or the outer sides of the cubes moved without touching the core 8.

I’m going to call these cubes the core 8 for simplicity. All my clones were spread out in the core 8. I can’t communicate with those that are on the floor above us so maybe that one changed. I decided to head up to hear what they had to say.

I noticed that the floor slowly started to flood at 8:00. I rushed to where I saw the tube that could allow us to go up. The hole in the tube was slowly disappearing so I jumped inside and swam up. [Gravity] seemed disabled here so it was easy to swim up with 2 living beings that are affected by [Gravity]. Also, this tube seems to be filled with water regardless if the floor is drained or not. How odd. I arrived on the 2nd floor and got information from the clones on this floor and lost connection with those on the 3rd floor. Nothing seemed to have happened on this one either.

The data on the core 8 was more or less complete now and I put my tails to crunch the numbers and to find out how to solve this core 8. As Hayley suggested, solving the core 8 will make solving the rest quite easy. And a 2x2x2 is quite easy to solve. I guess this is impossible to do with the real 4x4x4 puzzle since the core 8 will always be hidden. I made a large bubble and took out some food and started cooking.

Nothing special just some dishes I had seen in some restaurants. I imitated some fish dishes I had during my 18th birthday and some other dishes I’ve seen over the years. There were also rabbit and chicken meals andI got a bit carried away.

“Ooh, that smells good! Isn’t this a bit much?” Hayley got lured in by the smell of the food I had cooked.

Uhh, I got carried away, just eat what you can and I will store the rest.

We had our breakfast while my clones were working their asses off. A clone found 2 clones of Greg and they told the clones of what this place is and how I’m planning to solve this mess. According to the clones they haven’t found out much. They were too busy calming Crissy and trying to avoid getting lost. Greg’s main body should still be on the first floor.

They did encounter a lot of skeletons. I could imagine, I haven’t found many down here. I still wonder how that civilization disappeared, these skeletons are probably deceased scouts, and I am not stupid enough to think that the whole population just dives into the labyrinth for no reason or with no plan.

Maybe they escaped from the whale? How plausible is that? I don’t know. Hayley was talking to me again but I wasn’t paying attention. I was keeping an eye on Woofus the menace. I would expect him to do something stupid right about now. I swapped him with a chicken bone because he tried to explore again.

I swear Woofus, be glad that you’re a dog, if you were a human, I would have kicked your ass a long time ago.

Woofus barked as if he had no idea what I was talking about. I believed him because I’m convinced this dog isn’t too bright. I’m not talking to him in Hourai am I?

Here, this is your responsibility, we have a lot to do, I don’t feel like being stuck in this place for weeks.

“I will do my best I don’t want to die here, lead the way!”

Well, you can say that but I have no clue where to go. Since this is a moving cube, where would the exit be? And we also need to force this cube to move to solve it so we need to find a mechanism that does this. So we have 2 goals, one which is unreachable and the other one that still needs to be found out.

Woofus was clearing out all the bread and it drew Hayley's attention.

“That is strange, Haroldus was never a fan of bread.”

Probably stress, let’s go I think my clones found something. There are a lot of monsters there though. And don’t stick too close!

“Aww.”

I was wondering if this was how Hayley copes with this situation. She isn’t unattractive but I have a policy for situations like these.

I headed toward the area where 2 of my clones were fighting. I didn’t give them much mana so they were having a rough time to make sure they didn’t get annihilated. I arrived as a strange humanoid ice creature impaled one of my clones. I detected frost magic.

Ugh, this bullshit again. I created a pure water veil around Hayley and Woofus.

So, this is why my clones had issues with you. I won’t entertain your bullshit; I’m going to drop you instantly.

I spread wires and they formed into a pattern of a magic circle that would echo lightning attacks with greater power. I fired up [Tail Dynamo] and prepared for a small [God of Thunder]. In the meantime, I boxed him in with [Water Dragon Dance]. The creature's cold presence froze them which I used to box him in on top of the magic circle. Orange lightning gathered at my tails and I was ready to drop this pain in the ass monster. It took the blast head on and instantly froze over.

I now felt stupid, I didn’t expect it to get defeated in just one hit. Am I too used to fighting super strong opponents? The blast got echoed by the magic circle that I had completed and arcs of orange lightning jumped everywhere. It hit me too but it did nothing to me now that I’m more ‘one with lightning’

It is not as if I have lightning resistances but I might be quite tanky if it’s against lightning. I don’t want to test this against a real god of thunder of course.

I deactivated my Elgards eyes but I couldn’t see this creature in this block of frost. It had a nice red color and I confirmed that the creature exploded in red blood mist and this is it's remains.

Frost magic is so overpowered but as I know could also be a double-edged sword.

A clone was still close to the Greg clones so I let one tell Greg that this place has frost magic creatures walking around. I think Greg should be able to deal with those if his training went well. Frost magic has a neutral matchup against dark magic but dark magic is still at a slight disadvantage.

Somehow Greg’s clones seem less afraid of water than the real body is. I should ask him how that works one day.

It was 10:01 and this floor started to fill up with water.

“Noo Haroldus come back!” The stupid dog had escaped again and Hayley tried to chase him.

Don’t chase him or you will drown, come here.

“With pleasure!” Hayley ran at me and locked arms with me.

Don’t make me kick your ass too. Let’s get this dog before he lures more monsters here.

Half the floor was submerged and I made water veils around us, for easy movement and so that I didn’t have to listen to Hayley’s ‘Raishin comments.’

Maybe I should put in the effort to get her and Raishin together. That would make for a very annoying couple but as long as all those comments are directed at each other it might give Greg and me some rest.

I wonder what Shania is up to now? Is she the queen now? Does she still remember Raishin? And wait wasn’t the country in a mess last time I heard about it? Ugh, I need to pay more attention to world events, I’m sure some are just ready to bite us in the ass because we don’t pay attention to them.

I caught a stray Woofus in an air bubble, disconnected from the leyline currents, and bound the bubble with [Azure Chain], this woofer won’t escape anymore.

I saw Woofus struggle, unfortunately for him, these chains can apparently bind a light and dark dragon so there is a low chance this guy can escape. He didn’t lure or attract any strange creatures this time and we went back to the device my clone had found. Everything was submerged now. I archived this.

Floor 2 floods at 10:00 and floor 3 floods at 08:00. Hopefully I won't stick around long enough to experience this tomorrow.

I inspected the device in front of me. It seemed quite simple; it was a pedestal with a glass dome over it. In the glass dome was a floating 4x4x4 cube. I assume it represents the labyrinth.

The pedestal read something about needing lightning magic to activate it and that a powerful frost monster will be attracted to any attempt to activate it. I looked over at the big red ice cube. Does it mean that thing? I could probably deal with many more if they appear. Now this text was very specific in lightning magic. I zapped the pedestal with magic and something mechanical moved and the glass dome disappeared. The cube started to float and glow.

The top row of the cube was blue, the second row was orange just like we saw on this floor. The third floor was green and the 4th floor was purple-pink. I have bad memories associated with that color, it’s the color of pink broccolis and charm magic. I decided to do anything in my power to avoid going to that floor.

Woofus pulled on the chain. I handed the chain over to Hayley and returned to the cube. It was slightly transparent so I could see the core 8. It had a red dot which I assume is our current location. I held my hands around the cube but didn’t touch it yet. My tails were still figuring out how to solve the core 8. It had to take every side of the core 8 cubes into account so I don’t blame them for taking a while. I stood like this for 23 minutes before my tails came up with 2 solutions. 1 was highly probable to be correct, the other would have a higher probability of being correct if the first solution was incorrect. With this combination, no passage that would lead to another adjacent cube, should end in a dead end. A simulation popped into my head on how to turn this cube.

I love being a 9t. Doing this as a human would need an expert on these kinds of puzzles and possibly an army of scouts. Solving the outer parts will become rough because they need to be scouted too. I wonder if there is more than 1 solution to this labyrinth. It would be quite sadistic if that was the case…

I started to turn the cube. I went a bit too fast and the cubes in the core 8 also moved and threw us around. Hayley’s bubble was still intact after that stunt but this could have gone so wrong. Right, let’s do this slowly.

I solved the core 8 after 3 minutes. I hope my buddies will forgive me because I’m sure they had the ride of their life but it’s not like I could warn them. Greg might kill me later though…

At the moment we were on the third floor. On the west side of the core 8. I canceled all my clones and sent out a new wave to check if I didn’t make a mistake. I would only know if this floor is correct but there’s a high likelihood that floor 2 will also be complete if this floor is complete. Some clones set out and went up a floor.

Apparently, different tubes allow for different movement between floors. A lot of tubes aren’t accessible but some are. They will allow me to either go to floors 1,2 or 4 depending on the water level. And when this changes different tubes will allow for access to other floors. At the moment 2 tubes allow me to go to floor 2 and 5 tubes allow me to go to floor 4 while only 1 to floor 1.

The holes in the ground to go down only close when the floor drains of water so going down is an option as long as your floor is flooded. Only one immune to [Gravity] like me can use them to go back up.

It was almost 11:00 so it would probably take an hour before floor 1 floods. There is a low likelihood my buddies are still on floor 1 after I messed with this cube. Normally I would be like: my work is done here. But this labyrinth moves out of itself. I’m keeping an eye out on this cube but nothing seems to be happening automatically. Is there a reason why it moves automatically? Is it also based on the time or is it random? Or maybe it triggers when people inside the labyrinth do something.

I looked on as Hayley seemed to have more and more difficulty in keeping Woofus behaved on its [Azure Chain] leash. Maybe it sensed that Crissy is nearby. I don’t know what the probability is that they ended up on floor 3 but the moment they get into the core 8 it should be easy to get them. I don’t know about Crissy but Greg isn’t stupid, he has probably realized too that getting into the core 8 is the safest, and I told his clone that I would be here. I saw no movement so I decided to relax a bit.

It was nearing noon. I connected to the leyline currents and tried using [Counterspin] but nothing happened. Hmm strange.

I tried again and I just made bubbles. I sat down and calibrated the leyline energy. 8.6% affinity and 0.4% authority oof, did Isi ditch me, or has her power have difficulty reaching here? I am quite deep down in a whale's belly inside a dungeon, I actually shouldn’t be surprised that she can’t reach me, the real planet is quite far away considering all these ‘barriers’ between the planet and me. I wonder why I’m only getting hit by it now? Is it because I used magic? It never did this before. I use magic all the time while using leylines, although they are more utility-based and don’t require much mana, is this the reason?

The veil around me and Hayley slowly started to become thinner. I might have to switch over to magic if this keeps thinning. Luckily it got to a thickness that was still acceptable but barely. I opened the filter of leyline energy. I should actually keep this open but I’m doing most on just feel.

The currents seem quite normal although a bit weak. Hmm, wait, these energy currents belong to the whale. Hmm I see, I can see how this is a problem.

What would happen if I used all the leyline energy from this whale? Will it die? Or will it send us to the surface? I archived this because I might need it later and Greg is going to kill me if I forget. I wonder what would happen if I attuned to the whale’s leylines but I decided against it. Personally, I would notice if someone attuned to my leyline energy and I wouldn’t be happy. So, what do I do now? Do I wait here or try and find my buddies?

Greg knows that I’m in the core 8. Moving too much might cause us to miss each other. I have clones spread out and so does Greg. It should be a matter of time before our clones meet up again and relay important information to each other. This is the best we can do in this obnoxious puzzle.

I tried my best to create a good [Counterspin] with the shitty hand I’ve been dealt but at best I could make a bubble the size of my head. I didn’t know that Isi’s Authority had this much of an effect. I guess calibrating the moment I get to a new spot becomes more important since the use of any magic besides frost seems to mess with this. I had noticed this earlier; frost magic seems to be useable while using leylines but for other magic, I need to disconnect from the leyline currents. Also, I might have been quite lucky in that her authority increased, she said she was weakened, and maybe it takes a lot out of her to give me a high authority. She started at 1.9% which was quite low. She could've given me like 10% and I would have been able to blast almost anything.

No point in thinking about this. I’m nerfed at the moment so I might have to rely on magic.

This shouldn’t be a huge issue anymore. In my time with the Misha, I have improved all my magic skills. Nausea should be a foreign concept unless I fight prolonged with magic or against a strong entity like a demi-god or stronger. I used [Air Ball] and finally made a space of air big enough for Hayley and me to relax in. Woofus took this as an opportunity to rip the leash from her hands.

“Hey! Haroldus!”

I froze walls with dog-unfriendly doors at the exits of this small room. He could run around all he wanted but he would have to stay in this room.

“That was magic? Those magic circles flashed by so fast! How did you do that?”

Uhh lots of sleeping and studying in that order.

“It’s not specific to mythical beasts is it right? Greg and Raishin’s magic circles don’t disappear so fast.”

Uh, yeah, it isn’t, as I said it took a long sleep and over half a year of studying and pranki… Just studying.

“Pranking? Pranking who?”

You misheard me, anyways let’s wait here, my clones should find Greg’s clones sooner or later unless something happened to them.

“How about you tell more about yourself in the meantime?” She sat down next to me. I looked at how Woofus was tackling the frost door.

Look I’m going to tell you the same thing I told a friend some time ago. Immortals and humans just aren’t compatible, go find a human man to show your crushes or love interests in. I could sneeze and suddenly 50 years have passed for you. Just give up or go for Raishin, he is more interested in the opposite sex and has no standards. The same applies to him but at least he’s actively pursuing a girlfriend. Now besides that, there is not much to me I’m just an eccentric chaotic guy. I’m sure there are more like me out in the world.

“Hmm, and here I was thinking you would make fun of me or give me a bullshit reply, immortal, eh? I haven’t thought about that. Does that mean you don’t allow yourself to fall in love with mortals?”

Hmm not allowing myself is a big word, I did fall in love with a mortal but this is not going to end well for both of us so it is better to push any mortal away. Use this situation as an example. Our most efficient plan would be to blow this place up but we can’t do that because you 2 are quite mortal. It gives us more of an adventure but you realize how dangerous this situation is right? One mistake on our side and you 2 will die.

“I see, so someone else has captured your heart. And… I am aware that we’re dragging you guys down. And I see your point you guys don’t seem to be making a huge fuss about it but I do realize it must take a lot of effort for you guys to keep us alive here and thanks for that.”

Don’t worry about it out of all the humans I’ve met you’re not that demanding or selfish. It also makes us learn what’s considered normal and how to manage dangerous situations. Greg and I are responsible for keeping us alive so more experience is always welcome, just a tip. When strange people warn you that strange things happen around them, don’t go on a boat trip with them…

“Haha, another type of stranger danger. I acknowledge that what we did was quite reckless, this is the first boat trip that’s interesting though, most guys our age are quite boring. And after this, they will become even more boring!”

Heh, that’s assuming you make it out alive!

“You will make sure this pretty lady makes it out alive right?” Hayley started acting cute.

Lady? I don’t remember ladies throwing themselves at the first random guys they meet.

“Hey! I’m just attracted to danger!”

Did you fall on your head? If I’m dangerous you should run away!

“No, I mean you have the troublemaker vibe! I love that!”

Ugh, is it that palpable? I need to address this; I will put my tails on this. I didn’t want to go for the boring background character #62 vibe but after everything that keeps happening to me, I should go for it.

“Hey, how are we going to return to the surface? Let’s say we beat this labyrinth and make it out, we’re still on the bottom of the ocean…”

Don’t worry, we will find something by then, let’s focus on getting out first. That suggestion you had about the core 8 was a very good one. It makes solving this labyrinth way easier. We just have to solve the outer edges. I’m wondering about the disappearance of the civilization here but at this point, I just want to escape. And Woofus stop slamming on the door!

“Woofus, returned to me not too long ago.”

Great, so some random monster is slamming on the door, I don’t feel like dealing with it.

“What if it is Crissy and the others!” Hayley got up to open the door I grabbed her with my tail and bound her. “Ooh, this is so soft!”

Look, the wall has doors, I’m sure Crissy knows how to use a door…

“Oh, right, she does… what if this monster knows how to use doors too?”

Then we would be fighting and not asking these questions, I will put a lock on it. Crissy knows how to turn a simple lock right?

“She does…” The banging stopped and seconds later it sounded like something was bashing into it. I started to get quite some energy from it.

“What if he breaks through?”

Don’t worry, it won’t break. Another door made a sound and 3 figures entered.

“Crissy!” Hayley got up and ran at her friend.

“Hayley!”

The chicks had a dramatic reunion and Greg closed the door. He looked exhausted. Raishin looked quite tired too.

Hey Agnis I know that you were trying to solve this labyrinth but… did you had to solve it so wildly?

Wildly? Heh, that reminds me of a wolf guy I met but yeah sorry, I started a bit fast, I went slower after that.

And for that you have my thanks. I can finally relax. This place is stressing me out.

Finally rest! This maze sucks! So many frost monsters! I felt so useless!

Heh, it was rough but luckily, I could just [Shadowmeld] them and Raishin could [Flash bomb] them.

Oh, that trick good times, actually bad times.

Not many monsters we’ve encountered could just be blasted. Also, so many skeletons, we’re going to get out of here alive right? Greg explained your plan but I don’t get it…

Yeah, we should find out the outer edges and solve those, I have been keeping watch on random movement from the labyrinth but we either didn’t meet the conditions for it to happen or the time that this happens hasn’t passed yet.

Well as far as I know the labyrinth has moved 3 times since we got here, the first one was before we entered at 19:30, then the first floor drained at 20:00 and it moved again at 20:30, then at 10:30 it moved again and after that I haven’t seen any movement so either there was none or no movement that could have been seen or noticed on the first floor.

I hate this puzzle.

Same with me, but we might be able to leave this shitty place today if we’re lucky or tomorrow at worst. We either need to brute force the outsides with permutations and let the clones get knocked around and notify us or we need them to scout out the cubes and we will have to put our tails on duty too.

“Hey, what’s this thing with your tails?”

Greg explained to Crissy and Hayley that our tails can do more than just be fluffy. Raishin was sitting in front of the door that was still getting bashed.

Hey Agnis, what are you going to do about this? Do you mind if I take out my frustration on what’s behind this door? Raishin pointed at the noisy door.

You do know that there’s water behind the door, right? And that you might get bashed the moment you open the door.

It’s fine! Because Greg is such a wimp in the water, I got better at moving underwater! I will be back in a bit! Raishin wanted to open the door but I stopped him by freezing his feet to the floor.

How about you step aside when you’re not about to get bashed…

Ah right, sorry haha!

A bash could be heard a split second later and I freed Raishin, who swiftly opened the door, went outside and closed the door behind him. It didn’t take long for my frost wall to get hit by various strong lightning attacks. Raishin stepped back in 2 minutes later. He looked refreshed. Somehow, he got rid of his exhaustion by blasting something. 6t are so mysterious.

Hey, Agnis, what is the matter with this dog? It’s energy feels a bit off.

It must be his stupidity; look I don’t sense any intelligence from that dog.

“Hey! Don’t insult Haroldus!” Crissy got fired up again.

“Crissy, I know you love him but he almost got us killed several times…”

“I’m sorry… I will keep a better eye out on him…” She tried to stroke Woofus but he dodged her hand. What an asshole.

We caught up. Apparently, Raishin did the heavy lifting in keeping Greg and Crissy dry. Greg was wimping out a lot but at least was useful with his shadow clones and [Shadow melding] frost creatures. Crissy had improved her opinion of Raishin doing this and Hayley seemed impressed too.

Good job Raishin! You might even get one of these to be one of your girlfriends! Raishin went to pet Woofus but Woofus barked at him and he lost balance. He faceplanted into Crissy’s chest… I had such high hopes for him.

Crissy and Raishin started to fight again. Is fate trying to keep him single?