"You know, what you're asking for is not an easy thing to do, Hera." After sending a ssage to Typera asking about the way to bring sothing quickly to Zaxalam, the queen initially said that it would take about a week to get the items she was requesting.
After all, there was a lot of bureaucracy involved in taking anything out of the black site. But Hera pressed, saying that she had yet to even receive any rewards for her effort in the war. Everything she got was just things that were already supposed to be hers. Things like getting back a deal that the guild had already given her. Even if the terms were a bit better, it was just a form of reparations from the humans, not sothing that she was gaining from the alliance.
"And if the people from the alliance knew that it took that long before even a hero to get sothing so vital for one of its missions, what would happen if a regular person were to need help? It would be a sha if people lost trust in the alliance leadership due to their bad response ti. Especially if that issue was only there because of bureaucracy and not sothing more tangible."
The Empress also added that she wasn't going to go after anyone to talk about this. That just wasn't right. But if a reporter were to ask what she was doing or why she was just hanging out, she might be honest about the situation. They both knew that Hera wasn't really threatening the alliance. The Ophidianite was too kind to do sothing like that. As a matter of fact, Typera knew that all she needed to do was to give one harsher reply or accuse the Empress of trying to abuse her power and she would back down. But at the sa ti, this had beco a sort of ga for the two.
Hera needed to learn how to deal with politics and how to circumvent issues that could be creating problems for her goals. And she had to do all that in ways that wouldn't evolve into even more issues. She couldn't just strong-arm her way to success. The right way to go about it was to do things that were not overly hostile but would still press the other party into doing what you wanted them to do.
The way Hera was going about this wasn't great. Any politician or noble who was well versed in this kind of thing would be able to co up with a fair excuse to refuse her request. In addition, if she was dealing with soone a bit more used to that kind of thing, they could just outright refuse her demands. The argunt would be that her actions proved that she wasn't fit for the role of a hero and shut down any other attempts at future communication. But Typera was her friend, and she was genuinely trying to help the Empress navigate this kind of situation.
"Okay, that sucked. Absolutely terrible way to go about this. But it'll at least get across to . If you're dealing with soone who's a bit more green and maybe already intimidated by you, then yeah that could work. As long as you have the upper hand and they are weak spirited. But anyone who is a bit better at dealing with this would just laugh at you and shoo you away," Daskka explained. "But still, I'll see what I can do about this. Maybe instead of a week we can get it in a couple of days."
Hera smiled. "Thank you. I appreciate that. And sorry if I was too rough."
"Sweetheart, you don't have to apologize for that. Being rough is part of the deal. But like I said, that one really only works when you are dealing with soone who doesn't really know what they're doing. But when it happens, it works great."
Hera thanked The Harpy Queen again and left the eting room where they were talking through the hologram. She quickly went back to the eting she was having with her own team in order to tell them about the developnts. And by the ti she was back, they had already figured out a way to reverse what the altar was doing. It was actually easier than they were expecting, as the cube of reversal that Bob created was extrely well made. It barely even needed sothing to keep it together. As long as it was added to the spell circle, it would just function as it was supposed to. There was no special asure required.
The tricky part was to remove the right gem from the altar so that the spell circle wouldn't collapse without it, since they didn't have a way of adding a new piece to the altar. But now, they were almost sure everything could work. The only thing they needed was to test with so powerful poison, which ant that they needed Hera's help for that.
Bob had already created a large transparent vat for them to place the altar replica inside, and the thing was already with a couple fingers of water. The argunt was that since the altar was still functioning back in Deakoshara, it also ant that the lake wasn't completely poison just yet. There was still so moisture created by water sowhere in that mix.
They were waiting for the Empress so that she could see if the poison that they were going to use would be condensed enough to trigger the right type of effect for the test. If she was back there in the black side, she could use her own magic to create the poison, but since she was not there and they didn't have a version of the cube of reversal, they had to go this roundabout way to test everything.
It was going to be very hard to do that, since the type of hologram they were using was not ant to show the intricacies of a spell or specific objects. It was just made for etings and such. The specialized versions usually required exceedingly pricey and hard to co by materials, which was why no one really used it for anything but the most sensitive type of research. Even then, it was rare for a laboratory to have more than one of those sets of holographic displays. Usually people who were working in a place that had one had to share it like the most private of eting rooms.
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Helena quickly showed the type of poison they were going to use. The mage had spent long enough with Hera that she more or less understood the degree of power of poison used by the Ophidianite. And there were enough resources in the lab to replicate so version of it, even if the actual end result wouldn't be quite up to par. Still, it was enough to allow the group to make so proper tests with the solution they ca up with. That was sothing they were still waiting to do before confirming with Typera that they would need the cube of reversal.
With everything set up, Helena and Bob covered the altar in poison and activated the spell using one of Helena's shadow grabbers to put the cube in place. There was a delay where no one knew exactly if the altar was doing what they were hoping it would do, but not long after, the green liquid that was covering the makeshift altar started to lose so of its color. And in just a few minutes, the entire vat of liquid had returned to being pure water.
Helena and Bob perford so tests on the liquid to make sure that it was really okay, but Helena was the one to share the news with everybody. And she did so in the most Helena way possible. Instead of just saying, "Hey, it's fine, and the water is back to normal," she took a cup, filled it with the water from the vat, and drank it before anyone could even protest.
Everybody rolled their eyes at the theatrics, but they were happy that their plan had worked. Although, considering they were using Hera's own poison as a starting point, everybody understood that things wouldn't be this quick in the actual lake. After all, even the Empress's poison wasn't as concentrated as the one in the lake.
Hera had brought along a few vials of that extrely dense poison to both study and see if it would result in any benefits to her in the long run. Maybe using that type of poison would help her increase her own poison creation skill.
Not long after, Hera received a ssage from Typhera. The harpy Queen was confirming that she was able to pull so strings to speed up the process, but the arrival of the cube of reversal would still take between two and three days depending on the weather in one specific room. All that she needed was the confirmation from both Hera and Bob that there were making a deal. Which ca right away.
Hera thanked The Harpy Queen and took the rest of the day off, but not really. Instead of just resting and waiting around, the Empress started to shop for weapons to replace her chord. She knew that she had to do that sooner rather than later, but considering that it had been a bit of a long ti since she got a level up, she had decided to wait until that happened before making any changes. It would be a bit of a waste to change now, only to level up again a few days after replacing her court.
Speaking of dungeons, Pandora and the other Royal explorers who were still on the island had sent a report talking about the dungeon variation that Hera created. So far, no one was able to defeat the boss or complete the dungeon in any way. As a matter of fact, almost no one had even seen a glimpse of the final boss of the dungeon. So had noticed sothing moving in the middle of the valley, but the descriptions varied too much to be anything tangible.
The main issue was the poison in the area. Although poison was not the right word for it. Any poison resistance gear that soone would take was completely worthless in there, as the energy of the island was not poison but decay. A wave of putrefaction that tried to rot all their gear and even their own skin would assault anyone who tried to walk inside it. People needed a very powerful resistance-based skill or sothing to fight off against those effects, and they had yet to uncover what it could be the solution.
There were a lot of theories, of course. From items that could be earned on the other versions of the dungeon to even skills or spells that ca from sowhere else. But there were no answers so far. That ant that Hera wasn't able to even attempt the dungeon, as since she was responsible for this creation, she could only join if soone else finished it for the first ti. This was a rule imposed by the system, not by any single individual.
And in all honesty, Hera herself didn't really understand why this was such an important aspect of things to the system. It didn't make much sense to her to have people not being able to participate in a dungeon they created themselves. From what she could rember, the Sky Ruler dungeon was different enough from real events that even her knowledge about what happened wouldn't change the outco all that much. Then again, it was just how things were. Arguing about that kind of thing was just nonsense. It would be like arguing why people can swim in water but not in the air.
It ant that Hera would need to spend the next couple of days not following the hint of the altar period, but that also didn't an she would need to just stay in Zaxalam without doing anything. Instead, she started her exploration, following a different path than the one that took her to the lake.
Instead of turning right at the doorway, she went left towards the sa doorway that would lead back to the Aerie of the First Flight. Making sure not to be too far away from the doorway so she could return every night, the plan wasn't to go too deep just yet. Mostly because she needed to see what would happen with the rain after the altar was neutralized. But still, the ti allowed her to learn a bit more about the environnt.
For one, she had assud that she was in the planes of the MAZE with a mountain to the left of the doorway. But after traveling a couple hours south, she ca to learn that wasn't truly the case. She was actually in a tall plateau overlooking the real planes, which were, in fact, a more desert place than the vibrant jungle that was above. Even more important was the fact that she could see indications of living creatures in that area. Bones scattered here and there. That was the first real sign of life aside from plants that the Empress had noticed in this room.
And aside from that, she also could see beyond this arid desert another plateau with a lush forest on top of it. The impression she got was so much similar to what happened in the Wailing Valley, at least when seen from above. The entire room might be replicating the environnt of a dry mud flat, with that cracked ground but on a macro scale. Each plateau would be the pieces of rock, while the deserts would be the cracks in between.
She couldn't confirm if her theory was right now, but considering that snakes could live both in the desert and in forests, it made a lot of sense to think that their holand would be a place that contained both. Part of Hera wanted to start exploring that area too, but she knew she had to focus on mapping out the ti, otherwise she would end up getting lost.
By the end of the second day, when the ssage telling her that the cube of reversal had arrived reached her, she was more or less confident that she had created a rough outline of this specific plateau, at least one side of it. The rest would have to co later as, right now, she wanted to fix the lake.
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