(DHF)Chapter 4: Leveling up and Dark age (Patreon)

(Author note: This is the last info dumpy chapter I promise.)

To be clear though there is magic beyond the stuff that the falna gives access to but it is considered extremely inefficient and takes a long time to use for less than stellar effects apparently. When I asked how one would go about leveling up the answer I got was a little confusing. So according to Artemis the falna worked by gathering "excelia" which was sorta like money in that adventurers got it for putting in effort and challenging their limits through combat or crafting it didn't matter much which it was apparently.-

Anyway that excelia was then "spent" on improving the adventurers stats based on this effort when their god updated their falna. So according to Artemis mortals could only contain so much excelia depending of a bunch of factors she refused to explain beyond ones level and innate talent. So it was sort of like mortals were a cup that you could only add so much water to before it overflowed. This all made sense and I could grasp it easily but the next part didn't. Unlike a cup however a mortal CAN'T overflow their vessel with normal excelia which was also a condition for leveling up.-

Artemis was vague about it either on purpose or because she honestly wasn't but according to her adventurers need to gather "high excelia" by performing impressive feats according to the gods in order to overflow their vessels and level up. The problem I was having trouble wrapping my head around was figuring out what scale if any this feat gauge was based on. Like if a god thought you surviving another year was impressive would that work? What about if a god never thought what you did was good enough? What then? Would you just never level up at that point?-

Like I said it was a confusing answer and even worse apparently nobody had ever actually thought about these sort of questions because when I shared my concerns Artemis didn't have any way to say they weren't justified. Not to say she didn't try because she did but she was just as confused as I was so it didn't really work. At least she was able to tell me what leveling up actually did besides the standard answer of "make you grow up big and strong". Leveling up expanded and improved an adventurers vessel so it could contain more excelia and in greater purity as well.-

The way gods understood it was that the higher the level and the more powerful an adventurer got the closer to divinity or "arcaenum" as it was apparently called they got. This made me think that if an adventurer got far enough they could themselves become a god which Artemis agreed made sense if that was truly how the falna worked. One would likely then ask the question "but what about demigods then?" The answer of which was that they didn't exist. In exchange for coming down to the mortal realm gods sacrificed two things while here, their power and the ability to procreate.-

To be more specific the former was actually sealed and they could get rejected from this world if they released those seals. The later however was well and truly missing from their mortal forms entirely which is why they tend to refer to those who have falnas as "children". Quite literally the ones who bear the falna of a god are the closest thing to offspring they have here in the mortal world. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "adoptive family".-

After a week traveling together I was fairly comfortable around the Artemis familia and I am willing to say they felt similarly.

"That must be Orario, it's bigger than I thought if we can see it from here." I said as we crested a hill and far into the horizon stood the colossal structure.

"That's the dungeon city for you though. The only place in the world that you can find everything. See that huge pillar in the middle? That's Babel, supposedly it was made my Ouranos himself when he first descended to Genkai." Ariande said explained as she walked near me.

"I reckon at our current speed we will arrive in another four hours. This should be plenty of time for us to report to the guild and get you settled." Rethusa said seriously.

"Much as I like roughing it out in the wild with a bunch of pretty ladies I could definitely go for a bed right about now, I might even settle for a couch to be honest." I joked and most of the familia laughed and even Artemis herself had a ghost of a smile.

As we got closer to the city I noticed something quite concerning, cursed energy. A metric fuckton of the stuff radiated from the city like hundreds had been killed in horrific and terrible ways. None of it was recent though as the energy felt stagnant like it had sat there for years already. 

"So it didn't come up until now but is there any topic i should avoid mentioning while in the city? You know like a tragic event or some bad history everyone wants to forget? Got no memories remember so a heads up now would save me the trouble of finding out later." I said fishing for a clue about what I was seeing.

And oh boy let me tell you I was not prepared for what I learned. It was known as the dark age and was a period of eight years starting from the failure of the Hera and Zeus familias to kill the one eyed black dragon. That failure resulted in all the high end power of those two familias to be destroyed and allowed the two current hegemons to step into the light after they seized power and exiled both Hera and Zeus from Orario.-

Freya with her powerful Ottar and the rest of her familia of worshipers and Loki who played a supporting role but still has the second most powerful familia in Orario. Sadly those positions of power came with a terrible price as with the Zeus and Hera familias who had reigned supreme over the last thousand years gone the darkness they had kept at bay came a knocking, Evilus. Dark or mad god run familias whose only noticeable goal was to sow as much death, destruction and chaos as possible.-

Seven years ago the final blow was dealt to Evilus according to Artemis but the wounds they left behind still hurt even now. It was some heavy stuff and explained the cursed energy floating that blanketed the city like a fog. Knowing what I did about cursed energy though I did wonder why it hadn't turned into a cursed spirit but then I realized something interesting, it was inert. The energy wasn't active like it was in it's usual world and was in fact totally harmless unless something were to make it active. I won't lie and say I wasn't tempted to gather it up and use it but I could tell that as I was right now I had no hope of containing that much energy.