OctupleCompressedNeodymium

  Zoemie froze for a second, her brain needing a minute to comprehend the situation. "Are you fucking kidding me ?", she screamed, in equal parts out of fury and disbelief. Are they actually shitting me right now ?

  "Uh, guys, I think she does in fact mind.", the voice spoke again. It was a male voice, inhumanly deep and inhumanly smooth, a stark contrast to the rasping old priest, unfamiliar to Zoemie. "That's fine.", said another voice, a girl's this time. It brought to Zoemie the image of a teal-twintailed girl wearing a metallic dress. "We're in it anyway, no way out but to keep going."

  Zoemie's mind went bnk for another short second. "Are you actually his fucking gods ?", she asked once she had recovered enough of her faculties. What ? Why ? Why the fuck did you decide to show up now ?

  "Yes. Well, some of them.", the voice expined. "For your information...", another voice said, vaguely masculine, nguid and shifty. "We tried to tell him not to come here, but he ignored us. His mind was failing, he was getting too old for this." "Maybe we should've had him retire ?"

  "Maybe, maybe not.", a feminine, hollow voice whispered, Zoemie watching the strange coversation. "That is irrelevant now, let us refocus. His body cannot take our power, it will not st very long." "Right. So, yeah. Sorry about... that.", the smooth voice said, turning towards Zoemie as he did so. Bullshit.

  Zoemie did the first thing on her mind and threw a curse on the priest to slow the effect down. Keeping these fuckers around for longer means more I can get out of them. "So you couldn't do anything more to, like, make him not piss me off ? Nothing at all ?", she snarled, annoyed that they didn't do anything earlier.

  "Uh, thanks for the curse. It helps. But, uh...", one of the voices started. "We cannot move that openly.", the other masculine voice expined. "Our enemies would get suspicious; they might even send agents to investigate the Greatwoods further.", he continued. "Needless to say, that would just cause more trouble. Besides, he likely would have ignored further intervention on our part", the female voice said in turn.

  Zoemie seethed in annoyance. They are definitely lying. They def could have done something about that fucking pig. What I don't get, though, is... "Why do you fucking give a shit, anyway ? You know bringing me here was a mistake !", she snarled, although the floating old man didn't recoil at all.

  "...Let us not have this debate.", the girl's voice said. "We do not have the time, and neither of us will move from our position a nanometer." "Speaking of mistakes, though...", the masculine voice said. "We have a... situation coming up."

  "The fuck you mean.", Zoemie said, her eyes squinting. Oh, I don't like this.

  "One of your, uh, I think cssmates is the word ?" "Yes, that is correct. Said cssmate will come looking for the old priest." COME ON ! "It would do us a great favor if..."

  "Let me guess, you want me to let the bastard live !", Zoemie screamed. These bastards are fucking unfppable ! Zoemie couldn't say why it pissed her off so much, but it did. They know bringing me here was a fuckup on their part, but they're just fucking refusing to admit it !

  "Well, actually, we want you to sughter them and any other person they bring.", the girly voice said. "No survivors, no witnesses." But... why ? Zoemie couldn't wrap her head around it. I hope it's not Neth... right, it can't be, she's not here ! Fucking jackasses...

  "Can't you do that yourself ? Just chuck a bolt of divine lightning on them and call it a day !"

  "Not that we can't.", another woman's voice expined. This one was sharp, unfppable, and matter-of-fact. "But this approach would be suboptimal, and our situation is too tight to afford anything but optimal results." Total bullshit. Just look at me being here.

  Before she could answer, the shifty masculine voice took over again. "Well, we are asking a favor of you. So I suppose the least we could do is give something back in return."

  "Make the nightmares stop.", Zoemie snarled on the spot.

  "We'll talk to 'em about it, but, uh, no guarantee. We might be allied, but they work very much on their own." "What do these nightmares even represent ?", the whispering voice asked. "I, uh, am not sure. Something to do with images of timelines ? I'm not sure I get it or that I'm allowed to speak about it", the smooth voice.

  "So you can fuck around with the timeline ?", Zoemie asked. The old man's body was starting to be consumed by light.

  "Well, uh...", the smooth voice asked, but he was interrupted by the girly one. "The complexity is exponential. Arranging the timeline when one person was brought over or sent back is doable. For the whole css, however, it would take longer than the age of the universe." That's fucking bullshit.

  "Maybe you could ban svery, then ? Or do something about it ?", Zoemie asked instead.

  "It's not that we don't want to...", the shifty voice said. "Our opponents are stronger than us individually, but our alliance allow us to overpower them on an individual basis. However, a major part of why this works is that they're busy infighting, trying to gain any fraction of power from eachother, while we grow our power through cooperation.", he expined.

  "If we were to ban svery on a pnetary basis, they would band against us, and we would be defeated and maybe even destroyed.", the god continued. "However, if the world is covered by an immense field that automatically destroys all sve colrs... well, they can't do anything about it.", he finished, giving Zoemie the image of a orange-haired vilin with scars over one eye, evilly swirling a gss of brandy.

  "We have sometimes destroyed colrs, and even caused sve rebellions; it's not out of our purview.", the sharp voice said. "That said, our targets are limited for the reason my fellow expined before." Before she could continue, however, she was interrupted. "Uh, guys. There's someone else in the darkness."

  Xajymzia showed herself at this moment, staring at the old priest. "Oh, uh, yeah. Right. We definitely owe at least an apology, no ?", he asked, more to his fellows. "Well, you do.", the girly voice. "I wasn't born back then, after all, but... yes, you probably do."

  Xajymzia stared at the being for a short moment, his jaw fading into the light. "Why ?", she asked after a short while, her voice carrying enough power to shake all under heaven if she desired so. Zoemie shivered, the floating body started to fade into light.

  "Uh, expining it in detail would be too long, but, well... Remember our mention of alliances ? This happened when we were a lot weaker, and she wasn't, so, uh, we couldn't countermand her." "By "her", my fellow means another goddess.", the sharp voice expined. "She is currently sealed, although her worshippers still exist in dark and distant corners, watching and waiting."

  Her voice gained a strange, maniacal echo. "They shall return, through fire and war. They will wield sword and faith, and force their way through, and believe themselves untouchable.". The voice became deep and menacing, simir to Xajymzia when she was angry.

  "They shall perish, each and every st one, under the fire of artillery batteries and nuclear weapons. And their leaders will be sin, and their idols be forgotten. The future of this world will have Umdoranz in it; guardian. And if the heavens must shatter for it... then shatter they shall."

  Damn, Zoemie thought. She looked at the gods again. "Can't, you, like add more protections to this pce ? Keep people out ? Because clearly, the security by obscurity, it ain't working out.", she grumbled.

  "It, uh, yeah, was already in the cards. We'll have to modify his divine artifact..." "Speaking of which", the girly voice said. "You can have this.", she said, as strange item looking like a card deck manifested before her. What's this ? "The human princess created those cards to allow your fellow cssmates to enter the capital and castle at will. You can also draw cards from it to give to people for the same purpose."

  "That's... kinda useless, but thanks anyway, I guess.", Zoemie said. She had less than zero intention or desire to return to the castle.Maybe the old man will want a card. She turned to the priest, who was disappearing into light.

  "So... guess we'll be saying goodbye, for now.", the smooth voice said. "Yep". "Yep". "Yep". "Hm-hm", the other gods confirmed, Zoemie sighing as the st of the priest faded away into light, leaving nothing but his empty robes.

  Zoemie looked at them for a short bit, then teleported to the meeting room and crashed into a chair.

  Yuulvan approached Zoemie, not masking his presence. It had been a bit since the power surge faded. He had considered involving himself, but some kind of shield had denied him. It was likely not for him to hear, then.

  "...old man. Surprised you didn't show up before.", Zoemie said, not turning her head. She was sitting in the meeting room, looking at her mask.

  "Some kind of shield was preventing me from entering the cave. I suspect whoever you were talking to didn't want me involving myself.", he expined.

  "...Didn't know that. Guess that makes sense.", she answered. "...It was his gods. Well, they cimed to be. Don't know if that's true. They could have been bullshitting me, after all."

  "I have a magical item that can answer that question.", Yuulvan answered. The methods to craft more of them had been lost to time, however. I could conjure a few here, however. He put it down on his to-do list.

  "Go ahead.", Zoemie answered, exhaustion within her voice, and Yuulvan reached into his storage. From there, he took out a faintly-glowing orb, and looked at it.

  "Did you of the Heavens possess High Priest Kvutar's body ?', he asked, and the orb glowed with magic, emitting an aura that, in the vicinity of the speaker, would make them know whether the answer was true or false, and the aura spoke that it was true.

  "I just don't get it.", Zoemie grumbled sullenly. "He knew that I had nothing of value whatsoever to contribute, that his gods fucked up by bringing me over. He knew it explicitedly and he still tried something. The only thing I'm good at and care about is completely useless in every way, shape or form !", she continued, clearly unwell.

  "The idea you'd fight back most likely didn't even cross his mind.", Yuulvan specuted. "Frankly, I take it he never expected any form of resistance from you. I daresay none of the factors you brought up entered his consideration at any given point."

  "This is the kind of shit I mean when I say everyone hates me.", Zoemie said. "All I ever wanted to do is rot in peace forgotten by all, and that dude came at my pce with a sve colr ! And even if he didn't it ain't like I would've had much choice anyway.", she continued, downcast.

  "Even if I made him promise, bribed him, cursed him, they would've gotten the truth of my location out of him anyway. Anything goes when it comes to hurting me. They cannot tolerate being denied me to hurt."

  "He died for it.", Yuulvan said. Hmm... this isn't good. He had a very peculiar issue right now. Now that's something I've never dealt with before. He had dealt with a lot of people throughout his existence, and while quite a few did have simir problems, it had never been to that degree.

  "I've already fucked up waaaay too many times.", Zoemie grumbled. "And in the pce where I'm from, there's no tolerance for that. You only get a few chances, and once you screw up you're a failure forever. No one ever forgets your fuckups. They remember your failures and embarassments forever and never ever let you forget them."

  Yuulvan considered. I need to distract her. In her current state, nothing will get through to her. An idea came to his mind. "Then, let us talk about something else.", he said.

  "...Like what ?", Zoemie asked.

  "You favorites... video games ?", he answered, the words still unfamiliar on his tongue.

  "...This isn't going to help !", she shouted, half-turning towards him, although there was plenty of desperate anxiety but little anger in her voice.

  "But neither will obsessing about it for hours on end.", Yuulvan said, calm as usual. Falling into the chorus of harsh criticism will only make everything worse.

  There was a short bit of silence. "Sorry.", Zoemie said after a bit. "Okay. Maybe we can talk about games.", she continued. Yuulvan smiled slightly. Seems like things will be alright for tonight.

  "So, yeah, once I watched a video of a guy going for max popution, but he did it in a really inefficient way.", Zoemie expined to Yuulvan, the tter smiling neutrally. He cked a lot of the context, but that was fine. He wasn't really doing this for information anyway.

  "Oh, how so ?", he asked instead, inviting her to eborate.

  "So, there's a type of popution in this game with 50 pops, one of the three factions, but not many of their houses can reach that level. So the dude had only put that one faction down, but he ended up with most of his houses having only 30 or even 5 pops.", Zoemie started to expin.

  "I developed from there what I think is the optimal building setup, but never got around to actually building it.", she continued. "The trick is that you first build that faction, keeping your 50 pops houses in a radius so you can add an information building afterwards for even more popution per building ter. If you can shove enough houses in the radius, it's more popution overall than more houses."

  "Then, you remove all the non-50 houses, and put down another faction instead, upgrade them fully, following the same technique, and the third, and so on, going down popution density per house.", Zoemie finished to expin.

  "A clever method for making the most use of out your space", Yuulvan said.

  "Yeah, ter I found a simir trick for another game of the same series, where, to simplify, you can optimize space like a maniac by putting all of your highest-tier houses in a single monument radius since at most they represent, like, less than half of your total houses in the supermajority of cases.", she expined. "I could've gone further in optimizing the starting setup, but didn't feel the need at that point."

  "Oh, is that so ?", Yuulvan inquired.

  "Yeah, it would've taken too long. Same with that other game I pyed, actually, where it's theoretically possible to finish it by getting max score and max multiplier on every field. Which is, like, doable, but it takes fucking forever. I watched a video of a guy who actually pulled that off, once. He was like... level 11k ? Or something like that ? Maybe I'll revisit either of those when I get back to these games."

  "That is a lot of levels.", Yuulvan commented.

  "Yeah, especially when... Okay, so, the first game in that series, I finished it at level... eighty-something. The second one, same, but I think you need around level 200 to get every skill, and while it can go even further, there's not much point. And after that each game got a much higher level cap than the one before ? I think someone reached level... 180k in the very st one ?"

  Yuulvan raised an eyebrow wordlessly. "That must have involved an enormous amount of pying.", he said after a bit.

  "Yeah, don't know how many hours the guy puts in, but... yeah... It gets pretty insane. There's some games people sink more than ten thousands hours in !", Zoemie expined.

  "In which game did you spend the most hours in ?", Yuulvan asked, curious.

  "I have no goddamn clue, and I kinda don't want to know.", Zoemie answered, her eyes widening. "Makes me feel uneasy."

  "Ah, I see.", Yuulvan answered, before Xajymzia interrupted their conversations.

  "Is it already dinnertime ?", Zoemie asked, and Xajymzia confirmed with a nod. "Damn. We've been talking for... a while."

  "Do you feel better ?", Yuulvan asked, and Zoemie nodded at him.

  "...Yeah. A little. I think.", she said as the two entered the dining room, sitting down. The dinner was once again unfamiliar to Yuulvan, but Zoemie seemed happy about it.

  After dinner, as Zoemie left for her room, Xajymzia approached Yuulvan. "You have my thanks.", she said to him, and he nodded.

  "Will she be alright ?", he asked her, a little concerned.

  "At least for this evening.", she answered, and Yuulvan nodded in turn. This won't work every time... but for now this will do. There would be more things to deal with, more information to share... but that could wait until tomorrow.