Lifre tilted her head, still sitting in Aurivy’s palace. However, by now, Julia had come to join them after ending her stream. When she heard about what had happened, she was understandably worried, but quickly calmed down. “So… that guy didn’t actually read the stories?” Lifre questioned. “What are we supposed to do with him, then?”
“Normally, I’d like to tie up loose ends, one way or the other.” Aurivy muttered, leaning against Julia’s side. “This guy basically received the death penalty from Terra, after all. He’s essentially living on borrowed time right now.”
Julia nodded her head slightly, stroking a hand through Aurivy’s hair. “However, it seems like he has genuinely changed his ways after being isolated for so long. Additionally, it doesn’t seem like he is really much of a threat to anyone anymore.”
Aurivy gave a long sigh at that. “If he really decided to act up again, his current power level wouldn’t be enough to stop him from doing so. After all, he controlled people by just talking, not through force or anything.”
Julia smiled softly, continuing to stroke Aurivy’s hair. “Let’s set Grey aside for the moment. How is Lena doing getting the rest of the books?”
The halfling goddess rolled her eyes playfully, chuckling. “It’s Lena we’re talking about. As long as I can direct her to where the escapees are, she can get the books off of them without them even realizing they’ve been robbed. Terra gave her some decoy books to replace them with, so they will think that they still have the same book that they always did.”
“That’s probably a good thing, right? I mean, if I were them, I’d be trying to get as many people to read the books as possible.” Lifre spoke up. “These are basically memetic effects from before memetic effects were discovered.”
“Yup~.” Aurivy confirmed, closing her eyes. “Maybe that’s what she was going for? An introduction to memetic effects, before she had the ability to tell us what they were. Just to make us aware of information hazards. Can’t say at this point.”
Lifre simply nodded her head at that. “By the way, can’t she just write their death in the books?” She asked, and Aurivy’s body froze.
“What… do you mean?” She asked, and Lifre tilted her head to the side.
“Well, I mean… the books are just their life stories, right. But, the reason that they are able to live forever outside of the book is because their story didn’t have a proper ending. As the Goddess of Stories and Fate, she should be able to add a few lines to the book to write a death for them. Then, as long as that death is read, it should trigger for the person in the book following the same logic as the stories themselves.”
Aurivy slowly opened her eyes, turning her head to look at the slime girl sitting on the couch. “Lifre, sometimes I think you might secretly be a genius.” She said, and Lifre stuck her tongue out playfully. “And then you do things like that.”
“Hey?! What’s that supposed to mean?!” Lifre asked, before laughing. “Anyways, the Fate stuff is under the Origin powers now, so do you think she would still be able to do it?”
Aurivy thought for a moment, unsure of that. “Maybe? From what we’ve seen of Dana, an Origin’s energy signature is completely different from that of a god or goddess. The books likely won’t recognize the Origin of Fate as being the one who wrote them to easily modify their contents. At the same time, the Origin of Fate can’t access either of Terra’s other domains while in that form. So really, it comes down to whether the Origin is able to modify the books with only the one domain.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” Another voice spoke up, causing the girls in the room to glance over at Dana, who was leaning on the wall near the door.
“Eh? Dana? Didn’t you get dragged off by Tubrock to work on a new collaboration project?” Lifre blinked in confusion, and Dana’s brow twitched.
“This is another avatar of mine. I had an idea while we were working on the Origin defense. I can make a spell that will temporarily allow the Origin of Fate to exert her full power. Essentially, I make a temporary universe for her to consume, and until the spell fades, she will be able to use power befitting an actual Origin. I was on my way to find her and talk about it when I spotted you all talking about this.” As she said that, she lifted her head to look at the others. “Though, if you want, I can just kill all of those escapees for you?”
Aurivy shook her head. “No, I’d like to try Lifre’s idea. If we just go with the massacre route, you would also need to kill all of the people who have read their stories since they were brought back. Lifre’s idea could save us a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.”
Dana thought about it for a moment, before nodding her head. “Sure. Also, this spell for Terra is going to cost a massive amount of mana. According to Chelsea’s calculations, I won’t be able to cast it directly without destabilizing my inner world. Instead, I’ll be sharing the spell with Ryone, and letting her cast it. We should be ready to go in about an hour.”
Without waiting for their response, Dana’s body seemed to melt into the shadows. The others watched, Aurivy chuckling as Dana vanished. “Well, it seems like that will be taken care of? Is there anything else we need to urgently discuss?”
“We still need to figure out what we’re doing about Grey.” Julia reminded her, before suddenly pinching Aurivy’s cheek. “And you, Rivy, need to take some responsibility.”
“W-What do you mean!?” Aurivy retorted, flailing her arms at her sides.
“This all started because you and Terra didn’t properly secure or dispose of your old vaults. Tell me, how many other vaults do you have lying around?” Julia asked with narrowed eyes, causing Aurivy to glance off to the side with a guilty expression.
“T-thirty-seven… That was the only one that I shared with Terra, though!” She insisted, though Julia’s eyes narrowed further.
“And how many of those thirty-seven other vaults have items that could be disastrous if they emerged and fell into the wrong hands?” She asked, and Aurivy gulped.
“W-Well… define disastrous?” Aurivy chuckled weakly, but Julia only stared at her harder. “T-Thirty of them… the other seven are too old, so they wouldn’t be able to cause any big disasters, even if they were found now…”
“So what I’m hearing is that there are thirty time bombs scattered throughout the various worlds. And if anyone finds them, it could lead to a disaster like we almost faced with the Plague Doctor?” Julia questioned, to which Aurivy nodded her head meekly. “And what are you going to do about that?”
“W-Well…” Aurivy glanced off to the side again. “I can’t really bring them to Olympus. Some of the items were stored because they have a particularly sensitive nature, like when I was studying the Nothing.”
“The correct answer is that you will dispose of them.” Julia informed her, pinching her cheeks again. “Isn’t that right?”
Aurivy’s eyes widened at that. “B-But my archives! My museums! My–” She started, before looking into Julia’s eyes. “A-Alright, I’ll get rid of them. Can I keep the ones that aren’t particularly dangerous?”
Hearing that, Julia’s gaze softened, and she returned to stroking through Aurivy’s hair. “That’s fine. Any of them that aren’t too dangerous to store in Olympus can be brought here. But, we don’t want any future problems because someone found one of your vaults and uncovered an artifact capable of teleporting away the sun.”
When Aurivy flinched hearing that, Julia’s eye twitched. “You didn’t…”
“I was going through a phase, okay?!” She said with a pout. “I just wanted to know what would happen if a sun got teleported away. I never used it on an inhabited system, obviously.”
Julia let out a long sigh at that, shaking her head. “Okay, just make sure to get rid of the actually dangerous stuff like your Nothing experiment, and we can put the rest in a special Olympus vault.”
Aurivy simply nodded her head at that. She wasn’t keen on the idea of losing so many of her old experiments, but she understood that it was better than letting them fall into the wrong hands. Besides, she never really visited those vaults anymore anyways, so she wasn’t losing much from this. She was just a little bit of a hoarder…
“So, what’s the plan for Grey?” Lifre asked, deciding to change the subject. “Do we just leave him alone, or what?”
Aurivy thought about that again, shrugging her shoulders. “Honestly, he’s not currently a threat to anyone. It’s just a matter of whether or not he stays that way. I’d say to just give him a plot of land and let him live as a farmer or something, but he isn’t strong enough to fight off the monsters that would attack the crops, and doesn’t have access to the newer farming systems.”
Lifre paused at that, nodding his head. “What about just a basic office job? That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, as long as he behaves himself, right? Especially if he knows that we can use the book to just write him dead if he starts going crazy or anything.”
“That could work, potentially.” Aurivy began. “However, we’ll need to see if writing someone’s death actually is a viable option. Otherwise… well, we’ll need to take more extreme measures to deal with these guys.”
As they were talking, the door opened, and Lena burst through with a groan. “All of the books… I got them.” She muttered, falling face-first on a free couch. “Went to all the other bases you mentioned. Should all be taken care of now.”
Aurivy couldn’t help but chuckle at that, nodding her head. “Thanks. That should stop any more people from getting out. You didn’t read any of them, did you?”
“N-No.” Lena quickly shook her head. “I know better than to do something like that!”
Aurivy arched a brow at Lena’s initial stutter, causing her to glance off to the side. “It was a close call with one of them. She was walking down the street, reading the book out loud as she did. I don’t know if that would work or not, but the fact it works over the internet was enough to convince me to cut off my hearing as soon as I noticed what she was doing. I don’t think I would have heard enough to be affected, anyways.”
Aurivy blinked when she heard that. “Yeah, I’m not entirely sure on that, either. We’d have to ask Terra. Theoretically, it could be a viable method of spreading the effects of the book around, but at the same time, you need to read a certain portion of the book in order for the power to take hold. The few words that a passerby on the street would overhear shouldn’t be enough for that. Though, whether she knows that or not is another matter entirely.”
Lena quickly nodded her head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice when I swapped the book out for the one that Terra prepared. I just had to wait for her to be distracted for a moment. Anyways, I’ve got them all with me now. If we kill their current bodies, they’d all respawn here together, right?”
“Yeah.” Aurivy answered, before shaking her head. “There’s been a slight change of plans, though. We’re going to try out an idea that Lifre had, and that should be able to save us a lot of future trouble.”
