All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 72: Hazardous Waste

I stared at the towering heap of blackish-brown filth that stood before me. How something so disgusting had managed to pile so high unnoticed. My sensors moved upwards towards the ceiling and registered a bunch of small, furry black shapes. Eyes blinked open, and looked down at Beatrice and me.

The little beady black eyes blinked at semi-random intervals, creating a cascading pattern of winking stars above us. One of the creatures unwrapped what appeared to be wings around itself and then resettled them. I watched a glob of something fall from above and land on the pile, growing it just a tiny bit.

I ran my sensors over the mass and shuddered. This simply wouldn't do.

Without waiting for Beatrice to follow me, I rushed to the first monstrosity besmirching my floors. I couldn't roll over it, as it was tall enough to coat my chassis. Even if it would clean itself over time, I needed to exhaust all other options before I made that sacrifice. So I started shining my sanitation lamp at it. Judging based on how much microscopic life my sensors were registering, I reasoned that it might have some effect.

It wasn't enough. In fact, the data indicated that whatever this was had so much potency that it was contaminating the air around us. I started using my vacuum and air control to gently extract bits of mass from the pile, but it was prone to splatter everywhere. Stopping before I made even more of a mess, I popped out my mop and spray bottle combo.

My mop was an underused tool, in my opinion. Compared to how revolutionary it was when I first got it, its usefulness quickly faded. There just hadn't been much liquid that needed cleaning recently until now. The goop was too solid to be picked up, so I sprayed some cleaning compound to dilute it.

Once I had sprayed it a little, I tried to absorb it, but my mop mainly just removed the liquid I sprayed on the pile. The mess itself remained mostly unscathed. This was much more difficult than I had feared.

Beatrice had finally made it into the room. She had a rag tied over her face. "I hate cleaning up guano. It's the worst. Normally the mages only made us do this as a punishment. But still."

Was the goop called guano? At least the humans here seemed to understand the proper disgust that this guano deserved. This was one of the first moments that I actually had hope for the people here.

Moving toward a closet, Beatrice pulled out a shovel. That was a good idea. I wasn't sure how else to clean up this mess. She walked over to me with a shovel and bucket in hand and put the bucket down. With a sigh, she dug a load out of the pie and plopped it into the bucket.

As she was digging out another shovel full, she froze. "What!"

I waited for her to finish with the shovelful, trying to figure out how I was going to assist her. However, she didn't move. "I just hit 19 recently. How did I get to level 20 so fast?"

Beatrice shot me a quick look.

—-

LEVEL UP. LEVEL 20 REACHED. CHOOSE A SKILL: PERSUASION, DIVINE ALCHEMY, IMPROVED MUCKING

Bee was conflicted. Not about what skill to choose - she had made up her mind as soon as the options were presented. No, she was trying to decide if it went against her pledge to Void to simply keep her options to herself this time. She reasoned that it didn't. Her master wanted her to be independent and resourceful, so surely it would like her to take the initiative here? It obviously wasn't because she feared it would pressure her into Improved Mucking. Of course not.

Deciding to ask for forgiveness rather than permission and resolving to definitely consult Void next time, she quickly made her selection. "I'm thinking I am going to pick Divine Alchemy. Is that okay?"

Her master just gave her an affirmative beep. Bee let her shoulders slump in relief. She really hadn't wanted to pick Improved Mucking. Seeing how much experience she had gotten for the single scoop of bat guano she had removed, it could have been a good choice for leveling. But she shuddered at the thought. She'd rather level more slowly than hit level 100 as the world's best bat guano shoveler.

The first option, though, was one that she would avoid at almost any cost. It was her father's favorite skill. One that he had used at every turn in both his business and personal life. Persuasion was a skill that Bee deeply found disgusting. The way it subtly warped the mind of the target was sickening. After being the target of it so many times, she decided to never even consider it.

That she had even been offered the skill was worrying for her. She supposed it had to do with her interactions with Tony's family and her bargaining. Of course, that had been with the best of intentions, but still, the system seemed to count that.

Of all the options, the one that she chose wasn't a very hard decision. She didn't exactly know what Divine Alchemy did, but it sounded awesome. Her first truly magic-based skill! This was everything she had dreamed about. Bee had a nagging thought that it wouldn't give the abilities of the god of alchemy, though. She would need to look through the library and see what it actually did.

She finished her second scoop of guano with a lot more enthusiasm. The experience she earned for that one was much less than the first, but still an incredible amount. What made this such a valuable task to Void? It was cleaning, sure, but she normally wouldn't get anything that lucrative from the more routine stuff.

Looking over at her master, Bee became even more confused. Typically it was the most enthusiastic cleaner that she had ever seen. But now it was spraying liquid at the pile and trying to mop it up. It didn't seem to be having much success. Could it be that it had never cleaned guano before?

***

After a long day caring for the bats, Bee finally returned to the library. She wanted to pass out right after she and Tony had finished eating, but there were a couple things that she needed to take care of. First, she wanted to check out what her new skill did. Also, now that they had cleared out the other possible threats from the castle's upper levels, she figured it was time to turn her attention to Nazareth'gak.

She noted that Tony had made it to level 7. It seemed that his time in the fields had done him well. However, she refrained from congratulating him on it. He hadn't brought it up, and she still hadn't revealed her Scan ability. Instead, they talked about how the crops and chickens were doing.

Tony had settled into a routine, and she hated to admit it, but most days, she forgot he was here. The only times they saw each other were in the mornings and evenings. As Bee needed less sleep than he did, often she was gone before he woke up. However, she no longer had to worry about food. Like at all. But it wasn't just like servants laying out a meal; Tony did it with more care. She imagined this might have been what living with parents who cared about her was like.

Her mother had been like this, but it had been far in the past, and she didn't remember it as much as she would like. But if Bee came back from clearing out dangers on the upper floors late, there was always food waiting for her, usually some for breakfast as well.

Now that the upper floors were mostly safe, she actually had business in the library today. She browsed the shelves looking for a couple things. The exact title of the book she was looking for still eluded her, but she had an idea of what to look for. Eventually, she found a thick tome that mentioned her new skill. As she read the description, her heart sank.

The skill did not, in fact, give her divine abilities in alchemy. No, it was a faith-based skill to which classes like Devotee often had access. This skill gave her improved abilities with the types of alchemy that her divine parton favored. Of course, for her, that meant cleaning. Well, that wasn't useless, exactly. She could dabble in more cleaning-related solutions, but maybe there were other applications here too. If she convinced Void that a speed potion would help her to clean more quickly, would the skill consider those fair game? It was something to test. Other than that, so far, she couldn't figure out a recipe that involved circumventing stairs. Maybe she could make ramps?

The second book she found in the stacks Void had arranged by the entryway so long ago. That was probably why she had never found it. Containment and Disposal: What to do when You are Done with Your Demons. It was exactly the book she needed.

As she read through it, things were much more difficult than she had first thought. There was no simple way to kill a demon that was contained and in stasis. Not unless you had access to power a dozen levels higher than the demon. A captured demon just had too many inherent defensive properties to damage. However, not all hope was lost. There were ways of making a demon come out of its slumber while weakened significantly.

The book referenced a dozen different methods, none of which it discussed in depth. It did reference a few other books, which she eagerly collected. They didn't directly address the methods for disposing of unwanted demons the book laid out, but they discussed the concepts that it was based on.

One was an in-depth discussion on how demons regained consciousness as they came out of hibernation. Another talked about the environmental effects on demons.

Containment and Disposal mostly seemed to center its ideas around waking the demon up to consciousness before its full power returned. If it woke, then it would lose its protection and not have its full power. It wasn't easy to pull off and required several difficult to concoct potions to force a demon awake early. Normally this wasn't done as people generally were not stupid enough to summon demons much stronger than themselves without binding them.

The second approach was more to make the mages' life easier. It dealt with preparing the surrounding environment and essentially setting traps. If they filled a fire demon's surroundings with water before it woke up, there would be very little trouble in fighting it. There were several other things that could be done like that as well. Most, though, required a group of mages to pull off, and that was something that Bee wouldn't have.

The most common disposal method was banishment. The demons could fight against it, of course, but it was a lot easier than killing them. Unfortunately, it required more people. It also depended on the type of demons. The lesser demons they had been fighting at first were easy to banish, and that was the most common solution for them. The earth demons were pretty much impossible.

Bee wasn't sure how she would handle Nazareth'gak. There was no way she was going to be able to banish it. She also would have needed to start redrawing the circle before it was erased if she had any hope of finishing it on her own. It seemed that she had a week or three before she would have to find some way to get rid of it before it woke up naturally.

If the Lieutenant woke at full power, there likely wasn't anything on this planet that could stop it from freeing its brothers. If that wasn't the case, she would have long considered running.

Looking through the references and all the possible ways that she could weaken a demon, Bee began to make notes. She was writing things down long into the morning.

Eventually, she fell asleep in her chair, head on the table, and notes pushed to the side. She stayed like that through the night, even as Tony checked on her before bed. Even as a concerned Void nudged her foot, trying unsuccessfully to get her to move to the mattress just a few feet away.

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