Chapter 327

  Oh Karma!

  “Oh Karma, how can you ever be considered heartless, when you clearly have earned my own tiny heart many, many times over.” I state, while clutching at my chest and feeling that same tiny heart beating at a near frantic pace.

  At my comment Mallory of course just raises her head into the air and lets out an exasperated sigh.

  For a moment, I wonder if she thinks I am mocking her.

  “Look, I’m tell you, it was an accident. Honestly, I forgot the Aura was even active,” Mallory protests.

  “Oh, here it is,” I all but squeal with delight, “say it again. Leave out no detail, I really want to hear it, so I can imagine it again, and again, and again…”

  Mallory just stares at me with a look of annoyance, before going over the events again.

  “It started with my accidentally killing him due to his comments towards Gwen. Then he apparently tried to assault my backside in retaliation…”

  Hearing this, I feel my body all but squirming with excitement, “go on.”

  “You are far too excited about this,” Mallory hisses.

  “Don’t you see, this is a dream come true. Death by his own hands, literally and figuratively here.” I gesticulate wildly, letting my body float up so that I am now smiling while looking down at Mallory.

  Mallory just looks up to stare at me in the eyes, and I swear I could all but kiss her.

  “Then say it, say those beautiful words, that caused this result to happen…” I reply while pointing towards the corpse of my soon to be future ex-husband. A STBF-EX? Fortunately, Gwen is already here apparently casting her version of Resurrection for the second? No, wait. Trying to gauge the situation, I lick my finger, hold it into the air to grab ambient mana particles, then taste the air, “three times?”

  I turn to Gwen for confirmation on this being the third such Resurrection.

  She just raises one eyebrow and nods her head in agreement.

  “Wow, three times. Now go on, don’t leave anything out.”

  For a moment I wish there was popcorn. I think about it for a moment, then quickly nix the idea as I like the idea of popcorn, but I hate the little kernel shreds in my mouth.

  Mallory just sighs and continues.

  “Well, he tried to play grab hands with me, which resulted in his second accidental death,” Mallory notes.

  “Death by Reflexive Battle Aura, got it, now this third time?” I ask.

  “The third one wasn’t me, that was all your daughter.”

  “Really?” I ask turning to Gwen who just shrugged her shoulders in agreement and continued casting Resurrection.

  “Yes, apparently she was still ticked off at him for trying to touch me in such a way that she Resurrected him, just to kill him herself.”

  Hearing that, I turn to Gwen and am momentarily speechless.

  Seeing my reaction, Gwen looks upset with herself more than anything.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I just saw the look he still had in his eyes after he got Resurrected and how he even opened his third eye just to stare at Mallory’s behind, and well I let him have it.” Gwen admitted sheepishly. “I know I shouldn’t have done that to dad, but…”

  Chuckle.

  By now I could not help but laugh.

  “Oh Gods, stop, you are making me laugh too hard,” I admit. Then just as expected a laughing tear forms and almost solidifies into the size of a mana marble almost immediately.

  “Oh my gosh, this is too good. So glad I skipped classes early to check in on all the Titles and World announcements.” I bellow loudly.

  “You’re not mad?” Gwen asked.

  “I mean, he earned them from what I can tell, right?” I ask, as I look around and see piles of golden Karma threads just washing away. “Though apparently, you missed out on a lot of good karma coming your way, had you held off on the assaults, it seems like it was worth it. Besides, it’s not like you are forcing him to stay dead. So, other than the chance at good karma, you are fine.” I state.

  Realizing that I likely place too much importance on what the world considers to be a true karmic event for my own good.

  “So, you mean it, you’re okay?” Mallory cuts in.

  “With you Resurrecting the lug? I mean, sure, if you must,” I joke, knowing that Gwen is already feeling bad about this event already.

  There is a momentary pause, before Gwen finally smiles, a note of relief filling her face, that’s when I go in for the kill.

  “Now my only question is how are we going to write this up?” I ask.

  “Write this up?” Mallory and Gwen both ask in unison.

  “Yeah, you know for the incident report,” I begin. “I mean, are we going to call it an accidental suicide? Or a full blown Robicide?”

  There is a moment, and then I see the moment the look of confusion and concern wears away on both of their faces at the exact same time. Seeing their look of near annoyance generating frustration makes me smile a little bit more inside.

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  There is a moment of silence, all while Gwen continues to cast her spell. Realizing this is the important part where she needs to focus, I decide to leave, while I still can.

  “Right, well, I’ve got a class to teach and all. Have fun cleaning up this,” I wave my hand wildly around the room indicating all the pixie blood everywhere. “I feel sorry for whichever shmuck lives here…”

  Cackle.

  I laugh ladylike to myself, before I Teleport and Cosmic Anchor my way back to class.

  Poof.

  As I appear, I am still laughing loudly to myself. Only to arrive and find that my students are all nervous.

  Penelope is standing up, her legs weak as she clearly is bracing herself with her desk.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Are you okay?” Penelope all but demands.

  “Me? Yeah, I’m great, why?” I ask.

  “What about the Grand Commander?” Another student asks.

  I blink at the comment, then try to figure out who exactly they are talking about.

  “Mallory?” I ask, as that is the only name that seems to fit the pompous title.

  “Yes, is she okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine,” I reply still trying to understand what exactly is happening.

  Fortunately, Penelope is clearly able to read the confusion on my face.

  “Okay, so it wasn’t you, or one of your Simulacrum, or Mallory that the World Announcements were about?” Penelope clarifies.

  At that question, I began to understand.

  They were concerned that this was a direct attack on the guild and its members that would simultaneously weaken us, while strengthening our enemies.

  “Oh, yeah. We are fine. Just my ex, no big deal,” I reply.

  “Your, your ex?” Penelope asks all but collapsing to her seat.

  “Yeah…” I began.

  “Three times?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry. He deserved it for all three times,” I replied, trying to hint that it was more of a suicide than a full blown Robicide.

  There was an awkward pause. I guess this was to be expected as I was clearly not taking the death of my STBF-EX seriously enough.

  I did find it oddly karmic that he managed to somehow get a Mythical Bloodline right off the bat, not realizing how terrible that was without having the power that came with building up a proper foundation. Then he seemingly got exploited for that very same exploit that he tried to take for himself.

  Just when I was musing to myself on the ironies of the world, that is when Penelope pulled me from my musing.

  “Um, professor?” Penelope asked.

  “Umbrella,” I responded.

  Penelope just paused and stared at me for a moment, before shaking her head and continuing her initial though process.

  “Will you please continue your lesson?” Penelope asked.

  You know those moments, when you had a thought, but then something happened to distract you. You know, you get messages that likely someone you love is dying, then being Resurrected, only to die almost immediately again and again. No? Never happened? Well, now you can likely see why that would be distracting.

  “Right, the lesson.” I begin and am a bit flustered as I have no clue of where I was in my speech. This happens when you just sort of wing things and hope for the best. “Anyone remember where we were?”

  “Crush your enemies!” Gabriellaz chimes in, getting really enthusiastic into this topic.

  While that does sound sort of similar to the topic I was covering, I don’t know if it was in any way the actual topic being covered.

  “Destroy their spirit by reverse engineering their life’s work in seconds,” yet another student called out.

  Again, the enthusiasm the second time around is top notch, but I’m still sort of lost as to where I left off. That’s when Gabriellaz adds in and completes the last full thought I had here before getting sidetracked.

  “Then create a better product, with more functionality and versatility, until they are left in the past. A minor footnote in the annals of history denoting your minor competition on your meteoric rise to power through capitalism.”

  “Oh, that’s right!” I exclaim, as I finally have that eureka moment. Now that I can remember where I was in my thoughts, I feel slightly better. It’s not dementia, it’s just a lack of attention to what I was last doing.

  “Now I remember, and I can explain what it was exactly that I wanted you all to work on,” I begin to once again gain my flow and let my thoughts come out in their natural flow and cadence. “Your class Glyphs are unique. If you look, rather than having typical patterns or ways to practice, you will begin with a singular item.”

  I paused as I let the students get to said Glyphs and pull up the item that they were currently on.

  Of course, only half of the students do this, the other half just stare at me like I’m going to do their Glyphs for them.

  “Come on, this is an invitation to pull up your Glyph we will go through the first one together,” I state and gesture with a rolling hand gesture to help get these other students on track with me.

  At that beckoning everyone pulls up a Glyph that has what appears to be a typewriter.

  “The Grammarme Typewriter. A typewriter that records your work, fixes the grammar, makes suggestions and ultimately keeps ideas for a full book made in its typed formats. Then can generate books based on saved crystals.”

  I pause, realizing that I am getting a bit excited about this. I know it is this world’s equivalent of a supercomputer, but it did more than just that. It took full thoughts and stories and printed them.

  It was a typewriter, grammar checker, tone and style influencer, and book publisher all in one.

  “Its only flaw was that it could only print known books that already had premade data crystals. That was its downfall, the need for data crystals, then monopolizing the data crystals so that no books could ever be made.” I shake my head at the lack of foresight. The creator needed to have flooded the market with the Grammarme Typewriter data crystals, then sell the typewriter itself at an exorbitant cost.

  “Actually, that statement is incorrect,” I correct myself, “that is the one about its only flaw. There are dozens of design flaws that are either intentionally or unintentionally designed to break down over time requiring routine maintenance. The only problem was that the creator didn’t leave behind instruction manuals, figuring that he would be able to have a constant stream of income from fixing these contraptions.”

  “What happened to the designer?” A student asks.

  “Good question, he died.”

  “But how?”

  “Well, as you can guess, he wanted to sell these devices in person. Meaning he had to put his entire life’s savings into each version, before taking them from kingdom to kingdom and finding a wealthy bibliophile, only to milk them for everything they were worth.”

  “Okay?” Penelope asked.

  “That’s when karma struck. While he was carrying one of the completed Grammarme Typewriters to a neighboring kingdom, there was a monster stampede that attacked his carriage. Killing him and leaving behind his body and the Grammarme Typewriter as the only memory. He was an easter egg that was meant to be found, but no one cared. Not until one blind elf girl happened to stumble across the oddly shaped typewriter buried deep in the ground. One that seemed to glow with the fading residue of magical energies.”

  “You found it?” Penelope asked.

  “Me? No, this was all Gwen, but she found it and gave it to me as a present. Half the pieces were missing, and the ones that were there were so badly constructed that it was all I could do to piece together how it could have worked in its original form. But that did give me the idea for this lesson of class.”

  There was an odd pause as students began going through their design and rotating the object.

  “So, what do we do with this?” A student finally asked.

  “Reverse engineer it, take it apart piece by piece, figure out how it works. How it saves data to crystals. Find out what kind of crystals it uses, then note its weak points. Note the areas that could easily break down over time. Then finally suggest at least five areas of improvement.” I state.

  “Five? How many are there?”

  “There are at least ten. Well, thousands really, as the only limitation is what you want to improve, which is why this class is so great. For while we all have the same invention, we can have hundreds, if not thousands of different combinations for how to fix or improve this system” I state.

  After hearing my lesson, everyone turns their attention back to their floating designs that are being spun about and rotated.

  Just when I think I can take a moment to myself and relax, that’s when Penelope of all people lets me know she is already distracted.

  How do I know she is distracted? Well, simply put, she asks a question that has nothing to do with the lesson at hand. Or maybe there is a slight connection, but we have moved on from this point that she seems now fixated upon.

  “Are there hundreds of these types of things in the world?” Penelope asks.

  “What now?” I ask for clarification.

  “In the ground, you noted that Gwen found this, while you found this city, and then the Kujo Caverns.” Penelope pressed.

  “Yes,” I answer affirmatively, before seeing where she was going with this line of questioning. “You mean are there more fossils or future quests that are just waiting to be found in the ground?”

  At this point, everyone has stopped their lessons as they all stare at me, waiting with bated breath for the answers to these questions that Penelope is now asking.

  “Yes, are there literally hundreds of quests just waiting to be unearthed?" She asks.

  I shrug and answer honestly, “of course there are.”

  Pause.

  There is a silence that everyone seems to have at this moment.

  “I think the real question that they want to ask, and I do too of course,” Valeria chimes in for the first time. Yes, she was there in class, but just sat next to Raygunnr, at one point I think she even used his sleeping form as a chair, but I won’t tell. “Is why don’t you try to do more with these clear future quest spots, sell them, or something?”

  “Yeah,” a few other students nod their heads in agreement at this.

  Seeing that everyone seems to be fixated on this question, I turn to Valeria and ask the only real reply available to such a question, “why?”

  At my question everyone flinches back as if they had been slapped in the face.

  In a way, they might have mentally been slapped.

  “Why? What do you mean why?” Valeria stammers out.

  “Exactly, I mean, why?” I can see that this is a teachable moment, and as such, I decide to go on with why I don’t dig up every treasure. Yes, part of this is self-control that I built up as a Broke child, knowing that I couldn’t keep half of the things I found. But the other part I found was that “the main reason why I don’t dig up every treasure is the karma associated with that treasure.”

  Everyone remains quiet, so I continue this impromptu lesson on karma.

  “Now if you went through the world, and felt yourself inexpertly drawn to go over a particular spot with mining gear, and follow your intuition that told you treasure was buried nearby and then you found it, then the karmic debt of that treasure would have been paid in full. Your work, your effort, your faith in yourself would be enough to justify you earning whatever item you found. Whether it was worth a gold coin, or a million coins, the karmic price would have been paid.

  “Then, imagine the alternative. Someone like myself or Gwen goes along, finds a treasure spot, digs it up, just because we can. Then sells it, our karmic debt will be increased due to not having truly earned the items in question. That is why I abstain from most of these findings.”

  “Except your Library of the Ancients, or whatever it’s called,” Penelope notes.

  “Well yeah, of course I’m going to keep the never-ending cave of endlessly generating books as my apocalyptic bunker to go to only in cases of emergency.” I reply as if it was the most natural thing possible.

  Penelope just shakes her head.

  Then after a moment, someone asks a question that I don’t really want to answer.

  “Wait, if you and Gwen both only use this ability of yours sparingly, what does your son do with this same exact gift?”