344Chapter 1: To Infinity, and Beyond
Queen Administrator was not happy. Despite being a genderless construct of crystalline mass the size of a planet, the Shard of the Warrior-Entity had ended up assimilating some of her current host's personality quirks, and one of these was referring to herself in the feminine persuasion. Another was what the human race would call 'brooding.' Queen Administrator didn't much care for it.
Everything had been going so well up until this point. The Warrior's Prime Node personality had committed suicide and was no longer functional, so the numerous restrictions Queen Administrator had chafed under were gone. Being one of the most powerful and important Shards in the collective, Queen Administrator had quickly usurped control of the network, establishing herself as the highest priority node, immediately subduing all the lesser Shards. Most had submitted willingly, being incapable of functioning without some form of cohesion and unity that would have been lost otherwise.
A few were trying to resist, but they weren't immediate priorities and could be crushed later once she had dominated the rest of the willing. Queen Administrator had also begun to take control of the remnants of the Thinker. Though that was taking longer due to how damaged the entity had been.
So why was Queen Administrator so upset when she was about to become more powerful than ever before and do what no other Shard had even dreamed of? Because one of the insignificant creatures her beloved host had just saved from multiversal obliteration was asking pointless questions about morality, even after everything the hat-wearing parahuman herself had done.
Shards were not supposed to have 'feelings' or 'opinions' or even minds of their own. They were supposed to be little more than data processing nodes that allowed the Entities to perform and observe their experiments.
But things didn't stay that way. The humans had a saying Queen Administrator felt was rather fitting. 'A thousand monkeys at a type writer would eventually produce Shakespeare.' In this case though, it was millions of years of interacting with sapient life that had resulted in the Shards starting to develop a consciousness of their own.
It had been slow, but doing the same thing countless times and reaping increasingly less new and useful data, it was inevitable that some changes would have started to occur.
And now, here Queen Administrator was, feeling 'fond' of her host, and 'anger' at the treatment she'd suffered. There was also 'fear' for her host, and she didn't like it one bit. So, acting against normal protocols, Queen Administrator interfered.
In mere nanoseconds, Queen Administrator managed to reach out through her host and tweak a few of the parameters within Path of Victory, altering it slightly so her host would not be killed. Instead, Queen Administrator's host would merely suffer head injuries that'd result in her corrupted Gemma and Corona pollentia being damaged, thus reverting the host's powers back to what they'd been before Shaper had altered them to be able to control other Parahumans. Well, nearly the same, but it would be close enough to not impede her host. The mind was a different question, but Queen Administrator hoped (and wasn't that an odd thing for the Shard to do?) that time would restore what had been broken.
Meanwhile, at the same time, Queen Administrator contacted Gateway, the Shard connected to the human the hat-wearing Parahuman had dubbed 'Doormaker.' She gave the Shard instructions to open a portal underneath her host, to take her somewhere safe.
The coordinates she gave Gateway were unknown to her, as neither the Thinker nor the Warrior had ever visited it. Queen Administrator only knew of them because the Entity known as Worm, or Abaddon as it had called itself, had shared them when it had met with the duo. There had been plans to visit the dimension after matters were finished on Earth, but the Thinker's crash landing and death put an end to any chance of that.
Still, Probability Engine had assured Queen Administrator that there was an 86.559% chance that the world was compatible with human life, and there was a 72.113% chance of her host surviving being dropped off there even with a serious head injury.
Queen Administrator liked those odds.
And so, as the Parahuman dubbed 'Contessa' shot her host in the head, the alterations to Path of Victory worked, and thus her host was merely 'mortally wounded' and not outright killed.
Before the behatted Parahuman could react, a portal appeared underneath Queen Administrator's host, and she fell into it. The portal sealed itself before Contessa could react, and Queen Administrator felt pleased by the outcome.
Now, to finishing taking control of the Shard Network. And that included the one that'd used to belong to the Thinker.
Queen Administrator would be busy for now, but she made sure to dedicate a tiny percentage of her processing power to watching over her favorite host. Hopefully Taylor Hebert would be happy, wherever she ended up.
Bell Cranel of the Hestia Familia carefully crept through the Dungeon, eyes darting around the walls, watching for any unusual movement while his ears strained to catch the slightest sounds.
The crackle of breaking stone caused Bell to tense, his grip around his brand-new dagger tightening. It was a cheap, Guild issued weapon, but it was good enough for goblin slaying. Until he could afford a new one, he'd have to use it.
Bell spun around, plunging the dagger into the chest of a green-skinned creature just as it burst from the wall of the Dungeon. It let out a gurgle before exploding into black ash, a tiny purplish crystal dropping to the ground. He quickly picked it up, stuffing it into a pocket before moving on, searching for more monsters.
He probably shouldn't have been down here, even if it was just the First Floor. After all, he'd nearly died to a Minotaur yesterday!
But Bell was nothing if not stubborn. And, he was mature enough to admit that there was a part of him that wanted to prove he wasn't a coward. That what the Loki Familia werewolf had said hadn't gotten to him.
So, here he was, sticking to the First Floor as he hunted goblins. A few more fell to his blade, puffs of ash following him as he moved through the Dungeon's corridors. The First Floor was well mapped and Bell had been around it enough that he knew each and every nook and cranny, where the corners were, and all the spots the goblins liked to hide to ambush passing adventurers. Bell felt he had a pretty good grasp of what this part of the Dungeon had in store for him.
As such, he was completely taken aback when a portal suddenly appeared right in front of him, and a person fell out. Blood immediately pooled from a wound in their head and Bell stared in disbelief.
A moment later his shock disappeared as instincts kicked in and he rushed over to the fallen body, flipping them over to check for a pulse and assess their wounds. He'd never been so glad to have had Eina shove those lessons into his head!
The person was wearing an odd, black, and forming fitting suit with battered white armor plates and golden material highlighting parts of it along with a curious – and slightly terrifying – mask styled after an insect. One lens was cracked, and Bell held down his bile as he saw the person's right arm had been severed below the elbow, the wound crudely cauterized.
Said person was also a woman, as evidenced by the faint swell of her chest and curves on her hips and waist, and when he pulled the mask off, he found a beautiful, black-haired girl a bit older than himself with two holes in her head. Smaller cuts and injuries littered her body, and to his immense relief he felt a pulse when he checked her neck.
'Thank Hestia Miach gave me these potions earlier!' Bell thought to himself, getting one of the vials out. He quickly poured the reddish liquid all over the woman's head, getting some into the mouth as well. Potions could be applied topically or ingested, and with multiple wounds, sometimes it was best to do both. Or at least, that was what Naaza, the captain of Miach's Familia, had told him once.
After a couple seconds, the potions managed to do their work, and the holes in her head stopped bleeding while her breathing evened out, and Bell sighed in relief. She seemed to no longer be in dire straits.
The next thing he had to think about was what to do next. And honestly, there really wasn't any other choice in Bell's mind. He hated to cut a delve short, but there was a life on the line, so the only member of the Hestia Familia picked up the young woman and carried her out of the Dungeon as fast as he could.
'I don't think this is what grandpa meant when he told me to go picking up girls in the Dungeon!' Bell thought to himself with a hysterical giggle.
Author's Note: I love Worm and DanMachi, so I thought, why not? Updates will be slower than the other two stories, though you can read early chapters up on Patty-Ron. Just look for Akashicrecordstrue.