All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 85: Falling In Place

The castle regrowing around me wasn't the only weird occurrence that I noticed. I had been organizing debris and fallen items into piles for a while now. But strangely, whenever I placed something on a pile, it was always perfectly aligned. At first, I assumed that was just due to my skill and increasing motor control. But at one point, I was in a particular rush because I knew Beatrice needed some help in a few minutes. Then, I knew I wasn't stacking the books and blocks straight at all; when I came back to that stack of blocks, though, it was all perfectly aligned.

When Beatrice's alchemy equipment started organizing itself, I started looking for solutions. Something odd was going on. There were several things that I was aware of that could be causing something like this. My first suspicion was there was some sort of like-minded creature sneaking around straightening everything up. An anti-mess maker, maybe.

I spent several days carefully scanning my surroundings while seeming like I wasn't paying attention before I finally gave up on that theory, as cool as it might have been. The other unexplained cause could be the reward I got for reaching level 50. I had been expecting another mutation, but instead, I had just been told my domain was activated with no explanation. I supposed this castle had become my domain, even if I didn't know what that entailed exactly.

After days of being around the castle, things were starting to improve markedly. I had cleaned each floor thoroughly, and I had noticed that the stacks of salvaged bricks were slowly shrinking as if the domain was repurposing them. Still, at this rate, it would be a long time before the castle was back to its previous splendor.

It was a couple more days before Beatrice was finally able to awaken Tony. As she kept feeding him healing potions and applying slaves to his head, he kept getting better. When he finally woke up, he was very confused. His memories of me seemed a bit hazy, but he did give me a good pat before falling asleep again. But the next morning, he woke up on his own.

---

Bee was worn down to the bone. She had barely slept more than a couple hours a day since the Lieutenant was defeated. All other hours of the day, she was trying desperately to save Tony. Things had taken a turn for the worse that first night, and with the library in disarray, it had taken her much too long to find solutions. Organ damage, brain damage, and internal bleeding were all things that were extremely difficult to heal. Those injuries required much more complicated concoctions than she had ever needed to make before.

Each one stretched her abilities, and it was only her new skill that had allowed Tony to pull through. It was the only time she had ever been grateful to the system for giving her a slew of terrible options. Repair seemed that the skill was functioning in a medical sense. Though the little bit of testing she had done showed, it did work on other things as well.

Repair and her Divine Alchemy had synergized and allowed her to muddle through recipes far beyond her skill level. All the while, they both made her actions more effective. Repair seemed to be especially effective in putting broken bones back together. Which was the only reason Tony had even a chance at waking up again. The number of ribs that had been at odd angles inside him, needing to be put back in place before healing could really begin, was astonishing.

Once his bones were healed, the long process of trying to restore function began. Bee hadn't slept for the first three nights before she finally passed out reading a book. By that point, Tony was still not out of trouble yet. Luckily Void had been kind enough to wake her up after a few hours.

Other than that, though, her master mostly left her to her work. It cleaned up after its fight, but even she could see it would take Void a while to restore the castle. Somehow it was magically repairing the walls as well. She had yet to catch it in the act, and at first, she was sure it was a hallucination. But now she was sure that the cracks in the floor were slowly melding together.

Now, nearly a week after the fight, Tony had finally regained consciousness. As he lay in the bed, unfocused gaze drifting around the room, his first words were, "Oh good. We are alive."

After confirming that he was not, in fact, dead, he fell unconscious again. Still, that was enough. Bee slumped over her bench in relief, letting exhaustion overtake her. It was just good to hear him speak. She wouldn't call Tony a father figure, as she still had a living father and enough bad memories to taint that role. Maybe he was more like a young uncle. But she had come to depend on him during the preparations for the fight. Even if he was older, he still listened to her.

Of course, she wasn't sure how much of that was because he was just overly aware of how strong she was. Now that she had reached level 32, she was truly strong. It was hard to quantify. Honestly, if she enlisted in the military, she would be among the upper ranks, and she was still only 13 years old!

Her strength wasn't quite superhuman yet. She might not be able to pull a plow as well as a draft horse, but she bet she could still pull it. The strength wasn't the biggest difference. All her skills were more powerful than before, and her mind was clearer. She remembered things with little effort, and she could read entire books in less than an hour.

Soon enough, Bee blinked her eyes open to a new morning. Stretching her protesting muscles, she checked on Tony to find that he was also awake.

Bee came over to check his wounds. "Hello Tony, how are you feeling?"

"Not great. Honestly I feel like a horse kicked me through a wall." Tony answered. His voice sounded raspy from disuse.

"That's not too far from the truth actually. I believe you went through a wall. Most of your ribs were broken at one point." Bee said. Tony reached up to feel his sides gently. "Huh, doesn't feel broken, just bruised."

"You will be bruised for at least a week. I fed your body as much of every different kind of healing I know about. It can't take much more for a while. There were… a few times I didn't think you would make it." Bee started to explain. "Once you couldn't handle any more of the alpha-based potions, I needed to move on to some slaves. That worked well for the most part, but unfortunately, it didn't do much for your insides. After those stopped I had to swap to using beta-based potions. Not ideal I know. It was hard to even find much about them; they have been outdated for so long. While they are much slower than the alpha-based ones, you can handle a bit more. Once you reached your limit on those…."

Bee trailed off as she realized that Tony had fallen asleep again. Sighing, she ran her hand down her face. Covering up a yawn, she returned to her mattress and just passed out.

---

I was almost done with restoring the entire castle. It was hard work, but I actually didn't do much directly anymore. All the mess was cleaned up, and all the reusable materials were organized. Just my presence seemed to be required as the castle stitched itself back together. The only thing I could actively do to speed it up was physically close to the damage.

Since I didn't have anything I could actively do, I was just keeping Tony company as he recovered while Beatrice was off somewhere else in the castle. Tony was looking at me oddly as if he was trying to remember something. "Hey, you fought Nazareth'gak, right?"

Huh, what a question! I searched my memory banks, and I found an instance of Beatrice referring to something of that name. Putting it together, I assumed it was the big demon's name. It only took me a few moments to process that, and I let out an affirmative beep.

"Crazy," Tony said, his head lolling back into the pillow. "You are one scary guy."

I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, so I just stayed quiet. It wasn't long before he spoke up again. "You know… I want to go home."

There were a few more minutes of silence while I tried to work out how to respond. I wanted to help Tony keep his spirits up, but I just wasn't sure how. Floors are simple; I like cleaning them. I know exactly how to take care of them. You vacuum, you mop, and sometimes you need to spray and wipe them. Humans are hard.

Humans have always done many things that have confused me. I rarely ever understand them, and their thoughts seem so illogical. Eventually, Tony broke into my musings as if he had never stopped talking. "Not to stay there. But I want to see my ma. And my pa. They should come here. There is more than enough work, and with the demon gone, this is a safe place."

He paused for another long second. "With all the stuff I have seen. I'm not really sure there is anywhere else safe. Maybe they need to go to Greg. But that's too expensive."

Again Tony paused for a long second. As the time stretched out, I eventually gave an inquisitive beep urging him to continue. However, when I looked over at him more closely, he had fallen deep asleep again.

---

Roscoe led his band of skeletons after the human army. It had been too easy to chase them off, and they had not managed to kill nearly as many of them as he would have liked. As much as that was a disappointment, it was also a blessing. They simply didn't have the numbers yet. If the humans had managed to defeat them, their revolt would have ended.

Of course, even now, their numbers grew. The humans they had managed to finish were turning behind them. They would be a far cry from the elite skeletons, but simple zombies had their place too.

As Roscoe led the march down the road, he looked at some of the small side trails leading off from it. He could smell the occasional group of humans down those paths. Each time he considered stopping the chase to pursue those humans, he figured that it wouldn't be worth it. There were only a small number of humans in those offshoot paths, after all, and he could always come back.

The first one also smelled of his Senior Sister, so he made a note to leave that one alone.

For now, Roscoe was satisfied with chasing the humans to a larger settlement before starting to gather more followers. There would be more potential recruits nearby a larger group of people. Still, maybe he would send a few zombies back. It would be a good idea to get the conquest rolling in multiple places. It would be harder to stop that way.

Yes, that would be a good idea.

On the second day, they were still not near a large group of humans. As much as he wanted to make sure the revolution was perfect, Roscoe was getting impatient. By the end of that day, he started sending a few zombies down random paths. They weren't very smart but could handle simple instructions. So he gave them a clear directive: "Find new recruits."