I Obtained a Divine Power
I Obtained a Divine Power
[Blessing]
An event triggered by fulfilling specific conditions at relics, ruins, or locations imbued with the power of an elemental god.
In Fanta X Aca, this was the sole means of obtaining an Authority.
An Authority is the ability to borrow the power of the god who presides over a given element, enabling feats beyond the reach of human causality.
It was unequivocally one of the game's top-tier content pillars.
As far as anyone knew, a character could receive an Authority once—twice if they were lucky.
Rerolling was rampant: players would rush a fresh account straight to a known [Blessing] location to grab an Authority, and if the roll was bad, they'd scrap the account and start over. The technical term was reroll marathon—what the community called resemara.
'The Earth element didn't even have any known Blessing sites, though.'
That was one reason the Earth element was treated as bottom-tier: you couldn't get an early Blessing for it.
And yet, the [Earth Blessing] site had been buried underground this whole time...
No wonder it stayed undiscovered.
'Who in their right mind would think to dig into the ground for it?'
Ian shook his head and stepped closer to the idol.
A small goddess statue, about the size of a forearm, glowing faintly.
It didn't look like someone had sculpted it. Rather, it seemed as if the soil had naturally taken this shape on its own.
Ian dropped to his knees.
This was the animation that played whenever you received a Blessing in the game.
'So what do I do now?'
This wasn't a game—there was no button to press. And no status window had appeared either.
Was he supposed to prove his faith?
After a moment's hesitation, Ian closed his eyes.
He decided to attune himself to the dense Earth-attribute mana suffusing the space. The moment he gathered that elemental energy into his dantian—
Shaaaah—
A warm, radiant light poured from the statue, flooding Ian's inner vision even through his closed eyelids.
—O child who walks my path.
A voice that soothed the soul reached him.
An intangible presence wrapped his body in gentle warmth.
—Hmm. You are a peculiar one.
Ian flinched.
Wait. She hadn't figured out he was possessing this body, had she?
He swallowed hard.
—You walk a path not of harm, but of aid. Your generous heart is akin to the earth itself. I shall bestow upon you a power befitting the road you have traveled.
Phew. So that's what she meant.
Ian let out an inner sigh of relief.
Peculiar—she must have been referring to Pongpongi's exploits.
It made sense. Only a tiny fragment of a god's being manifests during a Blessing. In other words, he'd been worrying over nothing.
...Huh?
No. Wait a second.
If that was the case, then what the Earth Goddess said next—'the road you have traveled'—couldn't possibly refer to Kim Ian's life. The owner of this body up until now had been Pongpongi.
"......."
A sudden wave of foreboding washed over him.
—I bestow upon you a blessing. All that your touch reaches shall become clean and renewed.
Why did ominous feelings always turn out to be right?
Maybe intuition really was a product of human evolution. Ian had the distinct sense that he already knew the name of the Authority the Earth Goddess was about to grant him.
—Thus, I name this power Dishwashing. Dishwashing is the power to cleanse your heart and spirit, to render your surroundings clean and peaceful. With it, you will be able to temporarily erase certain traits or properties from a target. Should you diligently hone this ability, you will find it useful across a range of durations and characteristics.
'...The Authority is called Dishwashing.'
Ian was at a complete loss for words.
The gentle light and voice blanketing the space around him faded away.
"No. Uh. Hold on!"
He didn't even get a chance to protest.
Sllk.
Even the idol of Gaia crumbled back into ordinary soil.
"......"
Ian stared blankly at the vanished traces of the goddess.
"Dishwashing."
That was the Authority he had acquired.
◆
After staring dazedly at the mound of dirt, Ian shook his head vigorously.
"This could actually be surprisingly good."
Even the worst Authority had a substantially higher absolute value compared to most ordinary techniques.
Whether it was useful or not was another matter entirely.
'Figuring out how to make use of it—that's just a matter of thinking it through, isn't it?'
He was already putting Pongpongi's <Extraction> and <Transformation> to good use, despite those being practically heavy machinery in terms of finesse.
He felt confident he could make Dishwashing work, too.
"...It's really just the name that's a little problematic."
Honestly, just discovering that an Earth Blessing existed was a huge gain in itself.
Now that he knew the Goddess Gaia's Blessing lay beneath the ground, he could search subterranean locations for opportunities to acquire other Authorities as well.
"I wasn't even thinking about Blessings at all before this."
Having more hidden pieces to collect was always welcome.
Phew.
He exhaled and looked around.
The bright light the goddess had radiated was gone, but faint sources of illumination remained.
"More importantly, how do I get out of here?"
As he scanned his surroundings, he caught the sound of something ringing out—and something colliding.
And something that even sounded like a human voice.
What the hell?
—Kyaaaaaa!
When he strained his ears, a scream from somewhere in the distance grew steadily louder.
—Fwump!
Then a small figure dropped through the same hole Ian had fallen from.
Pft.
A flawless landing, utterly at odds with the dramatic scream.
The silhouette was distinctly catlike.
Ah. Right. Because she was a cat.
"Danya?"
"...Nggh."
Frrrt!
Danya twisted her body around, shook off the dirt, and glanced about—then her eyes went wide. Why was she looking at him like he was a ghost?
"Ian!"
Danya scampered over.
Her big round eyes swept over him from head to toe, and then—
—Pop.
She threw a punch.
It was squishy.
"I was worried sick, you idiot son of a bitch!"
Arms stretched behind her, face thrust forward. Beastfolk body language was rather dynamic. That was probably her genuinely furious posture.
Ian promptly apologized.
"Sorry for making you worry."
"I wasn't worried!"
You just said you were. Pick one, tsun or dere. Just one. Still, he was a little touched. That hole he'd fallen through—it wouldn't have been easy to jump in without serious resolve.
"Thanks. For worrying about me."
"Oh, for crying out loud!"
Pop-pop-pop.
Punches so fast they were barely visible.
But Ian found himself paying more attention to the dirt and dust clinging to Danya's hair than to her squishy fists.
And the moment Danya's fist made contact with his chest—
'Dishwashing.'
He tested the brand-new Authority he'd just acquired.
The earth energy generated in Ian's dantian traveled along Danya's hand and spread through her.
"Oh."
The dirt and dust vanished cleanly.
Sensing something off, Danya touched a hand to her own hair.
"...Huh?"
Her eyes rounded at the now spotless strands.
"What was that just now?"
Ian shrugged.
"Just a little trick."
"What do you mean, a trick? It felt like mana suddenly welled up inside you."
"You must've imagined it."
"......"
Danya narrowed her eyes at him, suspicion written all over her face.
"First you one-shot that giant rabbit earlier. And now that mystery technique of yours..."
Hrmm. Danya furrowed her brow as if deep in thought, then snapped her fingers.
"...Could it be you're a genius hiding your true strength?"
"Pfft!"
"Why are you laughing!"
A genius who didn't even know a single spell he could cast on his own? The abilities Ian was using right now were essentially Pongpongi's unlocked skills, repurposed on the fly.
'I need to get stronger, fast.'
Securing his first Authority was just the beginning.
Consistent training. More hidden pieces.
He looked forward to seeing Danya's reaction once he'd collected a few more of those.
"...He really was a genius after all. There's no way he could change this fast otherwise. Which means... wait, does that make me dead last in the Mezai class? No way in hell..."
Danya was already muttering nonsense to herself.
Ian snorted and crouched down in front of her.
"What are you babbling about? Enough nonsense—give me your feet."
"Nya!"
She must have used her feet to stabilize herself during the fall; they were covered in dirt, dust, and plenty of small scrapes and scratches.
'Hmm. Wonder if this works on wounds too.'
He did feel grateful toward Danya, but she also made a suitable test subject for the Authority. Ian used Dishwashing (the Authority) once more.
Shaaah—
All manner of dust and grime vanished without a trace. But the wounds didn't close up.
'So it can brush off dirt and dust, but it can't restore or heal.'
Lost in thought, Ian found himself pressing on Danya's feet a few times without realizing it. They were small and squishy, like cat jelly.
The owner of said feet was not about to stay still.
"...Ian, don't tell me you have a foot thing?"
"......"
"Pervert!"
He felt wronged.
He'd just pressed them unconsciously because they genuinely felt like cat jelly.
Everything after that proceeded smoothly.
Danya wandered around, sniffing the air, and found a passageway buried under a mound of dirt. Following that path brought them back out to the forest, where the corpse of the giant rabbit they'd killed was still lying.
"Guess that was its den back there."
"So what do we do with this?"
"Probably not edible. Feels like it's contaminated with dark mana."
Danya's first thought was whether they could eat it.
He really did like that about her.
Ian had been wondering the same thing himself. At this size, it would make a pretty decent protein source.
The problem was the blue mushroom glowing atop its head.
A strange energy was continuously seeping from it, spreading throughout the rabbit's entire body.
"Hold on."
Ian's eyes lit up.
That. Couldn't he just purify it with Dishwashing?
◆
<Reconnaissance and Search Fundamentals>
Professor Rowen of the Reconnaissance Department.
Rowen was in an especially good mood today.
Why?
Because those stuck-up Mezai students were dangling from the trees all over the forest like wind chimes.
'In all my years of teaching, I've never witnessed such a magnificent spectacle.'
The corners of Professor Rowen's mouth twitched upward.
Rowen had known about the magic-immune rabbits from the start. That was precisely why he'd arranged this impromptu field exercise.
'There's no way magic faculty kids can deal with rabbits that have developed magic resistance.'
This would leave the Mezai students—and even the magic faculty professors—thoroughly embarrassed for a good while.
"You've all had a rough time clinging to your barrier spells. Rest up in the shade."
The moment Professor Rowen finished speaking, the students who had already given up on the exercise flopped to the ground in droves.
'That old hag's face is going to be priceless.'
The person Rowen was picturing was Professor Violet, a specialist in mana circuits. The fact that the two of them were sworn rivals was common knowledge among Lichten Academy's faculty.
Rowen began grinning again.
'Still, it is a bit disappointing.'
Not a single student seemed to have landed a proper hit.
Had they all just panicked the moment their offensive spells failed and burned their emergency artifacts?
'There were ways to leverage the natural environment around them.'
However underhanded Rowen's motives might have been, he was still an academy professor at the end of the day. The whole point of this lesson was that facing creatures like this in person would serve as massive experience for the students.
'But they didn't even have the guts to try. Tsk, tsk.'
This was why he could never get along with mages.
A breed that just gave up the instant their calculations stopped adding up. But in combat, cold reason wasn't always the whole story.
Truth be told, the priest-class kids who'd already completed their rotation through the exercise had at least properly clashed with the creature before admitting defeat.
Though, to be fair, none of them had managed to take down that monstrous rabbit either.
So there Rowen stood, clicking his tongue in disapproval while cheerfully gloating—
—Scrrrape.
"...What's that?"
From somewhere in the distance came the sound of something heavy being dragged.
—Scrrrape.
—Scrrrape.
The sound drew closer.
Professor Rowen cast a simple search spell—and his jaw dropped.
"Why is... why is that thing coming this way?"
The giant rabbit was being dragged toward them.