Yugioh Card Summoner

Today I received some interesting info about Varuna. You might remember that I made a video about him after I brought him home.

I had gotten some interesting responses on the thing. Sadly not all of it good.

See, Saint Lucia of the Hero’s party is widely considered to be the first Saint. But as you may have realized, that definitely isn’t the truth. The full truth at least.

Saint Lucia definitely is the first Saint of the Goddess’ Faith, the religion that is the most widely believed in today. But Lua isn’t exactly devoted to the Goddess either, and she is a Saint. The same with Ria, but she is a priestess.

And that is the reason why the Church isn’t exactly happy with me. They’ve made this belief that only people devoted to the Goddess can be Saints, priests or priestesses. Which would by extension limit Holy Magic to those individuals.

But that obviously isn’t true. All you have to do to get the priest/priestess title is devote your life to better the life of other people. Lua did that by being an adventurer while also learning healing. Ria did that by devoting herself to me and just trying to make up for what she did in her blood rage. And you know, some card cheats.

But back to the ‘first saint’ claim. Since most historic records were lost during the Demon King war, there were essentially no records of there having been a saint before Saint Lucia.

But here I was, someone with a being so old that he had lived in the time before the Demon Lord, and knew for a fact that someone with high level Holy Magic existed back then.

And because Tahlia records everything I see, I can easily show the crystal that Varuna was trapped in, and from that it can be confirmed that it was an eternal crystal.

So this all brings us back to a religious argument which has been a thing since the Goddess’ appearance over 1300 years ago. Which is the true god of this world, the System or the Goddess?

Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure myself. I’m decently sure I know the answer, but not positive.

My theory is that the Goddess is an avatar of the System. She was born using those 3 Ultimates, whatever they may be, to form her body.

Now you might ask why that would be required. And for that, the answer is simple. After the Demon Lord, the world was fucked up. Badly. I mean it was bad enough that a frozen water giant sealed in an eternal crystal dropped through a hole in the dimensional barrier.

And while the System is powerful, it isn’t all powerful. It isn't’ a god, neither is the Goddess. Well they are, but not like the all powerful gods you might think of. 

So the System needed a physical avatar. So using the three ultimates as a sort of focal point, the Goddess realized her body in the physical world to fix everything using the Hero’s skill as the power source for the fix. 

Afterwards, the System simply had to keep the Goddess around, as it probably didn’t realize that her appearance would birth a new religion. So now she is something akin to a System Agent, except that with more responsibilities.

Or at least that is my theory. I could ask her, but I don’t think I’ll get a straight answer. Not like she told me what the three ultimates are, despite me asking.

So yeah. Because of Valuna’s story, people were reminded that there can be Saints and priests not related to the Church of the Goddess.

But now to some good news. I think I know where Varuna used to live.

There is a medium-sized dungeon on the east coast which is completely underwater. But in the entrance room of that dungeon is a wall carving. One that apparently shows Varuna, as well as the Hero and the Saint who defeated him. 

The history of the carving had been lost to time, but an adventurer who had heard of the carving from aquatic adventurers, who then used Factory VR to get some training and saw the Varuna video, reported that it might be related.

Sadly it is a word of mouth tale, as the adventurer had never personally seen it. And there aren’t any Factory VR buildings that are suited for aquatic races. 

So I did what I do in those kinds of situations. I grabbed Varuna and Cailie, and we went on a little adventure.

Naturally we flew my Space-Jet Dragon. Varuna was in his ‘baby’ form so he would fit. And yes, the Blue-Eyes Jet does have space for two people and a small water spirit thing. I do actually have an idea for what I could call Varuna, but I’ll wait until I see if this history is his history, or just a coincidence.

Spoiler

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We landed in a shore town nearest to the dungeon in question. Sadly the adventurer who informed me of the carving wasn’t there, as the town didn’t have a Factory VR station. I’ll eventually get one or two to each adventurers’ guild, but it will take some time. 

Still, some of the locals knew of the painting. It wasn’t well known by any means, and the aquatic adventurers had their own guild that was more suited for them in the underwater part of the town, so it was recommended that we head there. 

When a small-time merchant who ran a ‘corner store’ in the guild heard I was heading to the underwater part of the town, he attempted to sell me some swimwear, and a breathing device. I quickly checked over what he offered, but the stuff he had was so low quality I wouldn’t trust my life with it. Even the full body swimsuit was made of a cheat cloth and would likely break after just a few times using it. 

I then told him I didn’t need it, before using One of Every Race to change my race to Melusine. While I don’t use the draconic mermaid race that often, it is actually my favorite underwater race. I’m just used to the draconic races as I practice with them the most, so Melusine feels the most natural out of my aquatic races.

I got more than a few looks from the adventurers as I just casually changed race. For them, it might have looked like a spontaneous evolution or something. I mean, those who were at the adventuring tournament would have seen my skill in the exhibition match, and even more have likely heard it by word of mouth. Or seen the recording on the Internet or in the Factory.

But still, people don’t change races outside of evolution. That is just how this world works. All except for me. And some rare transformation skills like what Unika has. But those transformation skills are generally either like the Horse-folk reversion Molly and Cina have where you go back to a previous evolutionary state. Or a monster transformation skill like what Unika has with her full fox transformation.

There are some stories of mer-folk being able to swap their tails for legs, but Cailie doesn’t know of them as no one in her clan has ever done so. They are quite isolated and there are basically no landfolk other than dragons around them so it does make sense that no one would feel the need to do so.

But the other way around. A human turning into a mer-folk. Unheard of as far as I can tell. Well, when Manamorphic Body is ready to be released, I think it will start happening more often.

The underwater part of the town was about as lively as the upper part. Maybe even a bit more lively. Not only did mer-folk call this town their home, there were also some others like eel-folk and octopus-folk. I even spotted a shark-folk person, despite the fact that shark-folk generally live further up north.

Cailie and I got more than a few looks as we made our way to the underwater adventurers’ guild. Probably because we were not from here, but also because we arrived from the direction of the shore, instead of one of the nearby rivers that lead inland.

My wings and Varuna didn’t help either. Varuna is basically a blob of differently colored water, and wings on a mer-folk are quite rare.

But no one approached us, so we made our way to the guild building. There I asked for information about the undersea dungeon, and after showing my S-rank guild card, the receptionist quickly told me everything. 

She then called over an adventurer who was just hanging around. He was apparently quite well known in the town for exploring the dungeon we were heading into, so she offered him as an escort. For a small fee, but that really didn’t matter. 

Our escort was one of the octopus-folk so I was somewhat tempted to turn into a Scylla to show off, but I stuck to my active race and swam behind him as he showed us the way. At first it seemed like he doubted if we could keep up with him, as he was going at a slow pace, but eventually he realized that we are much faster than even he is and we sped through the water.

The dungeon itself was nothing special. It just looked like an underwater cavern entrance. I quickly pulled up the info on the dungeon, since I can do that, but it really was nothing special. Not too large, just a bit larger than TinaWood, with an A-rank core. Miasma levels are just a bit higher than average, but the monster level is a bit below so it should balance itself out. Trade points had some okay stuff, but nothing I needed.

The important part were the wall carvings in the entrance room. I looked at them with Varuna and he confirmed that the watery giant depicted in them was most likely him. The octopus-folk man was more than a bit taken back by that, since he didn’t know who or what Varuna was, and didn’t expect the small water creature to be the giant water god depicted in the carvings.

We then moved our attention to the weathered text that had been carved next to the paintings. Sadly it was barely legible, which was strange as the carved image was still decently clear. And even more strange, the text didn’t trigger Language Comprehension, not even in the parts that were actually legible.

I sent screenshots of the text over to my new deciphering team, which I formed in the Factory after the Nir situation, and they got to work. I then asked Varuna about it, but while he could talk, he never bothered learning to read.

I thanked the adventurer for his help and asked if he knew of any other carvings like this. He told us of a few that had been carved into the cliffsides, but they had mostly been destroyed by the waves. I still asked him to show us there, just so I could see them for myself.

On the way, we ran into some monsters. I let Varuna take care of them so he took in a bunch of the sea water, growing to an even larger size than he was in the Monster World and annihilated anything we came across.

That showed our adventurer friend that Varuna really was who he claimed to be. 

Eventually we got to the cliff carving. And like the carving in the dungeon, it definitely showed Varuna. But this one was in a different stage of his life, as he was clearly already frozen and sealed within the eternal crystal.

On our way back to the town, Varuna let the extra water go and shrunk back down. We didn’t want to scare the entire population after all.

Once back in town, I reported to the guild that I found what I wanted and paid extra for both the information and gave the adventurer an extra payment as well.

Upon returning to HomeBase, I headed to the Factory so I could hear the deciphering team's findings. And they had figured a bit about the faded texts. 

They seemingly called Varuna the ‘Soul of the Ocean’ and the ‘God of Water’. I kind of liked the Soul of the Ocean name, so since Varuna’s race name was unknown, I decided to just call him a Water Soul.