Chapter 34: Miko Lore
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 417 – Claude, Age 12 – The Dungeon
[Claude POV]
I sat against the cold stone wall, trying to make sense of what I was.
The dungeon was quiet tonight. Or what I assumed was night, hard to tell down here, with only fungi and my own fire for light.
The monsters had learned to give this section a wide berth after the last few encounters.
Even creatures driven by instinct could recognize when something wasn't worth the trouble.
Good. I needed time to think.
Miko.
The word had surfaced in my memories more than once. Not my memories, the borrowed ones.
Fragments from lives I hadn't lived, deaths I hadn't died. Someone in that tangle of echoes had known about Mikos.
Had encountered them. Had studied them.
I closed my eyes and let the knowledge surface.
In this world, Mikos were rare.
Not unique, there had been others throughout history. But rare enough that entire generations could pass without one appearing.
The records spoke of them with a mixture of reverence and fear, as they rightly should.
A Miko was born with abilities that transcended normal magic. Not learned through study or practice, but inherent.
Written into their very being from the moment of conception, or perhaps before. The Dragon God Orsted was said to know of them.
The Human God Hitogami certainly did.
These beings existed on a different scale than ordinary mortals. And they paid attention to Mikos in ways they ignored everyone else.
That alone should have been warning enough.
The borrowed memories offered fragments.
Kishirika Kishirisu, the Demon Empress, she was said to have eyes that could see magic itself. Could bestow those eyes on others.
Some called her a Miko of Vision, though whether that label was accurate, the memories couldn't say.
The previous Dragon General, who had served the Dragon God millennia ago, there were whispers that one of them had been a Miko of War. Someone whose very presence turned the tide of battles, whose instincts operated beyond what training could explain.
Smaller examples dotted history like stars. A healer in the Holy Land of Millis who could cure diseases that should have been incurable.
A seer in Asura who predicted the rise and fall of three emperors. A warrior in the Demon Continent who had never lost a single duel in sixty years of fighting.
Mikos, all of them. Or so the legends claimed.
The types varied.
Some memories spoke of categorization attempts, scholars trying to sort Mikos into neat boxes based on their abilities.
The results were messy, contradictory, incomplete.
Miko of Memory, ones who could access knowledge they shouldn't have. Past events, lost information, secrets buried for centuries.
Miko of Sight, those who saw beyond normal perception. Future glimpses, magical auras, hidden truths.
Miko of Body, individuals whose physical forms operated outside normal limits. Strength, speed, endurance that defied explanation.
Miko of Spirit, the rarest, supposedly. Those whose souls were different, connected to something beyond the material world.
The categories overlapped. Blurred.
Most Mikos didn't fit neatly into any single box. The scholars had eventually given up trying.
What they agreed on was simple. Mikos were touched by something beyond human understanding.
Something that left a mark.
I opened my eyes and stared at the dungeon ceiling.
So what was I?
The echoes, the borrowed deaths, the accumulated instincts, that felt like Miko of Memory. Knowledge I shouldn't have.
Skills I never learned. The residue of lives I never lived.
But the fire. The convergence.
The way parallel worlds seemed to pour their dying moments into my skull.
That didn't fit any category I'd found in the borrowed memories.
Maybe the scholars were right to give up categorizing. Maybe Mikos were too varied, too individual, too strange to sort into boxes.
Or maybe I was something new.
The memories offered one more piece of knowledge, though it came fragmented. Unclear.
Mikos drew attention.
Not always deliberately. Not always positively.
But their existence created ripples in the world's fabric. Other powers noticed those ripples.
Reacted to them.
The Human God, in particular.
That name surfaced in the borrowed memories with a weight that made my chest tight.
Hitogami.
A being who existed between worlds, who manipulated fate like a child arranging toys. The memories were clear on one point.
He took interest in Mikos.
Sometimes to use them.
Sometimes to destroy them.
The memories couldn't say which was worse.
I had avoided thinking about this for months, maybe longer, time was hard to track, I had focused on survival. Fighting.
Learning. Pushing deeper into the dungeon, trying to find the exit, trying to stay alive long enough to make it back to the surface.
But the questions wouldn't stay buried forever.
What was I? Why did I receive these echoes?
Why me, out of everyone who had lived and died in Buena Village?
The borrowed memories offered partial answers. Mikos were rare.
Mikos were different. Mikos were touched by something beyond human understanding.
But they didn't answer the fundamental question. Why?
I stood up, brushing dust from my clothes.
The dungeon stretched out around me, dark and deadly as ever. Somewhere above, the exit waited.
Somewhere beyond that, a broken world full of people who might or might not have survived the teleportation.
Sylphiette. Philip.
The others.
I had been avoiding that too. The exit.
The return. The moment I would have to face whatever remained of the life I'd left behind.
But I couldn't hide in the dungeon forever.
"Miko," I said to the empty corridor. The word echoed off ancient stone, disappearing into darkness.
Whatever I was, whatever it meant, I would have to figure it out above ground. Where there were books, libraries, people who might know more than the fragmented memories I carried.
The borrowed knowledge told me Mikos were rare and dangerous. That powers beyond mortal understanding took interest in them.
That some used their abilities to change the world. And others were destroyed by those who feared what they might become.
I would have to be careful.
But first, I had to get out of here.
The exit waited above, patient as it had been for months.
Tomorrow, I would stop avoiding it.
Tomorrow, I would climb toward the light.
Tonight, I sat in the darkness and thought about what it meant to be a Miko. What the borrowed memories could teach me, and what they couldn't.
The echoes stirred in my mind, not clearly, never clearly, but present. The warrior's instincts, the scholar's caution, the survivor's hard-won knowledge.
They weren't answers.
But they were tools.
And maybe, if I was careful enough, clever enough, stubborn enough, I could find the answers myself.
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