Bab 31: A little history lesson
A.N. Here is one of the most important questions known to mankind...does Minecraft Steve get the N-word pass?
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~Do you remember?~
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"Thank you for your hospitality!" Hestia smiled brightly as she clutched a paper bag in her arms. "And thank you for the food you're sending me off with."
"No problem." Steve waved it off as he leaned in the doorway.
Hestia leaned to the side to look behind him but she could not find who she was expecting.
"Where is Ptah?"
"Oh him? He's...occupied with work I guess. Research, if you would call it. Knowing him though, he might come and see you later, probably. Just don't worry about it."
"I have every reason to be worried." Hestia said sadly as she looked back at Steve. "Please take care of him, and make sure he's alright."
Steve gave her a confused look.
"Why do you say it like that? I don't think there's any chance of something going wrong with him."
"It's not that, just..." Hestia paused before sighing and then giving him a very serious look. "Ptah doesn't do so well with most people."
"You think?"
"And you would be the first companion he's had ever, the first person to live with him and be within intimate space of one another ever since..." Hestia re-thought her words, before deciding against it. "You would be the first person he'd consider family. So with that in mind, please take care of him."
"You speak as if he's got issues." Steve then mulled it over. "Actually he does."
"Steve!"
"What? It's true. But apart from the obvious, what is it you're so worried about?"
Hestia sighed before half-turning away from him and giving him a side-eye.
"It's not my place to tell you how or why...but Ptah lives with a heavy load. He's filled with guilt and remorse...which is why he's so quick to anger at times. But believe it or not, I have never seen him as cheerful ever as he is with you."
"How in any reality is that considered cheerful?"
"You haven't known him as long as I have. But before you came along, he was very much alone." Hestia smiled a sad one. "It's part of the reason why he's never been able to come clean with Hephaestus. For all his power in heaven, he was always so scared..." Hestia suddenly jerked as she realized the last part that slipped out of her mouth. "Errrr, forget I said that."
"...Yeah." Steve raised a brow, but a part of him took her advice and stored it away for the appropriate usage at the opportune time. "What about you? You feel alone?"
"Always." She replied. "I've tried so hard to bring people into my Familia. I know I don't have much to offer but I really want a child of my own. Just one, just ONE...is it too much to ask?"
"Well to be fair, you did say you don't have much to offer and you don't exactly have the best living conditions." Steve said. "Though I imagine that basement is quite warm and cozy."
"It is." Hestia tighten her arms around the bag.
"Underground places like that are usually the case. But you have to admit, living under a desecrated church is not the most appealing of places."
"Yes." Hestia shook her head in self-loathing. "I can't blame anyone for not joining me. Why would they, when they have someone like Loki-no-boobs with all her money and her big mansion and everything?" Hestia chuffed a little.
"I wouldn't advise projecting your problem onto other people Hestia, especially when the fault is your own." Steve said firmly before sighing and crouching down to be eye-level with her. "But you ARE a goddess of the home and the hearth. There is a saying where I come from."
"What is it?"
"They say 'You're vibe attracts your tribe'. What it basically means is that when you possess certain qualities, you will attract people to you who value and desire those certain qualities. Look at me. Ptah is Lord over craftsmen, artists and workers. And though his 'art' is terrible, I am a craftsman and I love crafting things and he is brilliant at craftsmanship. More than that, he is a Primordial which is not a kind of god you find much of to follow in Orario, and he possesses great power. I also possessed great power even before I joined him."
"So you're saying that people who also want a family and a home will come and join me?" Hestia asked as she tilted her head.
"I have no doubt about it." Steve said truthfully. "Of course, not many who come to Orario are seeking a family and a home. But I say that whoever is willing to follow you even when you have nothing is a child worth keeping." Steve put a hand on her shoulder. "But that gives you no excuse to stop looking for them yourself little miss goddess. The deal requires the co-operation of both sides. So get out there and keep asking until you find the one."
"I will." Hestia said before she smiled and giggled a bit. "You know, Ptah says you're a bit of a meanie but you seem quite nice."
"Only when you're being nice to me." Steve said as he smiled too. "In which case if you do not return the same approach to me...then we'll be singing a different tune. Anyway, you'll be late for work. The market is thankfully not as far away from here as it is from your home but you're still going to have to hurry if you want to reach your job in time."
"Yeah, I know." She said as she toom of running while waving back. "Thanks again for everything!"
"A pleasure having you!" Steve called back as he stayed at the door to watch her turn the corner of a street and out of sight. "(sigh). Now here's to hoping that Bell still finds her or she finds him. Really, she is the best option there is for him at the moment. There's no way he's coming into my Familia like I've seen some fan-fictions do." Steve closed the heavy door behind him while still talking to himself. "After all, this is a Familia of workers, not dreamers."
He paused, looking over the lobby that was once again devoid of statues courtesy of Steve throwing them into the storage room again. Looking at the clock he kept in his inventory, he saw that it was not far off from midday.
Seeing as he would have to meet with Tiona and Ais soon for their big outing, he shrugged and walked to his room, grabbing a bit of incense from the broom closet along the way. He momentarily stopped in his room to light the incense and let it burn as it immediately started to fill the air with a sweet smell.
Closing his room door to keep that smell in, he made his way over to Ptah's room and walked in without knocking. Ptah didn't even notice him walk in as the little god was too engrossed in his new book.
"I didn't expect you to be reading that thing for this many hours straight." Steve said. "Is it really that fascinating?"
"...Your people really were a bunch of weirdos." Ptah mumbled as he traced a thumb over an image of vase with Hieroglyphs on them. "And yet they were such great artists and brilliant thinkers. Though they get everything wrong about us gods. Like why the hell would I ever be married to Sekhmet?!" Ptah cringed as ripples of disgust ran over his skin.
Steve raised a brow. "I know she runs a league of mad, bloodthirsty and brainwashed assassins. But is she really that grotesque as a personality?"
"She's a freaking sicko!" Ptah exclaimed with a disgusted upturn of the nose. "And psycho! A sicko psycho! A psycho sicko! A psychicko! A sickycho!"
"...That's not even a word...and I'm pretty sure you just said an antisemitic slur..."
"Well now it is." Ptah stated before he went back to his tirade. "And more than that...she's got...'specific' tastes when it comes to carnal relations..."
Steve gave Ptah a pointed look. "Aaaaaand...?"
"...She's...interested in those who...wouldn't even be interested in that sort of thing in the first place...a lot of blood is involved."
"And you would know that, how?"
"Let's just say that it was something told to us by someone who was unfortunate enough to succumb to her deceptiveness because he never thinks with the head on his shoulders and somehow miraculously survived..." Ptah said before tutting. "Poor, poor Priapus."
"And that's the god of..." Steve widened his eyes before looking down the hall towards the front door. "What does Hestia think of him?"
"Hm?"
"Priapus? How does Hestia treat him?"
Ptah put a finger to his chin. "Well she never really liked him to begin with. But then her hatred of him really began festering after one peculiar day."
"What happened?"
"I don't know the details." Ptah said. "But one day, a long time ago, she flung him out of her temple. He went bouncing down the steps before tumbling off the side of Olympus and bouncing down its slope. And that is a long fall." Ptah scrunched his eyebrows. "Funnily enough, after that day, Hestia seemed to develop a profound like of donkeys for some reason or another. It's really weird."
"Ah." Steve grimaced. Ptah noticed this immediately.
"What's wrong?"
...
"...Has Priapus descended at all...if you happen to know?" Steve asked meekly.
"Yeah, long time ago." Ptah said as he shook his head questioningly. "He lives in the entertainment district, and while that is no surprise, why are you acting so shifty?"
"...Well, I think I may know why Hestia hates him so much...if the same story holds true here."
Ptah tilted his head curiously. Steve continued.
"Well, back in my world, uhm...there was this story in Greek Mythology. The Greeks were the ones who worshipped the Olympian Pantheon. Anyway, the story goes that one day, Hestia was asleep on Olympus when Priapus happened upon her. Seeing the infamous, beautiful, virgin goddess asleep, he...unsheathed his 'sword' and approached her, intending to force himself upon her. But a donkey that happened to be nearby saw what was happening and in a bid to protect the goddess from being assaulted, it brayed very loudly, causing her to wake up. And...of course, upon seeing him in the state that he was, she ran away screaming. In appreciation of the donkey, she made it her sacred animal. But it seems here that the ending was a little different since this Hestia is a lot more fiery...but if the same thing happened here, then it would...explain...why..."
...
Steve trailed off as he watched Ptah's expression slowly darken until the boy's expression became dark with barely concealed rage. Ptah's golden eyes suddenly turned a blood-red colour as red veins began bursting out over the whites of Ptah's eyes and his fingers began twitching uncontrollably.
Cracks began to form in the window and the walls, and the bed seemed to creak under some sort of invisible great weight. Steve all of a sudden had a great urge to jump into Creative mode for some reason.
Ptah gently closed his book and laid it on the bed before jumping up to his feet and facing the wall where the window was.
"I hope your date goes well with those two girls." Ptah said in an eerily calm voice. "Do make sure that you settle those issues with those girls. We can't have anymore women having their feelings and their comfort being toyed with or taken along for a ride."
"...s-sure." Steve stammered a little, suddenly feeling like he should have kept his mouth closed.
"Good. After all, I would love to have some grandkids in the future. I'll never get them though if you keep running around the bush and you never stop to pick the fruits. Now if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere to be." Ptah walked over to the wall and spoke in a strange voice that sounded to Steve like it was coming from everywhere. "Part!" Ptah ordered.
Slowly, before Steve's eyes, the wall of stone blocks seemed to take on a melting animation, except that it melted sideways without ever becoming molten, and it opened up a doorway for Ptah to step outside. As soon as Ptah exited, the wall closed up again behind him.
"...He could have used the front door." Steve wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "Phew! If that's how he is when he's angry, then I should probably lay off the bad-mouthing for a bit."
For all that Ptah appeared to be immature and childish, he was still a Primordial. To underestimate him, was a deserved death sentence in as of itself.
---
"There we go. Finished at last." Steve said as he finally put down the last product on his makeshift catalogue he would be using to advertise when he finally opened shop. He set down the bundle of papers on top of a floor plan he'd drawn out for the expansion.
After reviewing some things, he'd come to realize that there was no way the grotto would be big enough to operate from, especially if Ptah insisted on just filling the lobby with all those statues. And so he made plans to buy out a bit more land.
Ptah's grotto was literally carved into the thickest part of the city wall, the little god was literally living inside the city wall. And considering the particular place where they were, there was actually quite a large space of empty plots which Steve was positive belonged to the government. Therefore all he would have to do was go to Royman and make a request to buy that land, and then Steve could put his plans into motion.
What reason could the fat greedy bastard possible have to refuse?
The trouble was though...
Steve sighed as he picked up the floor plan and looked at it. Crude and rudimentary the drawing may have been but it was a great reflection of his extreme talent when it came to building stuff. He was a Minecrafter after all. But still...
"This would take too long and it would be impossible to manage just by myself." Steve said a loud as he set the plan back on the table and threw his head back over the chair while crossing an arm over his face. "And it's not like I would just invite any Tom, Dick and Harry into the Familia. Some things could only be operated by a Player and I don't want to run the risk of someone managing to steal stuff from us or undercutting us by way of exploiting any newer and weaker members."
Steve let out another large sigh. He'd been doing that quite a lot recently. He had big ambitions but it would just not be properly upheld by his own two hands. As much as he wanted to sell magical items and potions, he also wanted to explore the Dungeon and eventually lead new types of expeditions into the Minecraft worlds. He was working on too many things that it would be impossible for him to make sure each and every one of these projects was successful.
If only there were other players who could help him run this all.
.
.
.
!!!
Steve quickly sat up as an idea hit him. Quickly pulling up his special console, he examined the servers he had already existing on there and the different generated worlds there were. To get into those places, mainly the server he'd shared with his friends, he had a custom sort of portal which would not take much for him to build.
And besides, it was not like he would actually go to that server anyway. He was dead to that world and if his character suddenly appeared again in the game to his friends, on the small chance that they were still connected to that world, he would become the new creepypasta of Minecraft. The ghost of a dead player still stuck playing the game.
He would become the new Herob-...that guy.
But it was not his main server that interested him. Scrolling all the way down past many different servers he was joined to or temporary ones he'd set up for specific events, he came to one right at the bottom one he'd tagged 'RP-Fant-Adv'.
It was a different server that he'd kept secret from everyone else, a world in which he had added all the mods he had in his main server but one he kept for a different sort of gameplay.
When he wasn't playing with friends, he would play by himself on this server, specifically enjoying fantasy role-play. And while there were no real players other than him on that server, he had structured it around a generic baseline story, and it was in this world that he had coded in certain NPCs...ones that looked like certain default skins...
"Would they be sentient though?" Steve wondered. "Or would they be soulless? Or would they just be fanatics? I'm sure one 'Overlord' type of story is enough to satiate a demand for stories like that. I was the leader in this server as well, and I directed them through coding and commands."
If the 'others' were sentient though, and he could get them on board, then they would be the perfect addition to the Ptah Familia. They could be the ones to run the establishment while he focused on other things to raise the Familia's prestige and standing in the adventurer world.
The thing is...if they were alive and well, what would he even begin to say to them? Becoming independent persons of their own would mean they would have their own personalities and those 8 characters were all but unknown to him beyond their appearance and what he would make them do.
"Tonight." Steve promised himself. "Tonight, I'm going in there...and I'm going to hope for the best." Steve took the clock out of his inventory. "Alright, almost midday. Time to pack up and head off to meet those two."
Steve hoisted his stiff body out of his set and stretched to get rid of the strain from sitting in one position too long. Tucking the chair under the desk, he exited the temporary 'Captain's office'. He'd make sure to build a proper one when the new building went up.
Locking up the grotto, he looked to the side to see Bathsheba staring at him questioningly.
"I'm going on my 'date'." He said. "Do behave yourself please. If you want to go in, take the 'other' entrance we made. Okay?"
The Warg yapped in affirmation. Steve smiled fondly and rubbed her face while scratching her chin as well.
"I might be back later with guests, so please don't mess anything either. Good girl. Bye-bye now."
He stood up and began walking in the direction of the Twilight Manor. It would be a long walk and a bit of time to trek there, but he was sure he had enough. And boy was he looking forward to today, because it was the day that would determine if he would come home a single-man or not. Only time would tell.
---
As Steve walked away, a pair of glowing bright eyes followed him from his bedroom window as his figure moved further away.
The person nodded and smiled a little before walking over to Steve's closet. The figure entered and closed the door behind him before lifting the hidden trapdoor and disappearing into the hidden room.
The sound of the still-lit Nether portal permeated the secret base beneath.
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Next chapter is the date, I promise.
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