I Was Reincarnated as a Dungeon, So What? I Just Want to Take a Nap.-Chapter 130: Purpose of Visit: Scones.
Back in the sterile silence of Sustenance Distribution Center 7, the rest of the team was facing a crisis of their own. The golem had vanished into a back room, leaving them alone to stare at the spot where it had been, trapped in a new layer of infuriating logic.
It was Sir Crumplebuns who shattered the stunned silence. "A NEW QUEST!" he declared. "THE QUEST FOR FORM B-42! WE SHALL ASCEND THE SEVEN TOWERS AND RETRIEVE THE SACRED PARCHMENT!"
Gilda's eye began to twitch. Her hand tightened on the handle of her axe. She was seriously considering if it was possible to solve a bylaw problem with a well-aimed swing.
"One cannot fight a bylaw, my friend," Zazu murmured, placing a gentle hand on her arm before she could act.
"He's right," Pip whispered, a new terror dawning in his eyes. "You can't fight it. But what if the form is a trap, too?"
Gilda just grunted, a sound of pure, helpless frustration. With no other options, and the faint, imaginary scent of scones still haunting them, they left the bakery. Besides, Gilda was hungry, and a hungry Gilda was a Gilda who was willing to entertain even Pip's most paranoid ideas. So, they set off in search of Tower 7. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖
Their journey across the city was an exercise in quiet madness. They soon came to a bridge woven from pure, shimmering light that spanned a gap between two towers. At the entrance, a small, glowing plaque simply read: The Sonata Bridge. As a local fairy glided across, each step she took created a soft, melodic chime, forming a simple, beautiful tune.
Gilda watched for a moment, then grunted. "Right. Music bridge." She led the way, her heavy boots landing in a tense, rhythmic march that, against all odds, managed to follow the simple melody.
A few streets later, their path was momentarily blocked by a squad of gardening golems. The team watched in baffled silence as the golems used tiny, delicate calipers to meticulously measure each individual leaf on a row of perfectly spherical trees, trimming any that were a millimeter too long or too wide.
Finally, just before they reached their destination, they passed a small alcove labeled "Public Emotions Kiosk." Inside, a single fairy was calmly filling out a form. A soft, glowing sign above its head read: Permit for Mild Displeasure, Pending Approval. The fairy looked up, saw the team staring, and gave them a brief, professionally courteous nod before returning to its paperwork.
When they finally found Tower 7, a tall spire of seamless white stone, they faced their next challenge: there was no visible entrance. Pip, remembering his previous humiliation with the last door, ignored his tools. Instead, he just watched as a local fairy glided up to the wall and said, in a perfectly monotone voice, "Requesting entry." And the door slid open.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Pip muttered.
They entered a vast, circular lobby where a single, glowing pillar of light pulsed gently in the center. There were no stairs, no lifts—just the pillar.
"Now what?" Gilda grunted.
Zazu pointed to a small, glowing sign at its base. It read: 'Vertical Transport Requisition. Please state your name, destination floor, and purpose of visit.'
Pip stepped forward. "Pip," he said to the pillar. "Floor 412. We're here to… get a form?"
The pillar chimed softly. A line of glowing text appeared in the air before him: 'Purpose of visit unclear. Please re-state.'
"WE ARE ON A HEROIC QUEST!" Sir Crumplebuns announced, stepping in front of Pip. The pillar chimed again, the text unchanging. 'Purpose of visit still unclear.'
Zazu then stepped forward, his expression serene. "Zazu. Floor 412," he said, his voice calm and philosophical. "We seek a key to unlock a future potential, a necessary component for the continuation of our journey."
The pillar was silent for a long moment before chiming again, its tone perhaps a fraction more confused than before. The text changed: 'Purpose of visit: metaphorical. Request denied.'
Gilda shoved them all aside. "Gilda," she grunted at the pillar. "412. Scones."
The pillar chimed once more, this time a happy, affirmative sound. The text read: 'Purpose of visit: Sustenance. Approved.'
Gilda just grunted, giving Pip and Zazu a look that said, "See? Simple."
A beam of soft, white light enveloped the team, and they were lifted silently and smoothly up through the tower.
They arrived a moment later on the 412th floor, stepping out of the light and into a truly impressive display of paperwork. The room was even larger than the last, filled with hundreds of identical desks arranged in a perfect grid. At each desk sat a fairy, and beside each fairy was an impossibly tall stack of paperwork. The only sound was the soft, unified scratching of a thousand quills. At the far end of the room was a single counter with a line of about fifty fairies waiting patiently.
The team took their place at the very end of the line. And they waited.
And waited.
It was a special kind of waiting, a slow, procedural torture. Every ten minutes, a single fairy would reach the front, have a brief, whispered conversation, get their form stamped, and glide away. Then the entire line would take one single, unified step forward. The silence was absolute, broken only by the soft, rhythmic scratching of a thousand distant quills.
The team settled in for the long wait, each of them coping with the soul-crushing boredom in their own way. Gilda, having nothing else to do, took out a small whetstone and began unconsciously polishing the head of her axe, the soft, repetitive motion a small anchor of familiarity. Zazu, finding the quiet and lack of stimulation to be perfect for napping, had already dozed off, his head resting peacefully on his own shoulder.
Pip, however, could not rest. He was convinced it was a trap. His mind raced through the possibilities as he eyed the perfectly still fairies in front of him. 'Are they spies? Assassins? Some kind of bureaucratic mimic waiting to devour our paperwork?' But no, he realized, it was something worse. 'They're not just waiting in line. They're observers. Part of the test.' He felt like he was being graded on his ability to stand still.
While Pip was trapped in his own quiet, procedural paranoia, FaeLina was on the verge of giving up. For hours, she had been sifting through mountains of glowing scrolls, her wings drooping with every new, useless document she unrolled. Just as she was about to admit defeat, her eyes caught it.
A single, almost-invisible footnote at the very bottom of a dusty, forgotten scroll on the theoretical classification of magical entities. Most of it was blacked out with magical ink, but a few words remained, a fragment of a secret.
...cross-reference case file 4-Zeta-9. Subject: a Sanctuary Core exhibiting… anomalous energy signatures… consistent with proto-divine entities… recommend immediate…
The rest of the footnote was gone, but the words that remained were enough to make FaeLina's mind reel. Proto-divine entity. She had to know more. The footnote mentioned a cross-reference — case file 4-Zeta-9— and she knew it was her only lead.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she zipped back to the central desk and waited for the Head Archivist to acknowledge her. He didn't. He just kept stamping.
"Excuse me," FaeLina said, her voice a polite but firm buzz. "I require access to case file 4-Zeta-9."
The archivist stopped stamping. He slowly looked up, his tiny, bored eyes fixing on her. "Case file 4-Zeta-9," he muttered, the words sounding dusty. "That is a Level 12 Restricted Archive. Access is forbidden without a completed Form 1-Alpha-Prime."
"And where do I acquire a Form 1-Alpha-Prime?" FaeLina asked, her heart sinking.
The archivist gave a dry, rattling chuckle. "You cannot acquire it," he said, a hint of something like amusement in his voice. "Access to Form 1-Alpha-Prime is, itself, restricted. You must first file a formal petition to the High Council to request permission to even see the form."
He then looked back down at his desk and called out to the empty air. "Next."
The word was like a dismissal, a final stamp on an impossible situation. FaeLina just hovered, stunned, as the full weight of the procedural trap settled over her. Her mind, which lived and breathed procedure, began to spin, mapping out the nightmare. 'A petition to the High Council requires Form 7-Delta, with a co-signature from a department head, which requires a preliminary impact assessment filed with the sub-committee on procedural inquiries, which requires its own set of triplicate forms...'
She had found the biggest secret in the world, but it was locked away. It was locked behind the very doors of the archive itself, which were sealed by the legendary Form '1-Alpha-Prime' —a form that could only be requested by petitioning the High Council, which in turn was buried under a mountain of paperwork so vast and so perfectly, infuriatingly logical that it might as well be a god itself.
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Author's Note:
And the bureaucratic nightmare continues on two fronts! The team, on their "simple" quest for a scone, have found themselves in the mother of all lines, proving once again that in the Fairy Realm, every solution is just the beginning of a new, more complicated problem. Gilda's simple, direct approach to the elevator ("Scones") was a personal favorite moment to write.
Meanwhile, FaeLina has hit her own procedural wall. She's discovered the biggest secret in the history of the Bureau, but it's locked behind a level of security so absurd you need to ask for permission to ask for permission. Her personal quest to save her family has just become a whole lot more complicated.
Now they are both trapped, waiting. Who do you think will get what they want first: the team waiting for a form, or FaeLina waiting for a miracle?
Thanks for reading!
