The sky had been dark.

The Old Cosmology above the ruined city of Iben had been a simple night sky, devoid of clouds and empty of most stars. The only real light source anywhere in the city and in the heavens had been the world of Riam, sitting up there like a green and blue marble with its southern Surface peeled away, to reveal yet another world below the original. All of that land up there was a land of plenty. For the last few hours, only Riam’s subtle glow had been the only real light cast upon this dead city of Iben, on the dying world of Insten, where Erick stood.

Now, though, in the advent of the Beast of Destruction, red lightning crackled across thin mana clouds above, and the waters that half-drowned Iben in darkness were now illuminated from below with deep red glows. Rapidly, those waters began to drain away, exposing deep red faults in the land, and sending plumes of foggy light into the air.

Most of the redness of the world had collected upon the coliseum in the back of Ramblewood Arcanaeum and University, like it was the only grounding for all the red lightning in the sky. It almost looked like a plasma ball that Erick would have found back on Earth, or how he made his sunform look sometimes.

A monster housecat that was not a housecat roared with fury deep within that coliseum, its main form hidden from Erick’s direct sight. Tendrils of shadow licked out of that coliseum, like negative presences upon the world. Where those tendrils touched clouds and waters, red lightning flickered down those lengths of power, into the bowl of the coliseum, and the cat roared again.

Erick checked himself. Rod of the Lightning Guardian; full power, with the ball-end coruscating with white light, and lightning. [Meditation] amulet; shining gold. Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation]; shimmering blue on his left wrist. His core, functioning fine and still hidden behind illusion magics, ready to be used in case of emergency.

Stomach with a bit of food in it; sure. Erick wasn’t hungry or tired at all.

Was he ready for this? Yeah. He was.

Erick strode across the rapidly-drying campus, toward the coliseum. Water seemed to rush away from the path between him and the coliseum, to vanish down into red cracks in barren ground. But really, the ground was getting pushed up here and there, and then fracturing even more, spilling red light upward directly into Erick’s path. His heart beat slow and steady, though it began to thump thump thump faster as Erick stepped across a gap in the ground, and saw red shadows swirling in red lightning depths, like liquid souls being tormented on their ways to the afterlife.

But they weren’t on their way to an afterlife at all.

Those red-lined shadow tendrils, thick as a person and kilometers long, snaked out of the coliseum, to dip into those cracks in the ground. Red light shimmered up those shadowed tails, and the tails seemed to be darker and brighter as they drank deep the souls buried in Iben’s land. Because that’s what those human-shaped things in the red light below had to be, right? Souls.

The cracks in the ground widened. The world screamed. And the tendrils drank deeper.

The screams of the dead mixed with the screams of the cat.

Erick reached the coliseum. Walls had collapsed, blocking the way through the tunnels, to the coliseum floor, but those same collapsed walls offered another path. It was an occupied path, though. Those red-lined, soul-sucking tendrils filled every gap leading into the coliseum's interior.

Erick hefted his Rod of the Lightning Guardian. Power flickered. Erick brought his weapon down on the shadow tendrils and met no resistance as his weapon passed right through. It was like soap being dropped into a greasy pan.

Benevolent Lightning touched red shadows, and red shadows fell away a soap bubble collapsing, the entire length of the kilometer-long, person-thick shadow breaking apart from Erick’s contact, leaving flickers of white lightning spreading through empty air. As that lightning passed, red souls instantly turned pearlescent and rainbow, as they were released from the shadow’s power, and soaked back into the world, into the very rocks and stone and air and moisture.

For a brief moment, the land around Erick bloomed with green life, and localized sunlight returned. And then all the other shadow tendrils soaked that sunlight and green into themselves, sucking souls back out of the ground, and out of the air.

Erick stepped onto the rubble path leading into the coliseum, and started swinging. Ten shadow tendrils burst in three moments, bringing brightness back to the world, as Erick made his way inward, into the arena. The tendrils never attacked him, but they desperately tried to suck up the souls he had released. Erick just popped them again.

Before Erick crested the rubble and saw the center of the arena, he recalled one very pertinent fact about the Old Cosmology that made it much, much different from the New Cosmology. Back then, before the Sundering, everything was made of mana. Everything. It wasn’t that way these days, for the New Cosmology was a world of physics and particles, where mana was a secondary existence upon which mana thrived as best it could. People and their souls were not the same thing anymore.

But back in the Old Cosmology, souls and mana were all there was.

Erick crested the rubble. He saw the monster drinking deep all of Iben, trying to consume the souls of this very land; the land itself.

The shadow cat had abandoned its previous, small form, where only the hints of its true form occasionally popped up, in the size of its claws and the largeness of its maw.

It was in its true form now, and it rather more resembled what Erick expected a shadowcat to look like, but bigger. It was the size of a moving truck; maybe 7 meters long, 4 meters tall. Lithe and dangerous, and fully black, except it wasn’t fully black at all. It was bare muscle and sinew and bone at the joints, and large claws and large teeth, but black shadows formed a sort of skin and fur around the whole creature. That skin was not solid at all, and it moved as a shadow moved. Those shadows gave the cat countless tails, but also wing-like projections out of its entire back, like extensions of every joint in its spine, each of them reaching out into the world, to suck down souls from everywhere it could reach.

Red light streamed down those lengths of shadow, into the cat, and the cat’s roars never stopped, but only shifted from loud to less loud. Its eyes were covered in shadow, closed tight, as red light flowed directly into the shadow tiger’s spine. It was in pain.

Erick found he was glad it was in pain, for the horror that it was currently committing was probably that most ancient of taboos; it was taking in the magical power and possibilities of others, and making that power into its own. It was increasing its personal mana gain at the cost of all the world around it.

And just like that, Erick understood the conflict between what Riam truly wanted out of Insten, and how dangerous this transaction was for this land, and those who lived here.

The tiger, whom Erick had called ‘Fyuri’, roared like an animal, and like a woman in pain, as its bones stretched, and muscles grew stronger, and red lightning blasted away shadows from its skin, only for those shadows to reform a second later. With every passing second Fyuri seemed to be getting bigger. Her fangs larger, and her roars deeper—

She suddenly opened her eyes and stared at Erick from across the coliseum.

Her eyes were molten pits of gold with a slitted pupil made of red light that suddenly widened, and then narrowed. Her roars turned from pained to pleasure, into a laugh as deep and true as any horror’s laugh could be. She spoke with an echo of the dead, “Little mouse has become a rat worthy of extermination! Well come get it! Try your best, little guardian of the already-dead.”

Erick strode forward, an anger bubbling within, as he softly said, “Time to die, Fyuri.”

Fyuri suddenly screamed, all composure vanishing as she whipped her head back and forth, her spinal and tail shadows lashing the ground and draining the world of all color. “HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME!” She roared, incoherent and furious, and then she yelled, “I didn’t know my name until you said my name! How did you know my name?”

Erick’s anger turned into something softer, more controlled, as he realized he was seeing consciousness bloom within Fyuri, the ‘Beast of Destruction’… Maybe. Could be a lie. Didn’t seem to be 100% a lie, though.

Erick answered truthfully, “I saw it in a [Witness].”

Fyuri screamed at him with incoherent rage, but she did not advance. She did not move.

Erick had not fully entered the arena floor yet, because despite Fyuri’s words, and his own apprehension at what was happening in front of him, every single thing about the shadowtiger’s body language was telling him that the very second he got within striking range, she would attack. She probably wouldn’t be able to control herself, either. She would just attack, because that’s who she was made to be.

She had been a fake thing.

And then Erick had held up a mirror, and Fyuri had she had seen herself for the first time.

Erick hefted his mace, and took one step toward the arena floor, saying, “I’m going to approach. If you attack, I will put you down until you cannot attack anymore. And then we’re going to talk.”

Fyuri suddenly roared, “Don’t come any closer!”

Erick paused.

Fyuri’s cat face was filled with a terror that was half of a lie. She was feeling something odd, Erick could tell; something warred inside her for control of her actions. Would she attack? Would she talk? And then something settled inside of her —the barest flinch of a change!— and she rapidly decided to continue to pretend to be conflicted.

Erick realized it was all completely fake long before that flinch, though. She was too good of an actress.

Because she had been snaking her tendrils around the arena, through hallways to the sides of Erick, and then behind Erick, ever since Erick started advancing into the arena. Erick still stood a good 200 meters away from Fyuri, but her tendrils had more than enough range to strike all around the coliseum, to attack him from behind.

Which they tried to do.

Erick flicked his rod through each attack without really looking. Each tendril popped at the touch of Benevolent Lightning, sending rainbows of souls back into the ground, and stone, and air, filling the world briefly with light all around him.

Fyuri, draped in shadows, roared, “No talk! Only kill!”

Erick, surrounded by light, rod crackling, whispered, resigned, “Okay.”

And then he stepped onto the sands of the arena and the world behind him turned into red lightning. There was no going back now.

Fyuri charged, her massive paws and claws ripping up the arena floor, sending sand wide. All her ephemeral tails collapsed down into one thick tail, and that one became a bladed whip sword longer than her, black as the Dark, as she barreled down on Erick. Almost invisibly, her clawing aura reached forward to strike long before she actually got in range.

If Erick had been a normal man, striking at Fyuri with a normal weapon, Fyuri’s near-invisible bladed aura would have carved him to pieces long before he got within range. But Erick was not normal, and neither was his weapon.

Erick met her first claw swipe, coming in at his top right, with a twist of his body, moving into the fight, bringing to bear his coruscating rod, its payload discharging and continuing to discharge well before the metal and lightning actually touched her shadowy fur and skin. Erick’s lightning met Fyuri’s bladed aura, and just like with the tails, Erick’s lightning popped that aura, while the rod continued forward, to glance, ever so gently, against Fyuri’s paw.

Where the rod touched lighting ripped across black fur made of shadows, dispelling darkness and bursting the red flesh below. Fyuri spun away before Erick could connect with her hissing face, her several-thousand kilo body moving a lot lighter than it should, as she spun and whipped her tail right at Erick.

Erick ducked the bisecting attack, the edge of shadow passing right over him, the aura around that tail threatening to rip him to shreds even without a direct blow. His rod passed through that aura, popping it, and then he gently connected with the flat side of the tail. The damage this time was extensive.

White lightning flickered across shadow and shadow exploded. Bladed bones charred and broke, half of Fyuri’s tail charing instantly. Fyuri screamed, retreating, her tail broken, her left arm charred from paw to elbow. Red light seeped out from her wounds, as shadows tried and tried to cover her flesh once again. She limped.

It was a fake limp; Erick wasn’t fooled at all. Erick had done some real damage to her, or rather his weapon had, but only truly to her tail. That thing could probably grow back if Fyuri wanted it to, but right now she seemed to be having trouble with her left arm. Maybe her limp wasn’t so fake? Hard to tell with compulsive liars.

Fyuri hissed at Erick from half an arena away, and then she looked at her arm.

Among the red lightning, there was white lightning, too. Her tail still sparked vibrant white, and even charred a little bit more as cloying lightning continued to damage her. That tail was a deadly weapon, but unlike the rest of Fyuri, it was physically weak. Erick didn’t expect his weapon to do that well against her, but Lightning was a powerful Element, and Benevolence was multiplicative, and had a lot more effects besides just that. Since Erick’s ‘dungeon mana’ was Benevolence-buffing, though, and had even easily made a [Benediction], with a bit of work it had been easy enough to invert that, and make something truly dangerous; a debuff filled with destructive Lightning and Benevolence.

It might even be a stacking debuff. If he were to make this spell back on Veird, he probably would have gotten a box for [Lingering Lightning], or [Benevolent Corruption Decay of Shadows], or something like that—

Fyuri’s tail flickered with brighter white lightning, and suddenly she lost another three meters of tailsword. She screamed, even as she grabbed her tail in her mouth and chomped off the Lightning-poisoned limb. Several meters of bladed tail fell to the ground and the lightning finally stopped.

Fyuri rubbed at her lightning-infected arm with her uninfected arm, and the white lightning finally vanished. She narrowed her eyes at him, saying, “You found a good toy, too.”

“I made it, actually,” Erick said, fine with talking, even if talking allowed Fyuri to heal. As Erick watched, the shadows around Fyuri’s injured arm began to surround the wound, once again concealing her naked muscle. Erick was running [Meditation], so his rod was regaining mana, too. Only about 8 mana every 10 seconds, but every little bit helped. Both of them were regaining resources from this pause. But. “My spell is a rather economical spell, so my mana will last a lot longer than it takes to defeat you.”

Fyuri narrowed her eyes again. “Hmm. So I can’t wear you down?”

“I’m rather sure we would both injure each other a lot more if we actually fought without breaks. You might even get lucky, though this is doubtful. So: No. You can’t wear me down with one or two attacks every minute. I will win that fight.”

Fyuri sighed, and a great weight seemed to fall from her, as she sat down and stared at Erick. “So there’s no point in fighting.”

… Erick almost agreed with her.

But there was something off about her. She hadn’t actually stood down from the fight at all. She was pretending again. Her next words confirmed that she was just planning on winning a different way.

“We can both wait for the End together.” Fyuri grinned, as she looked up to the red lightning sky. “Won’t be long now, little mouse. I just need to stay away from you long enough, and we both die.”

Erick realized what he was seeing rather fast.

The world beyond the arena was not simply filled with lightning, in order to force this fight, in some sort of narrative sense— Well. It was exactly that. But it was something else, too. The world beyond here was truly breaking apart… As much as a dungeon space can break apart and not really break at all.

With steel in his voice, and in his hands, Erick asked, “You’re controlling this ending, aren’t you.”

“Yes. Kill me and save your city, little mouse. Otherwise Riam is taking this land for their own. Liquidation! We’re finally liquidating Iben for its war crimes, just as we have liquidated all the peasantry for their failure to pay their taxes long before now.”

“… You really do want to die, don’t you?”

Fyuri laughed. “I’ve wanted to die since I was born!”

She attacked. There was no grace this time. There were no probing strikes. She came at Erick with her claws and then instantly with her fangs, her maw open wide and filled with death.

Erick managed to go into Fyuri’s attack, tapping his rod across a paw and dodging the other, twisting inward, his rod smacking Fyuri’s lower jaw. She tried to continue the attack, to bite down on him, but lightning fucked her up, her jaw snapping shut as her lightning-infected leg buckled under her. Erick tapped four more times all across Fyuri’s chest—

Fyuri screamed as she kicked reflexively with her back legs, catching Erick on his left side, and catching Erick’s rod on her back legs at the same time. Erick went flying, but the massive cat twisted and writhed on the ground, her body infected with too much lightning for her to function properly.

Erick rolled to a controlled stop right before he crashed into the arena wall, clutching his ribs. A claw had almost taken out his liver. Blood poured and pain caused problems with moving properly, but Erick had worked through the problem of pain long before now. He steeled himself as he triggered the active form of his [Self Rejuvenation]. Blood still poured from his side, but the pain became something mentally manageable; it still fucking hurt, and it wouldn’t actually heal for ten minutes, but Erick wasn’t going to die from an injury.

Lightning continued to linger all across Fyuri.

Erick decided that there was no saving Fyuri. He went over and did what he had to do.

He had to dodge a few frantic swipes from jittery claws the size of kitchen cleavers, and thrusts from paws half the size of himself, but every attack from Fyuri was just another part that Erick could counter, and could infect with more lightning. It was not a magnificent end for the deadly cat.

Soon, Fyuri was dead, her body smoldering. The corpse still flinched, for that’s what lightning did to living things. But soon, even the lightning stopped—

Some redness broke inside Fyuri’s body.

And suddenly the lightning all around the arena began to falter. To stop. The sky cleared. And the sky had changed. Riam in the sky had gained a red light, circling the plane like a sunstone, but smaller. It was a spec of red power, but it was there, and it was the exact color as the red lightning had been all around the arena.

Erick just watched it all for a moment.

All too fast, another light joined the sky above, but this one appeared on the horizon, far beyond Erick’s actual sight. All he could see was that the night began to give way to the day, the blackness up there turning to pale blue. All too fast, in an almost cinematic sort of way, a proper white sunstone began to shine through a crack in the wall of the arena, and to shine down upon Iben… or what was left of it—

Congratulations!

You have defeated the Beast of Destruction!

MP up! +2035 mana production per day!

Choose your reward!

Physical Power. Magical Power. Utility Power.

“Utility,” Erick said, without hesitation.

What remained of Fyuri’s body flashed over as proper sunlight touched it, the whole thing becoming a pile of ashes. Something shimmered silver upon that ashy body, and Erick suspected that was the reward.

He didn’t grab it right away, for he was rather sure that as soon as he picked it up the door to the second floor would open… Or maybe it would be a staircase. Or a [Gate]. Whatever it was, it would mark the end of his time on the first floor.

There was one more thing to do before Erick moved on.

Everything had happened too fast here. He felt an emptiness within that needed answers.

He needed to know what had happened to Ashes.

So Erick relaxed his mana senses, and became one with the past—

- - - -

The city burned beyond the coliseum, raging flames of every color marring the horizon in all directions. Ramblewood University and Arcanaeum was dead and gone, all its people turned to monsters by Riam in one final act of horror, or fled to try and rebuild elsewhere. Some stayed to fight, though. The resistance.

And though Iben had fallen, and would likely never rise again, the resistance had won in so many different ways. The adjudicators sent here were mostly dead, and that was the largest blow Iben could inflict upon Riam.

It was all because Ashes had—

The laughter of a dying cat broke through Ashes’s thoughts; shattering the still of the burning morning.

—because Ashes had finally killed the person who deserved all the death that she had delivered unto others. She just needed to fucking die, though, and then this part of his life would be over. 

“Ahh hahahahaha!” Fyuri screamed out laughter again, as she tried to move, but couldn’t. Ashes had finally caught her in a moment of weakness and broken everything about her that he could. Her legs, her arms, her mind. It was only by breaking her mind that she could truly ever die, and Ashed had done that as best as anyone possibly could. High Adjudicator Fyuri Riamiteer lay dying in a puddle of her own shadows, amidst the sands of the arena, and even though she was on her way out, she still refused to leave. Riam had stuffed her too full of natural treasures and life-saving magics. But those magics had trouble with crushing and lightning, and with all the rest that Ashes had done. All Fyuri could really do now was cackle and keen and scream. And maybe die, soon enough. “The traitor was you! Ah hahaha! Ashes! My love! The traitor was you! You’ve grown so strong, my wonderful mouse!”

Ashes stared, impassively.

That seemed to make Fyuri scream with rapturous laughter all over again, though her lungs and her mouth had long since stopped functioning properly. She was only alive because of her magic, and soon, that would run out.

Lightning flickered across her body, interrupting all of her magic.

Ashes almost left her to die alone, for he did not want to see this, but if he didn’t actually see her die, then he would never really be sure if she was dead. So he stayed. He watched. And his rage of working with Fyuri for the last eleven years finally began to ebb, as the beat of Fyuri’s lifeblood finally began to slow.

Fyuri’s cackling slowed, then sped up, then slowed again. And then it stopped. But she was not dead. Through blooded everything, Fyuri tried to crawl her way back out of the horror Ashes had inflicted upon her, but she couldn’t. She was dying.

Why wouldn’t she just fucking die already!? Why wouldn’t she—

She stopped screaming. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t really do anything.

But she could rally for one final taunt.

Fyuri stared at Ashes through her remaining, bright golden eye, for Ashes had destroyed the other one in their fight. Her voice was soft, “I always knew you were a traitor, but I always tested you, and you always passed those tests. I grew soft. I stopped testing as much as I needed to… Tell me at least one true thing about our time together. Tell me when, exactly, you first planned to kill me.”

“That first time you wrapped your arms around mine, when you taunted me with Markie and Sofie’s deaths, when you massacred those students of RAU.”

Fyuri’s single eye went wide. Her jaw trembled. “… Ha.” She breathed once. She laughed louder. “Ha… Ha… hahaha!”

Ashes couldn’t watch anymore.

He brought lightning down upon Fyuri over and over again, and he did not stop until long, long after she had stopped laughing. Long after there was nothing left of that hateful woman except for a black mark upon the arena floor.

And then he went to the resistance.

He had been feeding them information for a decade, but it was always just enough to prevent the worst atrocities, and never enough to get himself caught. There was no holding back now, though. He handed over a decade’s worth of intelligence gathered from the innermost levels of Riam, from every meeting he had attended alongside Fyuri, and every dalliance they had shared in their house on Riam. From her relatives in the upper echelons of Riam, to cousins and otherwise also in the system over there. Ashes felt a guilty pleasure in handing over information on his ‘family’. None of them had ever accepted Ashes as a member of their family, even though Ashes had tried his hardest. Maybe they always knew he was a traitor? But, no. That would be giving them too much credit. They just hated him.

It was for the best that Fyuri had unilaterally decided against having kids, but then again, it was illegal for a child of a Riamite and an Instenian to inherit anything under Riam law. So it was just as well that Ashes’s false loyalty to Riam had never been tested in that way.

If they had had a child, then perhaps Ashes’s anger would have abated over these past eleven years. Maybe he could have become the person who Fyuri saw when she looked down on him in the bedroom, and everywhere else.

He was glad to finally be done with that farce.

- - - -

Erick thought about what he had just seen.

And then he moved on, distracting himself from all the heavy emotions swirling in his gut through a focus on numbers…

Numbers. Yes. Important numbers…

Okay. So maybe he needed to distract himself a bit more before he got to anything else.

Erick stood there, breathing, for a good while. Why did that [Witness] feel so… So deeply?

Erick ignored it, for now. Later, he would ask questions. For now, he ignored it.

And then he started to move once again. There was still that bit of silver to pluck from Fyuri’s ashed corpse, but he would get there eventually. Firstly, Erick wondered about that +2035 mana reward he had gotten for beating the floor. Was that odd number specifically to bring him up to 5000 base mana production? Seemed that way. He almost asked the dungeon if he had been ‘underpowered’ for the fight, but that seemed like a question to save up for the people running this place, for Erick was certainly going to be talking to the people here…

Or maybe not.

Maybe he could just continue to run through this dungeon? See what it showed him, and not ask questions yet? Aside from the [Witness] stuff… This was kinda fun. It was certainly wholly different from what Erick was used to, and something very strange and magical was going on here. Erick liked dealing with strange things in magic. Now that seemed kinda fun.

He probably had a lot of time to kill, too, waiting for Denutha Odaari’s trial to get up and running. He could save the questions for the people who ran this place for a month from now, or whenever his cover was finally blown.

Yes.

Plan made.

Erick went over to the ashed corpse of Fyuri. A wind picked up as he approached, scattering flaking ash to the wind. The ashed meat went first, followed by bones collapsing inward like a house of cards knocked down, and then turned to ash as well. The final thing to vanish from the corpse was its heart.

That heart, before it lost its shape, looked exactly like a normal heart sized to a semi-sized cat should look. Funny. Erick expected Fyuri’s heart to look more monstrous, but even the hearts of monsters were mostly normal-shaped.

When the heart finally vanished into the wind, all that was left was a strip of loose, silvery metal that had fallen into a pile. It had a latch on one end, and was unmistakably a belt, though it was made of flat links and wires and three thicker plates, so it didn’t look like any sort of normal belt. It didn’t have a clip for his Rod of the Iron Guardian, but it was obviously a magical belt, and those were generally not made with any sort of utility function as base as ‘holding up pants’ or holding a weapon’s sheathe. The silver coloring painted it as metiron, and those three plates were locations for metamonds, with the leftmost metal plate already filled with a smoky grey metairon.

Erick picked it up.

Belt of Many Functions. (depleted), (depleted), [Unsensible], 5/250

… Plus-3 utility functions. Ha! Erick smiled a little bit, feeling something like joy crawl into the arena with the sunlight, and then coax itself into his heart.

“Right,” Erick reminded himself. “All of this is history. I wasn’t actually there.”

Weird!

Erick banished his thoughts on the story he had seen, and then he wrapped the belt around his waist. It fit well, though he did have to do some rearranging with his belt to hold his rod. Soon enough, he wore both just fine. When he found another metamond workshop cube, he would fit this belt with a [Benediction]… And maybe some more stuff. That [Memorize] might go well with [Benediction], actually. Putting both together might give him some sort of ‘All Stat’ equivalent… if he turned the power on both of those metamonds into an all-the-time thing, instead of a temporary boost of power. Erick preferred reliable, low level power anyway, over high-powered, emergency-use magics. Such a working would likely go very well with the belt, since that’s the type of magic it already contained.

Now Erick wasn’t completely sure, but [Unsensible] was probably an anti-sensory self-buffing magic. An illusion spell, to hide himself from others. Erick couldn’t really tell the difference, sense-wise, as he put on the belt, but he was pretty sure he was now subject to the same sort of anti-sensory magics that he had already seen a bunch of people using on the entrance zone, and what Fyuri had used, too.

He could still mana sense out to around 100 meters, but that level of mana sense was probably going to go way, way down in the next floor, when the mana saturation went from 80% to 60%…

Erick wasn’t exactly looking forward to that, but it would be good to get used to that sort of thing in case he ever had to go back outside the Edge of the Script again. He would probably need to vent a good portion of the mana in his core before he went down another level, though, just so he didn’t have to hold in so much against that pressure gradient. Erick checked his core, and guessed he was at around… 95% contained? So he had leaked a good 2500-ish mana into the dungeon.

… Like, honestly, he could just go down to 80% mana and match the dungeon’s mana density, and avoid this whole bloated feeling altogether. 80% of his max was still 44k mana. If he matched the next floor’s mana density for 60%, that was still 33k mana. More than enough to save himself if the worst should happen.

But that was rather irresponsible, wasn’t it.

Erick sighed, and contented himself with containing his mana, for now. Maybe he could construct a magic that would allow him to hold in more mana in the face of the void of space, but he had already tried that after facing Holo, the Wizard of Anarchy, and he had failed miserably, because he already had the best possible containing magic; a Domain. Which he was already using, internally. But a Domain still faltered in the face of outer space.

Maybe this dungeon had a specific solution for his problem, though? A solution that existed only here, inside this Second Script? It was possible. Erick was rather sure that permanent enhancements wouldn’t work inside a manaless environment, so maybe they had… Domains of different sorts?

The Edge of the Script, that most strongest of barriers against the void of space, still leaked, to this day, even after Erick had given Rozeta the knowledge of Earth’s magnetosphere. Veird’s new magnetosphere certainly helped, of course, both to keep mana in, and to keep the cosmic radiation of the sun and the rest of the New Cosmology from impacting Veird and cleaving away mana. It helped a lot. But mana still leaked.

Erick had already tried making a personal magnetosphere, but that didn’t work—

Oh.

He looked at the rod in his hands.

Metal was a much better container of power than flesh, and cores. Radiation barely impacted metal’s mana containment properties, or the mana therein, and pressure differentials certainly didn’t matter...

Ah.

… Well duh. These properties of metal was why Atunir had made this Second Script using metal containers as substitutes for cores, and interchangeable mana crystals as substitutes for soul-imbued spellwork; both metal and mana crystals were very good permanent holders of magic, if they were made correctly.

Erick briefly considered casting his core in platinum, or something like that, but rather instantly discarded the idea completely. Bad, bad idea, for too many reasons to count.

… Had Rozeta and the Relevant Entities ever considered surrounding Veird in platinum, or something like that? In order to fully prevent mana loss? … They probably had tried that at least once, for sure, for the benefits of contained mana fully outweighed the aesthetics of never seeing the sky again. But Melemizargo probably ripped that apart, calling it a prison, for sure. If a metal-covered Veird had ever happened, it had probably been a very short-lived experiment.

Anyway.

The gate to the next level had appeared several minutes ago.

As the morning sun had washed into the coliseum it had illuminated a hole in the world on the western end of the arena. That hole had expanded to form an archway to a white room, with words hovering above that doorway.

FLOOR ONE COMPLETE!

Erick headed that way.

With one final look to the crumbling walls of the arena, the destroyed city beyond, and the sun rising over all that wreckage, Erick breathed deep the scent of lingering destruction…

And then he stepped through the words, and the doorway.

The path shut behind him.

- - - -

Nothing changed in the deserted city for a while. But then, everything began to change in small ways, and then in large, as though someone was setting the world to rights one city block at a time.

The repair man had been busy, until now.

Water reappeared in the streets, like someone simply willed it to happen, and without any flow of water from point A to point B at all. Cracks in the ground filled in with stone and debris, like someone running a finger across the broken streets, closing in the holes with a push. Fallen buildings reversed their own destruction, like time flowing backward, walls and roofs and all the rest rising into the air and then settling back down. Walls remained broken here and there, because this was a war torn city. Only the destruction of the Beast of Destruction had been reversed.

And then suddenly the sun whipped across the sky, setting fast, and Riam’s new red star vanished from sight. As night settled into the city once again it was almost ready for another delver, or a party, or whoever. The place was still fully devoid of monsters, but...

Monsters would be placed as necessary, and at the dungeon’s discretion.

- - - -

Erick stood under bright white lights in a domed room like the ones he had encountered in the tutorial.

Ahead of him floated his status.

- -

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

MP per day: 5000

Meta-Irons: 1600, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 5/10, 0 in storage

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 99/100

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 1000/1000

Necklace of [Meditation], 49/50

Wand of [Drinking Food], 156/200

Belt of Many Functions. (depleted), (depleted), [Unsensible], 5/250

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Benediction], [Flaming Ooze], [Shadow Bolt], [Paper Control], [Memorize].

- -

As Erick acknowledged that status, it moved to the left, and new words began to appear.

You have two options:

Continue your delve without interruption

OR

Return to the entrance zone, and come back to challenge floor 2 another day

Erick considered for a moment, then said, “I’ll come back another day. Return me to the entrance, please.”

Words appeared.

Delver housing, storage, and many other options unlock upon the completion of floor 5.

For now, you must carry your collected items with you.

Upon leaving, all of your collected items will turn into non-functional iron crystals and iron gems, but they will regain functionality after re-entering the Glittering Depths, provided they have not been altered. Altered items might not function the same way inside the Glittering Depths! Alter an item at your own risk!

Seek out a dungeon guide if you have questions.

Thank you for delving the Glittering Depths!

The words vanished from the air, and an archway opened up on the other side of the room. Beyond that open path lay blue skies and grasslands.

Erick went through the gate and many things happened at once. Mana pressure evened out, rising to 95%, allowing Erick to relax his Domain around his core, allowing him to feel more normal. It was a great relief, but leaving the dungeon would be better. Almost as soon as Erick felt physically better, his mana sense expanded outward, allowing him to mana sense everything for 400 meters around. That was how he found himself standing on the backside of a hill, on the opposite side of where people entered the lower floors. A reconnection with Ophiel came next.

‘Dad!’ Ophiel sent him, though his voice was garbled as it faltered in the distance between Erick and the entrance. ‘Nothing bad happen! Play more?’

‘Play is done for now, Ophiel. We’ll head back to Odaali for a little while.’

‘Can we pie?! Purple pie?!’

Erick smiled as he started walking around the grassy hill, to where he saw people entering the shadowed side of the hill, and where the dirt path led to the entrance. There, floating to the side of the black [Gate], Ophiel fluttered invisibly and intangibly. Seeing his son was almost as good as feeling the world start to make magical sense once again. As Erick strode forward, passing people heading into the dungeon, he felt the Script once again begin to take hold.

As Erick stepped across the shadows ringing the entrance, the Script fully took hold. Erick’s belt, wand in his pocket and all the various metamonds inside, his rod, and his [Meditation] necklace, all began to transform. In three steps, Erick felt his Stats under the Script return to him in full, and every single item he had gained inside the dungeon had turned into grey iron crystal, or decorative glass.

Ophiel alighted on Erick’s shoulder, telepathically tweeting, as Erick grinned.

‘Yes, Ophiel, we can get you some purple pie. Maybe even some red and pink and orange, too!’

Ophiel briefly fluffed up, but then he got real low on Erick’s shoulder, and kinda unhappy, too. ‘No orange. Bad color.’

Erick chuckled as he stepped out of the dungeon, all the way back into the real world. The grand spider of a good hundred legs, which stood over and around the entire dungeon gatehouse, did nothing as Erick and Ophiel passed underneath.

Night had fallen outside, and a quick look through Ophiels revealed that daytime was only a couple of hours away. The dungeon didn’t seem to sleep much, though, for the number of people in the courtyard and in the dungeon guildhouse across the way seemed to be the same amount as it had been when Erick had entered the dungeon a good 18 hours ago.

Erick made his way through a tunnel, to the Platform Square, off to the side of the Grand Dungeon’s main compound, where he summoned a Platform and rose into the air, up and away, as he spoke to Ophiel about anything and everything, but mostly about what the little guy had seen when Erick had been inside the dungeon. Ophiel’s replies weren’t the most well composed thoughts that Erick had ever heard, but he still loved to hear them. Ophiel was growing up.

And soon, Yggdrasil’s voice came to Erick, too, ‘Father. There are some concerns for upcoming Shadow’s Feast preparations, and while no one wants to interrupt your time away from the kingdom, they are overwhelmed. Can you help? But not be directly involved?’

‘Of course!’ Erick sent, ‘I might spend the night at Odaali with Poi and the Odaalis, but I will also be ready and willing to revert time if necessary.’

With obvious relief, Yggdrasil sent, ‘Ahh… Good…’ After a moment he asked, ‘So how was it in there?’

‘It was rather darned interesting, for sure. How much would you like to know?’

Yggdrasil excitedly sent, ‘Everything. I was… I was talking to Everbless, and he’s been working on dungeons for a while. I don’t think I want to do that, but the idea of a Second Script, if well done, might be interesting? I am not sure how such a thing would actually need to be done, though, for isn’t the Script already rather well done?’

Erick sent, ‘The Script is rather well done, but Atunir was not going for breadth of coverage when she came up with the Second Script inside the Glittering Depths… Maybe. I’m not sure about that. I have some longer-term questions about the nature of the exact sort of Second Script Atunir has imposed, but to start with, she’s gone for a more limited form of magic, for starters. That, along with allowing people to produce their own mana for their own use, instead of having mana being produced in the Core, means a whole lot of simplification in any required Script. When you get that simple, that simplification can probably be taken outside of the Script, into the void of outer space.’ Erick continued, ‘Now, to start, you must understand about mana density...’

Erick spoke for a long time as he flew through the early morning night. Erick made sure Ophiel was a part of the conversation, as he flew his Platform up through the sky, and toward the west, but Ophiel rolled all his eyes and did not care about magic too much. Yggdrasil was incredibly interested in magic, and Erick answered as many questions as he could, but some of Yggdrasil’s questions were beyond Erick’s current understanding, and he said so.

No one seemed to be chasing him from Greensoil, too, which was great! ‘Ashes’ had been discovered by some higher-ups and various people here and there in the Odaali Embassy in Greendale, but he had not been found out by the general populace, or by the Viridian Throne. If Ashes had been found out, then Erick would have had some very polite and also insistent inquisitors tracking him down right now, to talk. But there was none of that.

So Erick flew along, and when he judged himself safe enough to open a [Gate], he did so, and had Ophiel blank the manasphere where he conjured that ring of lightning. Anyone who had been tracking him would have found their path stymied by a sudden loss of anything to trail.

Odaali was just waking up when Erick stepped into the royal throne room, as himself, with his crown of black horns, a smile on his face, and Ophiel twittering behind him. Within moments, the guard was on him, but almost just as fast they realized who he was, and Poi was awake by then, anyway.

Breakfast was early in the Odaali household that day, with Yetta’s kids already screaming and having fun with Ophiel over a nice family breakfast. Eventually, the kids and Ophiel rushed away into the next rooms, and Yetta, Cyril, Poi, and Erick, had breakfast in peace, as they spoke of Odaali’s preparations for Shadow’s Feast, and about Denutha Odaari’s trial.

Yetta said, “Odaali will be fine with the Feast. The last decade has been rather calm in all those sorts of ways, but we still do Feast drills as any city should.”

Erick grinned. “Good to hear.”

“In less favorable news,” Cyril said, “Odaari isn’t going to see the inside of a courtroom anytime soon. The Viridian Throne has rebuffed our initial attempts to reopen the case, trying to get us to drop our interests. We told them that we’re not dropping it, and then they opted to try and delay again, which we counter-filed, telling them we demand a public trial, in accordance with the Founding Laws of the Republic.” Miffed, and not showing that too much, Cyril added, “Which has started a week countdown timer, which they are turning into a 2 week timer because of a ‘special exceptions for holidays’ clause, using Triumph of Light to make this whole thing a lot more delayed than it needs to be.”

Erick was not surprised. “So what does this mean?”

Cyril said, “This all means that if Poi wants to stay in Odaali, we’re happy to have him, but the throne is [Force Wall]ing us, and so there’s nothing to be done. They won’t even set any meetings with Poi, as they have declared him an outsider.”

Erick was surprised at that. He looked to Poi. “They won’t even set meetings with you?”

Poi nodded. “They would if it were you asking.”

Erick thought about that for a second. “… I’m not getting involved yet.” He said to Cyril and Yetta, “Let me know when you want me involved.”

Cyril gave a small sigh of relief. “Thank you. What they’re doing is underhanded, but the paperwork and politics are still actually moving, which is more than how it’s been for the last decade. So we don’t need your direct assistance yet.”

“Atunir is fine if you execute her, or do whatever, Erick,” Yetta said. “You don’t have to go along with our mortal requests.”

Erick just smiled, and changed the subject, “Speaking of Atunir, I suppose I can contact her in a dream anywhere, so I’ll probably do that, but after I take Poi back home. Her dungeon was quite interesting!”

Yetta brightened. “What did you like about it?”

“Oh well… To start with, there’s the simplicity of the system, in that everyone can make a ‘core’ without needing to alter their biology to actually incorporate a core, which seems like it would almost eliminate the general possibility of monsterization, for monsters simply don’t form in low-mana environments. Even normal humans can use that Second Script, and…”

Erick spoke for a good hour about most of the things he had seen. Not all, though. He specifically went thin on how the mana density of even the first floor was uncomfortable, and he specifically stayed away from the [Witness] stuff, because… Well that would make him look crazy? Right? Dungeons didn’t have [Witness]able shit… Right? Erick hadn’t even talked to his kids about that, yet.

Anyway. Soon enough, Erick said farewell to Yetta, Cyril, and their kids (which was mostly Ophiel saying goodbye, to the little kids, because the kids didn’t give a shit about Erick, which was kinda cute) it was time to go back home.

Erick would be back to Greensoil to delve more floors of the Glittering Depths later, for he had truly enjoyed the experience, even if it had been frightening in certain ways. After Shadow’s Feast, though.

- - - -

Erick purposefully opened a [Gate] from Odaali to a secluded part of his cloud castle home; one of the out-of-the-way gardens, nestled behind the library. There, he asked Poi, “So about all that stuff that happened in the dungeon that I didn’t talk about. The [Witness] of events that were certainly apocryphal, that never happened? With Ashes and Markie and Sofie and Fyuri… What did you think?”

Poi deadpanned, “I think you should have brought it up with them.”

“But it would make me look crazy! … Right? Dungeons don’t have alternate realities inside of them… Right?”

Poi rolled his eyes, and more strongly repeated, “I think you should have brought it up with them.”

Erick frowned. “… Maybe after I get through another floor.”

Poi nodded, then changed the subject, “I’m getting about a hundred questions about what are your plans for Shadow’s Feast tonight, and I’m going to tell them…?”

“Nothing. I’m indisposed, or whatever it is that Kiri and Zolan have been telling people.”

“[Force Wall]ing it is, then.”

Erick chuckled. “Oh come on! That’s not the same at all.”

“Whatever you say, King Erick, absolute ruler of the world.”

Erick laughed again.

He didn’t get a chance to take a nap before night came on, for Zolan and Kiri both quietly handed him some major tasks for him to do, if he could please. So Erick spent the next several hours repairing several small sections of the Gate Network, as he did every so often. It was easy work.

And then came Shadow’s Feast.

- - - -

Shadow’s Feast was mostly a non-event.

Erick spent the ‘holiday’ at home for the first time in a long time, with Ophiel spread wide across the globe, looking for any potential problems. Mostly, there was nothing; a few uppity dungeon breaks here and there in the wilds, where no one really lived, yes, but those were easy to take care of, which is what Erick did, with lancing light and targeted explosions. The dungeon breaks weren’t anything malicious on Melemizargo’s end; just natural dungeon breaks. Other than that, Erick read some books on the history of the Fall of Quintlan and how [Create Food and Water] tied into all of that. He also spied upon Storm’s Edge. According to a skeleton speaker-for-the-dungeon-master, that Quilatalap had set up outside of Vanya’s central dungeon, Quilatalap was much too busy to be disturbed right now.

Erick kinda wanted to surprise the man, but Quilatalap was too busy right now.

In the morning, as the black sky flaked away and Shadow’s Feast ended, Erick waited a few more hours to make sure nothing was happening, and then he tucked himself into bed.

On the first day of Triumph of Light, Erick dreamed of wheat fields.

- - - -

“So you liked it?” Atunir asked.

Erick walked through golden wheat fields with the goddess who made them, under a bright blue sky.

“I do like it, in a general sort of sense. The system is simple, which has points in its favor, but I have a few questions. Primarily: how does one learn how to make real magic, if the average person will use crystals for everything? What does this system look like, on a larger scale?”

Atunir easily said, “Actual mages will learn to make magic inside arcanaeums in high-mana environments where auras function normally. Elsewise, most people will take the mana crystals that are produced by whoever is in charge of whatever areas they are in, or which they make themselves using spell tomes. I would expect spell tomes to be produced by any dungeon on our version of a Second Script world. Metairons and basic metamonds, too. The meta-irons to hold those gems could be any metal, too, though platinum is likely one of the best options. From there, it would be easy to transfer such a system into a true void of outer space, as you call it. Whatever metal is used there would simply need to be properly enchanted with layered magnetic defenses and other nuances, in order to be used outside of a Scripted space. Such a thing would probably form the central engine of a spaceship, or what-have-you.” Atunir said, “Meta-irons and meta-diamonds would function differently, too, outside of a Second Script, with the irons holding a lot more mana and the diamonds actually being vulnerable to degradation if they’re not properly sealed within the meta-iron. But in its base form, this system would work on any world with a Second Script dedicated to making it work. It would probably even work here, on Veird, but Veird has some anti-mana-crystal properties that make this mostly non-viable here.”

Erick took that in, and imagined a world where people didn’t use a whole lot of magic in their daily lives, but which they still had magic. “A world of mostly technology, then?”

“For a long time, yes.” Atunir said, “Until the mana density of a world naturally rose to good levels, and people began to use magic themselves, instead of through trinkets and artifacts. This sort of system would be much simpler to maintain, as well. It would still need a central overseer, but that god could be a naturally arising lifeforce in a planet, instead of a person assigned to the task. A dungeon core, grown to large proportions. The current overseers of the Glittering Depths are a handful of dungeon masters who usually spend their time watching screens, managing monster habitats, reporting to Greensoil according to Greensoil’s laws, and not much more than that. The dungeon does almost everything on its own. It would be easy to scale that system up.”

Erick’s eyes went a little wide at that. “… Well that’s certainly ambitious, but I could see it happening.” Erick said, “Onto my next question, then: About what I saw through [Witness]. The story of ‘Ashes’ and Markie, Sofie, and Fyuri. But more than just that: how much of that whole story was true?”

Atunir smiled softly, as she gazed out across the golden fields. A few cows mooed in the distance, as a wonderful breeze brushed across the wheat fields, sending the golden stalks to waving. “It seems something unexpected has happened, hasn’t it? A [Witness] returning a true sight, inside a dungeon. Somewhat impossible from most understandings. But then, upon understanding what dungeons are, we arrive at a possible explanation, or at least what I believe might be true. I could be wrong, but…

“The Dark is full of memories; more than the mana, more than Melemizargo, more than gods. Though this youngest incarnation of the Dark is young, the Dark itself was here before all of us. And the Dark has memories more than any of us.

“I even put my own memories into that dungeon.

“I asked you to check out the Glittering Depths, to see what you make of it all, but along the way, somehow, someway, you have triggered some confluence of power, there in the Dark. I made the Glittering Depths with a true story, so perhaps the Truth of it all seeped through, triggering something else within you, the viewer.

“You’re not the first person to go [Witness]ing stuff that mostly happened, though I believe you have [Witness]ed the most of all those who had come before. Ask around with Yetta, or with other delvers in the Glittering Depths, and you will find others like you. As for why some people [Witness] the past, and not everyone? We have arrived at an explanation I believe might be true.

“A part of your soul passed through that time of history, back in the Old Cosmology.”

Erick stopped walking as Atunir’s words hit him.

Atunir paused beside him. “Souls never really die, you know. They simply move on, into other forms. Into mana, usually. That mana becomes new life, and new souls, which spawn new mana all the time. The mana of your own soul, here on Veird, has already gifted life to so many other things out there, from the plant life of that Benevolence Dungeon Tower, to how you have simply flooded the world with Benevolence, and that Benevolence has coalesced into elementals here and there. Slimes, too. Every single Benevolence creature anyone manages to create through [Conjure Force Elemental] and Mana Altering for Benevolence is directly created from the castoffs of your own soul.

“If, in ten thousand years, a conjured elemental should become a real existence, then they might experience memories of being ‘Erick’, if they dove deep enough all the way back into their own past.”

Erick found himself whispering, “Oh. Wow. Okay.”

Atunir continued, “Before the Sundering the Old Cosmology was like a leaking boat, with people traveling to other universes all the time. Mana leaked into other universes, and other universes leaked into the Old Cosmology. The fae are the most obvious example of this truth, but we had outsiders back then, too. In this sort of light, and likely due to the Sundering, it is not that surprising that your current soul has roots in the Old Cosmology.

“Many people do.

“Now. To address the horror in the room, or at least the circumstance that you believe is a horror: There’s that whole Xoatist thing happening right now, which is whatever you want it to be. I don’t believe you are Xoat. I do, however, believe that a part of your soul did come from the Old Cosmology. Is this impressive? Concerning? Interesting or dangerous? Maybe all of those things; maybe none.

“As a general caution: You should not believe what you saw there, in the Dark, for memories and existence gets tangled up something fierce inside those deep places in the mana. No one can really [Witness] that far and see any sort of Truth at all. Take a look at Melemizargo’s insanity, if you want to know what it means to look too deeply into oneself. You, Erick, should understand that what you see in the Glittering Depths is to be taken with a heavy, heavy dose of disbelief.” Atunir said, “There’s no harm in continuing to plumb the Dark for answers, though… Or at least not for you. Melemizargo likes you.”

Erick took a moment to collect his thoughts, as his mind ripped back toward his [Witness]es inside the Glittering Depths. “… What of the Ashes storyline is true?”

Atunir nodded slowly, as though she was deciding how much to say. And then she began, “To be able to see the past in the Dark, three things need to be generally true: You need to be a solo-delver, or have the Dark focused on you in particular. You need to be able to [Witness] on your own. And you have to have a real connection with the Old Cosmology. If you had been someone else inside the Glittering Depths, if you had gone in with Poi, or others, you likely never would have seen anything at all in the manasphere, as the dungeon wouldn’t have had any resonance at all between all your separate souls. You would have tried a [Witness], and seen nothing but empty Dark.

“But since you do have some connection with Insten…

“Or maybe it’s just because you’re a Wizard, actually.” Atunir shrugged. “That could also be true, since you simply have more Dark inside you, and are therefore able to see more of the Dark inside others...

“Either way.

“The general shape of the story you saw inside the Glittering Depths is exceedingly true. ‘Ashes’ was a man who struck the first true blow against Riam when he killed ‘Fyuri’, the Grand Adjudicator heading the purge against the Resistance. He had a great many personal reasons for doing what he did, as you have seen. He was a very brave man, but he was not the only one there, in that past, who brought my Truth to Insten.” Atunir smiled softly again, as she said, “You’re the first one to bring out the real names of Ashes’s past, though. Ashes’s name wasn’t ‘Ashes’, but that is what he became known as afterward; what he called himself for that was what he made of Riam’s forces. ‘Fyuri’ wasn’t her name, either, but she became known by that name because of her nature, and because of what she inspired in the Resistance. No one knows those names but you and me and a few other gods… And whoever you tell, I suppose. I never told the builders of the Glittering Depths those names; they use the NPC generator to fill in those parts of the story.

“Those names didn’t exist in that dungeon until you came along and made that happen.

“Most of those storylines are as true as they can be, but they are nudged into positions, to allow people to follow archetypes, to discover the story of Insten and Riam, and to understand the power of Field and Fertility through whatever lens they wish to view the world.

“The story you [Witness]ed of Ashes and Fyuri was mostly true, though.” Atunir said, “Either because you’re a Wizard, and you molded yourself to fit a pathway that you didn’t know you wanted to fit until you got there, or because you are the [Reincarnation] of Ashes, or because you’re an offshoot of some wayward bit of mana from the Old Cosmology… Take your pick of reasoning.

“All of it could be true, or none of it could be true, for walking in the Dark is always a trip, one way or another. And that’s what dungeons are; trips through the Dark. Most people cannot see the Dark that clearly, though, so most of the time this is not a problem.”

For several moments, the wind calmly blew.

“… There’s no real answer for why I [Witness]ed anything at all, is there?”

“Broadly, there is no real answer. Could be any number of reasons. One of them is probably correct, and Wizardry has a lot to do with it, but since the Old Cosmology is gone there’s no way for me to track your soul from there to here.” Atunir offered, “If you want, I could get you into contact with the other person who has experienced a major [Witness] inside the Glittering Depths?”

Erick kinda did want that. “… Who?”

“Clarice Icewind. The top solo-delver, and most highly decorated delver. The Iron Bandits still beat in her overall depth, and they’ve had a few true Old Cosmology experiences themselves, and mostly in the Endless Dungeon. Clarice’s journey through the first five story levels was about as revealing to her as your first floor was to you. Most of her revelation came to her on floor 5, which is where the bits of her current soul connected the most with an echo of what her soul used to be, so long ago.” Atunir said, “The Endless Dungeon, so far, has been the major source of Old Cosmology memories for other people.”

Erick knowingly said, “You made this dungeon so that you could see the Old Cosmology again.”

“Yes. Of course I did.” Atunir looked across the sky. “Every random level in the Endless Dungeon of the Glittering Depths is… It’s all my memories of the Old Cosmology, laid down for all to see. Every place that I touched in my duty as the Goddess of Field and Fertility for uncountable worlds.” She looked to Erick. “If you went deep enough into the Dark, you’d see more of your own life, for sure, because despite the varied possibilities of why this is happening to you… You have a history with the Old Cosmology, in some unknown and unknowable way, Erick. Ever since you brought us the idea of ‘Reincarnation’, replacing the phrase we use to describe high-tier summoning with a simple, single world, I knew you had a history with what came before the Sundering.

“Are you Xoat? Hmm. Doubtful. But an intriguing tale, anyway.”

Erick breathed shallowly; he was still uncomfortable with the idea of him being Xoat after all these years, and especially now, with all the rest of what Atunir had said.

Atunir kept talking, though. “I know how uncomfortable the idea of you being Xoat makes you, but I believe you were alive in the Old Cosmology long before you lived here, in this universe. That, at least, is true. In a large way, this is as big of a deal as you choose to make it. But in a smaller, more personal way, you are not alone in this circumstance. Look to the shadelings, if you want to know others who have been revived from very distant places and times. Or look to others who have delved into the Glittering Depths, who have found connections to the Old Cosmology through those delves. Souls are effervescent, and though the original soul might be gone, their impact on all which came later still draws lines between the present and the past.”

Erick felt like he had been gifted a white elephant; a large thing that he had no idea how to handle. 

Atunir asked, “Will you be delving more?”

“… Yes.”

“I could simply tell you what happens to Ashes if a delve makes you uncomfortable.”

“… No… No. I will find out on my own what came before—” Suddenly, and —Erick admitted to himself— because he wanted to get away from the current topic, Erick changed the subject to something much more interesting, which he had never really poked at too hard. Erick asked, “No one really knows what caused the Sundering, right?”

Atunir looked at him, suddenly unsure. “… No one knows what caused the Sundering; yes.”

“Is the truth of it somewhere inside the Dark? Inside the dungeons? Inside the memories laid down by gods and Melemizargo?”

Atunir looked like she was juggling ten different responses, from utter disbelief, to surprise, to a desire to say some very angry words. And then she calmed, and said, “I respect the Dark and its mysteries, but I do not respect Melemizargo at all. Less than 10,000 years into his power and we had the Sundering… I do believe that he doesn’t know exactly what happened, otherwise he would have told us, and we gods would have known the truth anyway. It is possible he is keeping that knowledge buried deep; deep enough that even the Dark’s current avatar cannot know the truth. It might, therefore, be possible to delve the Dark and discover what has been hidden from us all, for all these years. But the Dark is still the Dark. I would suggest not poking the Dark without the Dark’s express consent.”

“… Maybe I’ll save discovering the truth of the Sundering later, then. After I free Yggdrasil from myself.”

Atunir nodded, but she was still unsure.

“But about Ashes…” Erick asked, “You can’t give me anything but suggestions as to what might be happening?”

“Either you put yourself into that storyline in a rather deep way, because you’re related to Ashes, or because you’re a Paradox Wizard. I can tell you that you have not Established yourself as Ashes; you won’t ever have enough power to do that to a god like me, thankfully.” Atunir’s voice drifted away on the golden wind, “I wish the Sundering had never happened and I could tell you directly what your connection is, but that’s impossible.”

The dream faded.

Erick woke.

For a while he simply lay in bed, thinking about a great many different things.

- - - -

Discounting the last decade, the first day of Triumph of Light had always been a day to first celebrate that one had lived through Shadow’s Feast, which usually began with putting things back together that had been destroyed in the night. Burials of the dead. Prayers of thanks to the gods. Curses against the Dark.

In some places, that pattern held true. Those places were the outliers these days, though. These days, in Candlepoint at least, people mostly spent the first day of Triumph relaxing after spending all the previous night awake. Just awake. No real danger, except the expectation of danger. And that was exhausting.

Erick spent the day sleeping. He was not the only one.

The first night of Triumph of Light was when the parties really started in Candlepoint, and all the Greater Candlepoint Area.

As the sun began to set, Erick had a private affair at his home. Just him and most of the extended family he had made here on Veird. Poi, Poi’s sister, Rizala, and Rizala’s husband, Variol. Teressa, and Teressa’s husband, Dariok. Kiri was able to make it, thankfully. Quilatalap could not attend because he was still inside the dungeons of Storm’s Edge; he was also exceedingly busy, which was a shame for multiple reasons. Erick had wanted him here, to have him here... And also to ask him about what Atunir had told him, about delving into the Dark, and seeing memories of the Old Cosmology inside certain types of dungeons.

Jane wasn’t able to make it, either, but she was rarely home in Candlepoint these days. Her absence was expected.

“But I wanted to ask her about all this shit, too,” Erick said, as he drank a beer while sitting with Poi and Teressa on the ‘patio’, on the clouds around Erick’s house. He had spent the last little while talking about the [Witness] memories he had experienced inside the Glittering Depths, and his family had listened, while they drank beers on the patio.

It wasn’t really a patio, though. It was more like a large, grassy hill-like space, with garden chairs and a firepit and other general-outdoor amenities, and few nice trees. The whole thing was held up by wispy clouds. It was one of several outdoor spaces among the lands of Erick’s floating cloud castle, and perhaps the most normal one, located more or less centrally between all the various houses of the castle.

Dariok was at the firepit, overseeing the cooking of a large pig, while Rizala and Variol were in the kitchen making even more food. And so, the only people who had really heard Erick tell his story of the Glittering Depths had been Poi, Teressa, and then Kiri toward the end. The others were probably giving Erick space and purposefully not intruding, which was fine. Erick was absolutely sure that Rizala, Variol, and Dariok considered themselves loved ones, but he was also sure that they simultaneously didn’t consider themselves truly part of the family. Erick supposed that the only way that would change was to give it more time; he certainly wasn’t going to force it.

Kiri brought over the pitcher of beer and refilled some drinks, as she said, “I went to a lot of dungeons in my own Worldly Path and I saw a lot of shit, but I don’t think I ever saw a true memory in the Dark. Going into the Grand Dungeon at Freeland and coming out of the Grand Dungeon here at Candlepoint was perhaps the oddest part of my Path.”

Teressa asked, “You never went to any Endless Delves, did you?”

“I did, but only the first ten floors of the Endless Blue at Dungeon Island,” Kiri said, sitting down. “Dungeon Island has three Endless Delves, one of which is Melemizargo’s own Mount Ascendant. Almost went in that one instead. Perhaps if I had, I would have come out of some other dungeon on my way back out.”

“But you never saw actual, true memories, did you?” Erick asked.

“Well… I’m kinda reevaluating that, actually.” Kiri said, “There was that one random floor in a Random dungeon that was like an image of Tower Town, but even more horrible than I remember it. I fought off monsters that looked like the nobles that used to torment me when I was a kid, and then Archmage Quel’s shadow, too. It was like a waking nightmare… But I got through it. And Tasar was there with me, so it wasn’t that bad.”

Erick paused. “… You never told me about that before?”

Kiri shrugged. “It’s still odd to talk about. The whole Path was weird.”

Erick looked at Kiri with compassion in his eyes.

And Kiri rolled her eyes at him, saying, “Eh! It’s fine, Erick! All dungeons are delves into the Dark, and meant to be journeys of self discovery; this is known. I didn’t know that we were actually going into real memories, though. Not like we can go into Benevolence and see your memories…” Kiri looked at Teressa. “Can we?”

Erick chuckled. “Hopefully there’s nothing too embarrassing in there.”

Teressa easily said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a memory of you sitting on the toilet, or otherwise.”

That earned her a little chuckle, but inwardly, Erick was glad that no one would be snooping on his memories… And yet…

Erick decided to say, “Atunir said that my far descendants might have some sort of ‘elemental memory’ tied in with Benevolence.”

“I could see that,” Teressa said.

Poi nodded.

“Anyway.” Kiri continued on, “There are a few other Endless Delves in Sogli that are rather well known, and there’s a few down by Stratagold, too. And apparently the Glittering Depths has one, too. They’re hard dungeons to make right because they delve into the ‘random’ generator option of dungeon cores rather deeply, and it’s that randomness that has to be producing these sorts of deep memories. There’s no such thing as true randomness, after all, and what we see as randomness in a dungeon is really just a dungeon producing something that will challenge the specific delver that it's testing at that time. And since randomness gets people real-deathed, dungeon masters try to keep true randomness out of their dungeons, so it’s not too surprising that this is ‘new’ information.”

“I know Quilatalap doesn’t have any Endless Dungeons,” Erick said, “I never got into the ‘why not’ with him, though.”

Kiri shrugged. “I have an accepted answer, but not a real one.”

“That’s fine,” Erick said.

Kiri nodded, then began, “All dungeons are delving into that alternate dimension of the Dark, to allow people to make themselves stronger, or whatever, but they’re also curated experiences. They’re all allowances from Melemizargo to the world, to allow the people of this world to see if they can make a better one. Endless Dungeons are an extreme, esoteric variation of this principle.

“And Endless Dungeons are very hard to get right.

“Endless Dungeons are very prone to failure in a few specific ways that other dungeons are not.

“Most dungeons try to set a scaling level of danger between one floor and the next, because danger means resources become real, and they can be brought back into this reality. But you don’t want people to hurl themselves into inevitable death traps, because that just means death, so you incrementalize the danger. Therefore, people can choose what level of danger and gains they are comfortable with.

“But Endless Dungeons have two-ish big problems.

“The first problem is that the continual, incremental danger added to fake floor after fake floor means something always ends up breaking because the fake can become real inside a dungeon, and especially when someone views it.

“Adding to this, Endless Delves can get very random.

“Randomness, when combined with a viewer that changes what they view into reality, causes problems.

“And now, here you come, Erick, adding in this whole ‘[Witness]ing the Old Cosmology through some sort of shared resonance with the dungeon’ thing you got going on...” Kiri thought, then shook her head. “Still not sure what to make of that. But your experience does add even more reasoning as to why Endless Dungeons often break. Perhaps the truly dedicated delvers out there see glimpses of their past in those Endless Depths, so they dive deeper and deeper, in order to see their previous life. Maybe they usually end up seeing what killed them in a past life, too.

“Now that would be darned traumatic, if you ask me. That sort of mental anguish deep in the Dark, where Reality is reality, could cause a dungeon break.

“But! Good news: I have never seen an Endless Dungeon break badly —no Ancient-level monsters suddenly storming every single nearby city and whatnot— which means something odd happens when an Endless Dungeon breaks. Does the delver that caused the break consume themselves in the process of witnessing their own Old Cosmology death? Does the death of the delver cause a disconnect in the dungeon, meaning that everything the delver had been searching for is simply lost to the Dark? Does Melemizargo step in, directly, and sever the break before it propagates to the upper floors, and then out into this real world? I don’t know.”

Teressa scrunched her face. “Quilatalap is not making Storm’s Edge into an Endless dungeon? Right?”

“Not part of the plans at all,” Erick said, instantly understanding Teressa’s concern. “That dungeon is supposed to be the solution to a Storm; not the cause of the storm.”

Teressa nodded, but she wasn’t wholly sure.

Kiri asked, “How is he going to make a dungeon that contains 22.5 million people, anyway? That seems… improbable.”

Erick began, “The original plan was for 6 side dungeons of normal size, and one central dungeon of massive, million-people False-Society-size. The amended plan is for all of that, but each dungeon turned into several levels of civilization, and…”

The conversation went on into the evening, into dinner when everyone gathered for a grand feast, and then afterward, into after-dinner beers. Eventually, Teressa and Dariok split off to go have fun at an orcol mosh pit in Treehome; they planned to spend the next few days partying up there. Kiri went back to work. Pregnant Rizala went to bed, with Variol to rub her shoulders for her. Poi went to his meditation room to take care of Mind Mage business that had been piling up, for just like with Kiri, it might be the Triumph of Light, and most people were partying, but a lot of people still worked.

Erick almost decided to go visit Jane since she couldn’t visit him and their normal talking day was still two days away… But she was probably busy. So Erick checked in with the people down at Adventurer City to see if Jane was actually busy.

And sure enough, she was. She was inside a dungeon.

So Erick decided to tuck himself into bed for an early night.

- - - -

The next morning, he bid his people farewell and did some light preparation to go back into the Glittering Depths. Mostly, got some good pants and some nicer boots, and a small backpack that could hold lots of little things, like his Wand of [Drinking Food], and whatever metamonds he managed to find. None of it was remotely enchanted at all; it was all ‘dungeon gear’. Vendors these days knew their stuff would be going inside dungeons where magic didn’t always work the same. A lot of vendors were working with fun Particle Magic spells and specific types of spider silk and other silks, though, because carbon fiber and nylon-adjacent stuff still worked inside alternate-magic-spaces.

Erick’s new outfit was all grey, and would act as both underarmor, in case he ended up getting something like a breastplate inside the dungeon, and general-purpose clothing for all types of weather. It would even resist small bites and sweat and dirt. Truthfully, Erick was kinda excited with his new outfit. Being an ‘adventurer’ was rather different from everything he normally did, and he so rarely had to actually worry about his clothes. Usually, Erick was either made of Benevolence and using his sunform, or else he had [Mend] to repair everything. But none of those options existed within the Glittering Depths.

Erick, of course, recognized this desire to delve into a dungeon, to explore the Dark, as something new. Almost like a calling. Perhaps it was the newness of it all that drove him to go back to the Glittering Depths. Perhaps he was following something Fated, like the Worldly Path, drawing him onward.

Hopefully not that second thing, though.

‘Searching’ Atunir’s memories of the Old Cosmology, and seeing ‘Ashes’s’ life play out before him in a way that seemed so familiar, and yet so distant. That’s what truly called Erick back to the Glittering Depths. Erick had picked that name, ‘Ashes’, out of his head and not really thought too much about it, and yet, he had picked out an important name. Which was odd for so many different reasons.

Maybe Erick went back because was interested in the Sundering.

Atunir didn’t have answers for the Sundering inside her memories, but Erick figured an exploratory jaunt into Atunir’s memories was a safer space to start his search for Sundering answers, than to go directly to Melemizargo. If nothing else, Erick would find out what life was like in the Old Cosmology, even if such a sight was marred with current-day understandings of magic and ‘not that true at all’, according to Atunir. Later, maybe Erick would go to Melemizargo, and to the Dark, for better, more dangerous answers about the Sundering.

Or maybe journeying through the Glittering Depths was Erick was simply doing his due diligence, to search out what ‘Second Script’ truly meant both to him, and to the rest of existence from now until forever. There would certainly be a lot of Second Scripts going forward, with a new one for every possible world out there… Or something like that.

Maybe he wanted to understand his daughter a bit more, too.

Jane had been delving these dungeons ever since they came into being. She was at the forefront of the creation of the Dungeon Guild, and high up in their leadership these days. Every week she went out with her teammates and killed rogue dungeons the world over. She barely had time for him these days… Which was rather what kids were supposed to do when they grew up. But with Erick finally delving dungeons, maybe he could connect with his daughter once again. Maybe they could have something fun to talk about when Erick finished the Glittering Depths to floor 5.

And he had to kill some time, anyway, to let the Viridian Throne let Denutha Odaari explain herself to Odaali, and the public at large. Erick wondered what the holdup was, exactly. The story couldn’t be much deeper than Odaari turning radical in the face of Greensoil’s tyranny, could it?

Likely not…

Ah.

Erick realized.

Denutha’s testimony would probably implicate some people in the upper echelons of the Greensoil Republic of doing some bad shit, and a trial would have those people held accountable. That had to be the reason, right?

… Eh. Erick would give the Viridian Throne a week and a half before he got directly involved. Maybe he would give them a few days past the Triumph of Light and the new year? Sure. That sounded fine. Maybe they’d close this Daydropper Quest under their own cognizance, before he got involved.

- - - -

Welcome to Floor 2, the blasted plains.

What was once farmland on the world of Insten, of the Old Cosmology, is now a warzone.

This is a true story, turned into a learning experience.

More than a hundred years have passed since the fall of that city, and the fall of many others like it. Whether you fought the cat at the school, or the suit of armor at the castle, or the ghosts of nobility in their homes, all paths ended in brief success. And then Riam retaliated.

We have skipped those many years of horror, for all individual resistance is but a spark, easily extinguished within the Emptying.

And yet, horror fades, time moves ever onward, and the seeds of a true rebellion have been planted.

In this time, in this place, the resistance had gained a modicum of true power. Underground, they developed new tools with which to truly resist Riam. They survived. They matured. Like seeds buried under winter snows, they waited for the sun to rise and for an opportunity to present itself, but sometimes they were disturbed in their rest.

Sometimes, they had to blossom early, because anything other than total war was to lay down and die.

You are NOT alone in this world.

Everything in RED will try to kill you, so kill it first.

Fight against the ruthlessness of Riam.

Make some more magic, behead the war machine coming your way, and carve a path of blood to the next floor.

Erick sat up and blinked a few times, trying to get the dirt out of his eyes.

Several things happened rather fast.

First came realization, and a trickle of mana sense. Erick felt the world, and the world seemed hollow. Empty. It was not empty at all, though; just comparatively. Erick’s mana sense was a wild streamer of sensory information, mostly contained to the ground where the mana moved slower, but also in the air directly above the ground, where mana wisped into the air like streamers. He sensed maybe 20 meters all around himself, and only partially.

The nature of his mana sense had changed. In an odd sort of way he could still tell what mana was what, and strangely enough, that particular nature of his mana sense was a lot clearer than back on Veird proper. Under the Script, the manasphere was almost uniform in power and distribution, with equal parts Elemental Stone inside the air as there was Elemental Air inside the land. But here, the ground was layers of Elemental Stone, the air held Air, and there was only mixing upon the surface, in the sand and grass and otherwise.

A whole lot of Fire burned in the crater right next to him.

That crater was five meters across, and whatever artillery had impacted there had barely missed him.

Almost as fast as Erick noticed all that, he saw that his core was exposed; his [Illusionary Soul] had been broken, and that the mana he contained inside his core had been reduced to 60%; the same density as the ambient mana all around. That was still 33k mana, and he could still manually cast his Domain, which he tried and succeeded in doing the very moment he thought of it, but he was down a lot of mana. His personal safety net was heavily reduced.

His [Unbreakable Form] was gone. His natural absolute damage reduction as a dragon was probably compromised, too.

At least he didn’t feel bloated.

At least his Belt of Many Functions seemed to be cocooning his body with its Elemental Illusion-based [Unsensible] magic, which was… A thing. Erick wasn’t sure exactly what [Unsensible] did, but he seemed [Ward]ed against casual mana sense-based enemy inspections. Still, though, Erick would be experimenting with [Unsensible] and [Benediction] as soon as he could, in order to make that whole thing work a lot better than it currently was.

Three seconds had passed since Erick had sat up and checked himself. He had seen the land all around him, but he wasn’t in immediate danger and the floating text for floor 2 had yet to leave his sight, so he didn’t look outward too hard until now.

But now, Erick looked away from that floating floor 2 text, that text vanished, and the full breadth of the land around him came into view.

The land was a warzone.

Craters everywhere, spilling smoke into the sky. Bodies strewn across the land, all of them human-looking, but all of them with great wounds upon them. Sword cuts. Mace smashes. Armor dented or rented apart. Only a few of the bodies wore red tabards. Most of the dead wore simple clothes and had spears or wooden shields. A few people had blue or grey tabards. Broken weapons lay everywhere. Some of the bodies were still on fire.

The main battle had passed by hours ago, at least—

A sword clanged against a dull wooden thing, sending the sound of dying battle across the dead field once again.

Erick turned to the right.

In the distance stood a man fighting a defensive retreat, holding a shield up to ward against two people in red tabards. The retreating man had a grey tabard. One of the reds held a sword, the other held a spear. All three of them were bloody and covered in dirt, and on the verge of dying.

Erick stood up, feeling funny, his head lighter than usual—

His body was not the ‘Ashes’ that he had come into this floor with. The hair was a bit longer. The body was a bit younger. A bit more muscular. He was also wearing a grey tabard, for some reason. This was an ‘Ashes’ that had gone through some shit, and came out the other side physically better for it, somehow. There was a story there, too, and especially since there was a hundred year difference between floor 1 and floor 2. Ashes had gotten up to something odd? Some special healing magic?

… Erick looked to his wrist, where the Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation] held strong, its sky-blue glow mirroring the light of the sky overhead.

Well…

Aging and bodies worked differently in the Old Cosmology, didn’t they? Perhaps ‘Ashes’s’ bracelet had gifted him with years beyond the norm—

A spear clanged with a wooden shield. The retreating man grunted. The spear and the shield fell to the ground, locked together, and the red tabards cursed hate at the retreating man.

Erick would leave the investigation of [Self Rejuvenation] to later, after he helped the resistance fighter. Erick began running that way as he called out, “Over here!”

The fleeing man looked up to see Erick running his way. The red tabards cursed and yelled epithets. The one with the sword prepared to receive Erick, while the one who had lost his spear to the fleeing man’s shield bent down and grabbed a mace off of a dead body. The fleeing man began to flee Erick’s way, though he was incredibly exhausted.

All three of the men were exhausted, but the red tabards were still ready for war. And then Erick hefted his Rod of the Lightning Guardian, and the red tabards both saw the flickering white energy upon Erick’s weapon. They looked at Erick’s grey tabard. The fight left the red tabards. They decided they had had enough of war.

The red tabards raced away across the burning field, rushing to get away as fast as they could.

The fleeing man glanced backward at his pursuers— He stopped fleeing. And then he laughed loud and happy, cursing the red tabards, laughing at them with great purpose and as loud as he could. His laughter didn’t last long. The guy rapidly quieted and then collapsed to the ground like an exceedingly tired toddler.

Erick reached the man and nudged him with his foot. “You okay, mate?”

Ripped clothes. Ripped grey tabard. Bloody arms and a forehead wound. Dirty as a ditch digger. The fleeing man looked like his better days were long, long ago. His ribs showed in the ripped gaps of his shirt; he looked like he hadn’t eaten properly in years. Everything about the man told Erick that he was on the verge of death, and that he had been on the verge of death for a long time.

And then the man opened his brilliant blue eyes, and he saw Erick standing over him, and he smiled. “Hello, Captain Ashes. Fancy meeting you in a place like this.”

Erick smiled a little bit himself, and got into the moment. “I don’t have any healing for you, so we’ll have to go back to camp. I got food, though, if you need that.”

The man instantly balked, writhing theatrically, mumbling, “I hate that stick of [Drinking Food].”

Erick laughed, then said, “Get up, private; you’re not that wounded. What’s your name?”

“Private Parts, sir.”

“Lie again and you won’t get any gruel.”

“… I’m not sure if I want to lie or tell the truth, sir.”

Erick stared down at the man.

“I’m Private Kinder Scottsland.” He added, “I play the lute and mostly talk shit in camp? Known as the company gossip? Did you hit your head, sir? Also thank you for saving me, sir.”

“I was struck with some heavy ordinance back there.” Erick pulled out his wand. “You hungry now? Or can you wait until we find a bowl? Also, we gotta get back to camp.”

Kinder said, “I can wait.” He held up his hand.

Erick grabbed the man and hauled him back to his feet. As he put his wand back into his fanny pack, he looked around, asking, “Which way is camp?”

A shadow of pain passed across Kinder’s face. And then Kinder ignored that shadow, and made his voice as jovial and non-depressed as he could, “It’s gone, sir. We’ll have to regroup at the mountain.”

Erick looked around.

Erick and Kinder were currently in a lower part of some rather flat plains, so all Erick saw for kilometers upon kilometers was blasted plains, destroyed trees, and battlefields filled with bodies. Maybe if Erick went to the top of one of those larger hills they might see something, but right now, there was nothing but war all around.

The sunstar held high in the sky, but it was dimmer than Erick recalled back at the end of Floor one. A hundred years of the Emptying had probably harmed Insten’s sunstar just as much as it had harmed Insten itself.

Erick asked, “And where is the mountain?”

Kinder pointed in a direction. “That—”

Right as the man said that, a pair of fireballs exploded in the distance, in that exact same direction, sending up roars of flame. Those bursts of fire sent out even more fireballs that flew wide and wild, causing smaller explosions across the land.

“… that way.” Kinder slowly lowered his finger. “Their artillery mage is watching that direction.”

Erick wasn’t sure what that double [Grand Fireball] had even been aimed at; he couldn’t see any living troops anywhere at all. Perhaps if he got to higher ground, he could see something. But that was probably a bad idea. That would just make them a target. Erick pointed toward some relative lowlands, perpendicular to where the explosions had happened. “Anything in that direction?”

Kinder went, “Uhh… I don’t know—” He pointed left. “That’s where the main base was. Gone now. Too many refugees came to us and none of them could fight…” He looked down at the bodies all around. “They certainly tried, though...”

Erick could tell he was losing the man. With authority in his voice, he said, “Kinder.”

Kinder instantly solidified, to stand as strong as he could. “Sir! The main base is probably occupied by Riam.” He pointed forward, toward the explosions. “That’s where we reconnect. The mountains, that way. A month of walking. We can walk around the battlefield. Soon as we get to the forest that way we can hide. Probably come across others—”

Another distant explosion rocked the land.

“We’re not leaving, Kinder.” Erick said, “Besides the fact that I’m not spending a month hiking to new lands, they have to be watching all the ways out, and the fight is still happening. Our forces are still out there, getting picked off. And if they’re not, then I won’t let Riam have the base, and all the intel inside. We’re going hunting, Kinder. We’re going to wipe them out, as they have tried to do to us.”

For a moment, Kinder said nothing. And then he blurted, “HOW?!” He rapidly added, “Perhaps you have forgotten, sir, but they assaulted us with at least a full assassin cadre, ten regiments of highly trained soldiers, a whole class of mages— I’m pretty sure the artillery mage is an archmage, or at least really fucking good with fire. And we barely put a dent in them!”

“I’ve killed armies before, Kinder. I’ll just have to do it again.”

“… Ah. You’ve hit your head rather hard, then. Well. I suppose we’re dead either way. Might as well take some of them with us, yes?”

“Exactly.”

“HOW though… uh. Sir.” Kinder asked, “How though? Like really. I would like a plan of action.”

“It starts with us finding some spell components and then me making a sniper spell.” Erick looked around the nearby battlefield, but didn’t see any metamonds or metairons sitting around. “From there, it’s a matter of our kill count going up, as theirs failing to rise at all. Very simple stuff.”

Kinder blinked. “Uhh. Where do we start?”

“Immediate safety first. I’d go toward the explosions and help whoever was fighting the artillery mage, but I don’t think that guy is actually hitting anything.” Erick looked in the direction opposite of the exploding fireballs. “We go that way, then we circle around to the main base. Keep on the lookout for any meta-pieces.”

Kinder started walking that way, saying, “They probably destroyed the spell cubes back at the base.”

Erick followed. “Backups?”

“Architect Marii had a side base? She was paranoid enough to have backups, too. So maybe we can look for her?” Kinder looked across the battlefield, taking a moment to orient himself. “… I think it’s that way?”

“Away from everything, then? Sure.” Erick nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Words appeared.

Main Quest updated:

Find Architect Marii’s hidden location. 0/1

Create a devastating spell to change the course of war. 0/1

Push back Riam’s abominable forces. 0/4

Erick nodded, and the words vanished.

… But that word, ‘abominable’, seemed odd.

Erick started walking in the correct direction, and asked, “Have you seen any abominable forces yet, Kinder?”

Kinder kept up beside him, saying, “I’ve seen abominations every day that Riam’s forces exist on our world, sir.”

Erick looked at Kinder again.

He was being oddly cognizant for an NPC.

Erick’s paranoia started tickling.

So he asked, “How’s it being an NPC?”

“Not sure what that is, sir.”

Erick nodded. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep you alive.”

“Thank you, sir! Can I have a full chicken dinner once we get to Marii’s?”

“I have gruel, Kinder. Want some gruel?”

“… Not that desperate yet, sir.”

Erick nodded.

And all around them were dead people.

No metamonds or metirons yet, as far as Erick had been able to see—

“Ah.” Erick walked over toward a fallen body with one hand clutching a half of a staff made of metiron. The body itself was half burned to bones, all of their clothes gone, save for a strip of long blue cloth that might have been a blue tabard. The staff was just the upper half, with a tangle of wires on one end, and a nasty break halfway down. If the other half was somewhere around here then Erick could not find it. Erick reached down and pried the body’s bony hand from the staff, saying, “May Atunir take you into her embrace, and may the weapons we make of your tools strike holes into the heads of our enemies.” Erick hefted the metiron, and said, “Looks like I’ll have to reforge it into something else, but it’ll probably make a good anti-personnel weapon.”

Acquired: Staff of the Anti-Magus (BROKEN), 12/50

Kinder looked at the body. “I’m sure she would approve, whoever she was.”

“I’m sure she would, too.” Erick asked the man, “So I’m used to a lot of death, but you’re not, are you? You’re taking this a lot more in stride than normal people in your situation… If I gather the situation correctly, that is.”

“I think I am in shock, and playing it all off. This was all empty plains two months ago, and good farmland before that… when I was… a child...” Kinder went silent.

Erick decided to distract the man as they walked away from the explosions far, far behind them. “So, Kinder. How long have I been here, at this base? How long have you been here? Where is ‘here’? What happened to cause this attack?”

Kinder blinked at Erick’s sudden barrage of questions, and then an explosion happened a bit closer behind them than either of them would have preferred. Kinder walked faster.

Erick matched Kinder’s pace.

Kinder began, “I’ve been here two years. I… You were here before me. Uh. Riam sent out a normal patrol, I think. But with all our refugees… I think someone leaked our location a month ago…” As Kinder moved, he visibly worked out some kinks in his shoulders. His voice turned even, and solid, “The higher-ups decided to make a stand of it. They thought we had enough of our shit together to fight back. The Mountain has made a real go of it, and the higher-ups thought the Plains could do it too. Turned out they overestimated the power of underfed, undereducated people who had been fleeing for their lives for the last year. There was probably some espionage. Not sure how it all happened, exactly. Three days ago we had a base and 25,000 people, half of which could at least hold a spear and a shield. Today we have us, and whoever Riam has captured instead of killed. I’m just a grunt, sir.”

Erick and Kinder jogged through low hills filled with bodies, avoiding the dangerous hilltops, and also the deeper parts of the undulating land, where blood and gore had slipped free of the people it used to belong to, to turn into mires of mud and death. Back where Erick entered floor 2, most of the bodies had been commoners, with little more to defend themselves with than wooden spears or farming implements turned into weapons. There had been a few people in grey tabards like Erick and Kinder, and even a few people in blue. Most of those people back there had died fighting enemies in front of them, and they had even taken out some red tabards along the way.

But here, on this back side of the battle, the people were pointed mostly in one direction; away from the front lines. These people died with wounds on their backs, and heads caved in from behind. They were all commoners here, and the number of red tabards on the ground were almost zero—

Someone screamed up ahead, asking for mercy.

Instinctively, Erick put on speed, rapidly leaving Kinder behind, his Rod of the Lightning Guardian in his hand as he raced forward, up over a low hill—

Seven people in red tabards advanced upon a trio of teenagers. Four other people in red tabards stood behind the advanced hunting party, their hands gripping chains that trailed behind them, connected to fourteen commoners and two grey-tabard soldiers of Insten all manacled together, all injured. It was a hunting party, a collection team, and their prey.

Erick advanced, silently and quickly, but there were a lot of eyes among the collection team.

One guy holding the reins of the prisoners yelled out a warning to his people.

The hunting party turned.

A slightly better-dressed woman standing to the side of the collection team, held the reins of Ashes’s people tight, and yelled at him, “Lay down your arms and I won’t harm your soldier— FUCK!”

Erick gave no response except to crash into the hunting party, his free hand turning aside a spear as his other hand brought his lightning rod down on top of a red-enameled helmet. Lightning flashed bright and the man from Riam’s brains scattered. Erick hadn’t meant to hit him quite that hard, but it was done.

One of eleven, down and out.

In that very same moment the woman in charge flicked some sort of magic down the chain holding her prisoners and all of the prisoners collapsed to the ground, groaning in pain. And then the woman raised her hands and cast a dark and light spell of some sort that arced up and then down, aiming for Erick. It looked illusionary.

Erick would deal with that spell in a moment.

He dodged into the team of hunters, crippling one of the men with a tap of his rod against a leg, sending lightning across the man, and the man down to the ground. With overwhelming force, Erick cracked spears and then dodged further into the melee, just in time for the woman’s [Illusion Bolt] to hit one of her own people. That man curled into himself, screaming in fear. So it had been a [Fear Bolt], then? Sure. Three of eleven down.

Erick dispatched three additional soldiers of Riam in just as many seconds. Six of eleven down for the count, but only a few permanently out. A less-injured hunter groaned in sparking pain, trying to regain their footing. Erick would have to let them try, because he was dealing with four other hunters now.

Kinder finally entered the fray with a spear thrown from afar, hitting the casting woman’s center mass. It deflected off of her breastplate under her tabard. It was a distraction, and that was all. Instead of everyone going after Erick, the prisoner team went after Kinder instead.

A particularly accomplished hunter parried Erick’s lightning rod with a spear and managed to keep out of Erick’s meter-long reach for several more seconds, as his team reorganized around Erick.

The surprise round was over; now came the actual fight.

Two minutes later, bloodied and angry, Erick had chased down the final hunter and added more brains to the gory battlefield. As Erick walked back to Kinder and the captured people, words appeared.

Rescue and Revenge, 1/??

The more you fight, the larger your challenges and the greater your rewards.

MP up! +500 mana production per day!

The message vanished when Erick looked away.

He took his time walking back to Kinder, and the recently freed people.

He needed a think.

Firstly, Erick wondered that if he had killed those two guys going after Kinder, if he would have been on step 2 of this question-mark-long quest. Erick decided that the answer was ‘probably’, but not because rescuing Kinder was the actual first step of this R&R quest.

Kinder was from Greensoil.

He was not a part of this dungeon scenario. But this was a Grand Dungeon. The Glittering Depths were able to do everything they needed to do on its own, but it was still able to be controlled by the dungeon master when necessary. Whoever the dungeon master was, they now had their focus on Erick, and they had controlled the dungeon enough to get two fake people from Riam to attack ‘Kinder’. In that same sort of way, a dungeon master could have made this quest prompt appear back then… If Erick had killed the red tabards chasing Kinder.

But why do this at all? Why approach Erick in this way?

… They were trying to figure him out, so they were coming at him in this odd, roundabout way.

… They didn’t know he was Erick, did they. If they did, they wouldn’t have come at him like this. Erick would have had people from Greensoil coming right up to him and trying to get him to either go away, or to come at Greensoil through normal channels. Greensoil did not like Erick on their land without Erick having an escort.

So…

That meant that Greensoil was looking for answers about ‘Ashes’? Why, though?

Maybe someone in the Glittering Depth’s dungeon control rooms had noticed weird shit happening around him, and that sent a trickle of information up the chain of command, and now ‘Ashes’ was getting investigated.

Erick almost sighed. He was rather bad at subterfuge when it got this convoluted, but he could play along for a while. See where this whole circumstance led.

There was only so much one could tell from situational happenstance, after all.

Erick had hoped that by coming back to the Glittering Depths that he would have be able to dive into the memories of Ashes’s life, and that required him being alone in the dungeon, but here he was with another real person somehow tagging along, inside his dungeon experience.

Eh.

A little more walking brought Erick back to the group.

Kinder had taken the keys off of the red tabard woman in charge of the collection party and unlocked everyone from their manacles, all the while acting like a soldier in the resistance. The ‘real’ soldiers were already recovering from whatever spell the woman had used on them, but some of the people were still dazed from whatever controlling spell they had suffered. The teenagers who had been targeted by the now-dead hunting party were helping Kinder and shaking people awake.

As Erick came close, most people turned toward him, and Erick softly commanded, “Spears. Tabards. Put them together and make a stretcher. We carry those who cannot walk until they can walk again. All of us are getting out of here alive, so get it done. Someone pry that metal bar off of the front of that manacle chain; it’s the only thing that’s actually made of metiron, and I want it.”

People got to work fast. Only one older woman needed to be put on a stretcher, and she looked like she would recover eventually. As they worked, Erick found a small, cerulean blue metamond lying in the gore under one of the red soldiers. He put the Elemental Healing metamond in his small backpack, along with the others.

When they were all ready to move, they started to do just that, sticking to the lower parts of the blasted plains, headed toward Architect Marii’s, wherever that might be.

“How far is it to Marii’s? Anyone know?” Erick asked the whole group.

Kinder answered, “An hour walk.”

Erick asked the group, “Anyone else corroborate that?”

Kinder rolled his eyes.

The teenagers each spoke in monotone, “Architect Marii makes good magic,” and, “I miss my father,” and, “War sucks.”

One of the soldiers said, “Marii is an hour that way,” while the other soldier said, “She makes good meta-monds.” Both of them had spoken with soft, monotone words.

A few other people began to speak as though they were machines answering. “This grandma is heavier than she looks,” said one of the men holding onto the stretcher, carrying the older woman, while the other person holding the stretcher said, “I’m hungry.” Someone else in the crowd responded with, “I miss redberry pie,” to which another said, “I need a sword, and an enemy to stab,” but that guy was missing one hand and the other arm was broken. He probably wouldn’t be stabbing anyone too soon. Adding to all the other oddness of speech, another one said, “Blue magic is for healing,” while another had been whispering this whole time, “Woe and death to us all, when the dark in the light finally comes to claim this world, to destroy that what must be destroyed to make manifest an Ultimate End.”

… Erick stared at the woman who had said that last thing.

Kinder was also staring at the doom prophet NPC.

Erick asked the doom prophet, “Repeat that?”

The woman spoke in monotone, “Kill the reds before they kill us all.”

“No. The thing you said before that.”

“Kill the reds before they kill us all.”

“… Whatever.” Erick turned to Kinder. “So how is it being an NPC?”

With a perfectly natural and not-monotone-at-all voice, Kinder repeated the same answer he had given Erick once already, “Not sure what that is, sir.”

“Sure, Kinder. Sure.”

Erick walked on.

Kinder followed, his eyes lingering on the woman who had spoken of ‘Ultimate End’.

- - - -

In a break room far away from the monitoring station, Quince sat down across from George and opened up his own lunchbox. George was already done with his lunch but he was still nursing his lemon-lime soda because he didn’t want to go back to work while the inquisitors were still there. It wasn’t a surprise inspection, thank Atunir, but it had been a routine inspection, and George didn’t like to stick around for those either. Quince usually stuck around, though, because of various reasons, and because he could handle being around those people.

But Quince was here now, eating lunch, instead of watching the inquisitors as they messed around in the monitoring room.

George chuckled to hide his nervousness. “Should both of us leave our stations at the same time?”

Quince shrugged. “They ordered me to leave… so I left.”

George felt his stomach sink. He whispered, “Did something happen?”

“Besides their normal callousness? No.”

George glanced around the rec area. Then he turned back to Quince, whispering, “But what about the d-guy?”

Quince shook his head a little and then hid his face with his sandwich, whispering, “Last I saw the master is looking after him and scrubbing records. Forget you ever saw the guy.”

George startled a little at the mention of the master. Then he simply nodded.

Quince nodded in turn, then got to eating lunch.

George went back to slowly drinking his soda.

- - - -

- -

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

MP per day: 5500

Meta-Irons: 1600, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 5/10, 0 in storage

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 99/100

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 1000/1000

Necklace of [Meditation], 49/50

Wand of [Drinking Food], 200/200

Belt of Many Functions. (depleted), (depleted), [Unsensible], 5/250

Unused Meta-Irons: Staff of the Anti-Magus (BROKEN) 12/50,

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Benediction], [Flaming Ooze], [Shadow Bolt], [Paper Control], [Memorize], [Minor Treat Wounds]

- -