| “Do I hold it against a dungeon when someone in my party dies? I mean… yeah. Why the hell wouldn’t I? Sure. Some people will say that it’s our fault for going down there in the first place. But, what the hell else are we supposed to do? I grew up poor. Most of us do. The rich don’t become adventurers. I don’t have any qualifications. I don’t have any education or formal training of any kind. But what I can do is shoot a bow and I can do it damn good. I’m level thirty. I have some abilities that’ll knock your socks off. Sure, I could join the military. But, honestly, I’m more likely to die there than I am in the dungeon. And the dungeon has endless resources anyways. Every instance has every floor of the dungeon and there are thousands and thousands of instances every day. So why do we have to fight for those resources? The dungeon could just give them to us and it would be a done deal. It clearly has the ability to make as many things as we need. Then, we wouldn’t need to go and take it for ourselves. It clearly has the ability to do that, if it wanted to. But it doesn’t. So, yes, I do blame it for the people who died in my party. The dungeon doesn’t care. The rich don’t care. It’s just us and we have to stick together with our own. They weren’t bad people. They were just born too poor to be able to do anything else. Is that a reason for them to have to die? — I guess so.” |
~ Interview with a low-level, rank D party leader upon receiving his rank up to rank C-
Leaves fall down, cascading from trees towards the forest floor like falling snow would on a winter’s day. Isaiah wanders through the tree-line, having landed here to explore the area in a more subtle way. Red flies along with it.
However, now, its exploration has come to an end, as it sees exactly what Black had been talking about. Isaiah has reached the end of the floating island, near the south-western edge of it. It’s further away from the massive staircase, so it isn’t immediately apparent to anyone who is coming up from the city. But below here, right at the edge of the territory, is a village.
— ‘Was’ a village, thinks Isaiah, correcting itself.
Several houses that were along the border had clearly been split in half, as the island tore free from the land. Half of them are crumbled apart and had fallen into themselves as piles of indiscriminate rubble up here, up on the island. The other halves had done the same down below.
“Hmm… well, that sucks,” says Red. “Oh well. That’s life. What can ya do?”
But it wasn’t just the houses that were exactly on the line. Many other homes seem to have broken in the quake. Many more seem to have burnt in some fire that had likely escaped during the chaos. In essence, the village is destroyed.
“Can we make this right?” asks Isaiah, already knowing the answer as they look down, over the edge of the island, to the outside of the dungeon’s territory.
“Uh, listen, chief,” says Red. “If you think this is fucked, then wait until you get stronger and the territory expands again.” She shrugs. “The rest of these houses are gonna go then too.”
Isaiah rubs its head. “This is a problem.”
“Don’t sweat it,” says Red, placing a hand on Isaiah’s shoulder. “Listen. We’re gonna have way bigger problems in the future. So this here? This is peanuts.”
Isaiah turns to look at the uthra. “Thank you, Red. You are always a deeply reassuring presence,” it says sarcasticially.
“Right?” asks Red. She points out towards the large human city, off in the distance. “Just wait 'till the territory reaches them and you rip their walls straight out of the ground. Hah!” Red plants her hands on her hips, smiling a happy smile. “I can hardly wait.”
“Red. I do not need to tell you that this would be a very big problem for us,” says Isaiah.
Red waves it off with an idle hand. “It’s all a matter of perspective,” replies the uthra. “As far as I’m concerned, they can all get squished. Damn humans.”
“You know, I was a human once,” notes Isaiah.
Red shakes her head. “It’s okay, chief. We all make mistakes.”
Isaiah sighs. “I appreciate your sense of humor, Red,” says Isaiah. It lifts a finger, pointing it at her.
“- Ah fuck me. No! Not again. Get away from m -”
A glow escapes Isaiah’s finger, enveloping Red’s crimson silhouette.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
| (Isaiah) Upgraded: [Summoned Worker {03}] to [Summoned Worker {04}] |
| Cost: {300} EXP |
| EXP: 1244/3450 |
| ~ [Uthra {3}] ~ | |
| Class: Minion | Element: HOLY |
| Type: Worker | Category: Spirit |
| Rank: E+ ↗ | |
| Level: 15 | |
| An Uthra. Uthra are small, celestial light-world entities. Born out of the magical cosmic rivers, known as leylines, they are composed entirely out of holy-magic. Uthras serve as guardians, wards and builders. They are similar to fairies, cherubs and sprites. | |
| HP: 30/30↗ | SOUL: 30/30↗ |
| NEW - (WORKER) ABILITY - [Peaceful Dominion](Passive) |
| Wild monsters will not attack the worker, as they do not perceive it as a threat. |
| NEW - (WORKER) ABILITY - [Warp Point](Active) |
| Cost: {15} SOUL |
| Creates a hidden warp point, unique to the worker. The worker is able to freely use warp points to warp to other locations that they have marked. Warp points are unique to the individual worker and can only be used by them. |
Red’s body stretches out, growing further and longer. Her arms extend and her legs grow in length as her torso fights to keep pace with her extremities, parts of her bodies popping and bulging as she grows. The uthra falls down to the ground as her wings stay too small for her new weight for a moment. But then, they begin change and grow in size as well.
The uthra sits down on the grass, her body now having finished growing. If a level three uthra is the size of a small, human child. Then the level four variant is larger now, like a young person having reached a late stage of adolescence.
She groans.
Isaiah bends down, holding out a hand to help her back up to her feet. “My apologies, Red,” says Isaiah. “But I have work that I can only trust you to do.”
“Hell of a way to show it,” grumbles Red, wobbling up to her feet. She stares at Isaiah’s hand for a moment and then looks up at its face, before turning back down towards the hand. She grabs it. “I liked being small, you know?” she asks. “The bigger I get, the heavier I feel.”
“As we grow, so do the weight of our responsibilities and the burdens of the life we live,” says Isaiah, pulling her up to her feet. “I enjoy watching you grow, Red.”
“Are you my mom or something?” asks Red, stretching and shaking herself out. “I didn’t come from an egg, you know?”
Isaiah shakes its head. “I find joy in nurturing things,” it explains. It points to the ruins. “That is why I need you to nurture these people for me.”
“Huh?”
“We… No. I have done them wrong,” says Isaiah. “But I can not make it right. I can not leave the dungeon’s territory,” it explains. “So I need you to do so for me. Go to the village. Help where you can. Fix what you can. Do what you can,” instructs Isaiah. “Make them know that we will make this well again.”
“Do I have to?” asks Red. “You know that I hate humans.”
“Please,” asks Isaiah. “I will not order you to do so. But I will ask it of you, as a kindness,” it says, letting go of her. Red crosses her arms, her much larger wings buzzing loudly behind herself as she lowers her head in thought. “I know it is not the same, Red,” says Isaiah. “But the humans killed me too, once. Or rather… we killed each other.” Isaiah looks out towards the city. “It is not the fault of the wolf that it longs to tear into a screaming calf. And it is not the fault of the serpent that it eats the squeaking mouse. Humans are what they are because of the way they were made.”
“Don’t make excuses for things that can think,” snaps Red. “They’re not able to get away from what they did that easily.”
It looks her way. “I do wonder,” notes Isaiah. “- If thinking really triumphs that often over base, animal instinct?” it asks, holding a hand to a spot on its chest that had once been pierced by a blade in a life now long since past. “We must treat humans as thinking, living individuals, Red," says Isaiah. "But we must at the same time shepherd them, as if they were rabid, fearful animals.” Isaiah looks back towards her. “— For our safety and for theirs.”
Red lets out a long sigh. “Fine. But only because you give a mean speech,” he says. “At least you didn’t talk about the seasons this time.”
Isaiah nods. “I will make a note to do so next time.” It flies up, getting ready to return to the tower. “Thank you, Red.” Red flies off down the cliff-side, towards the village, simply waving it off instead of saying anything else. Isaiah watches her go and then leaves itself.
| ~ [Crystal] ~ |
| Uthra, Male, Worker {2} |
Crystal flies around the outside of the tower, humming as he carves away large chunks of the stone brickwork.
The uthra works. The work goes quickly, however. He has a lot of experience in making statues these days. Plus the tower could use a little pepping up. Besides, this will help keep people from climbing up the outside.
Sure, there are the harpies. But they’re much higher up there and someone can still easily climb to floor six or floor ten, if they were dedicated.
He turns its head, noticing Isaiah flying in.
— Right on time.
Crystal finishes the gargoyle, one of several dozen that sit on the outside body of the tower. Now he just needs a little dungeon-magic to bring these all to life…
| ~ [Beulah] ~ |
| Human, Male, Thief |
Beulah makes his way around the shrine on floor eighteen of the dungeon.
While Red had forced him to move into the upstairs area, nobody really notices when he is or isn’t there in the little, quaint house that it is his to call his own. It does feel a little ungrateful, turning down a free house that had been made for him specifically and it is a nice place.
— It’s just that he’d rather be here.
He knows that sounds dumb.
His feet echo around himself as he wanders down the wooden corridor of the shrine. After all, they, the shrine-maidens, are just homunculi. They’re not ‘real’ like any of the people upstairs are. Homunculi, fakes, don’t have souls, personalities, desires, wants, needs, feelings. They’re simply hollow, simple shells that look like something close to the state of personhood.
- So he can’t exactly explain what’s going on here, given their unusual state of timid liveliness.
But for a dungeon, the tower is an oddball anyway. So perhaps this is just one more quirk?
He pulls open the small, sliding door, behind which is his closet for his tools and materials. He doesn’t have a room here, the shrine wasn’t designed for someone to live in it like he has been doing. He’s just been bunching himself up in this closet until now. It’s cramped and tiny and he has to pull his legs in to sleep on the floor, pressed into the tight space in a ball. But he prefers it to the nice house above.
Beulah grabs his roll of fabric to get to work.
Something falls down from it.
The man blinks and bends down to grab the scrap of tree-bark that someone had carved two words into, with crude, untrained handwriting.
‘Welcome home’.
He smiles, gently placing down his greatest treasure onto the only shelf there is in the closet, his home.
He doesn’t need to explain it. It just is what it is. Beulah looks over his shoulder, staring at the face that watches from the end of the long corridor, peeking around with a cautious gaze and a twitching of fox-like ears.
He waves to the shrine-maiden.
She vanishes, disappearing back behind the corner as they always do. They’re always very reclusive creatures. He shrugs and closes the closet again, ready to get to work. He’s already happy with this much.
As he turns back around, he doesn’t see a face. But an arm and a hand shoot past the corner, waving back to him, before vanishing once more, together with the sounds of someone fearfully running away down a hallway.
“’Home…’ huh?” mutters the thief, Beulah, to himself, staring back at the tiny closet behind where he stands. He’s never had a home before. This seems like a real luxury for someone of his standing.
His hand runs along the closet door one more time, just to check if it’s real, before he sets to his tasks.
Maybe he'll try out the whole prayer thing today, after his work.
| “Do I hold it against a dungeon when someone in my party dies? I mean… yeah. Why the hell wouldn’t I? Sure. Some people will say that it’s our fault for going down there in the first place. But, what the hell else are we supposed to do? I grew up poor. Most of us do. The rich don’t become adventurers. I don’t have any qualifications. I don’t have any education or formal training of any kind. But what I can do is shoot a bow and I can do it damn good. I’m level thirty. I have some abilities that’ll knock your socks off. Sure, I could join the military. But, honestly, I’m more likely to die there than I am in the dungeon. And the dungeon has endless resources anyways. Every instance has every floor of the dungeon and there are thousands and thousands of instances every day. So why do we have to fight for those resources? The dungeon could just give them to us and it would be a done deal. It clearly has the ability to make as many things as we need. Then, we wouldn’t need to go and take it for ourselves. It clearly has the ability to do that, if it wanted to. But it doesn’t. So, yes, I do blame it for the people who died in my party. The dungeon doesn’t care. The rich don’t care. It’s just us and we have to stick together with our own. They weren’t bad people. They were just born too poor to be able to do anything else. Is that a reason for them to have to die? — I guess so.” |
~ Interview with a low-level, rank D party leader upon receiving his rank up to rank C-
Leaves fall down, cascading from trees towards the forest floor like falling snow would on a winter’s day. Isaiah wanders through the tree-line, having landed here to explore the area in a more subtle way. Red flies along with it.
However, now, its exploration has come to an end, as it sees exactly what Black had been talking about. Isaiah has reached the end of the floating island, near the south-western edge of it. It’s further away from the massive staircase, so it isn’t immediately apparent to anyone who is coming up from the city. But below here, right at the edge of the territory, is a village.
— ‘Was’ a village, thinks Isaiah, correcting itself.
Several houses that were along the border had clearly been split in half, as the island tore free from the land. Half of them are crumbled apart and had fallen into themselves as piles of indiscriminate rubble up here, up on the island. The other halves had done the same down below.
“Hmm… well, that sucks,” says Red. “Oh well. That’s life. What can ya do?”
But it wasn’t just the houses that were exactly on the line. Many other homes seem to have broken in the quake. Many more seem to have burnt in some fire that had likely escaped during the chaos. In essence, the village is destroyed.
“Can we make this right?” asks Isaiah, already knowing the answer as they look down, over the edge of the island, to the outside of the dungeon’s territory.
“Uh, listen, chief,” says Red. “If you think this is fucked, then wait until you get stronger and the territory expands again.” She shrugs. “The rest of these houses are gonna go then too.”
Isaiah rubs its head. “This is a problem.”
“Don’t sweat it,” says Red, placing a hand on Isaiah’s shoulder. “Listen. We’re gonna have way bigger problems in the future. So this here? This is peanuts.”
Isaiah turns to look at the uthra. “Thank you, Red. You are always a deeply reassuring presence,” it says sarcasticially.
“Right?” asks Red. She points out towards the large human city, off in the distance. “Just wait 'till the territory reaches them and you rip their walls straight out of the ground. Hah!” Red plants her hands on her hips, smiling a happy smile. “I can hardly wait.”
“Red. I do not need to tell you that this would be a very big problem for us,” says Isaiah.
Red waves it off with an idle hand. “It’s all a matter of perspective,” replies the uthra. “As far as I’m concerned, they can all get squished. Damn humans.”
“You know, I was a human once,” notes Isaiah.
Red shakes her head. “It’s okay, chief. We all make mistakes.”
Isaiah sighs. “I appreciate your sense of humor, Red,” says Isaiah. It lifts a finger, pointing it at her.
“- Ah fuck me. No! Not again. Get away from m -”
A glow escapes Isaiah’s finger, enveloping Red’s crimson silhouette.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
| (Isaiah) Upgraded: [Summoned Worker {03}] to [Summoned Worker {04}] |
| Cost: {300} EXP |
| EXP: 1244/3450 |
| ~ [Uthra {3}] ~ | |
| Class: Minion | Element: HOLY |
| Type: Worker | Category: Spirit |
| Rank: E+ ↗ | |
| Level: 15 | |
| An Uthra. Uthra are small, celestial light-world entities. Born out of the magical cosmic rivers, known as leylines, they are composed entirely out of holy-magic. Uthras serve as guardians, wards and builders. They are similar to fairies, cherubs and sprites. | |
| HP: 30/30↗ | SOUL: 30/30↗ |
| NEW - (WORKER) ABILITY - [Peaceful Dominion](Passive) |
| Wild monsters will not attack the worker, as they do not perceive it as a threat. |
| NEW - (WORKER) ABILITY - [Warp Point](Active) |
| Cost: {15} SOUL |
| Creates a hidden warp point, unique to the worker. The worker is able to freely use warp points to warp to other locations that they have marked. Warp points are unique to the individual worker and can only be used by them. |
Red’s body stretches out, growing further and longer. Her arms extend and her legs grow in length as her torso fights to keep pace with her extremities, parts of her bodies popping and bulging as she grows. The uthra falls down to the ground as her wings stay too small for her new weight for a moment. But then, they begin change and grow in size as well.
The uthra sits down on the grass, her body now having finished growing. If a level three uthra is the size of a small, human child. Then the level four variant is larger now, like a young person having reached a late stage of adolescence.
She groans.
Isaiah bends down, holding out a hand to help her back up to her feet. “My apologies, Red,” says Isaiah. “But I have work that I can only trust you to do.”
“Hell of a way to show it,” grumbles Red, wobbling up to her feet. She stares at Isaiah’s hand for a moment and then looks up at its face, before turning back down towards the hand. She grabs it. “I liked being small, you know?” she asks. “The bigger I get, the heavier I feel.”
“As we grow, so do the weight of our responsibilities and the burdens of the life we live,” says Isaiah, pulling her up to her feet. “I enjoy watching you grow, Red.”
“Are you my mom or something?” asks Red, stretching and shaking herself out. “I didn’t come from an egg, you know?”
Isaiah shakes its head. “I find joy in nurturing things,” it explains. It points to the ruins. “That is why I need you to nurture these people for me.”
“Huh?”
“We… No. I have done them wrong,” says Isaiah. “But I can not make it right. I can not leave the dungeon’s territory,” it explains. “So I need you to do so for me. Go to the village. Help where you can. Fix what you can. Do what you can,” instructs Isaiah. “Make them know that we will make this well again.”
“Do I have to?” asks Red. “You know that I hate humans.”
“Please,” asks Isaiah. “I will not order you to do so. But I will ask it of you, as a kindness,” it says, letting go of her. Red crosses her arms, her much larger wings buzzing loudly behind herself as she lowers her head in thought. “I know it is not the same, Red,” says Isaiah. “But the humans killed me too, once. Or rather… we killed each other.” Isaiah looks out towards the city. “It is not the fault of the wolf that it longs to tear into a screaming calf. And it is not the fault of the serpent that it eats the squeaking mouse. Humans are what they are because of the way they were made.”
“Don’t make excuses for things that can think,” snaps Red. “They’re not able to get away from what they did that easily.”
It looks her way. “I do wonder,” notes Isaiah. “- If thinking really triumphs that often over base, animal instinct?” it asks, holding a hand to a spot on its chest that had once been pierced by a blade in a life now long since past. “We must treat humans as thinking, living individuals, Red," says Isaiah. "But we must at the same time shepherd them, as if they were rabid, fearful animals.” Isaiah looks back towards her. “— For our safety and for theirs.”
Red lets out a long sigh. “Fine. But only because you give a mean speech,” he says. “At least you didn’t talk about the seasons this time.”
Isaiah nods. “I will make a note to do so next time.” It flies up, getting ready to return to the tower. “Thank you, Red.” Red flies off down the cliff-side, towards the village, simply waving it off instead of saying anything else. Isaiah watches her go and then leaves itself.
| ~ [Crystal] ~ |
| Uthra, Male, Worker {2} |
Crystal flies around the outside of the tower, humming as he carves away large chunks of the stone brickwork.
The uthra works. The work goes quickly, however. He has a lot of experience in making statues these days. Plus the tower could use a little pepping up. Besides, this will help keep people from climbing up the outside.
Sure, there are the harpies. But they’re much higher up there and someone can still easily climb to floor six or floor ten, if they were dedicated.
He turns its head, noticing Isaiah flying in.
— Right on time.
Crystal finishes the gargoyle, one of several dozen that sit on the outside body of the tower. Now he just needs a little dungeon-magic to bring these all to life…
| ~ [Beulah] ~ |
| Human, Male, Thief |
Beulah makes his way around the shrine on floor eighteen of the dungeon.
While Red had forced him to move into the upstairs area, nobody really notices when he is or isn’t there in the little, quaint house that it is his to call his own. It does feel a little ungrateful, turning down a free house that had been made for him specifically and it is a nice place.
— It’s just that he’d rather be here.
He knows that sounds dumb.
His feet echo around himself as he wanders down the wooden corridor of the shrine. After all, they, the shrine-maidens, are just homunculi. They’re not ‘real’ like any of the people upstairs are. Homunculi, fakes, don’t have souls, personalities, desires, wants, needs, feelings. They’re simply hollow, simple shells that look like something close to the state of personhood.
- So he can’t exactly explain what’s going on here, given their unusual state of timid liveliness.
But for a dungeon, the tower is an oddball anyway. So perhaps this is just one more quirk?
He pulls open the small, sliding door, behind which is his closet for his tools and materials. He doesn’t have a room here, the shrine wasn’t designed for someone to live in it like he has been doing. He’s just been bunching himself up in this closet until now. It’s cramped and tiny and he has to pull his legs in to sleep on the floor, pressed into the tight space in a ball. But he prefers it to the nice house above.
Beulah grabs his roll of fabric to get to work.
Something falls down from it.
The man blinks and bends down to grab the scrap of tree-bark that someone had carved two words into, with crude, untrained handwriting.
‘Welcome home’.
He smiles, gently placing down his greatest treasure onto the only shelf there is in the closet, his home.
He doesn’t need to explain it. It just is what it is. Beulah looks over his shoulder, staring at the face that watches from the end of the long corridor, peeking around with a cautious gaze and a twitching of fox-like ears.
He waves to the shrine-maiden.
She vanishes, disappearing back behind the corner as they always do. They’re always very reclusive creatures. He shrugs and closes the closet again, ready to get to work. He’s already happy with this much.
As he turns back around, he doesn’t see a face. But an arm and a hand shoot past the corner, waving back to him, before vanishing once more, together with the sounds of someone fearfully running away down a hallway.
“’Home…’ huh?” mutters the thief, Beulah, to himself, staring back at the tiny closet behind where he stands. He’s never had a home before. This seems like a real luxury for someone of his standing.
His hand runs along the closet door one more time, just to check if it’s real, before he sets to his tasks.
Maybe he'll try out the whole prayer thing today, after his work.
