Soulforged Dungeoneer

When the otherwise dull government meeting came back from a one-hour lunch break (I joined a group that called in an order for sandwiches from a shop I didn't catch the name of, and that was good enough for me), I immediately recognized that some things had changed. Most notably, the number of military Dungoneers who were clearly acting as guards had increased, and there was a little partition set up that utterly failed to hide Allison Cream from my telekinetic sense, even as it did a fair job of hiding her physically from me. My seat had been reversed so that instead of facing the inside of the horseshoe of desks, I was looking at the gap, which was close to where the High Priestess was hiding. The extra guards were clearly positioned in such a way that they would be between us when she came out.

I guess they were nervous about whatever was coming. That made me nervous, too, and I think Merry joined in on that on an empathic level if nothing else. She seemed to be rolling around somewhere in my head restlessly, and it was honestly a little distracting.

I feel like she's doing something, admitted Merry. Not to us. I mean... we kinda guessed, right? She's gonna connect to her god and we'll talk through that link?

I took a deep breath and tried not to think about it.

When Mr. Flour, now behind me, finally called the meeting to order, he also deigned to spend just a bit of time making sure that I finally understood the point of the meeting.

"Mr. Applebee," he said, after getting through a very perfunctory 'now let's resume' bit, "there are a number of questions that we know we are not allowed an answer to, but that the Dungeon Gods seem keen on giving us. Your task is to attempt to answer these questions, with the assistance of your bound fairy." And I was handed a little wooden clipboard with a sheet of paper on it. "I understand you haven't done this before, but for all we know, we may only have one chance at this, so please do your best."

I looked over to my left, where there were mostly military people sitting, and to my right, where there were mostly high-ranking Dungoneers, and took the clipboard and nodded.

The list of questions seemed like it had a bunch of repeats on a couple themes--one major theme was "Why? For what purpose? What are your intentions?" while another is "How do we get control? What's the secret? How do we get stronger?" After studying the list, I decided that I would refer back to it, but I didn't think that reading the questions off one at a time would be the right way to approach it, if only because I couldn't think of a way to do that without feeling like I was being turned into a robot.

The only interesting, new piece of information I got from the list of questions was a name: "The Lord Beneath." My eyebrows raised when I looked at it; it wasn't something I had heard anywhere, and Merry seemed similarly ignorant.

"Are you prepared?"

I looked back at the speaker and nodded, wordlessly. He made a gesture, and I turned back to the little partition and watched as someone relayed a gesture to Allison Cream, who... seemed a little off.

When she stepped around the partition, it was clear she wasn't in her right mind. Or rather, someone else was in her right mind.

High Priestess Cream had rippling waves of white energy flowing off of her, thick enough that I could sense it with my telekinetic sense. Her eyes were two blazing holes of white light, and white luminescent smoke poured out of her ears, nose, and mouth. In fact, I realized, the haze that was coming off of her was literally pouring out of every pore of her body, as though her mortal shell simply couldn't contain some high-pressure gas that just so happened to be "power itself".

I swallowed nervously. I had been cheeky before when arguing with the Priestess, but dealing with her god as it possessed her was definitely a different matter.

"Hello again, Gentleman. Mr. Vice President." Cream's voice was masculine, now, with just a little hint of an echo of her original voice behind it. Her eyes, finally, turned directly to me. "And you, Mr. Applebee. I apologize for my High Priestess' behavior. It appears she was a bit... overeager. I hope there were no serious consequences of her actions."

"No... sir." Not to me, anyway. I hoped nobody else got in trouble for her bullshit.

The Dungeon God nodded. "You may call me Lord Ethanic. I understand that you are the first human on this planet to have a Bound Fairy. My congratulations to you."

I nodded, once, and focused my attention on Merry. How are you holding up?

I'm okay. He's got a lot of data there, but he's not surfacing anything. Try asking a question.

So I cleared my throat and, very hesitantly, started in on the question that topped my own personal list, even if it wasn't exactly written on the paper. "Lord Ethanic... may I ask, who is the Lord Beneath?"

"That information is restricted." Cream tilted her head up at me, but she was smiling. I felt Merry reach for something.

She relayed a few facts to me, and I frowned, picking one to try to relay to the room. "He is... the keeper of the Master Key?"

Cream's mouth spread into a wide smile. "Ah," said Ethanic, and put strange emphasis on his next words. "Allow me to clarify. You are close; what you call the Master Key is a powerful engine that creates and regulates all of the Dungeon Keys that give people like you power. I suppose, in your language, it's an appropriate name. A translation of the original name would be the Labyrinthine Star." And then, very deliberately, she shut her mouth and waited.

There was a bunch of whispering around me. I glanced back down at the list of questions, frowning. Merry offered me little snippets of things she was hearing, but instead of processing them, I just searched for anything in that stream that would lead to more interesting questions. After a moment, I looked back up at him. "And this Lord Beneath is a member of the species that created the ...Labyrinthine Star?"

"Correct."

I frowned. "And you aren't."

A slight hesitation. "That is also correct."

"Why was the Lord Beneath sent here?"

"That information is restricted."

I nodded as Merry searched through the information, but what she found, I didn't immediately feel like repeating. Tonally, it felt off; according to Ethanic's information, the whole Key thing was some kind of species uplift project, but why do that if there was a chance of leaving civilizations destroyed if they fail? Mentally, I tried to recall what the tea-offering Administrator's words had been. It helped that Louise had repeated the words again later

This is the deal we offered Humanity: Access to the [ Dungeon Key ], and in return, once you had learned how to use it, once humanity had proven that it could adapt to the key, once they proved that they didn't need to be hand-held, we would be free.

I frowned, trying to rectify those two thoughts, but a noise from the room brought my attention back, and I had to put it out of mind before I got lost in my own head.

"What is the purpose of the Full Clear Quests?" Although there was a question on the list about 'how do we meet the Lord Beneath', the Administrator's words about us being hand-held suggested that this was the wrong time to ask that question.

"That information is restricted."

That's interesting. This data is clearly incomplete--by, like, a lot. They're hiding something. Merry gave me a mental impression of a page with a lot of blackout ink redacting information, while making it clear that something was being hidden. That told me that not only was this information leak a deliberate act, but one they had a measure of control over, which was... concerning.

I cleared my throat and tried to cue in to what Ethanic had said before. "Please clarify for me... the Full Clear quests are supposed to let us replace the Dungeon Administrators?"

"Ah!" Finally, Cream's mouth spread into a wide smile again. "That is one of the primary goals of the Full Clear Quests, yes." But, she didn't elaborate.

I had to try to link that back to what I'd heard before, from the Devil when he offered me my quest--or tried, before I successfully tried to kill him. "And when we replace an Administrator, some things will no longer be restricted to a Dungeon?"

Cream tilted her head to the side. "Hm. I suppose you're close enough; let me clarify. Currently, all of the Administrators are bound to their dungeons, as are all of the Dungeon Gods. When you complete a Full Clear Quest, the new Administrator and Dungeon God are released from their bindings and may wander your world freely, as well as continuing to perform their roles within the Dungeon System."

That had a lot of people writing things, but I nodded, and then frowned. "The Administrators and Dungeon Gods are linked?"

Another moment of hesitation, a little longer this time. "To complete a Full Clear Quest, you must obtain the approval of one Administrator and one Dungeon God. When you replace a Dungeon Administrator, the God whose approval you sought is also released."

That seemed odd. "The quest I was offered was to bring a declaration of war from an Administrator to a Dungeon God. That doesn't quite sound like seeking their approval."

Cream's smile seemed off, a little. "I assure you, I do not lie. There are... some formalities to the process, and the way in which the quest is offered may vary between individuals, but the core requirement is the approval of both."

I found that I was frowning deeply, and tried to clear my head and force my face back to neutral. I glanced back at the paper in front of me. "Why was information like this restricted?"

"That information is restricted."

I felt weird as Merry blinked, taken aback by something. She shared with me a mental image of a document where the blackout marker was used, instead of hiding text, to simply scrawl the words "TO PREVENT CORRUPTION" in huge letters over a much longer document.

And it was at that moment that I understood.

Some people here, if they had to choose between a loyal American or a more competent foreigner being in a position of power, would choose the American without a moment's hesitation, and America was far from the only world power--large powers, small powers, and everything in between--that would do the same. In fact, the games of brinksmanship between us--them, really, since I had nothing to do with it--and other major powers would only enhance that problem.

That left me unsure of whether to speak what I just realized out loud, or not. Were these the wrong people to have power? Was Ethanic bound to answer these questions, or did he trust them? Or was he trusting us--Cream and myself--to judge our own people for ourselves?

I hesitated for long enough that I'm sure most eyes on the room were on me. Finally, though, I spoke. "The information is restricted because if we know how to become an Administrator, the wrong people will get the job."

There was kind of an amused noise that came from Cream's mouth. Instead of that wide, pleased smile, though, it was something more of a tight, stressed one. "It is difficult to know who is the right person to hold power. What can be assured, however, is that those who seek out power for power's sake are the wrong people to hold it."

That fit hand in glove with what the Administrator had said. "If we--the people of Earth--can complete some kind of trials without becoming corrupt, then we're worthy of completely controlling the Master Key."

"Exactly!" Cream's voice seemed excited, if not exactly pleased. "You got that quickly. I am impressed."

"Then, the reason why our civilization could still be destroyed, why we could still fail..." I left the implication hanging in the room, hauntingly.

"The decision was made that if a civilization became corrupted with power, it was better destroyed than left to spread and rot." Cream's voice was some mixture of icy, determined, forlorn, and amused. "There is no way to change this decision, and there never will be."

I nodded, not needing any input from Merry to put the pieces together. "And that's the purpose of it all, isn't it? The Dungeons, the system, the Lord Beneath?"

Cream nodded, a plume of glowing smoke pouring out of her nose as she blew a sigh through it. She also twitched, I think holding back another automatic reply. "The details are not for me to disclose right now. It is restricted information, but I also do not disagree with the restriction. Instead, understand this: if you do not find the right people to complete these Quests, your civilization has no chance to survive. The true test of your species' survival is not whether or not you can slay monsters, but whether you can defeat the enemy within, both individually, and culturally."

Left unsaid was that some of those enemies might be in the room right now, or might receive reports about this meeting on their desk tomorrow morning. I turned in my seat to glance at the Vice President, but aside from the fact that his face was intensely serious, I couldn't read him. I considered throwing my Telepathy skill at him, but it seemed like the wrong time and place to experiment with something I'd never used before.

I turned back to the Lord Ethanic. "How many civilizations have succeeded?"

"That--" she clearly bit back the automatic answer, a second too late to be smooth. "I can honestly say that I don't have that information. The Lord Beneath might."

"...How many have failed?"

Cream turned up her nose at me. "That information is restricted."

Merry considered what was shown to her. The big takeaway is, when the Beneath dude is replaced, the key stays where it is. This one wouldn't be here if someone had succeeded before you.

I frowned. "How many civilizations has this particular Master Key visited?"

"That information is restricted."

I swallowed, my mouth instantly running dry. "Five?"

Cream looked at me, not bothering to say anything. I looked at her for a long time, and then nodded, slightly.

"...You aren't from the species that created the keys. That means that you are from a civilization that was visited by the Key later."

Ethanic just stared at me in return.

"...and then was destroyed when it left."

"I think we're done for today," said the Dungeon God, his voice having a level of tiredness to it that I could tangibly feel leaking out into the room. "You are correct, Mr. Applebee, but it is not for my own people that I grieve. I grieve because I have tried and failed to save others from the fate that befell my people, in spite of centuries of work. And because, irrespective of my intentions, I may again." His eyes move from me to the Vice President in the corner, and then swept around the room. "Don't forget that, when you decide on what comes next."

And then he was gone, leaving only High Priestess Cream standing before us.