Soulforged Dungeoneer

I'm going to summarize what came after that not because it was really unimportant but because I spent most of the next bit of time thinking about my skills and didn't pay a whole lot of attention to other things.

Everyone wanted to know what the hell had gone on. I sort of said that the Yogi was pretty clearly more telekinetic than martial artist, and it was interesting, but not really useful to anyone but me. And then we all, because we were still trying to speed dive the dungeon, got back into motion again. More ladders between rope bridges, more small incidental fights.

Instead of one-on-oneing any more monsters, I took a more active role in killing things after that. It was probably silly, I'd realized while sitting with the yogi, and somehow my stubbornness had melted away. Also, it helped that I could kill things by throwing them off convenient ledges. Less good for dueling practice, but it helped with getting experience at least.

The next floor maintained the rope bridge theme for some reason, with the major modification being that there was an honest-to-goodness war being waged. Two armies, one in each cliff, were charging into one another across all those rope bridges. The frost bandits were one side, while the other were some kind of peasant militia that honestly didn't look all that different, except that they weren't berserk like the bandits were. I could tell that there were some kind of commanders or something that you could probably challenge or whatever, and there were also still spiders crawling over the rope bridges and feasting and being attacked.

The most important thing for us, though, was that on the peasant's side was also the base of the God's Tower for Kalamitus. Max told me that if you got high enough in this narrow and deep craggy valley, you could see a big black tower going seemingly forever into the sky, but from deep in the crevasse, there wasn't a lot that was obvious, except that there was particular wide section of cliff with a big blue gate in it, and five large bridges leaving it. Posted on either side of each bridge were large stone sentinels that were way too high level for this dungeon--250--and there was a woman in white priestess garb standing outside the door waiting, who according to the bare number over her head was an actual human and not an NPC.

We made our way past the war with relative ease, again thanks to Max's group and their ladders, and they all started immediately setting up camp on the ledge, as Susie, Louise, and I approached the gate. The woman had been watching us a while, and bowed when we got close.

"You are Jerry Applebee?" she asked, politely, looking straight at me.

"That's me."

"Kalamitus has been waiting. He said you'd be here soon. Your friends can come inside if you like." She gestured, and the door opened.

I looked back at Max, but he just gave a dismissive wave at me. "Not our scene, man. We'll wait here," he said, and pulled something out of his inventory that was clearly alcohol.

Well, they'd be fine.

We stepped through into the God's Tower like it was an alternate dimension--no cold, no heat, no noise of battle, and the materials were all different. It was mostly dark navy blue stones with some kind of pattern in light blue going up the sides erratically, something like a double helix or a twined pair of "wind lines" that people would draw stylistically to indicate airflow. The room itself was a large, perfect circle, far too big for the relative lack of contents.

There was a reception desk off to one side, and an elevator that was a bare metal shark cage with a door in one side. It looked a little intimidating, honestly, though it could also have just been an affectation. Other that, and some uncomfortable-looking waiting room chairs, the vast majority of the room was empty space.

"Kalamitus would like to speak with you alone, Mr. Applebee. If you would, take the elevator to floor five, please." She turned to Louise, and then to Susie. "You can wait here. We have Inn facilities if needs be, but you'll have to wait for the elevator to return..."

Since I would only delay that, I moved to the elevator and got in. There was a freestanding pedestal with big shiny buttons on it that controlled the thing, of which all except the "5" button were currently sunk into the pedestal and presumably unavailable. I pressed that, and the cage started to rise into the ceiling, supported only by a couple of chains. Although it rocked back and forth just a bit, it honestly felt pretty stable.

Interestingly, I didn't actually pass through other floors on the way to floor 5; it had to be some kind of space-warping thing, because the floor itself seemed to be as thin as paper for all the time it took to pass from wherever we were to floor "5". There was a moment where I could swear I could see both floor and ceiling at the same time, but that could as easily have been illusion or my mind playing tricks on me.

The fifth floor of Kalamitus' Tower was painted to look like the great outdoors, with a large steel gate being the first thing that you encountered as soon as you left the elevator. There was no knocker, no buzzer, no lock, no nothing, and so I simply moved up to the gate and pushed it open.

And there he was.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw Kalamitus for the first time was that the blue sweeping lines from below were clearly a stylized blue asian-style dragon, because the god that stretched out before me was the exactly that. Like a giant flying snake, he had crossed over himself in an overlapping set of elongated coils, slowly and sinuously moving in place idly as he waited. In a couple places along his body, there were long bony arms, impractical looking but ending in clawed hands. His face, I have to say, looked very odd to me; I expected something more along the lines of a lion, a demon, or, you know, a dragon, but it was squarish with wide flattened horns and reminded me more of a giant, predatory moose.

I didn't react for a long moment, and he took that moment to observe me before I finally, with a mental prod from Merry, bowed low.

"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, it is good to finally meet you." I looked up to find that Kalamitus had unwound himself and was now just kind of stretching to fill the sky, looking down on me in a way that definitely felt like he was a predator. His voice, while perhaps intended to be kindly, sounded like he was, at heart, a very condescending man. "I am Kalamitus, and for the moment at least, I am your Patron."

"Now, I'm sure you have a great many questions, but before that, I'd like to make sure that we are on the same page on a few things. Ahem--tell me, what do you know about Full Clear Quests?"

I frowned, since it was weird that we were starting off on that topic, but Merry nudged me immediately. He's doing that thing where he leaks information. Uh... hang on, lemmie make sure... I think what he wants to know is--

"An Administrator and a God agree on a champion, after he passes one test from each," I said, more or less relaying what Merry told me. "If he agrees, he replaces the Administrator and he and the God are set free." I frowned, because I seemed to recall there was something odd about Ethanic's phrasing of those facts, and Merry agreed that the redactions were heavy on what she was shown, in a way that was suspicious.

"Ah, good. I understand that your people have largely been very hesitant to undertake these quests, which unfortunately is partly by design." Kalamitus began to slowly sky-snake his way around the room, which I suppose was a flying snake's version of pacing. He kept at least one eye on me all the time, though. "Nevertheless, it is time. Although you refused my partner's quest the first time, there are... some ways to solve that problem, in particular for you. Usually, it's far more complicated to get back to those quests, you understand, but you're just so low-level..." The dragon gave off an excited chuckle and turned to face me more directly, his serpent body weaving through the room idly, and mostly coming to rest behind him and away from me. "Alas, you've also gone and gotten yourself involved in this silly matter with the Heretic Knight, tsk tsk. I'm prepared to do a number of things to help you survive this quest, but only if you are willing to do what I say and become the first of your race to accomplish a Full Clear Quest."

I mentally conferred with Merry, but she had little opinion and no new information. "You really believe I should become an Administrator?" I asked, deciding that we'd start the conversation there.

"Ah, an enlightened question. I do so hate the kind of people who start off by asking what exactly I can do for them, hm hm hm." Kalamitus, now that most of his body was behind him, kind of sprung forward at me like a jack-in-the-box, and rose up like a cobra to look down on me. "Unfortunately, Mr. Applebee, this is another one of those topics where I can only expand upon knowledge that you already have. Which means that I must ask you questions..." the rising part of the snake body retreated and his head sunk down to my level, his eyes showing some crazy form of him being pleased with himself, "...so that you can prove what you already know. Yes?"

"Of course." That fit with Ethanic's emphasis on the phrase, allow me to clarify. On the other hand, the way he phrased it made it clear that if we were caught, somehow, any blame would be dumped on me, since I now knew that I wasn't supposed to learn new things... well, whatever.

"What is the ultimate goal of your people, as it relates to the Dungeons?"

I frowned, because the question was phrased awkwardly, but I already thought I knew the answer to that question. I let Merry absorb whatever was being leaked, anyway. "To defeat the Lord Beneath and take control over the Labyrinthine Star."

He twitched a bit, and Merry confirmed that names, at least, had not been in what he leaked. "Ah, so you do know a bit, good. Ahem--and what are the steps that your people must pass to complete this task?"

I frowned, and mentally looked to Merry. She sorted through something, and I passed it along. "Release all the Administrators and Gods, and then... defeat the Seven Sovereigns? And replace them... and use their powers together to ...challenge the Lord Beneath?" Again, apparently the name 'Lord Beneath' was not a part of the leaked document; what Merry relayed to me was take control.

"Hmm, hmm, hmm, I see you have some questions there." Kalamitus shook his head back and forth just a little bit, like a dog shaking off water, but he also didn't contest the way I'd summarized things. "That's for later, alas. And how many Administrators are there?"

"Fourteen."

"Seven sovereigns, fourteen Administrators, fourteen Gods!" Kalamitus's voice was suddenly sharp, and he looked up into the fake sky as though he were yelling at someone. "All these extras, all of this nonsense, all before anything can even be attempted, and yet somehow they consider it wise that we not be allowed to speak on these things, even though it will all come out eventually." He turned his body and snarled down at me, then moved in very close, again, as though ambushing me. I mostly managed to not freak out at the motion. "Because of course," he said in a whisper, "people will always make the best decisions when they know the least about what's going on, don't they?" His brief moments of emphasis sounded like he poured a buried hatred out of his heart and into his words, and I shivered.

"The point, Jerry, is this." Kalamitus's head jerked sideways, from my point of view, as the body behind him adjusted. "Someone has to be first, and for a lot of complicated reasons, you'd make a decent candidate. Not outstanding, but the mere fact that we can get to you, and explain things to you now, before it starts, puts you worlds ahead of any other candidate to be first. You have no idea how many things I want to tell you that I can't tell you unless you already understand. Important things." He turned his head sideways, so that he was almost directly looking at me with his giant eyeball. "The true nature of Administrators. Tell me."

True nature? I considered what I knew on my own while I waited for Merry. Obviously, they ran--and probably created, designed, and controlled--the dungeons. If the ultimate goal was defeat Beneath--ugh, I guess I really do have to call him Lord Beneath, don't I? Shortening the name makes it sound really lame--then controlling the Dungeons means training people to accomplish the task.

Yeah, but that's not what he's asking. Merry shared something with me, and I frowned. "The original fourteen Administrators were created... to be enemies of mankind, by consuming the ghosts and nightmares of humankind..." I put one hand to my head, both because I was confused, and because something about the whole topic kind of made my head hurt. Nightmares? This was part of the disappearance of all the ghosts...?

"Exactly. Exactly! Created only and specifically to be destroyed, to be replaced. Deathly things, deserving of no pity and no respect. Whatever you may think of them, the Administrators that you know are monsters and nothing more, Jerry." Kalamitus' voice had an edge to it, and he swayed back and forth emphatically as he talked. "They encourage people to use the system and become stronger, but these Administrators are not helping you with your true task at all! Replace them as soon as you possibly can, and you'll move on to the part of the challenge where the real work gets done."

That... that didn't sound like the meetings I'd had with them at all. The Beanpole had been kind of an ass, yes, but a monster? A nightmare? I shivered. And the woman who'd given me tea--just tea--I could certainly understand how she was born from ghosts, maybe, but what nightmare? What monster? "I don't..."

"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry," Kalamitus' head sunk low, and I realized for the first time that somewhere ahead of me the ground dropped away, so that he could be below my line of sight. "Please, I've been through this whole cycle several times now. Trust me when I say that I've been learning everything I can to make this all easier on you. You need to believe me: the sooner you're through all of this, the better."

Wow, no pressure. I grit my teeth, both feeling uninclined to argue with a massive dragon-god, but also not really sure I understood anything well enough to raise an objection. "What do you want me to do?"

"I'd prefer it if you would simply give up on this Knight quest, but I'm prepared to help you if you won't. This early there's always this silly matter of precedent, and how people will look at you if you run away from your obligations. Feh!" The dragon soared into the air again, then seemed to... stretch? He tensed in an odd way, pulling on his muscles, and then relaxed into another pose where he overlapped and piled on top of himself. "Either way, in order to speed things along, I'd have you return to the Dungeon you started in one last time, in order to meet with the Administrator again and receive his half of the Full Clear Quest."

I frowned. "I'm over the level cap--"

"Ah, ha-ha! So you don't know that one. Interesting, interesting." He slipped out from his coiled-up pose and moved in again. "The Fairy Dungeons. Tell me what you know."

I paused. Merry studied what she was being told, but... but I did know some of that, didn't I? "Fairy Dungeons... connect other Dungeons. There are also Fairy Queens in there--"

"That's not important, you can avoid those," snapped Kalamitus, as though I was going off-script. "Continue."

I frowned, and Merry filled me in on what my lines were apparently supposed to be. "...Fairy Dungeons are a form of unrestricted dungeons where anyone who enters can control the form... but they are also denied the tools to do it properly. A Fairy Knight is appointed by the Queen or King to guard every Dungeon, and if defeated, they will let you pass."

"Yes." Kalamitus chuckled, darkly. "Such useful parasites, don't you think? Fairies. I can't imagine the Dungeon without them. They support their whole civilization by stealing power from the Dungeons, and in return, they provide certain functions... but, sooner or later, like any other civilization their survival instincts drive them to war with the very things that keep them alive. For the Lord Beneath lets them live, but as slaves--if you win and replace the Lord Beneath, what will happen to them? Will they remain slaves? Be killed? Be freed? So far every species has failed in their efforts to pacify them, and yet, they remain terribly useful creatures from start to finish."

I felt incredibly uncomfortable, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was imagining Merry as nothing more than a parasite slave. A partner, I wanted to argue, but... was she free to leave? Even if I wanted to let her, could she? Could we be equals, while she lived off of me?

Not the time to be thinking about it, but uh... Merry seemed to be thinking about it, and she didn't seem terribly happy with Kalamitus' phrasing of it either. ...yeah, later.

So I tried to put it aside, and realized that the giant dragon seemed to be watching and judging my reaction to his... yeah, okay, I'm just gonna flat out admit it's racism, because you know what? Fuck him. That's what it is. And as I thought that, and thought that as far as I gave a damn, Merry was a sister to me, and fuck anyone who said otherwise, the Dungeon God got kind of a weird look on his face, and then seemed to shrug it off.

"The point, Jerry," he said, and I started to feel a little pissed off that he was comfortable calling me by my first name, "is that you can use a Fairy Dungeon to travel to Pearland Dungeon and complete the Full Clear Quest, exactly as it was presented to you last time. After receiving the quest, instead of exiting the Dungeon, take a Fairy entrance on that level back here."

And then Kalamitus, for the first time since I'd arrived, actually used his hands. He moved in close, and two hands dug into the ground in front of me, and I realized that while the hands looked tiny and ineffectual compared to his large sinuous body, his fingers were as thick as my legs, and he could bend steel and shatter rocks like they were nothing at all. And he loomed, very deliberately taking up not only my entire field of view, but making me feel the difference in our sizes as a very clear metaphor for power level--a relatively small chunk of him vastly outweighing me, instantly.

"Agree to follow my instructions exactly," he breathed at me, and I could swear I smelled a million dead bodies rotting on his breath, "and I'll teach you what you need to know, both to beat the Heretic Knight, and to beat the Fairy Dungeon. In whatever form you prefer--Cultivation, if you desire it, or improving your Skills to the highest possible ranks. The best equipment... well, it can be arranged, though it's not quite in my purview. Even empowering that infant Fairy to become something of more consequence than the injured little mosquito that she is right now."

I felt... intimidated. I mean, of course I did, right? And that was the point. As I'm retelling the story to you, don't think that I was, like, as calm then as I am now. I wasn't okay. And things would have gone very differently except for one little fucking thing.

Merry had learned how to work with my emotions when using the Psychokinesis skill. She'd even just practiced with it just a little while ago.

So yeah, I was about ready to collapse into a ball of nerves, because this guy was giving off an aura of Yeah I'm going to absolutely slaughter you if you don't do what I say and Merry, in my head, puts her hand on my heart and a wave of calm filtered into this giant surge of fear that was otherwise about to completely trash me. I didn't even realize until afterwards that she spoke to me at the same time. I couldn't hear or understand anything. My whole mind was filled up with this evil dragon willing to snack on my ass if I didn't do exactly what he wanted.

But that... wasn't a thing, as far as I knew, and that thought crawling through my brain at that moment made me pause. It was a weird thought, but... Dungeon gods weren't supposed to be wrathful or able to hurt or kill people, not directly. I... I really didn't know what their deal was, honestly, but I'd never heard any stories of people actually being smitten... smote? whatever, by one of them.

"I'd... like some time to think about it," I offered, lamely, honestly kind of surprised I had the balls.

"Time, hmm?" Kalamitus reared up into the sky, looking down on me. "Time is a thing you have less of than you'd like, but of course I won't refuse to give you the space necessary to make your decision. And, let's be clear--your part of the rewards are flexible. You'll get exactly what you want, whatever that is, as long as..." and here, slowly, his head descended again, his long snake body rising up above him to create a negative space that he immediately filled with his big ugly mug, "...you do what I tell you to."

And then he backed off, and a ding behind me announced the elevator returning.

The elevator, again, had restrictions on the floors, and instead of going to the first floor, which I assume was the entrance, the only button available to be pressed was the third floor. Going there put me in a large, NPC run hotel, where Louise was perched on a comfy overstuffed couch, waiting for me.

She immediately got up and moved towards me, and I moved towards her, and damn near passed out into her arms from relief.