Soulforged Dungeoneer

The process of leaving the fairy dungeon was nothing complicated, and I emerged from a portal in a place that I recognized faintly as the ass-end of one of the early Dungeon levels. Naturally, of course, I reconnected all of my skills that had been busted up from being used in the Fairy Dungeon, and my regeneration was going, and my mana was refilling, and everything that had seemed weird was a hell of a lot better off.

I looked around, nostalgia creeping in as I examined the place. I'd camped near here, at some point; since I couldn't leave the Dungeon, I spent a long time just waiting for my stats to recover after fighting. I'd thought back then that this was probably going to be the death of me, one way or the other. I moved over to a familiar depression near a rock, kneeling down and feeling the earth where I'd previously laid down tried not to cry or have a mental breakdown.

Hadn't quite succeeded in either case, of course.

Eleven-to-fourteen was a weird little savanna trip with a flame lion boss at the end, and the loot here was nothing special. Mostly, I'd been jazzed to find that the monsters here made good food when cooked, because I'd been kind of lean on food for the first two biomes. Starvation didn't mean quite as much to a Dungeoneer as a plain human, but... it didn't go away, either.

I stood up from all those memories and looked on towards where the floor exit was. There were two basic goals here, one of which I was obliged to do from the quest, and the other... personal. But all things considered, that second one was a hell of a lot faster to get to, so I didn't bother waiting.

"Hey again, Administrator." I looked up, but not straight up at the sky; somehow, that didn't feel right. In this big, open-seeming savanna, which actually had invisible limits to it as all Dungeon floors did, the sky felt too... open. Too far away to be where he was. Somehow, just kind of... away, generally, over there, felt more right than straight up. "Got a minute to talk?"

There was an awkward pause for a long moment, and I wondered if maybe his powers to hear people mention his title were not as great as I'd thought--but then, suddenly, there we were. Me and him, in a big blank void.

Me, him, and a fairy. I noticed his head turn to Merry, and suddenly he scowled, and I was thrown back out of his void and onto the Dungeon floor.

Oh, shit. Merry seemed like she was rubbing her eyes. Jerry, bro, you have no idea what I just saw.

Suddenly, a weasel with a note tied around its neck jumped out of a nearby bush and started running circles around me. I picked it up with my brain and examined the note, nodding for Merry to continue.

It was like he was surrounded by hundreds of rings of light, and each one of them was backed by engines like yours, and there were many hundreds of threads, webs, tying him to other places...

The note around the weasel's neck, no surprise, said, "I am not permitted to allow a Fairy direct access to my avatar. If you wish to speak, you will need to leave her here. I promise no harm will come to her."

Merry, now clearly disappointed, materialized herself. "Just don't take too long. This body still hurts a bit, you know."

I just tossed the weasel to Merry. For some reason, it didn't try to attack her at all, though it did try to escape. And then, a moment later, we were, suddenly, again. With the... you know, void.

Man, I am terrible at words sometimes.

The beanpole, Xzyrtvwartcihz--though I was never going to remember that name--stood rigidly at attention like he always had, hawaiian shirt too wide for him draped over his shoulders, big circular glasses covering his eyes completely. His face, which had been perhaps pleasantly surprised only for a moment before he noticed Merry, was now stubbornly stuck on a disapproving look, as he stared right at me.

I... well, in the end, I wasn't expecting a lot more than that, was I? I looked apologetically at him and shrugged. "Been a while."

"Since you last humiliated me? Yes, I suppose it has." His voice, again, was high and nasal, and disapproval dripped from his words.

"And yet you offered me a Full Clear Quest."

"Which you refused."

"Kalamitus encouraged me to reconsider." That was an understatement. "You know, having a guy called the Devil offering a quest--"

"I was fully aware of the irony." To my surprise, the Administrator sneered at me. "You don't honestly think that what comes next is going to be good for you, do you? Do you have any idea? You must, having just come from the Fairy Dungeon."

Images of a person being rendered into a bloody smear in an instant flashed through my brain, and I shivered involuntarily.

But I don't think that was really what he was thinking, because he continued. "This whole thing is a disaster from the start, but what comes next is worst. The nightmares of humankind are just beginning, and you're going to become one who inflicts that suffering on others. Despair, confusion, and being forced to kneel at the feet of titans as they crush all you've ever known--good and evil are not as simple as Dungeon and Dungeoneer. Life is no adventure; it is no game. And you... you are one who has only barely begun to see that distinction for yourself."

That accusation stuck in my head; I didn't quite understand. "That distinction?"

He raised his head, as though looking down his nose at me, but I couldn't see his eyes through the glasses. "You were forced to kneel at the feet of a titan. At the feet of the Devil--at my feet. You used a weapon born of evil, meant for evil, against evil itself, and you could have--would have--done the same again, turning the weapons of the gods against them for all the evil that they've done. If any of this wasn't a farce, you might have been a hero. Evil begot evil, begot good. Light from darkness; hope from despair." He sneered at me. "But the gods you spited are ants compared to the true powers, and spitting at the feet of ants won't do you any good. Even if you grew to be a mouse, even if you became the most powerful vermin in the world, you would still be facing no animal, but the greatest warriors the world has ever known. Your power is nothing."

"But you did it anyway, not because you would succeed, but because there was virtue in trying. Virtue in swallowing your fear, in denying the simple truth of the odds, and becoming denial itself. Virtue in spite; virtue in sin." The Administrator's head turned away a little. "Virtue that will be erased when, someday, inevitably, you die."

My heart caught in my chest at that. I... well, I mean, what the hell do you even say to that? "So you asked me to become an Administrator--"

"I didn't ask you to do that," snapped the Administrator, suddenly, turning to face me. "I offered you a chance to enter a world you do not understand. And it is a fool's errand, the kind that only a devil would ask of you. Not because there is any way to stave off the inevitable death of your people," he peeled his lips back into a toothy grin, which looked completely out of place, because his body continued to look completely dorky, so he basically looked like an out of shape beanpole nerd trying to be intimidating. "Because your life in that world will be a waking nightmare from which there is no escape."

I thought about that for a minute. "See, I said no because it sounded like other people were going to suffer."

"Other people will suffer."

"Because of me, I mean."

"Because of you."

I paused. "People that would not have suffered, otherwise."

He was silent for a minute. When he spoke, there was heavy regret in his voice. "They won't see it that way."

That... among many of the things he'd said, told me a lot about his personality. "They won't," I admitted. "But they'll be wrong."

"Perhaps."

Although I thought I understood, I asked anyway, straight and explicitly. "Why me?"

"Because you defied the inevitable." The beanpole turned his head to look away, again. He turned it far enough that I could see his eyes behind his glasses--or where they should have been, but there were pools of black there, instead. "Perseverance, patience, determination, an eye for complexity, resistance to pain, a sense for true magic, and a heart that rejected the darkness at the weakest moment of your life." His face warped like he had bitten into something bitter. "You, Mr. Applebee, are everything a monster wishes they could become."

A monster... I looked at him. "Kalamitus said that you were created to be destroyed. A nightmare."

The beanpole snorted and turned to look at me, but said nothing.

"...that you were going to die, and that it was necessary."

"Considering how much you say he's said, I assume you've met him," said the Administrator with yet another sneer. "If so, I'm sure you have a great many reasons not to trust every word that comes out of his mouth."

That made me feel fairly relieved.

"...but," he continued, almost without pausing, "I am a monster, born of humanity's nightmares. A discarded thing that craved eagerly for the light, which snuffed out other lights and wondered why the world was dark." The Administrator moved his hand to remove his glasses, and the black voids would have been shocking if I hadn't just seen them. "A shadow that screams in the night, begging for mercy and finding none. When I die, Jerry Applebee, it will not be an injustice. I am a thousand tortured souls in an ill-fitting suit; born from evil, born to evil, begging at the feet of titans lest I should be stepped upon and snuffed out in a single, simple act of violence. It was evil that was demanded of me, and it is evil that I do." His face crinkled, I think because he didn't see me reacting badly to his eyes, and carelessly replaced his glasses. When he removed his hand, they were slightly askew.

You are everything a monster wishes they could become. I considered his words and looked at him for a long moment, but he didn't say any more. I wanted to say more, to find the right words to say, but... somehow, all I felt when I looked at him was loneliness.

I looked away, instead, feeling kind of defeated. "The quest is still there?"

"Yes."

I nodded, and after a moment of not talking, I was returned to where Merry was...

...uh, where Merry was riding the weasel like a horse, using the note tied around his neck as reins. She'd had to shrink down a bit in order for that to make sense, mechanically, but... I guess she could just do that? That was interesting.

"Hoooo!" She pulled back on the reins, and the weasel definitely did not stop, instead flailing around in confusion. "Ho, I said! Ho! Hooo!"

I took a step closer, which I guess scared the thing, because it bolted, and Merry had to let go or she'd be dragged off into scrub bushes. I couldn't help laughing, and she did too, and then she immediately fluttered up and sat on my shoulder. That close, I could see that she was, while in a good mood from the exercise, also quite disappointed to have lost her mount. Or... maybe she was sad for other reasons? "I'm glad to see nothing happened here," I offered.

"Yeah," her tiny little voice said. "Little scary without you here, though, bro. I mean, I'm fine, but... you really not being there... it's a little weird."

Unable to really comfort her at that size, I offered a finger tip like I was going to pet her or something, but she swatted it away and just dived back into my mind, where we exchanged a more mutual hug-like thing.

And I stood back up and moved on towards the floor exit, and effortless walk through the Dungeon that I knew would await me. Because really, now, at my level... what was there in this place to challenge me?