Soulforged Dungeoneer

One of the first things you need to know about my newly minted little skill was that, fundamentally, it doesn't ...really work very well. Sometimes. Most times, really. It's not... it's not supposed to work. It didn't take long from me getting the Skill that Merry was poking at it, and she seemed immediately confused.

The Administrator, trying to use the skill for himself, seemed equally nonplussed.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the Administrator was able to consistently use the skill to attack me, and I guess it was pretty powerful, since I put together pieces from a lot of other skills to make it. His technique, however, didn't play to the skill's strengths.

Jay, I don't... help me understand what I'm seeing here, yeah?

You said to go back to when I was fighting ghosts. The Slenderman was doing a jumping smash again, and while he was kind of able to do it better with the skill, accelerating and throwing himself around, he didn't really understand the triggers. That wasn't physical combat, it was mental combat.

Merry gave a wordless question but didn't interrupt as I found an opening in Slenderman's jump pattern and jumped at his face. Only, instead of punching him, I grabbed his face and, turning in midair, threw him at the nearest wall.

I make that sound easy, but it really wasn't. I had a lot of extra weight, now, but the boss monster had the weight from his extra levels, plus the weight from his own cloak. For a moment, I'd been dragged backwards with his momentum, but I dug into that extra weight that I carried, flexing it, and just dealt with the fact that I was throwing something ungodly heavy--far heavier than me, by some accounting.

The Slenderman smashed through the wall, and it was only exceptionally quick thinking on his part that got him back in the arena, panting heavily, as I landed on the floor and moved forwards to hit him again.

"What the hell even is this skill?" asked the Administrator, confused, through his puppet mouthpiece. "It doesn't control the way it's supposed to."

I just snorted, because I wasn't going to give him a hint on how to kill me in the middle of combat.

For some reason, maybe because the shockwave had blown me away despite not hitting me, the boss decided to start throwing punch-waves around again instead of anything else. It became obvious as he did it that they were already starting to get weaker, which wasn't much of a surprise to me. I sidestepped the blasts as soon as I saw they would be coming, and when I saw the Slenderman's stress rise and he threw one last blast as though panicking, I dived and rolled, blinking out of existence again and appearing in front of and below him.

I punched him in the knee hard enough for it to crack. Maybe I should have used a sword--that would likely have been stronger--but suddenly I was operating on different instincts.

The Slenderman turned towards me and tried to kick me with his good leg, which meant standing on his now-bad one. I just kind of avoided the kick, though that was probably also partly a lie, and reached up with the Skill to push him down while his leg was still in the air. His bad knee collapsed, and he fell stupidly on his ass.

"I'll give you a hint," I obliged, because I thought it would sow more confusion, and pointed to the room around us. "I'm not locked in here with you." And then, I reached up and tapped my head. "You're locked in here with me."

And then I materialized my sword and tried to crush his skull, and for the first time, the Slenderman really felt obliged to try to dodge it.

What followed was, if you only look at the numbers of the situation, ridiculous, with me chasing a level 250 monster puppeted by the Administrator of the dungeon around the room, and it tried (I think desperately) not to get hit as it tried to understand how the hint was giving it any insight into the skill.

Unlike me, he could talk pretty freely at the same time.

"Locked in your head? The skill gives you some kind of domain? But no, I don't feel anything similar. Strange." The Slenderman almost tripped over a pile of debris into one of the gashes he'd torn in the floor, but even with his game leg, he got his feet back under him and vaulted the hole. I continued to make half-hearted swings at him, mostly just to test his speed, and when I made a faster, more decisive strike, he sped away, though I think that was more brute force than an effect of the skill. "And yet, there is something, there, isn't there?"

I decided to just go for it, and plotted about two moves ahead, making a strong feint, then leaping after him, and when he dodged that, immediately throwing my blade, with a heavy weight behind it.

That strike landed on his chest, missing the shoulder or any other critical point, and the weight of the blade, though it didn't kill the Slenderman, did end up knocking him backwards. It wasn't quite weighty enough that the sword could drag him backwards with its own momentum, but it didn't quite bounce off, either, sticking slightly as it transferred some momentum, but then sliding off after a moment. That heavy contact was enough to do a fairly large chunk of damage, but nothing crippling.

I was already set up, having moved into position, dispelled, and resummoned the sword, and my next strike almost hit him dead on in the face, but he dodged.

This time, I could tangibly feel his evasion. It was through my blind spot, which I kind of expected from a use of my skill, and he slipped a little further than he should have been able to, which again was appropriate. He came out looking halfway composed, and was entirely surprised when I very nearly decked him in the face with my sword again.

And again, when he dodged that.

"So this is some kind of stage magic?" asked the Slenderman, confused, as he sensed me moving in again.

"Merry told me to envision myself fighting ghosts," I replied, pausing. "From before. You may have been a nightmare, Administrator, but did you ever fight one? In a world where there are only concepts, where nothing was real?"

The Slenderman made a gesture that was intended to be a small shrug, but which didn't particularly look like one given his awkwardly long limbs.

"You don't just beat them. You can't. Or, I never could." I grit my teeth as I thought about it and tried not to shiver. "They're in your head. If you visualize a fight in your head, it doesn't help. Whatever you do to the puppets, the real enemy is the puppeteer. I didn't really know how to attack the puppeteer, so it was a mental fight. I would prove that they couldn't beat me, and they would give up."

The Slenderman frowned, looking down at himself. "Then this is--"

"The whole premise of the Dungeons is bullshit," I said, not realizing until I said it just how fucking tired I was. "You can make it look like a game or a test or some real world emergency, but the way it's all designed, it's just a training ground, isn't it? Everyone's said as much--you, the other Administrator, Ethanic, Kalamitus. The format of the first dungeons is fixed, but we're supposed to change that when we take control of them, right?"

"What does that--?"

"It matters because this is the same as that fucking bullshit," I said, my exhaustion bubbling over. "As fighting a ghost that won't leave and won't die. I can't actually achieve anything useful and just have to try to not die for-fucking-ever and if along the way," I didn't notice that I'd begun shouting, "I just so happen to become stronger, it doesn't fucking matter because I still can't win! I can't get a break! I've gone from bullshit to bullshit and it's only ever gotten worse! And this stupid full-fucking-clear quest, or whatever, is a way for me to help other people, and I want to help fucking Bo with his heretic knight bullshit or whatever, because it sounds to me like he was shafted by some asshole, and because I know what it's like to have your head--" My heart twinged, with guilt, and I stopped talking, my frustration roiling inside of me.

The Slenderman stood there, confused, and stared at me.

"The point is," I said, long-dormant hatred boiling to the surface, "ghosts fucking cheat. And this fight of yours is also a cheat. I have to fight tooth and fucking nail and struggle with my life on the line while you sit back in your white room and laugh about how easily you could squash me if you actually fucking chose to. Well, fuck you. Maybe I want to cheat, too."

And I flared the skill, knowing that Merry had put pieces from the Rebirth Contract into the pile, and lunged at the Administrator, aiming to strike at something that I knew had to be there, but which I couldn't quite see or sense.

I knew I didn't have to.

My strike landed on the Slenderman's torso, and a chunk of his magic was shaken loose, a chunk that sent the puppet body spasming.

"I don't want--" In my other hand, I took my sword and smashed it across the Slenderman's torso, "to be an Administrator, or a Dungeoneer," I made two more heavy strikes, finding a rhythm that made me feel most satisfied when I either spoke or struck, "or a killer, or a cheat, or a thief, or fucking anything. I want to live a happy life and maybe help some people and, I don't know, maybe be respected, for once. Maybe be respectable. Do some good and be known for it. Save lives, talk to people. I want," strike, "to have," strike, "a life!" Two more strikes in quick succession, and I stood there, panting in frustration, I added, again shouting without really meaning to, "For fucking once!"

The Slenderman was wounded, but also damaged, and I knew it, but I didn't care. Merry seemed to find it interesting, and I could sense her studying the damaged boss monster, but I knew what she would find, categorically; I'd damaged some part of its fake nervous system, or magic system, or whatever, and the damage made it difficult to move.

But it wasn't dead.

The Slenderman hissed at me, backlit eyes and mouth narrowed as it appraised me. "You understand that cheating is not permissible."

"Let's look at my fucking bucket list right now," I snapped back. "I want to get out of this Dungeon, go free or kill the heretic knight, and then turn in my full clear quests to become Administrator, or whatever. So if this skill doesn't meet the fucking Lord Beneath's standards for something to be passed on to someone else, at this point I don't even give a shit. The Heretic Knight isn't even one of his toys; it was stolen by a Fairy Queen, or whatever. So either I die in that fight or I become an Administrator, and as far as I know, either way I stop using the skill."

"So what if it's a fucking cheat. If he disagrees he can go ahead and wipe me from fucking existence," I didn't really think about that as I said it, "because he like everyone else has always had that power and always fucking will, and we fucking useless powerless beings at the very bottom of the fucking food chain can only do whatever we can to survive. So let me survive or kill me, but I'm fucking sick and tired of this bullshit."

A pair of footsteps behind me chilled me to my core, but when I turned, I didn't see anything that I would call a Lord Beneath. Instead, there was a blue-skinned man with... an electric blue mohawk haircut? He was dressed in sandals, jean shorts, and a frayed sleeveless white shirt with the anarchy-A sketched on it in red. From what I could tell, he was the same species as the woman who had responded to my request to add features to my Skill, but if his outfit was supposed to indicate what he did, I didn't immediately understand.

"Sup," he said when I turned. "You and me, Jerry, gonna have a chat here really quick before you do anything else you're gonna regret, okay?"

"Sovereign Fool," said the Slenderman, I assume to introduce the newcomer to me. "I must admit I was worried for a minute."

"Yeah, the Boss isn't going to interfere in person like that. He just puts pressure on us to do our job. And you," and for some reason, he pointed at me with both hands, double pointer fingers held like he was doing that obnoxious 'hold a gun sideways' thing with both hands, but without the guns, "you are definitely my problem, boy-o."

I wasn't sure what to say to that.

"Let's go down the list," he said, dropping his hands and instead counting on one hand, starting for some reason with his pinky finger. "You were a psychic to start. Created your own class, made a mess of it; a natural cultivator, you spent experience instead of class points; you murdered to get power; got access to an eff-cee-que long before you should, chatted up the administrators, got involved in fairy politics, actually got a fairy yourself, got involved in internal Star politics, took lessons from a god about cultivation, and became the planet's lowest-level X-rank basically without guidance, taught someone else to do the same, became the lowest-level person I'm aware of to have invented a skill without guidance..." the Fool, having already run out of fingers, dropped his hands. "All of those are in the path of the Fool, and now you go on saying some bullshit like your weird-ass life isn't entirely your own fault."

I kept my mouth firmly shut, but I couldn't disagree.

"Well, congratulations, boy-o, here's your moral lesson for the day. There are only seven Path Sovereigns and one of them is dedicated to the people who lay outside of all of society's norms, who lay outside of everything the Star is trying to do. Because ultimately, society has to grapple with the fact that a large population of people aren't going to accept even the wisest kings and will fight against even unbeatable foes out of spite. You want to say that none of this is your fault, but the truth is, it doesn't matter whether or not it's your fault. Statistically, someone would eventually end up in your shoes, right or wrong, and we have to be ready for that. I, in particular, have to be ready for that, so right now, you're my problem."

"So, yeah, the fact that your skill is a cheat puts you on my radar as a big 'ol bad news bear, but your point about it not lasting is accurate. Your skill is Fool's marked, so it's not going into the system, and I'll take a look at it to see what we can learn or salvage. At this point, I'm also forced to do some hocus-pocus," and he waved his hands in the air theatrically, "to ensure that you don't try to spread it, but that doesn't involve killing you or stealing away your skill or otherwise preventing you from finishing your very short bucket list, or going off to kick that bucket on your own. The Boss Below plays the long game, and individuals like you don't matter to him. What matters is the trend."

"That said," he said, "to you and the people around you, what you do matters. So." and suddenly, he swatted his hand down like he'd seen a mosquito, and I found myself picked up in the air, my magic suddenly scattering out from me into the space around me. "I also ought to at least fix this up just a touch. Aaaannnnddd... that should do it." My magic collapsed back into me, and I collapsed onto the ground, with nothing obvious changed. "What's left is on you, boy-o. If you don't die, I'll see you at your Trial."

I had a whole lot of questions--a whole lot--but the blue-skinned man was gone as soon as he finished his sentence.

Leaving me alone with the Administrator's personal boss monster, again.