Swap was a strange skill—or perhaps it was just that skills were strange in general—and for a fractional moment, he could feel both an outline of his body impressing itself in the same space as the pebble he’d targeted, and the signature of the pebble taking his own place in the tavern. Both of them were capable of movement within the confines of their new space. For the pebble, it could be placed at any point within the original outline of his body, from on the floor, to right at the peak of his hair. In the case of his actual body, he could adjust exactly how he would arrive, but some part of his body had to intersect with the existing location of the pebble—Hannah’s frozen hand vanished from in front of his chest, and then, without any real sense of transition, he found himself stepping forward into the middle of the street. A man looked up, and grunted as he narrowly avoided walking into him, and Elliot stepped to the side to get out of his way, eyes raking across his new surroundings as his heart thundered in his chest.
The two signatures that were standing exactly where Hannah and Grant had been seemed to hover at the inside of the tavern for a moment—perhaps in shock at his sudden disappearance—before one of them started towards the doors. Elliot spun on his heel, glanced up at the sign of the nearest building—a helmet and sword—and then pushed the door open as he stepped inside. The door swung shut behind him just as Hannah got out onto the street, and she spun around two and a half times, ostensibly searching the road for where he might have gone—he felt a pang of something terrible at that, unable to understand why she was going to so much effort for someone she’d only just met.
“Morning,” The man sitting at the counter said, “What can I do for you?”
Elliot turned his head away from the door as Hannah jogged past the building without seeing him, and then he let out a slow breath in an attempt to steady himself. The man was sitting on a stool on the other side of the counter, scrolling through what must have been his INVENTORY, though he’d apparently paused at the sight of him entering the store.
“Good morning,” Elliot said, “I saw the sign—you sell armour?”
“Weapons, armour, and jewellery; though I don’t have much of the latter, it sells too quick to keep much of a backstock,” The man said, “Name’s Aestus, so feel free to use it—you’ve got the look of someone who just got here.”
Elliot had a feeling the man wasn’t talking about walking into his store.
“Elliot,” Elliot said in return. “What gave it away?”
Aestus tapped a finger on the metal chainmail that was covering his chest and then nodded his head at him.
“People don’t tend to walk around without their equipment on, at least not when they’re outside—too dangerous,” Aestus said, “The only ones that do that are people who haven’t learned better yet.”
“New arrivals,” Elliot said in understanding. “I’ve only done a single dungeon, so I don’t have much gold yet; I was hoping to find out how much a set of armour would cost.”
“Figured as much,” Aestus said, “How much did you get from your first run?”
“Three-hundred-and-fifteen gold,” Elliot said, “I’m guessing that’s not enough for even a single piece?”
“One thousand gold is pretty much the baseline for any item—to account for the cost of identifying it—and it only goes up from there based on the specific item,” Aestus admitted, “You’re looking at about twelve thousand gold for a full set of common armour; that includes a helmet, cape, gloves, chest, leggings, and a set of boots.”
“I found a pair of common boots.” Elliot said, “Is there any problem with wearing equipment that hasn’t been identified yet?”
“Stumble onto one of the chests, did you?” Aestus guessed, “Works the same as identified stuff, but since none of the bonuses actually show up on any of the INTERFACE panels, you won’t actually know what it does.”
“How long have you got until your next dungeon?” Aestus asked.
“Just under seven days,” Elliot said, “But I plan on going back in again today.”
“Most people aren’t so keen to get back in there, especially not on their first day,” Aestus said with some interest. “They usually try to get a job at one of the local places—plenty of firewood to chop, drinks to serve, or floors to clean.”
Elliot wouldn’t even know who to talk to about that, and it would require far more interaction with people than he could likely handle—the dungeon seemed far more tolerable.
“I don’t think I’d be all that good at something like that,” Elliot said, “Thanks for your time—”
“I’ve seen a lot of people pass through my store since I first bought it, and it never used to bother me that they never came back again,” Aestus said, drumming his fingers against the counter. “Three-hundred-and-fifteen gold, you said?”
“Yeah,” Elliot said.
“Think I’ve got a set sitting around for about that much,” Aestus said with an upward nod of his head. “You know how to use a trading stone?”
Elliot took his hand from the door and turned back to face the man.
“I saw someone use it earlier, but I haven’t done it yet,” Elliot said, “You said that items are always over a thousand gold—I don’t have anywhere near enough.”
“You don’t, so we’ll call this my good deed for the month and leave it at that,” Aestus said, placing his trading stone on the counter. “What’s your highest attribute?”
Elliot couldn’t reconcile a man like Aestus existing in Hell after everything else he’d seen so far—he was the first person Elliot had met who seemed capable of looking beyond himself and who’d done so without asking for anything in return.
“It’s speed,” Elliot said.
“Not bad as far as primary attributes go,” Aestus said, scrolling down through his seemingly endless inventory panel. “What’s the next highest?”
“The rest are all ones,” Elliot said.
Aestus tilted his head at the words, then actually glanced over a moment later, seemingly a bit off balance at the idea.
“You’ve got a six in speed?” Aestus said with interest. “I knew a woman with a six in defence once, but even five for a primary attribute is pretty rare.”
Those pale monsters that had thrown that man around in the dungeon like he weighed nothing at all must have had a strength attribute that was higher than one. Even trapped on its back and with only one hand, it was so much stronger than him that he couldn’t even keep it in place with all of his body weight behind the effort.
“I’m a bit worried about being able to actually kill anything,” Elliot said, a bit hesitant to actually admit it. “My strength is always going to be lower than just about everyone else.”
“Higher quality weapons are usually sharp enough to make up the difference in most cases, though I’d encourage you never to try and block an attack from someone with a strength build,” Aestus said, “Did you get an offensive skill for your active—fireball, lighting, or something like that?”
“No,” Elliot admitted.
“Then it’s probably best to lean into your advantages and start saving up for a decent weapon as soon as possible,” Aestus said, “Something with higher penetrating power, or maybe a long-range weapon like a bow—what weapon did you start with?”
“A common spear,” Elliot said.
“That should work, though most of the people that use those are strength builds,” Aestus said, “I’ve actually got an exotic spear with a speed attribute attached that nobody wants to buy—it’s been sitting in my inventory gathering dust for the better part of a decade.”
“Exotic and common are the qualities of equipment?” Elliot asked.
“Common, rare, exotic and unique, in that order, from least to most expensive; common items have an attribute or a trait attached, while a rare will always have one of each, ” Aestus said, “An exotic item has an attribute, a trait and a skill modifier—and unique gear has all three and a whole new skill on top.”
A pair of leather gloves appeared in the man’s hand, and he dropped them down onto the counter beside the trading stone—a chainmail shirt followed a second later.
“Can you find them in chests?” Elliot asked.
“Commons and rares are confirmed to be in chests, and there are rumours that a few people have managed to find exotics, but we don’t know if those are just stories to cover for people killing their teammates in the dungeon for gear—never heard a thing about uniques, but they have to come from somewhere, right?” Aestus said in answer. “Either way, I don’t know how you managed to find a chest during your first-ever dungeon, but trust me when I say that you probably won’t see one again for a very long time.”
A set of hide leggings with a tuft of odd fur around the waist joined the growing pile, and then a bundle of beige cloth with a metal ring pinching two folds together—it must have been the cape.
“Are they that rare?” Elliot wondered.
“They’re small invisible boxes, and the only way you can actually locate them is if you blindly scour every inch of the dungeon—something you don’t really have the time to do when a bunch of monsters are trying to get your ass,” Aestus said, “I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but you shouldn’t linger in a dungeon for too long after the portal has opened either.”
“What happens if you do?” Elliot asked.
“A boss spawns, and trust me when I say you don’t want to be there when it does—it’s never the same thing, but they’re almost always horrible,” Aestus said, “They’re supposed to drop good items; but nobody in Hell even tries to fight them anymore, not after the entirety of Cascade got wiped out.”
The last item he brought out was a little more than a bandanna with a metal plate stitched across the forehead and a pair of metal slats striking down off the sides to offer a bit of protection at the jaw. Aestus took the trading stone, then shifted it forward until it was sitting in front of him—Elliot reached down to lay a hand on it.
“Three-hundred-and-fifteen gold,” Elliot said, “Thank you, Aestus—I’ll make sure to pay you back in the future.”
“I won’t hold you to it,” Aestus said, “You can equip all of this from the inventory.”
Elliot reached out to lay a finger on each item, depositing them one after another before bringing up his own INVENTORY panel. He did a quick check of each item as he equipped them, and the items appeared over the top of his suit, already strapped in place.
Helmet Forehead Protector Increase Speed Attribute by 10%
Cape Ragged Shroud Increase Speed Attribute by 10%
Gloves Leather Gloves Increase Speed Attribute by 10%
Chest Chainmail Shirt Increase Speed Attribute by 10%
Leggings Hide Pants Increase Speed Attribute by 10%
Boots Common Boots Unidentified.
“They’ll protect you well enough, but the attribute bonus won’t apply until you’ve got a minimum of ten points in the targeted attribute, and they won’t round up either,” Aestus said, “The bonuses also only apply to your base attributes, and they ignore the other bonuses when it’s calculated—you know what that means?”
“Yes,” Elliot said.
“Good, because it’s a pain to try and explain that to people who don’t,” Aestus admitted, “You got any more questions for me?”
“How much was that exotic spear you were talking about?” Elliot asked.
“Eleven million gold flat,” Aestus said. “Which is on the very low end for exotics.”
Elliot shook his head at the number, and Aestus gave a bark of a laugh. He’d expected it to be far beyond his ability to pay—not that he currently had any gold left, seeing as he’d just spent it all—but it hadn’t occurred to him that it would be in the millions.
“I’ll start saving,” Elliot said.
“Then I’ll look forward to finally getting rid of the damn thing,” Aestus said, “Good luck out there, kid.”
#
Elliot half expected to find Hannah and Grant waiting at the gates of Hell in some kind of attempt to prevent him from leaving the city, but he saw no sign of them anywhere. It made him feel as if he was sneaking around in some place where he wasn’t supposed to be, and so he took the most direct path up to the Torii in an attempt to rail against the feeling. Originally, he’d thought that maybe he would stop outside of it and perhaps do something to prepare—though he wasn’t sure what he would experience beyond it—but there were people loitering on the platform in small groups, and he felt if he paused for even a moment, that they might draw some terrible conclusion about him.
Elliot wasn’t even really sure why that was so intolerable to him, but the idea of his preparation being confused for cowardice held far too much of a grip over his heart—and so he passed straight through the portal without slowing even a step. This Grey Room seemed identical to the first one, and that left him to wonder just how many of them there actually were—it could have been the same one he’d been inside earlier in the day, or it could be a different one entirely. The white outline that he recognised now as a door to the tunnel was already present in the face of the wall directly opposite where he’d appeared, and there were—after he took the time to count them—twenty-three other people standing in the room. There wasn’t a single person present who was without armour, so he was almost certain that there were no new arrivals.
The knowledge of how much a full set of the most basic gear actually cost put a few things into much greater perspective for him, namely, if the average gold earned per dungeon was anywhere near three-hundred-and-fifteen gold, then every single person here must have been through dozens of dungeons at a minimum for them to have so much equipment. He also didn’t know enough about the quality of items and how that was represented in relation to the object’s appearance, so, for all he knew, some of these people could be carrying rare items or higher. One of the older-looking men had one of those massive Chinese blades with the large handles—he thought it might have been called a Dadao, but he couldn’t be certain—unsheathed and resting against his shoulder, a thousand runic symbols engraved into the surface. It looked far fancier than just about any other piece of equipment in the room, so it might have been an exotic, and if that was true, then Elliot wasn’t even sure he could estimate how many dungeons the man must have been into afford something that cost more than ten million gold.
There were fewer people overall than there had been in the first one, though he didn’t know what that meant for the opposition. Would there be more monsters in response, or less? Was the selection based on some unseen criteria, or was it truly random? The total number of people present rose to thirty before the tunnel finally unlocked, and Elliot remained in place until everyone else had begun funnelling themselves out of the tunnel, wary of getting too close to any of them. The transition from his swap-sense reporting a void of feeling outside the four walls of the Grey Room to a forest was jarring. But it brought with it an odd sense of safety as well. There were thousands of things that fell within the scope of his skill, and intuitively, he knew that he could swap places with any of them. Leaves, sticks, pieces of bark, clumps of dirt, rocks, fallen trees, stumps, and even the early morning dew that was dripping down off the tip of a hundred different blades of grass. Even the other humans who were still in the process of scattering throughout the trees were potential targets, and he briefly considered the idea of moving one of them back into the Grey Room just for the sake of it—but there was no real benefit to be had by antagonising any of them.
Elliot exchanged positions with a falling leave, appearing amongst the forest and turning to study the shape of the trees—they were all thick, gnarly things with exposed root systems that seemed to strangle the ground that fed them. The place looked like something out of a horror film, but the quiet ambience and the flickers of sunlight passing through the trees kept it from sinking its teeth into his psyche—the sheer amount of spiders he could feel scuttling around, just out of sight, on webs that stretched between every other tree, was something he could have gone without knowing. There was a familiar white outline showing through a dozen thick roots, hidden in a small hole that was probably only accessible by sticking his arm up to the shoulder—he appeared directly beside it, shifting from a standing position to a one-legged kneel without actually moving any of the muscles required. He snuck his hand through the hole, straining hard—his fingertips brushed against the face of the chest, and the mechanical click sounded out. He sat back up, retrieving his arm and wondered at the utility of the passive skill he’d been given.
Every single common item was worth more than a thousand gold, though he’d need to spend at least that much to identify it first—he tried not to let his mind wander towards Hannah and her skill because he was undeserving of her help and he’d never have been able to bring himself to approach her after making such a mess of things. Still, if he could collect a backlog of common items, it was possible that Aestus would be interested in them—despite what the man had said, Elliot would be paying him back, and the items in these chests were a good place to start. There was actually another chest right along the edge of his range, and so he swapped beneath the tree it was concealed within—halfway up the trunk, there was a twisted knot that seemed to dig deep into the bark. It was too high for him to reach, even when standing on his tip-toes, so he removed his spear from the INVENTORY. Carefully—and with a quiet apology to the tree he was maiming for selfish gain—he etched a set of footholds into the face of the trunk. He then used them to get the extra foot of height needed to get his arm into the hole—another mechanical click greeted him, but this time, he didn’t have much of a chance to enjoy it. Something small, thick-bodied, and ponderous wandered into the range of his swap sense, and Elliot was abruptly reminded that for all of the twisted beauty of this forest, there were monsters here that were aiming to kill him.
“Run or fight,” Elliot murmured.
The thing was small, barely more than knee height, but it was also in the company of three others. It was still far enough away that he couldn’t actually see it, but technically, it was well within his range of attack—he just wasn’t sure whether that was a good idea or not. It was possible that they were stronger or faster than they appeared at rest and that once they became aware of him, they would reveal themselves as a much greater threat—but the size of them made him oddly confident. Between the length of his spear, his ability to move himself behind them in an instant, and their own lack of reach—surely he could defeat something like this. He’d killed one of the pale things with a single attack through the back of its head, so the same should be possible here. But even if it wasn’t, he could always run away afterwards; his skill made that an easy enough task.
The real question here was that without the overwhelming fear that had come with the horrific, inhuman nature of the pale things, could he drive himself to commit the same level of violence? The wooden haft of the spear felt solid in his hands, and when he turned his mind inwards to estimate how ready he might be—he found almost nothing at all. There was no terror, hesitation, or moral quandary, just a quiet acknowledgement that by the structure of this place, he would have to kill the monsters to leave, or they would do the same to him. One of the stubby monsters passed an overlapping series of gaps between the trees, and he caught sight of it for the first time—it looked even further from human than he’d expected from its shape. It looked closer to a dog that was standing upright on its back legs, though its face was rounded, flabby, and squashed. Every inch of its body was covered in a wrinkled mess of ridges that looked hard to the touch and had a rough texture—not unlike that of the trees that were surrounding them. They had two arms, two hands, and two legs, but Elliot wouldn’t have ever confused the thing for a person. If anything, it looked more like some kind of bark-covered goblin.
“It’s you or me,” Elliot murmured as he rose to his feet. “Sorry, but I’m going to be selfish this time.”
Elliot drew the spear up, paused, and then angled it back down at knee height as he realised the best way to attack was to give it no opportunity to return the favour. He shifted his feet apart to give himself a solid base to thrust from and then focused on the carpet of leaves directly beside the monster. Then, he whistled. The bark-goblin twisted on its stubby legs, almost overbalancing in its rush to face the direction the sound had come from—but there was no longer anything there, as Elliot now stood directly behind it, staring down past the tip of his spear towards the back of its head. He thrust the spear down at an angle, the metal tip passing through the back of the monster's head with far more difficulty than he’d expected and beyond any resistance he had felt from either of the pale things he’d killed. But even so, it ended with the spear passing out the front of its skull to bury in the dirt at its feet. The closest of the three remaining bark-goblins was staring straight at him now, shocked into stillness by the suddenness of what it had just witnessed.
Elliot tore the spear free of the corpse, and the one closest to him flinched back from the sight—one of them gave a belated shriek of alarm and then scrambled forward across the carpet of leaves to get at him. Elliot turned to face it, and the monster shrieked again as it made no attempt to divert its straight-line charge. The other two were barreling towards him now in much the same manner, stumbling over the detritus as they joined the fight. Elliot waited until the first one got within two feet of him before he switched places with the one at the back. The bark-goblin gave another shriek of surprise as it raked its clawed hands down the face of the one who’d just appeared directly in front of him. Elliot stepped forward—the spear already repositioned for his next attack—and then lunged, staking the trailing bark-goblin through the top of its back with all of his strength in an effort to bypass the same expected resistance. However, unlike the first one, this monster lacked the same resistance entirely, and Elliot lost his footing as the spear punctured straight through it without even slowing down.
He reached for a stick just outside of the small clearing and vanished before he could fall all the way to his knees. He arrived standing perfectly upright, with none of the momentum he’d just been fighting to contain. The remaining two bark-goblins were shrieking at each other now as they attempted to separate from one another, and he watched from behind the tree as the two of them scrambled around, trying to discover where he’d gone. He waited until they were no longer facing one another and then traded places with the injured one, appearing with his spear already up in the starting position of his next thrust. Once again, it went through just as easily as it had the last time, with none of the odd resistance, and the monster crashed into a large, bulbous root without making any attempt to catch itself. The injured bark-goblin shrieked from its new place behind the tree and then attempted to flee the area entirely. Elliot shifted his spear until the tip of it was at knee height and then swapped places with a dead leaf directly ahead of it—the monster ran face first into the tip of his spear with enough force that Elliot actually had to take a step backwards. Its legs kept moving for a moment as it hung impaled from the spear, its hands grabbing at the haft in an attempt to prevent it from penetrating any deeper—Elliot pressed forward, staking the thing to the ground by its head, and this time, it stopped moving entirely.
“Four monsters down,” Elliot said, letting out a slow, steadying breath. “That wasn’t so hard.”
The odd resistance he’d felt from two of them worried him a bit, and he was left to wonder if he’d have even been capable of overcoming it had he been using something other than a spear—all the force he was able to generate being pressed into such a small area was doing a lot of the work for him. Elliot fought the spear free of the monster and then left them there, setting off deeper into the forest. He quickly learned that this part of the forest was far more overgrown than where he’d started, and when it grew too difficult to continue, he began using his skill to swap himself through the trees—another white outline appeared ahead of him, and he switched directions to angle towards it. Halfway there, another one appeared right across the outer edge of his ability to detect them and then vanished again as he skirted too far past in the opposite direction—he made a note of where it had been, then went straight for the closer one.
This one wasn’t even really hidden all that well. Instead, it was sitting half buried in the mess of tree litter; an odd rectangle outline appeared in the otherwise pervasive mess—it vanished with a mechanical click, and he started backtracking again. He found the fourth chest nestled in the gap between two roots, the invisible corner the only thing exposed enough to make contact with. He’d barely laid his hand on top of it when what must have been one of the other humans from the Grey Room crossed into his range. Elliot lifted his head and then scanned the gaps in the trees in a failed attempt to locate the person—whoever it was, they were oddly tall, and he couldn’t remember seeing anyone even approaching that height. Elliot stepped out from the tight-knit copse of trees, head turned to the side as the other person stepped into view—and then he froze because it couldn’t have actually been one. A woman stood half a dozen meters away, her skin a pale green and her faded, washed-out hair pulled up into an elaborate knot at the back of her head. Elliot wasn’t sure exactly how tall she was, but it must have been approaching the seven-foot mark. For all of her height, she couldn’t have weighed more than sixty kilograms soaking wet. The odd thinness should have left her looking clumsy, but when she turned on her heel to look at him, the movement was perfectly graceful. She was beautiful on a level that he struggled to really pin down, and even the disgusted sneer on her face couldn’t seem to detract from it.
“Are you—” Elliot started. “You look like me.”
The words sounded clumsy to his own ears, but he didn’t really know how else to convey the message that was tearing through his mind. Humans didn’t have green skin, deathly sharp fangs, or pointed ears, but every other piece of the puzzle was unerringly human. This wasn’t a faceless, pale thing with a maw of needle-like teeth. It wasn’t a wrinkled, savage little creature with bark for skin and claws instead of fingers—this was a human in almost every way that counted. But how could a human that hadn’t entered through the Grey Room with the rest of them have been here? Was this a monster? Could a thing that looked so startlingly human be considered a monster? The woman’s hand settled on the handle of her scimitar and then drew it out of the thick sheath in a single movement—
“Don’t do that,” Elliot said, his right hand in a white-knuckled grip around the haft of his spear. “I’m not going to fight you.”
The woman—he couldn’t seem to think of it as anything but a human woman—spoke, and though the words were in a language that he didn’t speak, it indisputably held some kind of meaning behind it. This wasn’t a monster pretending at advanced cognition. It was a sophont that was biologically adjacent to a human—and it was now pointing its weapon directly at him.
“Stop,” Elliot tried, holding his left hand up in what he’d once believed to be a universally understood concept. “I’m not going to—”
Elliot switched places with a fallen branch as she cut the distance between them down to nothing in four rapid strides, her figure blurring into motion at a speed he had no ability to match. The woman skidded to a stop, sending leaf litter sweeping up at her passing, and for a moment, she was struggling to turn around in the confined space of the trees—the tip of his spear hovered in front of her chest, but the moment they locked eyes he found himself struck still by her almost-humanity. The pale things and the bark goblins had been so easy to place into some other category and then just destroy with impunity—but this felt like murder.
“You need to stop,” Elliot managed as the woman slowly turned to face him. “If you keep attacking me, I’m going to have to kill you.”
The woman’s scimitar came up slowly, and he took several steps backwards as she swatted the spear out of the way with a disgusted grimace—she stepped forward, lifting her weapon again, and Elliot stepped backwards in turn, trying and failing to maintain the distance. The woman’s feet shifted against the leaves, crunching them into the ground as she braced herself for movement, her shoulder dipping ever so slightly—Elliot reached out and took hold of her outline within his mind, trading places with her. The woman appeared where he’d been standing, facing the tree instead of the open air, and her scimitar crashed into the trunk, lodging itself there.
Elliot, now standing exactly where she had been a moment ago, pressed the tip of his spear into the side of her chest before he could think any better of it. It passed through her skin and muscle without any resistance whatsoever, burying itself all the way into her torso before it lodged itself on something that must have been the other side of her rib cage—she stumbled with the motion of his attack, her long slender legs giving out beneath her and then she fell, the scimitar remaining hard stuck in the trunk of the tree. Elliot dragged the weapon back out of her body, and the woman twisted in on herself, attempting to cover the gaping wound in her side with her hand. It did nothing to stop the torrent of blood pouring out of her, and Elliot flinched at the too-human cry of agony that rent the air. The woman was going to die now, he knew, and because he hadn’t killed her outright, he had done nothing more than sentence her to a long, painful death.
“I’m sorry,” Elliot managed.
The spear came up as he prepared to put an end to her misery, and this time, in the wake of his attack, there was nothing but silence and a familiar blinding light.
#
Elliot stood on the platform directly in front of the Torii, and it took him a long moment to realise what exactly had happened—he’d killed the last monster in the dungeon, and so the portal had opened up at his position. Only, it hadn’t been a monster that he’d killed; it had been a person and his understanding of what the dungeon actually was had just been upended completely. If the monsters could be so close in appearance to a human and carry with them intelligence that seemed at first glance to mirror them—then wasn’t it the case that he’d be running the risk of facing more of them in the future? What if the next time he stepped into the dungeon, it wasn’t bark-goblins at all and just an entire dungeon filled with tall, green, lithe folk?
Beyond that, if some of the monsters were intelligent, then what was to say that they all weren’t? He’d been so terrified of the pale things that it had never occurred to him that they might have actually been sophonts as well. That assumption had led him straight to believing that the bark-goblins were just mindless monsters without any higher thought—but he didn’t actually know that, did he? The shrieks they made at each other and at him could have been a language, couldn’t it? Even if they weren’t and the woman had been the only intelligent being present, then he was still undeniably a murderer now—but it wasn’t like he’d wanted to do it. He’d tried to de-escalate the situation, and she had chosen to continue the fight even when it could have only ended with one of them dead. Even if she hadn’t kept fighting, and they’d come to some kind of peace, what would have happened then?
The portal wouldn’t have opened until either she was dead or the rest of the humans were, and all of them would have been trapped there until one of those two conditions had been met. The very second he’d stepped into the dungeon, he’d locked himself into that fate, and every time he did so again, he’d have to potentially face the exact same situation. But now that he knew what that meant, could he still do it? Seven days from now, he would find himself drawn into the dungeon without any sort of action on his part. If he was placed against another being with pale green skin and a prodigious height, he would have no choice but to kill them because that was what the dungeon was; a death match between the participants in which only one team got to leave in the end. The panel sitting in the air in front of his face told him that these death matches were the primary method of securing both resources and personal power. Could he risk giving up the growth that would come with deliberately putting himself in the dungeon? He’d already come to the conclusion that throwing himself into danger now was the optimal path to long-term survival—but was he willing to trade his own future for a dungeon filled with enemy beings? They would be forced into lethal conflict no matter what choice he made, and the only way any of them would survive would be if they honed their ability to kill humans—and he’d already seen that at least one of them had no trouble with cutting him down.
“I’m more selfish than that,” Elliot murmured.
The words drew some attention from those near enough to hear them, and he turned away from them, moving towards the railing to avoid blocking the portal. A million thoughts twisted in his mind, but he couldn’t seem to make any progress on any of it, at least not out here. He let his eyes fall onto the reward panel for the first time—
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Survival
311 EXP
311 GOLD
Discovery
400 EXP
Items
Common Pants
Common Chest
Common Shield
Common Pants
Total
711 EXP
311 GOLD
Level Up
Revive Ally
Yes/No
Despite the fact that he’d personally contributed more towards eliminating the enemy combatants—he could no longer seem to think of them as monsters—he’d actually earned less Survival GOLD and EXP than the first dungeon. The four chests he’d found had also ended up granting him more overall EXP than completing the dungeon had. As a test, he checked the REVIVE ALLY prompt again, but there was no change in the price listed. Four common items meant that he’d earned roughly four thousand gold on that dungeon alone, so long as he could identify them first. To do that, he’d need to complete at least two more dungeons—at just over three hundred gold per run—to earn enough gold to get started on that. The thought that he was actively trading Sophont lives for three hundred pieces of metal stung at the back of his mind, but he did his best to push it away. The alert that he’d levelled up came with no interaction on the actual text prompt, but when he dismissed the panel and brought up the STATUS menu, he found out why.
Status
Level 2
Attributes
Strength
2
Speed
17(12)
Magic
2
Defense
2
The EXP had been automatically applied, and his level-up had already taken place without any of his own input. Some quick mental math of the sum of the rewards from the two dungeons placed the total EXP gained at just over twelve hundred. Which probably meant that it had taken a flat one thousand to gain that first level. All of his attributes had increased exactly in line with the expected growth, and he could see that passing the threshold of ten points had triggered the speed bonuses on his equipment, granting him five extra points—he’d only gained one level and already the disparity between the Speed Attribute and all of the others was notable. Elliot didn’t particularly feel as if he’d become faster, though he hadn’t done anything to actually test that—and as he clenched his fist a few times, he couldn’t help but think that a two in strength felt much the same as a one had. Magic, he had no real way of checking and Defense—Elliot paused for a moment as his mind threw up a connection to something he’d been thinking about. The odd resistance he’d felt from two of the bark-goblins had been an odd mystery before, but now it was evidence towards their sapience. If that resistance was on account of their Defense Attribute being higher than the others, then it would make sense that his weapon had a more difficult time hurting them—and for that to be possible, it meant that they needed an INTERFACE of their own. That would explain why the lithe-folk woman had been so fast as well because her Speed Attribute had been high enough to boost her above whatever baseline her species had started at. If every single one of the ‘monsters’ that were present inside of the dungeon had an INTERFACE, then didn’t it stand to reason that they had entered the dungeon from a Grey Room of their own? Did they have a place like this, with a Torii and a city filled with their peers surrounding it? Did they have a planet—like Earth—that they’d died on before they woke up in this place? Did they come from civilisations that had threaded the needle on dozens of species-destroying disasters until they had evolved to the point where they’d obtained self-awareness, intelligence and then culture?
“We’re in the same situation,” Elliot murmured.
A group of three people appeared in front of the portal, and each one of them had been present in the dungeon he’d just been inside, suggesting that they’d only just located the exit portal amongst the thick forestry. They were tense, probably from the danger that they’d all been embroiled in only minutes ago, but none of them looked as if they were struggling with the moral quandaries of having murdered any members of a similarly intelligent species. Did it bother them at all—or maybe they hadn’t spared it a second of thought? But Elliot did, and he was already considering going right back in all over again. He wasn’t sure what that said about him exactly—maybe that he prioritised obtaining personal power over the lives of an almost-human—but he didn’t have the luxury of stopping here now. All of the poor decisions he’d made back in the old world had led to this place, and while it wasn’t the same kind of hell he’d been expecting, it was probably the one he deserved. So he’d keep on pushing forward, he’d throw himself at the mercy of risk, and he’d keep on placing himself in danger. Every single person here was nothing more than a ghost fighting for the right to keep on haunting a city of the dead—and Elliot couldn’t say that he was better than any of them.
#
Despite everything he’d learned and the violence that was sure to greet him, stepping through the Torii was somehow even easier. Elliot thought that it might have had something to do with the sheer number of unknowns shrinking as he tore free what knowledge he could from this hostile environment. The Grey Room was entirely empty when he arrived, and not a single other person was present—that only lasted about thirty seconds before a pair of women came striding out of thin air to join him.
“—can be so mean to me,” The first said, with a sigh of grievance. “It’s not like I really did anything all that bad.”
“Amber, you’re lucky she didn’t kick your ass in front of the entire faction,” The other woman said, shaking her head. “You should stop antagonising her so much.”
“The meetings are boring, and she’s way too nosy,” Amber complained, “Tsunami—we meet the quota of runs every week, so why won’t they just let me do my own thing, damn it.”
“Because your own thing involves bringing groups of strangers back to our building and making a mess of the common room,” Tsunami said, “If you’re going to get wasted, then do it at a tavern.”
“We were at a tavern before they kicked us out,” Amber insisted.
Everyone else he’d seen inside of the Grey Room had possessed an odd tension to them—some kind of universal externalisation of the gravity of the situation they would soon be dealing with—but there was almost none of that here. These two seemed almost at ease, and though they’d glanced over at his place by the corner, they didn’t seem inclined to keep much of an eye on him. As he listened in on their ongoing argument, he determined that the two of them intended to work together in the dungeon and that, given the familiarity between them, they’d probably done so many times before.
Amber was auburn-haired and at least two heads taller than Elliot himself, and that height was accompanied by enough muscle that Elliot thought she might actually weigh more than he did. There was a stack of four copper bangles hanging on her right wrist, shifting around as she moved her hands around to accentuate her frustrations with the leader of their faction. Kaoru of Lion’s Edict, if the name Amber had mockingly spoken was any indication. There was no sign of a weapon on her person, though she was wearing a pair of leather gloves that each possessed a strip of short, stumpy spikes across the knuckles. Tsunami was dwarfed by the other woman, with straight black hair and standing at what might have been five foot two at best. Though she was possessed of a rather slight figure, her forearms and biceps were noticeably defined, and if he had to guess, it would be a result of the longbow that was dangling from her left hand.
They sent him a few more glances as their conversation began to peter out, and he began to feel a rising discomfort at the idea that one of them might attempt to start a conversation with him—Elliot was genuinely relieved when a new person appeared directly between the two groups, and he found himself letting out the breath he’d been holding. The person’s arrival was like a pebble that catalysed an avalanche, and within half a minute, there were exactly fourteen people present, including himself. Free of the mental grip their furtive glances had held over him, he turned his mind back to what lay ahead of him. The strategy for the dungeon remained unchanged. His primary goal was to locate and unlock as many chests as he could manage before the people here had cleared out the rest of the enemies—cleared out because he didn’t want to linger on what that really meant.
There was something distinctly cowardly in leaving all of the violence to everyone else while he sought out resources without the intention to really fight—but it was also the best use of his time in the dungeon. Elliot found his gaze drawn towards the white outline that denoted the hidden entrance to the dungeon. What was behind the door this time? Pale predators that hunted with endless patience? Bark-goblins that roamed in packs and sought to savage their enemies as a team? Lithe-folk with tall, slender bodies and an alien, otherworldly beauty? Perhaps it would be none of them, and he’d be faced with some new being he could never have conceived the existence of. If it was something like that, he could only hope that it was far enough from human to help ease his conscience—the dungeon opened without warning, and he felt his swap-sense expand outwards to the world beyond the room. They were surrounded by trees once again but of a vastly different type than the previous one—these had massive drooping fern-like protrusions hanging off the trunks, and each one was absolutely riddled with tiny green spikes. Vines, bushes, and other plants had overgrown the entrance of the tunnel, and it left no way to actually leave.
One of the men with a large two-handed axe pushed his way to the front of the group and then, using what little space he had left, hacked straight through the mess, obscuring the exit. Once he’d gotten free of the tunnel walls, his progress grew exponentially, with each swipe of his axe tearing down great arcs of the jungle around him. Elliot could have swapped outside, but it would put him on the front line, far in front of the others—and then he’d be the first person to encounter the enemy. Instead, he remained in place until the entirety of the group had made it outside and then, using their own weapons began cutting through the mess.
As he waited, he began to notice a distinct increase in the ambient temperature as the hot, humid air began to invade the sanctity of the Grey Room. Most of the group was just following the man with the axe—including both Amber and Tsunami—while a scattering of three others had decided to try their luck carving out their own individual paths. Once they’d all moved far enough away from the entrance that he couldn’t actually feel them anymore, Elliot finally moved to leave through the tunnel. The heat was even worse outside, and the lack of trees brought with it a similar lack of shade—the direct sunlight was hot enough that it felt as if a physical weight had just pressed down onto him. He stumbled into the shade of the nearest tree, already sweating and then did his best to scan the area for any signs of white—he caught the very edge of a chest off in the uncharted jungle and then reached out to exchange places with one of the massive, brown and decayed leaves that had broken free of the trees.
He arrived in the only real space available in the area and then did his best to shimmy between the trees to actually reach where the chest was hidden—Elliot was starting to realise why Aestus didn’t believe he’d run into another one any time soon. He couldn’t imagine trying to find them using conventional methods because there was just too much space to cover, and without an initial direction, he probably wouldn’t have ever come this way. It made him wonder exactly where all the items people had were actually coming from. Aestus bought and sold items that people brought to him, and from what he understood, those items either came from chests or killing people in the dungeon—he hadn’t had a chance to really investigate the equipment that the lithe-folk woman had been carrying, but she’d been wearing a full set of robes, and she’d been carrying a scimitar.
The portal had stolen him away before he could even think about taking any of it for himself, but if she’d had a full set of gear, then it was possible that there were other species that would as well. Were all of the items coming from chests and then just being traded around whenever they killed each other? He’d seen hundreds of people in Hell wearing full sets of equipment—five armour slots, one-to-two weapon slots, and seven jewellery slots—but at only one item per chest, that was thousands of chests at a minimum to even hope to reach the amount needed to equip everyone. The population of Hell could be far larger than the relatively small subsection of people he’d actually encountered through his brief time there, which meant that the real number was likely much, much higher.
If the Lithe-folk woman was any indication of her own race, then there might have been entire cities of other species with comparable populations to the human one, and that meant that his already adjusted estimate might only be a fraction of a fraction of the total amount of items passing between hands. How were people finding enough chests to actually fulfil that kind of quota? Was his ability to locate hidden things actually far more common than he’d first thought, or had this interspecies death match simply been going on for so long that people stumbling onto them blindly now accounted for all the items that were in circulation?
“That’s a lot of people killing each other,” Elliot said, breathing out at the heat. “God, this place is hot—maybe hell is a jungle.”
The mechanical click rang out, and Elliot found that he couldn’t actually retreat from the awkward, half-bent-over position he’d found himself in to reach it. He lay there for a moment, his stomach pressed against a partially downed tree, and his feet not quite touching the ground and just suffered in the heat for a minute. Once he’d gathered enough of his energy to keep on going, he traded places with a stick at his previous spot, then leaned heavily against a tree while he scanned the overlapping mess of flora in an attempt to locate his next target. He could hear something in the distance that he thought might have been a river, but it was outside of his swap sense, and despite the overpowering heat, he wasn’t planning on drinking anything from such an alien place—with his luck, the water would kill him before anything else did.
There was no sign of another chest anywhere near him, so he swapped places at an angle that intersected slightly with the main group’s recently carved pathway, but they were still so far ahead that he couldn’t actually feel any of them. He spotted another chest in the distance, at almost the same angle as the first had been, so he skirted back out towards it and then—not quite willing to try crawling underneath the plant, given how many spikes were present on its limbs—attempted to use his spear to cut his way through. The blade on top of the spear was about seven inches long and thin, but with barely any space, he couldn’t really get enough room to slash at the plant. Instead, he was forced to stab through the foliage at the stem of it, which went about as well as he expected, in that he couldn’t see what he was fucking doing at all.
Eventually, he’d managed to do so much erratic damage to it that the plant began to list to one side, and then he managed to get one of his boots on top of it enough to force it down flat to the ground. From there, he managed to crawl into the space and get his arm into the mess littering the base of the tree—the mechanical click rang out, and rather than try to retract himself from the undignified position, he swapped back up to his feet with a grunt. Between the heat, the fear and adrenaline that had plagued him across most of the day, all of the social interaction he’d had, and the physical exertion that had come with it all, Elliot found himself growing genuinely exhausted—it was clearly the middle of the day on whatever world this jungle existed in, but back at the Torii, it had been approaching late afternoon. He still needed to find a new place to sleep tonight—because he couldn’t bring himself to even consider returning to the room with Hannah and Grant after he’d run away from them both—and he’d have to take care of that before the sun was completely gone.
The main stretch of road had dozens of other hotels, taverns and other places that had advertised available rooms, so he’d just have to—there was a rumble in the distance, followed by a tremor that shook the leaf litter at his feet. He turned his head towards the direction it had come from and frowned because it was the same direction as the main group had gone. There was a distant sound of repeated crashes, growing rapidly louder—a massive tree, uprooted from the ground by some unknown method, appeared within his range. It knocked down half a dozen trees in its path before its momentum had been defeated, and it fell heavy to the ground. More similar sounds washed through the otherwise quiet jungle, and another tree smashed down two dozen meters away from the first. Elliot considered just leaving the area entirely, but the engagement didn’t seem to be coming to an end, and that was concerning for a number of reasons. The largest human contingent from the Grey Room had gone in that direction. If they were struggling to put an end to whatever they had encountered, then it was possible that they couldn’t, and if a dozen people couldn’t win together, then Elliot would be left alone to deal with whatever it was in the aftermath—something he very much doubted he could manage.
“No choice,” Elliot murmured.
Elliot exchanged places with the uprooted tree—there was no discerning change in difficulty doing so, even though it was easily the largest thing he’d used his skill on so far—and then swapped forward again when nothing came into range. There was a chest at the far left side of his radius, but he ignored it for now in favour of trying to locate the ongoing struggle—another uprooted mass of roots and rotting wood cleared the tree tops ahead of him, and he swapped two dozen meters to the left to avoid the impact zone. One more swap forward placed him at the edge of a large clearing that probably hadn’t been there before the dungeon had opened, and he took in everything that was happening as best he could—Amber and Tsunami were the only two people who were still alive. The other ten people who had been part of the group were scattered across the mess of downed trees in far more pieces than they’d been in when he’d last seen them.
There was one other presence, but they were moving so fast that Elliot couldn’t actually see anything more than a red blur of barely there motion as it wound its way around the fallen trees without so much as missing a step. Amber wrenched one of the trees up off the ground, swung it outwards in a massive arc that was three seconds too slow to hit anything at all, and then, when she realised she’d missed, let it go at the end of its arc. The tree passed across the clearing like a missile, the tip of it catching on another downed tree and sending it into an arc that once again missed the blur entirely. Tsunami stepped out from behind the other woman, her bow drawn, and a series of arrows smashed into the ground between the blur and where they were standing, not even trying to hit the thing; rather, it seemed like a delaying tactic to keep it from approaching either of them. Amber was covered in blood from what must have been a dozen different bleeding lines in her flesh, and her shoulder plate had a trio of gouges carved out of it that hinted towards the enemy’s main source of attack. Tsunami’s perfectly straight hair was now a violent, sweaty mess that clung to her face as she twisted on her heel to keep track of the red blur, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
“—playing with us,” Tsunami said, with a sharp expulsion of air. “But that’s not going to last forever; we need to slow it down.”
“I’m trying, but even aiming ahead of it isn’t enough to make up the difference,” Amber managed, panting from the effort. “It’s too fast—fucking outliers.”
The red blur might have been a few shades short of invisible to the naked eye, but it was a bright, steady-in-motion presence within the range of his swap sense. It existed as a human-shaped outline pressing its way through the physical world and interacting with it in the exact same manner as everything else. Elliot knew that he could swap places with it; it was just a matter of picking the best time to—
“It’s coming again—” Tsunami started.
Amber, her hands already wrapped around the base of another downed tree, dragged it up off the ground as Tsunami spun with her, removing herself from the path of the attack—but unlike the previous time, the blur didn’t run parallel to the arc of the attack. Instead, it ran in the opposite direction entirely. It swerved past the tip of the tree, then cut inwards, heading straight for Tsunami’s back as she circled behind Amber. Tsunami seemed far more capable of tracking the blur than Amber, and Elliot could see the moment she realised that it was now behind her. Tsunami twisted on her heel in an attempt to get her bow up between her and the blur—Elliot swapped places with it a moment before it could strike, arriving crouched down on one knee as Tsunami fired the arrow directly over his head. The creature smashed face-first into the tree he’d been standing in front of only a moment again, tearing a massive chunk out of the side of the trunk as it deflected off from the impact.
“I’m going to get it in the air—” Elliot said.
He was forced to swap places with Amber, putting her on the other side of Tsunami as the woman—unaware of the exchange that had just taken place—continued to swing the tree around in an attack that would have killed both of them on impact. Amber stumbled in an effort to halt the force of her swing, and the tree drug a trench through the ground as she barely managed it.
“What the hell—” Amber breathed.
The creature was already climbing back to its feet, the left half of its body bloodied from the impact, and it stumbled in an effort to put weight on its injured leg. Tsunami spun to face him again, her bow most of the way up, and he kept on speaking without pause.
“—you should aim for wherever I appear because that’s where the red thing will be soon after,” Elliot said. “It’s getting back up.”
Elliot dragged his leather-clad hand across the ground as he rose to his feet, taking the largest fragment of wood he could find with him in the process. He underhanded it up into the air as high as he could manage, and then, when Tsunami turned to look up at its arc, he switched places with it. For a moment, he was suspended in mid-air as the stolen momentum of his throw kept him rising higher into the sky, and he caught the moment that the red-skinned monster stepped out of the treeline. It was perfectly human in every regard, except for one small detail; the top half of its head was simply missing, and in its place was a flat plane of unblemished skin stretching from just above its cheekbones to the back of its skull. It had a large, lip-less mouth that was drawn into a perpetual smile that was about as far from an expression of happiness as he could have imagined.
Amber had turned to look up at his position in the air; the tree still held between her hands and her fingers sinking into the shattered wood from the strength of her grip. Tsunami’s bow was pointed directly at him now, and the red blur burst forward with an untouchable speed, even with its mangled leg—Elliot traded places with it, arriving at a dead standstill in the middle of the clearing as he dumped all of the things ample momentum. It appeared in the air at the same moment, upside down and with its back turned. Tsunami must have let the arrow loose the second she caught sight of red because it was already halfway through the air. The half-headed creature somehow twisted in mid-air, shattering the arrow with its bare hand and scattering fragments of it all across the clearing—and then Amber stepped forward, the tree rising up over her shoulder as she brought it straight down on top of it. For all of the breathtaking speed the being had been capable of generating, it could do nothing to harness any of it while it was stuck in mid-air. The tree trunk exploded from the force of the strike, soil, leaves, and wood rising up into the air from the impact—and then they were standing in front of the Torii as the light of the portal faded away.
“—fucking got you,” Amber said, as she managed to straighten up from the odd position she’d arrived in. “Holy shit, that hurts.”
Tsunami’s bow was still held up in front of her, another arrow notched, and the people coming up the stairs of the Torii swerved to the side in an effort to get clear of it. She carefully reduced the tension on the bow as she lowered it to point at the floor and then turned to look at him. Elliot took three steps to the side once he realised how close the portal had placed the three of them. The reward panel sat in front of his face, but he gave it nothing more than a cursory glance—
Survival
240 EXP
240 GOLD
Discovery
200 EXP
Items
Common Dagger
Rare Boots
Total
440 EXP
240 GOLD
Revive Ally
Yes/No
—before dismissing it entirely. The adrenaline still coursing through his body left him with the desire to move, and he half turned back, perhaps to face the two other survivors of the dungeon—and then aborted the motion upon realising he didn’t really have anything to say to them. Instead, he angled for the stairs, intending to leave; it was quickly approaching dark now, and he needed to find somewhere to sleep.
“Hey—hold on a minute,” Amber said, “Where are you going?”
Elliot felt a spike of something—the lingering adrenaline in his system and what was probably panic at them addressing him after he’d tried to leave without talking to them—roll down his spine, and he found himself pausing on the third step from the top as the two of them moved to follow him.
“I—need to find a place to sleep tonight,” Elliot said, “I’m going to do that.”
“Okay, sure, but we should probably talk about what just happened, don’t you think?” Amber said, wincing in pain at the motion involved in stepping down the stairs. “You just pulled our asses out of the fire back there.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Elliot said, “You should have more important things to worry about right now anyway.”
There was so much blood leaking out of her armour that he found himself staring down at it in what might have been a mixture of disgust and alarm. Amber seemed to follow his glance and then grimaced at the sight of herself.
“There’s a healer just down there, about three doors in from the gate,” Tsunami said, joining the conversation. “We can talk while we walk.”
Elliot stumbled a step down as Amber clapped him on the shoulder, before she steered him down the stairs as if he was some kind of human-sized crutch—he found himself wondering just how careful she was being with her strength right now, considering that she had been throwing around trees a few short minutes ago.
“I don’t really have anything to say,” Elliot managed, and then after a moment. “There are healers here?”
Amber’s hand was still resting on his shoulder, and he came to realize it was unlikely to change until they’d made it to wherever they had intended to go. Tsunami was doing much the same on the other side, but in her case she was an active participant to the whole thing.
“You don’t have anything to say—” Amber said with a snort. “What the heck does that mean?”
Elliot kept to his word and said nothing in response, partially because he didn’t have any idea on how to answer such a blunt question, but mostly because he was regretting the unintentional admittance of social weakness.
“You’ve never been to a healer before?” Tsunami asked.
He hadn’t known that they even existed until they’d brought it up, and his mind spun, attempting to figure out how they fit into the greater puzzle.
“I haven’t needed one yet,” Elliot said.
“Cause you’re so fast,” Amber said, putting a bit more weight on his shoulder as they stepped down onto the road. “How’d you get it up into the air like that?”
Tsunami looked just as interested in the answer, and rather than deal with the fallout of not answering such a direct question, he decided to just tell her.
“I’m not that fast,” Elliot said, “I just switched places with it.”
“That’s your active skill, huh?” Amber said, impressed. “All I’m good for is breaking things—but then again, I’ve always been good at making a mess.”
For some reason, she seemed somehow proud of such an odd statement, but Elliot couldn’t have said why.
“Yes, Amber, we know,” Tsunami said, taking it upon herself to keep the conversation moving. “I’d like to thank you properly for saving us, but I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Elliot, but you don’t need to thank me for anything,” Elliot said as they passed through the gates of Hell. “I wouldn’t have been able to kill that thing on my own, so it was really you who was helping me.”
Amber laughed out loud at the comment, or perhaps the fact that he’d turned his head away from both of them in an attempt to avoid the offered gratitude; he couldn’t be sure.
“We wouldn’t have been able to kill it without you either,” Tsunami said, “That’s the problem with running into outliers, you either manage the impossible, or you die like everyone else.”
That was something he’d overheard from them once before, and the invocation of its use here generated enough curiosity for him to overcome his desire to keep silent in the face of Amber’s laughter.
“What is an outlier?” Elliot asked.
“You don’t know that either?” Amber wondered.
“An outlier is a monster that has a much higher level than everything else inside the dungeon,” Tsunami said, “It’s not particularly common, but eventually, you’re bound to run into one of them—if I may; what level are you?”
Elliot was hesitant to answer, mainly because he had no idea how common it was for people to actually share their level. Amber seemed to find his cautiousness hilarious because she laughed out loud at the silence.
“It’s not a trap, you know,” Amber said, “I’m level one-hundred and ninety, and she’s level one-hundred and sixty.”
He hadn’t really been thinking about either of them in terms of levels, but the number was still quite a bit higher than what he’d have guessed.
“Oh,” Elliot said, “I’m only level two.”
“What?” Amber said, blinking. “What the heck were you doing in that dungeon?”
“He shouldn’t have been there—no, we shouldn’t have been there.” Tsunami said, “Elliot was there before we were, so the level range should have been decided based on his level.”
“Level range?” Elliot asked.
“That’s how most people believe the dungeon works,” Amber said, peering down at him with curiosity. “Max level is about one hundred levels above or below the first person who enters the Grey Room.”
“Which should have been a minimum level of one—because it can’t go any lower—to a maximum level of one-hundred and two.” Tsunami said, “Everyone else that was present was at least level one hundred, except for the outlier, who was at least level three hundred.”
“Maybe there were two outliers, one high level and one low level,” Amber guessed. “Is that even something that happens?”
“I don’t know,” Tsunami admitted. “I’ve never heard of it before.”
If most people believe it worked in that way, then it was probably some kind of collective rationalisation that people had come to after pooling their individual experience in the dungeon—that kind of information was far more important than almost anything else he’d learned so far. He might have even said that it was worth tolerating the physical contact and proximity to a pair of strangers.
“Whatever, we survived, and that’s all that matters,” Amber said, before shaking her head a bit. “That’s the building there—help me inside, would you? I’m starting to get dizzy.”
The building in question looked much like the others, but the engraved sign hanging above the door depicted a circle with a cross sitting inside of it—he’d remembered seeing it this morning, but he’d originally thought it was just a poor drawing of a buckler shield. It was a struggle to get her through the door with all three of them there, but they managed it after a moment.
“You’re bleeding on my floor—again,” A woman sighed, “Why do you end up here so often?”
“Maril,” Amber complained.
“It’s because she doesn’t have any sense at all,” Tsunami said, speaking up. “I’ve come to think that she traded it all away for more points in strength—Amber, you’re getting blood in my hair.”
Amber had taken the opportunity to hook her arm all the way around the other woman’s neck, pulling her into a one-armed headlock, ostensibly to show her displeasure at the comment. Elliot took that as a sign to retreat in case she attempted to do the same to him. Amber let him go without a fight, and he backed up a few steps to maintain a more comfortable amount of distance.
“I’m literally dying here, and you’re making fun of me,” Amber said, with no regard for her complaint. “Not to mention you get paid to fix people, so be more happy when a client comes to visit you.”
“Come to visit me when you’re not dying, and then I’ll be happy to see you,” Maril said, entirely unimpressed. “Go on then, pay up already, or I can’t get started—rules are rules.”
Amber begrudgingly slapped her bloody hand on top of the trading stone, and Maril huffed at the streak she’d left behind.
“Ten thousand gold,” Amber said, “I bet you’re pleased with yourself now that you’ve robbed a pretty little dying girl of her last few coins.”
Maril reached across the counter as soon as Amber had touched the stone, taking hold of the other woman’s wrist before she could pull her arm back.
“You’re about as far from a little girl as can be, and you’ve got too many scars to be pretty,” Maril said before reaching across the counter to take her hand. “Here’s an idea—if you want to keep your gold, then stop getting hit so much.”
“You bitch,” Amber laughed.
At first, there was no sign of anything happening from the contact, but then Elliot caught sight of the deep cut that traced the side of her neck up to just past her jawline. It was sealing itself shut in the span of a few seconds; a thin white line of off-coloured skin remained behind as a permanent reminder of the injury.
“Tsunami?” Maril said.
“I might have twisted my ankle, but I’d rather ride it out than pay the fee,” Tsunami said. “Elliot, were you injured at all?”
Elliot started a bit at the sound of his name, having assumed that they’d forgotten he was even present, and when she turned to look at him, he shook his head—even if he had been, he wouldn’t have been able to afford the fee.
“Good as new,” Amber said, clenching her fist for a moment. “Think they’ll let me into the bathhouse looking like this?”
“He’ll make you rinse off before you get in,” Maril said, “Try not to slip over and break your leg along the way, you clumsy girl.”
“What?” Amber demanded. “I’m not clumsy—”
Elliot took that moment to step out of the building, unwilling to intrude any longer on what was clearly some kind of friendly meeting between people who actually knew one another. He spent a moment eying the door to Marvin’s tavern with a bit of unease; while he doubted that either of them was still there after what must have been six or seven hours, he couldn’t help but feel unnerved by the proximity. Amber called out his name from inside the store, apparently just realising that he’d left while she wasn’t looking, and rather than subject himself to any more social interaction, he fled.
#
The room was barely bigger than the other one, and it cost twice as much for a single night, but it was his alone. Night had fallen quickly, and with it had come a mass reduction in how many people were willing to walk the streets—but they weren’t empty entirely. Some of those he’d seen begging for gold near the gates had moved to sleep in the alleyways, and some of them seemed too restless to sleep at all. Others seemed to treat the night like it was barely any different than the daylight, but those were always in larger, rowdier groups. Though his room was bereft of a window, he could feel them moving through the streets, and far closer, he could feel the others in the building, sleeping, pacing and—in the instance of the pair who’d only entered the building a few minutes ago—shifting in bed atop one another.
Though in that particular case, he hadn’t needed his swap sense to guess what they were doing; he could simply hear it through the wall beside his bed. Elliot closed his eyes and wondered at how drastically his life had changed in the span of twenty-four hours. Yesterday, he’d been climbing out of his own bed to prepare for another colourless day in a world he’d no longer had a reason to exist within while he did everything in his meagre power to avoid thinking about the things he’d lost or the ones he’d thrown away. Now, he was at the mercy of an endlessly repeating death game in which he was expected to kill monsters and not-quite humans in search of resources and growth. He’d actually killed a woman—from a species other than his own, and to protect himself—and then rationalised himself right back into trying again.
The half-header was easier to separate from humanity because of how other it had been, but he didn’t know what he would be facing when he first decided to go in. If he found himself in conflict with another, more relatable species, would he stumble again? Should he stumble? He’d done his best to dissuade her from attacking him, and that was something he could offer again—it would cost him nothing more than the initiative to try and get them to relent. The problem was that these beings could have skills that were even more dangerous than his own had ended up being and that both initiative and the element of surprise might be the only things keeping him alive.
What if he hesitated to kill one of them, and they proceeded to draw out some esoteric ability that couldn’t be avoided? Even if they didn’t, there was still no solution to what would happen in the aftermath; even if he could get them to stop fighting—they’d still be trapped in the dungeon until one of them died. The wall began to shake in time with the movements occurring in the bed, and Elliot rolled over to face away from it. Everything he’d learned about the dungeon spun in his mind, and he wondered how lucky he must have been to have discovered any of it. If Jane hadn’t helped him in his very first dungeon, he probably would have died already. If Hannah and Grant hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have been able to win against both of the pale-things. If they hadn’t encouraged him to follow them to Marvin’s tavern, he wouldn’t have learned about factions or anything else. If he hadn’t met Aestus and been blessed enough to have received the man’s great charity, he wouldn’t have had any equipment worth mentioning. If Amber and Tsunami hadn’t been present in the most recent dungeon, he wouldn’t have been able to kill the half-header outlier—nor would he have learned about the existence of outliers, level ranges or even healers.
He’d learned all of that in a single day, and how much better prepared would he have been if he’d known it right after he’d managed to survive his very first dungeon? Hannah and Grant wouldn’t have access to anything he’d learned after they’d gone their separate ways—and who was to say that they hadn’t learned just as much in his absence? There should have been someone waiting outside the Torii, someone willing to help the new arrivals or at least point them in the right direction. Why wasn’t there? This city might have been called Hell, but it wasn’t filled entirely with devils. There were people like Jane, who would help for a favour, people like Aestus, who would help out of their own goodwill, and even people like Amber and Tsunami, who would help out of what might have been a misplaced sense of gratitude. There should have been a faction that was trying to give new arrivals the best possible chance for survival, but there just—wasn’t.
“Maybe I could do that,” Elliot murmured.
The idea of willingly interacting with others—especially people whom he had no prior relationship with—was a difficult one, filled with discomfort and resistance. Elliot was sure that he wouldn’t have answers to half of the questions that someone—like himself, perhaps—would inevitably ask. But even just the shallow pool of knowledge he had now would have been worth any amount of gold he’d earned after that very first dungeon. Elliot fought down a yawn—trying not to make any noise that might disturb the pair in the next room over—and rubbed at his tired eyes. Maybe one day he’d create a faction with people who were actually good at talking to others—people like Hannah and Grant, his traitorous mind supplied unasked—they were the type to excel at delivering that kind of introduction.
Being able to do what Aestus had for him and supply the new arrivals with an actual set of gear would go just as far—and with his ability to search out chests, then perhaps that was something he could do to contribute. Someone to teach them how to fight would fit in as well because if any of them were like Elliot, they would have no training with melee weapons or lethal combat. A faction that supplied knowledge, gear and training to those who had nothing at all—it didn’t matter if it was profitable, at least not to him. They’d be saving people and giving them a proper chance at a second life, or perhaps a proper chance at an afterlife, if that was what it really was. Elliot yawned again and then buried his face into the sheets, struggling against the exhaustion. If he could manage to build something like that, then maybe one day—hopefully in the far-flung future after she’d lived a long, fulfilling life—he could greet May as something other than the colossal failure he’d turned out to be.
The bedsheets twisted in his grip as his thoughts wandered away from strategy and into the realm of things far more tenuous. The exhaustion dropped his mental barriers low enough that errant thoughts he’d been trying to ignore had begun to slip into focus—he found himself thinking about Dimitri and May, and he found himself thinking about Hannah and Grant. Maybe his attempt to distance himself from Hannah and Grant today had been just another extension of what he’d done to May in the wake of Dimitri’s death. May was probably sleeping in her bed right now—she might not have even known that he was dead. Hannah and Grant would be crammed into that tiny little room just a few hundred meters down the road. They were probably talking right now about everything they’d experienced since arriving here and everything that they might have to do just to survive. He could almost imagine himself sitting in the corner beside them, listening to the discussion. He could almost imagine the way the smattering of freckles on Hannah’s face shifted when she smiled or the way her fingers had skirted across his pants in that unexpected and lingering touch. Elliot wasn’t quite sure when he actually fell asleep—but when he dreamed, it was of freckles, smiles, and a world where he hadn’t destroyed every good thing that had come into his life.
