Chapter 050: Listening to Elders

  After our meeting with Grandma concluded - I did let her into the system - we departed. The plan was to meet up with the rest and return to the Hold. Of course, it was ruined quite quickly. Leria had some business to do in the city - I think that it was connected to the villages of Erstval and their former village, so instead we picked an inn and decided to call it a day.

  Thankfully there was still a bit of money in our stash so that wasn’t a problem. We had to sell a Baptism of Blood’s jewelry though. Two thousand twenty five ambries, for us to survive until our next decent mission into the anomalies. We were running out of assets we could liquify for money.

  Ugh.

  ***

  “The more I think about it, the more I think that this world sucks.” Simea said, interrupting my sad attempt to drink the money cares away.

  I’ve spent enough of my life in a country that was recuperating from the devastating war (my father fought in it, I avoided it because I was too young and the war ended when I was twelve years old) to know the worth of money. I can’t help being touchy when it comes to it!

  We were sitting around the table at the inn, eating the last meal of the day and drinking. Me, Simea, Vaera, Lena and Syna. Leria was still absent but wrote me earlier that she would come to us soon, finally finishing her business.

  “No offence to the locals of course, I mean it’s obviously not your fault.” Vaera chuckled.

  “Right in time, I was about to feel offended. But yeah, the longer this adventure of ours goes, the more I come to the same conclusion. I’m seriously beginning to think that living in ignorance about how widespread gods’ influence is was a blessing.”

  Feels Orwellian, right? Might be the reason why no higher power ever introduced itself properly to us on Earth. If people were absolutely sure that there was something up there and it was omniscient…

  Well, watching weird hentais on the internet would never feel the same. Not with knowledge that Jesus/Budda/Mahomet/Whoever else is literally watching you and considers you a degenerate, huh.

  “To be honest I thought like that at the beginning.” I decided to take part in the talk. “But after thinking about it for a while… we might be rather lucky to have picked the Gates of Eternity.”

  “Why?” Simea got curious.

  “Because the worlds of other games of the Infinity Project suck big time as well.” I sighed. “Robinson seems to have a penchant for a Crapsack World trope. Of course, it’s never a world that can’t be saved. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. Players are actually encouraged to do it. But there is a long road ahead of them.”

  “For example?” NO JUST NO. WHY ANOTHER INFODUMP FOR THEM. Ugh. Let’s keep it brief.

  “Let’s take Long War, the space opera setting. Literally every alien species is so alien that we can’t even understand how they think. Most of them seems to consider us a threat, an obstacle… or food. The most powerful species we know of is literally space locust that evolved on a death world and has both insane reproduction rate and the ability to remember everything they ever saw. It’s not even sure if they are sapient or sentient, they might just be great at copying. They think of humans as a food and outnumber us immensely.”

  “That’s… ouch.” That’s not the end of it.

  “Also, more than 50% of Mankind lives in a totalitarian police state known as Terran Federation. Mind control, surveillance implants and almost orwellian political system included.” No wonder they were considered an enemy of the players on the level of aliens, really. “And before you ask, the rest isn’t in good shape either. Around ? of Outer Colonies is either authoritarian or totalitarian as well, not to mention being perpetually busy fighting each other, aliens and the Federation. Also both hardline nazis and the Stalin-era communists are back… and are superpowers."

  Then again, the ? of the Outer Colonies that managed to hold its ground from the wave of extremism was a pretty decent place to live. With its own problems, but still pretty decent. Even most authoritarian countries of the Ancien Regime faction were decent, they often cooperated with New North Atlantic Treaty and Res Publica Christiana against crazies like the Fourth German Reich and the USSR.

  “Also, before you ask about that as well, the Vortex World isn’t that much better. Most of the game happens in various city states are in most cases an example of cyberpunkian dystopia. Mostly because the five superpowers that divided the world are… uhm… well, three of them - Atlantic Republic, the People’s Union of America and Novaya Rossiya are literally Doomplaces of various brands. First is anarchocapitalist dream taken straight from the memes about ancaps and their child slaves, the second is in fact an extremely racist state that realized socialist utopia by designating a significant portion of the non-human population and working them to death. And Novaya Rossiya is literally a common trademark for a bunch of ruthless warlords. The Chinese Empire isn’t much better, since the worth of its citizens is directly based on how far they diverged from Humanity in a clear parody of transhumanism.”

  Both Lena and Simea went WTF. The rest as well, but in a different way since they didn’t understand a lot of words.

  “It says much about your world when the only remotely good guys are a Christian, quasi-theocratic authoritarian state that is really into jingoism and already caused two World Wars because it believes that it has a divine mandate from God to smite all the blasphemous countries on the planet and conquer it whole. They won both times, and the Atlantic Republic lost most of its territory… meaning that if the third war starts and they win again, the balance of power will probably collapse completely and it is quite possible that their victory will be sealed. Glory to the Ecumenical Union! Too bad they consider atheism a crime that is punishable by lifetime imprisonment in labour camps and think that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, hmm?”

  Then again, there were city-states with pretty much modern society but better technology. Without extremism of any of the superpowers. Even the Ecumenical Union was pictured as a country too deep into dogmatism and going too far in their persecution of non-believers. Robinson bashed everything he could, but he always showed which option was, in the end, the best of bad alternatives in his opinion.

  That was the shortest way of roughly describing the other worlds.

  Makes me wonder if the players there were imprisoned as well. If yes… well, that could be quite sad. There were supposedly no ‘Gods’ there. Religions were of course, but Gods as in the Gates of Eternity… without them, who the heck knew where the balance of game could go? Or maybe there were God-AIs there after all, just much more subtle?

  But what if the aliens win? Or the Terran Federation? Or the Atlantic Republic? What if the Players will have to remain there forever? In Crapsack Worlds that no longer can be repaired?

  Seriously, if we had to be imprisoned in videogame… WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE A DFI GAME. WHY.

  “That sounds rather serious. At least the part I understood.” Vaera decided to speak. The rest seemed still shocked. Too much to open their mouth and say something meaningful. “Too bad I won’t be able to see other worlds, so for now let’s settle with seeing a lot of this one. Especially the Imperium.” Right, ri…

  I should have expected something was fishy about her the moment the Appraisal called her ‘Grandma’. She obviously had to have a name, right?!

  That… would explain a lot. Especially the Locust part.

  She did WHAT?! MODIFIED THE GAME SYSTEM IN A VR GAME?! WHILE BEING AN NPC?!

  HOW IS THAT EVEN FUCKING POSSIBLE.

  A short while of wait. The others on the table saw me deep in thoughts (and in Nexus), and were busy trying to not interrupt me. They knew that I was going to let them in any discovery I achieved, after all.

  Interesting.

  White Sun sounded like a great deity for both Progressivists and New Dawn. They were magician ‘sects’, so strong that Imperium had to at least officially tolerate their existence. They were close to being ‘political’ parties of the Imperial Magic Guild to be honest.

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  Progressivists were resident anti-theists. More or less. They dreamt of world where casting magic didn’t require making contacts with daemons, nor any other ‘higher’ beings. New Dawn in the same time were a relatively small extremist sect that dreamed of world without magic as a whole. It was almost schizophrenic for something like that to be composed by magicians. Most of them were somehow traumatized by their magic, some others were simply a technology-geeks and the rest were misguided idealists.

  An archetype of an evil awaiting in the depths of the earth. Heh. This means that he was literally spawned as a being that slumbers beneath the earth, awaiting to be awakened by Those That Mined Too Deep... by thoughts of people that believed that there was something slumbering beneath the earth, awaiting to be awakened by Those That Mined Too Deep.

  He was literally a local variant of a Balrog. No one could tell what exactly was behind the stone walls of the caves and mines. It was a mystery. And even if you mined a corridor or a hall, the mystery remained, only the walls were slightly further. These thoughts ended up spawning some... unpleasant beings.

  Ore Golems were one thing, they normally weren’t really aggressive unless you were in an anomaly. If you uncovered one in a normal mine, you could quite easily persuade it to protect your miners. They were a daemons of the Pantheon of Elements, and thus essentially neutral to mortals. No benevolence but also no malevolence. You could easily bribe them with offerings and so on. It was the same with most things you could find.

  Well, there were also less pleasant things that could slumber beneath your mine. Seems like Ardent Flame discovered that the hard way.

  Still, it doesn’t sound like they ran into a simple spore. “Dangerous daemonic incursion” was, obviously, dangerous… but to miners. Not to an entire base filled with zealous members of a holy order of Overtyrant. Judging from the number of Devoured we ran into they had at least a dozen knights and maybe a hundred soldiers.

  Magicians as well, probably, but we were yet to encounter them. Zhrhr’s spawns being mostly impervious to Overtyrant’s magic was probably important, but for that exact reason no one sane made guilds/orders/groups aligned only to a single type of magic.

  It was a small army. And that was without taking daemons into account. If they had a church inside the Hold - which they most likely did - it was bound to have a guardian spirit, some servile daemon of Overtyrant. Since it was surrounded by a lot of zealous people, it was bound to be around… well, Gold grade was the lowest possible estimate. Then a melines, which would probably try to beat back the being attacking her domain. And, back then, probably had at last a few lesser daemons under her thumb.

  All of that amounted to nothing. The Zhkrkrkrkrk forces curb-stomped them. Blitzkrieged them to death. So fast, that the whole order barely managed to organise a resistance after losing… well, no idea how big the second level was, but let’s say 90% of their base. And even then, they were forced to resort to an acid moat to contain the thing inside.

  There were some dark secrets awaiting us in the deeper part of this place. Of course, if Zhyhyrk was truly the one responsible for it, rather than having his spawn sneak his way into the already fallen place. Ugh.

  ***

  We were in the middle of our journey back, when I got another message.

  And that’s the best way of showing just how important knowledge was in DFI’s games. With the confirmation that Zhyrkh was responsible for all the shit we had to face on the second level of the hold, we weren’t going to delve deeper without arming ourselves in PROPER weaponry.

  Of course, we had only a single sorcerer with some strength in fire magic department. But Vaera was far from specializing in it. And while we had several people that could use holy magic (me, Leria and, in critical situation, the priests), exactly all of them practices character aligned holy magic.

  There were two basic types of holy magic. One attuned to nature and one to character. Nature meant that beings of ‘evil’ nature - be it daemons servile to evil beings/gods, undead or everything from Beyond - were vulnerable to it by default. Character meant that the damage you received from it was proportional to the number of evil deeds (sins, in other words) you commited.

  There was a reason why many religions had confession rituals. Even the worst person, if he or she confessed and repented could instantly become absolutely invulnerable to character aligned holy magic. Of course only if it was genuine on his part, otherwise it was simply another sin of trying to exploit the rituals of a god for your own gain.

  The problem was that while character holy magic worked like a charm against evil mortals (naturally resistant against nature holy magic) and average evil daemons, things get messy with Aberrants and Beyond as a whole due to how different they were. Which normally wasn’t a problem, as they caused maybe 5% of this world’s supernatural problems, but our ‘playthrough’ was obviously focused on them. They still got damaged due to how… contrary to them the Anathemas were, but the damage was much, much lower than it should.

  Inri was 100 to character and 0 to nature. Overtyrant 90 to 10. Bright Lady 66 to 33 He-Who-Is 50 to 50. Allfather 33 to 66. Allmaker 25 to 75. Shimmer 10 to 90. Goddess 0 to 100. That covered the most common brands of holy magic.

  Which meant that the only magic user in the Hold that was more or less suited to combat the Spawns was… Ytar. My underaged assistant. Leria would probably chop my head off if I suggested sending him into battle, though. And even then he knew only a few basic spells he learned because of his familiar. Even exploiting two vulnerabilities at once (as Shimmer’s magic was both nature-aligned holy magic and light magic) wouldn’t close the gap.

  Note to self - when we have money, buy some grenades. Incendiary, explosive and flash. Oh, and some magical variant of flashlight, as strong as possible. Might be nice as a debuff.

  ***

  We returned to the Hold after few more hours.

  I was welcomed by a lot of things requiring my attention. Or at least reports about things happening.

  Both villages began organizing agriculture, namely their magical-tainted mosses. There was a lot of space in the caves, but some of them suggested making faux ‘walls’, lined up neatly, in the more open parts of it. Not unlike a bricked version of vineyard.

  Which, of course, meant money. Since bricks weren’t exactly free to grab. Ugh. I decided to leave overseeing the agriculture to Kytar, the head of our workforce. The workforce had suddenly swollen in size.

  At least settling the place up went well. Some people already had begun fishing, the Kovacs group returned with food, and had departed on a raid to an anomaly.

  Both priests more or less finished setting up shrines. The power of the melines was still detectable around the graveyard, which suggested that she might actually survive, especially since there was a tad bit more of it now than earlier.

  Nice.

  Then the forest elf - named Aoneer Valanor - came back. This time wearing a cloak (one with a ranger feeling to it) and with a bow, quiver and a long dagger. Nice to see my money being properly invested.

  He carried a deer on his back.

  “Hi, boss. I’m back.” … If Kytar made the villagers refer to me by ‘boss’ as well… then I’m going to kick his ass.

  “Nice equipment. And it’s great to see you contribute somewhat to our food storages.” He nodded.

  “Well, yes, but that’s not all I want to talk about.” Oh? “I already managed to at least briefly scout the forests surrounding this place.”

  “You did it already?!” Wasn’t it like two days since I paid him?

  “Well, I’m a forest elf.” Oh, right. They weren’t too strong, but they were natural born long distance runners. Every forest elf could run for a whole day easily. Courtesy of the Xylian Dominion, that made them to be their hunter-gatherers and messengers.

  He probably ran to the city, bought everything and then ran back… before running through the forests surrounding the Hold. If only to get a rough gist of the place.

  “I see. Did you find anything interesting?”

  “You could say that, yeah. Well, the weirdest thing is that… well, these forests are absolutely peaceful.” And how is that weird? “I actually asked villagers that live nearby and… they are all convinced that this area is literal deathtrap.”

  Say what?!

  “There are signs of a wolfpack hunting around, there were few low grade wild daemons but rather peaceful to outsiders… plus a lot of different animals that could be hunted for food. “The ranger continued. “Like deer. There is literally nothing that’s really dangerous to me. I have a theory.” I loved people smart enough to make theories when they encountered something weird. “There was some sort of cult living around here, right?” I nodded. “Well, they might have purposefully cultivated the area’s fame of being a ‘place of no return’ to keep people out.”

  “Well, that would explain why they had no problems visiting the city and returning back, despite the lands around supposedly being dangerous. And without any civilization in the area.” I commented.

  “Yes. Another idea is that there is some sort of apex predator living further south.” Ouch. “Something that scared and chased away everything that could rival it. Imperial griffin or wyvern, maybe even a dragon or a roc. But I’ve seen no signs of it, so it’s merely a back-up theory.”

  Now that was interesting.

  “So… is it safe to have people go forage at least nearby the entrance?” It would be useful for our food supply. At least after the winter.

  “Not for now, though I did see some berry bushes. Of course, it’s too late for that. There are some mushrooms that grow through the winter, but I’m yet to give the green light. If you give me something nice, I could make an offering to the naiads living in the nearest river and ask them few questions about the area.”

  “Consider it done. I have few bottles of decent alcohol, leftover after the previous owners of this place.” I answered. “I’ll give one to you. Anything else?”

  “Actually… yeah.” He gave me an almost embarassed look. “It might sound crazy, but I found something… weird.” I’m not sure i I like the sound of that. “I think there is a dungeon growing in the cave maybe an hour away from here.”

  DUNGEON?!

  “There is what?!” I seriously needed a clarification for that.

  “There is a dungeon.” He repeated. “Yes, I know this is crazy, but there is certainly a cave with a lot of magic coming out. I took a look inside and… well, everything looks exactly like I remembered dungeons to look like. I don’t think anyone discovered it, at least judging from complete lack of footprints and tracks. Though there are some signs around indicating that something leaves the place from time to time and drags hunted animals inside.”

  That… was a big thing.

  Dungeons weren’t exactly that rare, though Ambryxis (with three dungeons, Depraved Pits, Catacombs and the Burning Abyss) was an anomaly. Most bigger cities had at least a single one, since it was a much more reliable source of aether than magical anomalies (that, in turn, offered another interesting things so they were kinda equally important to local economy).

  According to mythology, the first Dungeon was created due to divine bet. Hammer (White Pantheon God of Crafting as a whole) and Demiurge (Black Pantheon God of… well, Crafting, but also Progress and Science) had a crush on Inspiration, White Pantheon Goddess of Arts and Beauty. Many contests ensued, but Hammer’s creations were too repetitive, and those of Demiurge liked to randomly explode.

  One of the contests was unique, since they were supposed to cooperate and make a single thing together. Hammer gave the item an ability to change its surroundings and create things on its own. Demiurge gave it the ability to grow stronger and improve itself. Then things went downhill, because the whole bet was a scheme of Shadow, an Imperial Religion resident jerkass since Discord’s unfortunate fall into Pentagram.

  Shadow gave the item free will, mind and soul. Hammer was enraged, since he was completely against making his creation sapient or sentient. While he was busy invading Evernight (Shadow’s realm in Gehenna) for revenge, Demiurge (mostly amused with the whole affair), gave the first Dungeon Core a few finishing touches and let it loose in the Real World.

  The first Dungeon Core was believed to be the sole Black Crystal-grade dungeon (capable of creating up to 200 floors) beneath the Imperium’s capital. They used it to train the Imperial Magic Guild (and few other imperial organisations) novices. His offsprings were the Black Gold-grade Dungeons (up to 180 floors), their descendants were Adamantite-grade Dungeons (up to 160 floors) and so it went all the way to Copper-grades (20 floors) that were essentially barren. But were still useful.

  Depraved Pits were supposedly Platinum grade (100 floors), while Catacombs and Burning Abyss were Gold (80) and Silver (60) grade. Which was even more unique than the overall number of dungeons in a single city, however big, since most of them had Iron and Copper grade Dungeons at best.

  If one of the three Dungeon Lords of Ambryxis had an… ‘illegitimate’ child that settled around here… well, that was a big thing. Really big. Even if it was merely an Iron grade. Especially if we managed to forge a profitable relationship with its Dungeon Lord. If we could use it to train new recruits in a relatively safe environment…

  I guess it’s time to conquer a Dungeon.