I woke from a dream of a dead girl. I wasn’t sure when my skill had ended, and my dreams began. For a long and terrible moment, I couldn’t remember which of us I was. Was I Tavi the goblin thief? Was I Infinity the Traveler? Which one was the dream, and which one was real?
In that moment of confusion and doubt I thought that there was someone else I should be too. Then that memory fled like a dream on waking, and I found myself looking at my character sheet and hoping it would answer my questions.
> Adventurer Tavi (Infinity), The Rule-Breaker
>
> Level 23 Female Goblin Thief
>
> Species: Nilbog (Goblin, Level 11) / Valerian (Level 4)
>
> Class: Thief (Level 5) / Trailblazer (Level 3)
>
> Resources
>
> Health: 100 / 100
>
> Mana: 100 / 100
>
> Stamina: 100 / 100
>
> Defenses
>
> Armor: 13
>
> Resistance: 12
>
> Dodge: 14
>
> Attributes
>
> Strength: 10
>
> Agility: 16
>
> Dexterity: 16
>
> Fortitude: 10
>
> Toughness: 10
>
> Intelligence: 13
>
> Wisdom: 10
>
> Charisma: 10
>
> Willpower: 13
>
> Perception: 15
>
> Luck: 13
For some reason, reading over my stats calmed me down. Despite everything, this was a world of order built on numbers, and that knowledge gave me comfort. I was Infinity, and I was also Tavi in a way. What was left of her at least. Last night I’d dreamed her life as vividly as if I’d lived it.
It had started with the memory I’d selected from the logs, a simple scene where Lucus and I had been preparing the rooftop getaway where Tavi had ultimately died. It was boring, Tavi had been bored while doing it and I was bored reliving it. I hadn’t known I was reliving it though.
The illusion of being Tavi had been so complete that until I’d woken moments ago I’d not known it wasn’t real. I’d heard her thoughts and knew them for my own. I’d been able to remember her past as if I’d lived it. I had lived it.
Now it was fading, but I knew I’d spent the entire night dreaming her dreams. I blushed remembering flashes of some of them, and then just as quickly found myself crying for reasons I couldn’t entirely define.
It was just wrong. She wasn’t an NPC like I’d first thought, nobody here was. She’d had dreams and goals and a zeal for life I could hardly credit, and then I’d come along and stolen all of that from her just because I wanted to dream too.
I was a monster wearing her skin, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I cried into my pillow for a while but managed to pull myself together before my cellmates roused themselves. The last thing I wanted was for them to find me crying in bed again.
It was still dark in the prison when I woke, with only the barest sliver of light starting to shine in through the barred window. Since I had some time, I decided to take a look at the achievements I’d gotten the previous night while I waited for my cellmates to wake up.
> New Achievement
>
> It’s Not Luck, It’s Skill
>
> You have discovered a new skill for the first time. I hope it wasn’t something weird or useless like Underwater Basket Weaving. Will you keep your discovery a secret? Will you hoard it amongst your close associates? Or will you teach the world a new trick?
>
> Rewards Earned:
> An extra free rank in the skill you discovered
> New Achievement
>
> It’s Just Goblin Spelled Backwards
>
> You are the first to select the Tier 1 Goblin species evolution “Nilbog”, becoming the first of your kind in the world! The legendary Nilbog turns the normal Goblin on its head, proving remarkably hard to kill unlike their more standard kin. Few things can frustrate a powerful opponent more than a Nilbog who’s decided to stand in their way.
>
> Rewards Earned:
> +10pp (Universal)
> Title Unlocked (“Immortal”)
> New Achievement
>
> Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
>
> Congratulations! You have evolved your species for the first time. You are on the path to becoming the best version of yourself.
>
> Rewards Earned:
> +10pp (Goblin)
I groaned to myself when I read the first message. For whatever reason achievements didn’t give their reward until you read the achievement message, even if the reward was intangible. If I’d checked my achievements before using Devil in the Details last night, it would have been at rank 2 and I would have had twice as long of a vision.
I guess it hadn’t really mattered given what had ended up happening, but it was still a stupid mistake. I’d need to be more vigilant about checking these things. It was interesting that I appeared to have double-dipped on that particular achievement, as I’d also been given an achievement for being the first Traveler to discover a skill. That was probably an oversight, but not one that could be repeated.
Before I got distracted with anything else I went and had a look at the title I’d just gotten.
> Immortal
>
> Title (Tier 5)
>
> Some seek immortality with the fervor of the condemned, yet others see it as a curse. The difference is often one of perspective - fortunately you’ll have plenty of time to think about it.
>
> While this title is equipped your body will not experience physical deterioration, making you immune to the physical effects of old age. You will not die from old age, and you are immune to effects which would normally accelerate aging.
>
> Warning: This title may be earned in several ways having to do with finding ways around death. It does not prevent you from being killed, and killing someone who possesses this title is one of the ways to earn it.
Holy shit. I could be immortal?
On second thought, did I even need this title to be immortal? How do gemstones even age? Presumably this would affect Tavi’s body. Goblins didn’t live as long as humans, not even close if the memory I’d viewed last night was to be believed. This title might fix that.
I wasn’t going to die of old age overnight, but I decided that I wanted to keep this equipped as much as possible. I hadn’t really thought about my lifespan until just this moment, but now I had a bunch of unanswerable questions.
It suddenly put a lot of things into a new perspective.
I calmed myself down and beat off the intrusive thoughts. I couldn’t let this get to me, aging a week wasn’t going to be an issue and I didn’t want anyone here to discover I had this title. If you could become immortal by killing someone with the title, I couldn’t let anyone know I had this or I’d wake up one day with my throat slit.
I was going to use it as much as possible until I figured out just how mortal I really was. Once I had though, I might just break it and get rid of any extra incentive for anyone to kill me. If my soul gem aged at the geological timescale, I’d be ok with not being completely immortal. Even if that meant needing to replace bodies from time to time.
By this time my cellmates had begun to stir. I had pretended to be asleep so as not to be the first one awake. I didn’t want to answer too many questions if I could help it.
Eventually they started talking and I used the opportunity to stretch and yawn, then sat up in bed and had a look around. My stomach also decided this would be an ideal time to rumble loud enough to be heard by the entire cell block.
“So, uh… When’s breakfast?” I asked.
***
My cellmates turned out to be an eclectic crew, but I immediately liked them.
Zaeri was a gnome, and the only person I’d met in this world shorter than myself. She had the top bunk across from mine. She was in jail for getting drunk and knifing three people in a bar fight. None of them had died, thankfully.
The bunk under Zaeri was occupied by Yanell, a vanilla human that was here for no crime other than vagrancy. She was homeless and had gotten picked up in by one of the sweeps of the city back alleys that the duke sometimes ordered.
Regga was an orc, and she had the bunk under mine. Apparently, she was a local business owner, having a tavern near the river dock on the opposite side of the city. She was in jail for breaking a man’s arm with her bare hands after he’d refused to leave one of her barmaids alone.
Regga was apparently a regular here, and for very similar reasons each time. She’d be hauled in for beating the crap out of an unruly customer, spend a few days running the dungeon, and then be released a few days later. She seemed to think of everyone around her as her children and hovered over me like a worried parent from the moment I woke up.
When it came time to tell my story, I was cut off before I could get into any detail as the guards came by to usher us all to the mess hall. I’d been told to expect this, as this was also where we’d be forming our teams for the dungeon.
What I hadn’t been told to expect was the shower. We were moved one cell block at a time, and each block showered en masse. Showering wasn’t even quite the right word, as it was more like walking into a room and having a bucket of water dumped on your head. Other than that, it was much like showering in high school after gym.
This was also where we got fresh clothing. I kept my leather vest and gloves but found and equipped a whole new set of other clothes, including a replacement for my lost shirt. The system for equipping ourselves was something else.
Along the back wall of the shower room were piles of random clothes sorted only by type, it looked like they just dumped the clean laundry here and left it. Hell, maybe they did the laundry in this very room. There were clothes for all sorts of body types, some only vaguely humanoid, but I managed to find some things that fit me well enough.
There was also a place here for us to deposit used rags and get new ones. Now that I knew this wasn’t a game, I was all but sure I was going to find out what menstruation was like firsthand. I was not at all happy about it. Maraci had told me to expect it sometime today, but I had no idea what it would be like.
My cellblock was on the ground floor of the prison, which made us last to enter the dungeon. The top floors would already be in the dungeon by the time we ate breakfast. Our floor would go in last and come out last, and we’d never even see the other floor’s residents.
Higher floors were apparently for more dangerous criminals, and we weren’t allowed to mix. There were even different rules for each floor as to how they could enter the dungeon.
As to our actual dungeon groups, I wouldn’t be going in with my cellmates - they each already had groups, and each group was comprised of as good a mix of skills as the prisoners were able to work out.
Unfortunately, there weren’t a whole lot of magic users in the prison, or at least not on the first floor, and perhaps too many sneaky types. My public class was Thief, so I was going to get lumped in with the latter group. It was eerily similar to the problem DPS characters faced in most MMOs.
Regga and the others stayed with me while we went through the food line, but then she directed me to a smaller table in the middle of the room. This was where you sat if you needed a new group, and the leaders of other groups would come by and talk to you.
If the table wasn’t empty by the time we were to head into the dungeon the guards would sort it out. Nobody wanted that since the guards were more concerned about everyone going in than the groups actually being effective. They would break up groups into smaller ones if they needed to fit someone in.
I sat down at the table with my bowl of mystery-meat stew–the approved meal for carnivorous inmates no matter the time of day. It was oddly not terrible, but then I wasn’t sure how you would mess up stew.
Our floor was allowed to make teams with other cell blocks, so it was a packed mess hall. The sexes were separated in our cells but intermingled here. That’s why when a man sat down at the table across from me it took me a moment before I registered the problem.
Then I looked up from my bowl of stew and directly into pale violet eyes. They reminded me of my first moments in this world.
I immediately inhaled stew and spent the next few minutes coughing. That at least gave me time to get my bearings and figure out how to approach this. During this time Lucus calmly ate his breakfast, his eyes hardly leaving me as he apparently assured himself that I was all in one piece.
I thought back to the memory I’d viewed last night. Lucus had featured prominently in it, and I found myself blushing again as I remembered it. Not that anything had happened, but I’d gotten a completely uncensored view into Tavi’s head during that period, and the poor girl very obviously had an extremely confused crush on this boy.
From the perspective of an outsider, it was almost comically cliche. I could easily see that Lucus was in love with Tavi, and she was infatuated with him. The problem was that the two of them approached relationships so differently that they practically weren’t speaking the same language. I’d gotten some very eye-opening insights into how she thought last night, but I’d also understood Lucus far better than Tavi ever had.
What it came down to was that goblins lived fast and hard. Their species survived off their numbers, and those numbers came from rapid reproduction. Tavi and Ryke hadn’t been raised in a goblin society so their view on the subject wasn’t as stark as their biology wanted to make it, but I knew now that neither of them had expected to live long.
As the only two goblins in the house, they’d talked about this quite a bit. They’d learned to keep it from the others because it was hard for their adopted family to understand, particularly Narani who was apparently over a hundred years old already.
The reality was that by goblin standards Tavi was already middle aged, despite only being a few years older than Maraci. Goblin lifespans typically declined rapidly at around forty, though apparently dying of old age was rarely a concern.
Had she grown up in a goblin society Tavi would have been expected to be a mother by now, most likely several times over. She hadn’t been paying off her Expendable penalty because she had a death wish like Narani had thought, but because she was all but certain she’d never live long enough for it to matter.
Goblins weren’t meant to live long, it was just how things were.
All of this I now understood because I had a perfect understanding of Tavi’s thought process while she’d been thinking about her relationship with Lucus - or rather the lack of one. Tavi wasn’t planning for the future and never had been, she was living in the moment. She found Lucus attractive and liked his company. To Tavi, that meant they should be spending every spare moment enjoying each other in every way possible, because it was doomed not to last.
Lucus wasn’t human, not fully at least, but he’d been raised in human society and had inherited their expectations of how sex and romance were supposed to work. Tavi vaguely understood this but couldn’t take it seriously. Her life was simply too short to worry about such things, and she had no instinctive desire for a long lasting monogamous relationship. She didn’t understand why Lucus was holding her at arm’s reach even as he so obviously seemed to be attracted to her.
From my perspective, the answer was simple. Lucus wanted more out of a relationship than Tavi knew how to give. He loved her, and he could see she didn’t love him. The fact that she was willing to sleep with him wasn’t a positive for Lucus. He obviously believed if he took her up on it then that would be the extent of their relationship, and I had to agree with his assessment.
Tavi essentially wanted to be friends with benefits, and if she had gotten it, she would have stopped pursuing him. He was playing hard to get and it was driving Tavi crazy. It was absurd that I’d been able to deduce this entire thing from roughly a minute’s worth of memories and a few embarrassing dreams.
Looking at Lucus now, his eyes were practically devouring the sight of me and I swore I could feel their heat on my skin. This sort of look had confused Tavi to no end because to her it practically screamed desire, but Lucus never followed up on it. It made my cheeks heat up just thinking about it. I wasn’t used to people looking at me like that.
I had to give it to him, he understood Tavi very well. There was only one problem with that.
Tavi was dead.
Despite appearances I was not Tavi. I might be wearing her body, and that might have come with some unfortunate side effects, but I was very definitely not Tavi. Sure, I could see what she’d seen in the guy, as much as I might prefer not to, but it didn’t matter.
Even if I was inclined to pursue a relationship with Lucus, it wasn’t me he was in love with. That person had died in his arms, and he didn’t even know it. The thought of tricking him into the relationship he wanted to have with Tavi made me physically ill.
Despite that, for a long moment I found myself getting caught up in the image of what would happen if I just told Lucus what I knew he wanted to hear. My dreams last night had been full of this man, and now that he was sitting in front of me I was having trouble remembering why it was such a bad thing if we had a little fun?
With an act of will I forcibly pulled myself away from that line of thinking and made a whole new mental closet just for Lucus. Then I shoved that thought into it and slammed a padlock on the door. I might not be Tavi, but she sure was trying to wear off on me.
Getting control of myself, I loud-whispered to him across the table. ”Lucus, what are you doing here? Did the guards catch you?”
“I turned myself in late last night. Our merchant friend had put a warrant out on me as well. Since I don’t have his property there’s not much they could do to me besides throw me in here. I wasn’t going to let you face the dungeon on your own if I could help it.”
Oh perfect. He was trying to protect me. What would Tavi say here? She was apparently suicidally reckless so… “I’d have been fine. Now I’m going to have to protect you!”
I waggled my ears dramatically for emphasis. That was something I’d picked up from her memory last night. Ears were particularly expressive for goblins, it turned out. I thought it was due to the lack of true eyebrows.
He just smiled wider at that. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle myself.”
I was bailed out at that moment as someone approached us from one of the other tables. He was a lean man with wiry muscles and dirty blonde hair. “Name’s Arven, I’m in need of a Tough for my group. You want in?” He asked Lucus.
Lucus motioned to me. “We’re a pair, got room for both of us?”
Arven looked at me doubtfully. “What class are you girl? My group goes deep into the dungeon, I won’t take anyone that can’t survive.”
“I’m a Thief,” I told him. “Level 5.”
He was already shaking his head. “No way. We have a rogue already and no offense, but goblins aren’t known for being too great at staying alive. I won’t have your death on my conscience.”
“Hey now, wait a second! I can take care of myself,” I protested to maintain the character. Inside I was glad. I didn’t want to risk dying, even with all the work I’d done last night on improving my survivability.
Lucus had other ideas, and he caught the man’s arm as he turned away. “Hold on. If you’re going deep in the dungeon without a full group and surviving that tells me you know what you are doing. Do you really think she’d be better off with some reckless group of newbies who don’t know what they are getting into? If you have the room, take us both and we’ll keep her out of danger. I’m a Scion of Stone, you know what that means?”
Arven stopped and turned back to us. “I suspected when I saw your eyes, sure. It’s why I wanted you on my team.”
“Well then you know I can protect her.” Lucus told him.
“I know you can protect yourself, but what are you going to do when something sneaks up on us and takes her out in one blow?”
I cleared my throat at this point. “‘Scuse me, but I’m right here, you know?”
The thing was, that I actually agreed with Lucus’s line of reasoning here. Arven seemed to know what he was doing, and it might actually be safer to go with him than someone less experienced. I needed to convince him to take me with his group, not just act like I wanted to.
“I’ll have you know; I have the Danger Sense passive at rank 3, nothing’s going to find it easy to sneak up on me.” I grinned at them, showing off all my teeth.
Lucus shot me a confused glance, but Arven looked interested. “Danger Sense? Our Rogue has that but only at rank 1. I didn’t think Thief got that until higher levels. How’s your stats then? It’ll do you no good if you’ve got shit for luck and perception or wisdom.”
“Perception is 15, Luck is 13. Wisdom is only 10.”
I saw him thinking it over, then he grunted. “That’s not bad for your level. Alright, you can keep an eye on our flanks, but I don’t want you getting up close and personal with the monsters in there. We’ll grab you a crossbow from the armory on the way in and you’ll hang back picking off anything that tries to get the drop on us. We can spend a few days getting you some levels before we do anything too dangerous.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Lucus was still looking at me curiously, but I ignored him for the moment, standing up on my chair to reach across the table to shake Arven’s hand. “Deal!”
Arven had us join him and his team at their table. Each table in the room had eight chairs, which was also the maximum number of people that could be in a group. It worried me a bit that this group was already half the maximum size, but looking around the room made it clear that six was the average. Only a few parties had all eight slots filled.
Lucus and I sat side by side as Arven took the seat across from us. “Let's do a round of introductions and I’ll get you both a group invite,” he said. “I’ll start. I’m Arven, a human as you can probably see, and my class is called Whirlwind Skirmisher, it’s a rare Tier 3 class that focuses on fighting in light armor with two weapons. I’m in here because I accidently killed a man in what was supposed to be a duel to first blood.”
Arven nodded to the person to his left, a man with gray skin like Regga’s, though he wasn’t nearly as muscular as she was. “I’m Savas, nice to meet you. I’m an orc rogue. I’m working towards qualifying for the Gambler class so I’m not the best in combat. I’m uh, in here because I made a few bad bets, and my creditors sent me to work off my debts… I’m maybe not the best at gambling either.”
He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I do have fast hands though.”
The next person was seated beside me, she was a stunning Devilkin woman with small horns like Maraci’s poking out from under golden blonde hair. Her skin was midnight black, but her eyes were gold to match her hair. I was intimidated just sitting next to her, she was so gorgeous that for the first time I was thankful that I was no longer attracted to women as I’d have been just as helpless in front of her as I had been yesterday with Javril.
“I’m Dawn, nice to meet you both,” she said with a breathy voice. “I’m a Cleric of The Adversary. I’m in here for practicing “forbidden rituals.” She rolled her eyes as she said this.
Arven snorted at this. “She’s in here for ritually sacrificing some poor fool to her god and summoning a devil. Only reason she’s not on the second or third floor is that the Advocates intervened on her behalf and got her a lighter sentence.”
“The Lord Adversary takes care of his people,” she said. “I did it on his order after all. Admittedly I wasn’t supposed to get caught, but alas. Anyway, my loss is your gain. I’m one of the few people that knows healing magic in here.”
She looked down at me. “What about you little one, what do you bring to our group?”
I stood up on my chair to get more-or-less eye level with the rest of them. “I’m Tavi, and I’m a goblin thief. Yesterday I got hit in the head so hard it knocked over a building, so I’m pretty sure I’m immortal or something. Anyway, I’ve got this Danger Sense skill that tells me when bad stuff is about to happen so Arven wanted me to come along and keep you all safe. Nice to meet you all.”
I heard the sound as Lucus smacked his forehead. “Tavi, please take this seriously,” he said.
“What? It’s true!”
Another man who hadn’t been introduced yet chimed in. “If you have Danger Sense, why didn’t you avoid getting hit in the head?”
He was a human like Arven, but dark skinned and with a shaven head and smooth voice. He was also too smart for his own good, I decided.
“Obviously I wasn’t in any danger,” I told him, trying to project a smug air.
Exasperated, Lucus jumped back into the conversation. “I’m sorry everyone. I promise she takes things seriously once the action starts. I’m Lucus, I’m a Human Scion of Stone and my class is Tactician.”
This got some raised eyebrows around the table, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of his subspecies or class, or both.
“If you aren’t aware, Tactician is a rare Tier 3 class that focuses on party buffs and planning. It’s not normally a frontline class but my subspecies lets me lead from the front when I need to. Tavi and I are both in here because we allegedly stole from a wealthy merchant who decided to put a warrant on both of us when he couldn’t prove it. Tavi was nearly killed in a building collapse yesterday but received healing in time to save her life.”
I let out a “harumph!” and sat back down in my chair.
Everyone looked way more impressed with Lucus’s story than they had with mine, which was exactly what I wanted. I put on an annoyed expression regardless and waited for the introductions to continue.
The dark-skinned man who’d spoken up earlier went last. “My name is Dorian, and I’m a human Chanter. My class is a Tier 2 version of the bard class. I can inspire my allies to great feats while placing banes on my enemies. I’m in here because my dashing good looks were considered too dangerous to be released on the unsuspecting public.”
“A pity they confiscated them on your way in then,” Dawn quipped, “Don’t listen to him, he won’t tell us what he did to get tossed in here but every time we ask the guards they just laugh, so he probably got drunk and ran naked through the streets or something. He’s good enough in a fight though.”
“Tavi is going to act as a ranged lookout for us. I don’t want her getting into melee combat, goblin health being what it is. Lucus will be our front man. Anyone have any problems with that?” Arven asked, looking around the table for signs of disagreement.
“As long as they pull their weight I couldn’t care less,” Dawn said. “I don’t heal dead weights.”
“We’ll hold our own, don’t worry. We’re used to working as a team,” Lucus said.
“Welcome to the team then,” Arven said. Then he squinted first at Lucus, then me. A moment later I got a new prompt.
> System Message
>
> Party Invitation
>
> Arven Wyse has invited you to join his party. Accept?
>
> Yes / No
I selected yes, and suddenly my health, mana, and stamina bars were joined by 5 more sets of smaller bars. Just like in most multiplayer games, I could see my party’s health and other resources, and probably also their buffs and debuffs… or boons and banes as they called them here. Slowly I realized that everyone was staring at me, and it occurred to me that they could see my stats too. Whoops.
“Jira! She has as much health as I do,” Dorian complained. “I thought goblins were supposed to keel over in a stiff breeze?”
“She’s not a goblin, see? She’s a Nilbog, whatever that is… It’s a goblin subspecies, but not one I’m familiar with,” Dawn said, sounding thoughtful.
“Hey, don’t go blabbing my secrets!” I told them, desperately trying to figure out how much they could see and how they were seeing it. I couldn’t even see my own health except as a percentage, how did they know how much health I had compared to them?
I opened my menu and saw that there was now a “Party” option available. Clicking on it opened something like my character sheet, but extremely abridged. I relaxed a little as I saw that my total level, class, and species were pretty much the only other info it showed beyond my various resource pools.
Then I noticed that my name on the party screen read “Adventurer Tavi, the Rule-Breaker” and winced. Other than Arven, I was the only one in the list with even a single title that wasn’t “Prisoner.” He was listed as Blademaster Arven Wyse, the Prisoner, which was interesting by itself. He was also level 60, which was higher than the party average of 40.
A moment later Savas noticed the titles. I got to watch it happen. His eyes bugged out and he stood up from the table, then visibly forced himself to sit back down. Everyone was distracted by this for a moment, so I took the opportunity to look him directly in the eyes and say “I said, don’t go blabbing my secrets…”
He flinched, then nodded, and everyone looked back and forth between me and him. Arven noticed next, and he just leaned back in his chair and looked at me. “I’m going to need an explanation for all this when we get into the dungeon, you understand?”
Then, to everyone else who hadn’t figured it out yet said, “Look at her name in the party menu, don’t say anything.”
The reactions were predictable at this point, except for Lucus, who just looked down and raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged in response and told him “I had a busy day yesterday.”
I was just glad I hadn’t equipped the Souleater title yet. I didn’t think it would show since it was an accolade slot, but I planned to check the second I thought nobody was looking.
Breakfast continued in silence for a few minutes, and I made sure to ham it up a bit, slurping my stew down and then belching something fierce. I was trying to act as unconcerned as possible, but my mind was racing, trying to figure out how I was going to play this.
I could tell the others anything I wanted, but whatever I said had to be something Lucus would believe. Fortunately, I had laid some groundwork here the last time I spoke to him. The other part of that plan was going to be a bit more distasteful.
I did finally figure out how they could tell what my health was at. By looking carefully at their pools, I found that it was possible to get a sense of how much of each resource they had in comparison to me.
Dawn for example had much more mana, Lucus had significantly more health and stamina. Arven on the other hand had the most resources of the entire group in every category. I couldn’t put numbers on anything, but it was somehow obvious that their full bars were considerably larger than my full bars. It was a very strange mechanic.
“Prisoners! Breakfast is over. Remain at your tables until called, then report to me.”
Each table had a number painted on it. Our table was number three, and I watched as two other tables were called up and given backpacks filled with dried food appropriate to their dietary needs, and then sent through a door on the opposite end of the mess hall from where we’d entered.
“Through there is the armory,” Arven explained. “There’s a stockpile of weapons and armor in there, but if you try to take it out through the mess hall door it’ll vanish right out of your hands. The other side of the armory is the checkpoint, it’s where you check in anything you’re bringing into the dungeon. When you exit everything you’re wearing and carrying except what you’ve checked in will be teleported right off you. Don’t try and smuggle anything in or out, it won’t work.”
We were called up and one by one we took our packs and made our way into the armory. I walked over to the ranged weapons, but the crossbows were too high up for me to grab. “Hey Lucus, give me a boost here would ya?”
“Don’t you want to get a dagger? I thought you preferred knives to ranged weapons,” he asked.
“Oh, I’ll get a knife too, but the plan was for me to use a crossbow, right?” I winked at him as I echoed back words, he’d spoken in my vision the previous night. “You’re always telling me it’ll be fine if I stick to the plan.”
“Which one do you want, I’ll grab it for you.”
I pointed to a random crossbow that looked small enough for me to draw. As he handed me the weapon, I noticed that the tension around his eyes had eased slightly. We were back on familiar ground for him.
“Take these too,” he said, handing me a metal lever contraption, and a thick leather belt. “That’s a spanning belt and a devil-foot lever, use the lever if you have time, the belt if you don’t.”
I spent a few minutes figuring out how the two items worked and donning the belt, both were methods of making the crossbow easier to load. The lever could be attached to the bow to pull the string back, turning a straight movement into an arc that made it much easier to pull back a heavier draw thanks to the added leverage.
The belt worked in conjunction with the stirrup on the weapon itself and didn’t provide any mechanical advantage to drawing the bow. It just made it less awkward and changed the muscles you were using. I made sure I could draw the bow using both methods. Other than a twinge of back pain when using the belt, both methods worked acceptably well, though the lever was much easier.
I added a quiver full of bolts to my loadout, then looked at the other armory options. I grabbed a long dagger that was closer to a short sword for me, and its accompanying sheath.
Lucus outfitted himself with a spiked mace, a chain shirt, and a round shield. He also grabbed a second bundle of bolts and tossed them into his pack in case I needed them. I noticed the others grabbing ropes, grappling hooks, and other climbing equipment - not one of them took any heavy armor, so I assumed there must be a lot of vertical movement in this dungeon.
I grabbed my own set of climbing gear and asked, “So what should we expect in there? Anything I should be bringing?”
“Did nobody tell you what to expect?” Dawn asked.
Arven grunted. “Most out there don’t make it out of the sewers, they wouldn’t know what to expect.”
“I’ve heard some things, stories from ex-inmates,” Lucus said, grabbing his own set of climbing gear.
“We call it the Undercity,” Dorian said. “The stairs at the end of this hall lead into its sewers, but as far as we can tell it’s a mirror of Altria, just inverted. We’ll be on the other side of the river when we come out, then it’s just a matter of exploring until we find something interesting. We’ve been working our way towards the castle, but the entire city is overrun with undead and other monstrosities.”
I looked around the room for anything that might be good against the undead. Fire was the only thing that came to mind, and there were some torches in a barrel along one wall. I grabbed one, along with a tinderbox, and stuffed them in my pack. There didn’t seem to be any explosives or flammable oil or anything of that nature here, so I’d have to be on the lookout in the dungeon itself.
Then I had an idea.
I walked over to the guard by the mess hall door and asked, “Hey, can I get a jar of grease from the kitchen?”
He looked down at me, “Why do you want grease?”
“In case I get hungry? It’s so I can start a grease fire if I need to. What else would I do with it?”
“I’ll ask the warden…” He stepped out of the room and approached the man calling out table numbers, had a brief word, and then walked off in the direction of the kitchen.
A minute later I had a stoppered glass jar half-full of grease. I added it, and some extra rags to my pack, and considered it a double success that I didn’t need to explain why I was bringing extra rags.
We were all suited up, so we moved on to the check in process and the next group was called in to use the armory. Check in was done through a barred window, with a scribe taking notes and an actual wizard overseeing the process. That got me a bit worried, and I unequipped both my titles before he looked at me, just in case.
When it came my turn to check in, I had to climb up on a stepping stool they’d left out here for people my size. I ran through my list of stuff with no issues, but I hesitated before mentioning the last thing.
“Did anyone tell you guys about my head injury?” I asked, tapping my still-bandaged forehead.
The wizard perked up at this and leaned down to have a look at me. “Oh yes, some of the guards mentioned you to me. Let me have a look at it please.”
Reluctantly I pulled up the bandages, showing him the gemstone.
He reached through the bars and put his finger right on it. I jerked away, but it was too late.
Abelar Toury used “Greater Identify (Tier 3)” on you.
You have partially resisted Greater Identify.
Well that answered the question of what it looked like when people used skills like Identify on you. I’d gotten lucky though, I had just enough points in my Dual Nature skill that he wouldn’t have gotten anything useful out of that.
“Fascinating, an intact soul gem embedded in your forehead. You should see if you can get that thing enchanted when you get out of here, soul gems are excellent for holding spiritual power. If yours were enchanted, you might be able to produce some interesting effects.”
Everybody was looking at me again, and I quickly pulled the bandages back down over my forehead. “I’ll keep that in mind… I’m definitely trying to make the best of it.”
“Very good, now try not to fall into the sky, I’d hate to see such an interesting condition be lost to the dungeon.” Then he turned to Lucus and began the process of checking him in.
A moment later we were ready to enter the dungeon. Arven led the way. The entrance was a huge circular stone door that was rolled aside into a slot on the wall but seemed like it’d be easy to drop into place. Beyond the door was a narrow unlit stairway, and my Darkvision came in handy for keeping my footing. We walked down for a good thirty seconds before the floor leveled out.
New Achievement! “Welcome to the Dungeon”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up the moment we set foot in the dungeon proper. It felt wrong.
Dawn created a magical light that floated just above our heads, which was a lot for me, but not so much for the others. We were in an old sewer, just like you might see under certain cities in Europe even to this day. The problem, I soon realized, was that we were standing on the ceiling.
The sewer was thankfully dry, and only smelled like old dry shit instead of fresh wet shit. Ironically this probably made it better than the real sewers it emulated. I looked around, trying to understand what I was seeing.
On the “roof” two stone walkways ran to either side of a channel in the middle, clearly where water would run in a normal sewer. Somehow, we were standing on the cobblestone ceiling of an arched sewer tunnel.
“When you said inverted, you meant that a bit more literally than I thought,” I said to Dorian.
He grinned at me in the darkness, his white teeth shining in Dawn’s light. “It only gets better from here. Make sure to watch the ceiling, the dead like to cling to it and drop on us.”
“Typical strategy down here is to make your way by sewer until you find a building that can be reached from a sewer entrance. The best loot is always in the buildings, and we presume the castle is likely to have the best loot of any building. Things are normally quiet in the sewers unless an event starts, in which case we have to hide in a building if we want to have any hope of surviving.” Arven told us.
“Wait, what’s an event?” I asked.
“Every now and then a dungeon event happens. You saw that door we walked in through, right? Well two guards are stationed inside the dungeon at all times and when an event starts there’s an alert. When that happens, those two run back up the stairs and pull the stopper out of the door behind them. The door isn’t opened again until the dungeon resets, just to be safe. The dungeon event almost always involves the sewers flooding, and if they don’t stop it the water, or whatever passes for water here, will flow up the stairway and into the jail, and from the jail into the city.”
“Have you ever seen one of these things?”
Arven shook his head. “I’ve been inside when it happened before, but I didn’t see anything. It’s well known that you only have two options if you’re in the dungeon when an event starts. You either run for the exit, or you hide somewhere far from the ground. Most who get stuck in the dungeon don’t survive it, and everyone who’s survived locked themselves somewhere secure and kept their heads down.”
Dorian gave me a little more context. “The first time an event happened was when the dungeon was new. Some kind of black slime poured out and into the city, and it was full of undead. Thousands died before the Etronan army was able to clean it up.Afterwards they built the prison over the top of the entrance to keep it under control.”
I re-equipped my titles and quickly checked to see if Souleater was going to show up on the party screen. To my relief, it didn’t, and I left it equipped. I then drew my crossbow and loaded up a bolt. This crossbow had both a bolt clip and a safety like a gun that would prevent the bow from firing, so I engaged both and waited for the others to be ready.
Instead, I found them all looking at me. “Oh, right. You wanted me to explain things.”
“We’re not taking a step further until you do, that’s for damn sure,” Arven told me.
I sighed. “Listen, I can’t tell you everything but here’s what I can say. Yesterday I died, and the gods intervened - entirely for their own reasons. I agreed to do some stuff for them and in return they patched me up. In the process I got several achievements and that got me some titles and bonus progression points, which I used to pay off my Expendable penalty because I didn’t want to die again. I also put an affinity into it, and when I paid it off, I got access to the Nilbog subspecies because it’s focused on survival. The whole reason I have the Danger Sense skill is that my Adventurer title is granting it to me at rank 3.”
You could have heard a cricket chirp if there’d been any in this dungeon. The first to recover was Dawn, who was probably a bit more used to the idea of talking to gods. “Is that why you have a minor blessing from The Adversary? I wanted to ask but you know, people tend to assume the worst and all…”
“You can see that?” I asked, concerned.
She nodded, “Clergy members of sufficient rank can see those marked by their patron deities if they use an inspection skill or are in the same party. I’ve heard the highest levels of the clergy can see them passively, but I don’t know for sure…”
“Huh, well yeah, that was part of the whole deal.” I told her.
“Tavi, you made a deal with The Adversary? No offense Dawn, but Tavi, he’s evil incarnate, you can’t trust him. Whatever he asked you to do can’t be good, even if it sounds mundane.” Lucus looked very concerned, and his expression was mirrored by nearly everyone there. Even Dawn seemed wary.
I waved off their concern as casually as I could. “It wasn’t like that; he wasn’t the one I agreed to help out. I just kind of ended up helping him in the process.”
“Then who did you agree to help, and when did you find the time to do all this Tavi? I was with you all day until just before you were arrested. You couldn’t possibly have done anything in that time.”
“I told you before, it was Valera I talked to. A lot of it happened outside of time, I think. I’m pretty sure some of it was in Hel… I mean Jira. I can’t really talk much about it, but like I said I had a really long day yesterday.”
“So, what you’re telling me,” said Dorian, “is that you’re some kind of epic hero sent on a quest by the Goddess of Trials herself, and we’re in your party?”
He shook his head, grinning sadly. “We’re going to die. We’ll die legends I’m sure, but we are most certainly going to die here. Small consolation it will be to me if other bards get to sing the song of my deeds in my absence.”
Danger sense has activated.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Dorian,” Savas told him. “It’ll be… Fuck! Why’d you do that?” He cut off as I kicked him in the shin.
“Because! You were about to say something overly positive, and my danger sense started screaming at me. If I’ve learned one thing it’s that System knows the value of a good setup. Don’t give him easy ones like that.”
New Achievement! “Party Pooper”
“I just got another gods damned achievement for figuring that out!” I whisper-yelled at him.
Everyone was staring at me again, not that they’d really ever stopped. I looked up at the floor/ceiling/whatever and spoke to the air. “Look, I get it if you want to even the karmic scales a bit, but leave my friends out of it, they didn’t do anything wrong. Keep it between us alright?”
I didn’t get a response from the artificial deity, but I did get one from Lucus. “Who are you talking to Tavi?”
“System, I may be on his shit list right now,” I told him.
“Tavi… System isn’t a person, it’s a force or tool of the gods.”
I nodded. “Yeah, and he’s also an older guy that acts kinda like a butler. Lots of forces are people too. Maybe all of them. Now hold on, I need to check my notifications and see if any of this stuff will help us in here.”
> New Achievement
>
> Welcome to the Dungeon
>
> You are the first Traveler to enter a world dungeon, let’s hope you live to tell someone about it.
>
> Rewards Earned:
> +5pp (Universal)
> Title Unlocked (“Dungeon Delver”)
> New Zone Quest: “The Devil in the Bleak City”
> New Achievement
>
> Party Pooper
>
> You ruined an excellent cosmic joke out of an entirely unfair sense of self-preservation. Ah well, there’s always next time.
>
> Rewards Earned:
> Title Unlocked (“Killjoy”)
> Zone Quest
>
> The Devil in the Bleak City
>
> Evil stirs in the heart of Altria. Beneath the city, its dark mirror hangs in an empty sky. The undead haunt the streets and sewers, and the Lord of Ruin sits upon his throne.
>
> Discover the secret at the heart of the Undercity, before it’s too late.
>
> Time Limit: 30 days.
>
> Success:
> - Bonus class progression points divided equally among your group.
> - Titles for each participant.
> - Each participant will be awarded a Random Loot Box based on their participation.
>
> Failure:
> You’ll probably die. The good news is you won't be alone!
> System Alert
>
> Your support request has received a response.
>
> A support ticket you were mentioned on has been updated. You can view and respond to the ticket from the Bug Report interface.
“Huh, yeah you’re probably right Dorian, we’re fucked,” I told them. “I just got a quest with a ‘Everybody dies’ failure condition.”
There was a collective wince at this, but Arven recovered quickly. “Can you share it with us? I want to see this.”
He walked me through the process of sharing the quest, and I waited while the rest of them read it over. While they did, I looked at the support tickets.
> Support Ticket
>
> Ticket #00001596
>
> Infinity! The Adversary here. I had your tickets elevated to me as both caused some unexpected consternation amongst the Pantheon.
>
> Regarding your report of experiencing foreign emotions and sensations from your host body, we have ultimately decided that this is not a bug, but rather emergent behavior that is consistent with other system functions. System has rightly pointed out that your body is giving you feedback the same way any body would, and I suspect that you would actually find it more disturbing if it did not.
>
> You may have noticed since entering this world that your mind is both clearer and colder than normal, except when it comes to acting in your role as “Tavi the Goblin Thief”. This is because your new true body has no biology to it, the feelings and emotions you are used to feeling are largely the result of chemical influences on your brain, and without the chemicals or even a brain, you’d be feeling almost nothing at all.
>
> Tavi’s brain is acting as a sort of translation device for your perceptions of the world, which is why you are feeling things you are unused to feeling. If you want to experience things from a different perspective, I suggest you find a different body that is more to your liking. There’s some other effects in play that are also contributing to this, but they involve mechanics I can’t speak about until you’ve learned them for yourself - though you might find the petition system useful for that sort of thing.
> Support Ticket
>
> Ticket #00001597
>
> Infinity, The Adversary here again. You’ll be pleased to know that while this wasn’t a bug, we have restored your access to Limitless’ skills as you were taught them by one of his own priests, at his direction.
>
> Lord Limitless was quite put out by this, but I successfully argued it was the correct course of action. The reason it wasn’t a bug is that most of System’s oversight does not extend into the Hall of the Pantheon, so you didn’t unlock the skills when you should have.
>
> When System reviewed the logs he didn’t consider this, and failed to award you the skills then as well, assuming you had already unlocked them. When a further review was done, System and I agreed that you had met the conditions to unlock the skills. Lord Limitless objected but was unable to acquire the necessary support to overturn System’s ruling.
>
> Sadly, this does mean your report is ineligible for the bug bounty program, but I hope you are satisfied with the results none-the-less.
I grumbled to myself on reading these. It was clear that System was using this as an opportunity to troll me a bit, but I appreciated that he hadn’t stood in the way of letting me unlock Limitless’ skills.
The information about my body also made a great deal of sense, and even made me feel better about the situation. Part of the problem I’d been having was the disconnect between what my mind and body were telling me, and the fact that a lot of the feelings I was used to experiencing were absent.
Understanding the reason for it, and why it seemed to be easy to slip into character as Tavi, made it a lot more bearable. It was still somewhat disturbing, as I felt like my personality had been altered to a degree, but I could tell the core of me was still there and unchanged. I was just looking at the world through a different lens.
My contemplation was interrupted by soft cursing from Arven. “We need to get moving. This quest is bad news, but we wouldn’t have gotten it if we didn’t have a chance at completing it. Strange that it’s got such a long timer on it though, the dungeon resets every eight days.”
“I’m not sure I can…” Dawn said. “Look at the name of the quest, if my god is involved, I can’t work against him.”
“He seems to like me. I don’t think he’d mind if you helped me out. Maybe you could try asking him though? Can’t you pray about it or something?” I asked her.
She hesitated, then kneeled right on the sewer cobblestones, mucking up her otherwise pristine white pants. She assumed the classic prayer pose, and we all watched as she silently prayed to her god.
Only a few moments later her eyes snapped back open, and she looked at me wide-eyed with an expression I was getting used to at this point. “I… I’ve been told that my services are currently being loaned to Valera to pay back a favor. I’m to follow Tavi’s instructions until the quest is completed or failed… I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”
“Our chances of survival are lowering by the moment,” said a manically smiling Dorian. “Come friends, let us go and perish in a blaze of glory!”