Ben wished he'd never seen his old stuff again. It was all laid out exactly how he had left it, cleaned and ready to sit unused for a month, possibly two months depending on how his vacation went.

He had requested some privacy and was in a jarring amalgamation of his old room and the dark void of the Pocket of Sanctuary; all of his furniture, but none of the floor and walls and ceiling. All his stuff was here, but here wasn't his apartment. Seeing it all, the sheer mundane reality of his old possessions, was a weight heavier than anything Ben had experienced thus far.

It was, he felt, almost a mockery. Like he wasn't in a fantasy world, like nothing had changed, while everything so obviously had.

He'd walked with a being from the Purelands and watched her die. He'd known her for. . . twenty minutes, possibly less? But he'd known her, seen her personality, felt who she was and what a crime it was that she'd been stolen from her home. There was an ache in his chest he couldn't shake. He had been changed.

He had a stray thought, he wondered if his parents and Betsy had ended up in the same place, wherever it was that good people went after they died.

“Fuck,” Ben thought, clamping down hard on his mind, banishing the emotionally upsetting thought away from him.

It worked, and soon, he was calm again.

He was laid out on his old bed, the squeaky spring mattress had never seemed larger. He stared up at the black void of a ceiling, and the action of being in his bed and staring up at the ceiling connected him to his own and old life in a profound, powerful way. Like a lightning strike in his brain, without the flash or the noise, just the surge of potential energy equalizing.

Two lives, one brief and one far too long, meeting and realizing they were the same person.

“It's just me,” Ben said, a frown on his face. He lifted his hand, which wasn't his hand anymore. His hand's fingers had ranged from two to three inches, and this hand's longest finger could generously be called one and a half inches.

“I'm still just the same person I always was,” he said, his voice quiet. He turned to his side, then turned back to lay on his back. It was a familiar action, one he did nearly every night of his life.

He felt fear, because he was somewhere safe. Ben was terrified of the monsters he'd seen out there, and even more terrified of the monsters he hadn't seen. He looked at his hands again, and vivid memories surged of what he'd done to gremlins and fairies and turret snails and. . . ax beetles.

“I've never been so violent in my life,” he whispered, feeling a strange mix of emotions; a thrill of excitement; a surge of sorrow; a dash of disgust; lightly seasoned with the sense of undeniable superiority that comes from having killed, and not having been killed yourself.

He felt the crown talking to him, trying to contextualize his emotions in such a way that he would relish in the superiority. That he would seek more powerful creatures to kill, so that his power would be evident to everyone.

Was it just the crown, Ben wondered, or was it something inside of him as well? He had often considered the grim reality of human beings, of how often they as a species killed.

For food; for sport; for love; for hate; for duty; for God; for the devil; for any reason at all.

Humans had been killing since before they were even a species. Ben's father had been to war, and his grand-father, and his great-great grandfather. Every war in America had one of Ben's ancestors in it, and probably every war in precolonial Europe as well. Ben had spent years thinking about that on and off.

Had his ancestors all been good people? He doubted it, they'd all been to war, and war was an ugly thing where good men did demonic things to other good men and inflicted wickedness on the losers.

Nobody was innocent of the stain on their bloodline. All nations and all peoples of the Earth were descended from violent killers, rapists, and monsters.

And hero's as well.

That was the mystery that sometimes haunted Ben when he laid in bed. In the war, in hell, some men were still good men. Some men still laid down their lives to selflessly save another. Some stood against the monsters, rather than become one themselves.

“And now here I am, with blood on my hands,” Ben whispered without emotion, but that's the wrong way to say it, isn't it? Ben wasn't without emotion, but simply beyond it for the moment. His feelings were there, but they were under him, like hot asphalt making an updraft for a bird of prey to circle higher and higher.

What to do? He was a killer now too, despite his best efforts in life. He'd stayed out of the military specifically for that reason, just so there would be one generation of his family male line without blood on their hands. What a fiction that had turned out to be, what a ludicrous notion.

None had ever done such a thing, and none ever would.

Ben couldn't tell if that last thought had come from the crown, or himself. It scared him that he didn't want to know.

The modern world had made it so easy to forget, and had even gone so far as to actively try and forget what life really was. What it had been. That safety and comfort were fragile illusions maintained by the careful, daily labor of tens of millions. Ben had been one of those tens of millions.

He'd never told anyone before, but before he worked for the city he had no idea how sidewalks were even made. If someone had asked him, he would have stated 'they pour concrete', and said it was simple.

Then, he'd actually done it, a lot. He realized how fucking stupid and ignorant he really was about the world around him. After that, he'd poured sidewalks and roads in concrete; he'd made new roads out of tar and pebbles and sand, that shit modern people call asphalt; he'd picked up garbage and cut the grass; he'd cleaned up after the homeless when they died in the woods, or when their shanty-towns in the woods were discovered.

The more he'd done to contribute to the smooth operation of a modern city, the more he realized how fragile it all was, and how quickly it could all fall apart.

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Constant, daily maintenance till the end of time. That was the price of civilization.

Ben started laughing and blinked a couple of times.

“God, that's so fucking nostalgic,” he said, sitting up, “laying in bed, raging against the modern world for all its fucked up stupidity.”

Ben started laughing in earnest, the blood on his hands not forgotten, nor forgiven, nor resolved. It was simply there, and all Ben could do was try and be a good person in spite of it. He could spend his life wracked with guilt over his own evil nature, and the evil natures of his all-too human ancestors. Some people did, and it didn't get them very far, and it didn't wash off the blood.

Nothing ever would.

The human soul is stained deep crimson with the blood of the innocent and the damned, and all a man can hope for is that more wickedness dies than innocence lost.

“I'm so fucking self-righteous,” Ben said, trying to mock himself, and then getting an earful from his crown about how righteousness is determined by royalty.

“This is seriously the worst class ever,” Ben said, and really considered for the first time taking the crown off and throwing it in a ditch somewhere.

Ben was stronger than his class, and he could do it. He knew he could.

He didn't.

He couldn't say why, except that being a [Prince] was a damn good bit of fun, and he couldn't think of anything else he would rather be.

“I think I'm actually pretty good at this whole [Prince] thing.”

Then, Ben got up out of bed and went to join with the rest of the group.

[You have advanced to level *- Error]

[Your level system has malfunctioned]

[Seek a Sage, hacker]

“That's not good.”

–

Vivi was sitting by himself, away from the group, struggling to breath. Nothing was physically wrong with him, he wasn't injured. . . he was just remembering everything that had just happened to him. Ghost Ears, who had nearly two hundred years of experience as a Village Chief; two hundred years of experience in dealing with emotional issues and trauma. Two hundred years of experience in counseling young fairies, no, young people in distress. Ghost Ears flew over to Vivi and asked him what was wrong.

And Vivi started talking.

He'd almost died. Not just once, but lots of times, all in the same horrible night; a night that wasn't even over yet. The last time he'd felt like this it had also been night, the worst night of his life.

The night it all fell apart, when his stupid, stupid friends had convinced him to be even stupider than they were. The night they'd spent months preparing for, the night they thought would mark the beginning of their lives, of their success. The night they would open The Beyond and pull out a Great Wish, just like The System did.

The night they'd all died, almost thirty years ago as humans measure time, and Vivi had been banished while his mother and father wailed for their child, for the terrible sin they'd committed in creating him, for the sin in raising him improperly, for the loss of him. That had been the day he was abandoned by his species, when his name had been forever blackened in their history.

Thirty long years he'd spent living in that dungeon, in that tree in the Overcavern Forest. Working for The System, doing the little jobs that Dungeon Bosses did when nobody was trying to conquer them. Others had come before, but none of them had ever made it through the Boss door; he'd engineered the dungeon to not have enough silver keys to both fight the boss and claim the treasure chests. The best part was, by the time someone realized the trick, they'd already used all their keys and gotten some mediocre, system generated treasure.

He hadn't minded being alone. Vivi had kept his mind occupied by studying magic, which was his passion anyways, and more than once he'd thought 'Wow, being exiled and alone sure is convenient!'

He'd been lying to himself, obviously, but people lie to themselves because it works, not because it's wrong.

The Aeon Slug had put it all behind him, and for a blessed ten years he hadn't thought about the past at all, content to sit in the mana rich environment of his dungeon and study the arcane. He bought the books from The System with the payments he received for being a model Dungeon Boss. Then, he'd bought some furniture. Creature comforts, and by the stars he'd been comfortable in his little hole in the world.

In a single day, his world of delusion and illusion had been ripped away from him. From a single job interview, from a single human. Vivi told Ghost Ears everything, about their plans to take over Strange Town, about how Ben wanted to make Vivi a [Royal Sage], about how Vivi felt hopeful for the future again. About how he felt like he'd made a friend, even though they knew almost nothing about each other.

Vivi had been talking, then he stopped.

“What is it?” Ghost Ears asked, an expert at knowing when to be silent and when to speak.

“Ben's only twenty-nine,” Vivi said, his eyes wide as that particular memory surfaced, of that vulnerable moment when Ben had lost his crown, and the person inside of the class had been revealed. Ghost Ear's eyes went wide, and the blood drained from his face.

“He's barely a child,” Ghost Ears whispered. He looked over and saw Ben messing around with some dirty laundry, trying to figure out a way to make something usable out of it. “I never would have guessed.”

Ghost Ears stared at Ben, who had grabbed a towel and was staring at it in triumph.

A fairy could easily live to be a thousand years old. An Aeon Slug would never die of age. Ghost Ears and Vivi were both fairly young for their species, but Vivi was nearly seventy, and Ghost Ears close to two-hundred and fifty.

“Not even thirty,” Ghost Ears whispered again, “I never would have guessed.”

In that moment, Ghost Ears underwent a fundamental psychological shift in relation to Ben. Whereas before he'd seen an arrogant but powerful [Prince], now. . .

“What a prodigy,” the True-Elf Fairy said to himself, and then, “he's going to need so much help.” Another pause. “He's going to need someone experienced in dealing with people.” There was final pause, the longest yet, and then;

“He needs a [Royal Advisor].”

And Ghost Ears knew what he needed to do.

--

The Gremlins were broken, but that really wasn’t a big deal to them. Their biggest loss was two out of the fifteen Elder Gremlins who had allied together. Thirteen remained, and they walked through the Overcavern Forest trailing behind their latest monstrous creation.

The Eldest Gremlin scrubbed at his chest, trying to remove the mark Red had put on him. He knew it was a tracking ability of some kind, though if it did anything else was anyone’s guess. His initial plan had been something of a failure, resulting only in the creation of the Bladed Slayer rather than the total destruction of reality.

Really, if he were being generous with himself, he would say the entire event had been a massive gain. He’d been trying to grow a Bladed Slayer for. . . a very, very long time. At least as long as humanity had been gone from The World.

Now that humans were back, bringing with them easy to procure and process ingredients for creating his Summoners Brew, he was able to get into touch with some old friends from the other side. They’d shared the secret of creating the Bladed Slayer and more!

The Eldest Gremlin patted a slim notebook at his side, which carried helpful tips on how to create some truly horrific, abominable shit.

He sighed, thinking of the materials required to create his new, vastly improved children. There was only one dungeon in the Overcavern Forest to get the mutagens he required, and it had recently become quite the pain in the ass to deal with.

What with it transforming into a Citadel and all.