Little did I know at the time that the dragon was looking for proxies to attack me with as it cannot directly affect me. So several hours later I’m swarmed by several individuals with dungeon bane. They also out level me strongly and at tier three It’s a foregone conclusion. So after I catch one of the murderers out of position and after they have already broken everyone and everything outside of my yellow gate, I use my knife to pack up myself, my monsters, my elves, and my realm. Colic only survived by being spooked by them as they came down the stairs, while Arthur, Timothy, and Jerome were all mutilated by the brutality of the first round.
I wake up in the territory of a Dragon slayer, in slave cuffs. A paladin walks in, and states, “Sorry about the cuffs, we do not tend to detain people all that often, and when we do we try to trap them in pocket dimensions to limit their ability to misbehave. Food?”
I nod and partake in the dried bread. An infiltrator blinks in and informs the paladin, “His realm is still locked down, and my skills only work on doors that are meant to be opened, not walls.”
The paladin watches the infiltrator leave before turning back to me, “So about the last person you killed.”
“What do you want to know about an individual that is from a group that ambushed and slew a paladin that assisted me in removing the last bit of demonic corruption.” The paladin’s expression hardens as he works through my sentence.
I’m hit with a potent inspection skill that roils my defenses. “Your defenses are impressive, but you are clean.”
He takes a moment to recharge his energies and recenter himself so I ask, “The earth and sand dragon is dead?”
“Yeah, the current big dragon is a brute of a fire dragon,” He pauses and uncuffs me, before continuing, “Consider yourself conscripted, Jerome went random on his respawn, and correspondingly is not here, Timothy had an extra life so he’s back with his schoolmates, and Arthur zeroed out but was worthy of heaven so he cannot be here either.” he then escorts me to a training ground. Timothy waves me over.
His boss looks at me as Timothy introduces me, “He’s the guy with the summon that had the relevant skill.”
His boss regards me, before saying, “Summon.”
I summon Inky and he reads the skill description. The paladin watches at an elf glaring daggers at me at a distance. “What did you do to deserve that?”
“We already had that discussion, Colic was sexy though,” and the elf glares harder at Timothy.
“So, kind, gentlemen,” the elf is really struggling here, “What would it take for you to release Colic.”
I look at him and his totally subtle desire, before pointing at the paladin watching this disaster unfold and saying, “His boss says no.”
He gets read into the situation, looks at the elf pleading at him, then turns to me and asks, “Do you think he’s a creep.”
I look back and forth between the two of them and then at Timothy, then I sigh before stating, “He probably thinks of himself as a gentleman.” I pause before continuing while the elf looks pleased with himself, “but I think he is the same type of gentleman that he claimed I was.”
Timothy starts laughing, and the elf doesn’t know who to glare at. Soon the proctor has finished gathering everyone, so before the troublemaker can leave the paladin steps in and says “Caseana, The angels just poked into the locked area and asked if those who have a good showing here are impressive.”
“Antonio, please consider myself to be incredibly impressive.” The proctor and his associates look at each knowingly.
Turns out Inky can fly so he flies up and primes his light above everyone. The Head proctor gives him the nod so the event begins. The shadows spawn and chaos erupts. Three individuals reveal shadows with demonic elements, while the dozen or so paladins make it their mission to get theirs under control fast enough to help the others. The others do not manage to coordinate with any plan in mind though they make an attempt to keep the shadows outside of the circle. Inky notices one of the individuals with the demonic shadows is moving to the center, so I knock mine away and move to intercept.
“Burn you fools,” and I do not make it as the Diabolist uses an infernal spell to burn a way to escape.
I respond to his skill by summoning blobby, who continues to summon themselves in an intercepting pattern as inky shuts down his summoning. Everyone other than the cultist is sent flying, leaving a pen space revealing his allegiance. The paladins that were knocked away dust themselves off while I unsummon blobby. The paladins who were waiting their turn for the shadow field on the other hand, already were engaging the fool, while the proctor grabbed the suppression cuffs and sealed the other two with the demonic shadows. I summon my gun and point it at the direction of the betrayer, who has decided to go full boss monster and summon infernal creatures to keep the paladins off of him. I decide that the best course of action is to take potshots at the mass of summons and the other ranged combatants nearby follow suit. The Melee combatants intercept the countercharge, before wading in.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I’d like to say we fought with better coordination than against the shadows, but that would be a lie. As we didn’t do better and merely ground down his summoned army until it was over. The leader of the paladins by this point was over by the other two, to oversee the atonement that they should undergo. I sit down and center myself as Inky comes over to sit on my lap. Antonio walks over and asks, "How can you be so calm?”
“I’ve spent several months using the shadows to purge my own taint and the wall of Blobby emerged from that. Wasn’t effective against the shadows because each instance of blobby generates their own shadow.” I hear the proctor make the ‘urk’ sound, as he must have been the one that received the summoning notifications.
One of the adjuncts walks over to me and starts shouting at me, “Did you really think a rash of unbound summoning was a good idea?”
The paladins who were saved from direct damage from the hellfire intercept the Adjunct as the Proctor in charge walks over. “I’d ask what the drawback is for the slime, but as you are keeping it unsummoned it must be pretty bad.”
Timothy, who has walked over, says, “It triggers infestation countermeasures, as they are all real.”
The proctor, who has heard about the boss fight with Blobby, blanches. Antonio, not believing Timothy’s exaggerations, got a better appreciation for what gave him the exaggerated perspective. We all go quiet as an angel swings over head, looking down at us with way too many eyes. It probably realizes that everything here is under control, as it leaves soon after. I feel a spatial magic pulse as a janitorial squad shows up to clean up the lingering hellfire that must have been pushed into the spiritual realm. Another pulse as they leave, as they must have more work to do. All in all angels just showing up and taking a look at things just happens in areas with high enough population to make the monitoring worth the trouble. Good thing I haven’t been introspecting too much.
“Hi.”
Oh no.
“Oh, I forgot, I think it was ‘Be not Afraid,’ right?” Expectant angel smiles.
I pinch myself, “Not dead yet, what is the occasion?”
The angel snaps its fingers and takes the appearance of a person, and drops its aura. “Looks like you need a lot more spiritual resistance.”
“Don't we both know that now, so… what is the occasion?” Well I’m going to find out very quickly whether or not the angel thinks letting me know what the plan is is beneficial to its agenda.
The angel’s eye twitches as it switches up its methodology, “I wanted to be your friend.”
I look around before settling on Inky, who is confused for a moment before he realizes what is up. You can tell because he says, “I get to be friends with the angel too. Friendship dance.”
Inky starts dancing as both the angel and I look back and forth between Inky and the other party. “Is it always this bad?”
I respond to the angel by saying, “Some days it is worse.”
“Then why do you follow the rules?” Antonio and a few other paladins stop moving, and squint at the angel.
“I don’t follow any abstract concept of the rules, I have internalized a set of rules that inform how I behave. While I may change and update the set, the goal was to help me be myself under adverse conditions. I wonder if it would have been better if I played more fast and loose with who I am, but my behaviors make me who I am. I will note that I have used the rules that others have designed as a basis.” The paladins relax as the angel regards me.
“Then the holy resistance?” I instinctively squint at the angel, as I try to figure out if this was its aim.
“Mostly reading too much Exodus, and using that to determine what sort of preparations I should take before I meet god. One of our historic references stated that looking upon god is awful, and I, while I was reading that, went ‘I wonder how much resistance I’ll need to survive it.’ I then proceeded to doodle some numbers on a page before realizing that I have no benchmarks, slotted a message into the forum and got laughed at by anyone who read it. Looking back I totally deserved that, as I had no idea about the forces I was asking about.” By this point in the spiel most people surrounding me were laughing, probably at me but it is what it is. Then I continue, “Then I decide the only reasonable thing to do is figure out what the standard was and copy it. So that was how I only have holy resistance right now, as I need more of the stuff just in case I get unlucky again.”
“So you got holy resistance because you thought you could accidentally meet the most powerful entity in reality,” there is a measure of incredulity in the angel’s comment.
“Yes.”
One of the other paladin interjects, “But how? It’s not like you meet someone that powerful directly on the street, or all the places that mere mortals frequent.”
“Well not everyone can die of old age or be murdered.” My comment garnered a moment of what should be stunned silence, if it wasn’t for the angel laughing.
“So what I’m hearing is that you looked at the forums and saw the comments that were copied from heathens and you went ‘well, I'm not going to get any better information’ and you just went with it.” The angel seems really cross for some reason, it's probably trying to compensate for the laughter.
“No it gets better, when you take your message down you have to say why the conversation is over. So I said, ‘you know what, I will get the information myself and get back to you to reveal what I have learned.’ Not realizing that all the encouragement was them egging me on to goad me into running into forces I do not understand. But when it happens I’ll be sure to write down my recollections afterward.”
“Afterward?” shouts one of the students.
“Of course, I don’t expect to be anything other than a blubbering buffoon in the relevant aura.” The paladins seem to be having a laugh at my expense due to my comment, so Antonio interjects, “I didn’t know you had such high expectations for your speaking ability.”
The angel finally gets to its aim with this comment, “Well you were supposed to get holy affinity as part of your setup, but you seem to have misplaced your letter of introduction. We gave it the title of a ‘mysterious letter’ on the assumption that your curiosity would get you to open it.”
“And then it flared its aura and I just shut down in fear.” The angel nods at my comment, so I continue, “So what are we going to do now?”
The angel hands me what amounts to an intro box and says, “Do not trade it.”
The contents have been aggressively modified, as normally there are what amounts to an introductory farming set included. But I got an eclectic mix of introduction to delving and magic instead. I bind in and incorporate the set, and get really tired from my hubris.