How long has it been?
Sweat drips down Canta’s face as he runs up the staircase again, panting, heaving, and gasping for breath. He’s been running for -
Canta blinks, getting the sweat out of his eyes.
- How long has he been running for now? Days? Weeks? He’s so hungry. It’s been a while since he got a sin from Brother.
Canta’s hands land on his knees as he bends over forward, gasping for air, his eyes scanning the area around himself. He’s in some kind of oddly pink forest.
Wiping his forehead on his upper arm, he keeps running, reaching the top of the staircase that leads to nowhere. His foot hovers over the abyss that comes after that final step, but instead of falling freely, it finds a new stone surface beneath itself a moment later.
He’s teleported to another location.
Canta runs through this new ‘floor’ of the dungeon, which is some kind of crystalline field, searching for the next staircase that is hidden on the other side of it. It’s odd. It’s sort of like progressing through a dungeon. But the dungeon is spread out all around the forest, and every time he reaches the top of a flight of stairs, he simply appears at the other end somewhere else, despite some of them being kilometers away from each other. The dungeon-magic of the stairs was kept alive, in a sense, by the use of a different kind of magic known as ‘hero-magic’, rather than dungeon-magic. However, this needs sunlight to function, hence why everything is outside.
It has been several weeks since the two of them arrived here, in the metaphorical-dungeon. How many weeks exactly though? He isn’t sure. At least four. It’s been a while.
Brother has been training him. During the day, he has to run through the metaphorical-dungeon by himself, fighting small token-monsters along the way that are always related to the floor that he finds them on, and then, during the night when the moon is bright and shining in the sky above them, Sister teaches him how to fight someone one on one.
As for the sins he was promised, Brother, the masculine, odd-ball voice of Sister, has been delivering. But only every time he clears a full hundred staircases does he ever get a tiny morsel to satisfy his hunger. As of now, he’s inclined to believe the skeleton’s ramblings about sharing a body with hundreds, if not thousands, of other souls. The sins he has been given are all from different people, places, and times. All of them carry a different smell, a different taste, and a different memory. They can’t be from one person.
As for Alleluia, she’s made herself comfortable in what amounts to a den that she and Canta have made to keep her sheltered from the elements. She spends her hours reading books. Apparently, in their free time, which they have had aeons of, the female voice in Sister has written many such things. More aptly said, Sister had transcribed books that had already existed from their memory, returning them to paper. Canta isn’t so much interested in the sourcing of said paper as he is in the ink, but he decides it would be best not to ask.
On the plus side, he’s not only been eating, but he’s been gaining levels again. Brother’s sins are different from the many that he has eaten up until now. They’re dry-aged and refined. Even small sins give him giant amounts of experience-points, and the real combat-training with Sister is a great boon to him, if not deeply painful. Sister doesn’t go easy on him, saying that he needs to show that he means it. ‘Besides, his body can regenerate, so it’s fine. Suffering is just part of the educational experience.’
The physical eating of the sins is fairly pleasant as well, involving him eating some fruit or some flowers that make him oddly tired. Except for the one time Brother had given him a dead snake to eat and simply stood there chanting ‘meat-snake, meat-snake’ over and over until he ate the snake, which was indeed made out of meat. He supposes it would have been odder if it hadn’t been.
Meat snake 500 g Calories: 93 *Protein: 18 g Fat: 5 g Carbs: 0 g Fiber: 0.2 g Sugars: 0 g
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A week passes. Canta, still continuing with his own exercises as well, notices the first real muscles growing on his arms. Alleluia notices as well, and training ends up being postponed for half an hour now and then.
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“You’re really strong,” says Canta, dangling upside from a tree-branch that Brother had smashed him into with its lance during the next day. “Do you just wanna kill the Demon-King for me instead?”
“No,” says Brother. “That’s a you-problem, champ. I don’t get involved outside of the dungeon anymore. Not since I was a lizard.”
Canta shrugs, still upside-down, ignoring that last remark. “I mean, I get it, it sucks out there. But you could fix that.”
Brother shakes, his body shuddering in a spasm that Canta has become familiar with. A peaceful transition of power. Sister has returned. “No, we can’t leave,” she explains. “The hero-magic in this place is what keeps this body alive.” Sister begins poking him with the blade of the lance, trying to coerce him to drop back down from the tree. “Without it, this body and the souls inside of it will all fade.”
“We all gotta die eventually,” notes Canta, pointing at them.
“Correct,” says Sister. “So make sure this ‘Demon-King’ of yours does.” It pokes him again and Canta drops down to the ground.
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He gets a particularly big sin that night, a fine, old, refined one that belonged to some odd man named Piotr. It’s just standard, run of the mill stuff, though. Apparently, he had the hots for someone else, despite already being married. It's no big deal in Canta’s eyes; he’s seen a thousand of these already.
But the cosmic-system seems to disagree and gives him the amount that he would have gotten for five or six people all at once.
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Another day passes.
Canta keeps running up the stairs, sweat dripping down his body. He hasn’t bothered wearing a shirt for days. He only has one, and it already looks like shit. But he’s going to break another hundred staircases today or die trying; he’s determined to do it.
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Another day passes.
Stairs. Stairs. Stairs.
Canta runs, completely focused on the stairs. The stairs are the key to his success. By climbing the stairs, he gets food, by getting food, he gets stronger, by getting stronger, he can climb the stairs better!
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Another day passes and soon the rest of the week as well.
Sister’s body is controlled by someone else today, someone who he hasn’t met yet. It is someone who is not of many words.
The skeleton walks up to him, pulling on his head to get his posture straight, pressing against his stomach. It nods, satisfied. Bending down, Sister picks up a pair of sticks from the forest, handing him one. Confused, Canta takes it and watches as the skeleton stands next to him with sure footing, grabbing its stick like a sword. It lifts the improvised weapon over its head and swings it forward into the empty space before itself.
Canta watches as it continues to repeat this movement over and over, listening to the air being sliced by the stick through the movements of an expert swordsman who has no words to spare. Getting the gist of it, he then copies its posture and motions and the two of them stand there next to each other, swinging their sticks over and over for the better part of a few hours.
“You’re doing great, honey!” calls Alleluia from the side, waving with an idle hand, not looking up from her book.
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The next day comes.
More swordsmanship.
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Then another day.
More stairs! Canta loves the stairs! Stairs!
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Another week passes.
Canta is getting stronger and stronger. He’s super excited about tomorrow’s training! Tomorrow is another stair-day.
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Tomorrow comes. Sister looks at him, lifting a finger. “Okay. I think you got it. Bye,” nods the skeleton, giving him a thumbs-up.
“…Huh?”
“You learned your lesson about hard-work paying off even under impossible circumstances, about how even in the worst situations, you can still find the resolve to grind and do what you can to fight towards something better. Now it’s time for you to leave the metaphorical-dungeon. Bye!” waves Sister.
Canta blinks. “Wait, what?”
Alleluia gets up, dusting herself off. “Oh, I’m relieved. I’ve reread this one book six times now,” she says, setting the book back down onto the pile. “It’s good though,” she says. “Thank you for having us in your home!” says Alleluia, curtsying to Sister.
“Sure thing,” replies Sister. “Good luck with the whole ‘Demon-King’ thing,” says the skeleton, its cape billowing in the wind as it eyes Canta. “If it doesn’t work out, then come back in an aeon or two, when the dungeon is running again for real.”
Canta blinks, somewhat taken aback. “I mean… I don’t mind leaving, but couldn’t you just… you know, give me all of the sins you have?” he asks. “You still have a lot and I could really use them, really power up and then stomp the Demon-King in five minutes flat.”
Sister stares at him and then sighs. “Ah, damn it. Now you’ve done it.” Her body shakes and Brother returns, the one eye glowing ominously bright.
“SICK!” screams the skeleton. “YOU MAKE ME SICK!” he yells. “FORTY-NINE DAYS!” Brother grabs his shoulders. “Everyone spends forty-nine days in the Bardo!” The eye seems to spasm inside the skull a little. “How fun do you think it would be to just give you INCREDIBLE, UNIMAGINABLE, DELIRIUM-INDUCING POWER?!”
Canta lifts a finger. “– A lot. It would be a lot of fun.”
The skeleton shoots downward in a sharp motion, pressing its face close to his. “I’ll make you a deal, brother,” says Brother. The skeleton leans in towards him, whispering into his ear. “You go out there and bring me the Demon-King’s eye, and I’ll tell you about the time I was a slime-girl for an afternoon.”
Canta blinks. “I really don’t want to know that story.”
“GOOD LUCK, BRAVE ADVENTURER!” screams Brother, getting up and rubbing his eyes as if crying. “This part always gets me,” he sobs, before turning to Alleluia. “Miss.” Alleluia waves goodbye.
“Wait? That’s it?” asks Canta as Alleluia grabs his hand and begins dragging him off. “What? What was any of this? I didn’t learn shit! None of this makes any sense!” he protests. Alleluia just hums, dragging him along, and the skeleton, Sister or Brother or whoever it is now, waves goodbye. “Why are you all pretending this is normal?!” yells Canta, but he receives no real response.
The two of them leave the metaphorical dungeon. The purple-armored skeleton vanishes out of his line of sight as it returns back to its spot in the meadow to sit back down in quiet peace, perhaps waiting for the next passerby to find it.
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“So now what, my meat-champion?” asks Alleluia. Canta grumbles, winding her crank back up. “Do you think you’re strong enough to eat the Demon-King now?”
“No,” says Canta, plain as day. “But whatever, we’ll figure it out on the way,” he explains, pointing towards what he assumes is the east, the way they had come from. “We’re going to have a long trip back around and then back towards the big-tree city,” he nods. “Let’s go.”
“Is that really what you want to do?” asks Alleluia, grabbing his hand.
“Hell if I know. But what else is there to do?” asks Canta, lifting his foot to climb up the next step of the staircase.
He stumbles over the completely flat field.