Grey placed his binoculars down and stretched, limbering up for what was ahead. Beside him, Austin sat with his back to the raised ledge of the roof, his eyes tightly shut. The young man had mousy brown hair and a rather innocent look to him.
Grey nudged his foot. “Nervous?”
He smiled thinly. “A little.”
He was sure the boy hadn’t killed another human before. It probably weighed heavy on him, even. Grey thought for a moment. What was the most effective way to establish his persona, to win more goodwill?
“Tell me something about yourself,” he said with a smile.
He stopped drumming his head. “I’ve got two sisters. Both younger. No dad around for most of my life. Just me, my sisters, and my mom.”
“Did you join the Hunters for them?”
“Mostly,” he said. “I was the only one to go to the Tutorial, but we lived in an apartment close to here on the northside. Mom didn’t want to leave. Stubborn, I guess. The Hunters offered protection, and… here we are.”
“So what’d you do before all this?”
The man smiled. “I know what you’re doing, Grey, and I appreciate it. I do, but-”
Grey shrugged. “Maybe I’m just killing time. No harm in talking is there?”
“I guess not. Fine, I was a waiter at a steak place, The Roadhouse. It wasn’t a lot, but enough to keep me afloat during the semester.”
“I know the place. Good food.”
He laughed. “And you?”
“A software engineer at a place in town called Firmsoft.”
He made an ooh sound. “Big bucks, then.”
Grey chuckled. “It was decent money,” he said. “I saved most of it, though.” He looked up at the sky. “Sort of seems like a waste now.”
“I was saving up for a car. Tired of biking everywhere,” he said. “Now look at me. Driving might be the least of my worries.”
“It’s a crazy place. Was that way even before the Tutorial, but this,” Grey waved, “This tops it all, I think.”
“Definitely.”
They sat in companionable silence for some time. It was broken by the sound of combat, and Grey peered over the edge of the rooftop they sat on. The Guild had arrived. He informed Austin.
“You don’t have to come, you know,” he said. In fact, he wanted the man not to. Grey’s personal mission could have no witnesses.
Austin shook his head. “No, this is how I protect my sisters, my mother.” He stood. “I’ve got to do this.”
Grey frowned. It was out of his hands. “Then let’s go.”
---
The inside of the Dungeon resembled a library. Bookshelves that towered as tall as a building stood on either side of Austin, and far, far above, he could make out a series of twisting bookshelves and upside down halls like a twisted mirror of their own floor. The Guild members had entered before them, and he could hear the sound of battle past the narrow halls ahead.
Grey cleared his throat beside him. Austin turned. He liked the man. He was soft-spoken but seemed kind, and more importantly, he had a sort of unwavering quality to him. Austin knew he would be there to aid him if need be.
“We need to move slowly. Take to the shadows and scout ahead. Return after you’ve examined the situation,” the man said, the shadows of the dim lighting playing across his tan features.
Austin nodded and breathed in, searching for the flickering coldness in his chest that signified his Evolution, Obscuring Shadows. He knew not how he knew its name, only that it felt… instinctive. Natural. It was an Evolution, after all.
He pulled on the coldness, feeling it creep into his face, and a moment later, he knew the shadows embraced his form. He stepped forward and placed his feet carefully so as not to cause a creak in the wooden floor. In his right hand, he held a sword he had received in the Tutorial.
Austin turned a corner into another small hall and then another past that. The sounds grew louder, and some sort of explosion knocked several books from their shelves. His eyes widened. A scream of pain pierced the air.
He rounded a final corner, where the hall widened considerably. The bookshelves here looked almost like fortifications, with cannon-like barrels peeking out from empty shelf spaces. He watched as the Guild fought semi-humanoid beings made of… paper? It wasn’t quite paper, he knew, but they resembled origami humans made of yellowed paper, their features rough and undefined. They wore large, monk-like robes, and all manner of devices passed from their ink-stained hands.
He saw a metal ball shatter in the midst of the Guild, the shrapnel blocked only by a hastily thrown up shield. Another paper-man fired a cannon. A third darted between the Guild members, the ink-drawn runes along its robes and head flaring with blue light.
Austin watched until the Guild seemed close to winning and returned to Grey, informing him of the situation. The man nodded, taking the words in with a thoughtful expression. After a moment, he grabbed Austin’s arm.
“Now, this is only a guess,” he said, “But I think this is a Dungeon of… inventors. Scholars. Enchanters. Maybe all three. They’ll work on versatility and cleverness, not necessarily strength. Normally, us two would not have the raw power to exploit that. The Guild team does, however. So we wait. We wait until they’ve nearly wiped the Dungeon, and then we…” He trailed off.
Austin winced. He knew killing was something he had to do, but it was just… He didn’t know what to make of it. He still felt like a kid struggling his way through college. In his head, he had imagined he would be a hero if something like this ever occured, but the Tutorial had disabused him of that notion. There were no heroes, not really. They didn’t live long.
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He could see in Grey’s eyes the man felt the same. This was something they had to do, their way of surviving in this new world. It was in some ways both a death and a birth. The death of their innocence and the birth of the identities that would see them through this world. See their families through.
At least, that was what he told himself. He swallowed and nodded to Grey. “Alright, I’m ready.” Was he?
“Then let’s go. Stay in the shadows. I’ll teleport if any stragglers are left behind.”
They followed in the carnage left behind by the Guild. Occasionally, Grey would stop and examine one of the fallen paper-men, thinking out loud about what sort of Evolutions might have caused such damage. Then they would continue, doing their best to stay unnoticed.
The Guild members made good time, stopping only a few times to rest. They had lost no one by the time they got close to the boss room, and Grey said that meant they had some sort of healer. Austin knew what he was getting at.
The healer dies first.
When the group stopped outside of the boss room- a great circle surrounded by towering stacks of books- Grey told Austin to rest and that he was going to scout ahead this time. He disappeared a moment later. Austin sighed in relief.
It was getting harder and harder to see the men and women they were going to kill. He wasn’t sure he could stomach much more of it. Grey had seen that and taken pity on him. He really was a good man. Well, as good as a man could be in this situation.
Austin slumped against a bookshelf and pulled a tome free beside him. It was in some indecipherable language, one he recognized from the patterns painted on the paper-men’s ‘flesh.’ Some of their inventions were incredible, he had to admit. One of their devices had created a sort of vacuum that drew their enemies together, and another created a force field. It was something out of a comic book, but then, that was their reality now.
His thoughts turned to his family. What would his mom say if she saw him? Brianna, his sister? Mary… She was only eight. He had to do this for them. He had seen corpses. In the Tutorial, out of it. He couldn’t see them like that. He wouldn’t.
Grey appeared beside Austin some minutes later, and Austin jerked away, a cry dying in his throat when he realized who it was. The thin man spared him a weak smile and held his hands up as if to show his innocence. The absurdity of it made Austin laugh, but then his worries crept back in.
“They’re moving. We need to hit them now.” He met Austin’s eyes. “If you don’t want to do this, leave now. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
Austin’s mouth ran dry. He desperately wanted to accept, but he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t let this man do that for him. This is what he had signed up for.
“No,” he said, feeling bile well up in his throat. “No, I can do this.”
“Alright,” Grey said. “This is what we’ll do…”
Austin’s sword plunged from the shadows and into the back of an unsuspecting man, cutting him off in the middle of a shout. He ripped it free and stumbled, trying to bring the blade down onto the woman beside him. His sisters’ faces flashed through his mind. He missed. A hand hit him in the face, his vision dimming for a second. A cannon boomed, the shock traveling faintly through his legs. The paper-men were… They were backing away?
Behind him, he heard a gurgle and a muted cry of pain. The healer was dead. Austin chopped again, but the woman dodged and kicked out, hitting his leg. She stood a moment later, grabbing a handgun and raising it quickly. Red light leaked from its barrel, and-
A sword plunged into her skull from over Austin’s shoulder, penetrating the space between her eyes with a heavy thud. Then came the shudder and a wet noise. The body slid off the blade and bounced on the wooden floor, settling into the pool of her comrade’s blood. The comrade Austin had killed.
He dropped to his knees and threw up, the sour taste bringing water to his eyes. He gagged, heaving until there was nothing left to heave, and then he stared limply. His eyes flicked behind him and saw the carnage Grey had left. He tried to throw up again. Nothing came. His brain dimly remembered they were in the boss room, that monsters should be attacking. There was only silence, however. Then a voice.
“You have done as you agreed, human. Very well, I will do as you asked.” This came from one of the paper-men, one whose robes were grander than the others. Austin looked up, his bloodshot eyes crinkling in confusion.
Agreement?
Grey’s hand patted him on the back a few times, and the man crouched beside him. Austin met his eyes. They were different from before, his expression… empty. A strange feeling washed over Austin. He tried to pull away. The hand gripped him tight.
“You shouldn’t have come. Shouldn’t have had to do this. I tried to tell you,” he said, running a blood-stained through his close-cropped hair. He shrugged. “Oh, well.”
“What is-”
Grey stood, and before Austin could move, a sword plunged into his chest. Then again. He hardly felt when the steel kissed his neck a moment later, separating his head from his shoulders.
His last thoughts were of his beautiful mother and sisters, the family he had left behind. The family he was supposed to protect.
---
A few minutes earlier.
Grey stepped out of the Dungeon and into the street. He walked the direction he knew the boss to be, walking to a spot in the street marked with a line of chalk. He had already scouted this Dungeon before, and the chalk marks indicated areas of interest.
When he stepped back in, it was in the center of an empty circled lined by stacks of books. Gaps sat between these towers of literature, room enough for cannons and other enchanted devices. They tingled with a certain sense of power, a sense he had only felt in one other type of object outside of those in the Dungeon.
With his arrival, paper-men stepped into these gaps, but Grey had eyes only for one. He raised his hands in surrender. The first Dungeon he had raided showed him the monsters could speak English. Other raids showed him the ability extended to any other language he knew.
“Do not kill me. I am here to make a deal, not war,” he called.
The paper-men surrounded him, but by some unspoken agreement, they stopped short of attacking. One of their number strode forward, its black and silver robe trailing behind it. Its features were rough, as though whoever had crafted it had given up halfway.
“Speak quickly, human, or die.” Its voice emanated from an unknown source, deep and rich.
“You are about to be conquered. They will take your Key, slow down your growth, and send parties to raid you every time your respawn. I can stop them.”
“If they could defeat us, I will simply respawn.”
Grey smirked. “Will the rest of you respawn, however? Or will you be replaced by others? I’ve noticed something interesting about Dungeons. They never respawn exactly the same. The boss comes back to life, but the rest of the inhabitants? Gone, dead.”
In fact, he suspected humans could only enter a small portion of the worlds known as Dungeons. He believed that beyond the part humans raided were whole societies, which meant these paper-men were simply replaced by more volunteers upon their death. He had only a scattering of evidence for his assumption, but the reaction of the paper-men told him the truth.
“And why should we not just kill you-“
Grey waved a hand, causing a ripple of movement among the paper-men as they tensed for action. “Let’s not play this sort of game. Let me state the terms simply. I will kill those who threaten you and prevent your Key from being stolen. In turn, I want you to create a few of your enchanted devices for me. If you refuse, I will help those who wish to destroy you, effectively guaranteeing your death. I’m not sure if you can tell, but I am very strong.”
A moment passed as the paper-men communicated amongst themselves, and then the rich voice filled the air once more. “There is another beyond the group you speak of. What of him?”
Grey waved a hand. “He will die. I will neither turn against you or use him as a loophole to void our agreement.”
“What sort of devices did you want?”
Grey told them what he had in mind.