"Huh?" The look of confusion on the old man's face after seeing Dungeon Master 07's guardian, a guardian nothing like the others he'd faced thus far, shifted into one of distraught when he heard the words spoken by Dungeon Master 07 through "Telepathic Discourse."
“What?”
Having come to the common resolution to seal the Greed and Resurgence-Authority-wielder, we also simultaneously agreed that since we were about to do this, we might as well try something else along with it. As Dungeon Master 07 rehearsed the sealing of the authority wielder on a batch of human invaders, he took advantage of his rehearsal to accomplish two other things. The first was to learn the language. We were already familiar with very basic words like "help," "please," and "mercy," but that was not enough to hold a proper conversation; we wanted to have a proper discussion. The second thing was to find a way to communicate with invaders.
We are dungeon cores, and while I think we’ve reached a point where we all can say that we finally know what being a dungeon core is all about, we also know that being what we are, we're clearly not meant to communicate. The fact that, in spite of having all these myriad ways of controlling my spawns and domain, I had no direct way to communicate was an undeniable proof of that. But even so, this isn’t something I'm supposed to do, I wanted to communicate; I wanted answers.
Seemingly not yet adapted to what just happened, the old man stammered back to his feet, mumbling, “A voice… just talked to me… a mental attack?” theorizing on what just happened to him.
That promptly prompted Dungeon Master 07 to answer.
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Echo-13: No. It was not an attack. I am talking to you.
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“Huh?! What’s happening?!”
I couldn’t really blame the old man for assuming that Dungeon Master 07’s words were an attack, for, in a sense, it was an attack.
We wanted to communicate, but since we had no direct means to do so, we had to find alternatives. One thing we immediately considered was the use of spawns, which we realized was the way to go due to the little extent of control we had over them. Then our focus immediately shifted to the other category of spawns: guardians. But not just any guardian, for while the control we had over guardians was vastly superior to the one we had over spawns, we didn’t have enough control to have them speak on our behalf.
Trying to find a workaround, we nonetheless skimmed through the interface catalogue to eventually stumble upon spawns with telepathic abilities. Since abilities are the only thing we can conventionally control on a guardian, we believed spawns with those kinds of abilities were the solution to our problem. It wasn’t before we were met with utter disappointment. It seemed that the telepathic abilities of creatures with telepathic abilities can only be used by the said creature as an attack. That was very much to be expected, but nonetheless, we couldn’t help but feel disheartened over the news.
The next thing we did, as we considered all the other alternatives, was think of something that, had we been smarter, we would have thought of earlier: the authority Otherworldly Synergy. Being an interfaceless power, we, while having grasped to some extent what the authority could do, had yet to see the true limit of its power. This allowed us to discover a new extension of the authority’s power. To skip over the lengthy details, with Otherworldly Synergy, we modified the attack ability known as Telepathic Discourse to become our way to communicate with humans.
The first humans we tried the modified Telepathic Discourse on displayed the same reaction. No doubt they assumed that they were being attacked with a telepathic-type attack. So the right thing here, if communication was what one really wanted, was to dispel that wrong assessment of theirs.
“Who are you?” The man asked with an expression of confusion.
A moment of silence followed. No doubt, Dungeon Master 07 hesitated between introducing himself as his guardian or as what he was. Hearing no complaint from any of us, he continued.
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Echo-13: I am the entity behind this Dungeon.
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“The entity behind this… Dungeon,” the man mumbled, seemingly still in a daze. I had the feeling that it would take him a moment to fully digest what he just heard. So, talking to Dungeon Master 07, I asked what interested us during the time the old man gathered his thoughts. He replied with an alright.
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Echo-13: Since you didn’t answer when I first asked, I will ask again. Why? Why do you keep showing up in our—my domain?
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With at least 15 instances of invasions to his name, I would be deeply ignorant not to have noticed it. After three or four invasions, it became clear to me: All the Greed and Resurgence-Authority wielders, Eland Karstark, Gael, Samuel, Danitz, Damien, and even Aegis as he currently calls himself, all these people; they may change names, but in the end, it was obvious these people were all the same person: the man initially known as Kevin Karstark.
How does this work? Well, the answer always lies in an authority. While initially, the effect of the Greed and Resurgence Authority remained a mystery, as soon as I realized what happened, we understood that this was the doing of the authority. In fact, we knew from the second time the authority eluded our control that it was the doing of an authority; we just didn’t know how it worked.
Initially, I assumed (assuming, if not knowing, that all authorities were different from one another) that the Greed and Resurgence Authority’s power was a flesh version of the Ethereal Echo Authority. Basically, what I imagined was him having clones—flesh clones he could hop his soul around—which allowed him to do what he did, 15 times. That's how I initially pictured it. However, as I thought about and remembered a detail about myself, I realized that it couldn’t be. It was something else. That something else was that the authority allowed him to hop into another body, one that I guess he grew from, very much like a day in other words. What Greed and Resurgence does is allow him to reincarnate into this world.
“Why… I keep showing up… in your domain? You want to know why I keep showing up in your domain,” the man repeated, seemingly baffled by the question.
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Echo-13: Yes.
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That was a question I and the other Dungeon Masters had thirsted for an answer for so long, especially so when we came to understand what his Authority does. I imagined, you have a power, one that allows you to grant the opportunity to begin again. So that’s what you do, I believe. You live through a lifetime, and at the end of it, you head for a place that no doubt you know will kill you. You go there without much surprise; you die. The first and second time would be logical; I, in an attempt to not blame insanity, would believe that the first was an understandable mistake and the second time is an attempt for you to get your revenge. But anything beyond that, it’s just madness. If it wasn’t, then I have killed that same old man enough to believe I'm entitled to know why.
I awaited the man’s answer, but instead of an answer, what I got were mumbles—mumbles repeating the words over and over, “Why… I keep showing up… in your domain,” until ultimately, instead of answering my question, he replied with a question, “you… you know that I keep showing?”
We were a little confused as to what kind of answer that was, but we answered truthfully.
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Echo-13: We—I know.
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Hearing our words, the old man’s expression turned to one of utter bafflement, only to have that expression hidden as he arched down into a strange bow. We wondered if it was because he was hurt; after all, he was only at 3% of his health. But I understood it wasn’t that the moment I heard a chuckle from him—a chuckle that soon turned into a full-blown maddened laughter.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
What happened?
Did he finally go mad?
Wasn’t he already mad in the first place anyway?
Could be.
Amidst his laughter, he suddenly calmed down to mumble, “I see, so that’s how it was, that explains everything,” as if he just made sense of something that had forever eluded him. He then looked ahead, his gaze—one of madness—staring straight at Dungeon Master 07’s guardian, saying, “You… you know what my &%$#@ does…You know I can come back from the dead, which means you must also be a &%$#@-user.”
We had no way to confirm what &%$#@ could possibly be. We didn’t learn what that word meant when I got the opportunity to, but I had the feeling that &%$#@ was the equivalent of what I called authority. So our answer was simple.
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Echo-13: Yes.
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In that moment, he fell into what came across to me as a dumbfounded expression. It was only some time later that he said in a completely unrecognizable language, “Si tessaram habes tecum, id significat te etiam ex altera parte venire.”
What the heck was that?
We didn’t learn that from these invaders.
That literally didn’t sound like any language they taught us.
It was exactly then that he asked, “Did you understand what I just said?”
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Echo-13: No.
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—we simply answered, though we were confident that with the authority of Otherwordly Synergy, which greatly helped us when it came to learning the language of this world, we would be able to understand whatever he said if given enough time.
“I see, so not from that side. That’s a relief,” he heaved with a sigh before letting out a self-deprecating chuckle.
At that point, we were growing bored, actually it was more like annoyed at the direction this whole interaction took. We’re patient, but instead of answering our question, the man kept asking questions himself, completely ignoring our initial one. The next thing he said, while being once again a question, was one that answered a question I already knew the answer to; if anything, all that I needed was a confirmation—one that I got from his very question.
“Since you’re &%$#@-user. I take it that, unless you’ve gotten it from someone, you’re like me, someone from somewhere else than this world, someone that was in that place of pain and suffering, someone who’d met him, Lord K.R.U.L, Herald of the Divine.”
That I already knew, or at the very least, it wasn’t a surprise. Since the first time I was being invaded by that lone invader, from my very first interaction with an authority, I’ve already established the possibility that authorities were linked to him, the entity that saved me from that place, Mighty K.R.U.L. As to exactly how it was linked, I’ve never been able to confirm it, but now I can see that it was this: I wasn’t alone, never been alone in my situation. Authorities were wielded by people like me, people that aren’t from this world.
Welp, that’s awkward.
Really awkward.
That was the only way to currently describe the situation I just found myself in after confirming that not only was I not alone in being saved from that place by Mighty KRUL, but that I found myself antagonizing three of them, killed two, and in the process of sealing the third, which I failed to properly kill.
That wasn’t just awkward; it was on a whole new level.
Well, to be fair with myself, while I did kill some of them, it wasn’t like I did it for the sake of killing fellow otherworlders, reincarnates or whatever should I use to refer to ourselves; it was an accident, mostly. Besides, it was them who came to my domain, killing my poor spawn back when I was nothing but a very low GP-wealthed Dungeon Master. I did what I had to do to survive. But not only did I do that, I also did what was asked of me: to act on my instinct. What that instinct told me was to acquire GP and of course the authorities from them.
The more I thought about it, the more messed up it looked. As I was given the chance to escape that place, Mighty K.R.U.L entrusted me with a fragment of himself—a fragment that, had I been reincarnated with an authority, I would’ve believed that authority to be the said fragment. But I wasn’t. All I know is that I have the task that has been given to me, the one to act upon my instinct. One thing that instinct first dictated to me was to harvest as much GP as I possibly could. While I did know that it could be used for the betterment of my dungeon, if one were to ask me what the ultimate purpose of that urge to harvest G.P would be or what it’ll be used for, I wouldn’t even know what to answer. Perhaps my fellow reincarnates does, but I don’t. I just know what needs to be done, and so far I have done nothing else but act in that general direction.
But even so, I wanted to know. While perhaps this was just what was expected of me to know, I wanted to know more, to understand more, and this old man was the first step toward that secondary objective of mine.
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Echo-13: No.
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We replied to his question. In that moment, the man was taken by what looked like both utter despair and relief; he cried and chuckled almost simultaneously, creating a messy sight to behold. This went on for a moment, and once he was done, he finally looked at Dungeon Master 07’s guardian, a now challenging expression on his face.
“You want my &%$#@ too, do you?”
Of course I do.
Why wouldn’t we want your authority?
But wait.
Too?
Too?
Oh, I see, so I’m not alone in that regard too. From the look of it, the desire of gathering authorities isn’t something proper to me alone but to other authority wielders as well, or at least some of them, just enough for him to assume that, like "others" before me, I too wanted his authority.
Even back when I still had no confirmation of the existence of fellow reincarnates, I was at least aware that there were other cases of authority wielders killing others than me. Actually one could argue that I was never initially an authority wielder, so it could be said that I was innocent of the killing of a “fellow” authority-wielder until my second “lone invader.”
From the very beginning, even without knowing much about the authority, I knew these things were something rare, unique. So naturally, when Tusko Vagar popped up in my domain with not one but two authorities, I had the feeling that he’d acquired them from at least someone else or, if he were authoritiless like me, two. After all, there was always the possibility that he acquired the two from an unfortunate “accident.” I was more believing in the former; it was just an attempt of mine to at least give Tusko Vagar the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway, that was just to say that while I might have been the first to cause the demise of a fellow “reincarnate,” I wasn’t, because of the existence of Tusko Vagar, the only one. The thing is that I even believed that what most likely brought him to my domain was Authority Gathering, which allowed him to sense the presence of the authority in my possession: otherworldly synergy.
He was most likely tracking it, and that was what led him to his demise.
While the short and rather hostile interaction I had with Tusko Vagar was nowhere enough for me to tell what kind of man he was, I, in my mind, created a mental image of the kind of bastard Tusko Vagar was. In my mind, and from the little I knew of him, he was a greedy man, overconfident. I was tempted to see him as a loner, but being a former wielder of the Ethereal Echo, I knew for a fact that man couldn’t be lonely. And last but not least, I imagined Tusko Vagar as a ruthless one—ruthless enough that he earned himself a ride most likely straight to that place we’ve been saved from by Mighty K.R.U.L.
Perhaps it was because he didn’t get an answer almost immediately, or perhaps he simply wanted to vent out his anger. He walked threateningly in Dungeon Master’s direction, barking, “Answer me. You want my &%$#@ too, don’t you? That’s why you killed everyone.”
At that moment, we seriously considered shifting domains to have one of us lower his health just a little, just enough for him to calm down. However, we promptly gave up on that idea. We didn’t want to either accidentally kill him or antagonize him more than we already were on bad terms. Instead, we attempted to defuse the situation with a reply.
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Echo-13: You know what we are. You know you and I are from someplace else than this one. I have answered many of your questions already, but I can tell you still have questions for me, so do I for you. What I would like to happen next is us responding to one another's questions like civilized creatures. If it can’t be that, then—
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In that moment, Dungeon Master 07 shifted with the other Dungeon Masters, in the span of several consecutive seconds, spawning the old man into their respective guardian chambers without having the guardians attack him. As Dungeon Master 07 took back control, the old man, in spite of what he just witnessed, didn’t seem all that much impressed. If anything, he seemed even more stubborn.
“You think you can threaten me?”
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Echo-13: Not a threat. Just showing what else it could be if we choose not to go the civilized way.
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Technically, yes, those were the alternatives. After all, we weren’t planning on using any Guardian. We just showed him. With the authority he has, it would be useless to kill him. Should he refuse the civilized approach, we wouldn’t waste a second and seal him straight away as planned. While I firmly believed that the smarter thing to do was make allies, when that option was not available, leaving me with just an annoying enemy I had no way to definitively deal with, fellow reincarnate or not, I wasn’t going to pull my punches.
I must admit, as that exchange unfolded, that while I didn't regret it one bit, I felt like I might have lit a fuse that couldn't be put down. We were there, waiting for it to blow, when, after some time that felt like an eternity of consideration, the old man anticlimactically calmed down. In a calmer but still stubborn voice, he said, "Fine."
A sigh escaped his lips, bearing the remnants of frustration, yet hinting at a reluctant acceptance. "What do you like to know?" he uttered, his tone now tinged with a mixture of defiance and resignation.
While surprised by the sudden change of heart,
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Echo-13: Everything.
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—we nonetheless replied.
***
I want to clarify that by "everything," I meant everything from the day you were saved by Mighty K.R.U.L to this day. In other words, I want to know what sets us apart as two reincarnates. I'm not particularly interested in anything before that, especially not anything about that place.
While I make sure to remember the fact that I have been saved from that place every day as a form of self-motivation to keep up the good work as a Dungeon Master, I'm also trying to forget the vivid details of that place. I really don't want to hear your description that I doubt will be anything short of vivid about how hellish that place was. As for what you were before that place, I believe that to be an irrelevant detail. However, the old man, seemingly misunderstanding my words, which might have been lost in translation or not precise enough, began narrating his story with unexpected enthusiasm.