It has been some time since our interaction with him, the old man—Kevin Karstark, Valerian or whatever name I should be using. It was our first-ever peaceful interaction with a human being, if one could call it peaceful, and our first interaction with a fellow reincarnate. I was proud of that achievement, if one could call those achievements, but at the same time, I was beginning to question the decision I made that day.
“Did we mess up? Because I feel like we messed up.”
“We messed up.”
“We should’ve killed him when we got that opportunity. Not only did we let go of 516 G.P., but we also let him go. Now, he might be out there snitching on us to the enemies.”
“I told you guys. I told you back then we should’ve killed them right there and then.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dungeon Master 04. You were silent like everyone else when he left.”
Stuck there in the middle of the familiar sight of insults, divergent ideas, and opinions, I sighed and said, “Gentlemen, I think that’s enough.” For a moment, I achieved what I didn’t expect to easily achieve: silence. Not wanting to waste that opportunity, I immediately continued, “I think what we can do is either lament on what’s been done and can’t be changed anymore—that’s something—or we can focus on what’s within control, what’s within our power to change and improve. What do you guys think?”
“The latter is great.”
“Yep.”
“Definitely the latter.”
“Then the latter it is, gentlemen. Now, I’d like to begin this with an announcement—good news, very good news. First, gentlemen, we are free of the constantly invading lone invaders. We’ve won the battle.”
“Yeeeeeeeeeah!”
“Yeeeeeeeeeah! But with applause.”
“Woot woot!”
Now onto the second good news. We once again did it; we’ve acquired our fourth authority. I’m still not sure if this is the way Mighty K.R.U.L intended it to be, but at least those authorities are with us—the ones that will never betray him or the Goddess. So let’s rejoice, for Greed and Resurgence is ours.
“Woo-hoo!”
“We did it, lads! We did it.”
“Heck yeah we did!”
Now, the third and last, but hopefully not forever last, good news. With our pestering lone invader problem fixed and Greed and Resurgence authority acquired, we can finally get back to normal—and by normal, I mean back into the fucking grind.
“Yeeeeeeeeeah!”
“Dungeon Master 06 has already acquired back his old Guardian; his domain, along with his cattle, were already recovering. We’re back into the game like we’ve never been before.”
“Yeeeeeeeeeah!”
“Fuck yeah!”
“Woo-hoo!”
I allowed everyone to bathe in exhilaration before finally deciding to announce, “now then, it’s about time we move onto the bad news.”
“Booooh!”
“Yeah, booooh, dude!”
“I know, I know, no one wants to know the bad news, but we can’t run away from it, can we?”
“Yep.”
“Definitely.”
“Now then, the bad news is that from our first interaction with our formerly-fellow reincarnate Valerian or whatever name you think we should be calling him, we’ve learned about another fellow reincarnate. That alone should qualify as good news, but it’s what comes next that makes it very tragic. Mighty K.R.U.L, and by extension, our Beloved Goddess, have traitors—in other words, enemies—enemies that were once fellow reincarnates, but are in fact now nothing more than enemies to us.”
“Death to the traitor!”
“Death to the traitor!”
“Death to the traitor!”
“Indeed, gentlemen, death to the traitor or traitors should there be another one. But we are what we are—poor souls trapped within the confine of its own domain. We can’t reach him to bring death upon him as we all wish to. It is such a sad reality that we live in, but nonetheless we must keep living. Now to the second bad news, the second bad news is that we made a mistake. I know, I know, please let’s skip the accusations part. Let’s say it was my fault, I messed up for not saying anything and allowing him to simply go but it’s upon us now; we have to deal with the consequences. Right now, at this very moment, he could be out there, on the enemy side telling everything he knows about us and our authorities. Speaking of authorities, we’ve been at least smart enough to not have gone into details with them. Anyway back to our problem, there is of course, the possibility that he is not doing that—that he is not snitching on us, but considering the centuries-long grudge he has with us, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is. So this problem, or potential problem, has to be dealt with, or at the very least, attempted to be dealt with.”
“Luckily for us, I have a lead as to how this problem could be solved. In fact if we’re lucky enough, that lead I have come up with might actually help us deal with our first problem. The key to our problems is our very newly acquired authority: Greed and Resurgence.
***
The moment "he" suddenly proposed to simply give away his authority, my first thought was to assume that there was a trap behind this. How so? My only theory I was able to muster back then was that he wanted me to use that authority and go through the same thing he did.
Throughout the fourteen times I've been invaded by him, and the fourteen times I've killed him, I've noticed a pattern. Upon the death of its wielder's current body, the soul, or at least what I can imagine to be the soul, is transported to a new host body. In that process, the authority basically nullifies all the efforts done by the wielder with the previous body; stats, skills, and even G.P were left behind with the dead remains. My initial theory was that he wanted me to use that skill and go through that same loss.
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That was my theory back then, but as I thought it over, I realized that perhaps I just overthought it. After all, despite being a fellow reincarnate, it was obvious that as a human reincarnated into a human, he was unfamiliar with the concept of G.P. He didn't even know what it was, so naturally, he never had the urge to hoard G.P as I do. However, what he had instead was a human equivalent of it: wanting to get stronger. Since he didn't even know what it was, it was unlikely that he wanted me to lose it all.
Sure, there was the possibility that it was the case, but it was more of a supposition than anything else. Besides, even if it were true, with a certain authority in my possession, which was an authority that I explained to him as one that allowed me to create many domains and thus host many guardians, just like it allowed its previous wielder to have multiple classes. Obviously, that was not the case; I lied, or to be exact, I omitted the most important detail about that authority: us, Dungeon Masters. So yes, I was more or less confident to be able to slither my way out of the consequences of the use of the Greed and Resurgence authority.
It was exactly in that spirit that I came up with the wannabe-solution to our problem. We are Dungeon Cores, and there's nothing we can do about anything happening beyond the border of our domain; that's what it has always been. But with Greed and Resurgence, with that authority, tomorrow could be otherwise. What we hoped for was that we, the product of the Ethereal Echo authority, would be seen by Greed and Resurged as several distinct individuals instead of one with somewhat pseudo-divergent personalities. We ran a few experiments to try out that theory, and many of them came back positive, supporting our theory—so now, our goal is to send one of us out there, into the world, like "he" did in the past few thousand years.
With the Dungeon Masters, we talked about and agreed that it was the only logical—okay, maybe not so logical, but we had an authority available, so it was to be used just like the others before it, and there seemed no other use to that authority than this one. We were ready to proceed with our plan, and one very important question was to be asked among ourselves—the question of which one of us it's going to be, well the answer was very obvious.
“How are you feeling, Dungeon Master 07? Not too stressed?” I asked, the bravest among us all.
“I feel like I could understand what that monkey sent into orbit felt, what's her name again?”
“Prushka.”
“Ah, yes, Prushka. I feel like her.”
Dungeon Master 07— it was he who would use the authority to make it to the other side.
Back before someone was to be elected to be the one to make the journey, I was expecting that part to be as chaotic as most of our decision processes. But, that day, in an unlikely fashion, the election was done in a rather civilized manner. Truth is, it was as much an election as it was a self-appointment.
As tragic as it might sound, Dungeon Master 07 came to be for only three things: to create a prototype domain for the sealing of the old man, learn the language of this world from our captive batch of invaders, and last but not least, grant us the opportunity to talk with the old man. While the first and the last ended up with unexpected results, it could, without the shadow of a doubt, be said that Dungeon Master 07 had accomplished everything that was expected of him. So, for him to appoint himself for this next mission… truly commendable of him.
“We’re proud of you,” I couldn’t help but praise our youngest Dungeon Master.
“Yeah, we definitely are.”
“Shut the fuck up, y’all. We all know why I’m doing this; I don’t need your fake kind words,” he replied in a typical Dungeon Master fashion.
He came last, but he’s truly one of us after all. I couldn’t help but feel proud.
“There’s nothing fake in our words. We mean it. We’re truly proud of you. Isn’t that right, lads?”
“Yeaaaaah!”
“Of course!!”
“See?”
“Tsk, let’s get this over. You guys are giving me the ick. Dungeon Master 00.”
“Alright then,” I exchanged a metaphorical nod with Dungeon Master 07 and handed the authority back to him for him to finally use.
One main question that we, Dungeon Masters, had to ask ourselves regarding sending one of ours out there was how does one of us kill ourselves. Because that’s how we believed Greed and Ressurgence worked. The wielder dies, then he gets reincarnated. But as we looked deeper into the authority, especially with Otherworldly Synergy, we came to understand that dying to something wasn’t a required step. With the authority, one could just abandon the current body for a new one without going through the dying step miserably. This seemed like a feature that had been existing since the old man’s day rather than one existing especially for me. Now, as for why “he” never used it, I guess it was a question for another day.
“You remember what you’re expected to do?”
“Of course, I do. Why would I appoint myself to this if I didn’t even know the point of all of this?”
“Fair enough. Fair enough.”
“I guess this is it then.”
“I guess, yeah.”
A strange and tense moment of silence enveloped us all. After a while, one of us asked, “Dungeon Master 07, are you still with us?”
“Yeah. I’m still here.”
“Oh, I see. I thought you were gone, sorry.”
“Yeah… Can’t blame you… do I do a countdown before I go or…”
“Yeah, do a countdown. It’ll definitely be more suspenseful.”
“Okay, I guess…3…2—”
Just as Dungeon Master 07 was about to reach “1,” one of us voiced out, “Don’t die out there, okay.”
“Come on, dude, you can’t say that?”
“Why?”
“You’re going to scare him.”
_____________________________
[ ???'s Interface ]
Greed and Resurgence
Harvest [0.4 GP]
『Expand』
Harvest All Now [0.4 GP]
Harvest Later [0.4 GP]
_____________________________
“I wasn’t—”
“Guys,” I called out as they were scolding Dungeon Master 04 for his comment, but my voice went unnoticed. I had to raise it with a louder tone, “Guys!”
“Mh?”
“I think Dungeon Master 07 is gone,” I explained, “but at the same time, I think something went wrong.”
“Why? Why do you think that?”
“Check out our interface.”
_____________________________
[ ???'s Interface ]
Name: ??? (Dungeon Master 00)
Entity: Dungeon Core
Designation: Dungeon Master
Status: Idle
[ Authorities ]
- Authority Gathering
- Ethereal Echo
- Otherworldly Synergy
- Greed and Resurgence
『Expand』
_____________________________
Dungeon Master 07 was indeed gone; that was an undeniable fact. However, right there on the interface was clearly listed the very authority that should’ve accompanied Dungeon Master 07 on his journey.
“Guys?”
“Yeah?”
“Could it be that we messed up somehow?”