So, pretty sure I can't just take all the tree roots and the hair. The ceiling doesn't look like dirt so much as a mesh, and I guess that makes the roots support columns? Even if they aren't touching the ground... Reinforcement? I take the roots the ceiling goes boom. And that wouldn't even guarantee that I take all the hair. How in the hells am I supposed to do this?

I don't even know if I can ask to switch tasks, have them gather the hair and I store it. I turn to watch them fight, the frickin' slippery monkeys dodging around and blocking blows with what look like little people, figurative and literal, dressed up as fish gremlins. And those little shits are quick!

I fought water monkey things in the swamp area during the entrance exam, still don't know why I can't go back and drink with Granin, but that's whatevs, and these guys are faster than they charged with water essence. Pretty sure whatever I got up to SS Rank wasn't my combat, but I don't know if I've actually improved at all in that respect. Like I'm not being charged for banking stuff again, or for flopping around in my bank --. Speaking of, I need to do some maintenance, and I know the hair's gonna go a long way towards that, but how the fuck am I supposed to collect it? And why aren't I asking?

-*There's almost as many strands of hair as there are roots. How am I supposed to find and gather it without bringing this place down on our heads?*- No stupid questions...

"We don't need to collect all of it," First Fist shouts back. Why don't we, and why's he yelling? "If we work together we should be able to get enough to weaken this place. Then we just have to leave!"

-*Won't they just dig it back out?*- Did this dude just try to minimum effort the town's survival--?

Yeah, no, the town is fucked. Nevermind. Shit. Wait. I should say something so he knows I'm onboard, and doesn't come up with some stupid elaborate bullshit that wouldn't work except for some nonsensical protagonist in one of those god awful stories where the "good guys", aka the people sending kids to war, always win no matter how well organized and spot on the people not sending kids off to die are.

-*I'm trusting you!*- Nailed it.

"Stick close! Grab the biggest bundles of hair first!" Is he really fighting and coordinating? He was captain for a reason. "We'll worry about the single strands and smaller clusters if the plan doesn't work. The bug doesn't fight!"

So we're not supposed to stray too far, I'm not supposed to fight, and we're all supposed to gather up the larger bundles of hair. Part that I'm confused about is how I'm supposed to not fight and get the hair. Are they going to protect me or is everything down here just going to ignore me like the bigger undead that didn't sniff around?

-*Hear that, bug? Stay close to one of us and gather the hair while we're distracting the water spirits!*- Okay, that makes sense. Could still be less of a dick. -*We'll help when we can!*-

"Start with 10 of the biggest ones you can find!" First Fist shouts.

I want to hang around First Fist, if he wasn't taking on as many people as he could at one time, intentionally trying to gather the spirits to him so me and Woodcock can work. Woodcock is a shifty bastard, but he works smarter, not harder, apparently. There are a few clusters of hair we can go after, some of them awfully close to First Fist, but he runs across the cavern and the pools to take out the thicker locks that aren't guarded, protected, or just near spirits.

I race up to a cluster trailing against the ground, wrap my legs around it and will it into my bank. My vision goes a little wonky, there's a huge pit in the ceiling, and I'm left trying to figure out what happened while Woodcock scoops me up and races to the next cluster. I don't think I want to do this anymore. I don't think I got some hair and stray roots. Pretty sure I just dragged something loosely tethered into my bank. Force banked something with enough sentience or protection to want to stay put or forced to stay put. Or I tore off a chunk of a giant tree that was formed to be the heart of a massive tourist trap's infrastructure. The roots aren't golden and glowy though...

"Come on!" Woodcock shouts, tugging at a hair and root bundle, dislodging dirt from the ceiling which falls down directly on us. After I've been grooming all day, really? "Grab this one next!"

Asshole. I walk up to the bundle, take a deep breath to center myself, and then bank the cluster to another near headache. I'm bank-y, right? Why is this taking so much effort? It's worse than trying to steal chunks of the Emperor's Wrath. Or is that it? I can't steal pieces of the world to fill my void? Stuff in the world, yes, pieces of it, no? Haven't I drank lakes and stolen trees before? Oh! Emperor's stamp versus me maintaining my own void space. Fack.

I whine, flopping to my side and grooming, ignoring Woodcock as he talks shit about my lack of enthusiasm for the task I suggested --. Did I really? Was this whole thing my idea? I remember wanting to clean up the Qi pools, -- well, I wanted to eat them but I told them we should clean them out, -- don't remember volunteering for landscaping and collapsing the underground city, though. And landscaping isn't --. I did point out that the Qi was condensing from shit. Fuck. I'm the asshole who volunteered us for more work instead of just leaving with the survivor's and getting the hells out of town. I get why he's angry now. My bad.

-*Wait, the town is gone, where's the tree?*- I'm an idiot. I'm sitting here struggling with a --. If the tree's gone why am I struggling?

"The town isn't destroyed, yet," First Fist looks like he's doing okay in his fights, and I have no idea how. "We're in a spatial bubble. When we get out you'll see the ruins of the town, but we're trapped inside until we can collapse it."

-*But we can't collapse it or we'll let all the undead out,*- I repeat, knowing this part, just not remembering the other part.

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-*No, we can't collapse it because we don't have anything in place to contain the diseases and corruption that brought the undead in the first place or allows them to spread,*- First Fist pauses in his fight to spell this out for me like I'm an idiot, and they do what now?

-*There's all kinds of seals and rituals to stop the undead,*- Woodcock scoffs and I turn to them in disbelief. -*The undead aren't the problem. It's whatever's got them gathering here that's the problem. That's what we're trying to fix.*-

Oh~... What~? No~... Wait, if it's so easy to stop the undead why are they fighting--. Tch. Outside voice.

-*If it's so easy to stop the undead, why are you two fighting?*- I'm so confused.

"You see saint script papers? You see essence ink?" Woodcock shouts at me like I'm supposed to kn--. I learned about this shit in the entrance exam.

Well, shit. I never did make ink. Persephone did. But it's not infused with essence. I can fix that. I don't have saint script silks, I have wimble. Does it have to be --?

-*Will Wimble script silks work instead of saint?*- No stupid questions unless they're to myself in my head and I'm expecting someone to answer me out loud.

-*We could probably do it with Demonic, but we don't have script silks, and my brush is broken!*- First Fist shouts. I guess his arms are tired from all the punching and stiff arming he was doing earlier, 'cause now he's just kicking, spinning from one foot to the other to switch legs.

-*Well, I got Wimble,*- I retort, waggling twenty Wimble script silks at Woodcock from where they're dangling out of my mouth. -*Can you make a new brush out of the tree roots or hair?*-

Oh, so we're friends now? Woodcock cheers, both arms up, casually bending his knees so a water spirit flies over him, and continues walking towards me like nothing happened. He snatches the script silks out of my mouth, rude, and scoops me up before casually jogging over to First Fist like we're done already. Celebrating too soon, much? First Fist hops, tucking his hands at his side before somehow force pushing everything away, rocked back on his bent back leg, front leg extended out sideways in the direction of his blast.

The two meet in the center, First Fist snagging a hair from Woodcock's head, both of them laughing although First Fist looks more confident while Woodcock looks like he wants to punch him, but settles for pointing at him instead. First Fist casually accepts a silk from Woodcock, biting his finger -- fucking psycho. I did it on accident once, and it was awful. -- before drawing on the silk with flourishes of his fingers and flicks of his wrist.

He flings the "finished" scripted silk at a pillar of roots and hair, the silk sticking somehow before taking another offered silk from Woodcock. He repeats the process until we're in a spot within four scripted silks. I don't know why the attacks slowed while he's doing this bullshit, or why the attacks pick up once he's done, but now the undead are bouncing off of a shield that's somehow spawned from the four silks. Warding talismans. Oh~... Once the dome's up the brothers turn serious again, backwards bastards, and start acting weirder.

Woodcock clears the dirt and debris from inside our bubble, flattening out the floor while First Fist rips off a piece of the root, -- somehow not breaking the shield? -- and walks out of the shielded area. When one of the dead water babies leaps at him he impales it with the root fragment then returns to the safety of the bubble. He slams the body against the ground and pulls the root out, using the blood of the corpse as ink as he draws a circle of some sort.

It feels really weird to just sit here and groom, but Woodcock isn't doing anything either. I don't know whether I should try to eat any of the corpses left over from First Fist's little art project, it took three bodies to finish, or the other corpses in the room. I still don't know what his circle does, but when he'd finished it a shockwave went out, barely disturbing the dust, but all the dead in the room just... collapsed. He said he put them to rest, but I still don't know why we're just sitting here while First Fist eats my stew and bread, thanking Woodcock who accepts even though he'd stolen the shit from me earlier!

Woodcock drops another bundle of hair near me. Okay, maybe saying he's not doing anything is a stretch, but he's just casually walking around the room tugging at clumps and bringing the ones that come loose easily over to me to dispose of. I'm still enjoying my luxuriousness when Woodcock, the stupid son of a bitch, and I'm not talking about his mom, lightly kicks me with his dirty ass boots and tells me to gather up the corpses.

I'm literally cleaning myself and he wants me to go on corpse gathering duty? And not to eat or bank them. He wants me to drag them into a pile so we can burn them. I want to ask with what but First Fist made an instant death circle that affected almost everyone in the cavern, so I'm sure they have a plan of some sort. But why do I have to be the one to do it? He's already dirty.

"Remember, I was the one who wanted to leave and go seek help from outside," Woodcock says, nudging me again, and this time he keeps poking me even though I'm glaring dead at him. "Your idea. You think you get to sit back and stay clean?"

Fucking. Asshole. I get up, comb the spot where he left a dirty print, it stays dirty because a rough comb isn't a clean, then prepare to run around through stagnant, muddy pools, making piles of corpse corpses, which will be burned, and probably have to repeat this nonsense with the undead in the rest of the rooms we clear. I start collecting bodies, looking to see Woodcock sitting down with an exaggerated smile, combing his fucking hair and looking awed. Asshole.

I take a page out of Woodcock's book. Not the part where he mocks someone minding their own business, but the part where he was being useful. As I make piles -- I've got enough corpses in my bank, thank you, -- I try to pull loose any chunks of hair I see dangling. He's gotten most of them, not all of them, and he'd managed to loosen up a few, so it's not a completely pointless endeavor, and it gives me something to look forward to when I get out. We still have another pool to clear, but we're pausing to give First Fist a break. Gods know he needs it.

Yes, we could all be taking a break in my void space, yes, everyone could clean up in a real bath with soap and hot water, and grab a real meal, and, yes, I could try to get more stuff out of the emperor. But I'm also avoiding the emperor and I don't want more people in my space after a stray doggo I picked up for shits and giggles got merced for no reason other than being the wrong kind of dog.

Dude can have people chilling inside my bank, getting shit delivered, just literally reshaping my world to suit them --. Wait, he's literally reshaped my void space. So dude reshapes my world to fit his world view, moves people in to my space for years and is all like "I paid for it" with a contract that he made up and did not run past me in in any way, then, when I move someone in to my world that I'm making, he kills them because he doesn't want them there? My void space isn't part of his empire! Yeah, he wants me to help him, and supposedly he's been helping me out so I can do the task he needs me for, but I never asked, and he just keeps doing stuff because he can.

I look around to see the four piles of corpses I've made and the room as cleared as it's going to get. I don't remember what my point is, but I don't feel inclined to let the brothers into my void, and that's not the emperor's decision, that's mine. Because it's my void.

-*Got all the bodies,*- I send, plopping down out of the script circles. It's their turn again.