Buck had stood by patiently, hearing the Merchant talk with who he now recognized as Aloy herself. Seeing the woman who had doomed him to suffer under the will of the Core brought him some amount of anger. There was a slight desire to see if he could get his revenge, to see if he could slip in undetected. [Astral-Projection] was meant to be a deadly weapon in the right hands and the man was feeling a strong desire to seek the truth about him being worthy or not.
Not at that moment, however. For he had listened to the people talk, had seen their words when the Core couldn’t. The many men, women, and kids were barely older than fifteen had come in larger amounts, crammed into those small wagons. What had they thought of travelling in such a manner? Walking would have taken longer but a single attack could have left many bruised from the panic and chaos alone.
There weren’t any thoughts of kindness towards them yet they showed off a perfect chance. The people weren’t people of work and toil, but merely people who had seen a chance at a better life. They had heard of the Dungeon and had come from nearby villages, likely having more than a few skills to show off. Some would be varied, some would be specialized, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that none would be surprised at whoever came, the guards likely expecting anybody desperate enough to seek them out in time.
All that had been discerned from listening in on the conversation alone. Or was it truly words he had listened to? Words inside the [Astral Plane] weren’t the same as that outside. They travelled through more than mere air. Even at a distance, the Druid had been able to hear their words yet he could also hear the heavy breathing of the men and women fifty meters away. They all felt close and distant at the same time, they're echoing noise drowning over his very soul.
It perhaps hadn’t helped that he had needed to get so close to even listen in. The barrier the Core had warned him about had been true, it shifting over to the very river. Being forced to take a few steps into the freezing water had been the opposite of pleasant, the feeling of matter travelling through his body being deeply unsettling. There were no positive facts about that experience.
Much less had it been fun when it became clear the merchant had detected his presence. Those men were meant to have their minds filled with nothing but coin and materials yet he had so easily detected Buck’s Astral Form. It was something to consider the next time he needed to get close to the [Merchant].
But not now. The Druid had stood by patiently as the hunter he knew by the name of Aloy and the merchant parted ways, both likely preparing their next meeting. From the angle he stood at, Buck was more than able to see the slight grin on the Giant’s face. It was despicable.
Shifting back into his physical form was hard, the distance travelled from it almost being too far. The man had a small moment of panic due to that. There was no Queen to pull him back into safety, the creature being too far in the Dungeon. By the time she could have reached the body, he would have fallen too far. But… there was no real reason to think about the near-failure, the fact he could return at all being the best example.
Yet that moment of returning was not pleasant either. The larger lack of Mana in his body did not help but disorient him more than he already was. A few of the ants by his feet had pushed him up against the new hole in the wall that led into the outside. It was curved, only light and his astral form able to get through it. It was also rather unstable when hit by a certain forehead, the Druid having immediately tried to get to his feet after returning to the body.
That wasn’t a good idea, the ceiling barely able to let him lie down at all. The tunnel was too small for humanoid people. Even the ants beside him had to hunch down slightly to fit into the space.
A piece of paper appeared to his right, extreme amounts of small pieces of ink falling onto it as the seconds progressed. It was the Core slowly but surely sending the man some form of a question. There had been a shift from the old method of scratching the words into the walls, the magic rock instead of using paper and ink. The man didn’t want to know where the entity had gathered the supplies from.
‘Give a full report of what you heard. Do not leave out details,’ finally appeared on the paper. The man allowed the ink to dry a bit before he even turned the paper to read. There had to be some form of communication that was more efficient or at least faster.
“A [Merchant] has arrived at the camp,” Buck started it off with, noting that the exit his [Astral Form] had used to leave the Dungeon had been sealed off. No sound needed to be allowed to leave, after all. “It’s a [Giant] by the name of Moshu. He seems to be relatively wealthy since he has [Enchanted Trinkets] of some form on his body. At least one of them allows him to detect my presence. The guards at the camp are accepting his entrance without issue and allowing the wagons to come inside. There are more than five of those but I was unable to count the full number due to my sight blurring after the barrier appeared again. I know that he has, at minimum, thirty random people along the ride who heard about the Dungeon from conversations in the nearby village. Also… the [Hunter] that left me to die inside here was out there. I am decently sure she would recognize me if she saw my face.”
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Another paper fell to the ground without hesitation, the droplets falling like rain across it. The Core had a longer list of questions or it needed something to say. Though… the form and shape were hard to decipher at first, not all ends of the page were used. It was in the middle at some points yet similarly made longer lines at others. Buck had to wonder just what in the holy ones it thought it was doing until another minute finally passed by. The top lines had a single question on them.
‘Is this the Hunter you are talking about?’ was made with big lettering before a perfect rendition of the archer's face was shown. The Druid had to spend a few seconds wondering why a magic rock was able to perfectly create paintings of a random person’s face before just dismissing the question entirely. Questioning magic rocks wasn’t good for anybody’s health and most certainly not for him.
“Yes, it’s her,” Buck answered, becoming more tired with the passing moments. “Also, could you get your ants to pull me out of here? I think the air quality is close to making me faint.”
Without much deliberation, the two [Giant-Ants] at his feet gently but firmly latched their mandibles onto his ankles and pulled. The sight would have made him scream not too long ago but now it was barely enough to make him think about it. The Druid had to wonder if he had just adapted to his new life or if he had lost too much of himself to feel that emotion anymore. Even breaking a finger or two did little to him, as if the nerves just didn’t care about sending that feedback to his brain. It was all just a bit duller than before.
After getting out of that hole, another piece of paper fell on the floor. On it was a small message.
‘Return to the inner room. Preparations for your leave must commence.’
… If that wasn’t slightly foreboding, the Druid didn’t know what was. Nonetheless, the man followed obediently, moving towards the inner part of the Dungeon. The small tunnels separate from the public Dungeon was quite an experience to travel through, at points shaking due to what the man guessed to be a pickaxe hitting the wall. At least it was better than having to encounter the people on the other side.
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The facial structure of the [Enlightened] was one of the most varied and complex parts of their bodies. When a specimen looked at another, the face was the first thing to be noticed. Yet, not all faces were the same. Some looked so wildly different from each other that they had no chance to be compared. Yet the humanoids would still recognize it as a face.
Did the people have an upper idea of what a face was? Was it due to the position that they knew that a face was a face? Or was it due to the specific features that a face was meant to have, that being a mouth, a nose, and two eyes? If the latter was true, would hiding one of those features make it impossible for a person to recognize a face as a face?
No, it wouldn’t. Even in the dark, where the ability to see was limited, the humanoid races were still more than able to see a face, to identify it as a face, and make assumptions about the person depending on that face. The position itself couldn’t be the method either, however. Just because they found a face on the ground, where faces were not normally meant to be, it would still be possible to see the faces as they were.
The Core had a theory. That theory was that the hominid brain did not recognize faces simply due to their features or position in the world. It wasn’t because they looked a certain way or because they were attached to a body. It was because of the shapes. A circle with three holes was a face, a kind-around rock could be a face, and a cloud in the sky could be a face. Their brains weren’t able to figure out what a face was.
Their brains were simply hard-wired into seeing very abstract concepts and forced that into the idea of faces. Was it always faces that were detected? Not even close. But faces were still found, making the evolution possible to continue. It did not work well but it worked enough to fulfil its simple purpose of seeing another humanoid’s facial features and recognizing it as alive. Did that also trick some people into thinking that rocks were alive? Perhaps. But maybe that could be a feature in the long run. Who knew what rocks were really up to.
‘Are you sure you know how to do this, little rock?’ the Queen questioned as the Core began to prepare a proper table for the Druid to lie on. The man himself had arrived mere moments ago, standing ready for whatever was to come. By the heightened pulse, he seemed either excited, anxious, or fearful. It was hard to tell.
‘The people outside will recognize him in his current form, Mother Carapace. It’s too large a risk to have so why not just make changes to his face?’
‘I understand that part very well, young one. The issue is that we are not ones who… know the current standards for appealing features.’
‘What do you mean?’ the Core questioned. ‘They just need a mouth, nose, and a pair of eyes. Then the others will see it as a face.’
‘A face to be sure, yes, but one that could be disfigured,’ the Queen pointed out. ‘Those humanoids put a lot of pressure on having the right kind of proportions on the face. When you stray too far from the standard you start having issues.’
… That was a fair point. Yet it wasn’t enough to stop the Core from continuing. From the pulses at the entrance of the Dungeon, it could feel a few newcomers enter the cave. They weren’t with the guards, their armour being too primitive. Neither were their tools, sizes, or general demeanour anything close to professional. They were new people that nobody in the camp knew. It was perfect.
Having gotten the Druid on the table, the Core started up the procedure. There was a fair amount of screaming when the skin was torn off but the Queen helped stop any movement. It was time for Buck to have a new face, after all.