Alain's countenance twisted with a spicy blend of fury and outrage. His shoulders shook in a very human fashion as his white gloves clenched into stiff fists. "Ur. Did you capture everything?" He seethed, his upper lips twisting in disgust. "She really crossed the line, this time, even more than before." His expression darkened. "You'll..."
The mask responded by shifting its brass visage within its outlined confines. Brian could see a silhouette of Ur’s ashen skin underneath when the animated mask widened his golden mouth to speak. "I sure did." Approaching, he raised his hands, upturning them, thick palms up. Brian kicked the ground and leapt away, only to falter as his leg throbbed with agony, causing the back of his head to hit the floorboards below.
Alain hastily interjected with frantic words, his face still twitched in a mockery of calm. "Sir, please, we are in your side, we d–"
Brian's raspy voice, a mix of confusion and weariness, interrupted the old man before he could continue. "I... am fully aware of that. Get away from me. I received a quest… during the fight. She is not from... here. Nor an ally – Enemy. You... even warned me." Brian's pupils dilated. "Still, You have to do it. Explain."
Again, this was another type of Quest that he couldn’t accept nor refuse, it just popped up and took one of his precious active slots without asking. Brian was starting to think every quest in this world – in Thoum, was such. The reward, this time, was immediate. His ruined fingers secretly held the pill in his grasp – masking the gesture for rage. This was a useful boon, and one he was familiar with. System Quests seldom gave the opportunity to obtain permanent power. A heal, in the right circumstances, was exactly that. He had only encountered similar type quests a handful of times before, few he couldn’t even dream of accepting.
His blurred vision caught sight of Ur as he retreated his hands and wordlessly swiped the book open, revealed blank, golden pages. The thump that reverberated through the room once he closed it shook Brian to the core. “Wha–?” The young man felt his consciousness bulge and expand, sensing every bone, every piece of his skin stretch and rip within and without his confines. His scalp overheated, and a dullness formed behind his eyes, the worst kind of pain which was almost tangible, almost touchable, but always unreachable. It burned deep within his skin, and he yearned to scratch at his eyes to peel it away, but he held fast. The agony was as fierce as it was brief. The young man looked down at his leg, partially covered by the ornate red dress, as it snapped back to normal in real time. He could feel his bones scrape together as they rearranged themselves. His whole body ached. Brian’s bruised and broken fingers trembled, twisted, resembling malleable twigs, until his digits put themselves in the right place. His lost nails didn’t regrow. With a flex, he stretched his leg, and it did so, even better than before. As he kicked off and distanced from them even further, he noticed something peculiar. Was he.. taller? No. He felt fresh, he felt new. He wasn’t as hunched back as he was before. Years of wear and tear stripped off of his being like dead skin.
His onlookers almost forgotten, Brian had never experienced powers being able to affect other people, not this directly.
Is this the power of Natural skills…
“You… were fighting with those…” Ur’s slurred speech trailed off as his book slipped and kissed the wood below. The lady in the mask gnarled into an ugly snarl as she screamed, hands clawing at her face, pulling her flesh taut. The masked giant had fallen to a knee, before he rightened himself up with his strong arm. He picked the book back up, massaging his veiled head. “I won't be asking you if you're okay; I felt your pain – only a fraction of it, and that was enough. You are remarkable. But know that… that bad woman… is – we couldn’t intervene. It's not that we don't want to – we couldn’t. She's protected by that… fake deity she carries with her. I dare not indulge more, as I am not your personal retainer. ” The mask seemed to take a lungful of hair as he sat back on his previous chair. Dry pieces of fruit entered his mouth.
Brian's curved form slowly straightened itself as he bared his teeth. He spat some pilgrim on the ground. His vocal chords hadn’t ached from the maneuver. “I acknowledge your apology. I deny your methods.”
He got to a corner of the sumptuous room and cuddled the wall with his back. No one could ambush him from behind this way. And if they had the power to do so he would be dead anyway. That was his philosophy. As much as he despised the pits, that was one comfortable thought to have about them.
The light in the room appeared brighter in his eyes, even through the semi torn curtains.
Be raised a finger. “State… what you did to me.”
Alain sneakily glanced at Ur and urged him to speak as he sat back down on the chair next to him. “I healed you.” Ur’s mask curtly said. “We call them spells, strong one. Check your body. It won't hurt as much anymore. I stimulated your vigor to heal what could be healed. Unfortunately, what is there cannot be changed; what is truly bent cannot be righted.”
It was indeed like so –it surely feels like it. Brian kept a tight grasp on the healing pill in his hand. it had that same exact effect, it just wasn't as potent. Was it a coincidence that the system provided him with? Brian narrowed his eyes. Even if it wasn’t, the fact that he now had it as a reward meant he wasn’t meant to win, or leave unscathed. So I would’ve been a loser either way. He wasn't free at all. He thought about the pill in his hand for a second and decided not to swallow it. He’d keep it in his satchel once he had the chance – if he had the chance to get it back. For now it stood on the drawer, behind the two men.
Alain opened his mouth. Tea on the table untouched. Its previous steam resembled a hazy mist now. “I’ll start with Esenaji.” He steepled his gloved fingers.
“She is an envoy. An outsider. Unfortunately, with almost as much authority as our king himself. There are three of them mutts in the whole red line – what we call our vertical citadel – she has the most authority between them, as the de facto leader of the envoys. She was sent here months ago, way before the Second came to be not far from this place.” His mustaches seemed to sag. The redhead put a hand on his face. “Am I allowed to talk about this at all?”
“Article 120b – an obscure one. Comma th –”
“Comma three. That’s right, something like that existed… I apologize, Sir. It’s been a tough week, I’m just a bit thrown upside down.”
Ur acknowledged it with a nod and kept the man talking uninterrupted. “I’m a high ranking retainer, I can talk about this now.” he looked at Brian with the intensity of a hungry wolf and spoke through his ruby stash. “What I’m about to tell won’t leave this room. Not without my permission. Is that clear?”
Brian could only instinctively nod as he gripped the pill tighter in his fist. His body was paralyzed by fear once more. His head started throbbing and heating up once again.
“All right.” he could feel a long explanation coming. “She's from another city, another settlement entirely. I do not know the specifics, but they shall be given to me soon enough now.'' The old butler uncomfortably shifted on his chair, and it was Ur who spoke in his place. “You don't have to, you know? The other two managed to push forward just fine.”
“Just fine won’t cut it if we want to save this fucking world! They – let’s arbitrarily call them bastards for whatever reason – stipulated a contract on the pretense of fixing our water reserves by sending us three envoys. Three envoys with status reading abilities. What a coincidence, huh? One of those three is the leader, the agreeable Esenaji you just had the luck to meet. We didn’t refuse, of course, as they gifted us the amount of this room times ten in minerals and some precious prototypes.” He glanced at Ur’s unmoving form “Which we’re currently trying to crack. The point is, somehow, they knew you Pioneers were coming, and were coming here.”
Some people were aware earthlings like Brian would appear here beforehand? He quietly hissed from the corner of his room, but if anyone heard him, they pretended not to.
“That was, of course, an oversight on our part, as she had been given authority on par with that of the king concerning Information regarding you pioneers. Technically speaking, they also “have” to verify that you lot aren’t magical beasts or members of other races in a guise, as if accepting the Quest earlier wasn’t proof enough.” His teeth ground together, and his mustaches lifted by a bit, enough to see his upper teeth. They were all golden.
That made for some interesting implications, Brian mused. If they thought he was a monster – he corrected himself… if they could use the excuse of shapeshifting monsters, that implied the existence of them, which didn’t sound too pleasant. The danger in Thoum just got kicked up by a notch in his mind. With grace, he bent his knees and shifted to a more forward stance. His center of gravity lowered.
The old butler scoffed and leaned back on the wooden seat, straight neck resting on the top backrest of the chair. He looked at the mesmerizing painting depicting the ancient battle above and sighed. He's sighing more than he's smiling, now. “Ah. I’ll have to clean the room later.” Ur let out a chuckle, the chair groaned a bit. “Alain, I did what I had to do; heal our champion from unforeseen circumstances, you have to thank Elias for this.” He turned to Brian, far away on the other side of the room. “Again, strong one, I apologize for any unpleasant experience. I don’t want to sound cowardly, but… I’ll wait for the geezer to finish his explanation and his demand, then I’ll leave. I have work to do.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
A smack of his lips and the redhead resumed again “Yeah. Not the geezer part, though, I'm still in my prime. Where were we? I can’t remember.” He massaged his eyes with two fingers. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll continue from here. Each Gaian settlement had and has their own different power source due to developing independently over millennia, or more. We specifically rely on minerals. It took tens of thousands of years before we remembered our reciprocal presence in the world. Before that, we blissfully thought we were the last Gain settlement still standing. Yet, we were everywhere – alas, the underground stretches beyond what we can imagine, especially here in Thoum. Sir, we can't even see the curvature of the planet, you cannot even begin to comprehend how mind bogglingly big it is. It makes no sense since we should be just some stains on the ground due to gravity. Furthermore, there’s not really enough incentive to locate ourselves amidst all of this chaos, as it’ll be too costly.” He took his time to see if Brian was following, before continuing. ”We got teleported here, to Thoum, just like you. This happened almost 10 years ago, I believe. I wasn’t even a butler back then.” he lowered his head and widened his eyes as he found the teacup on the table. He took a sip of his cold tea, a faint smile stretched across his wrinkled face. “Everybody, and with everybody I'm not talking about everybody, obviously – in the red line – specializes in manipulating the mana found either in our bodies, or in the environment. Here underground there’s a lot to take into, as it is pushed low by – sorry, I’m digressing a bit. We cannot, or choose not to, manipulate both of the currents, as we call them, at the same time as it would be too cumbersome and unwieldy. A wrong step could cripple our channels and weaken our bodies. I’ll make a congruous analogy. Think of a weak person having a powerful skill, if that power allowed them to swing their arms inhumanly fast – that’s still a neologism for me, I hope I used it correctly – they would, at best, dislocate their joints. At worst they’d lose the feeling in their arms. Forever. Amputation. Sir, the point I’m trying to make is that Esenaji, not being from here… is different from us. Their people create micro gods through some technological means, bind their gods to themselves, their bodies, and then worship them so it can bestow powers directly to them. It's a clever application of faith, something we don't even understand. Err, what that thing just did to you was to take your status information. I’m unaware of the specifics, but it needs to touch your body directly to do so.”
Brian tensed up, this time his head was properly hurting. He could feel it becoming hotter. Forward, move forward. It meant whatever was on the other side already knew his weak points by now, and if they had the right skillset that could probe more information from skills… they could delve deeper into the specifics. “It isn’t pretty, that happened with the third as well. Just… the abomination stopped after a single slap because he was unresponsive. Poor guy.” he glanced at brian. “You’ll meet them soon enough, don’t worry. You’ll also meet other Pioneers soon to come. We’re approaching the 10 year mark.”
That perked up his interest a bit. “What… this about?” He remembered the soldier yesterday on horseback saying the same thing. It seemed to be widespread information.
Alain smiled while he glanced at the unmoving form of Ur. A stone of a man both in patience and strength, it seemed. “Back on Sarroth, our planet.“ He began. “Actually, no. Yes. Each Gaian settlement, as I’ve told you before, developed independently after a certain event – the age and the war of Rust. This divergence also means our paths of advancement differ greatly as I’ve said. We are not aware of the many cities that could be paces away from us. “The splitting of our race happened because of our weakness – we still are, truth be told. We needed to hide…”
From who? Brian attentively listened to the story. The old man seemed much older than before.
“Our goddess, and at this point I'm not even sure if I should call her a Goddess or a Demon, many, many, many years ago, before the invention of writing itself, “noticed” an instability in the balance of the world. To her, that was tainted. A scar. A scab to remove. To fix that, she created even more imbalance by imbuing one single specimen of each sufficiently developed race, be it socially or intellectually developed – with godly power. She thought this would resolve the dispute between races. Naturally, as you can guess, chaos ensued. That’s where the age of Rust began. Beings called Kings and Queens showed up on the world and wreaked havoc just because they could, simple as that.” Strands of his hair began floating up in the air again. “Naturally, a King was bestowed upon us as well, but as we were already too scattered due to our nomadic tendencies, that created disarray in groups allied with the new King, and those that weren’t, broadly speaking. The opposers were wiped out – and we distanced even more from ourselves, spreading to every corner of the world. If only two of us survived, we could return, that’s what we thought. When our King was killed by the powerhouse of the Orcs – their own King, we fell even more into disarray, and began seeking refuge underground. Eventually, out of necessity and desperation, we adapted. Our knowledge was deep, and our supportive magic helped us to survive, albeit barely. Over millennia, our societies grew and our species became self-sufficient. We finally didn’t need to worry about the state of the world above as we had found a new one beneath.” Alain let out a bitter laugh. “This is where the answer you asked for is laying – the system transported us here. All of us. All of us Gaians scattered throughout the world, and brought us on Thoum. We don’t even know why! It was said that in 10 years’ time the system would send all of the other Kings and Queens still living in Sorroth to this place. Our former world is inhabited by goblins, minotaurs, aquamen, dragons, you name it, what you call a proper fantasy world. Some of the monsters back at home are fierce – and their champions even more so, nevermind their Kings or Queens or Pawns. Having them transported here shouldn’t matter, as the situation would just repeat itself, with us hunkering down and living like this. The system has furthermore aided by giving us a sky we don’t fully comprehend, coherent seasons and rain underground. No longer do we concern ourselves over oxygen reserves or waste disposal. These 10 years have been pleasant. There are nine other races that have been transported here, with their 9 respective calamities. Pardon my language, but if we continue like this, we may all die before the end of the year.”
“What the old man is saying is that we are pretty much fucked.”
Yeah. Brian didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit. Suddenly, the Pits didn’t sound too bad.
“You Progenitors are the key to end it all. The system asked us to win. We don’t care about all that. We just want to survive. That’s why you are so important to us.”
Ur’s ladylike boomed. “Yeah, that is right, let me rephrase it – Sorry, I was getting bored earlier. Along with us, 9 more sapient races, each from their different world, were summoned here. Each with their own boons and calamities. It seems like they were in a similar situation as ours, the underdogs, as you call them. The system provided us with you lot, the Progenitors. Who knows what they have been supplied with. Mythical weapons, a boost in strength? Flying cities? We have no idea. The only good thing is that they also have no idea what we have in store. Hopefully.”
Alain mumbled sardonically under his breath. “Yeah, praise the system for that.” The young man was becoming even more confused than before, and he asked a single, simple question.
“What?” Brian asked from across the room. He couldn’t comprehend it at all, it just seemed like a cosmic joke. Snatching desperate people from multiple realities only to pit them against each other… that was completely ridiculous.
They looked at each other for a moment and laughed.
“I must apologize, Sir. My behavior was unsightly. We… huh… we have no idea. It really makes no sense. Why does life exist? Why must I never catch a break? We don’t know, simply put.”
Ur raised a meaty, gloved finger, his precious book resting like a kid on his lap. “So far, we have encountered a single calamity. Which is worrisome, because it means their time frame of arrival is different from ours. That… thing bore the resemblance of an elf, but it was anything but that. With four eyes and a bright pink skin like that of a pig, no elf would’ve looked like that." He drew a big lungful of air “We are fairly sure it is a calamity, as its prowess was an anomaly in and of itself, completely outside of the realms of possibility. The power resembled that of a King. It melted the skin, bones and armor of a couple of our men in a matter of minutes just by watching them. Few survived the encounter. That was years ago. We were still getting our bearings and were unprepared for such violence. The other one is an utter mystery. Clad in darkness, just few of its slashes were enough to leave crater-deep cuts into cliffs, the shockwaves could be heard on the deepest parts of the red line. As of now, sightings of our Kings and Queens are still only false alarms. We’ll talk about the other races in another time, it is getting late, and we both need to be somewhere after this.”
“We can only hope and pray that she hasn’t sold your information to any of the hostile races or calamities already, if they’re capable of critical thinking. I don’t think she did, unless her wish was the annihilation of us Gaians.” His frown deepened. “It was too good of an opportunity for us to pass, even suspicious as it was. They also offered prototypes and defective items used to create a deity, just like they can. If we successfully manage to reverse engineer them, or glimpse into their function, our chances of survival would skyrocket.” He finished the tea and gently put it down on the table.
“Sir. As a Pioneer, you are the only one that can display your status to others willingly, directly from the system, without proxies.” Alain’s hands trembled. “After hearing our story, we humbly ask you, with solemn authority, to show us your status screen and information. We know we may be pushing it, but they’re orders from our king. I'll be frank, all of this will be relayed to His Majesty himself, so we could provide you with the best training and aid you to the best of our abilities. We have no further motives – not malicious, at least.”
As Brian just wanted to tell him off, his human skill pulsated in his brain, soothing him. Alain was telling the truth. He was beginning to think it had a mind of its own these days. It let him think about his options. One, they, well, not them, but they, some Gaians, were already aware of his status, apparently. Long term cooperation and connection was also something he desperately wanted, even if he hadn’t fully processed it yet with his ration mind. He probably would’ve relayed them the information regardless, as the recipients of the Quest, they were fully in the right to know that.
Furthermore, if they were going to help him, there weren’t really choices destined for a refusal. He yearned to meet the other two Pioneers from Earth in earnest. It was strange, but he genuinely wanted someone to talk with. Someone who could understand him.
Brian’s vision filled with status screens as he flashed his information in full in front of their waiting faces.
Their eyes bulged open.