Chapter 24
Lynthrone
Asher lay splayed and sprawled on the wet dirt like a beached whale ashore, still and unmoving. Though his heart roared with elation and fear, the rest of his body wouldn’t obey.
Closing his eyes, he rummaged through the still-fresh memories of the battle. He survived... somehow. It was beyond him, truly, how he still had a breath in him. Perhaps, he almost laughed in bitterness, it was that 1 point in Luck that he invested. By serendipity, it saved him.
He knew better than to believe blindly in either faith or luck--in life, unexpected things were simply coincidences. Sometimes they rolled your way and blessed you with a day or a week or a year to remember, and sometimes they rolled away like the receding tides carrying out dreams and hopes of tomorrow.
He brayed rather loudly as he struggled to sit up.
The world around him had shifted back into place. It was flat, once again. Eerily, there were no more hills of corpses strewn about; rather, there were just corpses strewn about. They were everywhere, piled in varying sizes, rotting still.
It was then that his eyes finally focused back on Wael--to his shock and horror, she was standing some ten yards from him. Her body seemed to hold no wounds or scars--as pristine as if it were just made. Her gaze was serpentine, prodding through him like a blade. The orbs of liquid schrol embossed in deep blue didn’t blink, didn’t move, didn’t stir. She looked on and on at him, her lips eventually parting.
“Come find me,” she said as her figure suddenly began to dissipate. “I will be waiting.”
Her voice faded with the wind... and so did she.
Nothing remained except his memories and the ghastly landscape which surrounded him. He’d finally remembered to breathe once more, having not realized he’d been holding his breath all the while. Despite already being doused wet in blood, sweat managed to break out, coating his back and rear.
It was then that it happened, the familiar pang of pain. Except, Asher enjoyed it. He found it oddly pleasurable. Approaching--
--nope, not going there.
Opening his eyes, he found himself back in the cabin. He nary had a second of peace before countless windows assailed every inch of his vision, informing him of countless things. He began to peruse them slowly, one by one.
Completed: Grassy Lowlands [Final]
Reward [1]: +1,000 Souls, +10 Divine Gems
Reward [2]: Titles Unlocked
New Title Unlocked: [Hell Survivor (Rare)] -- survived an Anomaly.
Title Effect: None
Reward [3]: Cabin Upgrades Unlocked
New Cabin Upgrade: [x1 Empty Room]
Empty Room: 6x6x6 Room that you can access from the living room.
New Cabin Upgrade: [Goblin Servant]
Goblin Servant: every day for 1h, a Goblin Servant will appear in your Cabin to clean it.
Reward [4]: Blacksmith Unlocked
Blacksmith: A new building will appear at the plaza. You may exchange Souls, Divine Gems, and Materials to craft gear.
Reward [5]: Adventure Center Unlocked
Adventure Center: A new building will appear at the plaza. Adventure Center allows you to re-try all the Stages you’ve been beaten so far. You may modify the difficulty of those Stages for Extra Rewards. Note: re-tried Stages do count toward the Weekly Quota but at half the value.
Reward [6]: 7 Days Grace Period
7 Days Grace Period: You have Seven Days to complete the assigned tasks. You may challenge Stages and Tasks at your own pace. There is no special reward for completing the Tasks in a shorter period of time, and the unused days of the Grace Period do not transfer over.
Reward [7]: 2x Jugs of Fresh Water
Reward [8]: +1UPG to Starter Weapon (cannot roll a Special Effect through this upgrade)
...
Due to the Anomaly, you are given Bonus Rewards:
Bonus Reward [1]: +1 Free Upgrade of your choice when you enter the Upgrade shop.
Bonus Reward [2]: Choose any of the Furniture Items that you have unlocked in the Furniture Store and buy it for just 1 Soul.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Bonus Reward [3]: Second Daily Meal becomes permanent (will always copy your First Meal unless otherwise specified)
Bonus Reward [4]: Daily Meal Upgraded--half a loaf of fresh bread + a spoonful of sugar.
Bonus Reward [5]: 1x [Scroll of Temporum (Divine)]
[Scroll of Temporum] -- immediately teleports you out of the stage and back to your cabin. If you have less than 3 days of Grace Period, restore it to 3 days. Note: You may Gift or Sell the item to others.
...
Congratulations! Many Lords and Ladies have taken notice of your Achievements! You are being carefully observed. Perform well, and you might be blessed.
It was a lot to take it, that was for certain.
Though it didn’t say so anywhere explicitly, Asher deduced that the Stage he ‘rolled’ wasn’t normal--that it was a ‘mutated’ version. He already suspected as much: even if the boss alone wasn’t enough to convince him, the sheer quantity of monsters and their variety certainly was. Nonetheless, it felt thrilling to know that wasn’t the baseline going forward and just a freak accident. Hopefully. Maybe. Probably. Well, he certainly prayed it was.
There were a lot of things to uncork but before he could, the pang of pain assailed him once more, and, before he knew it, he was at the plaza. Well, he thought he was at the plaza, at least.
Less so than a square where depressed maniacs gathered after surviving hell, the plaza at the moment seemed closer to a thriving, lived-in city. There were people everywhere--some were sitting around the fountain, chatting, there was a constant stream of folk going in and out of every building he could see, and the atmosphere itself just seemed so... relaxed.
Furthermore, the plaza itself had evolved--the fountain had become a central figure, its shape cast out of the finest marble stone, its surface depicting a dozen or so intricate carvings. The water cascaded down from the mouths of sculpted dragons into a pool of azure depths that seemed as clear as a baby's tear.
Circling the square in a fine formation were breathtaking edifices, each more awe-inspiring than the last. Towers of alabaster and obsidian soared, spires that flanked them seemingly hand-carved by the finest craftsmen. Several of the buildings featured balconies adorned with vines of ivy, and gold-gilded balustrade shielding whatever or whomever sat upon them.
It was a thriving little paradise, well beyond the somewhat ghost-town-feeling one he’d experienced before.
Abuzz with sounds ranging from hushed conversations to hammering of the stones and metals, it unexpectedly burned with life. Its limestone pavement, perfect in its make and without a crack, seemed a perfect reflection of its reality... the sort of reality that Asher could not understand.
“Hm? Oh, we finally got a newbie,” he was pulled from his thoughts by a rather deep voice. The bearer of it was a man who appeared to be in his fifties, donning a simple combo of garments--white, cotton shirt and cotton pants, with leather boots strapped up to just above his ankles. “Shit. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Ah, don’t worry. It will pass.”
“... what is...” Asher mumbled incoherently.
“This? Yeah, I know,” the man chuckled, looking back as well. “Trust me, I felt the same when I first saw it. But you get used to it. Alright, I haven’t yet had the chance to do this, so it’s time to pay the favor forward: you’ve just finished a tutorial,” the man said, turning toward Asher once more. “The ‘game’, now, becomes entirely different. You’ve probably already gotten the notification of the Grace Period and the Adventure Center, right?”
“Yeah,” Asher nodded.
“Right. Well, see that thrice-spired, gem-adorned building over there that goes up about a hundred yards?” the man pointed to the northernmost building at the plaza. There was a small line of folk on the outside waiting to go in. “That’s the Adventure Center. It’s your new bread and butter, pretty much. You’re a day too late, actually. Yesterday was the ‘Last Day’ for a number of us. It looked a little like an invasion to be honest, ha ha ha, with all of us lining at the front to sign up.”
“...” Asher remained silent. Confusion must have been apparent in his eyes as the man smiled soon after and continued.
“In broad strokes, there are three groups in Lynthorne--that’s what this place is officially called. You have the Civilians, the Bandits, and the Shepherds. The names are a bit cheeky and stupid, but they stuck so we just kept using them. Anyway, Civilians are folk that lined up yesterday--we don’t actively hunt for harder stages, we mostly replay the easier ones and slowly grind out Souls and Divine Gems. Most of us just focus on upgrading our Cabins, really, to make our lives easier. It’s become a sort of second life. We also make up the majority of people. Inevitably, most of the Bandits and Shepherds come and join us.
“Speaking of them--Bandits are people who grind earlier stages not to upgrade their Cabins but themselves. After that, they try pushing for the harder Stages and Scenarios. Uh, don’t worry about that. You won’t unlock those for some time. Anyway, their success rate is... eh, middling, at best. But they’re usually the only source of high-end luxuries and they bleed us Civilians dry of Souls. Three days ago, actually, Rob--one of the Bandits and, yes, he will kill you if you make that pun--auctioned off an outdoor pool that he was rewarded for completing a bonus objective. Can you guess how much it was bought for?"
“...”
“Six million Souls," the man enunciated each word. Asher's lips parted in shock and the man seemingly got what he wanted, laughing at Asher's reaction rather freely. "Yeah. It's nuts. But, honestly, that's life for most of us here. I've been stuck as a Civilian for, what? Six years now? Shit, has it really been six years? Goddamn, time flies. Some have been around for decades, now. It's hard at first, to adjust. But eventually, it just becomes... life. It's what we got. You settle into a routine, and clearing Stages becomes a job of sorts where you get your wage and then use that wage to splurge on yourself every once in a while."
“... uh, you, you mentioned the third group?” Asher prompted the man as the latter fell silent for a while.
"Oh right, yeah. The Shepherds," the man said. "I guess an alt name for them would be something like Climbers? They're the ones that are actively challenging the hardest stages, pushing the boundaries. As you can imagine, their numbers aren't great. Actually, I think there are only like twenty of them left, by now, and most of them are the OGs that have been pulled into this place almost a century ago. They don't really mingle with the rest of us. Occasionally, they'll show up and auction something off if they're in desperate need of Souls or Divine Gems, but for the most part, they live in a different world from ours. Anyway, that's the basic rundown of this place. Just explore, meet the Shopkeepers, and try and figure out where you fit in this whole mess."
“Just a sec--” Asher called back the man as he started to walk away. “If you don’t mind me asking... how many people are here?”
"Hmm," the man rubbed his chin for a moment, contemplating in silence. "I don't really know. There's probably tens of thousands, at the least, but because of the size of the plaza, we are sorted into 'batches'. Kind of. Think of it like 'servers' where you hop between them depending on when you 'log in' and whether a particular server is filled up to capacity."
“Ah, thanks.”
“Yeah, no probs. Just promise me you’ll pay it forward. The next newbie you say, tell ‘em.”
“Will do.”
Asher felt overwhelmed--perhaps even more so than when he was reading through the list of the rewards--and turned statuesque. He’d expected many things of this place after ‘finishing the tutorial’ and, in a way, he’d even expected this exact thing. He’d already asked Qyne once whether it was possible that some people grinded out the same stages to farm out Furniture rather than upgrades, and though she didn’t confirm it or deny it, it was clear from her attitude that it was true.
However, even if he predicted that much... he could have never imagined the sheer scale. And least yet where and how he himself fit into the whole puzzle. Was he a Civilian, a Bandit, or a Shepherd? Even he didn’t know yet.