Luke Everhart
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Chapter 229 - What Can Never Happen
🕑 Added 2025-03-29 11:30:02 +0000 UTC(As promised, the Monday chapter is released today instead. Have a great weekend everyone!)
“What are they doing?” Cen whispered to herself.
Nar looked up from the uneven steps he was struggling to navigate with his wobbly legs, and glancing to his left, he found that a priestess was intoning a chant of some kind as she used some sort of skill. She slowly passed her glowing golden hands over one of the white and golden armored and armed delvers, and some kind of liquidy, bubble-like, shifting chromatic barrier coated the delver.
“They are going into the dungeon,” one of the Scimitar delvers told him. A woman, Nar guessed, from her voice and armor. “Under the Laws of Corruption, they need to go in and cleanse the dungeon. That means to kill every living thing inside it, and then set off eradication charges to erase everything else inside the dungeon.”
“But what if there are apprentices already inside?” Nar asked.
“They are operating under the Radiants’ direct authority here, which allows them to bypass the dungeon rules,” the delver explained. “If they find any delvers alive, they will be rescued. Otherwise, their bodies will remain in the dungeon… And be erased with it.”
“But those barriers… What if the party inside finishes the dungeon and tries to leave?” Cen asked.
“They won’t be allowed to, and by now, they will have received a message to stay put and wait for rescue.”
“And what about…”
The delver shook her helmeted head, stopping Cen. “Not here.”
What’s with all the mystery? Nar wondered. Why can’t they just tell us?
As they passed by another dungeon, they watched as the Church crew turned off the golden barrier blocking its entrance. A party of combat delvers, fully coated in pearlescent bubbles of aether, assembled before the dungeon cube, doing one last quick check of themselves. Then, one of them approached and touched the cube, carefully, tentatively, as though afraid of it, then they all vanished into thin air, presumably into the dungeon they were to cleanse…
Though destroy might be a better way to put it… Nar thought.
As they reached the lower levels of the dungeon cluster, Nar finally got his first glimpse of other survivors. Rows of apprentices were being escorted downwards, towards the translucent, white glowing buildings, and if the Church delvers that had greeted them had been hostile, the ones now surrounding the aethermancer apprentices were, if not as bad as they had been towards their party, not exactly friendly and warm either.
Why are they being like this? Nar thought, a spark of anger igniting within him. All we did was survive that fucking dungeon, and they’re acting like we’re fucking trash for it!
He caught Cen raising a hand towards the delver that had spoken to them before, but the woman just shook her head once more. Whatever was going on, now was the time to keep their mouths shut.
The Scimitar crew deftly guided them and their hovering stretchers around the queued apprentices and ranks of white-golden delvers, and headed not for their beetle, but towards the new ship that had brought the COO and, Nar presumed, the HOUNDS to the scene. His back burned under the glares of both the Church uniformed people and the armed ones.
“Fucking BNs…” someone muttered as they passed.
Nar clenched his fists and kept his head high, staring straight ahead of him.
The walk to the ship past the Church crews couldn’t have taken them more than a couple of minutes, and yet, it felt like an eternity, and Nar kept expecting to be hit from behind at any point. However, they made it to the ship’s ramp without incident, and were escorted through tight, dark gray metal corridors into a surprisingly spacious and starkly white room. Within, they found two beds, stripped bare of anything, as well as several white cupboards.
As for Gad, Rel, Tuk and Mul, they were rushed off somewhere else to receive immediate treatment.
“I’ll take care of the tank,” the healer told Kur. “And the other two are looking after the burned apprentices and the brawler. The rest of you will stay here until they are stabilized for the journey, understood? We need to look you over before we can clear you to the Church. For now, there’s food and water in that box on the counter there, and a toilet behind that door. So just stay here and wait.”
“Yes, of course!” Kur said. “Thank you so much.”
“I wish I could stay and explain it all to you, but I really need to get started on that morsvar,” the healer said. “And it's best if we limit any exposure until we have the all clear. The COO will explain everything when she gets back.”
“Alright,” Kur said.
The healer left the room and the door closed behind him with a soft sigh, and there was a very audible click in the silence that followed the healer’s departure.
“Are we… In trouble?” Jul asked, eyeing the clearly locked door. “They are worried… Scared. Even all the Church people outside were.”
“Really? Damn… Do you happen to know why?” Kur asked her.
Jul shook her head. “Just that it's about what happened to the dungeons.”
Scared of what happened to the dungeons? Nar thought, taking a seat on the bare metal of one of the beds.
“Great… And now what?” Viy asked.
She didn’t look great herself, but the spearwoman had insisted on making her way down to the ship on her own two feet, aided by Kur whenever she swayed too much.
“Nothing we can do,” Kur said with a shrug. “But something a lot more serious than we thought is going on, that much I know for sure. The Church wouldn’t mobilize like this otherwise, and you can tell from this room that they emptied it in a hurry. Stripped the beds, cleared the cupboards… One of the drawers was even left open, and the door’s locked… Whatever happened to us, they don’t want to be near us, and my guess is they don’t want it to spread…”
Nar looked up at his party leader. Something had been tickling at the back of his mind, and now, at Kur’s words, he understood it. Or rather, he remembered what it was.
“You don’t mean… Like a disease?” Nar asked, his heart sinking.
He had only recently escaped being an Unclean, and he didn’t exactly look forward to going right back to being one so soon. Or ever.
“I don’t know… But something that spreads is my guess,” Kur said. “And that window did mention something about corruption…”
“Well, I don’t… Feel anything,” Cen said, checking her hands and body.
Kur shook his head and sat down beside Nar. “No point in guessing. For now, we’re out, we’re safe, and the others are being looked after. Let’s just eat something and try to rest, and I’m sure the COO will be here at some point.”
“Can-Can I lay down?” Viy asked, her tone suddenly weak as she pointed at the second bed in the room.
“Of course!” Cen said. “Come on! Lay down here. We can all sit on the other bed.”
“Th-Thank you,” Viy whispered.
The spear woman groaned as she laid down, and Cen fashioned a pillow for her out of a bundle of her daily uniforms.
“Sorry,” Viy whispered, closing her eyes.
“You should’ve just taken the stretcher!” Cen said, gently smacking her arm.
Viy shook her head. “I’ve already been enough of a burden… Again.”
Nar grimaced. In the end, he had been right in asking Kur to procure those mental boosters, but with the way things had gone down, he hadn’t even been able to use the damned things! Viy had been forced to power through it alone, and Crystal knew what had happened to her under the influence of the illatrian’s mental assault. From the outside, it hadn’t looked pretty, and he doubted the inside had been any better.
Next time, Nar promised himself, and her, though he wasn’t sure if he was at fault… That monster had truly been something else.
With a sigh, he scanned the empty room around them. His [Smell] had caught onto something nice wafting from the aforementioned box, and when his eyes touched the gray, metallic container, he decided to get up and investigate it.
“Oh, that smells nice,” Jul said, when Nar lifted the lid. “Are those sandwiches?”
“I think so,” Nar said, his face warmed by the hot air emanating from the box.
He lifted it and brought the box around the room, letting each of them grab a sandwich wrapped in some kind of plasticky, yellowy paper, and a bottle of water.
“Ooh, it's hot!” Cen shouted, passing the sandwich from hand to hand.
“Thank fucking Crystal for that,” Kur muttered.
He grabbed two, one for himself and one for Nar, and Nar returned the box to its original place.
“Hmph! That’s good,” Kur muttered with his mouth full. “Crystal, that hits the spot…”
The rations they had been given had been mostly cold sandwiches, fruit and water, and they hadn’t been bad, but whatever was in that sandwich was still hot, and Nar delighted in the explosion of hot flavor and in the simple act of chewing and eating. It was like a balm for his very soul.
Unfortunately, the food was gone far too quickly, and Nar was left nursing his half drunk, warm, water bottle. His mind strayed from thought to thought, unable to hold onto either of them for enough time to even make them coherent, skipping from the illatrian, to the guardian trees, to the Church, and what was and would happen to the apprentices outside as well as them, and the fight, the rain, and light, and trees and the fresh air of the dungeon, and his [Aura Blade], which he was sure to unlock now, and everything and anything that had happened to him in the past twenty-four or so hours rampaged through his battered mind.
Viy fell asleep at some point, cradling Jul, who had asked to lay down as well, and Kur was also nodding off, leaving only Cen and Nar to stew over their own thoughts.
An indeterminate time later, the door sighed open and Nar looked up as Tys stepped in. She took a quick stock of the room, and brought a finger to her lips so they didn’t wake up Viy or Jul.
“I know you have questions, but let’s get you all cleared up first,” she whispered, and pointed at Cen. “You go first. It’s the second door to the left.”
“I-I can just go on my own?” Cen asked.
“Of course,” the COO said, frowning at the small caster. “Where would you run to? The Church?”
“Run? Why would I run?” Cen asked, her tone pitched high with shock.
Tys sighed.
“Sorry, never mind that. Go on and get checked first. Then we can talk,” Tys said, gently pushing her out the door. “And don’t worry, I really don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about.”
With Cen gone, it was only Kur and Nar who were left awake in the room, and Tys took Cen’s spot in between them on the bare bed, forcing them scooch away to give her room.
“I need you guys to tell me everything that happened,” she said, her tone low. “From the very start, and don’t leave anything out. Go.”
“Uh… Right,” Kur said, sharing a glance with Nar.
Haltingly at first, and gaining momentum as he went, Kur told her everything that had transpired. For the most part, Tys seemed happy with their reactions and instincts, but her face fell when Kur at last told her about the illatrian.
“A frozen walking dead!” she breathed. “In a low level, orange dungeon? Fucking Abyss… That’s insane! And even more so that you survived it!”
Kur nodded at Nar. “His [Aura Blade] got that thing in the end.”
Tys gave Nar a surprised look.
“[Aura Blade]? Really? You actually managed to use it?”
Nar nodded, unable to keep a big, stupid, happy grin from taking over his face.
“I did, but only because everyone covered for me,” Nar said. “And because Mul distracted the illatrian in the end.”
Tys looked him over. “Still, I didn’t think you had enough [Mastery] for the damage that it would’ve taken to end that thing...”
Nar scratched the back of his head. “Well… About that.”
“Spill. Now!”
“I think it's probably easier to show you…” Nar said.
He brought out his sword, and flipped the blade face up so that they could see the differences across its length.
“What in the Pile…” Kur whispered. “What did you do to it now?”
Nar glanced down the length of the blade.
“I’m not sure… I needed more aura, and then the sword kind of… Reached into me?” Nar said, frowning, struggling to put to words what had happened.
“Like during the confluence?” Tys asked.
Nar stared up at her in surprise. He hadn’t expected her to know about it, but he shook his head.
“Last time the sword bypassed my [Mastery]. This time, it was different… The sword’s pathways connected with mine again, but then it just sucked in my aura, including the big chunk of it that I had already pushed into the sword for [Aura Blade]. I cycled it again, to the max, and it took it all again, and it happened five times! Then, this ball of light appeared in the middle of it… And I knew I had enough aura then.”
Nar stared down at the circular indent at the center of the blade. Six lines zigzagged from it, three reaching down to the guard of the sword, and three reaching up and merging at the tip of the blade. The blade itself still looked burned and scarred in its chromatic, purplish iridescence, but seeing the lines, and the circle, filled him with an unexplained, almost childish, joy.
Maybe I’ve upgraded its pathways, he thought, grinning down at his sword. I’ll have to ask the master later.
“Well, if there was doubt before about you keeping that sword, that’s gone out the window now,” Tys finally spoke. “That’s the sign of an aura core.”
Kur and Nar both gaped at her.
“A what?” they nearly shouted in unison.
Tys shrugged. “Why is it so surprising? There were pathways in it already, weren’t there?”
“But… An aura core. Isn’t that something you need… Well, a soul for?” Kur asked.
“I guess… Yeah, fine. We call it an aura core, but it’s more like an external aura reservoir,” Tys explained. “All auramancer weapons have at least one, as it helps us go beyond the limits of our [Mastery]... But you’ll see. You’ll get new weapons if you decide to stay with us, and they will all have pathways in them, and eventually, cores too.”
“My Crystal…” Kur breathed. “There’s just no end to the amount of stuff we don’t know. Why didn’t they tell us about this? I’ve been so worried about that damned [Mastery]!”
“Exactly because of that. So you wouldn’t slack off and not upgrade your [Mastery] as you should be,” Tys said, fixing him with a half smirk and half serious chastising glare.
Kur babbled something at that.
“Still, this is a surprise,” Tys said, leaning her face closer to the weapon. “I’m no expert, but it looks sort of fine? Wonder if you also upgraded your own pathways while you were at it, too…”
She looked up at Nar and grinned at him. “And all this while your party was dying around you? Damn. That’s cold!”
“What? No! I just knew I needed to…”
Tys stifled her laughter and squeezed his shoulder.
“I’m just taking the piss,” she said. “You did well. In fact, you did the only thing you could’ve done. Sometimes you need to ignore your party, and let the damage happen if you are to have any hope of saving anyone at all. That’s just the way it is, even for tanks.”
“She’s right,” Kur said. “Thank you, Nar. It was like the Ceremony all over again.”
Nar shook his head. “Ah, no need to thank me, man. We’re all one party and we all got us out of there.”
Kur smiled and nodded at him.
“That aside, you guys got a lot closer to the corruption that I thought,” Tys said. “It seems the source was right in your dungeon… Which is bad for you, but good for all the other apprentices.”
“What corruption?” Kur asked. “Please, can you just tell us what’s going on?”
Tys glanced at the sleeping forms of Viy and Jul, then nodded wearily.
“I wanted to tell it just once, for all of you, but I guess you can tell them,” she said with a grimace.
She sat up straighter and glanced up at the white ceiling. “Where do I even start… Alright. Look, you guys heard of the Abyssals, right?”
Both Kur and Nar stared at her.
“You mean the evil gods?” Kur asked.
“Yup,” she said. “Anyways, long story short, they are all weakened and defeated, stuck beyond the Labyrinth and all, but they're always stirring up shit. Always trying to invade us and get the war going again.”
“Yes…” Kur said, nodding with a frown. “But what does that have anything to do with our dungeon?”
“I’m getting there. There’s a lot of background stuff attached to this that you don’t know,” she said, sighing. “Why do you think I only wanted to say this once?”
Nar glanced at Kur. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting anything to do with the Abyssals…”
“Yeah…” Kur said.
“Alright, alright. Just shut up and let me talk,” she said. “In the beginning, there was Light and Dark, and between them there was balance… Ugh! I’m going to puke… Anyways, the Light side, the Crystal and the Radiants, wanted more than to just exist in the nothing, yeah? They dreamed of Creation and they went ahead and just did it. All shiny, and pretty and bright, and they filled the whole void with it. The Abyssals didn’t like it of course, and they went to war over it… So far so good, right? Nexus 101 and all that?”
“Uh-hu…” Kur said, nodding slowly.
“Anyways, they went to war for it because the Dark demanded that the Radiants return everything to nothing, and of course, the Radiants didn’t want to and they eventually won the war. They pushed the Abyssals to the very edges of Creation and put the Endless Labyrinth in between them and the Nexus, like a barrier. A very, very big barrier, and one that took over most of Creation itself. Well, what was left of it, anyways…”
“Damn,” Nar whispered.
Tys nodded. “Problem was, while the Abyssals were defeated, they were not dead. Light and Dark make up all that is, and it’s not like one can simply swallow or erase the other… They must both exist.”
“And the Abyssals never gave up on destroying the Nexus…” Kur whispered. “They’re still trying.”
“They are. And from the Dark Beyond, the Abyss, they reach through the Labyrinth, looking for ways through… And inside. And dungeon corruption is the way they try to do that.”
“The crystals on the wall?” Nar asked.
She shook her head.
“The crystals you saw were just the physical manifestation of the Abyssals' corruption,” she said. “The true corruption goes a lot deeper and farther than that, and a lot worse. If you think about it, the illatrian you saw wasn’t really a non-sapient… Not anymore according to what you told me.”
“What do you… Oh! Because he called us Children of the Radiants!” Kur said, his eyes going wide. “I did think he was not supposed to know that!”
“No, he’s not,” the COO said. “And that’s why they put up those golden barriers, and why they’re sending people in to kill everything inside and set up their holy bombs. These dungeons are going to be erased forever, and their guardian is going to be wiped, the cubes ground to dust and the dust chucked into a holy furnace. And that is all going down tonight, before those dungeons can become breeding grounds for beasts and sapient monsters, all of them united in the single-minded goal of reaching and destroying the Nexus.”
“Holy crap…” Kur whispered.
“The corrupted beasts and monsters will gather and swell, and become what we call a Surge, spreading into other dungeons, growing and growing, until we’re looking at a quadrillion plus sized invasion force!”
“Crystal…” Nar whispered.
“And they have no choice but to destroy everything?” Kur asked. “Can’t they purify or cleanse it somehow?”
Tys grimaced and sighed. “This is not a curse, Kur. It is the corruption of the very aether that makes up the building blocks of Creation…”
She folded her arms and considered her next words for a few moments.
“It’s like… Once corruption takes hold of a dungeon, the guardian itself flips sides. They’ll work for the Abyssals instead, and start eliminating the normal beasts and monsters inside the dungeon, or dungeon cluster. Then, they’ll start spawning things that were never supposed to be there, acting of their own, corrupted will. If left alone for too long, they will quickly amass enormous quantities of corrupted beasts and monsters, and when there’s enough of them, they spread out of the dungeon and look for more to invade and corrupt… The dungeon guardian makes the rules, and when it flips, suddenly everything can leave its domain. By then, everything in the dungeon will have been consumed, and the guardian itself dies shortly after that, leaving behind a dead, sterile dungeon.”
Nar exhaled slowly as he shook his head. “Crystal… This is all fucking insane.”
“And that’s why they’re destroying the dungeons?” Kur asked.
“Erasing them is a better way of putting it,” Tys said. “Corruption has never entered the Nexus, and it can never be allowed to get in. It would be the beginning of our downfall, and as shitty as the Radiants are, the Abyssals would be even shittier gods to live under.”
Nar glanced down at his tightly clasped hands, considering the Church people outside.
“Is that why they’re being like that?” he asked. “This corruption… It gets inside us too, and it corrupts us against the Nexus?”
“What…” Kur mumbled. “But that would mean…”
“Hush,” Tys said. “We don’t know yet, but yes, it affects sapients as well. It takes over our minds for the Abyssals and uses us as tools to try and infiltrate the Nexus.”
“My Crystal…” Kur whispered. “This is… It’s…”
“It’s just reality, Kur,” Tys said, shrugging. “And corruption is just another thing we need to deal with as delvers. Fortunately, it’s impossible to hide corruption. If you step out of the dungeon clean, then you're clean. If you don’t…”
Her voice trailed off, but her meaning was crystal clear.
It can never be allowed to get in… Nar thought.
“Why are you here, then?” Kur asked her. “Aren’t you worried you’ll become corrupted too?”
Tys snorted. “I’m too high level for that! Corruption only affects beasts, monsters and weaklings like you, under level 150.”
“Thanks,” Kur muttered.
“You’re welcome! So, no, I’m more than fine, don’t worry.”
Isn’t a level 125 delver already considered elite? Nar thought, dazed. Just what level is she?
“But you will have to give me all the loot you’ve taken, and I’m being serious here,” she said, her eyes darkening. “Everything has to be destroyed, purified and reduced to pure aether again. No matter if it's monster harvest, plants or inorganic materials, corruption can and will spread from anything! Even just your clothes! And we don’t mess with that.”
“Of course!” Kur said, glancing at their backpack by the door. “Everything’s inside the backpack.”
“Good,” Tys said. “You guys are tough, and although you were close to those crystals… Well, I think you’ll be okay. As soon as you’re all checked, we’ll hand over all the loot, and get out of here. It sucks to take that loss, but life’s like that sometimes.”
“Would it have been worse if you didn’t come here?” Kur asked. “Those people from before…”
Tys exhaled forcefully. “It doesn’t matter what the Church says, the majority of aethermancers don’t like us. And when shit like this happens… Well, some are quick to point fingers at those that reject the Holy Aether of the Almighties, even when it’s not really much of a choice during the Climb, eh? And so, you get shitty people like that once in a while. Of course, there are shining examples here and there, but they’re the exception. Priests, like that bishop, tend to be accounted amongst those, since the Radiants forgive us, priests, as the voices and executors of the Radiants’ will, tend to reflect that. Its doctrine, after all.”
Nar shrugged it off. He never really cared much for how others thought of him, unless they actually meant something to him. Family, friends, his party… As for the faceless “people”, who cared?
However, he couldn’t fully shrug it off, now, could he? Not when he knew firsthand the terrible power that the faceless many could inflict upon the few, and not when they were magnitudes of power above him, or had the full might of the Church behind them, priests or no priests, doctrine or not.
I need to be stronger, he thought. We all do.
But what kind of strength did one need, to be safe from an entire Nexus of hatred? From mighty militaries, and levels, and, now, even dark gods too?
He shook his head. Tys was here, and that’s what mattered… But what if she wasn’t there next time?
“Did everyone make it out?” Kur asked, drawing Nar’s attention back to the present. “From our people, I mean.”
Tys grimaced.
“We’re still missing a few apprentices,” she said. “We’re hoping that the Church will find them, as we’re not allowed in. But… We need to prepare for the worst.”
“Crystal…” Kur whispered.
“Things have gotten a lot worse than usual,” Tys said. “Normally, corruption is spotted pretty early on in the Outer Edges, and well before the dungeon guardian flips. Dungeons are almost always continuously being farmed, and corruption is pretty easy to spot… Our guess, and what I told the bishop, is that someone fucked us all over for some damned profits.”
“Who?” Kur asked.
“Whoever sold that fucking slot to us,” Tys said, her tone near hissing. “From what you told me, you guys were at the heart of the corruption, and that means that it all started in your dungeon. But corruption like what you saw in that cave doesn’t just flare out… It spreads slowly, across many, many resets, until the guardian finally flips… And then it strikes suddenly! Which is what happened here, as that guardian was just starting to build up a corrupted army.”
“Wait… You mean those guys knew about it? That harvest ship or whatever,” Nar said. “And they ignored it?”
“Oh, they didn’t ignore it,” Tys said. “They bought a hundred tickets and camped out here for months, farming that dungeon while keeping everything under wraps. My guess is that near the end, maybe even just a few weeks ago, the dungeon started going properly corrupted and when faced between reporting it to the Church, and losing everything they had gathered, or keep quiet and get out of here with those balloons full…”
“They picked the second option?” Kur whispered in disbelief.
Tys nodded. “They filled up that damn ship to the brim, not giving a fuck about what corruption they’d brought out from the dungeon, and then they hightailed it out of here without telling anyone. Fuckers even had the face to sell their extra tickets!”
“But they’ll catch them, right?” Kur asked. “I mean, the Church will?”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re already looking for them everywhere, but it's too late,” she said. “That ship’s already in a Syndicate or Veil haven somewhere by now… They’re the ones operating all the illegal stuff around this area, and the only ones who won’t care that the stuff came from a corrupted dungeon. They’ll check it, of course, and destroy anything corrupted, but that’s about it, and the actual ship is probably already being dismantled to be reassembled into a hundred other ships.”
“So we’ll never catch them?” Nar asked, frowning.
Tys chuckled. “If the Church could eradicate crime, it would’ve done so a long, long time ago. But the Nexus is home to a trillion, trillion cockroaches, and no one will ever be able to clean that up.”
“And the other apprentices?” Nar asked. “What happens if they are… Corrupted?”
She glanced between the two of them.
“I will do what I have to,” she said, her tone firm. “The Nexus must be protected at all costs, and even fucking criminals will do that much. It’s our only home, and to let it fall… It just cannot be allowed.”
Nar sagged at her side.
Sure, he didn’t know other apprentices that much. Aside from Row’s party, which he hoped had already made it out safe and sound, he only knew enough of some other apprentices of the Blades Hall to spar and exchange pleasantries with. But still… The thought didn’t sit down well with him, even if the reasons all made sense.
But you get corrupted, and that's it? Nar thought. You’re either strong enough to resist it, or it’s all over for you…
Crystal. Nothing seemed fair in the Creation the Radiants had built, did it?
“But don’t worry,” Tys said. “From what you describe, I think you guys were the ones at the heart of the corruption. Which means the others should have had an easier time of it, especially the further away they were from your dungeon… Unfortunately, it does mean that you guys are the ones most likely at risk, but again, I think you’re alright. The bishop didn’t just climb all the way up there to scold some delvers for disrespecting Church doctrine. He went to look at you, since the corruption report came from your dungeon when you found the first proper sapient monster to be spawned by the corrupted guardian.”
“The illatrian,” Kur said.
She nodded. “Hmm. When you found that thing, it sent alarm bells all throughout the System, and the Church rushed here.”
“They did move very fast,” Kur asked. “At least, I think so? It was only like, an hour maybe, that fight lasted?”
“The Church has control over the Navy, and that is the greatest fighting force in the Nexus,” Tys said. “Even the top ten thousand delving guilds combined could not come close to even matching half of their forces… They’re not called the Aegis of the Nexus for nothing.”
Kur nodded to himself, then he frowned.
“Why did the System trigger the report for us, and not for the other delvers? The criminals, I mean?” he asked.
She sighed. “There are ways around the System... But let’s not talk about that while sitting right next to a golden battlecruiser. You never know what it hears, and I don’t want any Pileshit following us back to the Scimitar.”
Nar could only shake his head. At this stage, everything was just going right over his wrecked mind.
“Anyways, the bishop had a look at you guys, and if he saw anything he didn’t like, it would’ve ended right there and then. So just think of this as a formality, alright? We’ll check you out, clear you up with the Church, and hand over all your loot. The weapons and gear should be alright, as they’re made of aurium and that stuff is damn near impossible to corrupt, but you’ll need to hand me your ring and everything else within it.”
“That bad?” Kur asked.
“That bad,” Tys said. “Once that’s done, and everyone is cleared and cleaned, we’ll go home. With any luck, everyone still missing will be fine, and will even get some real nice extra gains, especially you guys. The System is very generous to anyone fighting corruption.”
Nar nodded slowly, relief permeating him.
Crystal… Just let me get to my shower and my bed without any evil gods trying to turn me into a tool of darkness, alright? Nar prayed, closing his grit stuffed eyes.
“And why didn’t you tell us about this stuff?” Kur asked, his tone dropping. “If we’d known about it…”
“You wouldn't be able to do anything anyways, except worry about it,” the COO said. “And we didn’t teach it because its fucking rare to happen past the Deep Zones. Even there, it doesn’t just happen every day. Dungeon guardians are tough stuff! And I myself have never been to a corrupted dungeon or anywhere near it! The Scimitar too, in twenty thousand some years has never encountered a corrupted dungeon either. More than that, the ship’s been running these exact dungeons for thousands of years already, and nothing’s ever happened! I can’t even remember the last time a corrupted dungeon popped up in this region of the Outer Reaches, so close to the Nexus… And the last proper, real, major Surge was almost forty thousand years ago. So sure, it’s a concern, but it’s not a daily one… We’re already cramming enough shit into you guys as quickly as possible, so there’s no need to throw in any useless stuff that never happens into the mix.”
Well, it did happen, Nar thought, bitterly. And it would’ve been nice to know what was going on.
The COO stood up and looked down at them.
“And that’s the gist of it,” she told them. “Now, stay here, relax, and get checked. I want to go check on our missing people, so, be good kids, alright? And by the way, you can’t use your UI because their ship is blocking it across the whole area. They’re just trying to keep a lid on this for now before the media blows this up, so there’s nothing wrong with you guys, alright?”
So that’s what it was, Nar thought.
“Alright, just let the healers take good care of you now, okay?” Tys said. “And when this is all done, you can fly back with us. The captain’s baby will get us back in less than five hours.”
And with that she turned to leave.
“Thank you, COO,” Kur said, standing up. “For saving us.”
Tys picked up Kur’s backpack and stared back at them.
“My pleasure! I love sticking it up to the Church… But I think you’ve seen by now what kind of place the Nexus is,” she said, her tone dropping. “And I can’t always be there to save your asses.”
Then she turned and left.
She’s right… Nar thought, as Kur sat back down. This is the second time already.
But by the Crystal, wasn’t he going as fast and as hard as he could already? What more could he do?
Maybe I'll ask the master…
If there was more he could do, he would, as it was starting to feel tiresome, the feeling of constantly being forced to leave your fate in the hands of others, and having to hope their intentions towards you were good.
Comments
Faces The Wind
That cannibal leader during the climb, with a purple aura and a counsel of elders and something about taking initiates where the system can't see and showing them a truth that empowers them... I fear the Nexus is already infected.
Faces The Wind
Aura starts grey, Nar's goes black and white. Light, dark, and neutral colors. The Taoist symbol comes to mind as I contemplate what Nar's affinity might be.
Lucas Onderwater
I'm really happy you're enjoying it!! ❤️❤️ And I'm super excited to keep showing you more and more of the plot, characters' journey and of the big world of the Nexus + Labyrinth!
Lucas Onderwater
After everything that happened in that dungeon? I really hope so!! 😅
Lucas Onderwater
Thank you for reading!!
Lucas Onderwater
Thanks for reading!!
Chase D
Your story is too good. I can barely wait for the next chapter.
CentaureHeart
Thanks! Should be some nice gains
Tristan A
Tyftc!!!!!
Marcia McGinley
Thank you!
