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EC Book 4, Chapter 23 - Deferred Decisions
🕑 Added 2024-03-20 01:32:56 +0000 UTCVex stood at the precipice of the Void. His eyes glowed with mana. His connection with his Grand Anchor was as strong as it could possibly be, and though there was a small piece of himself that still felt a little strained, he wasn't sure they had time to let him try to recover. Hopefully, what he had would be enough to bring back Ukaros.
"Vex," Derivan said. "You are sure you are ready?"
Trust Derivan to always see through him. Vex chuckled, smiling, and gestured for the armor to walk closer; when he did, Vex took the armor's hand in his own, and interlaced their fingers.
"No," he admitted. "Bringing back even one dragon was a strain on my link with the Grand Anchor. I don't know if I can bring back an entire kingdom. But... I want to try, Deri. I think I need to try."
Derivan was silent for a long moment. This was the most conflicted Vex had ever seen him. He could almost see the two sides of the argument within his partner's mind: one side insisting that Vex stay safe, to not do something if it could harm him in some irreversible way, and the other side wanting to stay by Vex's side and support him in his decisions.
"I am conflicted," Derivan eventually admitted. His voice was soft. Vulnerable. It was the first time Vex had heard the armor like this, and he felt a small stab of guilt in his heart. "You are certain we cannot wait?"
"We can," Vex allowed, hesitating a little himself. It didn't feel like something major—just a small, nagging feeling somewhere within him, like an itch he couldn't scratch. It told him that whatever he'd strained hadn't had the time to recover completely. But he didn't know how long it would take him to recover completely, and they didn't exactly have the luxury of time...
...they had the luxury of a little time.
"I could wait for Sev to reply to me," Vex said after a moment. He smiled up at Derivan. "Just so we know for sure that whatever I'm doing won't, I don't know, irreparably damage the Grand Anchor or something."
"Yes," Derivan agreed. "I believe that may be for the best."
There were many words that stayed unsaid there—many things Vex wanted to say, and many things he thought he could see Derivan wanting to say, as well. But the larger man simply drew him into his arms, and Vex allowed himself to fall into the embrace, his head leaning against Derivan's chest.
Words could be said later.
Actions, for now, said enough.
—
"Now arriving at: Soulbloom Station."
The mechanical sounding voice echoed through the cabin as the train they were in slid to a stop. Misa glanced at Sev, then stepped outside of the cabin doors into this so-called 'Soulbloom Station'.
It was... strange. Everything here was so meticulously crafted—it was nothing like orcish architecture or furniture, nor even like the homes in Fendal, which on occasion seemed a little haphazardly put together. Even Elyra was all about grandiose beauty more than it was about precision.
Soulbloom Station was precision. Every pillar was placed the same exact distance apart. The tiles on the floor were perfectly square. The benches were lined up against one another all across the station, and there was exactly one flower blooming next to each bench. There was a certain beauty to it, but Misa couldn't help but feel a little out of place.
"This place makes me feel like I need to be wearing something formal," Misa grunted, staring down at her adventuring gear.
"Can't say I'm a fan either," Sev remarked, his tone dry. He glanced around at the station, then into the air, calling up his copy of the system. "No notifications. You?"
"Nothing," Misa said after a cursory glance at her own system screen. Not even the nagging feeling that there should be a system notification. The train sat with its doors open behind them, though, so it was clearly waiting for them to do something. "Are we supposed to just explore?"
"Usually these stations come with some kind of objective... but I guess it's all up in the air now," Sev said with a sigh. "We can probably figure out what we're supposed to do, at least. You see anything that looks missing or off?"
"The only thing that looks off to me is the fact that we're the only ones here," Misa said. "This place doesn't feel like it's supposed to be empty."
"...Huh. You're right." Sev narrowed his eyes a little as he glanced around the station. "The Anderstahl Prime Dungeon usually populates its spaces a little more."
"With people, or with monsters?" Misa asked dryly.
"I mean, we've recently found out that the two are the same thing," Sev said. "Kinda. But no, I mean people. The dungeon gives them enough autonomy to act as individuals within the dungeon, even if they're not necessarily self-aware about being in a dungeon."
"That feels kinda sketchy," Misa said.
"It is." Sev shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. "I think people tried to tell the people they were in a dungeon, once... it didn't really go well. But it's not like it's the first time we've dealt with something like that."
Right. Her current family had been part of a dungeon's generated scenario once, too. She sighed. "At least it doesn't look like I'm going to have to do that again," she said, glancing around. "But you think the station being empty might have something to do with whatever we're supposed to do here?"
"Only one way to find out," Sev said with a shrug. He walked past the line and into what Misa vaguely recognized as some kind of office, then immediately began flipping through the papers and documentation held within. As far as she could tell from a distance, it was all schematics for the train, employment schedules, things like that.
It all felt remarkably real, actually. Remarkably detailed. Like it was more of a snapshot of something that had already happened rather than something generated for the sole purpose of filling out a dungeon—and considering what they now knew about how the system worked, Misa was inclined to believe that it probably was. Maybe the schedules weren't part of anything that had happened in this time, but somewhere, somewhen...
She was distracted from her thoughts by a yelp from Sev, and she brandished her mace. Sev had opened a drawer, and hundreds of replicas of the same silver tickets they'd given the Conductor had flown out. Literally flown.
<Level 27 Ticket Thicket>
Her system popped up with the name of the creature before she could stop it, and she frowned in confusion to see its level. It was a swarm, first of all, and those were rare enough to begin with—the whole collective of tickets were counted as a single monster for the purposes of health. More importantly, though, it was a low-level swarm.
Level 27. Bizarre. She'd never seen a monster this low level in a dungeon, let alone a Prime Dungeon.
She threw her mace at it.
One of the more convenient aspects of fighting swarms was that, with the way the system calculated and applied health, you only really needed to fight one part of the swarm to be counted as damaging the whole thing. It made actual swarms much more dangerous, and there were definitely dungeons that would produce those. This, however?
Piece of cake. She watched as the tickets flopped harmlessly to the ground, dead from a single blow, and then raised an eyebrow at Sev.
"They were only level 27, you know," she said.
"Oh, shut up," Sev grumbled. "You try having those things buzz around your face. It's like having a dozen bugs flying around your ears."
"Sounds uncomfortable," Misa said with a laugh, picking up her mace. Sev made a grumbling noise of agreement, and together, they looked around the rest of the office.
Besides that small scare, it didn't seem like there was anything else in here. Sev pulled open the rest of the drawers, but they had neither any more papers nor any more surprise swarms to jump them.
"Still think it's kinda weird that those were just level 27," Misa said, glancing around the tiny office. "You think that's part of a trap or something?"
"Probably, but it's not that uncommon for there to be small monsters at the start of a dungeon," Sev said with a shrug. "Prime Dungeons especially are kinda erratic when it comes to levels. For all we know it's just here as part of a different dungeon mechanic." He stared at the corposes of the Ticket Thicket for a moment, then started picking them up and stuffing them into his pockets.
Misa stared at him. "...I'll leave you to that, I think," she said.
"I'm doing it just in case!"
"Sure you are."
Amused, she made her way back out of the office and stared back out over the station. There was something here they were missing—something here the dungeon wanted them to do. She doubted it was as simple as finding a monster mimicking some tickets, killing it, and then using its corpse as a free pass to the next station...
There.
Something caught her eye, and she narrowed them slightly. Up in the lights near the roof of the station, a small shadow seemed to flit around, hiding in the corners and the crevices. Every so often, it would go toward one of the lights and stop, and then that light would begin to flicker—and after a moment, the flickering would stop, and the shadow would move away again.
Acting entirely on a hunch—one of the perks of the [Intuitionist] class was that her hunches were much better than most people's, now, and it had already been pretty good before—Misa threw her mace at the light, and several things happened at once.
The first was that the light detached from the ceiling, stretching down toward the ground with long legs of glowing filament; it "dodged" her mace in this way, though it still flinched as rubble from the ceiling rained down around it.
"Wait!" it called out, panicked. "Wait, wait! I'm not an enemy, I swear!"
Misa paused.
"Oh," she said, a little awkwardly. She glanced back as Sev jogged to catch up with her—he gave her a look, and she gave him an embarrassed grin. "Uh... sorry about that."
"Oh my gods, I thought I was gonna die," it said. Misa still had no idea what it was, but the system had decided to give it a name and a label.
<Level 36 Ceiling Fixture>
...Not a very useful name and label.
"Sorry," she apologized again, now feeling even more out of her element. "Not used to dungeons giving us... anyone friendly. Or anyone that can talk."
"It's fine," it said. "It's fine! I get it. I'm Tinsel. I'm a Soulbloom Emanation."
"You're a what?" Misa asked.
"A Soulbloom Emanation," Tinsel repeated itself. It gestured to the field outside the station—the field of flowers Misa had almost forgotten about. And she'd wanted to explore it, too. "Basically, I'm the child of one of those flowers."
