“All right! It’s monster-hunting open season. You just take these guys, and I’ll go over here and run experime—what? Don’t look at me like that! Disguise the undisguised disgust, madams and slime. Sharing is caring! Hogging monsters is against the rule book! Look, it’s written right there—‘Save some monster mauling for others.’ I’d know, because I wrote it myself. What? How else was I supposed to pass the time?”
If I could share my snacks with them, how come they wouldn’t share their monsters with me? This whole master-servant thing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be… But hey, at least the roll cakes were a big hit.
“You do know their primary purpose is to be twin-shutter-uppers? Right?”
Om nom nom nom.
Anyway…
A shadow of deepest night fell over the land. Monsters skulked, foul beasts born of the baneful miasma choking the realm. Slayers. Reavers of man flesh; creatures of fear, and fire, and blood. Demons. Yeah, and then, like, I killed them, lol.
“Gimme my spellstones! Make me rich! Line my pockeeeeets!”
Grraaaaawwwghhh!
O Entanglement: the ultimate deceiver, the builder from nothing, the synthesizer of synergies. The cheat Skill that time forgot. Waded into the throng did I. And then I watched. And I waited. The monsters bore down on me, and I merely waited. With ease, with dilatory apathy, I wound my Skills and Effects into one single magic, a composite force, a unified node of power…which I handed to Entanglement.
“Before, I would just let ’er rip, but that’d kiiiinda rip my head off… So we’re just gonna take it slow.”
Lianqi suffused my veins. Entangled magic coated me like a mantle. The demarcating lines between self and non-self blurred; I became a unified, unfathomable, uncontrollable force of nature. I didn’t push the power away from me bodily as once had been my wont—I let it become one with me. I was it. I was Power.
A deadly spear wall comprised of “Spear Ravens, Lv: 44” loomed before me. One brush against them, and I would be fatally impaled on their lengths. Spears lurched into movement—a black rain. A shower of ebon, nightmare feathers.
“I thought ravens were migratory? What’re they doing setting up house in a dungeon? I mean…if they don’t wanna get a move on, I’m gonna have to kill ’em… Not like I wanna, but…I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place?”
Ca-caaaaw!
Fear was the control killer. Fear made Entanglement deadly to me. It was the fear of the devastating power ripping through me, snapping my bones and sinews to shreds, that ruined me. It was the fear of the infinite and incomprehensible transformations Entanglement exerted upon me that brought me to my self-inflicted doom.
“Weirdly, I’m taking a page from the girls’ books here.”
Bobble bobble?
Like Entanglement, the girls were more than a sum of their parts. They constantly came together, forming fresh combinations and becoming better fighters for their efforts. Not like What’s His Face, the dude who picked people off one by one and only made himself weaker for it, or the rest of his ilk. No, the girls made slow but sure progress. Constant. Never-ceasing. Progress. That was the solution. That was the monolith I couldn’t afford to suffer defeat to.
“If Entanglement defies logic, evades all understanding by rational thought…then let’s turn my brain off. We’ll Entangle my Skills in my body.”
My whole class worked better in teams. There was a finite number of the nerds and idiots (thank god), but the girls? The girls kept swelling their ranks. They had numbers; they made use of their numbers. They achieved the impossible task of teamwork. They cooperated; they collaborated; they built an indefatigable collective from the efforts of many individuals—a collective armed with morning stars! A terrifying collective!!!
“Keep it up, Entanglement, and someday, you’ll catch up!”
Thing was, the girls didn’t believe in themselves. They had inferiority complexes about their strength on both the individual and party levels. They failed to understand what a menace thirty cooperative young women armed with cheat Skills could be. For all that they whined about failing to land a hit on the dungeon emperors during training, they failed to realize just how absurd it was to train with a freaking dungeon emperor in the first place. They’d been capable of fighting level 100 bosses for days now. The only reason they didn’t was ’cause I told them not to—I didn’t want people getting hurt, y’know? The dungeon empirical and dudely escorts—those were all overkill. Me being overprotective.
Small wonder they felt inferior to the dudes. Shocker that they nursed frustration. But y’know, I…I didn’t see a reason to risk anyone’s life. Right? Like, what was the point of all this hard work and growth if it came to nothing? Why throw that all away? Better to fight only that which could be, with 100% certainty, overpowered and destroyed. Better to battle only when it led to a win.
“That’s what power is all about, isn’t it?”
Wiggle wiggle.
The dungeon emperors didn’t want the girls fighting either. I think they saw themselves—their younger selves—reflected in the girls. And unlike the young dungeon emperors, the girls weren’t alone. They had us to rely on. They could keep on training and laughing and living it up.
“Besides, the girls don’t like killing and competition. They weren’t made for that. The nerds and meatheads… They’re another story. They like going up against stronger opponents. They like feeling out of their depths. Weirdos! Guys, don’t try and copy them. I mean it.”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Mm-hmm.
So I swore an oath to the dungeon emperors: I would catch up to the girls…’cause if the girls beat me fair and square, they’d try shielding me in battle. (I heard that was like their whole motivation?) And pardon my French, but fuck that. No one was protecting me on my watch. That’s what all the cheating and deceiving and lying and swindling was for!
“No ‘do the impossible.’ To hell with ‘do or do not; there is no try.’ Just get out there and get it done!”
In the span of infinitude cut so small, so minute, so thinly grained not a scrap, not a particle, not a quantum of time was left—I walked. With no fervor, no force, no emotion; with no pretension, no posturing, no power plays; with absolute precision, with deadly accuracy, with total control; with nothing save myself as I truly was—I killed.
I killed. I killed. I killed. I killed. I killed. I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed. And I killed. And I killed. And I killed, I killed, I killed. Just for something new, I killed. Then I killed some more. I killed until all that was left was that fact that I had killed. The world stretched in an unbroken and eternal silence around me, and on I killed. I killed until there was nothing left. I killed until the end of all things.
“Hff…”
The first step was the beginning. By the time my second foot hit the ground, everything was over. Life and death. That’s all anything ever amounted to. Life, and that which it returned to, death. The last remnants of the spear ravens had long since drifted to the floor and vanished. Now, nothing remained—save the spellstones. And the silence. The silence of a single man alone in a universe.
“Um, ow? I don’t know what I expected…”
Nod nod! Rattle rattle! Mm-hmm! Jiggle jiggle!
The selfsame silence of isolation in the depths of a dungeon. The quietude of existence in a place beyond the end of time. The seclusion of the farthest reaches of the universe. The ultimate solitary existence that no man or woman would ever know save for me. And them. The dungeon emperors. And maybe…maybe if we were all together, loneliness wouldn’t be quite so bad.
✦ ✦ ✦
