While I left Tyler and Riary to sort themselves out a little bit, Konohora and I headed to my room. We needed to have a conversation between us.
Although, the second the door closed, I wasn’t expecting how it started.
“You lied.”
Konohora was looking at me. I was confused, deeply, because when?! When had I lied?! I hadn’t taken their stupid Gem!
Her face was serious and determined.
“Wh-” Then I realized what she meant. I had spoken up too late after ‘No’ to her original question.
She knew.
I stared her down. We locked eyes.
“We should discuss the cultists.” I said. She looked at me, and slowly nodded.
“You have secrets.”
“Don’t we all?” I said with an eye roll.
“Hmm. Why do you think the Cultists took the Gem?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences. Also, I feel all of you are reacting way too softly to all of this. Cultists seemed kinda like they’d be a big deal? There’s a dead body not 50 feet from this inn. I don’t feel like the Gem is the most important thing for you guys to focus on right now really.”
“Lie.”
Ughh.
“You know what I mean though. Are Cultists common? What even are they ‘culting’ about or whatever? And more to the point, how are we going to deal with them?”
Konohora hummed for a second.
“Cults are sadly not uncommon. There are many kinds, with many forms of worship. The most common Cult is those that the worship the Dark One still. They often draw power from sacrifice. They are usually ruthlessly stamped out in any village, town, or city they show up in.” Konohora had a nasty look on her face. “They are like cockroaches, difficult to get rid of completely.”
Well that’s terrible.
“Wait, who’s the ‘Dark one’?” I asked.
She sighed heavily, giving me a deadpan look.
“We can discuss history another time. For now…” She said, trailing off.
“We, if you will join us, will most likely head to the adventurer’s guild to pick up the quest. Finding cultists is the hard part. Unless they gather, it is difficult to tell who is or isn’t one. The most likely places, such as the sewer system and potential underground caves or tunnels, are most likely being searched through by the Town Guards already with Earth and Plant magic.”
It was my turn to sigh, loudly. This was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
****
“I hate this.” I said.
“It was your idea!” Riary yelled at me.
Fair. Also, she was still mad about me outing her in front of Tyler, and they were both still giving each other awkward looks. Doubly fair.
But at least neither of them looked like they hated each other or were as wracked by guilt. As for our current situation though…
“I am so fucking glad I bought boots.”
We were in the sewers. The sewers, to my surprise, were fairly large. Because apparently underneath almost every elven town, they served the dual purpose of acting as fertilizer for the weird tree/plant houses. We had already passed more than a few groups of patrolling guards, asking us for our Adventurer Plates. Even a few other Adventurers no doubt searching just as well.
Ultimately we only had two ways of scouting that others might not have. My weird Power Gauge that ignored walls and had quite a distance at this point, and Konohora’s truth telling. While I wanted to just gather everyone up and have her ask “Are you a cultist?”, apparently there were laws against that sort of thing. Fell into the camp of ‘Mind Reading’ and mental magic was apparently heavily frowned upon, by everyone. That left us with this.
“If this is revenge from earlier, you certainly don’t hold back.” Tyler said. It had been hours and by this time the rancid smell was practically sticking to my brain. Our searching was useless. They had earth mages, plant mages, other guards, people with sensory abilities, magical abilities, and etc. But damn it, it was better than staying in the inn and stewing. We all needed something to do. And I really didn’t want to find a second body lying in the street.
It still unnerved me how everyone was treating this as almost routine. Like people winding up dead from cultists was normal. But whatever. They needed to die and on top of that, they were literally our only ‘lead’ on the Gem. It wasn’t really a lead, more of a hunch. A feeling. A feeling that had only gotten stronger after Riary had described what the Gem looked like. Black, looking like it had stars and space in it, a body that seemed teleported, near our inn? Sure, it could have just as easily been some kind of thieves guild or something or hell, maybe the manager of the inn took it. But I was willing to look into a gut feeling.
“Alright, look, let’s just-”
Suddenly I frowned and turned towards the floor of all things. There were people below us.
A lot of people. They were on the very edge of my Power Gauge but it wasn’t them I had noticed. It was a different presence, a presence that seemed familiar…
Suddenly I heard a crack and my eyes widened.
“Oh fuck-”
The sewer floor fell out from under us.
Suddenly we were falling and Tyler was screaming at the top of his lungs. Where before there were small balls of lights lighting up our path, now there was just the fall and darkness. Worse, I could see that we were rapidly falling towards the group of people I had barely sensed.
It was a ‘short’ fall all things considered, but not one I’d have lived through when I was human. I landed with an ‘OOF’ on top of someone, Tyler flat out probably killed someone with his heavy body, though it was Konohora I heard the loudest sounds coming from…
Riary floated down on fire, I noticed, the show off.
I got up and looked around the surroundings, with Tyler still yelling on the ground.
And froze.
I had never seen a cult before. But I was almost certain that two dozen people dressed in black robes, with a bloody altar with the Gem on it, in a dark cave in the ground, fit the aesthetic to a T.
Not only was the Gem here, I noticed a familiar face and my heart sunk.
“Hi Derek!” Happy said before humming out in a voice that had my hair standing on end. “It’s good to see you again!”
Happy Go Lucky, that ridiculously self named bard, with so much Charisma that even seeing them now got my heart beating. His beautiful face, his amber eyes, his light grey skin, his short white hair. I noticed the exact moment everyone else took in the sight of him.
“Wow.” Konohora said.
“Is this mind magic?” Riary said with a frown.
“That’s not fair at all.” Tyler muttered under his breath.
Fuck you Tyler! We can’t all be as attractive as you. It’s about time you met someone with better looks. Both of you are unfair to me. Damn charismatic people. One’s an idiot, the other one is Evil. Great, just my luck.
While my eyes were sadly stuck on his face, my mind and heart were somewhere else entirely. Happy was already sending my Power Gauge into a frenzy again. I felt like I was mentally stuck inside some kind of non-euclidean geometry and trying to figure out how it worked. It read C-Rank but also as… unfathomable. Impossible.
I did not want to fight the impossible if I could help it.
“What are the chances we can convince you guys to give up, give up the Gem, and quietly go to jail with the guards?” I asked.
Immediately, all the elves and a few humans in robes pulled out a variety of weapons. Happy just smiled, before going out to belting out a frankly creepy humming. It sounded like the chants of multiple people at once and suddenly the atmosphere went dark and darker. Eyes glittered out with killing in their minds. None of the cultists individually were much of a threat.
But there were a lot of them. And space was at a premium.
“Kill.” One of the cultists said then they rushed us.
My heart sped up a lot at seeing the wave of bodies and I pulled out my sword and swung in one fluid motion. A woman was right in front of me. My blade was on a path for her neck and my mind rebelled. Tyler had warned me, that I wasn’t acting like a killer. That I needed to.
“Winning means killing. No mercy to your enemies.”
I could disarm them, beat them, turn them into the guards. They were weaker than me, so much weaker. I could literally feel it. Like fireflies I was about to crush between my fingers. It filled me with revulsion.
And yet I swung. No mercy to your enemies.
My blade bit through her neck… and kept going without a problem. Riary began to burn, Tyler swung his own sword, and Konohora her metal staff. People died, crushed, burned, cut apart, and my eyes never left the woman’s severed head as it left her body. An alien feeling rose up in me. Relaxation in bloodlust. I wanted to rip and tear and maim with my claws, to cut them all apart. An annoying smile I couldn’t stop crept up onto my face and I swung again and again. Screams, yells, body parts! Blood! I stomped that part of me into the ground. Yes, yes I was loving this. I had been stagnant, idle, for far far too long. And now my mind was going crazy with euphoria. But I wasn’t going to lose my mind completely.
Soon, there were only five people left. Us four… and Happy.
“Ah!” Happy said, a… well… happy smile on his face as if he had just received ice cream for the first time. “This is so much better! Really, I should have done this from start. Thank you!”
Happy switched his horrifyingly creepy humming for a new tone and suddenly, all the blood in the room began to glow.
Riary’s eyes widened and she screamed in panic. “Stop him! He’s doing something to the Gem!”
I ran. I knew the horrific possibilities of the Gem better than anyone. He didn’t stop and there was no time. The Gem began to glow and I swung.
My black blade smashed into the Gem, and everything froze. The glowing stopped, Happy’s humming stopped.
We stopped.
I couldn’t move. We couldn’t move.
Happy did. He slowly looked at the Gem, which I had struck, and smiled.
“Oh. Well this will be interesting.” Then he laughed as the world exploded into void.
One moment, we were in a hole in the ground. The next, all I could see, all I could feel, was an abyss. There was only darkness, only the void. I turned and tumbled, but it was like I had been sent hurtling through time and space at the speed of light. I caught sight of everyone else and even now, could see Happy smiling without a care in the world. He seemed to just be taking in the sights.
Something moved. It was like all of space, all of existence, moved. My mind shuddered as something… eldritch appeared. Or, rather, it was always there. The only saving grace was I couldn’t feel whatever it was with my Power Gauge. I had no idea what that meant.
It was… bigger than a planet. Bigger than a galaxy. The whole breadth of its existence flooded into my mind. But it wasn’t the only thing. It was a speck, things millions of times bigger than it was a speck, as the universe was truly infinite. I saw what seemed to be a universe made of rot, another ruled by a God Queen that would put Yahweh to shame, a Higher Existence where fate ruled all, and then finally, Gems. Eight of them. They floated there, in my mind’s eye, except it wasn’t just my mind anymore. I could see and sense the others nearby, looking at them all. Eight Gems, eight domains. The Gem I had struck took its rightful place among the eight.
But there was something…. Wrong.
I saw a little more than the rest and anxiety filled me as my jaw dropped at the new information.
And then I felt myself falling, falling as my whole being felt like it was being shoved through a cheese grater. As if I was being unmade and put back together dozens, hundreds of times. The sensation was annoyingly familiar.
I landed.
“Ughhhhhhhhh.” My whole body was sore. No, worse than sore. I couldn’t even move. I felt like I had been run over by a dozen trucks, repeatedly, and then an elephant had stepped on me for good measure.
“Ughhhhh.” Another voice reached me, groaning even louder than I had. It took me a second to place but I realized it was Konohora’s voice.
I tried to get up and failed. Again, and then again. I finally managed to roll over at least and bring my hand to my face-
My hand.
I looked at my hand and saw… a black marking on the back of my hand. It faded away and suddenly I could sense… something. It was like the Hell Gem that was inside me but not. But also different. Great, another mystery for another time.
I got to my feet… and nearly collapsed. I wasn’t just tired and sore I realized with a start. My body… I took a step forward. And then another. I looked around. I grabbed a rock at my feet and squeezed.
Nothing. It stayed whole. It just felt like I was squeezing a rock.
My own Power Gauge told me what I already knew. I was no longer Derek the Demon, C-Rank by the very nature of my race.
I was Derek the Demon, only as strong as normal average human from Earth.
I looked over to Konohora… who was still lying face down in the dirt. As she rose and my eyes took in her appearance in full, I also looked down at my own.
Naked. Totally and utterly naked, the both of us. God damn it, I really liked that sword.
I moved over to Konohora, feeling a bit embarrassed. She was naked, I was naked, and god damn. Her breasts were not small, and her long auburn hair falling around her and her full figure made her seem like an autumn nymph from some legend. I was starting to think people were just way too attractive in this world.
“If you’re done staring,” Konohora looked at me deadpan, I just shrugged. “Where are we?”
I looked around and my heart froze. We seemed to be in a jungle… except… there was something… off.
“Derek.” Konohora said, voice filled with fear.
“I know.”
We were in a jungle… except the nearest tree was big. Really big. You could even say… gigantic. And it wasn’t the only one.
Either we had shrunk to a few inches tall… or this Jungle was super sized.
I heard a hissing behind us and quickly turned around.
There was a snake. A snake bigger than a seven story building. I looked up… and up and up. Its eyes stared at us, its jaw slightly hanging open.
“Hissss.”
“Konohora?”
“Yes?”
“If we die here today… there’s something I want to tell you.”
“What?”
“I don’t forgive you for convincing me to drink piss that one time.”
Konohora frowned. Then nodded.
“That seems fair.”
“HISSSS!”
Warix_Viviana
And so begins the new arc! Welcome to the Jungle. Feel free to read 15 chapters ahead on patreon. A bit of a dense and light chapter at the same time. Lots of moving pieces. We'll explore all of those in time.
While I left Tyler and Riary to sort themselves out a little bit, Konohora and I headed to my room. We needed to have a conversation between us.
Although, the second the door closed, I wasn’t expecting how it started.
“You lied.”
Konohora was looking at me. I was confused, deeply, because when?! When had I lied?! I hadn’t taken their stupid Gem!
Her face was serious and determined.
“Wh-” Then I realized what she meant. I had spoken up too late after ‘No’ to her original question.
She knew.
I stared her down. We locked eyes.
“We should discuss the cultists.” I said. She looked at me, and slowly nodded.
“You have secrets.”
“Don’t we all?” I said with an eye roll.
“Hmm. Why do you think the Cultists took the Gem?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences. Also, I feel all of you are reacting way too softly to all of this. Cultists seemed kinda like they’d be a big deal? There’s a dead body not 50 feet from this inn. I don’t feel like the Gem is the most important thing for you guys to focus on right now really.”
“Lie.”
Ughh.
“You know what I mean though. Are Cultists common? What even are they ‘culting’ about or whatever? And more to the point, how are we going to deal with them?”
Konohora hummed for a second.
“Cults are sadly not uncommon. There are many kinds, with many forms of worship. The most common Cult is those that the worship the Dark One still. They often draw power from sacrifice. They are usually ruthlessly stamped out in any village, town, or city they show up in.” Konohora had a nasty look on her face. “They are like cockroaches, difficult to get rid of completely.”
Well that’s terrible.
“Wait, who’s the ‘Dark one’?” I asked.
She sighed heavily, giving me a deadpan look.
“We can discuss history another time. For now…” She said, trailing off.
“We, if you will join us, will most likely head to the adventurer’s guild to pick up the quest. Finding cultists is the hard part. Unless they gather, it is difficult to tell who is or isn’t one. The most likely places, such as the sewer system and potential underground caves or tunnels, are most likely being searched through by the Town Guards already with Earth and Plant magic.”
It was my turn to sigh, loudly. This was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
****
“I hate this.” I said.
“It was your idea!” Riary yelled at me.
Fair. Also, she was still mad about me outing her in front of Tyler, and they were both still giving each other awkward looks. Doubly fair.
But at least neither of them looked like they hated each other or were as wracked by guilt. As for our current situation though…
“I am so fucking glad I bought boots.”
We were in the sewers. The sewers, to my surprise, were fairly large. Because apparently underneath almost every elven town, they served the dual purpose of acting as fertilizer for the weird tree/plant houses. We had already passed more than a few groups of patrolling guards, asking us for our Adventurer Plates. Even a few other Adventurers no doubt searching just as well.
Ultimately we only had two ways of scouting that others might not have. My weird Power Gauge that ignored walls and had quite a distance at this point, and Konohora’s truth telling. While I wanted to just gather everyone up and have her ask “Are you a cultist?”, apparently there were laws against that sort of thing. Fell into the camp of ‘Mind Reading’ and mental magic was apparently heavily frowned upon, by everyone. That left us with this.
“If this is revenge from earlier, you certainly don’t hold back.” Tyler said. It had been hours and by this time the rancid smell was practically sticking to my brain. Our searching was useless. They had earth mages, plant mages, other guards, people with sensory abilities, magical abilities, and etc. But damn it, it was better than staying in the inn and stewing. We all needed something to do. And I really didn’t want to find a second body lying in the street.
It still unnerved me how everyone was treating this as almost routine. Like people winding up dead from cultists was normal. But whatever. They needed to die and on top of that, they were literally our only ‘lead’ on the Gem. It wasn’t really a lead, more of a hunch. A feeling. A feeling that had only gotten stronger after Riary had described what the Gem looked like. Black, looking like it had stars and space in it, a body that seemed teleported, near our inn? Sure, it could have just as easily been some kind of thieves guild or something or hell, maybe the manager of the inn took it. But I was willing to look into a gut feeling.
“Alright, look, let’s just-”
Suddenly I frowned and turned towards the floor of all things. There were people below us.
A lot of people. They were on the very edge of my Power Gauge but it wasn’t them I had noticed. It was a different presence, a presence that seemed familiar…
Suddenly I heard a crack and my eyes widened.
“Oh fuck-”
The sewer floor fell out from under us.
Suddenly we were falling and Tyler was screaming at the top of his lungs. Where before there were small balls of lights lighting up our path, now there was just the fall and darkness. Worse, I could see that we were rapidly falling towards the group of people I had barely sensed.
It was a ‘short’ fall all things considered, but not one I’d have lived through when I was human. I landed with an ‘OOF’ on top of someone, Tyler flat out probably killed someone with his heavy body, though it was Konohora I heard the loudest sounds coming from…
Riary floated down on fire, I noticed, the show off.
I got up and looked around the surroundings, with Tyler still yelling on the ground.
And froze.
I had never seen a cult before. But I was almost certain that two dozen people dressed in black robes, with a bloody altar with the Gem on it, in a dark cave in the ground, fit the aesthetic to a T.
Not only was the Gem here, I noticed a familiar face and my heart sunk.
“Hi Derek!” Happy said before humming out in a voice that had my hair standing on end. “It’s good to see you again!”
Happy Go Lucky, that ridiculously self named bard, with so much Charisma that even seeing them now got my heart beating. His beautiful face, his amber eyes, his light grey skin, his short white hair. I noticed the exact moment everyone else took in the sight of him.
“Wow.” Konohora said.
“Is this mind magic?” Riary said with a frown.
“That’s not fair at all.” Tyler muttered under his breath.
Fuck you Tyler! We can’t all be as attractive as you. It’s about time you met someone with better looks. Both of you are unfair to me. Damn charismatic people. One’s an idiot, the other one is Evil. Great, just my luck.
While my eyes were sadly stuck on his face, my mind and heart were somewhere else entirely. Happy was already sending my Power Gauge into a frenzy again. I felt like I was mentally stuck inside some kind of non-euclidean geometry and trying to figure out how it worked. It read C-Rank but also as… unfathomable. Impossible.
I did not want to fight the impossible if I could help it.
“What are the chances we can convince you guys to give up, give up the Gem, and quietly go to jail with the guards?” I asked.
Immediately, all the elves and a few humans in robes pulled out a variety of weapons. Happy just smiled, before going out to belting out a frankly creepy humming. It sounded like the chants of multiple people at once and suddenly the atmosphere went dark and darker. Eyes glittered out with killing in their minds. None of the cultists individually were much of a threat.
But there were a lot of them. And space was at a premium.
“Kill.” One of the cultists said then they rushed us.
My heart sped up a lot at seeing the wave of bodies and I pulled out my sword and swung in one fluid motion. A woman was right in front of me. My blade was on a path for her neck and my mind rebelled. Tyler had warned me, that I wasn’t acting like a killer. That I needed to.
“Winning means killing. No mercy to your enemies.”
I could disarm them, beat them, turn them into the guards. They were weaker than me, so much weaker. I could literally feel it. Like fireflies I was about to crush between my fingers. It filled me with revulsion.
And yet I swung. No mercy to your enemies.
My blade bit through her neck… and kept going without a problem. Riary began to burn, Tyler swung his own sword, and Konohora her metal staff. People died, crushed, burned, cut apart, and my eyes never left the woman’s severed head as it left her body. An alien feeling rose up in me. Relaxation in bloodlust. I wanted to rip and tear and maim with my claws, to cut them all apart. An annoying smile I couldn’t stop crept up onto my face and I swung again and again. Screams, yells, body parts! Blood! I stomped that part of me into the ground. Yes, yes I was loving this. I had been stagnant, idle, for far far too long. And now my mind was going crazy with euphoria. But I wasn’t going to lose my mind completely.
Soon, there were only five people left. Us four… and Happy.
“Ah!” Happy said, a… well… happy smile on his face as if he had just received ice cream for the first time. “This is so much better! Really, I should have done this from start. Thank you!”
Happy switched his horrifyingly creepy humming for a new tone and suddenly, all the blood in the room began to glow.
Riary’s eyes widened and she screamed in panic. “Stop him! He’s doing something to the Gem!”
I ran. I knew the horrific possibilities of the Gem better than anyone. He didn’t stop and there was no time. The Gem began to glow and I swung.
My black blade smashed into the Gem, and everything froze. The glowing stopped, Happy’s humming stopped.
We stopped.
I couldn’t move. We couldn’t move.
Happy did. He slowly looked at the Gem, which I had struck, and smiled.
“Oh. Well this will be interesting.” Then he laughed as the world exploded into void.
One moment, we were in a hole in the ground. The next, all I could see, all I could feel, was an abyss. There was only darkness, only the void. I turned and tumbled, but it was like I had been sent hurtling through time and space at the speed of light. I caught sight of everyone else and even now, could see Happy smiling without a care in the world. He seemed to just be taking in the sights.
Something moved. It was like all of space, all of existence, moved. My mind shuddered as something… eldritch appeared. Or, rather, it was always there. The only saving grace was I couldn’t feel whatever it was with my Power Gauge. I had no idea what that meant.
It was… bigger than a planet. Bigger than a galaxy. The whole breadth of its existence flooded into my mind. But it wasn’t the only thing. It was a speck, things millions of times bigger than it was a speck, as the universe was truly infinite. I saw what seemed to be a universe made of rot, another ruled by a God Queen that would put Yahweh to shame, a Higher Existence where fate ruled all, and then finally, Gems. Eight of them. They floated there, in my mind’s eye, except it wasn’t just my mind anymore. I could see and sense the others nearby, looking at them all. Eight Gems, eight domains. The Gem I had struck took its rightful place among the eight.
But there was something…. Wrong.
I saw a little more than the rest and anxiety filled me as my jaw dropped at the new information.
And then I felt myself falling, falling as my whole being felt like it was being shoved through a cheese grater. As if I was being unmade and put back together dozens, hundreds of times. The sensation was annoyingly familiar.
I landed.
“Ughhhhhhhhh.” My whole body was sore. No, worse than sore. I couldn’t even move. I felt like I had been run over by a dozen trucks, repeatedly, and then an elephant had stepped on me for good measure.
“Ughhhhh.” Another voice reached me, groaning even louder than I had. It took me a second to place but I realized it was Konohora’s voice.
I tried to get up and failed. Again, and then again. I finally managed to roll over at least and bring my hand to my face-
My hand.
I looked at my hand and saw… a black marking on the back of my hand. It faded away and suddenly I could sense… something. It was like the Hell Gem that was inside me but not. But also different. Great, another mystery for another time.
I got to my feet… and nearly collapsed. I wasn’t just tired and sore I realized with a start. My body… I took a step forward. And then another. I looked around. I grabbed a rock at my feet and squeezed.
Nothing. It stayed whole. It just felt like I was squeezing a rock.
My own Power Gauge told me what I already knew. I was no longer Derek the Demon, C-Rank by the very nature of my race.
I was Derek the Demon, only as strong as normal average human from Earth.
I looked over to Konohora… who was still lying face down in the dirt. As she rose and my eyes took in her appearance in full, I also looked down at my own.
Naked. Totally and utterly naked, the both of us. God damn it, I really liked that sword.
I moved over to Konohora, feeling a bit embarrassed. She was naked, I was naked, and god damn. Her breasts were not small, and her long auburn hair falling around her and her full figure made her seem like an autumn nymph from some legend. I was starting to think people were just way too attractive in this world.
“If you’re done staring,” Konohora looked at me deadpan, I just shrugged. “Where are we?”
I looked around and my heart froze. We seemed to be in a jungle… except… there was something… off.
“Derek.” Konohora said, voice filled with fear.
“I know.”
We were in a jungle… except the nearest tree was big. Really big. You could even say… gigantic. And it wasn’t the only one.
Either we had shrunk to a few inches tall… or this Jungle was super sized.
I heard a hissing behind us and quickly turned around.
There was a snake. A snake bigger than a seven story building. I looked up… and up and up. Its eyes stared at us, its jaw slightly hanging open.
“Hissss.”
“Konohora?”
“Yes?”
“If we die here today… there’s something I want to tell you.”
“What?”
“I don’t forgive you for convincing me to drink piss that one time.”
Konohora frowned. Then nodded.
“That seems fair.”
“HISSSS!”
Warix_Viviana
And so begins the new arc! Welcome to the Jungle. Feel free to read 15 chapters ahead on patreon. A bit of a dense and light chapter at the same time. Lots of moving pieces. We'll explore all of those in time.
