by Wolfe Locke
$5160*
After dismissing his status screen, Seraph and Paul spent several hours out there on the sand. Both of them lying down, attempting to rest, caught between the Abyssal Elemental that haunted the pier and whatever waited for them down the road. In the distance, Seraph could see a paved road leading away from the pier. Farther in the distance, Seraph could see the silhouette of a city.
He knew the city was the goal. Somewhere within that dark city, he would find the demon prince, Beelzebub, and he would have to fight and defeat him. The thought did little to brighten Seraph’s mood. A demon prince was nearly impossible to kill. Seraph would have liked to take a while—days, weeks, months even—to just grind and get stronger before attempting it. Still, he was almost out of time to establish himself for the influx of humanity. He had less than two days remaining till emergence day.
Neither of the men were able to go back to Hometown; the magic Seraph had known to allow players to teleport back to Hometown wasn’t working. He was positive that either the two of them had been sealed in this dungeon floor, or the spell had changed. Considering his circumstances, Seraph attributed it to the latter—assuming this too was just another change of the dungeon.
With the coming dawn, there was a chance that the gate back to Hometown would be open, but neither Seraph nor Paul trusted in such a plan. Though the Abyssal Elemental had reverted back to its mimicry of water, neither trusted the lull in activity enough to even attempt to go back.
“Listen to me, Seraph. I have got to tell you, it’s been pretty rough these past few hours just waiting and watching you over there tossing and turning. Let’s make the most of this time. Tell me what I need to know to help both of us survive. I’m not an idiot; this level system is easy enough to understand, and I’m assuming through abilities, better gear, experience, and training I can also get stronger. I need you to tell me about the things that aren’t as obvious. “
Seraph thought about it for a second. Paul was correct, and the healing process was taking much longer than it should have, dragging out their stay. Seraph knew the healing magic of the dungeon was working. But he also knew it wasn’t working as fast as it should have—even with the debuff. It was like the dungeon was telegraphing its interference. They would need to wait some more, and if they were going to be waiting, it was time to push his luck.
I can’t keep waiting around for something to happen, thought Seraph as he pulled the Vial of Abyssal Ichor from his spacial pocket and drank it. Here goes nothing.
After he had drunk the whole vial, Seraph felt an intense urge to vomit as bile piled up in his month. Forced to steady himself, and swallowing the bile, not wanting to waste any of the priceless ichor while he waited for his nausea to pass, Seraph pulled himself up a bit and turned to look directly at Paul. “What you need to know most of all is that I need you to stay alive. If I’m going to be successful, I need you to get to my level.”
Paul furrowed his brows in irritation at the comment. "Alright, Seraph, since you’re such a hotshot, tell me why I had to pull you off the pier earlier. Tell me, please, why I have these scars on my face? Tell me how I carried you, kicking and screaming out of the body of that thing. Tell me what is this level I need to get to to be on the same level of someone who breaks their legs every time they run. What even is your level?"
Seraph had to look away; his father’s words shamed him. The man was right; Seraph had needed to be saved. He who had once easily absorbed and reflected attack after attack with his Wings of Blacksteel. Instead of answering, Seraph looked over to the city; though hours had passed, it was the same grey gloom it had been earlier—no lighter and no darker.
“You know that silence is telling me more than you keeping to yourself with the avoidance of the question. You aren’t used to being like this, are you? Just how strong were you? That strength has become a liability, because you’re still acting like you’ve got that power at your fingerprints, and you don’t.” Paul pressed the issue. “Hiding things that are going on with you can get us killed just as easily."
"I’m level 11 now, but I was level 437," replied Seraph in hesitation. “I reached level 437 after thirty or so years in the dungeon. My strength and my stats didn’t measure in the hundreds, they measured in the thousands. I was a god among men, and I failed because I focused on myself when I should have been shaping men into gods.”
“Alright.” Paul nodded. “I can work with that, and we’ve still got time, but if you're going to be successful at this, we need a plan going forward. Think about it while I get a fire going.”
Chapter 14: Going Forward
* * *
“So, Seraph, what do I need to know?” asked Paul again as he gathered up pieces of nearby driftwood scattered around on the beach and threw them onto the fire.
“Give me a second,” Seraph replied as he lay back on the sand, trying to stretch out as he could. He was enjoying feeling the heat soaking into his body, soothing his aching bones and muscles. He tried to make himself as comfortable as possible for the ordeal that was coming. The Abyssal Ichor was already beginning to work on reshaping his body; Seraph could feel it, like insects crawling beneath his skin. It was not a pleasant feeling, uncomfortable, but not yet painful—something Seraph was sure would change.
A mythic cosmetic change, thought Seraph as he justified the impulsive decision to drink the ichor. What will it do?
Clearing his throat, Seraph turned his head to the side to address Paul’s question. “What you need to know starts with how I died. I was the leader of a guild called Carrion Crow and had been its guild leader for decades. My guild was full of the strongest people in the entire world—most superhumans, many times stronger than you or I am now. We were a household name that everyone in and out of the dungeon came to fear due to our power, but in the end, it wasn’t enough; my guildmates weren’t strong enough. I alone was able to survive and reach the edge of the World Dungeon. There I died at the Altar of the End, only to be sent back in time to prevent the fall of humanity.”
Paul looked at him with suspicion and challenged what Seraph had said. “You told me you had the restart ability; what’s the truth? Did you lie, or are you lying now? I need honesty from you.”
Seraph grunted as he felt his insides begin to shift, waiting for a lull in the pain before responding. “Obviously, I lied before. I had my reasons, but since it’s just you and me, I can tell you the truth. Whatever you might think, blood is blood. I can trust you in a way I can’t trust anyone else. Too much is at stake.”
Frowning, Paul’s eyes narrowed in disapproval. “That’s quite the messiah complex you have there, Seraph.”
“It’s not a complex,” Seraph responded in anger, annoyed with the man. “Don’t make the mistake of looking at me and seeing a child. I’m twenty years older than you, and I’ve seen so many things you would never believe—even if I told you. Here is the reality, and you would do well to remember this. Out of the seven billion people on Earth and the hundreds of people who were granted Legendary classes, I was one of a handful who became strong enough to harm the Infernals. Only I was strong enough to finish the game.”
Seraph stopped as his flesh began to ripple in waves. Pain wracked his body as he bit down on his lips and braced himself against the ground, his fists clenched until the seizure stopped. When it passed, he continued, “And I hate that. Some of the people closest to me, my friends, the co-founders of my guild, my…” Seraph’s voice trailed off before recovering. “It doesn’t matter. They all died trying to get the rest of humanity’s information on the final floor, while I was busy, trying to protect the rest of humanity from Wormwood. We were forced to try to finish the game long before any of us thought we were ready for it.”
Paul cocked his head, curious. “What do you mean you weren’t ready? Why would you go for it if you weren’t prepared? Were you just that overconfident? What’s Wormwood?”
“Because of Wormwood, we didn’t have any choice not to,” respond
ed Seraph, gritting his teeth as the Abyssal Ichor continued to ravage his body. “Sometime in the future, a green mist will begin spreading across the entire world. I call it Wormwood. In its wake, death follows. Wormwood was somehow connected with the dungeon, but we never figured out what the connection was, only that Wormwood appeared after the dungeon did, slowly spreading death.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic? Spreading death?” asked Paul, skeptical even as his eyes couldn’t contain their unease as he watched Seraph’s body change before his eyes.
“Don’t patronize me, Paul. I meant what I said. Death followed in Wormwood's wake. Wherever the green mist went, whatever the mist touched, it changed forever. Imagine Arlington Cemetery overrun with towering masses of quivering flesh, clinging together and rampaging through the capital. Imagine every cemetery spawning foul perversions of undead, and the very trees warping into hungry, hulking golems. Every person, every man, every woman, every child exposed to Wormwood’s mist turned into monsters. Every single one, and it was never the same monster. They were all random chaotic mutations, turning feral, hungry, and insanely aggressive.”
Paul said nothing, his face betraying a look of horror as he tried not to believe the words that Seraph was saying. Seraph paused for a moment to let the man process what he had heard. “I made a mistake. We made a mistake and didn’t act when we should have, thinking Wormwood was a problem for the world outside of the dungeon, a world that we didn’t belong in, not really, not anymore. I was wrong to think that.”
Seraph paused again, his voice heavy with regret. “We turned our backs on the world and refused entry to the refugees. Eventually, after the world as a whole had been consumed by Wormwood, something changed within the dungeon. The monsters created from the advance and exposure to Wormwood forced their way into the dungeon, eventually making it as far as Hometown.”
“These monsters numbered in the billions; the waves were endless. There was nothing that could have been done to save Hometown from destruction. I took my people deeper into the dungeon to try to keep them alive. Even at high levels, most didn’t have a way or natural protection against the corrupting and poisonous spread of Wormwood. We had no option but to try and finish the dungeon; there was no other choice. We had no place to stay; we ran out of time.”
All the talking seemed to aggravate the internal changes going on in Seraph’s body, causing him to start coughing, his lungs spasming. He had to turn over, spitting up bloody bile and bits of black blood that landed in coagulated lumps on the sand.
Paul scrambled over, his face pulled into a mask of worry, putting a hand on Seraph’s back. “Hey, are you okay? Talk to me? What can I do? How can I help you?”
“I’ll be fine. I promise,” Seraph told his father, trying to allay the man’s fears, even as Seraph himself struggled to believe he would be fine.
“Alright,” responded Paul, unconvinced as he helped Seraph get back into position. “So from what you’re telling me, our time in the dungeon is finite, and eventually, we need to be prepared to end it. But that can’t be the only obstacle in the way of finishing things now, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” admitted Seraph. “Gaining levels isn’t easy, and while grinding for experience in the dungeon is dangerous, it wasn’t a huge deal. What hurt us was the constant struggles and infighting between the various groups that kept coming up.”
“I need you to explain if you can,” responded Paul, leaning forward in interest. “This is important and might be the key to everything.”
“You have to understand,” explained Seraph before breaking down into another coughing fit, “the dungeon was the only safe place in the end, and you’ve been there; it’s even smaller now than it used to be. In my original life, Hometown could house hundreds of thousands of people. Now it can only accommodate a fraction of that amount.
Still, either way, be it hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands, that’s nothing compared against the sum of all men—a mere fraction of a percentage point of everyone on Earth. Who lives, who dies, who gets to grind the dungeon, and who has to live on the surface? Those were the sort of decisions we had to make.”
“I’m sure that was hard on you,” Paul said, though Seraph couldn’t tell if he meant it as a declaration or if he was trying to be ironic. “But how did you wind up like this? Because the person you became was nothing like the son I remembered.”
“It’s easy to be critical!” snapped Seraph, his question answered. “My hands ran red with blood, but no one else had any ideas. We had to pick the few who we thought would live. I didn’t have the luxury of the morality you want to beat me with. Do you know what morality is? Your ethics? It’s a cudgel the weak use to avoid getting their hands dirty. If you were in my shoes, who would you pick? How would you decide? It’s not so easy, is it? And if you don’t pick, no one survives. I know I could have picked better.”
Paul looked at him with a sad look. Reaching out, he put his hand on Seraph’s shoulder, his voice soft, trying to be comforting. “I’ll help you; we can try to figure out a better way.”
Seraph looked down at the ground in frustration as emotions welled up inside him. Tears in his eyes in pained remembrance of the man his father had been, the father he had lost. Once Seraph was able to get his emotions in check, he turned back to Paul and answered. “I told you earlier that you died on the day the dungeon first appeared. Elves don’t gain experience like we do; they have to kill a player to level up—all the dungeon minions do.”
“On emergence day, the dungeon began to spawn monsters and sent them in all directions. But the elves played their part, too. They summoned monsters to hunt and kill, looking for easy ways to level up. One of those monsters was a hellhound. A hellhound that found us trapped on the highway stuck in traffic, unable to turn around, unable to just drive away.”
“We thought it was a wild dog that had gotten on to the road, but it was too big to be just a dog, and there were so many people on the road. Neither of us noticed the screaming and the people running as they were chased down by the hellhounds until it was too late to get away. Those that tried to run died first. The hellhounds jumped on their backs, tearing into the nape of their necks, and killing them before moving onwards.”
Seraph paused for a second to cough and clear his throat, some of the pain in his body subsiding before continuing, “When the hounds got closer to us, it was chaos. We could see they were shattering windows and windshields to get into cars. When you realized we weren’t getting away, you pulled me into the back of the car and laid me down on the floor, covering me with your body.”
“When they came for us, it was the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. You screamed for so long, suffering in pain I could never imagine, and there was nothing I could do to help you. I was paralyzed with fear, and even then, I could tell you didn’t want me to try and help you. There was nothing I could do to save you, and you tried to let me know that. Even as you screamed as they tore into you, you refused to let go of me. You refused to let them drag you away and drag you off me.”
When you finally died, they’d already moved on to easier targets to take, and there was nothing I could do but watch you die.
“I was trapped there beneath you, staring into your lifeless eyes as hours turned into days, and no one could hear me screaming for help. Or if they did, they chose to ignore it. I lay hungry and thirsty in my own filth. Stewing in my own waste, unable to move until a small group saved me. I had thought they were there to help, but instead, they threw me into the mouth of the dungeon as a sacrifice to try and appease whatever accursed master they served. That’s when I was first offered the class of “The Angel of Death - The Accuser,” that’s when I first picked up the mantle of Seraph given to me by my dark savior.
“What happened after that?” asked Paul, his face grave and concerned, and his eyes heavy with emotion. His body shifted as he tried to pretend the subject didn’t make him uncomfortable.
S
eraph’s expression hardened into bitterness and hate. “The elves of Hometown were not very welcoming towards humanity. They saw us as a threat—a threat that could dislodge them from the dungeon and replace them as minions. So they stole from us. They harassed us when we were still weak. They outright killed us when they could, which was not often. I made sure of that.”
“There was an unspoken conflict between us, and the leaders of humanity at the time pretended otherwise, complicit in their traitorous ways. Humanity was losing; every day, more and more people were forced into the slums of Hometown to share the meager resources we had while the elves hoarded the rest. We went to war with them because it was the only choice that made sense.”
“That’s crazy,” said Paul, minimizing what had happened. “There has to be another way, though. There is always another way. That’s going to have to be something that we figure out sooner or later: what are we going to do with everyone? Because you can’t keep doing things like you have, it’s not going to work.”
The patronizing edge that crept into the undertones of the conversation grated at Seraph’s nerves. Still, for now, he let it go, hoping Paul would learn better.
“There's something I need to know, though,” Paul pressed on, shifting the focus of the conversation, “How did you get here? How did you get to this point? Take a hard look at your actions and tell me, honestly, that every choice that you made was the correct one. I’m sure you can’t, and I know you can't. Because that’s what you need to be doing. You’ve already admitted that even though you came from the future, things are different. This is your life; there's no easy out, and you're not going to be able to lean on whatever foreknowledge you have to guide how things are going to go.”