Chapter 2: Level Up

The Pit of Despair was brimming with the kind of excitement and fear that can only happen when something new and dazzling interrupts the established, commonplace routine of those older and wiser.

Indeed, even though the older and wiser creatures dwelling at the bottom of the Pit (such as the octopus that fed entirely off bad vibes) were stronger, more experienced, and dreadfully terrifying on almost all accounts, they were also completely fascinated and arrested by the appearance of the egg.

The egg had a system, too, which wasn't very common either.

[Egg]

[Level: 1]

[Skills: Fascinate]

[Description: A small egg at the bottom of the Pit of Despair.]

A gangling subterranean mollusk covered in tendrils galore scuttled on up towards the egg. Known for its mystifying, putrescent odor, this mollusk was one of those other lucky dwellers of the Pit that had a system, as well as a propensity for communication between beasts by use of electric currents. Other creatures used a form of mental language known as thought speak, but that was unfamiliar to this mollusk.

The mollusk was unanimously voted the official entity responsible for inspecting the egg and communicating its findings to the rest of the Pit. The mollusk focused intently on the egg to learn more about the [Fascinate] [skill] its paltry character sheet described.

[Fascinate]

[Fascinate holds the power to bewitch and bedazzle all sorts of beings - alive or dead, existent or betwixt reality itself. Fascinate ensures that all observers, as long as they are not already in a mode of hostile combat, consider an entity as curious, engaging, and enlightening. It imparts buffs of positive charisma and high impressionability.]

Through a series of small yet dedicated shocks, toots, and whistles, the mollusk communicated these findings to its brethren. At once, they found themselves even more interested in the egg. It was as if understanding its curious and seemingly only power made the egg only that much more fascinating.

[Level up]

The beasts of the Pit of Despair were delighted as they watched the egg level up before their eyes, optical mucus membranes, and psychic cortex sensors. In a brilliant puff of pink smoke the egg briefly concealed itself. Then, a minor yet thick burst of water current quickly dissipated the smoke into the familiar, murky depths of glum nothingness that comfortably surrounded its spectators, revealing the egg once again. It had leveled up indeed.

[Egg]

[Level: 2]

[Skills: Fascinate]

[Description: A rather fascinating, yet small and insignificant egg at the bottom of the Pit of Despair.]

The beasts of the Pit seemed a little disappointed when the mollusk relayed the new developments of the egg's character sheet to them. Many of the Pit dwellers wondered what the point of the egg leveling up was if it didn't receive any new [skills]. Was the only change that its description was slightly modified?

What was the point?

The mollusk assured them that it was worth it to continue to observe the egg and not to eat both the egg and the mollusk itself for breakfast. This was something a rather large eel with eight rows of teeth had posited as an alternative course of action to continuing to humor the events that were currently taking place.

The mollusk further assured everyone attending the forum that if they were to focus again on the [Fascinate] [skill], it too would have changed as the egg's description had. Though a few Pit beasts argued, generally they were all the more curious than they were hungry, especially considering that some of them only fed off psychic energy. They eventually agreed to allow the mollusk to continue analyzing the egg's character sheet with its system.

[Fascinate]

The brunt of the [Fascinate] skill's description was similar to the point that some of the Pit creatures with eyes started rolling them, but the mollusk insisted they remain patient. Remarkably enough they all complied regardless of what had seemed to be growing tensions and impatience. At the end was the kicker: the [skill] had indeed changed.

[Fascinate affects all creatures within a 30 foot radius. It imparts a 'glow' that makes them less likely to act aggressively or attack while also making them more obedient and peaceful. This glow radius serves to protect the egg as well as bestow positive feelings of well-being and mental health to creatures nearby.]

This was a particularly troubling development to the octopus that fed entirely off of bad vibes. How was a being supposed to feed off bad vibes when there was an entity directly preventing bad vibes from being felt?

Worse still, the octopus couldn't even really feel frustrated or angry with the egg for this, due to the very same 'Fascinate' skill that was preventing it from continuing to feast.

Upon this realization, the octopus resigned itself to swim just about thirty feet away or so. After all, when the egg initially appeared, wasn't there a great helping of bad vibes to be feasted upon? Didn't that mean that there was a reason for the vibes to have seemed so bad? The octopus sure thought so, and furthermore, if this 'Fascinate' skill was pushing all the bad vibes away from itself, didn't the bad vibes have to have somewhere to go?

As the octopus knew well, bad vibes didn't necessarily just disappear - they had to be converted into something else somehow, much how like matter itself could only mutate or change and not ever be truly destroyed. The question was, were bad vibes converted to good by the skill's radius, or were they simply pushed away? Exiting the glow of the skill was the only way to know for certain.

So, the octopus left the radius of good vibes and was indeed pleased to note that there was a gracious heaping of bad vibes swelling around the blast radius of the egg's skill like murky blotches of ink and sorrow. With a cautious glee (for the octopus had to be certain not to be so pleased as to convert any of the bad vibes to good vibes, which indeed was possible at times), the octopus calmly and confidently resumed its feasting.

"Oh, what I would do if I had a gem in my shoe,

What I would do, what I would do,

I'd buy me a nice new bonnet, and I'd give it to you,

Yes I would, oh darling, yes I would-"

"No you wouldn't," Philhip interjected with a snort. "You're the greediest guy I know, Brahd, you wouldn't buy anything for anybody but yourself."

Brahdley stopped whistling through the wooden fangs covering his mouth and smacked Philhip on the back of the head. "I wasn't talking to you, idiot. I was singing a song."

"Talking, singing, what's the difference?"

Brahdley groaned with frustration. "Look, Philh, I know you're dumb as a sea sponge, but this isn't a complicated concept, so I'd appreciate it if you paid attention to me for once. I wasn't addressing you in any way. I was singing a song, which imparts with it a concept. It's an old shanty. A shanty about a man of the sea who has nothing, nothing to his name at all, but he loves someone very, very much, and he wants to buy them a bonnet. Since he has nothing but the shoes on his feet and the song in his heart, he sings to them. He says that if he did have something pricey and expensive, like say some sort of valuable gemstone, he'd use it to buy them a bonnet. It's a very touching story."

"And why is any of that relevant?" Philhip set down his oar and crossed his arms. "It's irritating and distracting. And how are we supposed to catch anything with you wailing so loudly and off-key that everything in a thirty foot radius is probably terrified to come anywhere near us? The only way we'd ever actually manage to catch a fish is if we had something that magically made everyone and everything around us feel incredibly good despite the dreadful sounds emanating from your vocal chords. If they can even be called that."

"You know what you are, Philh?"

"Right?"

"No. You're a little piece of kelp. A little piece of kelp that a big whale ate, and that kelp tasted so nasty that the whale got indigestion. So the whale threw you up and you sunk to the bottom of the Pit of Despair and got feasted on by the most disgusting, barnacle encrusted sea urchins in existence, and even they felt sick to their tiny little, spike-covered stomachs, but they had stronger constitutions than the whale so they didn't throw the bits of you they ate up. The urchins ended up with irritable bowels, the whale got a leaky gut, and neither the urchins or the whale were ever able to reproduce again because they were in such bad shape after eating you. Also the whale ended up paralyzed and was soon eaten by barracudas who grew extra flippers and gouged their own eyes out."

Philhip shuddered a little. "Whatever, Brahd. Are we going to keep paddling?"

"Keep paddling? You want me to keep paddling after the huge insult you just hurled at me regarding what I would consider a beautiful and well-honed singing voice? No, we're not paddling a second more." Brahd's three sets of eyebrows scowled vehemently at Philhip. "We need singing in order to properly pace ourselves and focus on paddling in step, even in this tiny little canoe. Even actual sailors do it, you stinky bit of putrescence. Plus, I think we're in the perfect spot to try out the new net we stole from that cranky old wizard."

Philhip did a double take as he looked at the murky water surrounding them as he recognized the abyss that their canoe was currently floating above. "Brahd, you can't be serious. You really can't be serious, can you? You realize where we are, right? Like, oh my gods!"

Brahdley groaned and whispered an angry prayer to Theseosus under his breath. "Philhip, I know exactly where we are. And believe me you, the Pit of Despair is absolutely the perfect place to test out this net. It's supposed to be infinite!"

"That's ridiculous," said Philhip. "Then you couldn't hold it in your claws, it'd be much too big."

"That's not how it works, you major doofus," said Brahdley. "You'd already know that if you had a system. But, not to worry, I can look at its description again for you."

Philhip tried to interrupt Brahdley, but his companion was too proud to stop from analyzing the net.

[Net of Infinite Reach]

[This apparently simple fishing net has a special ability that is concealed from people without systems.]

Brahdley loved that first line, and had read it to Philhip at least five times prior.

[Normal nets necessarily have a limit to how far below the depths of the water they can travel. However, due to heavy enchantments crafted into this net, it can instead reach to the end of any depth. This is a variable version of infinity that only functions when cast from the hands of a person with a system, and resolves itself when the net hits the bottom of wherever it has been cast to. The net, once cast, will plummet without running out of rope until it hits the bottom of wherever it is cast. Once the net hits the bottom, its length will be set in stone until it is recalled by the caster, at which point it may be cast yet again to another depth of limitless end with the same results.]

Philhip did admit that it was quite cool, though he also found the fact that the net required the use of a system to achieve its full potential frustrating and a little insulting.

"Now then," said Brahdley with a waggle of his many eyebrows, "Let's catch ourselves some incomprehensible horror from the depths of the Pit of Despair!"

Philhip sighed as his companion tossed the net into the murky waters.

"What do we do now?" asked Philhip.

"We wait," said Brahdley. "It's got to hit the bottom of the Pit, doesn't it?"

"Does the Pit have a bottom?"

"Of course the Pit has a bottom! It's got to have a bottom, doesn't it? It wouldn't be a Pit if it didn't end, would it?"

Down at the bottom of the Pit, the creatures that lived there were arguing over what to do about the egg. Though it was difficult due to the glow radius of its [Fascinate] skill, many beasts wanted to cook the egg and eat it. Many others at the least wanted to destroy the egg because despite the feelings of well-being it imparted, it was bringing change in a way that made them feel generally uncomfortable. Others still, such as the octopus that feasted entirely off bad vibes, were ambivalent, or possibly even wanted the egg to remain as it was due to the benefits incurred by the power of its [skill].

And then the net landed on top of it.

And once again, the Pit of Despair, once known as gloomy and disturbing but also altogether boring due to its clandestine nature, was full of even more hullabaloo.

What were they to do? What was there that could be done? General underwater common sense was to avoid nets, usually they were used by foul bipeds searching for food. Many Pit dwellers considered this no exception, despite the fact that the last time anything had reached the end of the Pit of Despair was about five centuries prior.

Still, someone had to do something, it was decreed. The mollusk with a system was required to analyze the net, and analyze the net the mollusk did. Soon after it was scrambling to explain just how exactly the net had arrived at the bottom of the Pit. While this did assuage some nervousness, many beasts in the Pit still found the net highly suspicious.

So suspicious, in fact, that the mollusk noticed a weakness in the glow radius of the egg's [Fascinate] skill. A weakness that the octopus that feasted entirely on bad vibes noticed as well, with a piqued interest. It swam back into the glow radius and located the vittles of negativity that were quickly manifesting upon the Pit beasts' deliberations regarding the net, giving no thought to the consequences as it rested on a knotted rung of rope and snacked away.

Brahdley smirked. "Looks like I caught something!"

"How you do you know?"

"I know, Philh, you absolute porridge head, because the rope is shaking. See?" Brahdley gestured with an open palm to the shaking rope that lead deep into the murky depths below.

"Well, how do you know it's not just shaking because you're shaking it, Brahd?" Philhip pointed with a claw to Brahdley's own tightly clasped claw, which was firmly grasping the aforementioned rope leading down into the water.

"I know, you dung heap, because I'm not shaking it. It's shaking me. Haven't you ever heard of cause and effect? Do I need to give you a lesson in cause and effect?"

"No, Brahd, you don't need to-"

"Let me give you a little lesson in cause and effect. Do you even know why it's called cause and effect, Philh?"

Philhip didn't respond to Brahd, other than by mouthing his own words back and him and flapping one of his claws open and shut as if to mimic Brahdley's mouth.

"I'll tell you why it's called cause and effect. You see, the effect happen because of what causes it. And that effect effects another thing, which causes something else. It's like that old legend, the bird eating its own feathers, the owl-o-borous. The owl hoots, but who does it hoot for? It hoots, of course, for you. Metaphorically, of course. I mean in reality the owl-o-borous isn't some omniscient entity, it's just a legendary owl that slowly eats itself over and over again, but it does that because it does it, and just like the owl-o-borus eats itself because it is hungry, and it is hungry because it keeps eating itself - and, as an aside, it has low nutritional value as a result of this - my arm keeps shaking because the rope is shaking, and the rope is shaking because something deep in the water is shaking it."

Philhip responded to Brahdley, but not in a way that he would've preferred. Regardless, at the end of it all, both of them agreed that it was the rope from the net that was shaking and not Brahdley's claw. With that, Brahdley gave the rope a tug.

"Oh wow, whatever this is, it must be heavy. Probably something really cool, like an owligator," said Brahdley.

"Owligators don't live in pepperwater like this, Brahd. If anything, it's probably an oilback purpose."

"A purpose? How would a purpose be down at the bottom of the Pit of Despair, Philh?"

"The purpose wouldn't have to be at the bottom. It could've been swimming only partially below the surface and gotten its rubbery old oilback purpose neck caught in the rope. Happens all the time, haven't you watched any nature documentary presentation spells?"

Brahdley sighed. He saw watching presentation spells as an awful waste of time, and he had told his companion that many times over. Regardless, it was not the time to continue arguing. Brahdley pulled and pulled on the rope, eventually enlisting Philhip's assistance in order to get enough leverage to hoist the long length of rope and netting up and into the canoe. As soon as it completed its ascent, the rope shot up into itself as if it were on a spinning reel, leaving only the net and its contents onboard.

"Hmm, no oilback purpose after all," said Philhip with a sigh.

"Or an owligator," said Brahdley. "Just a weird looking octopus, some weird looking type of sea slug, and an egg."

"An egg?" Philhip did a double take. "What kind of creature is laying eggs at the bottom of the Pit of Despair?"

"Beats me, but for some reason, I feel really good about it," said Brahdley.