XP Marks the Spot

DUNGEON FILE 004:

XP MARKS THE SPOT

For what reasons anyone would become a Hunter, resort to killing their own kind for points, was something I couldn't imagine.

Perhaps being in this place for long enough does something terrible to the soul, rotting it, turning men into monsters with pretty armor and silver tongues… Ew.

"So how long exactly have you been down here?" I asked, the words leaving my mouth before I realized how invasive they might sound.

Mendell glanced at me, his gaze sharpening. "A good question. I'd have to remember the specifics… Let's see…" He began tapping his fingers on the nearby stone ledge, counting silently. "I was executed around the 38th day of the Spring season. Now that would make me… 30 years old. Thus I've been in the Dungeon for 16 years now. How interesting, now that you've brought it up! It does feel like a lot longer, in a way…"

"How interesting… And—"

"—Wait. Step aside, if you would, Aya," he abruptly asked.

I looked aside, and realized I had been standing next to the splayed form of the Lustrous Nautilus splattered across the wall. I swear that thing was still moving, somehow. 

"Yes, my apologies," I replied and acted in accordance, though I was certainly confused. What did he intend to do with that disgusting thing?

It was clearly quite dead.

Mendell's movements were practicedly swift as he approached the corpse of the beast. Although dead, the nautilus writhed in pain, tentacles snapping wildly from muscle memory, but he approached apathetically nonetheless, not at all put off by the sight. 

He drew his estoc, the blade gleaming under the dim light, and crouched to the fallen shell's level on the cave wall. With rapidly precise slashes of his estoc, he sliced through the nautilus's tentacles and threw them into a sack on the side of his armor. 

The creature's muscles writhed and threshed but it couldn't retaliate in a meaningful way. Moments later, it fell still at last, black blood pooling around it from the cracked shell before dissolving into a misty substance and wafting into the air. Mendell stood over the creature, wiping his sword's blade clean of blood.

He didn't look towards me as he spoke again, his tone still curt and unchanged:

"The Lustrous Nautilus's [Essence] is mine, by the way. I killed it, after all, even if it's not much—So don't expect me to share any, even if you need it."

I frowned. "[Essence]? You've mentioned that quite a few times now, and I still don't get what the deal with it is…"

He suddenly turned, hands still deep in the beast guts, and gave me that same baffled stare as before, the same as when I asked him where he was from. "...Oh, you… You're serious then? All your life above, and you've never… What, you've never even leveled your skills? Literally anything related to the [System]? My, I knew women in the Obsidian Empire were sheltered, but I had no clue it was that bad…!"

"Sheltered? Is this like another fighting thing, and you're being judgemental because I've said there's no need for people like me to learn anything about combat again? If so, it's a rather unhelpful comment!"

"It's not…" Mendell sighed and rolled his eyes, as if he were explaining the simplest thing ever. I'm sure it was in his mind. "It's not just a fighting thing, no. Take a look at the Lustrous Nautilus." The cracked shell had been spewing inky black mist into the ravine air for some time, which Mendell had his face nauseatingly close to. 

"Ew…"

"This is life [Essence]. You have it in your body, as do all living things. You got to see it when the curse healed your wound from grabbing my sword's blade, too. When you kill anything, you absorb its [Essence] to exchange it for power and skill later on via the world's [System]."

"I see… It's that gross black stuff," I repeated, gesturing at the fallen nautilus uncomfortably. "Is it… is it like a currency?"

"You could call it that, in a way. [Essence] is the currency for skills of this world in general, sure. It is earned through killing to level up and become stronger. The stronger the creature, the more [Essence] it yields… Did you truly never learn this on the topworld?"

"No! Noble ladies don't need to kill things! Is it really so surprising I don't care for violence? Power gained in such a way, if you must take another life, well… That's deplorable!"

"I should probably tell you…" Mendell's expression suddenly tilted to become more sly. "Humans, not just beasts, can be killed for their [Essence], as well. And they have quite a lot compared to mere Dungeon beasts! So simple to take care of, too. Particularly the fresh ones who don't know any better, much like yourself! If you're ever in need, I could show you around the rest of the cells…"

My heart suddenly churned within my chest, eyes wide in realization. "You asshole!" I bristled. "That's why you take people's bodies to those cells? So you can kill them and inhale that disgusting stuff? And you intended to do that to me?"

"That's kind of what being a Hunter means, yes… If someone calls themselves a Hunter, like myself, it simply means we have no qualms about killing humans as opposed to those to restrict themselves to only beasts." He nodded his head with confidence.

"When people die in the Dungeon, their bodies dissolve into [Essence], of course. But as opposed to the topworld, the Dungeon's curse ensures their bodies make a full recovery after mending the damage back together. Which means they can be killed for [Essence] again upon fully waking up. And again, and again, and—"

"You're a real piece of shit, you know that? I knew there was something wrong with you! How could you do that, inflict so much pain on people and ensuring they have no escape for your own gain?"

"Oh come on. Pain is incidental. Morality is an affectation of the topworld. It holds no weight in a place where death is meaningless."

"Death is never meaningless. Pain is never meaningless!" I exhaled sharply.

A life should not be spent like fuel, I think to myself in horror, consumed and discarded when nothing remains.

And yet, this is apparently what men have been doing all the time on the topworld, and I cannot even escape it down here. What kind of fucked up [System] is this?

Now I feel that as 'sheltered' as I may have been, my education in life at least taught me this much: The justifications are endless and the same everywhere. War, industry, all these endless thirsts for power, all poor excuses as to why terrible men can think of themselves as right. 

In every case, however, the truth is simpler—some have decided that others are less than human, and so they are treated as such. I looked at Mendell now with indifference, taking him for what he told me he was: a cutthroat opportunist. 

I nearly had the urge then and there to run and go away, and have nothing more to do with anyone who had pride in naming themselves a 'Hunter', and their cruel apathy. 

There is something profoundly inhuman about treating people like livestock, slaughtering them over and over for one's own ends, something I fear greatly…

"You stand here, condemning me, but you know well enough that the moment you turn away, you will be swallowed by something worse. Something that does not even grant you the decency of an explanation before tearing you apart."

I narrowed my eyes. "That isn't an excuse for what you do."

"Perhaps it isn't," he shrugged. "It's not a choice I relish, unlike some, but it's… It's the hand I've been dealt. Aya, at least have faith to follow me to this one final place; Go wherever the hell you want afterwards, but I assure you that if you stay in the Sunken Ravine, you'll be here quite a while." Mendell watched me, waiting, neither pressing nor dissuading me from whatever conclusion I would reach. 

He had no need to. The choice had already been made for me by the nature of this place. 

I despised the notion of owing him anything. I despised the thought of needing him; Yet my circumstances did not allow for pride. I could leave him, wander aimlessly, and inevitably fall into the hands of another who would see me as nothing more than a resource to be harvested—

If he wanted me to have such a fate, he could have easily done so a thousand times over by this point. 

Or I could remain, endure his contemptible nature, and learn how to navigate this wretched world in which I had found myself.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Ayauhcihuatl… You're already trapped here, and I'm not the one imprisoning you. There's nowhere to go but down, quite literally."

"You're full of shit," I spat, trying to regain some semblance of control, but Mendell just gave me a wry smile. "If the Topworld could somehow know people were alive down here… My father, or the Emperor, anyone, don't you think they'd do something? There are literally holes to the surface in the ceiling of the ravine. I mean, it must be possible, someone could climb up—"

Mendell gave me a look as if I'd just told a terrible joke.

"Good luck with that. Truly, you should go ahead and try! What do you believe will happen when you singlehandedly climb 10,000 meters and leave the boundaries of the curse, which is the only thing holding your rotten body from becoming a mound of putrid flesh again? You'd die instantly, or at best, maybe your remaining sludge of a body would hopefully fall back in to give you a second chance."

"That's not what I—…! Pft. I get it. Fine," I muttered, looking away. "But you can't say it's impossible. I'll figure something out myself, and there has to be a way to alert the Topworld about everything down here! And just... don't talk to me so harshly like that again." 

I meant what I had said. There must be something, a protection spell, a counter, a way to send out a message… 

"I'll follow you," I continued, my voice steady despite the knot in my throat. "But don't mistake this for trust! I know what you are, and I won't forget it."

"Fair enough," Mendell said, turning on his heel, small smile forced back upon his face instantaneously. It seemed he wanted to say something else, but that sadness stayed only in his eyes. "Try to keep up, then."

I turned toward the endless cliffsides of the ravine and stared into it. A bottomless maw. My grave. My cradle.

"No," I whispered to the ravine as we passed. "No, you don't get to keep me."

I spat into the abyss. Mendell stared pitifully towards me.

"You hear me, Gods? Kingdoms? Bastards? You don't get to keep me! You can brand me, bury me, tear out my voice, but I will climb with broken legs and raw hands, and I will reach the surface!"

I yelled again, breathless. "I'll go home."

Of course, I knew there was no home. They took it from me. Still, I clung to the lie:

If there is a surface, I will reach it.

If there are laws, I will defeat them.

If there is a curse, I will break it.

If there are Gods who created this [System], 

I will spit in their faces too!