Demon Core - Chapter 2: THE DEMON-SICKNESS

Chapter 2: THE DEMON-SICKNESS

~ [Cartouche] ~

Human, Female, Dancer LOCATION: The Travelling Fair LEVEL: 06

Leaves of a caramel color fill the windy forest, just outside of the thriving city. Rattling tambourines ring out aloud around the fairgrounds as the band prepares the crowd for her, their sharp chimes cut through the voices that stem from the excited people, who are running around in all directions. There’s a savory-sour smell of fire-roasted meats, spilled alcohol and vomit in the air.

It’s going to be a busy night tonight.

Cartouche looks at the crowd, peeking out through the curtain for a moment, as she gets ready for her work. The left side of the carriage, which she is inside of, is opened up wide. People are already watching her, stopping in front of the stage before the show starts. The side wall of the carriage, being hinged at the bottom, can be detached at the top end and then simply laid down flat into a makeshift stage for performances.

For a traveling fair, this is an ingenious reconstruction. It saves massively on time and effort for low investment shows like her own. Unfold, dance, collect money, close. There’s no significant preparation or investment needed. For her purposes, it’s more than enough.

— Not that it’s her carriage or anything.

She’s just paying the fair-master to use it. Given the extortionate rates, it ends up being most of the money that she makes to begin with, actually. But it could be worse. After her dues, she has enough money left over to buy food that, while not exactly exciting, is sustaining, and then after that, she has enough to save up a tiny amount of money for her dreams, finally leaving just enough at the end to buy a new dress for herself once a year. Life isn’t so bad. It’s not happy, or good, or dream-like. But it’s not so bad. A little gray, more often than not. But… eh…

Besides, with every passing year, those savings of hers are becoming a little more substantial. Only a few more, maybe five or six years, and she’ll be able to rent a small room for herself in the actual city. She’ll open her own studio there to put on shows and teach dance classes. She won’t even have to wear these costumes and outfits anymore. She can really just be herself. Then, she’ll really be living the high life. That thing… whatever that thing is that she is out here striving for, she’s sure that she’ll find it there.

It has to be there, in the future, in her future. Because it certainly isn’t here.

Cartouche adjusts the strap of fabric around her neck, holding her stomach-revealing top in place and then checks to make sure that she has the right bangles on around her wrists.

It’s very important for her to adapt her dancing outfit to the crowd. If she dresses too flashy for a poorer crowd, they won’t tip. Being over-dressed in a poor neighborhood is met more often with anger, than with interest. If she dresses too humbly for a richer crowd, they’ll think that she’s not a serious person and they won’t tip. In those neighborhoods, being perceived as poor is met more often with disgust, than with pity.

— The bangles aren’t hers either. A lot of this is actually just costume jewelry that belongs to the fair-master. They can all use it. For a fee, of course. But that’s how this operation runs. None of them are here against their will. But they are all definitely here against their hopes. Just like everyone else, she’s here by ‘choice’.

Dancing is the only thing that she knows how to do and there’s no other real way to make money with it in this life of hers at the moment, assuming she stays on the socially virtuous side of her personal life decisions.

A loud bell rings outside. A man begins calling out to the crowd, getting them to gather around the stage.

It’s time.

Cartouche adjusts the fake elf’s ears that she’s wearing, made out of wax and painted to match the heavily sun-tanned tone of her skin. She grabs the soft, fabric veil to cover her mouth with, to aid the more exotic appearance of an elf from the forests that she’s selling to the crowd today. People who don’t travel often, like these poor, low-level adventurers here from this city, go crazy for things like this.

Dancing is an art and it’s her favorite one to practice. It’s what she loves doing. It’s the tool, the key mechanism that she uses to live out her days in pursuit of some vague, distant goal that has no name or tangible form.

But there’s a clean, methodical, ruthless business behind it all, dancing. These tiny details like the ears or the bangles all add up to make or break her show and, in turn, both her day and her future.

Life isn’t going to pay for itself, after all.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

New Area ~ [Dungeon] ~ Graveyard {Level 1} A desecrated, unholy graveyard that has been befouled by the horrid taint of the demon-king.

Level {1} Effect: Summons {1} [Imp] for every {08} slain combatants buried here.

It’s empty.

Everything is… empty.

Swain finds that he is sitting there, but he isn’t sitting there. He finds that his hands are held against his face, clawing against it, but they aren’t. He feels his blood raging through his body.

– But it isn’t.

Swain, as he was before, is now no longer. The boy that he once had been, that identity was stolen from him by his mother. The adolescence that he had then cherished thereafter, that was stolen from him by his father. The cusp of adulthood, the spring of life, most abundant, the first real chance that he had to be who and what he wanted to be, that was taken from him by Goose.

His heart doesn’t beat anymore. It’s as still and as quiet as hers was, as it always was in both body and spirit. He loathes them all so much.

The body of Swain has ruptured, it has violently burnt and melted away in the glowing, radiating power of this new force, this new magic that has consumed him. He rises up to his feet, his old skin that he was cocooned inside of, ripping apart like a spider’s broodsack. Red, bubbled, blistered flesh rips open from what was once his old face, as his new head now presses itself out of his old mouth, as would a bulging parasite, crawling up and out from a corpse’s intestines, back out through the throat.

His old meat, what is left of it, flops down at his feet like an old pair of worn clothes.

His new body is not one of flesh. It is a thing that might resemble something akin to humanity in its vaguest shapes, but there is no such connection here beyond that. It is a contained, raging, twisting mass of pulsing, violent energy. It is filled with the mass of hopelessness, of despair, of every bad feeling that he had ever suppressed and fought back in his life with the stabilizing mortars of hope, joy and love that have now been washed away by the crimson tide. Eyes and mouths grow out of his sides, abundant. They do so on his arms, his throat. They look around and observe, gnashing, drooling, as his body continues to pulsate and to grow.

However, Swain, if he can still be called that, doesn’t find any sight for himself or this new body. The many eyes, adorning his exterior in out of place locations, may be intent on surveying the area. But his own focus, his own attention and his own thoughts are only on the graves still down before himself.

He plants a hand down into the soil of her grave and begins digging.

“- I’m coming for you,” is all that he says as he begins to burrow down to where her casket must be below.

He wants to say her name, he wants to think it, to feel it inside of himself like the slip of fingers clutching between the gaps of his own. But all that is between them now is dirt.

He doesn’t remember it anymore, the name, her name. It’s starting to fade, together with the picture of her face as the magic of his poem, etched onto the gravestone, begins to work.

That’s fine. He doesn’t need to remember her face to find her, to recognize her, to never forget what she did to him.

– His hand, long, clawed, jagged, pierces into the wet dirt of the rained over grave as he digs into it.

After all, she’s right here.

The mouths on the sides of his body and limbs, like ruptured seams on a broken doll, open wide and laugh as he digs, a foul energy leaking from their open, toothy maws. It oozes out of him, spreading out into the landscape like a poison fog.

~ [Cartouche] ~

Human, Female, Dancer LOCATION: The Travelling Fair LEVEL: 06

Cartouche flourishes, spinning one last time to the music of the rattling tambourines as she brings her fast dance of the day to a close. Her feet step over some coins that people had thrown onto the stage during her performance. Only nine more, until they close for the night.

She exhales, feeling a little dizzy and sweaty, which is unusual for her first dance. Around numbers seven or eight she might get a little winded. Dancing is a real sport in and of itself, after all. But getting tired during the first one is very odd for her. She hopes that she isn’t getting sick. She can’t afford to get sick.

The adventurers, having watched her performance, holler and hoot as they have been doing the entire time, many of them already deeply drunk on egregiously overpriced beer, even if the evening had only just begun.

— That’s a clear sign that she’s in a poor neighborhood, the hollering. Rich people clap and whistle and wave her over to give her money in person, as if she were a servant-girl or in hopes for a back-show ‘chat’. But people from her part of the city, they’re more open about their thoughts because there’s no fear of social fall. If anything, it would be something for them to brag about, should they succeed.

Coins fly up to the stage. Most of them are small denominations — A single Obol here, few odd Obols there. There’s even a coin worth five Obols here, down to her side. That’s a big tip for her in a place like this. Ten Obols will buy her a loaf of softish bread that was made the day before. So far, nobody is throwing the coins directly at her tonight, which is a good sign for the rest of the night. But that happens once in a while too. Mostly later on at night though, when the fairground security brutes need to start watching the stage too for any drunkards who try to storm it.

This particular flavor of event happens once about every three or four days.

But, as always happens, many of the audience members are making a dedicated effort to throw their tips to the back of the stage, so that she has to bend over to collect them.

It doesn’t bother her anymore, honestly. It really used to, back when she started, when she first decided to do this work in order to move herself towards that undefinable life goal of hers — towards that feeling, that place of hope and happiness and cleanliness that should, in theory, lie somewhere beyond tomorrow. But now it doesn’t bother her anymore. She’s become gray to it. She’s quietly resigned to this being just a part of her job here in this place, this traveling fair. This is the price that she has to pay as an artist to bring her craft to the world.

Cartouche collects the money, ignoring any comments by waving coyly and pretending that she doesn’t know how to speak the language, pointing at her fake ears.

(Cartouche) has collected: {17} [Obols]

— Something wet and oily touches her finger.

She looks up towards the sky. The rain had stopped a while ago. The dancer looks back down at her hand. She makes a disgusted face as she smears the goo there on its tips around, wondering if someone put something gross on a coin.

But then she realizes that it’s wax. The waxen elf ears are melting.

That’s odd. It’s not hot at all tonight. Well, she feels a little feverish, but…

The dancer reaches up to hide the fake ears as she quickly heads back into the carriage, pulling the curtain closed behind herself. She throws her coins into her collection jar of savings and rubs her forehead, inadvertently smearing more wax on her face.

Cartouche hisses beneath her breath, letting out a bothered noise, as she reaches for a rag to clean up with. She pulls on the fake ears with the cloth, taking them off.

— A status window pops up next to her.

! [Critical System Notification] ! THE ONE-HUNDRED YEAR CRISIS – THE AGE OF DEMONS The demon-king has returned once again, fully intent to destroy the world in its entirety. You must reach and defeat him before it is too late. Difficulty: IMPOSSIBLE Priority: HIGHEST Time Remaining: UNKNOWN Demon-King’s Castle: 0.48 KM north-east of your location

Her heart sinks into her chest as she tries to make sense of what she’s reading.

— Someone screams outside.

Deeply confused, Cartouche runs back a step and pulls open the curtain again to look outside, down from the carriage.

The same status window has appeared everywhere, all over the fairgrounds. The message hovers in front of every single person, more of them popping up by the second in front of those who have not received it yet. Dozens, maybe hundreds of copies of the window appear before every person at the fair and likely before every person in the city, in any city, on any ship, on any mountain temple.

No matter where anyone is in the world, they have now been made aware that it is time for the conventions of the old era to come to an end.

You are suffering from: [DEMON-SICKNESS {01}] ! [Corruption] ||[{Minor} Nausea] || [{Minor} Disorientation]

[DEMON-SICKNESS]

You are within the befouling presence of the Demon-King. The longer you stay here, the stronger this effect will continue to stack, until reaching either the point of minimum DARK resistance or death.

With each increasing stage, the symptoms will become more severe, possibly becoming permanent.

Duration Remaining: 23:59:59

Cartouche feels something bubbling in her stomach. She grabs hold of the curtain, steadying herself as her vision sways.

The rag with the wax ears falls down at her feet. They’ve fully melted, soaking the fabric entirely through with a thick wax of a honey-like consistency. She blinks, feeling her body shaking. The jar full of coins behind herself rattles, as if they were in a quake as some immense pressure moves through the world. Then the wagon follows, wobbling on its axles, as if they were in a powerful storm.

You are suffering from: [DEMON-SICKNESS {02}] ! [Corruption] ||[{Normal} Nausea] || [{Normal} Disorientation]

People all around the stage and the fairground begin to panic, running and stampeding over each other. In their wild orientationlessness, as they are all affected by the same affliction that robs them of their stability, they trample over one another, as if the forest weren’t wide enough for them all to spread out in.

Cartouche spins around in horror, watching out of the last corner of her eyes, as someone vanishes beneath the crowd. She runs the three steps across the carriage, grabbing her jar of coins and then quickly climbs out of the back window, sprinting off into the forest.

— Someone next to her stumbles, loudly cracking their head against a tree. She only pauses to look for a second, watching as the man’s skin bubbles and blisters and begins to pop free from the meat of his body, like a hog, left over an open flame.

You are suffering from: [DEMON-SICKNESS {03}] ! [Corruption] ||[{Severe} Nausea] || [{Severe} Disorientation] || [{Minor} Internal Burns]

Cartouche runs a few more steps, fumbling and falling to her knees as she finds a desperate need to purge. The woman vomits out her kingly breakfast of a glass of water, one slice of dry bread and half of an apple, while scrambling back up to her feet again at the same time, bile leaking from her mouth. She runs as far and as fast as she can into the forest.

A burning sensation enters her core, pushing past the nausea. It’s like her stomach acid is beginning to boil within her own body.

You are suffering from: [DEMON-SICKNESS {04}] ! [Corruption] ||[{Major} Nausea] || [{Major} Disorientation] || [{Normal} Internal Burns] || [{Minor} Internal Bleeding] || [{Minor} Blindness]

Cartouche stumbles again.

The jar of coins flies from her hands, shattering as it strikes a withering tree. Its bark smolders and peels away, flaking off in an ash that grows from no visible flame — Just the same as the skin of her own forearms. The metal-bangles are scorching hot, burning into her flesh.

She stays down on the grass, her legs no longer respond, as she feels the sediment drying beneath herself, together with her eyes.

A single coin rolls down a thick, widespread root of the tree, stopping with a playfully loud rattle and a spin, right in front of her face.

— It looks like it’s dancing, doesn’t it?

Her hand reaches out for it. She needs this. She needs it to finally be able to –

You are suffering from: [DEMON-SICKNESS {05}] ! [Corruption] ||[{MAX} Nausea] || [{MAX} Disorientation] || [{Severe} Internal Burns] || [{Normal} Internal Bleeding] || [{Normal} Blindness] || [{Minor} Poison]

She dies.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

[Souls Have Been Harvested]

Killed: 127

Average Level: 1

Difficulty: Very Easy

~ [The Demon-King] ~ +9391 EXPERIENCE-POINTS. EXP: 10/10 EXP: 25/25 EXP: 58/58 (65) EXP: 160/160 EXP: 350/350 EXP: 600/600 EXP: 850/850 EXP: 1000/1000 EXP: 1750/1750 EXP: 2500/2500 EXP: 2088/4000

Level Up! ~ [The Demon-King] ~

You are now level {02}! You are now level {03}! You are now level {04}! You are now level {05}! You are now level {06}! You are now level {07}! You are now level {08}! You are now level {09}! You are now level {10}! You may now choose a dungeon sub-specialization! You are now level {11}! You are now level {12}! Level: 12 ↗ Experience: 2088/4000 Attribute: DARK Soul-Points: 36/36 ↗ Presence: 2.7 km ↗ Obols: 000

You have {06} free Ability Points to spend!

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Red-Water {01}’ Unlocked By: Killing ten members of the common races Reward: All monsters under your control gain +01 to ALL core, magical resistances.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘The Comfort of Home’ Unlocked By: Leveling up without even leaving your home area Reward: Your next level up (Level 03) will require 10% fewer EXPERIENCE-POINTS. (Calculation is rounded down)

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Red-Water {02}’ Unlocked By: Killing fifty members of the common races Reward: All monsters under your control gain +05 to ALL core, magical resistances.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Red-Water {03}’ Unlocked By: Killing one-hundred members of the common races Reward: All monsters under your control gain +10 to ALL core, magical resistances.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘The Killing Fields’ Unlocked By: Killing one-hundred members of the common races within one minute.

Reward: All wild monsters within your territorial radius will have status [Wild-Hunter] applied to them, massively increasing their rates of aggression and roaming range.

You will gain EXPERIENCE-POINTS for any members of the common races killed by wild-monsters within your territory.

Swain ignores all of the windows popping up all around himself as he burrows, shoveling away dirt like a possessed animal, following its instincts to make a tunnel.

His hand strikes against something.

— All of the eyes on his body turn back down towards the hole that he is inside of.

He breathes heavily, reaching into the side of the obstruction and wraps his clawed hands around the edge of the featureless, plain, wooden box that he is on top of. Its cheap, loveless lid is caved inward, crushed from the weight of the wet dirt that had been pressing down on it for so many years.

The rotten wood splinters as he violently rips it open, staring down at the thing inside of the box.

Swain exhales, slowly reaching down to pick up what he sees there. Bones.

He is standing atop a small heap of soft, fragile, delicate bones that had belonged to a person, a girl, who never got to make full use of them.

He picks up the skull, lifting it apart from the rest of the body and holds it up to his face, looking into its empty expression.

With his other hand, Swain rips out a wild-flower from the rain-soaked dirt, violently pasting it together into a mush in his large palm that he then smears over the skull. The demon-king lifts the soft, fragile, painted thing up towards his face, looking at it, feeling its negligible weight in his hands.

It smells like she did. It feels like she did — Like bones and wildflowers.

He can’t remember her face. But the smell of her, the feel of her, they linger inside of himself.

— Swain crushes the brittle, old skull together in his hands and greedily shovels it into his mouth. Falling pieces are caught by the gaping maws, open on his body. The demon-king tears the rest of the child’s bones out of the grave, snapping them and pressing them into himself.

There’s something beautiful here, isn’t there?

A femur loudly cracks as he breaks it in two, gnawing on the dry end of it, as the idea for a poem comes to him. The marrow inside of the bones is long since gone, having rotted away.

Her pieces splinter and break, crumbling apart in his many mouths. She’s going to be a part of himself.

– Forever. He’s never going to forget her.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Lamashtu’ Unlocked By: Gnawing on the bones of a child Reward: All wild monsters in your territory will regain their lost HEALTH-POINTS and SOUL-POINTS every time they eat a child.

The rains have stopped, the ground, withered and scorched, does little to absorb the water of the prior downpour. Instead, it all puddles and floats everywhere, creating a mire of sorts.

[Souls Have Been Harvested]

Killed: 13

Average Level: 10

Difficulty: Very Easy

~ [The Demon-King] ~ +1029 EXPERIENCE-POINTS. EXP: 3117/4000

He looks towards the new window, finally, remembering what had popped up just before, while he was digging. With his growing power from those first levels, his territory had grown. The demon sickness has affected more people now than it had initially.

Swain wonders for a moment.

…How far away was the city again, exactly?

~ [Royal Guardsman Serekh] ~

Human, Male, Fighter Advanced Class – Royal Guardsman LOCATION: The City LEVEL: 51

Status: [Major Blessing] applied to (Royal Guardsman Serekh) +25 to all RESISTANCES for 24 hours.

Serekh lowers his head in a sign of deep thanks, not being of a station to be allowed to speak to the bishop, who stands at the midst of the palace staircase, his hands outspread to bless all of them here. A golden wave, carrying auras of many resplendent colors, washes over the guardsmen.

People run and scream in all directions, their harrowed voices carrying throughout the night like so many spreading wildfires. His own men hold the crowds back with a strong wall of tower-shields and hands, as carriages pull in through the alley that is carved between the panicking rioters. They are secured channels of passage for important individuals to travel through.

It only took a minute.

The night was as would be any other night. It was quiet, peaceful. People were asleep for the most part, the artisans and the craftsmen and the workers of the city were all at rest, preparing for a new day of work. Only a few guards, night-owl adventurers and tea-house proprietors were awake at this late hour.

But then the message appeared.

It had appeared right before his face, before his wife’s face, before the face of every noble and priest in the palace and before the face of every man, woman and child, laying in their beds, beneath the mischievous starlight.

— The demon-king.

He’s not only returned, he’s here.

It only took a minute for everything to change, as if by the snapping of fingers.

He runs back to his men, grabbing the wrist of a woman trying to climb over the shield wall and pries it off, throwing her back down into the crowd.

It didn’t take long before something terrible moved through the city, moved through them. A sickness. It doesn’t affect him, personally. He’s strong. He’s high-leveled. He and his men, as also many other adventurers, seem to be resistant against the demon-plague for now. But this ailment, this… sickness…

— It affects everyone who does not meet these standards.

Resistance against the ‘dark’ element of magic seems to be the key here, but the priests of the city, torn out of their beds and chambers of prayer in the middle of the night, hardly have enough soul-points to cast their protective blessings on the critical members of society, let alone everyone here.

There are sanctuaries in the city that are safe from many forms of magic, such as the palace or the cathedral. But there is just not enough room in them for everyone here.

A blistering, bubbling hand reaches in through the shieldwall, grasping his wrist. He yanks it off of himself.

The bones in the stranger’s hand crack and break immediately beneath his fingers, as if they were fallow, soft bones that had belonged to a decaying bird. The man with the broken hand screams as the sickness travels up his body and through his core.

– Serekh can see it, the spreading sickness, in the man’s eyes that begin to burn and wither away, in his teeth that fall out of his blackening gums. They fall out of his mouth, clattering as they land on the stones.

He isn’t sure how exactly he can hear them, between all of the screams and the crying. But he can. He takes note of every single clatter as each of the teeth strikes against the ground.

Royal guard Serekh grabs a shield from the side and tightens the formation.

The bishop and the church are enacting emergency measures now to protect the city.

But they need time.

— Only a minute.

Someone falls down on the other side of his tower-shield, their body being trampled flat by the raging crowd pressing in to fill the gap.

~ [The Demon King] ~

Life, like a poem, needs a structure of some sort.

It doesn’t need to be cold and methodical, this structure. It can be a fluid, warm thing. But there needs to be something.

The demon-king rises out of the desecrated grave, looking down at the land as it changes because of his presence.

More and more status-windows are popping up all around him, declaring gained experience-points, level-ups and all manner of achievements in a pace that he can hardly keep up with.

— Swain has never been so strong before.

His body bulges, growing, festering, as the wails of the dying carry all the way through the night towards him.

But this is not sufficient.

This initial development is only the first stanza of the many that he needs.

He knows humans. He knows what he has become. He knows the stories of what has happened in the past, in the distant eras of demon-kings that have now come and gone. They had all failed, having been vanquished either by a unique party of particularly dedicated and powerful adventurers, or by a single, crystalline soul of an entity; the summoned-hero — A rare soul that the gods themselves bring into this world from another, allegedly, to fight a terrible crisis.

Many are dying and his progress towards his goal is moving and it is doing so fast. However, this will wane sooner, rather than later.

The land remains marred and scorched and his aura grows, but it will not be long until he is found by those particular people who exist in this world already. Those people of strong mind and body, who possess the levels and abilities to beat him now, before he’s even really started to grow, to create.

Currently, he is weak. He is a newborn chick, still chirping in the nest.

He needs to buy time.

He needs a quiet, dark place, where he can write his poems in peace, a place where he doesn’t have to look at these graves that fill him with so much anger and resentment. A place where he can fulfill his purpose in sanctuary.

— One of the mouths on the side of his body speaks to him of an idea in a mischievous, disgusting voice.

Swain listens to its suggestion and then he raises a clawed hand.

A dungeon.

He needs a dungeon. A king needs a castle, after all. A castle needs to be built.

His fingers glow with a terrible aura.

The sky is full, not of clouds, which have now left together with the rains. But rather, with glowing streaks of auroral blues and greens that gravitate towards him, contorted faces and tormented eyes held in their foggy, stringy masses.

— Souls.

They fly into the open mouths formed all around his body that gorge on them, the many eyes on his form looking every which way in delight. His fingers clench shut around one soul that flies his way, grabbing the screaming wretch by the whispers of its tail. He looks at it and shoves it into his real mouth, as he casts off the magic of his first spell.

(Swain) has used: [Summon Worker {01}] SOUL: 32/36

Swain chews in displeasure. It all tastes like… gray. These souls. They all don’t taste like anything at all.

There really is absolutely nothing of substance in this world, is th-?

— Oh?

The demon-king stops, to his surprise as he closes his eyes as a slight, soft sensation reaches him from one of the many souls he has consumed.

It tastes… familiar.

~ [Cartouche] ~

Human, Female, Dancer LOCATION: ??? LEVEL: 06

Left foot. Right foot and – swing the hips!

Cartouche floats in wherever it is that a person goes when they die. She’s there, in a quiet place.

— But her spirit doesn’t find rest.

She can’t sleep yet. She never finished her dancing. She never found that… that one perfect way to move her body, not only to a particular song, but rather to the simple beat of her own, once-striking, heart.

The dancer floats there, frustrated.

She looks around herself.

There are a lot of other souls here, she can see them, huddled into themselves like cold children. They’re sleeping, floating, drifting aimlessly through a fully lightless void in which only their silhouettes, aglow, are distinguished.

What’s wrong with them?

She tries again, composing herself.

— Left foot. Right foot and hips, then –

Cartouche stops, looking at a person, drifting past her, fast asleep. She’s having a hard time concentrating on her practice with all of these dead people everywhere around herself.

The thing that was once Cartouche watches the soul drift past herself. There isn’t a hint of love for life, of passion in it, nothing. It’s just… a thing that floats. It may have once been a person that could create and admire beauty, but now it is simply a catatonic presence.

Why is she here? She’s not like them.

Cartouche rubs her face, only to realize that she doesn’t really have one. Her shape now is just as vague and ‘humany’ as that of any other body here, floating, in whatever this ink is. The woman looks down at herself. She too, just like them, looks like a doll that is made entirely out of yarn. Apparently, this is what a soul looks like.

Good to know. But, again, why is she here with them?

The dancer looks around herself, realizing that she is the only one who is awake. She’s the only one who moves of a volition higher than some ambient current in the water.

She’s dead, right?

Cartouche realizes in plain, simple terms that she’s dead, as the fresh memories, suppressed by whatever this place is, return to her.

The woman shakes her head and recomposes herself.

Emotions will affect her art and sometimes, this is a good thing. Dance is all about emotion, after all. It is a form of freeing expression. It is a painting, made with no brush. It is a song, sung with no voice. But right now, she is following strict routines of practice needed. Emotions aren’t needed for this exercise.

She stands up straight, getting ready to try again.

Left foot. Right foot and –

– Her right foot crumples in on itself and she loses her balance, falling over.

Cartouche looks down at her body, at her leg, that has become… loose. Her whole self is made up out of strings and the strings that had been holding her foot in place have simply come apart.

She pulls at them, trying to tie it all back together, but as she does so, the strings that make up her arms also come loose and it all begins to get caught in on itself in a big, chaotic jumble.

There’s something wrong with her, isn’t there?

She’s not like the other souls here, quiet, peaceful. She never found peace. She never found… it. Whatever that thing is. There was something that she had wanted in life, something she wanted to use her art to find, to make, to… touch, to experience, to give. But she never got there.

— The only reason there could be is because there’s something wrong with her, right?

Other people had made it as dancers, putting on shows in royal halls and places of grandeur and wealth. They put on magnificent acts to spread the strong feelings of their souls throughout the world.

But she didn’t.

She performed what amounted to parlor dances at a traveling fair from a wagon that people had peed and vomited on regularly, because… that’s just what her lot in life was. It’s what she had to do.

The strings that make up her body begin to fall apart entirely, the core of her torso spilling out of itself, as if she were becoming disemboweled by a hungry animal. But she only calmly acknowledges the happening, rather than frantically choosing to fight against it.

The floating eyes of her shapeless gestalt twitch and look around herself. She looks at the other people — the normal people, the quiet people.

What makes them different from her? No… she corrects herself. What makes her different from them?

Why isn’t she a person who ‘made it’? She worked hard. She put in the hours. She put in the sweat. She sold her soul and disregarded her own pride and ego in order to do everything that she could to find this… thing — this vague, ethereal concept and in the end…

Her body fully falls apart, dissolving in the murky waters of the afterlife.

— What is it?

“WHAT IS IT?!” screams Cartouche out into the void in which not a single person can hear her cries, exactly as it had been during her life. Her words drift past the hundreds, thousands of sleeping people all around herself. Not one of them stirs to answer her. Not one of them stirs to even acknowledge that she had existed.

Cartouche closes her eyes, listening to her own words reverberate and echo out into what might be forever, for as far as she can tell.

It’s over.

She’s danced her last dance.

The woman who wanted to be something more lets go, letting what is left of herself fully come apart, so that it might fade back into the nothingness of eternity.

“- Beauty,” whispers a brutal voice into her ear, as if it were right next to her. “It is beauty,” says the man, speaking to her from all around herself now, his voice offers a harsh, rough contrast to the oddly soothing, calm waters of the afterlife. It is not a beautiful thing. But now, here, in the face of total, eternal silence, it might as well be the most beautiful thing she has ever heard.

She exhales, realizing that god must be speaking to her to say goodbye. Cartouche sinks down into the darkness.

Beauty, huh?

Why didn’t she think of that? It seems kind of dumb, kind of simple. But now that it has told her the secret, the word that was missing from her life, she thinks that she gets it.

Beauty.

She wanted that. She wanted to embody it, to be it, to make it, to give it. Beauty. Of course. It’s so… obvious. The grace of the dance, the suppleness of a trained, mastered body, the flow of the story being told in a language that is spoken without such crude, mechanical things as words or letters — All of these things are sticky petals on the moist, honey-cup blossom that is the concept of beauty.

— Her body pulls itself back together.

Cartouche watches in confusion as all of the others all around herself, all of the other hundreds of souls, as they fully break apart into shapelessness, as she had been doing before. They come apart in the acid of the stomach that they are floating inside of.

This isn’t the afterlife.

A red, raging light erupts in front of herself, blinding her, as if she were staring straight into a roaring summer’s sun.

The voice whispers to her and to her alone.

It does not spare a word or a tone for any of the other hundred and then some souls in this place. It only speaks to her, to Cartouche, to the dancer.

“It’s not here,” says the voice. “I’ve looked already,” it explains. She floats towards it, no… she’s swimming towards it. Cartouche, desperate now, not for life, but the promise of this deeper concept, puts her all into it to move towards the red, towards the light.

“Then where is it?!” she asks, needing to know, even if it is the last thing she will ever know. If beauty isn’t here, if beauty isn’t in the world that she was in, then where is it? Where else could it be?

The ephemeral flame that lures her soul in towards itself, like a spring fire would a newborn moth, flickers and dances so enticingly in the void. Her hand reaches out towards it, trying to touch it, trying to grasp it in the same quiet desperation she had held onto her life with for so many years.

Her fingers touch the light. It’s warm.

“…Where is it?” asks Cartouche quietly again. “I’ll do anything. Please. I need to… I need to find it. I can’t be done yet,” she cries, a wet venom pushing through what are supposed to be her eyes. “- I need to find it first!” she howls.

“We can look for it together,” promises the voice of the distant entity.

“I’ll do anything!” swears Cartouche.

“— I know,” replies the voice, sensing the worming, squirming despair in her deepest heart of hearts.

It rips her through the light, tearing her out of the place that every other departed soul from the region had gone to tonight, out from the belly of the demon-king.

~ [The Demon King] ~

More and more windows continue to appear next to him as the effects of the demon-sickness reap more and more souls from the nearby city, from the nearby villages. With each level-up, the range of his territory increases and the effects of the demon-sickness then touch areas that are even further and further away still, propelling forward a self-fueling cycle of death.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Hunter’ Unlocked By: Killing one hundred animals Reward: All BEAST monsters under your control gain a significant boost to the range of their sense of smell

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Red-Water {04}’ Unlocked By: Killing one-thousand members of the common races Reward: All monsters under your control gain +15 to ALL core, magical resistances.

Level Up! ~ [The Demon-King] ~

You are now level {20}! You are now level {21}! Level: 21 ↗ Experience: 3444/8750 Attribute: DARK Soul-Points: 54/54↗ Presence: 4.5 km ↗ Obols: 000

You have {11} free Ability Points to spend!

A gestalt, a slender limbed, clawing body tears itself out into the night. Her hands grip the sides of his body, as an arm thrusts itself out of one of the mouths on his torso. The extra mouth gags, its teeth breaking outwardly as her arm scrapes up along it, leaving deep, bloody scratches in her. The woman pulls out a shoulder and then her chest and then the rest of herself.

Regurgitated, rebirthed, the dancer’s soul reenters the world in flesh of some form, covered in the slime and blood of her afterbirth.

Unceremoniously, she falls down to the ground of the graveyard.

~ [Gallu] ~

– Worker Entity –

A Gallu.

All but forgotten by the men and women of the new day and age, Gallu are cruel, terrible demons that stem from the old times. They are responsible for tearing the screaming dead down into the underworld. Gallu do not know the mortal pleasures of food or drink, nor the warmth of merciful kindness. They will rip men from their howling brothers, suckling children from their wailing mother’s breasts and terrified animals from their burrows, thought safe. Nothing is sacred to the Gallu, apart from its core pursuit.

Born out of a lost, corrupted, mortal soul, Gallu are the minion workers of the demon-king. They have what appear to be physical bodies in the mortal world, but these are held together purely by DARK-magic.

Gallu can not be killed. Their poisonous shadows can only be dispelled for a time, before they then reform around the pulsating heart of the demon-core.

They serve primarily as workers and combatants.

The later concept of a ‘Shadow-Person’, often witnessed during the phenomenon of sleep-paralysis, stems in part from the mythos of the terrible Gallu.

Class: MINIONElement: DARK Type: WorkerCategory: DEMON* Rank: A Level: 06 [Dancer] || [Red-Water {04}] || [Wild-Hunter] || [Lamashtu] HP: 54/54SOUL: 54/54 *A demon’s stats are based on the LEVEL of the demon-king. Its affinities are based on its past life.

[Corrupted Muse]: The MUSE that this person had once possessed has been converted to DARK.

All DANCER abilities will shift, adapting to the powers of creation possessed by the demon-king.

The demon-king looks down at the first of many to come, as do the many eyes on his body, quivering in excitement as they can hardly find a better, single thing in the vivid night to focus on. Despite the fact that there are so very many things to see.

Someone who also seeks beauty. Someone like him. It is a rare soul.

She looks up his way and plants a hand on the soil, trying to rise up to her feet, as would a new-born fawn with weak, quivering legs.

“— What do you want me to do?” she asks in a shaking voice, having not one, single more immediate question than that as she stands before the horrific nightmare with too many mouths, too many eyes and too indescribable a body, amidst the graveyard, amidst the torment of screaming, flying souls above their heads. A viscous, slimy fluid that had pooled inside of her lungs and throat leaks out of her mouth.

He looks at her, holding out a clawed, wet hand that is soaked in the same spittle and goo as she is. She grabs a hold of it and it helps her up to her feet on which she stands once more, whole.

“I want you to dance,” replies the demon-king, letting go of her to let her stand on her own two legs.

The first waves of death will stop soon. The humans won’t wait long to make their counter-attack. It will come as soon as they find their first free minute.

He has a poem to write.

~ [Royal Guardsman Serekh] ~

Human, Male, Fighter Advanced Class – Royal Guardsman LOCATION: The City LEVEL: 51

Fists hammer against the shields, rotting and boiling away as the power of the demon-sickness grows, consuming ever more and more people. The howling survivors push forward, climbing over the piles of littered dead that have become so high, that those climbing over them could already stand over the tower-shields of the guardsmen. Magical spells violently burst, exploding above their heads, as the magical attacks of the citizens and adventurers are repelled away from the defensive line by experienced warders.

The line had to be moved back several times as the piles of meat, of once screaming faces, lay quietly with the broken fingers outstretched and reaching — As if reaching for him still now.

Those who had been protected from the sickness before, because of their higher level and resistances, have now begun succumbing to it in a new, second, stronger wave. The demon-king has grown in power already.

What a fearful thing.

It hasn’t been a minu-

Serekh blinks, slowly trying to reorient himself.

— He doesn’t know how long it’s been. But surely it’s been longer than a minute. There are so many corpses. There are so many eyes, staring his way. There are so many fists, hammering against his shield.

For the first time, the man looks back towards the cathedral that they are guarding, since the bishop had entered it.

What are they doing in there?

The smell of the boiling intestines of children fill his nose as he looks behind himself, not at the steps of the cathedral, but at the space between them and it. The row behind the guardsmen is littered with the corpses of children, of newborns, toddlers and adolescents.

Desperate mothers and fathers had, in their drive to save at least their children, thrown them over the line in the hopes that they would be caught, be saved and be protected from the demon-sickness.

Red-stained, soft fabrics of many colors and patterns litters the ground all around him. Bundles, filled with melted meat and soft bones.

This is too much…

He understands that there isn’t enough space for everybody. But this… this is too much…

His eyes capture a glow, shining vividly alight as the windows of the grand cathedral begin to radiate with a clean, pure light that feels like it is from the sunshine of a day in the past, which seems so impossibly distant now.

The ground shakes, a quake moving through the city, rattling their shields and their bones. A shrill, shrieking cry fills the air, carrying around like the resounding chorus of ten-thousand voices, singing in unified glory.

Colors fill his eyes, warmly hued tones of kind springs, distant and cherished, as an eruption of light blasts out of the cathedral.

He covers his eyes, closing them for the first time since the night had begun, as the light envelops him, envelops them all.

– What took them so long?

The spell grows outwardly from the cathedral, covering first them and then a large, outward bubble that grows around the inner city, a grand seal in its center.

[True Sanctuary] A powerful protective ward, cast through the collective efforts of hundreds of priests and priestesses of varying rank and status, converging their magical energies together into one, unified shield. Effect: Inside of the sanctuary

– No wild monsters are able to spawn within or enter the sanctuary

– All WITCHCRAFT is negated

– All negative magical status effects are negated

– DARK–RESISTANCE +100

– POISON–RESISTANCE +25

– Passively restores +1 HP every 30 seconds

– Passively damages all DARK entities -2 HP every 30 seconds

The light washes over the city.

It’s over.

The screams begin to quiet. The hammering stops as fists stay glued where they were, on the surfaces of cold metal, on the flesh of dead faces, on the chests of men and women who no longer stir that were being beaten in hopes of their improbable return to life. Instead, as the light washes over the city and over every harrowed face within it, those wretched cries slowly change their shape, as has the course of their lives.

— They change to long, wretched wails.

Royal Guardsman Serekh slowly lowers his shield and the rest of his men follow in turn.

Everyone standing there just… looks. They look at each other, the guards, the survivors.

It’s quiet.

Serekh breaks the silence and knocks his own shield over, simply dropping it where it stands. He walks, not towards the cathedral, but towards the wall of bodies. The man moves through the survivors, who have no ambitions greater than to continue being so, and grabs hold of a body, climbing up the wall of corpses to look around the city for as far as he can see.

And for as far as he can see, down every road and alley and out of every window and door hang bodies, melted. Their loose skin and meat dripping down everywhere as steam rises from their open mouths and hollow sockets.

Without a word, he climbs down on the other side and walks down the street that he takes every day, back on his way home from work.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

It cracks.

Bones of a yellow hue, broken and then twisted, so as to heal in positions misaligned,

Crawl through the screaming night, on stretched muscles and tight sinew, bound,

It creaks when it moves and its too many fingers break when it walks on their tips,

Which are as abundant as blades of dying autumn grass,

It seeks more to hold and more hands to grasp its,

The collector of bones starts there first, before it moves down your wrists.

– Which it will crack.

And then make a part of its.

(Swain) has used [Poetic Summoning] to summon: [The Finger Collector] Cost: 70% SOUL-POINTS

~ The Finger Collector ~

– Summoned Entity –

A creature that exists solely beneath the darkness of children’s beds, it waits for them to sleep and then rumbles and rattles for them to wake and to stir their sleepy heads.

When they look in timid fear, to see what is rumbling and scuffling so deeply below, down on their floors, the Finger Collector will strike and rear, and take off their hands – and perhaps too, somewhat more.

A mass of writhing bones that project out into too many wrong directions, the Finger Collector is made up out of thousands of hands, broken, pressed together into a lump that has regrown wrong and crooked.

Class: MONSTERElement: DARK Type: NightmareCategory: TERROR* Rank: SS Level: 70 *’Terror’ is a classification term used for all monster-types that do not fall into traditional monster categories, such as UNDEAD, GOLEM, GHOST, etc. Terrors tend to have unique make-ups and behavior patterns and lean towards hyper-violent tendencies.

Swain watches as the graves all around him rumble, his mother’s, but also all of the others. Bones are drawn out from the soil, collecting together into a mass. More bones come, pulling in from the forest and from unmarked graves that had filled it. More and more and more of them come together until eventually, the thing, the creature, the terror, sits in the vague darkness, having come together as a whole entity.

“Go,” is all that the demon-king says and the Finger Collector skitters off on ten-thousand fingers, hungry to find just as many and then some more.

That will keep them busy for a time, the humans.

It had taken most of his soul-points to summon the monster, but he needs the time and he needs some points left over for his work here.

The demon-king looks across the night, across the ruined graveyard, as the dancer dances there, performing her art, awash in the screaming haunt of the many souls that continue to cascade his way, flowing past her, as if she were dancing in a storm.

He feels his remaining magic being diverted, moving to her, flowing to the tips of her swaying fingers that slice the air as she moves atop the grave that belongs to a person who he only remembers the smell and the taste of.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Red-Water {05}’ Unlocked By: Killing ten-thousand members of the common races Reward: All monsters under your control gain +20 to ALL core, magical resistances.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘The First One is Always Rough’ Unlocked By: Killing someone who was in the process of losing their virginity Reward: All innate DARK-RESISTANCE, granted by the base classes PRIEST, PRIESTESS, MONK, is negated

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Experienced Hunter’ Unlocked By: Killing one thousand animals Reward: All BEAST monsters under your control gain a significant boost to their senses of sight and hearing.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Master of the Hunt’ Unlocked By: Killing ten-thousand animals Reward: All BEAST monsters under your control carry deadly POISON in their spit.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Slippery Situation’ Unlocked By: Killing someone who was taking a bath Reward: Any POISON attribute exterior effects can not be washed off.

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Art Block’ Unlocked By: Destroying a historical public monument Reward: The heat-radiating effect of the demon-core will degrade the DURABILITY of all metal equipment

~ [Achievement Unlocked] ~ ‘Water, Water’ Unlocked By: Poisoning a major source of water. Reward: All rivers, ponds and lakes within the territory will be continuously be affected by POISON

Level Up! ~ [The Demon-King] ~

You are now level {48}! You are now level {49}! Level: 49↗ Experience: 1841/13500 Attribute: DARK Soul-Points: 110/110↗ Presence: 10.1 km ↗ Obols: 000

You have {24} free Ability Points to spend!

The magic of the dungeon-core flows through her, pulsating down into the open grave.

Swain watches as the soil is ripped apart, the grave widening, as if two hands were grasping it and tearing open a fetid wound like a piece of fabric.

The hole deepens and widens as her dance continues, as the souls continue to flood his way, spectral whispers flowing from her body accomplish the work that would require men with shovels and tools days to complete.

A staircase emerges, leading down into a dark hole, past the ruptured casket. It seemingly descends down all the way towards the underworld.

But it’s currently only one floor deep. They will need more – Many, many more.

[Dungeon-Core Sealed] The dungeon has been activated. Your territory has been increased by 0.5 km (10.6 km total)

[Stockpile]

{Empty}

[Throne Room]

{Empty}

[Floor One]

{Empty}

You now have access to [Treasure Chests]!

New Area ~ [Dungeon] ~ Stockpile {Level 1} A simple collection of raw materials, gathered to use by the dungeon-core. Everything is currently collected in rough heaps.

Level {1} Effect: Allows storage of building materials, equipment, food and all other items and resources.

New Area

~ [Dungeon] ~

Floor {01}

The first floor of the demon-kings dungeon. It is currently empty.

SOULS COST PER MONSTER:

F-Rank: 01 E-Rank: 02 D-Rank: 04 C-Rank: 08 B-Rank: 16 A-Rank: 32 S-Rank: 64 SS-Rank: 128 SSS-Rank: 256

The demon-king nods, content. The dungeon is taking shape.

He looks at the dancer and she looks back at him, both of them then staring down the hole that has emerged.

She lifts her hands, perhaps now noticing the red tinge that has taken to them since her rebirth. The woman stares at her fingers for a while, before turning back to look at him, as the last of the screaming souls pull into his core, finally turning the night into a haunting state of silence. The hungry mouths on his body smile wide and content.

“…What am I?” asks Cartouche, perhaps finally coming to realize the extent of what is happening all around them.

Swain steps down the staircase, turning his head to look at her as he descends into the darkness below.

“An artist,” replies the demon-king, before lowering himself down into the underworld.

It only takes a minute before the sound of bare feet running after him comes to his ears, together with the jangle of melted metal bracelets.

~ [DEMON CORE] ~ SOULS COLLECTED: 12,336

~ [Royal Guardsman Serekh] ~

Human, Male, Fighter Advanced Class – Royal Guardsman LOCATION: The City, Home LEVEL: 51

Serekh sighs in relief as he takes off his armor. Not ‘Guardsman Serekh’ or ‘Royal Guardsman Serekh’, just Serekh, as long as his wife is here. He’s back home now, so all of that work stuff has to stay outside. It’s the rule that they had made. His wife doesn’t really care what station he holds in society and he doesn’t mind. That’s what he loves about her, after all. There are no games. There are no politics or noble bloodlines or odd plots of intrigue.

She’s just a normal person who wants to live a normal, quiet life.

The man rubs his tired face, smearing something over it, as he heads back up the staircase to their bedroom, quietly tip-toeing past the doors to their children’s rooms.

He pushes open the door to his bedroom that was already ajar, seeing that she is where he had left her, and throws off his shirt, creeping over and back into bed, back where his night had started.

Serekh lets out a long, relieved sigh as he feels his head sink into the pillow and his back into the mattress. He decompresses, ignoring the sogginess beneath himself. All of that armor really does weigh a lot.

His hand stretches out, holding hers, his thumb rubbing lovingly across the top of it.

— A piece of her wet, boiled skin comes loose, sliding off beneath his digit.

Serekh closes his eyes.

It’s okay.

Tomorrow he’s going to wake up and find out that this was all just a fever-dream.

The man yawns and goes to sleep.

— Something rattles and taps beneath himself.

He reopens his eyes, listening to the noises in the dark room.

There is a scratching beneath their bed.

Rats? They’ve had a rat problem before. It’s this neighborhood. With his salary, they could move to a much nicer one. But she’s always insisted that it’s better here in this upper lower-class neighborhood, so that the children don’t grow up ‘weird’, like he did, allegedly.

That’s just her sense of humor.

Tired, Serekh leans over sideways, looking down beneath the bed.

— Something that is there takes his fingers and then also his head.