Dungeon Sniper

We talked, and Benedikt pointed out a possible, and correct, explanation for Elysia's concomitant Transcendence.

"Kid, you weren't carrying a dead Elf's soul with you, by any chance?" asked Benedikt.

That was when I realized Alstair was gone. Really gone.

And Elysia was the last gift from him.

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Benedikt drove Elysia and me on the back of his four-wheeler to his underground bunker. The sun was still hot, but the wind blowing into the face helped with the heat.

Benedikt pushed some intricate buttons on the dashboard, and the descending leading down to a bunker opened up in front of us. I was amazed by the technology. Elysia seemed horrified.

"Help yourselves. Drinks are at the cooler."

Benedikt took a bottle of beer out of what looked like a fridge and sat down on a stool beside a table laden with junk parts and machinery. Elysia and I stood at the entrance, looking around the crowded, messy laboratory that screamed its owner was either a genius or allergic to cleaning. Probably both, I figured.

"Some kind of ice magic powering up this box?"

Elysia opened the 'cooler' and took out a chilled bottle delicately.

"It's called science, lady," corrected Benedikt, belching contentedly.

He then turned to me and frowned irritably.

"What's with the face, champ? Take a seat. You two are too big to be standing around in my lab anyway."

"Can you show some sympathy? I just lost a friend. A bunch of friends, actually."

Sure, Alstair had been dead for weeks, but not really. I did not need to check the Perks and Skills interface to see that I had lost a perk. A Unique Perk. But Alstair's presence meant more than just a line on some floating window. He was, I could never repeat enough, a friend.

"You didn't get rid of all of them. You've got to learn to appreciate what you have, not what you lost," Benedikt raised his bottle toward Elysia.

Elysia was tentatively tasting the cold beer and seemed to have decided that she liked it enough. As she sipped, her eyes met mine, and we both smiled meekly, maybe even blushing a little.

"You disgust me. I need another drink."

Benedikt hopped off the stool and walked over to the cooler. He popped another bottle and took a good swig appreciatively.

"Where are you getting your drinks from? I saw nothing outside while we rode here," I finally sat on a dusty stool. Elysia sat on a nearby table, low but just the right height for its Dwarf owner.

"I have my methods. Right then, before we begin, let's kill some time before the sun sets. It's suicidal to operate in the day, with the heat and everything—"

"Whoa, slow down, little guy. Begin what?"

"Why do you think I escorted you from that barren nothingness to this cozy little place? Because I like you? I told you I needed your help here."

"That's how you ask for help?"

"If you'd rather spend the entire day under the sun, be my guest, kid."

Fair enough, I thought. Meanwhile, Elysia was helping herself to a second bottle of beer. She seemed a little off, shaken by what happened in the past hour, and I could not blame her for some alcoholic assistance. Hell, if I could drink, I would have drowned myself with it right now.

But the image of a half-empty bottle of champagne still overlapped whenever I even took a whiff of alcohol. I turned away from Elysia and the bottle held in her hand and faced Benedikt.

"You said we have some time to kill? Let's talk then. I've got some questions."

"Shoot."

"I don't like that pun," I grimaced, "and don't ask why. I might really shoot you."

"With what? With the longbow you left at Level One? The crossbow that melted between the Transcendence?"

Benedikt was right. I just realized that almost all of my gear was gone. TJ, Elvis, Ross II...

"My daggers are, gone too," said Elysia, hiccuping mid-sentence and covering her mouth hurriedly. As adorable as she was, I was too panicked to make a comment about it.

I searched my belonging restlessly until I felt something around the waist. I still had Mataki's Blade with me. I took it out, sharp as ever but without the usual faint red glow emanating from it. A silent, for now, dagger-sword that needed charging with a Goblin's soul.

"Quite a sword you've got there."

"Yeah, where can I Goblin around here?"

"Why do you ask?" asked the Dwarf sharply, much to my surprise.

"There's a Goblin soul trapped in this thing. It recharges whenever I kill a Goblin, and it starts to talk."

Benedikt narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he extended his hand for the blade. I hesitated a little before handing it to him.

"The only 'weapons' capable of withstanding the Transcendence are the ones that have originated from the higher Levels. This one was made here, not at Level One," said Benedikt, examining the blade thoroughly.

"I figured. The Goblin inside said he was born here."

"Here? How?"

"Are you seriously asking me how two Goblins make a baby? How would I know what kind of weird shit they do at bed? Wait, do Goblins even have beds?"

"Did he say that? He said that he was 'born' by two Goblins, like he had parents once?"

Benedikt seemed uncharacteristically serious.

"If you're referring to whether he was a creation of Olothi like the others nowadays, no. He said he even knew Olothi in his days. More than just knowing. More like companions. Even lovers."

A look of realization flashed across Benedikt's face. He looked between me and the blade, face pale and lips trembling.

"No. Mataki's trapped in this thing?"

"Great. If you knew his name, why didn't you say it in the first place?"

"Why didn't you tell me it was Mataki's soul? You said it as if some random Goblin was trapped in there."

"Mataki is a random Goblin to me.

"You don't know what you're talking about, kid. Mataki was not just any Goblin. He was my friend. A comrade."

"Sure. Nice. Look, I really don't care. I've got other questions—"

"The poor bastard. How did he end up like this? Do you know how he died? Did he tell you?"

I blinked.

"Um, I killed him?"

Benedikt gasped.

"But it was more like self-defense, and he wanted me to kill him. It's pretty complicated—"

But Benedikt's face had already turned murderous when he flung the bottle to the wall and jumped at me.

I could hear Elysia giggle with yet another tipsy hiccup at the end.

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"You saw how peaceful it looked and felt last night. That was everything we had hoped for Colosseum Ultimatum to be. The symbol of peace. The conducive for harmony."

Benedikt said with the fourth beer of the day and a black eye. I nodded with a swollen cheek and Elysia leaning and sleeping in my arms.

"That was really it. And the Gate opened for a possible Transcendent who brought the momentary peace and harmony to all the races."

"So the whole 'kill every champion until only one remaining' was just some bullshit that popped up out of nowhere?"

"Well, 'fear' is one way to establish peace and harmony, if you think about it. But, no, such brutality never even occurred to any of us. Maybe Rafaqa, but I can't be too sure."

"I still think it's the Orcs who came up with the Battle Royale theme."

"I don't know what that is, but I, too, think the Orcs would have welcomed the idea of the killing spree."

"Wait, why are we talking about this? We were talking about how you and Mataki met."

"I was just getting there. Now, Mataki, he was just another Goblin to me at first. But back then, even the simplest Goblin was a mile ahead of what today's Goblins are in terms of intelligence, decorum, and decency. You must have noticed that Mataki was a bit different from the other Goblins, right?"

"Yeah, but when I found him, he was eating the Human flesh, so I'll have to disagree on the decency part."

"The Goblins have always been like that. They even eat their own kind, as some Orcs and Reptils have recently done so until the Orcs got rid of their shamans and the Reptils their own share of problems."

"What kind of problem?"

"Nasty kind. You don't want to know."

"What about the Dwarves? And the Elves?"

"Everyone knows that the Dwarves taste like dirt. Not that we ever tried ourselves. And the Elves, well, look at her and tell me if she's got any meat on her."

"Elysia's body is perfect as it is."

"I saw the way you ogled at that muscular Orcina. Now, she had a lot to chew on that body."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, covering Elysia's ears just in case. She was fast asleep, fortunately.

"Cannibalism is a lost tradition. A taboo. You don't think your Humans did not eat your own kind at certain points? The Humans, the weakest but also the most resilient race, able to live through the famine and pain, parents deciding whether to feed or eat their children?"

"You can stop now. You're grossing me out."

"The Dungeon has seen some hard times, but the people within have endured. No, not just endurance. It's 'evolution. Every race has evolved,' each in its own way. Everyone, except the Goblins."

"Because of the Exchange," I gulped ominously.

"The Exchange, the Curse, the Mistake. Those who are aware of the sacrifice the Goblin kind made call it various ways. The Goblins themselves do not call it by anything because they are oblivious. As a result, they cling to the old belief of the Cycle, unlike the other races who have moved on from the archaic faith of eat-or-be-eaten philosophy and turned to put faith on the best of themselves, the heroes."

"The Humans don't have a hero either."

"They do now. They have you."

I did not know how to feel about that.

"Look, Ben."

"Don't call me that. You shall address me by full name, and with respect."

"... Benedikt, I appreciate the history lesson, it reminds of a friend, actually, but I just had one question before we got sidetracked to... wherever we are at this point."

"Was that when I told you to shoot and you showed me the sword and we got into a fight?"

"Yeah, right around that time."

"What's your question?"

"It's not totally unrelated. It's about the 'soul exchange system' of the Gate?"

"Oh, that? I don't know anything about that."

"Liar! An hour ago we all saw the way you moved the Gate up and down like it was some high-end elevator!"

"Elevator, eh? You've got some interesting vocabulary, kid. But again, Alpha was like that too."

"Alpha was like what?"

Benedikt closed his mouth and seemed to be deciding whether he should speak further or not.

"Maybe some other time," Benedikt shook his head thoughtfully.

"No, now."

"We've killed enough time, kid, and now onto the important subject."

"Alpha talked like me? How exactly? Who was this guy anyway?"

Something about Benedikt's comment made me thinking. Was Alpha not a native of the Dungeon like myself? Was that why he blurted out weird, foreign words like how I always did?

If I were called Beta for being the 'beta tester,' was Alpha named after the 'alpha tester,' meaning he was directly involved in—

"As you saw out there, there's almost nothing in this Level. The war is over. The losers have either died or fled. The victors are crawling beneath the sand and... eating off each other out of boredom and, well, to exist. Not living, mind you, but merely existing. That's what they're doing."

"Sounds like a paradise."

Benedikt did not smile at the sarcasm.

"You probably have an idea who these 'victors' are?" asked the Dwarf hero seriously.

"Crawling, underground, cannibals, yep. Somehow, the Goblins won against the other races."

"Oh, I saw 'how.' I could stop 'how,' if I were a hundred years younger."

Benedikt emptied the beer in his hand and chucked it to the wall. I frowned at the exploding glass shards, but the mastersmith got up sprightly from the seat and rummaged the pile of junk on the table to pick up what looked like a remote controller.

"Three things for you to remember. One, the Goblins out there, they're the most advanced forms of the Exchange, meaning they're the most vicious, bestial bastards you've ever seen. Forget what you know about the Goblins back at Level One. You'd think they were your distant cousins when you face the monsters lurking below the sand around here."

"Geez. That bad?"

"You'll see. Two, we're not just eradicating the Goblins. The Goblins have earned their victory, although I doubt they are capable of thinking or understanding anything at this point. Let them have this Level and eat each other to extinction in this barren wasteland all they want. But we're going to go for the Queen. The Queen has to go."

"By Queen, you mean—"

"The Queen is capable of dig her way between the Levels. So far, her activity has been confined to Levels One and Two. If we let her escape, she'll keep laying her eggs at Level One and even venture beyond Level Three. We have to stop that at all costs."

"And by 'we,' you mean more than just you and me, right?"

"No, just you, me, and this puny Elf girl."

"I told you, Elysia is not puny. She has the perfect figure, like a supermodel."

Elysia stirred a little in her sleep, and I could feel Benedikt shaking his head disgustedly as I stared fondly down at her sleeping face.

"No hero ever needed a woman by his side," Benedikt clicked his tongue indignantly.

"You forget there's a legend of two heroic lovers. The legend of—"

"Olothi and Mataki," Benedikt finished my sentence before I did.

"... No. Alpha and Velonis."

"Look, I was there. If you're talking tragedy, you go for Team Olo-Mata."

They even had a team name. How cute.

"So, Olothi and Mataki, they really were lovers?"

"And partners-at-arms. Quite a dynamic duo, those two."

I took out Mataki's Blade again. Benedikt stared at it too. Without the faint red aura around it, it seemed not only lackl.u.s.ter but also... lonely. Had it always looked like that, or was I imagining things now?

"We'll need to kill a Goblin soon. I want to hear what Mataki thinks about this plan to kill... the Queen."

"I thought he was some random Goblin to you, kid. Why the sentiment?"

"It's called decency, something you clearly lack."

Benedikt chuckled, going for the sixth beer from the cooler.

"There's only one decency I know, and I only show it to my creations."

Benedikt nonchalantly pressed buttons on the remote controller. One of the walls creaked and began to flip, pushing off the junk on the shelves onto the floor as it slowly revealed the other side—an array of silver, metallic weapons fastened on the rack, gleaming and dazzling.

I blinked and gently lay Elysia on the floor covered with a blanket before standing up in utter awe.

"Let's see. We covered one, two, oh, and here's three. Gear up."

Benedikt nodded casually to the impressive collection of high-tech, futuristic weapons that ranged from handguns to grenades to—

"Am I looking at... is that what I think it is?"

I stepped closer to one particular 'rifle,' with a long barrel, a muzzle brake, and what looked like a telescopic scope attached to the mount.

I turned to Benedikt and pointed the beautiful 'sniper rifle' with a shaky finger.

"Pretty decent, eh?" the mastersmith belched proudly.