Chapter 431 (1/2)
”Legend has it that in the past, we were part of a wider world. But because of a great sin of our people, the Dintan, we were exiled from our home, and sent here, to this purgatory. Although the area we are allotted is quite large, and the climate here is mild...” Aratta shook her head, her hair swishing back and forth. ”...it is known amongst us that this is a lesser life. But with our options restricted, we focused on the only real thing we could control: Skill Levels.”
”Although we Level naturally, as we age, honing our Skill Levels does give us some measure of control over our strength, and our own pride. For generations, we existed in harmony, split amongst 20 or so villages in our area, and if we were not content, we were at least... surviving. But then a change came.
”Originally, our main opponents were those creatures we call the Death Cultists. They are much less focused on Skill Levels than we are, but their bodies... are almost impossibly powerful. They were our perfect foil. But then the monsters came. The monster hordes that you have fought, with great success, I might add. If our warriors were at the level of your group... or even close to it...” Aratta sighed, and looked at the ground. Randidly couldn't see her eyes due to the cloth, but he assumed she was lost in her strange melancholy.
”One on one, or two on one, or even five on one, we would be fine. But against 100 per each villager... In a blink, we had lost half of our villages. Originally, the Dintan leaders suspected this was a plot of the Death Cultists, some strange ritual of theirs, unleashed upon us, but... No, they were just as surprised and devastated, pushed back by the waves and waves of monsters.”
”After a month of being pushed farther and farther back, consolidating our people into fewer and fewer villages, a young woman with golden hair and a wicked smile appeared at the edges of our village. Clearly an alien, but also an enigma. She offered us a secret method that would boost our power, giving us the ability to fight back against the monsters. All we had to do was to sign an oath, that we as a people would owe her a great favor, to be called in at any time. It would be bound to each individual, through our bloodlines. Once we agreed, the woman warned, we could never escape that debt until it was paid.
”It did not feel as though she meant to be threatening, with how she delivered her offer, but many people did not trust this strange, golden-haired woman. She came out of nowhere, in our hour of need, and coincidentally offered a solution? No, this had to be a scam. For three days and nights, the debate raged, before the King and Queen of the Dintan. By the end, the Queen was swayed, yet the King remained firm.
”'What about our children,' the Queen famously asked, tears pouring down her face.”
”'Exactly,' the King said, his face firm.”
There, Aratta stopped speaking for several seconds, just looking at the ground. The fire crackled. Or at least, Randidly assumed she was looking at the ground; the more time he spent with Aratta, the more he learned to annoyed by the presence of the cloth over her eyes. But with the strange Aether fluctuations that were coming from it…
Randidly was almost positive laying beyond that innocuous looking piece of cloth was a trap laid by the Creature, although he couldn’t figure of what kind, or why. So for now, it was fine to just leave it there, untouched.
Based on the modus operandi of the Creature, the choice would be taken from him eventually, and he would be forced to face her influence. From Aratta’s story, it was clear the Creature had a heavy hand in moving the dungeon towards the current state of affairs. She had shown up, probably using the form of Lyra, and offered these people a method to power.
The Path of the Heretic.
And Randidly didn’t want to spoil anything, but the ending of this story… The images of those twisted, frail bodies buried haphazardly in the dirt were at the forefront of his mind.
Aratta looked up. “The King sent the golden-haired woman away. What followed were the hardest in the Dintan history, at least the history we have of this place. But… after two years of struggle, of shrinking down to only 6 villages… there was an equilibrium. The Dintan’s champions had grown so strong that they could push back the monsters. In addition to that…”
Now a shadow crossed Aratta’s face. “...In addition, the Death Cultists were taking the brunt of the monster’s assault. Because they had accepted the gift of the golden-haired woman. They had become Heretics. Luckily, it seemed that there was a tacit agreement that we would not go back to a war between the Death Cultists and Dintan, not as long as the monster hordes kept appearing.
“Time and time again, our best and brightest would investigate the origins of these monsters, to no avail; they sprung up from random places, in random amounts, filled with violence and bloodlust. The first villages that the horde would encounter would struggle for the first several hours, before assistance from nearby could arrive, lessening the pressure. It was a… stressful system, but one that worked.
“Then, about 3 years after the monster horde’s appearance, there was a change.” Aratta looked up, her eye cloth pointing towards Randidly. “Mixed in within the mix of monsters, that generally had Levels between 40 and 46… there started being higher Leveled monsters. 48s and 49s. For monsters too, it takes a great deal to get above 45. And each Level is a qualitative change. By the time they reach Level 50… they will have completely evolved.”