Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 301: The things we do (Patreon)

If she should be feeling something right now, Fresh isn’t really too sure what exactly that’s supposed to be.

Is she supposed to be horrified? If so, her heart isn’t racing, her body, while shaking, is only doing so at a minor level, as if she has a slight chill. Is she supposed to be sick? If so, she hasn’t felt nauseous or dizzy even once since having gotten up after her arrival and initial purge. Is she supposed to be angry and furious about the horror that has befallen the world, likely because of herself? If so…

She doesn’t.

Fresh lays on her back on the sand of the fake beach of the dungeon and stares up at the fake sky, listening to the fake crashing of the fake waves hitting the fake shoreline.

It’s all fake.

She doesn’t really feel anything right now. She’s just kind of… staring.

Nobody has said much of anything this entire time. Fresh finished vomiting and then crawled over to her friends and flopped over. But her friends are all just as still and lifeless as she herself is.

Jubilee sits on a piece of driftwood, just kind of playing with their mask. Basil, having been locked in prayer for at least the last twenty minutes now seems to be all prayed out and just sits there, staring at the sand down between her crossed legs. Shamrock meanwhile, has retreated back down into his armor, bubbling around inside of it, trying to get it back together, like a hermit-crab trying to fix its broken shell. But he seems to be having little success.

Whatever happened here in her absence, well…

It must have been bad, obviously. But that seems like a dumb thing to say, to think. Of course it was bad.

As for Shamrock, she had known about his ‘condition’ since the west. His affinity for sweets, his reaction to her puffing out her cheek in a display of dominance, his ability to withstand temperatures and to always keep his armor unsticky and clean. The little toy slimes in the west. The final proof however, was given to her when she learned about Jubilee.

Monsters don’t get combat-menus when fighting other monsters.

The battle in the north, against the ice-golem. There was no menu. Despite it being the most intense fight she has ever witnessed, there was nothing there except for plain, brutal, physical violence.

The others don’t really seem that shocked or interested either. She supposes that in their own way, everybody already knew. Basil at least since they had made camp after leaving the west. Jubilee… well, Jubilee is sharp. She’s sure they picked it up somewhere.

In a way, she kind of wants to get up and say something. But she isn’t really sure what.

Should she say something honest and blunt, to confront the issue at hand? Or should she try to say something motivating and cheerful, to try to lift her friends’ spirits? If such a thing could even be done anymore.

Or should she just say nothing?

Would any of them explode or lash out at her if she broke the tense silence of their circle? She’d deserve it. If they could still leave her now, having seen what the price of her friendship is, would they? She’d deserve it.

Fresh blinks, continuing to stare at the fake sky.

Five hundred eighty-nine thousand twenty-three.

That’s…

Everyone. Everyone in the east. The fairies, Tarja and all the others. Their customers. Thyme, the anqa. Everyone… they’re gone, erased from the surface of the world because she came here. They’re dead because she, in her insistence and selfishness to experience her own personal joy, had come to this world, come to the east. She cursed the hero. She…

Fresh sits upright and crawls forward, towards the crashing waves of the ocean and she looks down at the girl in her reflection, her fingers digging into the damp sand as the ocean froth wets her knees and sleeves.

The bad-thing. The thing that makes all things worse in the world, it’s her.

Fresh stares down at the reflection beneath herself that through the twisting of the light from above seems to have no eyes. It’s always been her. Where has she gone and made things better?

Nowhere.

There isn’t a single place in this entire world that is now better for her having passed through it. Not a home, not a doorway, not a forest grove. Nothing. It’s all worse. It’s all befouled and stained and tainted. Because she was there. Because she’s here.

It’s her fault. The girl in the reflection nods in agreement.

Fresh turns her head around, looking at her friends. They too have been made worse by her being. Jubilee might have been sad, but they were living a quiet life. Basil, while conflicted, found purpose in her work as a priestess and Shamrock, stalwart in his convictions, would have lived exactly as he had lived before without her.

Why isn’t the fountain making her forget it?

Why isn’t it forcing her to get up and to get on with her life, preventing her from dwelling on it like it did with the man from the merchant’s guild, from the north? The one who died because of her contract curse?

She wants it to make her forget it. She wants it to erase her memories of any of this. To erase the memories of her friends. To just… bring them somewhere else as fresh people, unaware of what they have done.

That would be her selfish, true wish. Does she feel terrible about it? Yes. But these are the people who she loves, the only people in any existence that she has ever truly, unconditionally loved as family in the truest sense of the word. Like Basil, she would choose them over the world.

And now, she has and it hurts a lot more than she thought it would.

“Well,” says Jubilee. Basil turns her head and Shamrock pops out of his armor. “Fuck.”

Basil sighs, lowering her gaze again.

Shamrock turns towards her and Fresh and him stare at each other for a while.

Letting out a long breath, Fresh clenches her fists, gets up onto her two feet, walking over towards her friends. She has to keep the faith.

Somebody has to.

She stands in front of them. They all know what she’s thinking, they all know that it’s the same thing that they’re thinking. They’re the worst. They’re all horrible, awful, disgusting things.

Jubilee gets up, adjusting their mask onto their face. “Well. I said I’d fucking kill every last orphan and cripple in the city if it came down to it.”

Basil gets up, lifting her prayer beads to her lips before tucking them away, continuing to stare at her hand in her pocket for a while. “I choose us.”

Shamrock wobbles upright, apparently not used to moving without his armor as he seems to have some trouble holding his ‘human’ form. “The wild hunt has begun,” says the man. Watching him talk is really an oddity. His gruff voice seems very ill-fitted to his body as a slime and she has no idea how he does it. “But the moon still flies.”

“Five hundred eighty-nine thousand twenty-three,” says Fresh, looking around the circle. “In this city. I don’t know about the others.”

“Fuck ‘em,” says Jubilee. “We’ll say a prayer together with Basil tonight and call it even.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” says Basil. “But it would mean a lot to me if you joined me,” says the priestess, her tone still very flat and numb.

“We will meet again,” says Shamrock, bending down, he grabs his helmet. “The well of souls awaits us all,” he says, holding the forehead of his helmet against his own. The armor is cracked and broken. But Fresh feels like she could fix it with her cauldron. Seeing her expression, Shamrock shakes his head. “We must bury the dead,” says the man, setting down his helmet onto the pile of armor and wobbling their way.

“Now what?” asks Fresh.

“Now we fucking get out of here.”

“There’s nowhere left to go,” sighs Basil.

“There’s exactly one fucking place left to go,” says Jubilee, waving after themselves as they head to a dungeon shortcut. “It’s this or you stay here. I’m fucking sick of coconuts though,” says Jubilee, stepping into the shortcut without them. Fresh is sure they’re waiting on the other side though, watching the door for one of them to come through. This is just Jubilee’s way of forcing their hands. Now that they have made the choice, the rest of them obviously have to go after them.

“Let’s go home, guys,” says Fresh, as she steps into the shortcut and the others follow after her.

Is it moral? No. Is it right? No. Is it just? No.

But Fresh doesn’t care about that. She cares about these people, these creatures that belong to her heart and soul and she would trade the entire world and then another on top of it, if only it meant to stay with them just a little longer.

That is the selfishness of the horrible witch.