FINAL CORE: Chapter 51 (Patreon)

If you read chapter 39 on Patreon, then please read the latest release of it on Royalroad, as I added two brand new sections with Red and with Isaiah =)

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54046/final-core-a-holy-dungeon-core-litrpg/chapter/956617/chapter-39-a-sense-of-community

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What happens to a soul after death?

Our faith, the knowledge passed on to us by our ancestors and their ancestors, tells us that we are reborn. Every soul who dies eventually returns and not necessarily in the same kind of body. The old lore speaks of what the gods told us directly, that a human might become a beast, that a beast might become an elf, that an elf might become a frog. There is perhaps a rhyme and rhythm to the system of reincarnation, but its inner workings were not revealed to us.

So we can only assume that, excluding a system of full randomness, one’s destination is either determined by a set of rules, or by a list of entities that one must cycle through. Perhaps it does not matter which is the case, as nobody seems to recall their past lives, barring some odd stories of children who speak of things they could never know.

This brings us many questions however. Are souls limited? What happens when more bodies are born than there are souls? Do new souls get made? What about a swarm of locusts, does each and every one of them have a soul, or are the lowest tiers of life at which ‘soulhood’ begins?

Do the souls of the summoned-heroes, brought to our world from another, return to their own world when they die? Or do they stay in ours, forever captive as whatever fate makes them next?

Finally, what of those souls we do not wish for?

What of the soul of the demon-king?

— If this is all true, then he is out there still. Not in the flesh he once wore, perhaps not even in the same state of mind as he was. But somewhere out there wanders the soul of the demon-king, be it as a man, or a dragon, or a sparrow. Perhaps your son? Perhaps your daughter?

He could be anyone, anywhere.

~ An excursion into the nature of soulhood from Sister Samshi’s guide to priesthood

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Rain splashes down against the stones, washing over the white body of the great tower in a torrential cascade.

The air around Isaiah crackles with violent energy as the entity stands there with its hands behind its back. A wave of crushing pressure pushes past itself from above, causing Red and Orange to lose fly back a bit. Isaiah opens its wings, to give them a spot to hide beneath as the storm continues to pour over the open-faced floor thirty.

“Good,” says Isaiah, watching as the massive shadow flies over their heads, concealed by the storm apart from its piercing eyes, which shine with flashes of intense light as if they were full of lightning. The silhouette shoots through the faux-night, a pair of piercing, golden eyes shining through the distance. It surges downward towards them. The stones islands beneath their feet shake as the monstrous boss of floor thirty flies in, summoned by Isaiah’s presence. “- This is good.”

Floor thirty is very unique in its design in that it is composed of several smaller floating platforms that are chained together with thick, solid, metal binds. They wobble in the strong wind of the raging storm.

The boss-monster lands on their island.

[Floor Thirty]

The Raging Storm

An open-faced room. Floating islands of stonework hang suspended by an interconnected web of massive, metal chains. A heavy storm is perpetually raging outside. Everything is drenched and wet and strong winds push through the arena, making this a very precarious environment.

Capacity: {1} BOSS

Boss Room: In order to progress, this boss must be defeated.

Upon Success: Spawns {1} random, high-quality item of a level equal to this floor’s, according to the item drop pool of the boss entity.

Activates a shortcut to use at the entrance, which leads up to this floor.

Room Effect: [Stormy Waters]: All intruders who are standing in the rain take 25% more lightning damage.

[Thunderbird]

A divine entity. A thunderbird is an ancient mythological entity, said to cause storms and thunder, sheerly by the flapping of its incredibly powerful wings. Its eyes flash, creating lightning that fills the skies.

Boss tactics: Aerial phase: The thunderbird will fly through the storm, summoning deadly bolts of lightning that will strike the chains connecting the islands. Any intruders must retreat off of the chains and to an island or suffer severe LIGHTNING damage.

Lower phase: The thunderbird will fly down beneath the islands, crashing against them in an attempt to knock anyone off. Intruders must either be on a chain or on a separate island to avoid severe knockback penalties.

Ground phase: The thunderbird will land on whatever island is closest to the intruder with the lowest DEX and begin to cast a severely damaging area of effect spell that can not be interrupted. Intruders must engage the thunderbird at range until the spell wears off, afterwards, there is a brief ground encounter time-slot, before it returns to the aerial phase.

Secret encounter tactic: The thunderbird has a great hatred and anger for snakes. Anything that looks like a snake will always be targeted as a highest priority by the thunderbird until it is destroyed.

“Why is it always birds?” asks Red. “Every boss is a bird.”

Isaiah lifts a hand, placing it against the giant beak of the creature that tilts its head, observing them curiously. “I believe Crystal calls this ‘theming’,” replies Isaiah. It looks down at the uthra, hiding beneath its wings from the storm. “What is the matter, Red?” it asks. “Do you not like birds?”

Red sighs, rolling her eyes. “I guess they’re better than humans,” she says. “So it could be worse.”

“I like birds!” says Orange from the other side.

“Shut up,” snaps Red out from under Isaiah’s other wing.

“Red. Be kind,” says Isaiah, stroking the beak of the monster. It lifts its head away and then flies off, soaring back into the storm. “Or you might just live to regret not having been as such.”

“Sure, whatever,” says Red. “Can I go now?” she asks.

Isaiah nods.

There’s still a lot more work to do elsewhere today.

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Scion

 Elf, Female, Priestess

This. This is what she’s been searching for her entire life.

Purpose. Adventure.

It may be a little silly and she hopes Isaiah isn’t watching. She does feel a little bad about slacking off, but, well, the opportunity was too great to resist, even for her and her zealous faith.

Scion lays on her back, staring up towards the drifting clouds above her head, the wind rushing past her flattened body, her short hair not billowing in the least in the gale, despite that one would expect it to, given the circumstances.

But the great feathers of the holy-beast, Garuda, protect her from the wind and their stiff, scratchy nature keeps her well in place on its massive back.

Her task had been to tend to the various creatures of the tower. This had been terrifying at first, of course. But she viewed it as a test of her faith.

With the massive entity, the bird-like monster from floor ten, she has become particularly fond of and it seems to like her enough. Often, when she’s sweeping the arena or bringing in massive buckets of food that she has to carry with both hands a few dozen times a day, she’ll talk to the creature and it will simply sit there and listen.

Today, she got to fly on its back.

Sure, simply laying here is somewhat reckless, as they are very high up and Garuda is moving with striking speed.

— But she knows that she’s safe.

Isaiah wouldn’t let her die.

She has faith.

Scion flips over, sitting upright on the creature’s back and crawls up towards its neck, hunkering down to view where they’re flying as they make another pass around the tower.

She’s never been this close to happiness before.

All of the faith, the waiting, the uncertainty — It has been rewarded. Scion lets out an excited scream as the hawkish monster dives down sharply, shooting the open bell-tower.

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Murjin

Dwarf, Male, Merchant

“Potions!” yells the man. “Get your potions! Health! Soul! We have everything you need!” says Murjin, gesturing to his stand as a group of adventurers walk by. “You there! You look rough! Just like you need a health-potion!” says Murjin, pointing at a woman who is passing by. “How about it? Only forty Obols!”

She stares at him blankly for a while, before looking down at the ground. “…I always look like this…” she mutters, lowering her gaze and shuffling off.

“— That’s because you need a health-potion!” he calls after her, before turning his head to another man, walking by. “You! How about it? A special deal! Health-potions, only forty-five Obols!”

The passerby stops to look at his stall for a moment, scratching his chin as he wanders over to look at the wares.

Murjin smiles. This place is great business. He’s one of the first ones on the spot. He’s not spiritual or anything of that nonsense. But he has a nose for opportunity and when he heard a group of pilgrims was heading out this was to a brand new dungeon, well…

It’s prime real-estate and there’s no competition.

An opportunity of a life-time and these people here are suckers, they have to be, for getting pulled into whatever this is.

Murjin walks around the counter, slapping the human man on the leg. “Hell of a build you got there!” says Murjin. “Do you train? You look like it! High strength, eh?” he says, looking at the pale man of a somewhat weaker build. “Here, I have something special just for you!” says Murjin, pointing him over towards the marked-up strength potions. They cost double what they do in the city.

— But they don’t need to know that.

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Isaiah

“Black. Welcome home,” says Isaiah as Black and the two new uthra, Beige and Magenta, fly back towards the tower. It’s been a while since they left. “Are you well?”

“All good,” says Black. “Magenta almost got eaten by a shark, but apart from that.”

Isaiah looks at the new uthra. It seems okay, but its clothes are ripped. “Teal will fix you up,” says Isaiah.

It blinks, noticing something, perhaps late and perhaps rather spontaneously.

None of the uthra wear clothes, except Magenta. They don’t exactly have real bodies, so it’s fine. Curious. Perhaps Magenta likes clothes? Interesting.

“What have you found?” asks Isaiah.

Black nods. “So, there’s a couple things,” he says. “The hills to the north are wild,” it says. “There are golems and all sorts of tough monsters everywhere there. Barely any humans.”

“And resources?”

“Well, we dug around. The ground is pretty crap, honestly. It’s really just rocks. But the surface, that’s where the good stuff is,” says Black. “We found a bunch of soul-resonant crystals. They should be in the stockpile by now.”

Isaiah tilts its head, not recalling what those are.

“— I’ll tell Gray to explain it,” says Black. “He knows this stuff better than I do.” Isaiah nods. “As for the ocean, well, it’s wet.” Isaiah lifts an eyebrow. “But we found a lot of cool stuff! There were all sorts of shells and we went into the water and found some pearls and there were a bunch of weird monsters and even some shark-teeth!”

Beige lifts a hand. “- Some of them were still attached to sharks.”

“Excellent work,” praises Isaiah.

“There’s something else,” says Black, rubbing the back of his head. He looks at the others, before turning back to Isaiah.

“What is it?” asks Isaiah.

“Well… we may uh… we may have a few more people on the island than we thought.”

“Explain.”

Black shrugs. “Well, you know how the island ripped off with two and a half kilometers of land in either direction? And how we broke the witch’s house and all that?”

“It is hard to forget,” says Isaiah.

“It turns out that there was a village in the forest, to the west. Right on the edge of the territory. We took a big chunk of it with us.”

Isaiah blinks, staring for a moment. It hadn’t even thought about anything like this. The trees of the forest must have obscured the village from its sight. “Is everyone well?” asks Isaiah.

“Well…” Black rubs his arm awkwardly. “Define ‘well’.” Isaiah winces. “We only peeped in, didn’t talk to anybody. But the story is that some people fell when the island rose. A few houses collapsed. It’s uh… it’s not pretty,” explains the uthra. “Knowing the humans, these were just some forgettable that nobody in the city will care about, but, well, yeah…”

Isaiah exhales, feeling a drop of old venom returning. It is once again paying for the mistake it had made back then with the ascension ability and its own haste.

It rises to the air.

This situation needs to be handled. The witch in the east is a problem. But if the villagers to the west also become hostile to the tower and towards Isaiah, then they will have trouble on two sides and they’ll be stuck right in the middle.

A diplomatic crisis must be averted.