Final Core - Chapter 75 (Patreon)

Apologies, I just saw I am one chapter behind on what I owe you. I will get another FC up tomorrow to balance us out again

Note: If you don’t know who Anderwal is, I suggest joining the Discord and checking in the #secretchannel now and then. Often when I post chapters to RR, they will receive entirely new segments that didn’t exist on Patreon because I think of stuff on the way. I always inform you of such changes there.

https://discord.gg/QdPBuazyAW

But fear not, I will also post the chapters here for you to click back to when it's something 'important', like this guy =)

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54046/final-core-a-holy-dungeon-core-litrpg/chapter/1000170/chapter-65-the-silenced-voice-of-the-forest-sits 

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Anderwal

Human, Male, Scholar

Location: The road to the south, leading past the central-city

Anderwal walks, hoisting the straps of his bag over his shoulder as he and his group march down towards the south. They don’t stay on the road, even if it would be faster. This would draw too much attention to them. They move as a group now, but for a long time, they’ve been split into pieces here and there.

Ever since the witch-hunts, the members of the Witches’ Sect who remained have scattered all across the nation. Some of them reside in prominent positions of power, having yet to be found out. Others live as simple people with forgettable faces. The clerk at an accountant’s station, the librarian behind the shelf, the baker pulling bread from his oven and scoring it with a knife – all of these people and so many more belong to the Witches’ Sect, but have not been able to live out this lifestyle for some time now for fear of their lives.

The people of the cities don’t understand.

They don’t understand that they’ve been manipulated by the church in the witch-hunts. They don’t understand that this was just another tightening of the fist that holds all the power in the world — next to the central-authority of the central city.

Anderwal turns his head, stopping atop a grassy knoll in the middle of the night, staring towards the east, towards the thing that breaks the horizon.

A giant heartwood tree, the size of the gods themselves, sits planted firmly in the center of the nation, as it has done for eras. Its crown scratches the sky, and its base is so wide that thousands of houses, all part of the make-up of the central-city, sit in a ring around its base. Its roots run so deep that they stretch to every corner of the nation, from the western dungeon atop the high mountains, to the far eastern desert, to the cool north — from where they stem — the world-tree’s roots dig deep and far, reaching all of these places at depths far, far below the surface.

It is the most magnificent landmark in the world.

Yet it is forbidden for the likes of them to touch.

“Anderwal,” says a man from ahead of himself. Anderwal blinks, looking and seeing that he’s been left behind in his daydreams.

He hurries, running to catch up with the group.

In the central-city, only people of noble descent are allowed, that or those adventurers who manage to clear one of the four traditional, old dungeons by breaching floor one-hundred are allowed to travel there.

Anyone who tries from the outside to enter, even people of the same nation, will often be met with brutal, harsh consequences.

This is the order that the church imposes on society, together with the central-authority. The keeping of the world’s sacred treasures to themselves, not by the right of gods or the natural order, but by made up laws that they themselves had written.

The witches were able to bypass such nonsensical things. Witches could easily overturn the social order, held in golden-ring adorned fists by those in power.

They walk by a village in the forest, standing outside for a moment, as several people with packs and torches come out to meet and join them — more members of the sect who have been living in secret for a decade.

The march continues towards the south as they walk day and night, collecting more and more of their rank and file along the way, who have all gotten the call.

The Witches’ Sect returns once more to haunt the world beneath the light of a crooked moon.

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Perchta

???, Female, Witch

Location: The City

Perchta takes a long draw of her smoking stick before exhaling the cherrywood smoke out over a small, standing basin full of water, its vapors moving over her reflection.

She smiles.

It’s so simple and devious, this might be the best idea she’s had yet.

“Witch Perchta,” says a voice from next to her. Perchta turns to look at Spillaholle, who is sitting there, reading another book. “Have you considered that smoking that thing is leading to your unhealth?”

“It’s fine,” says Perchta, wagging the stick at her. “I need this, Spilly,” explains the witch. “With all the stress in my life, this is all I have to calm me down,” she says, pointing at it. “The stress of my life will age me faster than this thing will.”

“Witch Perchta,” begins Spillaholle. “I believe you are responsible for the great majority of stress in your life.”

Perchta leans in. “Oh, yeah, sure!” she snaps, wagging the smoking stick around. “The way I remember it, I was living quietly until somebody provoked the humans, and I had to move my retirement to the ass end of the world,” she explains.

“Witch Perchta. I feel as if your accusation is baseless.”

“Baseless?” asks Perchta, incredulously.

“Witch Perchta,” says Spillaholle. “Are you not the most brazen of us? To change the shape of the moon so carelessly. Of course they grew fearful — you acted fearsome.”

Perchta leans back, taking a long draw of the smoking stick, narrowing her eyes as she stares at Spillaholle.

“Witch Perchta. Do not,” warns Spillaholle, looking at her over her book.

Perchta puffs out her cheeks, taking in as big a draw as she can, filling her mouth and lungs with smoke that she can blow at the woman.

— A large hand claps against Perchta’s back.

The witch lurches forward, coughing and spluttering as she loses control of the smoke, hacking and trying to breathe. A man laughs behind her.

“Now, now,” says Witch Gauden, patting Perchta on the back. “Don’t say that it’s Pipi’s fault,” says the man. “It’s nobody’s fault,” he explains. Perchta holds on to the basin of water, spluttering and trying to get her air back in as smoke pours out of her nose. “Sometimes, life just happens.”

“— Well why does it always happen to me?!” cries Perchta, turning her head to look at him, starting to cry.

Gauden nods. “Sometimes, life happens to some of us more than to others.” Perchta sniffles, nodding.

“Witch Gauden. I disagree,” says Spillaholle. “It was a mistake on our part to attempt to live amongst them,” explains the witch, closing her book. “The humans should have been made to live amongst us.”

“I understand your feelings,” says Gauden, stepping between them, placing a hand on Spillaholle’s arm to bridge the gap between her and Perchta for a moment. He looks down at the basin of water and pulls out a coin from one of his dirty pockets, fishing past the slime that wobbles around in his coat. “From where we are now, the past always looks so small, doesn’t it?” he asks, then holds the coin up. “Make a wish, Pipi,” says Gauden.

With a flick of his thumb, he launches the coin up into the air. The obol chimes with a clear ring as his nail strikes against it, spinning in the air and catching the light of the home on its polished, pristine surface, before it flies down into the fountain — The wishing well.

Perchta purses her lips and makes her wish, the very first wish that will be used in this fountain — before they bring it out into the city in secret.

It is a wish that one day she’ll be able to live with her friends in peace from the world in a place that is happy, warm, and whole.

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Isaiah

“I remember much of it,” says Isaiah, standing atop the roost. It lifts its golden sword into the air, looking it over in the moonlight. “War was my occupation. I stood clad in the banners of holiness,” says Isaiah, turning the sword. “But I was anything but. I was just a man, playing pretend, as would a young boy play pretend to be that man, who he might aspire to be one day.” Isaiah shakes its head. “Folly.”

The wind blows atop the roost, billowing the short hair of the monk that has grown over her time here. Her previously essentially bald head has now grown to be covered in the fires of red hair that is, while freely and naturally growing, somehow fits the person she is now. Like wildflowers, growing in a once overly proper and trim garden.

“We’re all playing pretend,” says the monk, sitting in her meditation. “I pretend to be a monk, but below that, I am a woman.” She opens her eyes. “I pretend to be a woman, but below that, I am an animal, scared and fearful of the hissing teeth in the darkness.” The monk rises to her feet, the heavy beads on her arms rattling as she stands. “— I pretend to be afraid of those hissing teeth in the dark, but the truth is that I am them.” She lifts her head to the sky. “So when the stars die out and the moon goes dark and all that is left down here on this world is a void in which I hiss — I will pretend to be a light that others can come to.”

— She assumes her stance. Isaiah turns to face her, lifting the sword for their next session.

The monk looks at it. “Folly is to think that your pretending doesn’t matter,” explains the woman. “It does.”

(???) has used: [{07} River Impact]

— Isaiah barely has time to widen its eyes as a fist flies its way. It dodges to the side, feeling a scrape just past the skin of its face as she lands next to it. Instinctively, Isaiah flaps its wings, striking her with a powerful strike against her back — Isaiah lifts the sword.

She, not losing her footing as expected, swings around and grabs Isaiah’s ankle, holding her fist back and the two of them stand, locked in stalemate.

“Will you tell me your name?” asks Isaiah.

The massive beads on her arm rattle. “Pretend that I have one,” replies the monk.

(???) has used: [{04} Savannah Crush]

(Isaiah) has used: [Repulsion Barrier]

— Their spells collide, the great, orange, dusty wave of energy from her fist striking against a glassy, strong wall of prismatic holy magic that appears between them. Isaiah flies back and she leaps, and the two of them return to their starting positions to try again.

It lifts the sword.

Isaiah may be strong now. It may have power in abilities and perks and in the dominion of its dungeon. But power and skill are very different things. Just as it has learned that it cannot solely rely on its nurturing instincts from its life as a blackbird, it too sees that it cannot solely rely on its fighting instincts from its human life.

There is a lot of ground to cover, before the stars fade and the hissing dark comes to cover the world.

They push forward to meet each other again.

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Beulah

Human, Male, Thief

Location: Floor eighteen of the tower — The Shrine

Beulah sweeps the floor of the shrine free from ash, humming to himself as he works.

— An explosion rings out in the distance. He lifts his head. Adventurers.

The man looks around himself. Shit. He hates this. He knows that they’re homunculi and that they respawn, but it’s not a good feeling when the shrine-maidens get involved in the fighting. He supposes that he’s become clingy, but you tend to take it personally when your roommates get killed, even if they can come back from the dead.

He looks down at the floor.

He just swept it too.

The thief sighs, rubbing his hair. The panel door next to him slides open. “Beulah,” says one of the shrine-maidens, the oldest sister, as he’s dubbed her, as she’s the largest and most mature of the three.

It was all kind of shocking at first. They haven’t really learned to talk. But they can say his name. That’s nice.

She makes a shushing motion over the tail that covers her face and then grabs him, yanking him inside the room, and then closes the sliding door.

“What’s up?” asks Beulah. “There are people coming. You guys have to get ready to fight.” The room that they’re in is the hidden room of the shrine, that the shrine-maidens use to retreat and rest. It’s where they sleep.

She shushes him.

Two hands grab him from his left and two hands grab him from his right, as the other two appear from their hiding spots and begin shuffling him away, each of them fighting the other to shuffle him away in their direction.

— The oldest one shakes one of her nine tails at the sliding door.

Beulah, being kidnapped, watches as the door turns into a solid wall, sealing the room off.

The two shrine maidens sit down next to him.

Footsteps come from the other side of the wall as a group of adventurers walk through the floor, talking to each other in confusion as they have no idea where the usual enemies of this floor are today.

They’re nowhere to be seen.

Beulah and the shrine-maidens all turn their heads as the group wanders through the shrine, checking everywhere, but finding nothing.

He sits there, somewhat confused, as the middle and the youngest sister of the three each tug on his arm, trying to get him to move their way. He’s noticed that the two of them always seem to find something to fight over. The last time he saw them standing there, comparing their tails for an hour without ever saying a word.

The oldest one returns, sitting down across from them.

— She digs into her robe for a moment and then pulls out… a rock.

She sets it down and slides it towards him.

Beulah blinks.

Damn. That’s a nice rock. Rorate got a rock the other day that beat his old rock, but this one is even better than hers. He’s back in the rock-game with this.

“Wow. Thank you,” says Beulah, picking it up. “This is a really great rock.”

The eldest shrine-maiden waves with her tail, revealing a flash of a smug smile that he can’t help but feel isn’t meant for him.

— The middle sister next to him gasps, offended.

Beulah can’t help but think that his last rock was a present from her then. She’s been beaten. It really looks like all three of them like to quibble.

Something tugs on his other arm. Beulah looks.

Ah. The smallest one must be the smart one. She didn’t even try to find a rock. She circumvented the game. “I really liked your piece of wood too,” he says. “And your rock also, see?” he asks the middle sister, pointing over to the corner of the room where he’s gathered his very few things, the rock and the piece of wood among them.

The shrine-maidens all look at each other, their tails whipping as they exchange a series of wordless glares.

— There’s a puff of smoke, and, just like that, all three of them vanish.

“Eh…?” Beulah looks around himself, scratching his head, as he now sits alone in the secret room. He shrugs, walking over to the corner to put his new rock away, wondering what that was about.

He turns back to look, realizing that the door is still gone. “Ah, hell.”

He puzzles, wondering what to do now.