Duskbound

Book 2, Chapter 22

The summons to appear before the guild leadership was every bit as miserable as Velik had expected it to be. He was harangued by various pompous instructors and department heads, praised for absolutely nothing, and had his abilities and tactics called into question repeatedly in an attempt to get him to justify himself. Velik had some vague suspicion that it was mostly done to get him to reveal his full skill set, something nobody was required to furnish the guild with.

But, at the end of it all, his evaluator had given him passing marks and he'd completed the job in record time. Despite the insinuations, complaints, and objections people Velik had never even met tried to raise about him, Guildmaster Nelspir awarded him gold-ranked status in the guild. Velik had expected Pevril to be upset about the whole thing, but strangely, he wasn't.

That can't be a good sign. Whatever this was all about, he wasn't trying to keep me from moving up in the guild. That's a man who got exactly what he wanted. Shit. I hate politics.

With his iron pin traded in for a gold one, Velik was finally, finally, given access to the guild archives. The head archivist, a rail-thin man with pale skin who rarely ventured out of his domain, was named Andel Thett, and for some reason Velik couldn't figure out, he seemed inordinately friendly. He'd always been apologetic that he couldn't allow Velik access before, so it was with a delighted expression that he beheld the new pin on Velik's collar.

"You advanced your guild rank," he said with the first genuine smile Velik had seen all day. "And not just to bronze, either! Wow. I knew you were strong, but to jump right to gold. Congratulations, young man!"

Even though Velik didn't much care about his standing with the guild, he had to admit it was nice to finally receive some positive feedback from somebody for his accomplishment. "Thanks," Velik said. "It was… an interesting process."

Thett snorted out a laugh and dryly said, "That's a way to describe things. I've been to enough of those meetings to know they're anything but pleasant even when you're not the focus. But that's behind you now, and I know why you're here. Yes, I remember all your questions."

That was true. When Velik had first arrived and joined the guild, he'd practically buried the poor archivist under questions, almost all of which Thett had to refuse to answer due to Velik's low rank. Now that he was a gold, however, he was quickly ushered into Thett's office and steered into a seat.

"I'll admit, I've already done some digging," Thett said. He paused and glanced over at a stack of books and loose papers. "Okay, a lot of digging. Torwin was asking me about this a few months before you arrived, and when he came back from that last job, it was just with even more questions. Then you showed up wanting to know about the same thing, and I figured even if you never got to the point where you had access, I might as well see what I could find for Torwin. I'm sure he'll be back any day now."

Velik leaned back while the old archivist rambled. The man was just so damn excited about this conversation that it was hard not to feel a little bit uplifted himself. After dealing with the politics and getting crapped on for months, he was getting his payout at the end.

"Is there anywhere you'd like to start in particular?" Thett asked.

"I honestly wasn't even sure where to start. My plan was to just ask you for help, so, where do you think would be best?"

"Sensible. It's a smart man who can admit what he doesn't know and seek advice from experts in the field," Thett praised.

Kind of laying it on thick there, but whatever. I'll take it as a win after the morning I just had.

"Right, so what Torwin came in with several months ago was, I believe, a dungeon seed. They've only been theorized to exist, but we have a lot of circumstantial evidence and some old legends about the origins of dungeons that support the theory."

"Wait, you know where dungeons come from?"

"Again, it's theoretical," Thett said. "There's a legend about something known as a World Tree, though of course the story is suitably vague on where exactly this tree is. But as it goes, a demon took a cutting from the World Tree and planted it in the heart of an old, forgotten kingdom that there is some evidence it actually existed a thousand years ago. The demon nurtured the tree with its corrupting magic, turning it into something dark and malignant, and the seeds it produced grew into dungeons."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"And is this an old fable or do people actually believe this?" Velik asked.

"Is there a massive, miles tall tree the size of a mountain somewhere in the world? Well, I've never come across any proof, but anything's possible," Thett said. "Did the old kingdom of Accelit actually exist? Yes. We're sure of that. It was destroyed from within by a powerful dungeon that grew out of control, so there's some credence given to the idea that it was the birthplace of dungeons."

"And the seed I discovered as a child…"

"If it didn't come directly from this hypothetical corrupted world tree, it's still possible there's some connection. We don't know how new dungeons form if for no other reason than nobody ever finds one until it's already awake and producing monsters. By that time, the formation is done. Dungeon seeds are a hypothetical extrapolation based on the existence of champion seeds and the preachings of old stories by priests of various gods."

"Except that Torwin handed you one," Velik pointed out. "Not so hypothetical anymore."

"Hah! Exactly. Although, technically, it's more circumstantial evidence. I'm a [Historical Analyst], you know. My class's signature skill is called [Analyze], and it lets us dig up all sorts of information from artifacts of the past. I can tell you that the orb Torwin gave me is about twenty-five years old, that it broke a bit over a decade ago, and that whatever magic was in it is now depleted. It has a connection to dungeons, but it's not clear what, yet. It's also got a bit of soul magic in it, or did once."

All of that seemed to fit the theory of it being a dungeon seed to Velik, but he was sure there were some other ideas that could also explain all the data points Thett was working with. Whether the thing that had turned him into a [Duskbound] human and given him [The Black Fang] as his unique class was a dungeon seed or something else didn't much matter to Velik. The important part was figuring out who had placed it inside the dungeon in the first place.

"Another theory," Thett went on, oblivious to Velik's inner musings, "is that what you found isn't a dungeon seed in the sense that it creates a new dungeon, but instead some sort of artifact designed to revive a dead dungeon core. Obviously, it failed to do that, so there's been some resistance to that particular idea among my colleagues, but, well, it is a possibility."

"Let's say the story is right, that it's a dungeon seed carried from some demon tree to where I found it years ago," Velik said. "Who put it there?"

"That is the question, isn't it? Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for you. What I can supply you with is all the knowledge the guild has accumulated over the years about flesh shaping monsters and classes, though the one in the class orb you brought me when you first got here was certainly unique."

"There are more people with classes to make monsters?" Velik asked. Somehow, he wasn't surprised, but he couldn't fathom why anyone would want to make monsters. Then again, someone with a class like that would make a killing designing challenging fights for an institution like the coliseum. If they were unscrupulous enough, they could do things like unleash their creations on towns, then collect rewards to get rid of their own messes.

Okay, I can see where someone with no morals might find a way to benefit from creating and controlling monsters.

"Oh yes, quite a few. Here, this book details some examples. The [Summoner] is probably the most famous, though they don't actually summon real monsters so much as create an artificial monster from their magic. I've never quite agreed with the system designation for that class, but what do I know about it?"

Velik accepted a thick tome bound in blue leather from Thett and rapidly flipped through it. It was well laid out, with each page discussing a different class that dealt with monster creation in some way, followed by some examples of what kinds of beasts they could create. [Summoner] had the biggest entry, as Thett had said, but [Necromancer] also had a large selection that included some familiar looking monsters.

"Dead bodies stitched back together and given a semblance of life," Velik read. "A powerful [Necromancer] need not limit himself to simply reviving an intact corpse when he can combine multiple bodies to make something greater than the sum of its parts."

"Dreadful, ghastly work," Thett told him. "I've yet to meet a [Necromancer] with good intentions."

"This says that the undead don't bleed or get tired, nor do they have any particular weak points," Velik said. That didn't track with his own fights with the flesh beasts he'd defeated. Those had certainly bled and had definitely died when he'd destroyed large enough portions of their bodies.

"Correct," Thett said. "As I understand your account of what you faced, I doubt a [Necromancer] was behind it. It seems very obvious to me that it was someone employing something similar to the unique class you found, [The Flesh Crafter]. It may even have been that class exactly. There can only ever be one copy of a unique class at a time, of course. That's what makes them unique. But if you killed whoever had that class when you destroyed the dungeon core in that cave, then it's possible the class opened up to be taken by someone new."

Maybe that's why the quest awarded the class orb to me, so that no one else would ever become that… that thing again.

"Moving on!" Thett announced. He pulled another book out of the pile. "I did some digging and found a few accounts of other monsters in the archives that match what you described having fought…" Your adventure continues at My Virtual Library Empire

Velik set his book aside and leaned in to look at the next one. He briefly eyed the pile, then decided that no matter how long it took, he wasn't leaving until they'd gone through the whole thing. Thett certainly showed no signs of slowing down, so he wouldn't either.

It was going to be a long night, though.