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Chapter 141: The Ones Left Behind - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2023-08-26 05:06:32 +0000 UTCElla looked at the entrance to the city, wondering when Miria, Sallia, and her friends would return home.
It had been almost two months now. She was starting to get a little worried. Surely they would have come back by now? Why weren’t they returning?
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down.
They were fine.
Miria and Sallia were two of the strongest girls she had ever seen. When their parents had disappeared after the Orukthyri attack, she had raised them as if they were her own daughters. She hadn’t raised them to be weak. She had taught them everything she knew about adventuring. She had given them every single tool she possibly could to let them live during their journeys in the wastes. Miria had one of the most absurd attunements she had ever seen, and Sallia was probably the best swordsman in the city once her absurdly strong body was taken into account.
She had even given Miria her good luck charm, the carving of an eight-legged pet that used to be popular before the dawn of the black sun.
They had every single tool they could possibly need to survive in the wasteland.
She wasn’t sure where Miria and her friends were right now. She didn’t know exactly what adventures they were having.
But in her heart of hearts, she knew that they would be fine.
They had to be.
* * *
Anise’s parents had a bad feeling in their hearts.
It had started out small, but it was growing bigger every day.
It had been four months since Anise and her friends had left Silver City to journey to the surface. The two of them weren’t entirely happy with Anise’s decision, but at the same time, they understood Anise’s dream.
It was to become a super-witch.
Even though Anise had long grown out of the phase where she loudly proclaimed her dream of becoming a super witch to everyone whenever she had the opportunity to, it hadn’t changed Anise’s underlying hopes and dreams. Even if Anise tended to get embarrassed when one mentioned the word ‘super-witch’ to her these days, she still loved spellcasting more than almost anything else in the world.
Unfortunately, Anise was held back by her low spellcasting essence pool and lack of spells.
They had no idea if there was a ‘cure’ for lack of spellcasting essence on the surface. It would probably be very hard to find, even if it did exist. But at the very least, Anise could find old spells, study them, and pursue her dreams that way.
But it had been four months since they journeyed to the surface, and the two were getting very worried.
They should have come back by now.
After three months, Felix’s mother, Ella, and Anise’s parents had all received deposits of gold that Miria and Sallia had left behind before leaving. It had been enough to take care of the two for several years, if they lived frugally.
But it couldn’t replace the growing, gnawing fear in their stomachs. At first, it had been easy to pretend that something had just come up during the journey. Perhaps Anise and her friends had gotten lost and were searching for the tunnel entrance to Silver City again. Or maybe they had gotten misdirected, and entered a different city somehow - after all, plenty of cities in the underdark had entrances that led to the surface. Otherwise it would have made it harder to ship metals out of the underdark and back to the cities of the old Orthan.
However, as the months continued to pass by, even the hope that Anise and her friends would return soon was starting to fade away.
Even though they still hoped that Anise would be fine, and that their little girl would come back with stories of her amazing adventures with her friends and her magic if they just waited a little longer…
They were starting to accept the truth.
Anise was never coming home. And not only would they never know how their little girl died, they would probably never even see her corpse.
All that was left was the empty void in their hearts where their precious little girl had once been.
* * *
Time passed.
In a certain room in a ruined palace, the corpses of three girls, one boy, a dragon, and a Palanthyrre that had been trapped in a cage slowly reorganized themselves into a new set of defenders for a portal.
There were no signs of any other adventurers successfully making their way into the room.
Years slipped by, and the encroachment of the black sun became worse and worse over time. The progress that the black sun was making also seemed to accelerate with each passing year - first, all life on the surface died off. Then, adventurers who tried to make their way to the surface started dying off almost immediately upon exposure to the black sun.
Trade between cities became more and more difficult to accomplish. Apparently, the tunnels between cities simply weren’t as well shielded as the cities themselves. This posed increasingly noticeable problems for traveling merchants, as they started to get sick anytime they tried to move from one city to another. Similarly, people started to get sick even if they only spent a few hours picking mushrooms in the mushroom caverns, making it harder to acquire food.
Even the city that had acquired the healing cube started to struggle to maintain its population as it became harder to harvest food safely.
Then, the core parts of the cities started to become less safe as well.
People in the cities started to get sick. Adventurers who had retired from the surface recognized the symptoms of the buildup from exposure to the black sun.
This was when panic started to truly set in. The black sun was not present in the underdark, and people were still getting sick from it, even if they hid in their homes. Combined with the increasing difficulty of harvesting food, things started to become truly dire for the surviving Orthanoids. Some people stayed in their homes, hoping that whatever had gone wrong with their cities would fix itself before they perished, while some people desperately dove deeper and deeper into the caves in hopes that it would keep them safe.
It didn’t.
About ten years after Miria and her friends died, most of the Orthanoid population, as well as most of the planet, had gone extinct from the myriad problems caused by the encroachment of the black sun.
At least, the native life of the planet had mostly disappeared.
However, the planet wasn’t devoid of all life. Strange things started to happen on the planet, although almost nothing was left to witness it.
Rocks started to come alive, opening their newborn eyes and beholding a world devoid of pink plants or native life.
The corpses of Orthanoids started to split apart and animate themselves, as bones, blood, muscles, and sinews grew life of their own and left the bodies of their former owners.
Finally, as new life sprung up in the rotting carcass of what had once been a proud Tier 5 world, something woke up.
Far above the continent filled with newborn life, a single, black sun floated in the center of the ring-shaped world.
At least, those who were unaware of what it truly was might believe it was a black sun.
However, for the first time since arriving in this world, the black sun sleepily opened its eye and blinked.
It beheld the ruined, dying world beneath its gaze. The laws of reality surrounding this planet had basically been replaced with the laws of its home dimension. And it couldn’t sense any other life in this dimension, meaning that there was no point in spreading further into the vast reaches of space.
Then, it blinked once more, and disappeared.
Author’s Notes:
Final chapter of Volume 2: The Black Scepter.
There will be a deleted scenes section for Volume 2, much like volume 1. But I think I’ll post it after NEXT chapter, just because it makes a little more sense timing-wise, even if it also doesn’t make quite as much sense timing-wise. It has a few things that are kind of related to the next chapter or two, so I’ll post it when it has no spoilers in it.
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Comments
Joey McGowan
Sad they didn't get any achievement for trying to attack the portal. Hopefully the next world is Tier 3. Though I kinda feel like its going to be tier 6-10 and they're going to get insta-gibbed. Or maybe they'll rack up some massive achievement affecting the emotions of a powerhouse as children saving the powerhouses life from suicide before dying themselves.
Jordan Bauman
Having a world with different laws that must be adapted to could be cool, like what if they visit a world with laws like in the dimension of the black sun?
MinE
A low tier world for them to overpower would be nice. Even a more normal tier 2 or 3 would be nice.
Invalid Entry
Can the next world be a nice tier one where they get to gallivant around as superheroes or something? Maybe an earth style modern setup but with binding based magi-tech being the world’s only magic so our boy can finally learn magic object creation. Getting sort of depressing seeing them repeatedly put in situations where they are little more than ants and are crushed as such. Yes a nice low power near contemporary style world, maybe even a bit magipunk, fighting early comic era style villains that are actually on their level - mad scientists, robots, mutants, cultists, low powered supes of various stripes, and of the ever present corrupt government three letter agencies - and living a decently long life that culminates in them dying fighting off some world ending calamity for a good chunk of achievement. A nice palate cleanser.
bcdp
Because you mentioned deleted scenes for Volume 2, I reread those for Volume 1 and just realized that with the Stats rolled between 70 and 130 (assuming linear distribution, which fits the data so far well enough), that while the average Stat (100) equals Grade 5, the expected average Grade is *not* 5, but rather about 4.5. That's because the Stats are not rounded to a Grade, but rather "truncated", i.e. 99/20 is not rounded up to Grade 5, but cut to Grade 4. Or in a simplified example where all Stats are rolled between 7 and 13 (and the Grade steps are 8, 10, 12 accordingly), we get: Stat => Grade 7 => 3 8 => 4 9 => 4 10 => 5 11 => 5 12 => 6 13 => 6 While you get two chances to get above 5 (the two "6"), you get three chances to be below 5 ("3,4,4"). That said, this didn't show much in the first book, because they all rolled above average: The overall average Grade was 4.8 (instead of 4.5), with the relevant stats at 5.0 (excluding the three irrelevant magics). Even poor, struggling Sallia was a bit above average with 4.6 and was just plagued by the low rolls hitting her important Stats. The second book the average was 4.6. It's worth a mention that Sallia's non-magic Grades were the worst with 4.2, but since some of them were near their thresholds to the next Grade, it didn't affect her much due to their market tools (like noodle bowl). In fact less than her bad distribution of low rolls in volume 1.
karmaslap
I do hope they don't die as teenagers (or equivalent) every life. I like not knowing how long a life might be
Guthan
If they went back and gathered more dragons they might have won.
Phlorez
Thanks for the chapter, it was a good one, even if they met a bad end. :)It's interesting to consider that, had they just turned back at the end, told a city about where the black sun connection is and how to get to it, they would have received a lot more influence achievement than had they continued on as they did. Seems like the system is designed to reward causing great change, and that doesn't always necessarily equate to the most "I'm the main character" thing. Easy to feel invincible with a dragon on your side and also if it feels like you can't really permanently die outside of the market though, I suppose. Also, I did notice the chapter title and the lack of a certain character in it. Foreshaaadooowing? (Edit: Another bit of speculation, it sounds like the black sun is definitely alive, and that sure does read like an extreme alteration affinity. I wonder if that was meant to be an example of what insanely high tier beings might be able to accomplish to harvest achievement?)
no-thoughts-only-vibes
you cant win them all, i guess?
Guthan
I hope the dragon becomes a companion. It would be awesome to have a baby dragon just pop up and the protag has to explain it every time.
