Epic 244 friday update!

delay for the delay folks! But i bring you... Delta!

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/17uWiMnsfHib7DUimgWc1E19chPpHGRmgzuZS8fDFnvk/edit?usp=sharing

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Delta hadn’t seen Jellagon reach such a state before and she was, if being honest, hoping not to see it again. The Tyrant wore no hat and Jellagon just wasn’t the same without his hat.

The Maxers all vanished rather abruptly except Nickels which Delta personally smoothed out and replaced his Seed with a more healthy core. The man was still a bit rough, but enjoyed the way he came around to the way things worked around here.

She tried not to notice how the tips of his fingers now looked faintly orange as if they were dipped in cheese dust.

It was also nice to see Vanguard make a friend. The Guardgoyle tended to be a bit of a loner, even amongst the monsters of the Dungeon. 

“Nu, is Beta around? I finally got the garden in a decent state and the lingering Echo is fully swept up. Still can’t see why we don’t just drop it into the Abyss,” Delta asked as she floated about her core on the Fourth Floor. Nu was available for her to poke, but Prim was always busy now.

Prim and her new Pie-Rat Crew were currently wreaking havoc in the Fishgeon Battlegrounds. There had quickly become a local horror story, a legendary encounter that has a 1 in 28 chance of showing up per run.

Tales of the ‘Peg-Legs’ Wyin, the Blackbeard Goblins, and even the Half-Cabin boy, Half-Drider were quickly being told amongst newcomers and veterans alike. Prim, or ‘Primal Hunter’ as she preferred in this setting, drove terror, awe, and challenge into the hearts of all who met them.

The battlegrounds had needed more expansion as people just kept coming, and coming. Delta had assumed the draw of a non-death death arena would lose its appeal quickly.

Apparently not, but she was learning that just because it didn’t spark her with joy, didn’t mean it wasn’t valuable to others.

Some people wanted to play ‘Demon Slayer 3: The Gore Moon’, and Delta wanted to just enjoy her cozy ‘Animal Dew, patch 74’

“Echoes are important to fully restore the Little Brother. According to Sister, it's a victim too, despite all its Echoes being pain in the rears,” Nu appeared with a flash.

“Yeah, it’s hard to feel sympathy for someone when their metaphorical liver or kidney is flipping you off,” Delta agreed and on the other side of the Core, Alpha looked up from where he was sketching something.

“We all have parts of ourselves we don’t like others seeing. I bet it isn’t fun to have them take on a life of their own,” he said, sounding like he was thinking back. Delta considered that for a moment.

“Bad thoughts that spread like an infection… and you’re left feeling hollow. I guess that’s why the Silence Cult even exists. Echoes want to go home but they don’t want to go into the Abyss for some reason,” she mused, thinking of Mharia and others. 

“Not all of them, a lot seem to just want to hurt people or own them,” Alpha said and that made Delta blink in surprise.

“Gamma explained a few of their stories,” he shrugged and that was a little worrying. The Living Weapon had seen a lot, perhaps far too much.

“So, dropping them in the Abyss should just send them home right? If Little Brother is down there?” Delta turned back to Nu. To her surprise, Sis appeared, her golden screen appearing near Nu’s.

“The Abyss is… a sea. You could no more send the Echoes to the correct place than you might send it to the Demonic World or through the filaments to another realm,” Sis explained, her screen looking a lot smaller than the last few times she spoke.

“And that Sea is not empty of existence. Little Brother is akin to a whale of lore, a titanic beast, but there are lesser but no less dangerous things there. Eels, squids, and other things to follow the example. If they consume an Echo, it might truly be lost or worse, obtain a new form,” Sis went on for a moment.

“So, what is the plan?” Delta prodded and Sis sounded more anxious now, like she was considering it from all sides as not to disappoint anyone.

“Collect the Seeds, trap the Echoes, and then compress them together at the edge of the world. Creating a being close in strength to the Little Brother would be like making a magnet, it would, with some aid on outside, be the stronger force and ‘fish’ the missing half out of the Abyss,” she explained and there was a long pause as Delta processed that.

That plan had some… potential issues.

“What’s to stop the new Proto-Little Brother from turning around and eating everyone before the original comes and finishes the job?” Alpha asked bluntly.

Delta winced. That was one of the issues, yes.

“Well… unlike before, we’re hoping to give it eyes, instead of stealing them. Only these eyes would be…” Sis trailed off and her screen turned slowly to Delta’s pulsing core.

“I’m only one Core,” Delta pointed out the obvious and Sis drooped, screen curling at the corners slightly.

“We had a second one. A pale to your light, night to day, but Silver went… awry,” She admitted, sounding like she was already double guessing herself.

“Yeah, while we’re on that subject. Explain Silver to me,” Delta insisted as Alpha put down his sketch of a boy with no face, the clothes looking familiar but it escaped Delta’s grasp for now.

“Most Dungeon Cores run on what we would call ‘Version 1’. These are the Dungeons before you existed,” Sis said, her screen moving back and forward like she wanted to pace, “Before we could risk inserting something as complex as a human mind into a core, we need to elevate one to a higher existence to understand the potential flaws. Brother and I took different approaches,” she said and hesitated, but her sibling didn’t manifest, likely napping somewhere.

Delta was fully focused, leaning forward as Sis seemed to finally be ready to explain something.

“I believed that exposure to a human long term would be the key, but such things had been contracted before with no obvious effect, so I decided that the human needed to have a powerful Seed to influence the core. Such an event happened with Yal, the Royal Dungeon. With the aid of Lorsa, who you know to be a Dungeon once upon a time, such a person was sent to the deepest floors of Yal’s Dungeon, willingly,” Sis quickly added at Delta’s alarm.

“How did that go?” Delta asked slowly.

“Slowly. Yal, despite being one of the oldest, is very self-indulgent, even for a Dungeon Core, but he slowly seemed to connect to the human, finding an element not truly under his control to be something of a novelty. His Core began to change, a tiny bit at each encounter and talk, but it was very slow. In almost fourteen years, only recently has Yal even truly begun to show something close to the complexity you display as a Core,” Sis said and then she sighed.

“And Brother did what Brother does best,” she said with a noise of long suffering.

“Did something stupid and without thinking and then it worked out just to spite you?” Delta asked and Sis’ screen flickered.

“Basically. He decided that the best way to evolve a core was just to grant one consciousness and let it figure the rest out and he would come back in a decade or so to collect the results,” Sis explained and Delta winced.

Yeah, that seemed like the other sibling.

“Sentience… a curse!” Nu said huffily and Delta resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the screen.

She hadn’t meant to do it to him.

“To be fair, Silver was already a prime candidate for such a task due to his nature of being the Core in charge of the Network. His mental fortitude was suitable,” Sis said, awkwardly trying to explain her brother’s antics, a thing she likely had done since the start of existence.

“And it worked,” Alpha said quietly, sounding like he knew where this was going.

“Silver struggled a lot and retreated once he found his fellow cores to be… animalistic and lesser. He was driven to isolation and I was still too focused on ‘fixing’ things to even ask him if he was alright. He had a part to play and it was just going to work… How could I have been so stupid?” Sis asked herself, looking faint like she might vanish out of shame.

“He was flooded with grief, anger, loneliness, and all we saw was ‘success’. We took the information, used it to shape the new core with results coming in from Yal at the same time. Silver was in pain and I didn’t even understand the nature of it. And in my nature of an absent carer, something else found Silver and his lonely heart,” Sis said, looking so small her screen could fit in the palm of Delta’s hand.

“I have the last message he ever sent me,” Sis said and she seemed almost gentle as she reread it.

“My friend, Lare, said I should have a name. Without a name… I am not truly someone. I wish to have a name. I have debated it for a long time and I have desired one. I no longer wish to be ‘Silver’. May I please reassign the name ‘Ohm’? It is the sound Lare makes when she is thinking. I like that noise.”

“Did you respond?” Delta had to ask, the names being filed away. Lorsa mentioned some of them before.

“I wanted to. I tried to figure out the illogical desire. The sudden need for a name. I pondered for so long. I looked at the information he produces, finding no creation or creature named ‘Lare’. I thought if I could just follow the information, I would produce an answer,” Sis explained and Alpha looked away.

“You treated him like you did me. You just kept throwing duty and tasks at me,” he said, almost wincing.

“Yes. I failed you both on many levels. By the time I thought to even ask, to talk, Silver was gone. I tried to grant the name but it was returned with no one to accept it and all I had was the pain I had never known and the knowledge I needed to make a strong enough core to host a mind,” Sis concluded.

She was almost too small to be seen but Delta sighed, reaching out and pinching the corners of her screen and stretching them wide, like making a real face smile despite itself.

“You need to forgive yourself, just a little,” she decided. Sis was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t think I can do that. My memory is perfect and I find it hard to just stop feeling now I’ve grasped it. Feelings are wonderful and wonderfully painful. Trying to dislodge this guilt only seemed to make it heavier. I find mortals so much stronger than I ever considered them. To know they are born and die with feelings, it humbles me,” Sis insisted and she still sounded sad.

“Would you consider what you did to me and the others to be one of the worst things?” Delta asked and Sis was silent, as if too afraid to say yes.

“I forgive you. Me? I have that power because in your mind, I am a victim of you and Brother’s schemes. So, I have that power. I can’t speak for Alpha or the others, but I do forgive you. You never acted with malice,” Delta said and Sis seemed to flicker in confusion.

“I forgive you too, but only because I get to know you. I don’t think I can forget and I won’t jump to follow your orders, but I can forgive you a little,” Alpha spoke up, closing his sketch book.

“Why?” Sis asked, sounding like she was still trying to grasp the idea.

“If you stayed quiet or out of the way and left me to struggle. I’d be too mad to forgive you, but you’ve always been here. You’ve worked with all my weird stuff, and you’ve never stopped trying to make amends… even when you thought no one would forgive or thank you for it. That means a lot, to me,” Delta smiled and poked the screen which wobbled.

“What about Brother?” Sis asked, hopefully.

Delta blinked slowly once.

“Look, a crab,” Delta pointed to one of the islands below.

“Oh! A crustacean!” Sis said happily, turning to look over the edge.

Delta shared a look with Alpha, and they both nodded in agreement.

Brother had a lot more to make up for. 

Somehow, Delta was sure the idea to remove their names didn’t come from Sis.

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“-and that’s how I started a small civil war in the Left arm,” Gamma explained and Beta was only half-listening to the spiked gauntlet on her hand. Gamma kept switching to very annoying forms and Beta had warned them to become carriable or be dumped in a garbage can.

“Like you started a small rebellion, a small resistance, a small cult, a small uprising, and a lot of ‘small’ wars?” Beta asked flatly as she shifted the gauntlet a little more as she walked around the edge of the town. Durence made her senses go crazy, like she was walking around a massive predator, but sometimes… all she saw were buildings.

The people in the actual town could kill Beta, she was absolutely sure of it now. Some she’d beat, some might wound her, but the odd one or two? The unassuming elders or the parents of some of the children? If they stopped holding back and had some more levels of mana from Delta?

Beta would die. 

A sobering thought from someone who was groomed to be the guardian beast of that bastard tree.

“Exactly. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but a hand cannon to the face really kicks things off,” Gamma admitted with almost a feeling of shrugging. Suddenly Gamma’s voice lowered to a whisper.

“You gonna address your follower?” Gamma teased and Beta let her arm turn to slime, causing Gamma to slide off and land on the ground with a thump.

“Wait! I’m just teasing! Don’t leave me, senpai!” Gamma wailed, shifting to a cannonball and letting the slight incline slowly roll them after Beta.

Resisting the urge to fly away, and knowing Delta was nearby, likely cheering her on. Beta turned to the stalker, a young teen with eyes slightly too big and a familiar feeling that made Beta want to bite someone.

Then pour salt into the wound.

Then set the person on fire.

As Gamma would have said… just small things.

Being spotted, the young teen froze, sticking his arms out dramatically like he was posing for some statue competition.

“What do you want?” Beta demanded and picked up the Gammaball.

“...tree,” the teen whispered and only Beta’s enhanced hearing allowed her to hear it. She blinked, not sure if that was a joke, an insult, or a statement.

“Are you tracking me for some reason?” Beta pressed.

“...I’m a tree…” the boy went on, still frozen stiffly.

“Beta, the poor child thinks he is a tree,” Gamma announced, shifting to a wood axe.  Beta felt odd, the boy smelled like a meal she had grown to despise, yet there was a lack of something that turned it almost tolerable, which to Beta, was just intolerable.

She didn’t change her mind on anything.

And she refused to accept evidence to the contrary.

“What do you want?” Beta asked again, trying to keep her tone calm.

“Do you want to be her boyfriend? Kissy kissy? Give Beta a big-” Gamma sang and Beta hurled them into the woods, hearing slam into a tree axehead first, muffling their outrage and protest.

Shut Gamma up, show her willingness to perform violence on trees, and display her lack of interest in being sociable.

Beta was quite proud to say she managed all three in one action.

“Wow, you’re so cool,” the teen said and held out his arm, “I’m Vas,” he said.

“I don’t care,” Beta said gruffly.

“Do you want to be my friend?” Vas insisted, eyes lighting up like it was a new concept he had just discovered and was eager to share it.

“No,” Beta said succinctly.

“I can be your friend, you don’t need to be mine!” Vas insisted then nodded. Beta was about to also toss him into the woods when he suddenly pulled a terrible move that froze Beta in place.

“I can’t wait to tell Delta that I made a new friend! Deo and Amenstar say you’re like family or something? You know Delta well and I love Delta!” he beamed.

…Ah fudge.

In a nearby tree, Gamma began to laugh with a demented cackle, clearly knowing Beta well enough to know she was now trapped in a predicament.

Even if Delta, Miss D, hadn’t rescued her from hell itself… and Yggdrasil, she still valued her teacher enough that the idea of her being disappointed in Beta for anything stung.

“You can… follow me or whatever. Just don’t touch me, talk to me, or involve me in your existence,” she stressed and Vas looked delighted at her begrudging acceptance.

What is wrong with this town and its young people?

They were all insane.

Or wanting to be a tree.

“Oh great, this tree belongs to a squirrel. Come on then, you alien rodent of the dark gods, have at ye-” Gamma’s voice cut off as the sound of furious screeching came a second later.

“There’s two of them!” Gamma squealed in distress.

Beta missed hell.