There is no Epic Loot here, Only Puns.

Chapter 172: Beta Hurry

“Oh, a Wyin tree! Did you know there’s a legend about these trees? That when the world tree was afflicted with a sickness, these trees appeared around the world near tragedy. The most popular myth was a woman who was born with the name Wyin who waited for her lost love-” Yattina told Alpha and Quee. The spider-boy raised his hands and backed away as the mist shifted in the room.

“It said the woman was a gentle maiden who appeared as a head priestess of the world tree itself, but she vanished, presumably taken by the sickness that hit the world tree, or perhaps she could be an allegory for fledgling innocence or new love,” Yattina mused as she tapped her glass eye.

The mist thinned, and the tree came into sharp focus.

“Actually, I did wait. I could appear as human. I did love, and he was mortal. I was sick… and I didn’t get better,” Wyin said slowly, and Alpha didn’t exactly tense his shoulders, but the grip on his sword tightened.

Wyin wasn’t a ‘bad’ monster, per se, but she had an odd temper that could be triggered by the most innocent of comments. Yattina seemed to stare up into the beautiful face of Wyin with wide eyes.

“You’re… alive,” Yattina said, then cleared her throat.

“Of course you are. You’re a magic tree of legend; you have more power in one leaf than I do in my entire body,” she said, muttering furiously to herself. Wyin looked away, deciding Yattina wasn’t too interesting.

“Don’t take it personally. All Wyin trees are ‘me,’ but they’ll never be me. That imposter was clever. I escaped, but he all but ensured I’d never grow to my full might again. It’s only due to the ‘luck’ of some goblins that I came to be planted here,” she purred and then looked over at Quee.

“My little star. You’ve not come to dance for me in some time,” she said, sounding hurt. Quee grinned.

“I’ve finally gotten to be a guard! People can skip to the second floor and not bother Sir Fran all the time,” he explained, and Wyin let out a throaty chuckle that reminded Alpha of a smoky bar room with the rich scent of whiskey.

“And that is the best thing, truly. Still, I see you’re stuck being a tour guide,” Wyin said, and Yattina hadn’t said anything. She looked stunned.

“Are you okay?” Alpha asked, stepping closer, and she turned slowly to look at him.

“The World Tree is an imposter?” she asked, and Alpha shrugged.

“Most likely,” he said, and Yattina’s face turned pale, and he tried not to wince as the party bond shared a deep flash of horror and some fear.

“Isn’t that common knowledge?” Alpha asked, and he stepped back as Yattina’s voice raised in volume.

“No! We know that the tree used to be welcoming and have a famous town called ‘Small Joy’ surrounding it, but about hundred and fifty years ago-” Yattina said, and Wyin interjected.

“One Hundred fifty-four if you wanna be precise, sweet thing,” she said as Quee twirled for her on a rock.

“-Fifty-four years ago, the tree suddenly became violently sick, and the town around became shut-off. No one could get close, and then the tree attacked whoever got close. We presume it just learned too much of humanity and grew disgusted by us or blamed us for the sickness!” Yattina said, looking like she wanted a dozen empty notebooks right about now.

“Oh, I sort of was disgusted by you all, in a friendly way. You all walk around with functional acid factories in your trunks and are sloshy,” Wyin chimed in again.

Yattina nodded firmly.

“The human body is a necessary evil that I only tolerate to hoard books and have a working brain,” she agreed without hesitation. She frowned and looked ponderous at something.

“I read something about the World Tre- the Fake Tree in a report recently. What was it about?” she asked herself, and Alpha waited patiently. Yattina snapped her fingers as she remembered.

“It gained a legendary-ranked monster that lives in its branches. The monster has been seen all over the world, carrying out all sorts of strange activities. The monster appeared about ten years ago, and it’s messed with Fairplay a few times,” she explained. Delta’s avatar looked down and whispered something that made Alpha’s skin prickle unpleasantly.

“Beta.”

“It’s a shapeshifter, I think, but all its forms share the same symbol on its neck. People speculate it’s half of a tree, but… but…” Yattina trailed off, and Wyin’s smile grew as the woman seemed to recall something.

“Alpha… why is the monster’s symbol on Delta’s front door?” she asked with an odd tone. Delta and Alpha shared a look.

“The symbols on the door stand for ‘Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma.’ I’m Alpha… you know Delta…” Alpha trailed off as the woman stared at him. A few seconds passed.

“I think you broke the poor thing,” Wyin said with a tutting noise as she waved a branch in front of Yattina’s face.

Yattina suddenly took Alpha by the shoulders, her grip surprisingly tight.

“Never repeat that name,” she stressed, and Alpha blinked, confused as the woman suddenly looked nervously around.

“What? Beta?” Quee asked, scuttling over as well as glaring at how she manhandled Alpha.

“No, the… the last one,” Yattina said and swallowed hard.

“Gam-” Alpha said, and she covered his mouth.

“Don’t! It’s a curse word,” she said in panic. There was a long pause.

“Gamma? Sounds like a weird name, this Gamma. Gamma, you say? I would like to know more about this Gamma,” Wyin announced, and Yattina covered her ears as if trying not to hear it.

“Woah…” Delta suddenly said, and Alpha could feel it too. Due to his new title as Archmage, he had gained a very potent magical sensing skill, and he could feel what could only be described as a dozen eyes trying to settle on the Dungeon, but not quite finding it.

“People are tracking the name. Everyone wants the King-Maker sword!” Yattina said quickly, trying to crouch low as if to avoid something.

“If you say the name, and they find you, you’re marked until they come for you. The Sword-Collectors, royal-wannabes, fourth or six in line for the throne, or…” she trailed off before making a deep gulp of actual concern.

“The Calculators.”

---

The lone island that sat between two edges of the world looked benign from high above, but from the clouds, a rapid shadow darted to the edge of the island. A mix between a falcon and a snake, the form shifted until a stoic looking teen girl stood where the monster had, a symbol on her neck glowing before going inert, she looked around as her clothes consisted of tough leathers she had roughly sewn together of different beasts.

This island gave her the creeps.

“Barkface is really reaching with this one,” she sighed and looked around for any signs of trouble. Ever since the strange Dungeon and ‘He’ attacked the tree, the old man had been working her ass overtime.

Beta was beginning to think the old tree wasn’t telling her something, but Beta accepted that was a thing a long time ago. Likely, treebeard did one of his stupid schemes and pissed them off, but that wasn’t Beta’s concern.

But if the Brother reacted, then they must be doing something right.

She didn’t care for the eyes or the tree’s desire to have it. She just wanted to get revenge on those ‘gods.’ The feeling of being made whole was still fresh in her mind.

Horrible flesh bubbling pain, bones snapping and reforming, muscles being woven inch by inch, organs built, then melted to be redone. Beta remembered it all.

The damn girl had a cheek to tell her that they had done much better with Beta than ‘Gamma.’ She mentally shuddered.

She didn’t want to think of what that poor bastard might have experienced being made if her formation was ‘better.’

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She walked forward on the island that was drowning in cloying Dungeon Mana. What sort of place needed five Dungeons in one close space? She inhaled, and the mana was easily converted into energy for her, as if her body had been made to live inside a Dungeon with ease.

If she was? She would burn them all to the ground rather than be an obedient pet for the gods and their little murder holes. Everywhere she looked, their screw-ups were clear between the rampant ‘other-gods,’ Dungeons, monsters, the cults, and more.

It was…

Beta didn’t know for sure, but she had a feeling that ‘before’ was better. Before had someone smiling at her, people she didn’t want to punch… a smiling teacher-

She winced as her flesh rippled, and for a split second, she saw vines and leaves emerging from her hands and fingers; so like Yggdrasil, how did it get there? Her veins seemed to bulge as they expanded towards her neck then her head and then… green.

When did-

-the cults, and more. Seriously, screw them. Beta scowled as she rotated her shoulder as if it were stiff. She just wanted to get this job done already. She walked deeper into the island and came to a stop as all her senses started screaming at her that she was not alone.

Beta had gathered quite a selection of monster forms in the two years since she had been here.

Sometimes, she found forms she had no clue about getting and chalked it up to the gods and their system that they kept trying to make her use. She wanted to at least check it out, but she never found the time.

She found the idea appalling.

Beta would not open that system. She would not. That was final.

She had found Yggy a year ago, and time just seemed to fly by when she was doing his jobs. He always insisted she rest before taking another mission. Beta was getting real tired of him trying to cozy in on her time.

Where would she even sleep for longer than a day? Small Joy? Psh, that place was a ruin.

‘But where did you get the clothes, the food you eat, the conversations of the world?’ some insidious part of her asked.

Yggdrasil. Everything she had was because of .

Movement all around her revealed themselves to be ducks. Dozens of black ducks with red eyes.

A lot watched her as she slowly moved forward to a clearing, where a massive hole in the middle of the island seemed to vanish into complete darkness.

This was what old treebeard wanted… for Beta to see if there was quicker access to the Eye through this hole on Funeral Island. One of the ducks was close.

The Beast lunged for it, arms splitting into a dozen claws, but the duck was strangely powerful, knocking her to the side as the flock surrounded her.

She was in danger-

She would kill them.

Beta raised her arm to strike when something very strange occurred. The system opened on its own, and her mind tried to rebel, but she couldn’t look away.

‘W-W-Welcome Be-Be-Beta! To DELTASUN 0.5. You have 99+ messages. You have to ‘remember.’ You need to ‘escape.’

Beta’s mind, her body, her soul was trying to split into two. Something inside her was trying to pull her apart.

Error: Infection is at 95%. This will not be enough.

“Make it stop!” Beta screamed as she clutched her head.

Solution: Do a ‘Delta’ move! If the parasite is using ambient mana to keep control, you will be sent somewhere where only Delta Mana will be available and not Yggdrasil’s.

Beta could barely read, let alone understand the message.

With permission of Prince Waddles, the seal to Demon World will open. Enjoy your trip!

Beta turned slowly to see a puffy black duck raise one webbed foot, and then she was tumbling down the dark tunnel on the island.

Find Delta. Her Mana has not been idle since going to the demon world.

And… I’m so sorry I was a terrible god. I will make it up to you, even if it costs me my life.

Beta felt oddly strange as she fell into a dark ruinous world, crashing into a crystal clear pond filled with Black ducks and pure-white duck chicks. Only when she was nearing the bottom of the pond did she understand that she was swimming in near pure-salt water mixed with something akin to vinegar.

She breached the surface, clinging to a rock that jutted out of the pond, coughing and sputtering as she failed to transform, the mana far too loose and free flowing around her to complete the task.

Ahead of her made of what looked to be the largest duck she had ever seen sitting on a throne of human teeth.

“Where am I?!” she demanded, and the duck quacked.

There was a long pause.

“…I don’t speak duck,” she said, gritting her teeth as the stinging water burned her skin slightly. There was some movement, and the ducks brought someone out. It was like a human tongue grew legs and had a foul attitude about it.

“What the hell are you?” Beta snarled, her fear feeding into her anger easily.

“I’m a demon tongue, ain’t I? I speak tongues!” the demon snapped. The big duck quacked again.

“His royalness, the Duke of Wrath - the Duck of Wrath - says you are here under invitation of his son and will be free to leave once you are purged of the ancient foulness clinging to your sad sack organs and shriveled brain,” the tongue said with a nasty tone.

“It said that… with one quack?” Beta said, doubt leaking off every word.

“I paraphrased for our benefit,” the tongue said with deliberate slowness.

“I don’t… what… no, I need to go! This place is making me feel weak,” she said, wading towards the shore and trying not to step on what looked to be thousands of eggs stretching as far as the eye could see.

The moment she left the hellish water, she began to have trouble breathing.

“His dukeness should mention that the pond has been the only source of Flat-World Mana around for some time. Since you no longer have a base form and cannot devour demons, you cannot breathe in the demon world,” the Tongue explained.

“I have a human form; this is my human form!” she protested, trying to get her lungs to work.

“No. It looks like what your form might have been, but it’s just that: an imitation of shifted flesh. You no longer remember who you are, according to the Sun Sister, and thus, can no longer transform into that form,” the annoying tongue went on.

“They took… my memories… from me…” Beta wheezed, crawling on hands and knees. She was afraid she might kill the eggs, but they were harder than diamonds under her touch.

“Truly, my heart bleeds for you, but you will now be enjoying the purging of your body in a few moments. How do you feel about leather or rope?” the tongue asked, translating more quacks of the large duck.

“W-What?” she asked, looking back. The duke held up two straps of material for Beta to bite down on.

“The Duke suggests leather, less threads in one’s teeth,” the tongue smirked.

“I don’t consent to this! I reject it!” Beta tried to crawl away faster.

“Quack.”

There was no need for the tongue to translate that. Beta could almost hear the words in her mind.

‘Bite down hard, this is going to be rough.’

---

Delta watched as Yattina nervously opened the door down the hallway to the left of the Map Room. She was nervous and a little shy as Yattina marveled at the third floor.

“It’s pretty dark in here,” Yattina admitted before Delta focused and soft lamps around the library turned on, revealing rows of books. There was a soft gasp as Yattina took a few steps forward, then stopped.

“I… may I…” she stumbled over her words.

Delta focused and pulled all her power into a single word.

“Yes,” she said, and the word breezed through the room, and Yattina turned, wide-eyed.

“Was that her?” she asked Alpha, who nodded, shooting Delta an impressed look. Delta was too busy leaning over, panting as if she’d just ran a damn marathon. How could she create a whole host of creatures, and magic enchantments, but projecting her own voice was this hard?

Was it like trying to speak, but only inside one’s kidney?

“So many books! Goose-bumps?” Yattina asked with wonder, picking up a book with a ghostly white bird on the front before she quickly moved on.

“I’ve never seen so many books in even a specialist store! You have a mix of rare tomes, unique stories, and children’s books. I could spend months here!” Yattina gushed as she pulled out a copy of ‘Short Stories and less’ containing only three sentences on the first page, and the other 100 pages were blank.

She opened a book of ‘100 soup recipes with lickable pages,’ the ‘In-depth Study of Studies,’ ‘Death: Villain or Hopeless Romantic?,’ and she even grabbed a copy of ‘Optics: A Light Reading.’

“Alpha! Quee! Join me! Books are friend-shaped!” Yattina insisted excitedly as she sat in some sort of sealed bag of squishy beans.

“I thought that was people?” Alpha asked, confused. Quee strutted past.

“Books? People? They both spread their contents for me,” he said, and Alpha looked at him.

“It’s because I’m going to be a rockstar, and supposedly, people open up to them. Like therapists,” Quee explained excitedly.

“Therapists; never liked them. They want to talk about my past, my pain, my injuries, my inability to sleep for longer than three hours,” Yattina muttered.

“Isn’t that to help you get better?” Alpha asked slowly.

“Help, smelp. Science and being right all the time is how I heal,” she winked with her good eye and went back to tasting the soup book.

A book slid out near Alpha titled ‘How to spot and help troubled individuals, by Seeri Ink’ for him to grab.

“Maybe you can… tell me about… your issues?” Alpha tried and pushed the book back on the shelf. Yattina gave him a long look before smiling with a placating look.

“I’m fine,” she said and buried herself deeper into her book. Alpha frowned and looked down at his feet, trying to figure out how to be empathetic or even sound concerned. He didn’t mean to come off as if he would rather not talk to people.

He just… spoke like that. A second book slid out towards Alpha.

‘Neurodivergence: It’s okay to be different.’

“Thanks,” he sighed, taking the book to join Yattina. They both jumped as Quee slammed down what seemed to be a twenty series book collection of ‘Karamel Rider: Delicious Hero.’

“This place is great! I should have visited ages ago!” he said brightly. On top of those, he had music books, stage performances, and a signed book of Maestro’s autobiography. It was a very thick book, in spite of Maestro’s actual lifespan thus far.

Delta watched them all talk and chat, all while knowing who was watching them from the shadows.

“Jack, you can join in,” Delta said to the watching Kobold.

“Shh… I can’t let myself be known until I know her levels of acceptance to the good word of Death,” Jack hissed back, barely heard by anyone but Delta.

“You mean cheap romance novels?” Delta summed up.

“The cheaper, the better,” Jack nodded seriously.

“Yattina, what do you think of mouth touching and wiggly wooing?” Quee asked, having superior hearing.

“Is setting myself on fire an option?” she responded without looking up from her book. Jack narrowed his eyes and looked ready to retreat.

“I like the chase, the idea, the sort of dancing around, and the learning. I love people connecting, but I skip past any…’wiggly wooing,’” she said, smiling at the phrase.

“Are you reading an age-appropriate book?” she asked suddenly, eyes narrowed. Quee held up the cover of some chocolate-themed hero kicking a sour-sweet in the face.

“I think so!” he promised.

Jack had turned, going through a series of shelves.

“Ogre on Dryad… Mermaid in love with a horse…ah! Woman in love with a magic mirror, doomed to never touch, but see each for whom they are inside. I can convert her!” Jack pumped his fist and nearly knocked a shelf over in his excitement .Delta took a look.

“It says in book four, the magic mirror can astral project into her dreams-” she pointed out, and Jack took book 4 to 22 and hid them behind a series of books called ‘Filler: the encyclopedias of taking up space.’

“Every religion has some white lies,” Jack shrugged.

“How wonderful! ‘Where’s Wallace’! A puzzle book! And look, Alpha, a companion book on feelings called ‘How is Wallace?’!” Yattina’s voice drifted out to them.

“Do you want to read about feelings?” Alpha offered.

“No time! I have a book here about the ten functions of a goblin liver. I didn’t even know there was one use for them,” Yattina said excitedly.

Delta was beginning to think Yattina had a small issue about discussing her feelings.

Before she drank from the Mana Well, Yattina might need to discuss her feelings to smooth out the process. A working seed contained thoughts and echoes of a person… if Yattina was to grow one from the well and have all these issues bubbling inside her?

She might crack.

But who did she have that specializes in-

“Luna!” she said, standing up with purpose.

But Yattina didn’t seem the type to publicly bathe…

Ten minutes passed, and Luna walked into the Library with a bundle of items. Her usually elegant form looked heavy, and she puffed with effort to keep walking. Delta winced.

“Sorry,” she said, and Luna shook her head.

“It’s only one floor, but I am not going down to the fourth floor. I might drown in Mana,” she muttered.

She unpacked a selection of herbs and an incense burner.

Nearby, Yattina was watching the frog ninja, engrossed in the process.

“So, we’ll be sharing a group vision quest to deal with issues of our past, and by doing that, I can see a rare ‘Mana Spring’ that the Dungeon wants me to test?” Yattina sounding both terrified and extremely happy at the idea.

“You don’t have to. There’s no rush, and you can always come back,” Alpha said, and Yattina blinked then rubbed his head with a small smile.

“I’ll likely be punished to hell and back for this little trip. Likely, I won’t be coming back for a long time,” she admitted, and Delta wouldn’t count on it. She had a way of making sure people left this Dungeon better than they entered.

Well, unless they were the majority of Fairplay, but that was on them.

As Luna was setting up, something bizarre entered her Dungeon. A sort of ‘fake’ life force that repelled her mana with unnatural ease.

She teleported to her entrance to see five spindly marionettes of sorts moving over the ground. Delta stared at them, then took a step back.

“Oh God,” she said, covering her mouth. The dolls, the robots really, were complex beings with a mana-system that drew power from shards deep within their bodies.

Each shard spoke in a near never-ending stream of words.

“Grow the blades, sharpen the doors. Grow the blades, sharpen the doors.”

“Snow on the hill. Snow on the hill. Snow on the hill.”

“Create new boss. Create new boss. Create new boss.”

Each was a fractured, but unique voice that spoke like a badly recorded audiotape.

“Dungeons… they’re using dead dungeons like batteries,” Delta whispered, back against the wall in sheer horror.

One of them turned to her, and before Delta could follow what was happening, it plunged a blade at her, cutting her avatar along the arm. She stared at the fizzling wound on her avatar as a flash of pain looped back to her.

Each of their weapons were made of Dungeon Mana, opposing Dungeon Mana. These things were like human-sized dead Dungeons being controlled from afar. Delta moved back into the tunnel and eyed them with deep sorrow.

“I’ll end this,” she promised them as their babbling picked up in tone and volume.

“Danger level: Max” she intoned, and the entire Dungeon shuddered.

The once cheery flickering orange torchlight turned a deep ominous red. Delta’s eyes dropped a single tear in combination of sorrow and the pain of her wound.

Stage 6: You made Delta cry activated.

Error:

Stage 7 released: You broke Delta’s Heart.

---

Outside, Ruli gripped her hands into fists and held out her arm, stopping any more of these junk robots from going in.

Delta’s entrance now had a dark hazy white mist over it, not quite preventing entrance, but there was deep rage and sadness coming from it.

Ruli didn’t need to hear it for herself to know that whatever was ‘up’ with these robots, it wasn’t good. She couldn’t prevent them from entering, but she could slow them down.

“You better hope she’s okay,” she warned the nearby Caline, who ignored her.

“These are but the test models, the first batch. If she can’t handle these, then the Dungeon’s fabled strength isn’t as much as I feared,” he shrugged. Ruli opened her mouth, but then noticed that the forest all around Delta, usually so vibrant and filled with life… had gone silent.

As if the world was holding its breath.

She shifted, and the row of HE-RO dolls toppled over like dominoes.

“Oops,” she said without shame.

“Cute, but it won’t matter,” he said as he ordered his men to pick them up.

“You prevent me from entering, and your friend Quiss is honor-bound to enact the law in my favor,” he reminded, and Ruli narrowed her eyes on him.

“I’ve bent him over crying before, I’ll do it again,” she said, and this made Caline frown in confusion.

“You’ve fought him before?” he asked for clarification, and Ruli smirked.

“Oh, in a manner of speaking, but you think Delta’s got shit endurance?” she asked, and Caline rolled his eyes.

“She has four floors at most; of course she has bad enduranc-” he froze and grabbed his rear as he made a face of pain.

“I… didn’t talk about… the town!” he gasped as he turned to waddle away.

“She’s part of the town, you butt waffle,” Ruli muttered.

She turned back to the misty door and drew a line in the soil before it with her large sword, Magma.

“Cross it, and I’ll break a random thing that sticks out of your body,” she warned the rest.

“Isn’t that stopping us from… going in?” a Fairplay man asked.

“Nope, you can go in. But you’ll be in a lot of pain while you do so,” Ruli said easily, sitting on her small wooden stool with glowing yellow eyes.

No one crossed the line.

It was all Ruli could do for her friend right now, and it just didn’t feel like enough.