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Chapter 196: The Argus Story

That dream came again, it had dulled over the years but always willing to rise when his guard was down.

It always started with the hand clamping down on his child self's shoulder.

"It's okay, you're going to see your home grow like never before!" the kind voice promised. The image seemed to almost melt away before him, the green trees and healthy earth becoming rotted and wrong. Life blended together in horrible amalgamations while the very air boiled.

That friendly hand still gripped his shoulder.

Caline looked up at the blank eyes of Ripdoy.

"You're going to grow like never before.'

Then the hand began to melt into his skin, bringing them closer as one being before Caline shot awake from his nap in the barrack cots. In a flash, he brought forth his Core Weapon, the silver blade instantly dulling his panic and fear until it cooled to a controllable determination. The tool he held was key to putting Dungeons in their place, but the lesser known effect was that it halved your emotions when it was active.

A handy tool when you were forty floors deep in a dungeon watching your men get massacred by monsters or a devious trap. It kept you grounded.

He climbed out of the cot, putting the core weapon away for now as he was awake. Such night terrors had become rarer, but he had a feeling they would never truly go away until he made certain wrongs into rights.

He scowled at a mirror as he tried to sum up the results of trying to get his badge back.

Yattina didn't sleep, she barely ate, and she had the social graces of a scorpion that adopted field mice. It was impossible to get close to her.

It was becoming impossible for him to do it, but he wasn't close to giving up.

A knock sounded and Caline called for them to come in, revealing the suspicious face of Yattina's little apprentice, Lim.

"Can I help you, sir," he said, the title said with clear distaste. Caline had the urge to admonish him but was simply too tired to care right now. Technically they were sort of the same rank, but he didn't focus on that other than to indicate for Lim to join him at the table.

"I'll stand," he said.

Caline nodded as he went to his private specially sealed lockbox. It would have been a good hiding place for his 'key' but he couldn't watch the lockbox all day and night like he could his badge.

Like he once could.

He returned to the table with a simple book that he opened using a specially protective spell and a drop of his blood.

"Let me tell you why I think you should help me and help your commander for her own benefit," he said simply and Lim scoffed, looking ready to turn and leave that very minute.

Caline placed three photos down on the table, taken at great expense with technology that was still being developed too slowly to be used commercially. Lim gave them a brief look, already dismissing them when he paused then looked back at them again.

Caline didn't say anything, just letting the pictures speak for themselves.

"Who is that?" Lim asked slowly, turning so he was fully facing Caline.

"Director Ripdoy, in all three," he said and Lim picked up one of the pictures.

"That can't... no, that isn't right," Lim said as he gestured to the picture down of Ripdoy smiling at the opening of the official Fairplay HQ, surrounded by people clapping and beaming faces.

"I have no reason to lie to you about this, nor did I expect to need to show you this. The second picture was taken over thirty years ago. Ripdoy is a little heavier, a little greyer," Caline pressed on, sliding it closer to Lim.

The picture showed Ripdoy in a secluded resort place, looking like he was taking time off with some close people. He was clearly past his prime but not what one would dare call to his face 'old'. Ripdoy looked tired, but happy.

"These have to be fake," Lim accused and Caline ignored the stupid idea he would waste a small fortune on making pictures to convince Lim. The audacity.

"The last was taken about five years ago at the 50th anniversary of Fairplay HQ being opened. It had just finished its renovations and mana piping. It was a big event," Caline continued, looking down at the very much 'old' Ripdoy who looked grumpy and sour like a war commander. It was obvious his close circle had shrunk again and Lim swallowed hard.

"I don't..." he hesitated and looked at all three pictures.

There was a knock and Caline swooped the pictures up, pushing them back in his book. The next moment, Gentle entered with a letter.

"Lim! Commander Yattina wants us to go to the sewer, gear up!" he said excitedly. Lim nodded, still looking harrowed.

Lim gave Caline one last strange look and quickly left with Gentle.

Once the door was closed. Caline looked at the pictures himself.

The first of the opening of Fairplay where Ripdoy held the shy hands of a young boy, the next one where he tossed a ball of sorts for the same boy, and in the last one where the same boy stood alert behind Ripdoy.

Argus Gentle was as old as Fairplay itself.

Older, perhaps.

And it was the thing that haunted Caline's nightmares when 'Ripdoy' was too busy.

If it was 'Gentle' and not something else. The boy acted blissfully unaware that he was close to seventy years old. A dozen movements that would be impossible to fake every second of every day.

Gentle was a child in mind, but clearly not of body.

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Director Ripdoy was hiding some very old skeletons in his closet.

And one of the bone piles murdered his family.

Caline would burn the boy, the company, this town, and so much more to bring the man's sins to light.

Then they would all burn together.

His stomach began to gurgle and he grimaced.

"I didn't say anything aloud about this backwater hov-" he yelled then began to gag. Seconds later, a detailed swan made of south red cheese landed on the table and Caline sank to the ground.

He hated cheese. So much.

Especially the kind that had pointy bits carved on them.

---

"Argus?"

Argus blinked as Lim hesitated to follow him down a darker corridor to the main hall.

"Are you... a demonic elder being who pretends to be a young child?" he asked and Argus stared at him.

"I can't even handle being a teenager," he said back with a flat tone.

"But you would tell me if you were forty... fifty... maybe even seventy years old?" Lim pressed.

"Yes, Lim. I will inform you when I find out that I should be collecting Kingdom-wide elderly support money," he said, finding this more amusing than confusing now.

"Why the questions?" he asked and Lim hesitated.

"I saw pictures of you when Fairplay opened fifty years ago," he blurted out and Argus blinked once.

"I was there," he said easily as they walked.

"Oh, good, I was... what?" Lim stopped dead in his tracks, boots making squeaky noises as he slid.

Argus winced but tried to put on a smile.

"I'm not well, I mean... I'm sort of sick in the incurable bloodline way. I have been since my step-father found me. I should be dead but Dad has this amazing friend who built him this ceramic 'Chronostasis lockbox' and I would go to sleep in it until medical developments were made. It was extremely costly. Dad had to build his HQ over a massive mana line just to power it. I never liked the box, it was always more of a pot," Argus admitted quietly.

"I wake up and every time it was my birthday so we would spend the weekend together or something before I went back to sleep," he explained.

"Woah," Lim muttered.

"I know. Apparently, my dad and his friend fell out because the trade was that the man would be able to study the Fairplay Maidens but then they all sort of just vanished together. He was supposed to study me but dad was against it," Argus mused as they found Yattina waiting in the hall.

"So... you're not an elderly demonic being waiting for the right time to stab us all in the back and reveal your master plan and rule the world?" Lim asked again.

"Lim, I'm on double watch duty tonight. I can't fit 'sleep' into my schedule, let alone... all that!" Argus said, throwing his hands up.

"Elderly demonic beings don't come to this world due to the rampant music festivals. Hurts their ears," Yattina said without looking up.

Lim perked up and they began chatting about demons and the power of loud music as they exited the Fairplay doors.

For a long moment, Argus lingers to look back down the dark hallway, his exasperation now a tight frown.

Then he was gone into the light.

---

Fera put down a plate of golden eggs from the second floor's Jungle, crispy bacon that while Delta knew it came from the cute little Piggles, Fera put it in a smiley face so it was okay. Next to them were big juicy sausages, and various vegetables pulped together to make what looked like toast. Strangely, no one had ever brought bread, buns or given wheat or flour to Delta to get the basic stuff down.

The most bready things they made came from Fera's creative ability to scare food into looking like other food.

"I can't wait to pretend to eat this!" Delta exclaimed as a cup of tea was added to the selection. She poked a piece of cute bacon and it broke apart into bacon-flavored motes which she passed her face through a few times, getting the scent of bacon.

Did she make it herself? Delta could make food she could eat, but anything made by others? It was a work in progress. She had continued to work on an avatar in secret, but the results were nightmarish. Mushrooms just kept creeping into the process somewhere and it was disarming to say the least.

"Nu, how's the updates?"she asked around a cloud of tea.

A blue screen unfolded much like a newspaper.

"Five more groups reached Fran, only two got through. None beat Wyin. One was left crying, curled up like a ball in the corner after Wyin recited things she would do to him. One got lost in the honey pools, and one had a cathartic session at the hot springs and decided to quit being an adventurer to become a dentist."

Delta blinked.

"What did Wyin even say?" she asked in both dismay and slight admiration.

"Something about papercuts, finger webs, and slits," Nu said airily.

"And here I thought she was going to go more mentally offensive than torture," Delta said with a shake of her head as she enjoyed some eggs.

"She did. She just went into very graphic detail," Nu promised.

"Wyin's existence is 'graphic'," Delta countered.

"I appreciate her creativity," Nu said and carried on to the next section.

"Ruli left a message saying that a new group had come into town. She wrote it on a napkin and tossed it down the stairs. She said that they're either 'Excitedly Wrong' or 'Extremely Strong', it was hard to decipher the message around her lunch stains." Nu went on.

"I think people just stating things and refusing to admit they're wrong would hurt me more than being thrashed," Delta said slowly as she put the plate down to stare at the ground.

"The horror. The very idea of experiencing such a character. I cry for you."

Delta eyed the blue screen.

"I was never wrong. I just had misconceptions and panic attacks," she said succinctly.

"Speaking of panic. Your dragon is ready and Hero said it's taking up a lot of space. You might want to do something about it," Nu said, reading a message Delta couldn't see.

"Nu, where on earth am I supposed to put a Death Star Dragon?" she demanded then froze.

"Well, tactically, it would be-"

Delta stood up.

"Delta... I know that look."

"I have an idea," she mumbled and moved.

In no time at all, she appeared on the fourth floor . She looked around and found her target.

"Ophiuchus!" she cried with a wide smile. The little snake eyed her with sleepy eyes as it emerged from its subterranean cave underwater.

She held it and focused very hard on what she wanted.

"Warning: Critters are not monsters nor traps of the Dungeon. Messing with their base blueprint-"

A sort of default warning popped up with over six hundred pages of conditions and issues known to appear.

"Skip," she announced and there was a new screen with 20 suggestions on what else to do with the dragon.

"Skip!" she said brightly. There were now just two pages of dire warnings and suggestions.

"Skip!" Delta said, becoming just a little impatient.

The box was reduced to a single choice.

'Do you accept the consequences of your own actions in the event of dire outcomes and unpredictable disasters?'

"Remind me later in thirty days," she said and flicked the box away to reveal her idea.

"Raid Boss Creation: Ophiuchus, The Death Star Constellation.'

Can be brought forth by one or more of the following conditions:

If a group has killed every being (more than 98% of monsters) of the Dungeon up to the fourth floor.

If threat level 5 or above is active.

If the number of people on a floor rises above thirty.

If at least twelve people of different star signs enter the floor at the same time.

If someone enters the dungeon while Minue is retrograde at the same time their birth star is in the fifth house.

If someone collects all 12 star orbs, Ophiuchus becomes the Life Star Constellation that has a minor but powerful wish granting ability.

While active, the fourth floor expands to twice its size and Ophiuchus covers the sky with a massive serpentine body. His abilities include 'Suck', 'Condense', 'Comet' and 'Unstoppable fortune of ill omens'.

Its powerful blackhole ability can trap and eject beings into the void, making this one of the few beings able to eject someone from your reality and reinsert your own with style.

The comet it can summon down bears one of the twelve star signs. Each will explode in a different manner. Some explode with force, others with soul shaking effects, and one with confetti. The confetti comet still hits with enough force to crush powerful defenses.

The Condense ability allows Ophiuchus to create a gravity well in front of it, eco-friendly in its ability to crush trash to a small portable state or a solid orb the size of a baseball but with the mass of a horse.

Unstoppable fortune of ill omens will cause all in the area to be cursed for the next year of their life. These curses cover a wide range of effects, including always stubbing one's toe, losing a pen at the worst time, finding worthless currency, winning the lowest possible prize in any competition, swallowing one's drink down the wrong way in an average timeframe, being three minutes late to everything, and other omens. They can only be broken by the most powerful of religious rituals or moderately powerful gods.

Ophiuchus is a servant of Waddles the Duck. If someone is under Waddles' curse and comes to this fight, they will have their chances of winning reduced to 50%. Note, this does not increase chances of winning if below 50%. Waddles does not hand out participation trophies.

"Nu, what is luck? In Dungeon terms?" she asked curiously, never having really thought about it before.

"Technically, all luck magic is doing the opposite. Making someone lucky or unlucky is actually the process of inserting stricter limits over the random elements that will affect them. Good luck will actively cause certain things to be repelled or attracted. Money or lovers is a common one. Bad luck directly pushes someone into negative experiences with subtle influence."

Delta mulled this over for a moment.

"So, there's no chaos involved?" she asked.

"...Sort of. Luck magic only inserts control over if 'good' or 'bad' things happen. Those exact things are still left up to chance," Nu explained.

"So all luck magic is chaos but really ordered?" Delta tried to grasp.

"Or look orderly but just a series of messy coincidences that fall into a pattern that looks semi-reasonable," Nu countered.

"Who even designed this?" Delta said, rubbing her head as she hit 'create'.

She would have her dangerous sky noodle.

---

Brother continued to fish as he relaxed. His new whale friend was fast asleep. His nose itched and he followed the sensation to some of his older magics. Notably, the luck series.

It was on the fritz again due to people over indulging in luck charms, rituals, practises, and wistful thinking.

That stuff stopped working when the population of people got too large and the magic was running constantly.

Brother shook his head.

"Luck, that stuff will kill ya," he told the whale with a somber tone as the magic rocks sparked and crackled.

It was good luck that they found someone to make their friend.

It was bad luck they were so inept at making gods they drove him insane,

It was good luck they managed to take his eyes.

It was bad luck that the god blindly lurched into the abyss and found 'home.'

It was good luck the only souls it took were in a little metal box on wheels.

It was bad luck that it learned it could take more.

Luck...luck...luck.

Terrible stuff.

Brother would stick to marine life that could shoot light beams or horses with combat horns.

Far more reliable.