The Great Core's Paradox

Triss kept calm, even when everything else fell into chaos. Again. Earlier that day, she had left with the rest of her makeshift squad, a mixture of surviving Verdant Grove Guards and some of the original Guard of Orken. She understood the idea behind the mixing of the squads; the cities had been different, and the Guards were different in turn. The two groups needed to be brought together, melded into one cohesive unit, so that they could properly act and respond to dangers that might affect their home.

Yet, even knowing that there was a need for it, it wasn’t always easy. The two groups had different command structures, different priorities, different histories. Those differences could cause problems.

All of that to say, things could be a bit...chaotic.

“Look, I don’t know how you did things back in Verdant Grove, but this is Orken.”

“Maybe you should just ask? You might actually learn something for once.”

“You…”

Triss let the argument slip into background noise; it wasn’t one that she hadn’t heard before. Tensions were high, especially among the members of the Guard. Whatever any of them might say - whether Verdant Grove or Orken native - they were all stumbling along in their uncertainty. That led to frayed tempers and even more frayed relationships.

It wasn’t every day that members of a settlement’s Guard were expected to venture far from their respective cities. That was more of a Seeker’s job, and for good reason. Not only did Core Seekers typically work to infuse themselves with far more mana that most others would be comfortable with - which, while effective in increasing their capabilities and helped keep them alive in their adventures, carried its own particular dangers - but Seekers also were traditionally equipped with higher quality equipment.

Triss let her hands flex against the shaft of her new spear. While it didn’t have the familiar smoothness of her original, that was broken and left behind during the - don’t think about it. She shook her head, brushing the thought away with more even-keeled emotions than she had experienced lately. One hand drifted towards the Totem around her neck.

Regardless of the lack of familiarity, Triss’ new spear was far superior. Orken had pushed its resident nullsmith into overdrive, quickly draining much of their Core mana stores. Fortunately, spears like hers were among some of the cheapest of weapons to infuse with a Core’s mana, as most of the weapon was made of wood and therefore not infused at all. With just the tip and a few strips of metal to brace the shaft, they could be created without too much trouble - which was good, because many monsters were too well-armored to defeat without the proper equipment. She had already noted the ease with which her new weapon sliced through material.

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for her own defenses. While it would have been nice, mana-infused armor was too expensive for Orken to provide. She was stuck with weaker, non-mana-infused metal.

Some members of the Guard were disgruntled when they saw the Seekers with their armor, but not Triss. The way she saw it, Core Seekers took risks that most wouldn’t dare - not only in challenging the World Dungeon, but in honing their bodies in the first place. They deserved the equipment they received.

Triss certainly hadn’t been willing to risk those dangers. She had seen the extreme instability that came when a Seeker went too far, suffusing their bodies with so much mana that their minds became Mana-Touched. Unstable, prone to oddities and insanity.

She had only witnessed it happen once, but some of the worst cases were forced to be put down when they became too great a danger, tossed into the null-water. With as much mana as they carried in their bodies, they died quickly.

No, that wasn’t something that she had been willing to risk.

The conversations around her eventually began to die out as they walked through well-trod tunnels. Triss could almost feel the tension in her squadmates as they moved further afield in search of monsters. Some of it washed off of her, pushed away by the ever-present sense of peace that radiated from the Totem around her neck, but she wasn’t entirely unaffected by it all.

She flexed her fingers again.

Soon enough, a light grunting could be heard somewhere in the tunnels ahead of them. Yerin, at the front of the group, motioned for silence. He turned and signalled at the others in hesitant, broken Seeker sign; Triss regretted not choosing to pick up the useful language earlier on, and she was sure that the others felt the same. Still, they could generally manage to get the message across.

Stay, she thought Yerin was trying to say. Then, the man pointed to himself and made another sign. Scout.

As the man moved further down the tunnel, draping a cloth over the glow of his weapon and stepping silently, Triss tried to relax. A certain amount of tension was good, but there were limits to that. The others kept quiet while they waited for Yerin to return, ears perked for any sign that the man would require a rescue.

A few minutes later, he finally returned. Enemy, he signed. A few seconds of thought, and then a few more signs. Big. Many. Danger. Opportunity. Vote.

The stamping sounds of heavy feet came closer, and Triss felt her muscles tense. After retreating a bit further to have a proper discussion, it had been decided that an attempt to take down the monsters - a group of Flat-Horned Chargers. While it was a risk, especially as a group without much experience in these sorts of scenarios, Orken needed food.

In the end, that was what decided it. With the size of the Flat-Horned Chargers, both individually and as a group, the people of Orken would be able to stave off hunger a little longer. Transport would be a problem, as the corpses would be too heavy to simply field-dress and carry back with them, but there would be time to deal with that afterwards. If they took too long, the monsters could very well disappear and the opportunity lost.

Triss and the other members of the squad, sans Yerin, waited behind a choke point in a ruined tunnel. Sometime in the past, rubble had fallen and narrowed the tunnel, leaving a natural bottleneck that would hopefully help keep the monsters from all attacking at once.

She traced a finger across the lines of her Totem, distracting herself with the sensation of cool wood on flesh until she couldn’t any longer.

At the end of the tunnel, Yerin appeared. The monsters followed.

They were larger than she had expected, great brutes with shoulders that reached a man’s chest and a girth that was quite a bit wider. The noise of their feet echoed even louder than before, and her beating heart echoed in turn.

Yerin slipped through the bottleneck, and then there was no more time.

The first of the Chargers had arrived.

The plan had been a careful one. It was aimed at keeping the dangers to a minimum, preventing the squad from being overwhelmed by more enemies than they could handle. There was only one problem.

The Chargers were too damn stupid to care about a bottleneck.

They crashed through, flattening themselves against piles of rubble.

The already-damaged tunnel roared in protest.

The walls came down.

The world shifted in between blinks, and she found herself desperately clawing at jagged stone, fingertips bleeding where the skin had split. Her spear had already been broken, snapped when she tried to use it as a lever to pull herself free from the coffin of stone. Her breath quickened, and her vision closed in.

She knew that she should stop. She should give herself a moment to think, to calm herself before the air ran too thin. Someone would come for her, surely. The fall of the stones had not been quiet.

She didn’t. The walls were too close, and they were closing in on her. Her lungs were too empty, never quite satisfied. The prison of stone ran red with blood, stained with her desperation.

Out. Out. Out. She needed out. Her baby -

Triss clutched at the Totem around her neck, desperately trying to force the memory from her mind. Her breath came in short gasps, and her lungs screamed in protest.

She did her best to focus on the differences: The body of a Charger, flattened under rubble. The glow of her spearhead, illuminating the darkness. The groans of her squadmates, trapped alongside her.

She held on tighter, fighting the panic that came alongside a single thought, a terrible difference.

Nobody is around to hear us scream.