Chương 40

Anroll Greylan Anroll accepted the warm bowl numbly, staring at his… niece? The difference was visible, which was more awkward. The corpse on the table had just been covered up, but before that he could make out the fading tan from days outdoors, and the impression of a toned and athletic body. Nothing extreme enough to have significant Attribute drift, but a visible fitness. In front of him, the girl was still Ellen… but different. Softer, somehow. More pale, definitely.

She was different from the girl he'd left before his trip, too. She walked more daintily, yet with more assurance at the same time. It wasn't the motion of an experienced adventurer, but it was the look of someone satisfied with their place in life. The large man scratched his head, shifting the hat atop his head.

"I uh… never saw this before. What do you do with the uh… bodies?" Ellen—the living one—had just settled into a chair next to Anroll.

"Oh… I'm sorry, Pauley. It's um… I'm not really sure what the others do with them. It's… I don't think I want to touch it, but Healer and Apprentice don't have any problem doing it. But they aren't here, so… I'll think of something."

"So this is your uncle, Ellen?" The innkeeper was steadfastly trying to ignore the body on one of his tables, focusing on Anroll. He'd seen that kind of reaction before, and it let him breathe easier knowing that this was not a normal event for the people here. He'd fought monsters, but seeing family dead was not something he'd been ready for.

"Anroll Greylan," he muttered, tugging the hood back and offering his hand to the man. The innkeeper hesitated, the name registering with him, but he pushed through and took the hand in a firm shake.

"Name's Tobias. That's my wife Lauren over there. Pauley, who sort of runs the village. And I guess you know your niece. She didn't tell us you were famous." Anroll could hear the barely-restrained admiration in the man's voice. Tobias was handling it better than most, but if he'd already been dealing with whatever was happening here, maybe the appearance of an adventurer of his pedigree wasn't big news.

"I don't… really know what's going on." He looked over at Ellen, who gave him a reassuring smile.

"We don't either, but she'll be back. I… think." Ellen touched her lips in a sudden expression of worry.

"We'll have to check the house." Anroll turned to face the girl who was apparently his niece, trying to think of what sort of monster or magic could mimic a human so well. It wasn't impossible, but everyone in the group looked so unsurprised that it was obvious Ellen had been living here for a while. And that's when he saw another one.

"Uncle Anroll?" Another Ellen stood at the top of the stairs nearby, dressed more lightly than winter really demanded, with her hair in disarray as if she'd just awakened.

"When did you get here? Did you see us die?"

"Ellen!" The Ellen beside Anroll exclaimed uninformatively. She hopped upward in surprise, hurrying toward the sleepy-looking redhead.

"What are you doing here? I thought you'd wake up in the town. Is your sister here? Have you chosen a name yet? He just arrived…"

"I don't know why we woke up here," the new one replied.

"I thought we'd wake up there, too. I haven't chosen a name yet, the new Hunter Ellen is still getting dressed. For once I think we remember how we died, too. Was it a boar?" Anroll coughed.

"Can someone please explain to me what's happening here?"

"We're still trying to figure that out ourselves," Pauley grumbled, tipping his hat. He grabbed his coat off the rack and shrugged it on.

"It's an honor to meet you, sir, but I'd better step out and calm down the others. They know something happened, but I think only a couple got a glimpse of her face. Maybe I can salvage this."

"It was a boar," Ellen—the one that had comforted Anroll—said.

"What's the last thing you remember? I don't think any of us have ever remembered that close to when it happened."

"I remember the boar charging at me, after I'd missed jumping for the tree," the other Ellen murmured.

"I was going to try to dodge the tusks and stab it behind the head, but I guess that didn't work as well as I'd hoped. At least I went down fighting."

"Is that Uncle Anroll?" Another voice called down from the top of the stairs.

"I'll be down in a few minutes. I guess it's safe?" Ellen finally turned around.

"I'm sorry, Uncle, there's a lot going on. You can call me Village Ellen, so you don't get confused." Anroll rubbed his head, but didn't comment on the statement. He was already getting a headache.

"We were wanting to talk to you anyway," Village Ellen continued.

"It started a few months ago, but every time one of us dies, two more wake up safe and sound. It's gotten a little out of hand." Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"How many of you are there now, dear?" Lauren walked over after she asked, nudging Anroll's shoulder. He abruptly remembered he had a bowl of warm soup in his hands, and took a slow sip.

"Let's see…" The new Ellen walked over to the table where Anroll was trying to collect himself.

"Village Ellen here, Hunter Ellen upstairs, myself, Merchant, Healer, Apprentice, Carpenter, Mason… I think that's it, unless more have appeared while I was busy. The Settlement Interface isn't telling me anything about who is alive right now. I think I'm too low Level." She sighed with a slump into the nearby chair.

"And I was thinking I'd make it to Level 12. It's going to take weeks for me to get back to 11, isn't it?"

"Girls… Ellen…" Anroll interrupted.

"Are you saying you've died and come back seven times already? Is that what's happened?" Both the Ellens at the table looked at him, and for a moment they were the same. One had a tan and better tone, the other softer and more expressive, but both had the same faint blush and awkward lip bite that Anroll had known her to have since childhood. He wasn't sure if he should be relieved or worried about that.

"Total? Seven, yes." Village Ellen confirmed.

"I've died twice. Same with the unnamed Ellen here."

"Twice, yes." The new Ellen nodded her head and sighed.

"Apprentice and Healer have died four times, and it's um… they're a little strange. I was worried that the more it happened the more we might… be different." Lauren slid another bowl of soup over to the new Ellen.

"Have we met, dear?" Her face had that mingling of concern for manners and concern over confronting something so unknown and outside of her experience that she was desperately trying to treat it as normal.

"Thank you, Lauren. We met, I was going by Trish." The soup was accepted with a heavy sigh.

"Merchant tries to keep us all informed of what goes on in the village in case we end up here, so I heard she'd brought you in on what was going on. I'm sorry if it's strange." The older woman sighed, "Well it was a surprise. I've never heard of such a thing! Um… Sir Greylan, do you know what's going on with the girls?" Anroll stirred from his thoughts when Lauren asked that.

"Hmm?" His mind had been wandering, trying to piece together how this could have happened, and none of the ideas he'd come up with were good.

"I have some suspicions, but I'd have to know more about the timeline of what happened. I've never heard of anything like this, no." He smiled at her.

"And please, call me Anroll. I was never knighted, so it's my Pops who is Sir Greylan."

"I need to look for my bow," another Ellen—apparently Hunter Ellen—said, finally coming down the stairs. She was dressed more properly for winter, except for her feet wearing sandals.

"I'll grab my boots and get ready. Hi, Uncle Anroll! I can take you up to the town we're staying at, I know the other Ellens would like to see you. Sorry for running away and making problems." Leaning back, Anroll rubbed his temples.

"Look, Ellen, I came to bring you home but I can't really do it like this. Just tell me what you intend to do so I can start to figure out what to tell your parents." Village Ellen looked downward.

"If you really need someone to go back, I can do that. I don't have any taste for adventuring any more." She adjusted her dress, fidgeting there.

"I like it here, though." Anroll just shook his head.

"I don't want to decide anything until I know more about your situation and the dungeon." Lauren looked visibly relieved, but she didn't say anything. Hunter Ellen gave a playful punch to the unnamed Ellen's shoulder and asked, "Did you ever decide what you were going to do? I know our original plan is kind of dumb now, but if you're willing to wait to really get the benefit I bet you can still do it." The undecided redhead leaned back in her chair.

"I'll go back up to Onroc with you. I was going to go Hunter and branch into the Furrier or maybe Trapper before, that was our plan, but during winter that might be a pain. There's plenty of pelts to work with but… I'm thinking I'll try to go toward Artisan or something, then to some kind of smithing Class. So you can call me Smith Ellen." Anroll felt a headache coming on, and he rubbed his temples again, then took a calming sip of the soup.

It was mostly broth, but the local herbs gave it a pleasant, warm and earthy taste.

"Is this normal? Deciding a name right away?" All three Ellens tilted their head at him, and Anroll felt the eerie dizziness of seeing that near-perfect replicated movement.

"Of course," Hunter Ellen answered.

"How else would we refer to one another? As we drift in different branches we have bigger differences, but we're all the same person in the end. We try to work together."

"We've started a sort of town of our own up in the mountains." Smith Ellen took over explaining smoothly, moving on to answer Anroll's earlier question.

"When I first went my own way I became a Hunter just to live by myself, but I have an idea for later if I choose Artisan. I think we just let every Ellen choose what they're interested in, and most of us try to pick up some kind of skill that helps us survive or expand the town." Hunter Ellen took over again, with a completely seamless transition.

"It's worked well so far. Only a few people in town know anything about our situation, most think we're twins. So we've been restoring some old ruins I found—previous Hunter Ellen I mean—and trying different things to do since we all start back at Level 0 when we're remade. We have a lot of banked experience though, so we can pretty quickly get to at least a Tier 1 Class." Too much information. Anroll had some ideas now about what had happened… and he was pretty sure why the dungeon had formed here.

He rubbed his chin and glanced toward the door.

"Lauren, Tobias… I'm going to borrow Village Ellen here for a while to bring her with me, if there's enough time to get to this place." He jerked his chin toward the mountain.

"I'd like to sit down with all of the uh… my nieces and explain things all at once. I can… carry the corpse up so it isn't in your inn."

"Can I come back tomorrow? They'll need help with the blood." Village Ellen immediately asked that, but in the process confirmed they could get to the town before sundown. The casual acceptance of her own self's corpse was disquieting to Anroll, but he nodded anyway. How many times had each Ellen dealt with her own body? That was something even he had never experienced. Doppelgangers were practically extinct by now, so it had never been a concern. And this definitely wasn't a case of those weird changelings.

"Do what you need to do," Tobias called out from nearby.

"We won't have any guests for a while." Anroll leaned back in his chair as the newborn Smith Ellen hurried upstairs to get more properly dressed for the weather outside. Village Ellen, whose dress was definitely not suitable for hiking up a mountain, followed her. The older adventurer grumbled under his breath.

"What in the System did you do, Pops?"