Chương 10: THE Gekko

The four adventurers continued deeper into the newly revealed passage, and Gloria immediately recognized the cave around her, because unlike everything they had crossed so far, this stretch had survived almost exactly as she remembered it from DDO.

The walls curved in familiar patterns, the scattered clusters of pale fungi occupied the same cracks in the stone, and even several oddly twisted roots that had once poked through the ceiling still clung to those very same places, leaving her with the unsettling feeling that she had somehow stepped into a memory. It made no sense.

Ara's existence alone had already proven that she was not the only player to find themselves in this world, and if one person had crossed over, then the possibility that many others had done the same became infinitely more believable. Three hundred years was an absurd amount of time for even a handful of players to leave their mark on the world, yet this place looked as though nobody had touched it since the day the game had ended.

Behind her, the atmosphere had changed so dramatically that it was difficult to believe these were the same people she had entered the dungeon with. The Archer's attention barely drifted from Gloria anymore, their thoughts completely consumed by everything they had witnessed over the last few minutes, while Bar and Rali had become strangely restrained after watching a Gold-ranked beast vanish beneath a single spell.

Even the Archer, who had already seen fragments of Gloria's strength before, struggled to reconcile the calm young woman walking ahead of them with the mage who had casually melted solid rock only moments earlier. Questions crowded the Archer's mind one after another, every possible answer leading only to another dozen questions. They searched through every famous Grounded they had ever heard stories about, comparing appearances, magical specialties, and known accomplishments, yet none of them fit.

Some possessed overwhelming magical talent but belonged to entirely different races and others shared Gloria's unusual appearance but lacked anything remotely approaching her command over magic. Whoever Gloria truly was, she did not belong anywhere within the Archer's understanding of the world's strongest figures.

That relentless search for answers left the Archer almost completely oblivious to the conversation taking place behind them, where Bar and Rali had deliberately fallen a few steps back and kept their voices low enough that only the two of them could hear. Whatever words passed between them were brief, but the effect was immediate.

Rali gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, and Bar's usual grin slowly spread across his face before he lengthened his stride, quickly closing the distance until he was walking almost shoulder to shoulder with Gloria.

"Hey there, girlie..." Bar began before abruptly cutting himself off, clearing his throat into a closed fist.

"Ahhh... damn it. Sorry. Lady? I've never really been the kind of guy who can talk like those fancy noble folks." Gloria's thoughts came to an unexpected halt as she glanced sideways at him, finding the interruption strangely welcome after the tangled mess they had become. Worrying over whether Echidna still waited somewhere ahead would not make the journey any shorter, nor would endlessly circling the same questions suddenly produce answers.

For the moment, Bar's sudden shift in demeanor proved considerably more interesting than the thoughts she had been trying, and failing, to organize.

"I've been listening to you talk for a while now," he continued, rubbing the back of his neck, "and I figured you're probably some rich br..." He stopped himself with another cough before correcting the sentence.

"Some proper noble lady, right?"

"And what, oh Bar, would lead you to such a conclusion?" He continued scratching the back of his head, which was an oddly uncertain gesture that looked almost unnatural on someone who had spent the better part of the expedition swaggering around with absolute confidence.

"Well... you're all fancy and stuff, ain't you? The way you speak, the way you carry yourself, your face doesn't have a single scar on it, you're... uh..." He hesitated for a brief moment before letting out a defeated sigh.

"You're ridiculously beautiful, and those robes of yours probably cost more than everything I own." A smile touched Gloria's lips.

"Hm. Your observations are quite perceptive, Bar, but your conclusion is mistaken. As a Grounded, I was born as lowly as one could possibly be. In the truest sense of the word, I was nothing more than a simple lizard, just as you have so graciously reminded me on numerous occasions." The confession struck him with all the subtlety of a lightning bolt.

"What?" His bewildered expression was so utterly genuine that Gloria almost laughed. She had not spoken a single falsehood. In her previous life she had been painfully ordinary, one insignificant person among billions whose greatest luxury had been spending every spare hour inside a virtual world that, by all reasonable standards, should have remained nothing more than a game.

Even in this world, this body had begun at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy, as a little more than an oversized lizard condemned to claw its way upward through countless evolutions, each one demanding unimaginable amounts of time, resources, and no small amount of luck. She could still remember the countless years she had spent exploring every evolutionary path available to her race. There had been hundreds of possible routes, each shaped by far more than simple levels.

The region in which a character developed, the main and side quests they completed, the achievements they earned, and even the order in which they accomplished them could open entirely different evolutions. Some paths had been available only to the first one percent of players to complete a newly discovered mission, while others demanded a place among the top fraction of achievers in the entire game. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Gloria had experimented with more of those possibilities than any reasonable person ever would, raising character after character to discover where each route ultimately led. Most had been abandoned the moment she realized they fell short of what she sought, because Gloria always had a singular target in mind. She had wanted the one possessing the greatest destructive potential—the path capable of producing more raw firepower than any other evolution could possibly attain.

Finding it had required years of relentless experimentation and grinding, followed by enough money invested into perfecting the resulting character to make even her old self question her sanity, but in the end, she had succeeded in her hunt! The game had never demanded such madness from her; that had been entirely her own decision. Considering all of that, and just how much time and effort it had taken to reach this point, she had truly started from the very bottom, and perhaps even a little below it.

"Ah, crap..." Bar muttered beneath his breath before dragging a hand down his face.

"Crap... damn it!" He looked at her again, this time without the mocking grin he had worn since the two of them first met.

"I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any bad blood between us, alright, gekko?"

"Gekko?" Gloria repeated.

"Oh, he's just killed himself…" Rali immediately said.

"I can't believe I'm about to do this, but I agree with you." The Archer muttered. The unfamiliar nickname echoed through Gloria's thoughts for a brief moment, and despite every effort to maintain the dignified composure she had carefully cultivated since arriving in this world, she found herself fighting the overwhelming urge to burst into laughter.

"Hahahahah!" That, at the very least, was certainly a new one. Bar let out an awkward laugh of his own, though it lacked even a fraction of Gloria's genuine amusement, and as though hoping someone else might rescue him from whatever this conversation had become, he threw a pleading glance over his shoulder toward Rali. His companion merely lifted both shoulders in a helpless shrug before motioning vaguely in Bar's direction, the gesture carrying a very clear message:'You started this. You deal with it.'

"You are a rather amusing man, Bar," Gloria said once her laughter had finally subsided.

"I must admit, you are almost amusing enough to make me forget that you attempted to murder me not so very long ago." The words landed with enough force to wipe the remaining color from Bar's grin.

"Ah... come on... That wasn't even me! It was that stick man back there!" he groaned.

"And besides, Gloria, I just like strong people, alright? Especially strong women! I could tell you were something special the moment I laid eyes on you, and that's exactly why I wanted you." Gloria blinked. That... was certainly a remarkably direct confession. At least he had abandoned any attempt to dance around the subject, which, strangely enough, she appreciated.

Bar was crude, loud, and possessed all the subtlety of a charging boar, but there was something refreshingly straightforward about him that made his intentions surprisingly easy to follow. Rali, on the other hand, remained an enigma wrapped behind that perpetually pleasant smile and those infuriatingly closed eyes, leaving Gloria no closer to understanding what truly went on inside the man's head than when they had first met.

"But after seeing what you did back there with that spell... Yeah, even I'm not dumb enough to keep pushing my luck. Not until I've gotten a whole lot stronger, anyway." Bar said.

'Perhaps he possesses more self-awareness than I initially gave him credit for. After all, he wasn't the one who'd tried to kill me.' Gloria mused. That charitable thought lasted for approximately two seconds.

'Nope! He is almost certainly just terrified of me now.' Seeing Gloria disappear into thought once again, Rali stepped neatly between the two of them.

"You must forgive my rather brainless companion, Lady Gloria. He became terribly excited after convincing himself that he might earn the privilege of crossing weapons with someone of your caliber, and I fear that enthusiasm clouded his judgment from the very moment we first met in the Guild Hall. In truth, that was our only reason for following you into this cave. We merely wished to ask whether you would honor him with a duel."

Bar's head snapped toward him so violently that Gloria half expected him to pull a muscle.

"... Rali," he whispered through clenched teeth, horror spreading across his face.

"Are you completely out of your damn mind?" Gloria, however, had already seized upon the opportunity.

"Oh, that is hardly a difficult request to grant!" She replied, folding her hands together.

"If a duel is your desire, then a duel you most certainly shall receive." Every trace of confidence drained from Bar's face. His mouth opened, closed again, then opened a second time as he desperately searched for a way to object without unraveling the very excuse Rali had so carefully woven together for them, and after several painfully long seconds he surrendered with a long, weary drawn out sigh.

"Disregarding this rather... entertaining exchange," the Archer finally spoke, drawing everyone's attention, "may I ask what your true objective is within these caves, Lady Gloria? And... if I may be so bold... do we truly require the company of these two?" Gloria's attention shifted toward the hooded adventurer, finding the question considerably more worthwhile than the conversation she had just escaped.

It was almost endearing how naturally the Archer had included themselves alongside her while excluding Bar and Rali entirely, though she could hardly blame them for it. The Archer had entered the cave believing Gloria to be an inexperienced mage in need of protection, and despite everything that had happened since then, that protective instinct had never truly disappeared. It had merely transformed into concern of a different sort.

"That is a fair question." Gloria admitted before clearing her throat.

"As all of you should already know, this expedition was commissioned under the assumption that the cave possesses no discernible end, was it not?" All three nodded. Rali was the last to do so, his gaze wandering thoughtfully across the stone walls before returning to Gloria.

"I would ordinarily agree without hesitation, yet everything beyond that illusion has challenged what I believed I knew. I have traversed these tunnels well over a dozen times throughout my career, and I would stake my reputation upon the certainty that this passage has never existed before today."

"It has," Gloria answered without the slightest pause.

"You simply lacked the qualifications to perceive it."

"... Qualifications?" Gloria inclined her head.

"This path was never intended for ordinary visitors. It reveals itself only to those deemed worthy of standing before the one who created this place." Bar frowned, clearly struggling to decide whether Gloria was speaking in earnest or simply amusing herself at his expense. Beside him, Rali's smile lost a fraction of its warmth as something thoughtful settled behind his closed eyes.

"You mean to say... there is someone waiting at the end of these caves? And that that someone had created all of this?"

"But of course there is!" Gloria replied, sounding almost surprised that such a possibility could be questioned.

"Every creation has its creator, does it not? Why should this place be any different?" The narrow passage finally widened into a grand chamber unlike any they had crossed before. Standing at its far end were two enormous stone doors carved from pale gray rock, their surfaces covered from top to bottom in elegant reliefs. There could be no mistake. This was Echidna's sanctuary.