Chương 481: B7—Chapter 57: Two Truths That Cannot Coexist

For our next target, we chose the first dungeon Mahya spotted in the hillside. Although Al now mostly fought as a mage, we still entered in the old formation. He walked in front with his shield, Mahya right after him, me next, and Rue bringing up the rear. On the other side was a small metal room with a door on the opposite wall. Right as I entered, Al was groaning and rubbing his forehead.

"What's the matter?" I asked. Text appeared in front of my eyes, but I ignored it to hear Al's answer.

"It's a genomey dungeon," he said in such a defeated tone that I wanted to hug him to make it better. I switched my attention to the text to see what the issue was. 🌀 THE WAR THAT STARTED BEFORE IT ENDED 🌀 As remembered by seventeen eyewitnesses, three passers-by, and Archivist Tigelbo the Mostly Accurate. First, there was a beginning. Then it was replaced. Then both began arguing about who arrived first and declared war. Know this: this dungeon is not broken. It is working as intended.

Once, in the Reasonable Era, which everyone agrees was a Mistake, the Genomey High Council attempted to solve conflict forever by placing all disagreements in one convenient location. That location immediately disagreed with itself. Thus was born the Battlefield of Mutual Certainty, where both sides are correct, every enemy is wrong, and victory is mathematically inevitable for both participants simultaneously. The dungeon grew sections. The sections grew opinions. The opinions sharpened into armies.

Here, fire argues with ice about whose fault steam is. Here, eggs fight with birds over who came first. Here, jumpers accuse fliers of cheating. Here, metal fights stone over who truly supports the world. Here, swimmers fight with walkers over border rights. Here, hammers battle nails for taking all the credit. Both are right. Both are furious. Each chamber contains Two Truths That Cannot Coexist, locked in eternal warfare because compromise was outlawed. You will be asked to choose a side.

This choice will be final until it is revoked, reversed, misfiled, or won. Assisting one faction will empower it, weaken the other, and retroactively justify your decision. Failure to assist either will be interpreted as siding against both, which is rude. Victory is defined as the moment when one side is declared the winner by reality. Be warned. Switching sides mid-conflict is allowed, encouraged, and may result in applause or a greater share of the loot. Do not seek fairness here.

Fairness left after being shouted at. Do not seek truth. Truth is currently engaged elsewhere. Seek only Resolution, which is achieved when one army stops moving, and the other insists it planned it that way. You are not heroes. You are Temporary Reinforcements. You are not saviors. You are Useful Outsiders With Opinions. Your presence will tip balances that were never stable to begin with. Proceed boldly. Choose decisively. Win loudly.

And remember the sacred maxim: If both sides hate you equally, you are doing very well and get more loot. Enter now. The war is waiting to see who you help prove right.

"What the hell?" I asked. Nobody answered. Mahya was busy giggling, Al was rubbing his forehead and looking like he wanted to hit something, and Rue was yawning. Finally, Al sighed deeply.

"It may be prudent to withdraw and clear the yellow portal instead," he suggested. Mahya looked at him like he had lost his mind.

"Why? Ignore the stupid text." She waved her hand.

"No. Ignore most of the stupid text, but remember the most important part. If we kill everything, we get more loot." That seemed to cheer him up a bit, but not completely. He still looked thoroughly gnomed out.

"Mahya's right," I said.

"We wanted dungeons. This is a dungeon. It says that if everybody hates you, you get more loot. So we should proceed as always. Kill everything, get the loot and the core, then move on." Now he looked at me the same way Mahya had looked at him earlier.

"You are advocating that we proceed into this dungeon?" He sounded genuinely scandalized. I nodded.

"Yes. We agreed to do dungeons and actively searched for them." I pointed at the door in front of us.

"So we might as well get on with it." Al sighed again, rubbed his forehead once more for good measure, and nodded with a defeated air. I really couldn't figure out what the problem was. Yes, he didn't understand the gnomes and thought they were all insane. And yes, the dungeon text definitely sounded gnomish. But it was still just a dungeon. We'd done so many by now that he should've been completely fine with it. Since I didn't have an answer, I just shrugged and followed them out the door.

We stepped out into a round, sandy arena surrounded by tall standing stones. One of the stones held the doorway itself. All the stones were covered in engravings. Half showed curling flames carved into the rock. The other half were etched with snowflakes. We stood there for a few seconds, looking around. Nothing happened. Rue let out a low growl, more annoyed than threatening, his tail flicking. He looked from one stone to another, then at us, sending me a confused feeling down the bond.

"I have no idea," I told him. Mahya's expression sharpened, and she marched straight to the center of the arena. The moment her boot touched the middle, the place exploded into motion. Flames burst up from half the arena, rolling and twisting as if alive. On the other side, long ice shards punched their way up through the sand with sharp cracking sounds. The flames leaped, throwing fireballs in wild arcs. The icicles responded in kind, hopping and skidding as they hurled razor-sharp shards of ice back at them.

Mahya immediately jumped back to us.

"Who do you want to help?" I grinned as an idea clicked into place.

"The ice." She stared at me for a moment, then shrugged.

"Fine. You lead this one." I scanned the arena and pointed.

"Let's stand behind the ice things so they know we chose a side. But don't do anything yet."

"Are you certain?" Al asked.

"Trust me," I said.

"I have the best plan ever." We took positions behind the icicles and spent the next ten minutes hopping sideways whenever a stray fireball came too close. The icicles were surprisingly nimble, springing around the arena and dodging most of the attacks. Still, now and then, one got hit and partially melted, slumping and dripping into the sand. Bit by bit, water soaked into the arena floor. Every time an icicle melted even a little, I reached out and connected to the water, letting it sit there, untouched.

Mahya leaned forward a couple of times, muscles coiled as if she were ready to jump into the fray. Each time I grabbed her hand.

"Wait. Trust me." After about ten minutes of us jumping from side to side like deranged kangaroos, half the icicles were gone, and the sand was drenched. Rue huffed, paced in a circle, then flopped down with a frustrated growl. I hummed, cast Fortify on Al, and said, "Cast the freezing spell from both hands at the same time." He did. The effect was immediate. At least half the flames sputtered and shrank, their movements slowing as frost crept across them.

I pulled on all the water in the sand, lifted it up in a single heavy wave, and dropped it straight onto the flames. Most of them winked out instantly. Only two tiny flames remained, flickering stubbornly. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I was about to tell Al to freeze those too, but didn't get the chance. Before I even opened my mouth, he cast again. The last two flames shattered.

They didn't vanish like the others but broke apart into motes of mana that drifted together and solidified into a red stone resting on the sand. The remaining icicles bounced all over the arena in a bizarre, chaotic victory dance. I nudged Mahya with my elbow.

"When enough of them bunch up, do your flamethrower thing." I turned to Al, about to explain the rest, but he was already ahead of me.

"Blazing orbs," he said.

"Yep." Mahya unleashed her flamethrower thing and melted six icicles in a single sweeping burst. Al and I took care of the remaining, pelting them with blazing orbs from both hands. It took about three minutes to finish them off. Just like before, the last two didn't melt. They shattered into motes of mana that gathered and formed a blue stone in the sand. Rue growled again. I scratched his ear.

"Trust me, buddy, you'll have a lot of things to fight." Mahya walked to the red stone, drew in a sharp breath, and let out a soft, excited "Oh." She crouched beside it, brushing the sand away with careful fingers.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A fire stone."

"And that is?" She picked it up with an excited expression.

"They're used in forges. You set one into the hearth, and you don't need gas, coal, or wood anymore." She turned it slightly, watching the faint glow under the surface.

"It absorbs mana from the environment on its own, so you don't have to feed it like a crystal. All you do is control the intensity with mana. Low output for steady heat, higher for smelting. It's way safer than an open flame." Al bent down and lifted the blue stone, frost forming faintly around his fingers before fading.

"This is an ice stone." I raised an eyebrow.

"Let me guess. You put it in a box, and it becomes a freezer?" They both stared at me for a moment. Mahya nodded.

"Yep. Pretty much."

"Can I have it?" Al asked.

"Go ahead," I said.

"Sure," Mahya said, then laughed.

"And you wanted to skip this dungeon because of the flavor text." Al fidgeted, drumming his fingers against his thigh.

"You're taking the fire stone?" I asked her. She gave me the look. I lifted my hands in surrender.

"Yeah, I know. Stupid question." The door to the next area was in a standing stone opposite the one we came from. It also led to a small metal room with a door in the opposite wall. We just crossed it and continued. Again, it led into a sand arena surrounded by tall standing stones. Those also had engravings. Half had eggs engraved on them, and the other had various birds. Rue barreled straight into the center of the arena, paws kicking up sand as he skidded to a stop. Nothing happened for half a heartbeat.

Then, with a sound like a thousand pebbles rattling in a tin can, the eggs cracked free from the engravings and popped up out of the sand. They were roughly egg-shaped, off-white and speckled, each standing on two absurdly thin spring legs that bounced and coiled beneath them. From their sides stuck two spindly arms, elbows bending the wrong way, gripping improvised weapons that looked hammered together out of scrap metal, bone, and Spirits know what else. Cleavers fashioned from curved sections of food cans.

Bent forks welded to door handles. Chair legs used as clubs, some of them still wearing scraps of upholstery, along with a variety of other strange creations. Across the arena, the birds burst out next. They came in every shape imaginable. Some were squat and aggressive; others long-necked and shrill. A few flapped to lift themselves clear of the sand, while others ran with heads low and wings half-spread, kicking up grit as they charged. For a second, both sides froze, staring at each other.

Then everything went completely insane. The eggs sprang forward in unison, their legs compressing and releasing like coiled traps. They launched themselves across the sand in wild arcs, weapons flailing. One egg smacked into a bird midair, bounced off its chest, hit the ground, and immediately sprang again, stabbing upward with a jagged spike. Another landed, wobbled, corrected itself, and started windmilling a hooked blade attached to a length of yarn while shrieking in a thin, metallic clatter.

The birds split into two groups. The fliers circled above and made sudden dives at the eggs, leaving spiderweb cracks and sending chips flying. The other group ran straight at the eggs in a V formation. The eggs formed one of their own, and the two groups collided head-on. Feathers filled the air, drifting and spinning as bodies slammed together. One bird grabbed an egg by the arm and flung it bodily into another bird, the two tumbling across the sand in a furious knot of wings and spring legs.

Several eggs coordinated, bouncing in staggered rhythms to keep their footing as they surrounded a larger bird. They jabbed from all sides, blades clanging against bone and beak. The bird responded by spinning in place, wings battering outward, knocking two eggs flat and snapping another clean in half with a single savage peck. The broken egg twitched once, its spring legs spasming, then went still. Nearby, a bird was overwhelmed when three eggs latched onto it at once.

One clung to its back, hammering down with a blunt tool. Another hooked a leg and yanked. The third leaped straight up and drove a spike down through the bird's skull. The body collapsed in a heap, feathers settling slowly around it. More eggs burst from the sand to replace the fallen, and more birds burst out of the stones, screeching loud enough to make my ears ring. Weapons rang, beaks cracked, springs boinged and snapped. It was impossible to tell where one fight ended and another began.

The entire arena dissolved into a crazy brawl. At the very center, Rue stood amidst the chaos, his head turning from side to side as bodies flew past him. An egg bounced off his flank and went spinning away. A bird clipped his shoulder and flapped desperately to recover altitude. He snapped at anything that came too close, but it looked like all of them ignored him completely. The confusion I could feel through the bond kept growing.

"Come join us, buddy," I sent to him. With all the noise, even his sensitive ears would not have heard me.

"Thoughts?" Mahya asked. I took in the mess of wings, shells, sand, and spring legs flying in every direction and came up empty. Al was already rubbing the bridge of his nose, eyes half-lidded like he was trying to will a headache away. Mahya glanced from side to side, tracking the flow of the fight, then nodded to herself.

"Let's help the eggs first. Then we'll deal with them." That was good enough for everyone. We slipped in behind the egg lines and kept our distance, acting as support rather than jumping straight into the mess. Mahya picked off birds with the air rifles from Zindor, each shot followed by a bird jerking mid-charge or dropping out of the sky in a scatter of feathers. I cast Fortify on Al, and he went to work, slowing the birds with cold before slicing through them with Wind Blades.

I added crossbow bolts where I could and threw in the occasional lightning burst when a cluster got dense. Rue finished the injured ones with Wind Blades, and used his Wind Breath to give us room whenever a group got too close. The last two birds burst apart into motes of mana. The particles spiraled together instead of fading, knitting themselves into a strange contraption that dropped onto the sand with a dull thud. It had straps, reinforced joints, and two massive bird wings folded tight against its sides.

Mahya's eyes lit up. She pulled out a big forging hammer, rolled her shoulders once, and said, "Let's clean up," before charging into the middle of the celebrating eggs. One heavy swing came down, and three shells cracked, spring legs buckling as they collapsed. Al and I exchanged a look, then reached for our own big construction hammers and joined her. The eggs bounced and flailed, weapons clattering uselessly against metal as we waded in and started smashing them apart one by one.

Rue lunged at one that hopped too close, jaws snapping shut just as it swung a club that looked like a fire poker. The blow glanced off his head with a hollow clang. He shook it off, snorted, and growled, clearly offended that his teeth didn't even leave a scratch. The last two eggs coalesced into a big metal egg. The harness was pretty self-explanatory, so I went directly to the egg.

Hatchegg of Eventual Resolution This object resembles a large metal egg, seamless except for a single, deliberate fault line that refuses to open until it feels the time is right. It is heavy, warm to the touch, and radiates an air of patience. The Hatchegg may be applied to a project that has become truly stuck. Not unfinished. Not delayed. Not ignored. Stuck. The project must have reached a state where further effort produces only sighs, arguments, or increasingly elaborate workarounds.

The Hatchegg can tell the difference and will not be fooled. When activated, the Hatchegg absorbs the unresolved contradictions, misaligned intentions, and lingering "almosts" of the project. After a period of internal consideration, which may involve rattling, humming, or faint tapping from the inside, it completes the final stages all at once. The result is a finished project that insists it could not have been completed any other way.

Side effects may include: Sudden clarity in hindsight Strong belief that this solution was obvious Mild resentment toward the Hatchegg Warning: Using the Hatchegg on a project that is merely unfinished will cause nothing to happen, which the Hatchegg will regard as a valuable lesson. I laughed at the description, but still thought it was a cool loot. Mahya was laughing too while inspecting the winged harness.

"Something crazy?" I asked. She giggled and nodded. Mutual Ascension Harness (Avian Compliance Model) This device consists of two oversized bird wings permanently convinced they belong on a person. The straps are adjustable, self-tightening, and occasionally optimistic about anatomy. Once worn, the harness responds to small, polite amounts of mana, which it interprets as encouragement rather than fuel. When mana is channeled into the harness, the wings flap, angle, and correct themselves as if offended by gravity.

The wearer does not need to understand how birds fly. The harness is very clear that it does, and that this should be sufficient for everyone involved. Lift is achieved through a combination of aerodynamic certainty, mana-assisted confidence, and the firm belief that falling is simply flying in the wrong direction. Flight is smooth, birdlike, and mildly jerky. Sudden movements may result in overcorrection, elegant spirals, or brief hovering while the harness reconsiders.

Prolonged use may cause the wearer to develop opinions about wind currents. Warning: The harness will not function if mistrusted. It knows.

"You should take it," Mahya told me, jerking her chin toward the wings.

"Me? Why?" I asked, glancing at them, then back at her.

"I can fly. I don't need it."

"As a cover," she said, giving me a pointed look. I looked at the thing, considered it for a moment, then stored it. She and Al both looked at the egg with a covetous gaze. They didn't say anything, but it was very clear both of them wanted it badly.

"Flip a coin for it?" Mahya suggested, rocking slightly on her heels as her eyes stayed glued to the egg.

"I recommend we complete the dungeon, examine the remaining loot, and then decide," Al said, also not moving his eyes from the egg. She hesitated, lips pursed, then nodded once.

"Fine." They still didn't move. Both of them just stood there, staring at the egg like it might disappear if they looked away for even a second. I waited. Nothing changed. After over a minute, my patience ran out. I stepped forward, grabbed the egg, and stored it. Both of them snapped their heads toward me at the same time.

"I'll store all the undecided loot," I said, dusting my hands from the sand, "and you can figure it out after we finish the dungeon." They agreed, though neither of them looked particularly happy about it. Tough shit. I had no intention of standing around for hours while they gazed lovingly at a metal egg.