Chương 246: 223: We Are Rats

Alpha wondered if he hated people? Alpha, from the moment he awoke in this world, had been let down by people. People had been the source of all his troubles. His hands moved the computer mouse set before him. It wasn't real, but that was okay. Alpha wasn't sure what was real anymore. Alpha, this world, his memories, and more, nothing felt tangible. So, he treated it like it was real, clicking boxes, points of light arranged in harmonious groups to form a picture he understood. Click here, get something.

Press there, spend something. Click somewhere, anywhere, just click. Don't think, just click. Math was simple, random chance truly didn't play favorites, and Alpha was safe.' What about Delta?' Despite the mantra, perhaps the belief, Alpha knew something was wrong, deeply wrong. His thoughts, his mind, his memories, all became abstract as if they were being picked through, decided upon, and separated into two groups. Two disharmonious groups. What was worth it to keep?

What part of Alpha was worth being in one group, but discarded in another. A memory of a snack? Why was one considered valuable but ten others were not? Alpha didn't know. He just clicked. If he had to voice the reason why, even as a guess, it might simply hurt too much. Another piece was up for selection, to decide which group it would go to. The worth it pile or the Alpha pile. A memory of a village. People. Their faces were easy to recognise, but their names escaped him.

Perhaps he never bothered accepting them into his memory? Faces helped separate people, names tied them together. Alpha didn't like that idea. He didn't want their ties or bonds. Maybe Alpha didn't like people.' What about Delta?' Yet, at moments, he thought about what he did want. A silence was his answer and that hurt. How could he not know what he truly wanted? Didn't people have dreams? Didn't people have motivations? Surely... Alpha was a person? But what if he didn't like being a person?

His hand moved, he spent something, he gained something. He clicked anywhere to continue. Alpha wanted... had wanted someone to just tell him what to do. No more subtle suggestions, no more pearls of 'wisdom', no more people telling him to just find his own way. Alpha needed for one person to just reach out and be honest. People talked around him, at parties or small dinners thrown after a successful mission or some goal Alpha achieved.

They talked to each other with those bonds, those ties, those names, and they never looked at Alpha directly. Alpha was invisible to their hearts and minds. Closed off and not even given a chance to reach out. It hurt. He was always someone else's guest, someone else's adventurer, someone else's responsibility.' What... about Delta?' Alpha was a guest of honor that no one cared to even greet. He was supposed to be important according to his power, to the Siblings, but he was nothing.

He was a conversation piece whilst being in the room. People talked and said his name, but they never tied it to themselves. Alpha wanted that, he realized. Names that tied and faces that separated. People who weren't him that wanted his name tied to theirs. Why did Alpha's name and face separate him? He clicked, because it was all he could do. All the while, the shifting of Alpha continued around him, inside him.

The feeling of being shared, of becoming two slowly becoming one again grew like a sinking feeling of a room that had once held good memories but was now just a room that could no longer supply Alpha with those same emotions. Alpha resented the room, the people, and his name. He resented something inside him that made him refuse to reach out first. Like he was some frightened hedgehog that was scared of being hurt by others.' Delta. What about her?'

His hand moved, he clicked, the boxes with the pretty images looking degraded now.

"Why won't someone just talk to me?" he asked and the question felt entitled, like Alpha was some special person who deserved ties, names, and faces that didn't separate him. That Alpha deserved to be the one who was approached. That Alpha shouldn't ever have to risk himself. Alpha craved more but he began to hate people. He hated what Alpha was in their mind. A silent, unlikeable child. Alpha hated people because they were showing him what he was by their lack of desire to reach out to him.

An unlikeable game piece that demanded to be more than a child.

"Emotions... are so painful," Alpha said, bending his neck as the mouse cracked under his grip, still working despite the insides oozing a dark liquid. The screen before him went black, reflecting nothing, not even Alpha.

"What about Delta? She makes you feel. Would it be better to not have them?" came a voice, warped and confused. Alpha didn't look behind him as a whitish silhouette in the screen seemed to stand just behind his shoulder. Beyond their reflection, the monster, the Echo, spread and tried to find cracks, a depth to Alpha to sink lower into. It would be disappointed.

"No, I like feeling good," Alpha insisted, trying to figure out if the white figure was also the Echo. The answer he arrived at was the being 'was' and it 'was not' the Echo. It had no features, no real substance, but it was something he could latch on to.

"But then you understand you simply cannot feel good all the time. Without the bad, without loneliness, you can't ever appreciate or desire others," the figure pointed out in a logical way that was soothing.

"Why can't I just have it that way? Just good after good?" Alpha asked, knowing the answer already but so tired of having to reason out the unreasonableness from others.

"I could say something about the struggle of people, how it makes us all appreciate things more or I could point out there are bad things you enjoy cause it results in good," the figure said as screens lit up, showing incremental games, clicker games, strategy games, and a dozen more with numbers going up due to a well constructed understanding. Problems of textbooks being solved and essays being written... Then it all vanished.

"But I'll cut to a more direct point. If someone else's happiness comes at the expense of your annoyance or disappointment... you're the type to find some pleasure out of that. To see someone else happy at something you'll get over in a few minutes," the figure said and Alpha looked down at his hands, stained with the black sludge.

"If we all had one happiness... one sadness... It would be so sad. We'd all be sad with no one in the mood to help us, everyone would be so happy that no one would be allowed to enjoy a sad book or movie or have a breakup. We'd all be so angry, we'd have no one to risk our temper to get close and show us they care... people are so silly, Adam, and it sucks," the figure said and Alpha jerked at the name.

"Emotions hurt," Alpha repeated, his voice trailing off as the idea came to him.

"Feeling nothing at all hurts so much more, take it from me, buddy. Besides, I don't think the last few weeks of your life have been that bad! I'm rather envious!" The figure so undefined that he was barely an outline seemed to cross his arms in amusement.

"Who are you?" Alpha asked and around him, orange splotches began to spread. Eyes opening in worry, concern, and anger.

"She hasn't changed," the figure said with some warmth before Alpha felt like someone slammed him hard in the gut with a bath full of water and then dropped a shelf of bibles on him.

"I'm just what Echoes. A little bit of me in all of them... don't judge me too harshly? Inner demons aren't funny when they go public," the figure sighed then vanished. Alpha has a single thought flashed across his mind, half a dream, then gone. Unable to remain real as the connection to the Echo faded. Knowledge, memory, and more he tried to cling to evaporated as if the figure couldn't even support residual memories of themselves in other people. Love this novel?

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"Oliver?"

Delta was between the real world and somewhere inside of Amenstar, the teen with her in this strange 'shared' mind space. Was it their souls touching?

"I don't think so?" Amenstar answered without hearing the question. His own mind wondered if this was really her, Delta. Deo's hero, Poppy's interest, Ruli's best friend, and more. Was this the almighty unseen Dungeon causing everything Amenstar knew to change?

"I am," Delta promised, her heart aching at the ability to talk to someone so directly, perhaps too directly. They were bonded for a moment, tied together due to mutual desire to help Alpha and stop the Echo. Delta could have imposed a dozen bindings on Amenstar in this exposed fragile state. Delta could see how she could do it, bind him to her in a way Delta would have a permanent connection to outside, to the real world, but Delta couldn't even fathom tying such a beautiful soul up in chains, in binding strings.

She couldn't stand the idea of such a thing inside a cage. Amenstar mumbled something about Delta being too direct and she could only smile.

"You're a good one," she praised and his soul threw up his necromancy, lack of friends outside Deo and Poppy, perhaps Alpha, and his troubles with his father's church as if these were blemishes on his character, not circumstances beyond his means.

"More friends don't always mean you're a better friend," she said gently. The conversation part-words, part-emotions. It was a strange, intimate and delicate way of talking to someone. Their connection wove together, dancing in sync but never forced together by oaths or promises. Still, Amenstar had opened his soul to her and already she saw phantom mushrooms and eyes appearing in his spirit self.

"Don't apologize, it's fine," Amenstar promised as he gently prodded a mushroom which had skull patterns on it while others had sheep heads. Amenstar seemed interested in something and his mind asked a question before it could cross his lips, a sort of accidental slip of the mental tongue.

"Wonder why necromancy doesn't work on mushrooms? It's a popular topic in Necro-Monthly, or the outdated ones in Paige Turner's book store at least..." he mused, "maybe that mystery has been solved?" he pondered. Delta, perhaps for the first time, let a twinge of annoyance show.

"Can't have anything without mushrooms getting involved," she scowled at the spread, but she was being asked a question and as a teacher, she couldn't help but want to answer a potential student's question!

"Necromancy is something I'm only slightly familiar with, but I noticed an... employee struggling to also affect them in her time of being... hired," Delta began, pausing before some words. Technically, it wasn't a lie! Mharia was hired. She just didn't consent to it.

"Mushrooms and fungi are strange because everything that lives should eventually die. Mushrooms grow on themselves, the cycle of death so deeply entwined with life that it's a lot like trying to control only jam on a peanut butter and jam sandwich," Delta made a dramatic wave of her hand as if holding up a godly sandwich. Amenstar stared at her.

"It's really hard to separate the jam from the butter once the sandwich is made. People are easier because it's like they're born fully peanut butter and then over time become jam. Fungus is more like an ever growing pain in the light that is my existence," she concluded with a sigh.

"Mushrooms are... sandwiches?" Amenstar repeated, sounding puzzled.

"Mushrooms are a lot of things," Delta agreed and she moved around the space, trying to make sure nothing Echo-y was in his soul, which she was glad to see there wasn't!

"What happens to us now?" the teen asked as he followed her through his own soul. Amenstar's soul was a lot like a quiet street in Durence during the fall, red and golden leaves covering the ground with a relaxing vibe. Delta could easily make a lo-fi track to this scenery. Suddenly a question occurred to Delta. How could there be seasons if the world was flat and didn't turn? She queried Sis and got the answer back that the world did rotate, Brother's body spinning head first around and around.

It became winter when it faced the Abyss and summer when it faced the sea of stars. Neat.

"Now, I need to get out of here because-" Delta began as a sudden haze of painful mana flowed over her, trying to net her back to her Dungeon. The floating castle above Durence was going berserk like a kicked wasp hive and it was using a strange array of 'dead' mana to box Delta in for some reason. All she did was break her Dungeon boundaries, hop into a body, fight an Echo, and became a goddess. It wasn't that big of a deal.

"I may have upset a few people by taking a short enthusiastic walk," Delta concluded.

"You're not an Abomination," Amenstar said with absolute confidence which made Delta feel warm and she touched her chest, moved by the kind words.

"You're really weird and I don't think there's anything else in the world like you which is saying something, but you're not an Abomination," Amenstar went on, which sort of punctured the warm feeling.

"Hey... Amenstar?" Delta asked as she began to fade, feeling the bond pulling her back to her Dungeon. The teen blinked at her.

"How do you make holy water?" she asked seriously and the teen opened his mouth to answer, but Delta beat him to it.

"You boil the heck out of it!" she cackled and snapped like a rubber band, shooting so fast back into her Dungeon she crashed through a dozen walls that took minutes to reform.' She lives.' Prim announced.

"I'm not worried about Delta, I'm worried what she managed to do in the hour we didn't see her," Nu grunted.

"I made a friend..." Delta said, raising a finger before collapsing on the ground, buzzing as her avatar collapsed into her core to recover. Delta felt so sleepy. In the future, she would take more precautions in the event she needed to sit up and handle a problem.

"Watch out for Fairplay... they think I've gone weird," she slurred as she went for a nap.

"I heard 'defend the dungeon with ultra-violence'," Nu said as the Dungeon Core went dark in a sort of power-saving mode." I heard the same. Also, what should we do about the Echo? It's clogging up my windows and Delta needs to choose a reward.' Prim asked as she turned to the fourth floor and soaked in the coming storm.

"What are the options?" Nu asked curiously as the dungeon switched to danger level 2... just to be safe.' The Echo has been defeated. Please choose a reward! -All monsters gain a resistance to Echo influence. -Unlock esoteric and unusual construction options from this point on. -Rats.

"The last one is a bit vague," Nu mused.' Don't look at me. I try to get details and its 'Rats. All the Rats'. Whatever that means,' Prim grunted.

"Just pick that one. I don't want Echo protection unless we personally develop it and I don't want some idiot's idea of a dungeon cropping into Delta's future room options. She is already making enough baffling choices as is," Nu ordered and Prim considered it then shrugged, picking the option. Nu was sure it would only mildly come back to bite him. Bite him with little yellow fangs...

Under Durence, skittering about in the dark of the sewer and basements around town, a dozen little forms went stiff, then, as one, turned to the East of Durence as if hearing a command.' Rats... rats... you are rats...' From rat to rat, the connection formed all across the land as every rat in the world had their little eyes flash orange.