The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

As the carriage loudly sauntered out of sight, the group withdrew from the window. DicingDevil closed it behind them.

"It looks like it's going North," he said. "We might catch up with it if we head out soon."

"I didn't notice it until we entered this part of the building, maybe it's some sort of apparition that only appears from in here?" Grisier replied.

"That's quite possible, we'll see."

As the group slowly sifted through the materials on the desk, finding a few valuable old coins and medallions, there was a loud cracking noise from the right side of the room.

As Crucis looked over, he saw a pale, thin white mist rising through the paintings of Amalen and of the feast of Charseus. Large cracks had begun to spread across these paintings, bellowing white mist like a volcano. The streams of mist coalesced in the air to form a faintly red, ghostly light which flickered upwards like a candle's flame.

While the group hesitantly retreated, Crucis made sure to grab a few valuable ornaments from the desk before darting towards the room's doorway and shoving a thick wooden plank from a broken cupboard in to block the door. This was a precaution, just in case the door closed as a trap.

As the paintings eroded beneath the clouds of white paint, the white walls also began to break away on the right side of the room. This released chalky white mist into the air. Behind the wall, a corpse dropped to the ground. It was marked as the corpse of [Charseus Esyu], and was level 125.

The corpse sturdily lifted itself from the ground, revealing a large figure dressed in thick armour. Its eyes were red, glowing orbs that flared like the red light above. The door to the room swung heavily from side to side, as if in a fierce gale, but to Crucis' relief it remained comfortably open. While the group was in danger, they could escape.

"He's too high level, retreat!" DicingDevil shouted. "If you grab anything on the way out, make it quick."

As Charseus reached down, he picked up a mace that had been lying next to his body. The mace was a charred bronze, with glints of gold in a circle near its top. As he slowly raised it, Grisier cast [Breath of Ice] to slow Charseus, and the group quickly made a break through the round door of the room. DicingDevil was the last out, and forcefully shoved the painting back into place to block the door slightly.

The party quickly gathered a few valuable-looking trinkets and goblets from the hallway, but were interrupted by the blinding light of three pairs of glowing red eyes advancing down the hallway. Crucis could make out that one was wearing the broken suit of armour which they had seen earlier, and the armour itself had seemingly disappeared off the wall. The wearer's nametag said [Grandus Esyu], a name which Crucis didn't recognise.

"There's more of them!" Akshel exclaimed, as he headed for the door back to the living room.

"Leave, everyone," DicingDevil commanded.

Crucis had more Agility than the rest of the party, so he easily made it to the exit and hurtled through to the living room. As he looked backwards, he saw that Charseus had violently shoved the painting off its hinges, and began pursuing the group again. The red-eyed creatures moved slowly and awkwardly, as might be expected from a group of stiff, long-dead corpses.

While Akshel was able to make it safely to the living room as well, Starfighter found his retreat halted as a blinding flash of light erupted behind him and hurtled him forwards onto the ground. He was reduced to 67% HP.

Watching from the living room, Crucis saw that Starfighter had been attacked by a red-eyed female spellcaster wearing a tight, grey robe made of fur that whirled lightly as she walked slowly forwards. Her nametag said [Emalet Esyu], a name which Crucis didn't recognise.

She raised her arm, emitting a blazing bolt of light which almost burnt the eye to look at. However, it struck the ground harmlessly and burst into white mist, as Starfighter darted unexpectedly out of the way. After his experience navigating unsafe parts of the wild, Starfighter had instinctively used his arms as a lever and propelled himself stubbornly forwards again in a hurtling, crouched run with his head leaning forwards. As he exited the door, he tiredly regained his balance and stood up.

"The game's fight info says that she did damage of the 'Light' element. Haven't seen that one before," Starfighter said.

He had switched to the game's fight information tab as soon as he sensed danger, so that he would be able to quickly evaluate the nature of any damage done. However, in this case it raised more questions than answers.

DicingDevil was alarmed by the sight of a spellcaster who could attack from range, and had Grisier single her out with an [Ice Heart] followed soon after by [Breath of Ice]. As the air of the room turned noticeably colder, the female froze in her tracks. This gave DicingDevil enough time to hustle everyone else into the living room, where they made a break for the mansion's front door.

As they reached the entrance hallway, they heard a loud, feral screeching coming from above the stairs. It sounded somewhat like a crow's caw, except louder and held for longer. The voice also sounded strained, like a dying man screaming out for his loved ones. However, the group did not stay to ascertain the source of the sound, but ran one-by-one out of the mansion's door as the sound of clanking armour behind them grew louder from the direction of the living room.

While DicingDevil initially spurred the group on further, intending to escape towards the village, he allowed them to pause once he realised that the sound behind them had died down as soon as they left. There were no signs of anyone following them out of the mansion, which had returned to its previous, serene silence.

A few bats flew above them, making a light fluttering noise on their way.

As they caught their breath, Akshel turned to Starfighter and said, "Can't say I've seen 'Light magic' damage before either, but doesn't every Mage get some sort of basic light spells? Are those Light element?"

"You mean like [Conjure Light]?" Grisier said.

"I think so, the one which you were using so we could see in the dark."

"Yeah, that's counted as a non-elemental, basic spell. All of the earliest spells are non-elemental. I haven't seen anything with the Light element for sale either."

"There is a Lumenomancer class, that uses a Light element," DicingDevil said. "But it's very rare — even rarer than necros — so you guys might not have seen much of it. Any Guild with sufficient influence has one to three slots for Lumenomancers, so you have to join these Guilds, be selected by the leadership as one of their Lumenomancer candidates, and then go through a set of arduous quests in order to unlock the subclass. We have one slot for it just unlocked, since we count as more influential after consolidating the area around Kruxol, but nobody has filled it just yet."

"How powerful is the subclass?" Akshel asked.

"I can't say I've seen any, but I hear it's very powerful. The damage isn't as high as some other classes, but they can apparently survive just about anything. Under 60% HP, their attacks will start to heal them and their team-mates, and they can use large shields which are apparently quite resilient. They have some weaknesses, like weakened buffs and recoil damage from any spells which aren't of the Light element. They're quite valuable, but Guilds have limited slots so they have to choose carefully."

"I haven't seen any either, but I did see a Light Elemental," Crucis said. "It was fairly low-level, but I didn't see it use the Light element. Maybe higher-level ones would, I'd have to check."

DicingDevil smiled. "Ah yes. Like the ones around Kruxol? I did see one of those use a spell a bit similar to the ghost woman just now, but it was an AoE flash that exploded around it and killed a bunch of low-levels trying to fight it."

"I wasn't watching those too closely, but that's quite possible," Crucis said. It was true, he had been staying out of the way of the Elementals so that nobody realised that he had summoned them.

"I also heard about those," Akshel said. "There's a lot of gossip about it, people saying it was a bad omen for the war. There's also this one kook preacher in Kruxol who is saying that it was some kind of demonic spirits working in favour of the ungodly DeathGang."

Crucis laughed. "Many people will go crazy when they're trapped in this game world for long enough. It's just a matter of time. But it can be endearing, even noble: it's just a way that people open up and listen to an alien world - even at the cost of their sanity and connection to their community. It's like a DEFCON level, people internalise expecting and dealing with the unexpected. But this guy sounds like he's just restrained to a dogma of fear, of Christ crucified and continually re-crucified by fearsome villains like DeathGang. His ear is shut right when it should be open. Christian or not, if people are going to go crazy then they should be forthright about it."

"Definitely. We had one Guildmate in the war, he was like, 'I know that Fountain are the good guys here, but I'm tainted by the seed of Ba'al, I feel such deep loathing and envy whenever I see their goodness that I hate them.' We were like, at least you hate them, so we put him on the front lines and he died but took quite a few enemies with him," DicingDevil said. "He was a weird fellow, but certainly entertaining."

"Someone must be insane, to need to go through such an elaborate emotional process simply to hate people," Crucis said. "If everyone needed as much of a run-up as that guy, we would barely need exponentially growing hate speech legislation. But according to the law itself, hate is as easy as breathing. And perhaps it is."

"That's quite true. By the way, since Akshel brought this guy up, according to Darys he's raising trouble in Kruxol and trying to preach a sermon at the same time as our late celebration. It's not that serious, but it's one of a few gatherings that are defiantly trying to interrupt or distract from our planned procession around the town."

"For most of those, there's a simple solution. Aren't there some guys around the Kruxol outskirts who deliver stuff for public events? Like, they can deliver food, dancers, firecrackers, etc., if there are enough people gathered in an area. You could always interrupt some of these gatherings with corny dancers or firecrackers, by ordering it to the relevant place. I think they also let you add a few words to appear in a glitzy light display behind the dancers, no expletives but something simple like 'Victory to DeathGang' or 'Come and Glorify our Victory' would probably work."

"Yeah, that should be enough to dispell the crowds. I think there's some restrictions to prevent people from ordering stuff for events they're not involved in, but, since DeathGang is holding a celebration across Kruxol, Darys should be able to order just about anywhere. I'll mention it. But I'm not sure that we can target the preacher's sermon, he's doing it in a building reserved for religious services and I doubt we can get involved."

"As far as this preacher, would it be possible for me to meet him before the sermon? I might be able to get rid of him, but if not then at least I can extract some info."

"Sure thing. Our spies already found out that he holds a small confessional between sermons. He'll be holding a preliminary, short sermon for his 'flock' and for potential believers, about half an hour before the real one. We have a couple of people with alts who are nominally his 'followers,' they could put in a good word for you."

"Excellent, thank you. I'll have to figure out a fake persona, and something fictional to confess. I don't think I have any real flaws to confess to except for pride, and that's not a real flaw, it's just basic awareness. It's one of those fake flaws, like when you have fanfic characters whose only flaw is being 'too pretty.' So that leaves an impasse. 'Man I'm throwed and I don't know what to do.'"

"Listen to the first sermon, maybe you'll figure out the kind of thing that would make a good confession."

"Sage advice. Yes, I'll do that."

"Why did the celebration get delayed?" Akshel asked, seemingly scrolling through his Guild chat.

"Um, the devs apparently sent a message saying that all players should spend this night in towns or cities, not in the wild. I didn't see it, you guys?" DicingDevil replied.

"Nope, nothing," Grisier said.

The rest of the group looked through their system messages, and confirmed that they also didn't see any such message.

"Weird. Alright, I sent a message calling Modrea, Vladimir and Konstantin, we'll see if they heard anything. If not, then maybe it wasn't received in the Hunting area for some reason. Darys figured we should have a slight delay to allow the crowds to flood into Kruxol from nearby," DicingDevil said.

After about a minute, Modrea appeared on the path from the village, and walked up to join the group. Vladimir and Konstantin scampered through the bushes beside him, proudly holding pieces of [Young Oppossum Fur].

"An oppossum? Nice catch," Akshel said.

"Yes, yes. Vladimir saw oppossum wandering around past village, so he comes and drags me to catch it," Konstantin said. "We chase it into tunnel, then Vladimir uses fancy Assassin skill to warp to other side of tunnel. Oppossum is trapped inside the tunnel, can't leave through either end. It is easy fight, now can get good price for this."

"Why didn't Modrea help?" DicingDevil said.

"Um, he was relaxing in village, didn't want to disturb him. He said not to get into trouble, so didn't want to say we were chasing animals around the village like dog with car."

Modrea glared at them light-heartedly, then turned to the group. "I did manage to find a decent trinket in the village, it apparently increases the damage of Earth spells in dungeons. But price was way too high for a sketchy trinket, a few hundred thousand gold."

"Village shops often lie," Starfighter said. "Did you ask to inspect the product?"

"Nah, didn't want the shopkeeper to think I was loaded, he'd try scamming me then."

"Reasonable, but it might have been useful information. If you can inspect it, then you can check its actual description in the game, not just the shop's one. So if you know its name and description, you'd know if it's worth looking for elsewhere."

"Yeah, sure. I think it was named the [Helix Trinket], we'll see if the name comes up again."

"By the way, did you guys receive the message about staying in town tonight?" DicingDevil asked.

"Yeah, it was kinda clear, in red font. Did you guys miss it?" Modrea responded.

"We didn't receive it. Strange, maybe the mansion somehow blocks out global announcements? I haven't missed any before, but none of us saw the message while we were in there."

"That is weird. Anyway, you can tell us about the mansion later. The announcement wasn't that urgent, it just said that people should be in towns and cities by 10pm at the latest, preferably by 8. Apparently the wild will get too 'dangerous' due to some 'calamitous' creature appearing, not entirely sure what that means. So that leaves us a few hours. It's only 6:15 or so now, I think?"

"Yeah, basically. The procession is now at 9pm, so we have some time. We should try to get on the way backto Kruxol after finishing a few quests up North and checking what's to the East."

"That sounds like a plan," Starfighter said gruffly.

"Anyway, now that we're all here — other than Danemy, who dashed off North to look for the carriage — let's all head North as well and pick up some quests," DicingDevil said, before starting off up a path to the North.

The path was rough, and covered with sharp stones. However, there were no signs of a carriage having passed over the area. On the way, the group rejoined Danemy, who had gone up the path early to see if he could spot the carriage.

"Didn't see anything here," Danemy said. "At least, if there's any carriage, no sign of it. There's also this NPC, he seemingly tells you about everyone who comes down this road and says he didn't see anything. He also has a quest for groups, we can check on that now."

He pointed to an NPC standing beside the path further to the North, a young, brown-haired man wearing a light, green shirt and with a small, grey beard. He smiled widely on seeing them, and began to speak.

"Hello, I'm Dastard. The miners up North called me, 'That rogue who ran off with our stuff,' but now they've left. I'm just a messenger, y'know, I run around all fleet of foot and carry messages or letters from aristocrats and the king to anyone in the area. But it's a poor income. So how am I supposed to go on without grabbing supplies, coal and valuable stones from the mines and selling them? You guys have to help me!"

"He seems very sympathetic, the poor guy," DicingDevil intoned in deadpan. "Let's see what he wants."

He turned towards Dastard and, checking a few options shown next to the NPC, asked, "Tell me more about the mines."

"Well, I don't know exactly why the miners left, but supposedly they were chased off by some ghosts or something. They're fearless guys, but some ghosts killed a few of 'em and the rest were dragged out by higher-ups to avoid incident. So I'm wonderin', did the dead miners have anything on their person when they died? Any materials or tools I could steal? So I'm just going to ask you to check if you can find a dead miner, see if he has anything left, y'know? If he does, I'll come and find the rest, you just need to find one."

"What's in it for us?"

"I'll give you some good rewards. You can keep most of what you find on the miner, and I'll hand out some bombs I took from the soldiers near Kaxil. Some odds and ends I got from the miners as well. I can also offer this stone, it doesn't do much for me but I hear it's great for Guilds."

He held out his palm to reveal a chalky, white stone, named [Guild Blessing Stone].

DicingDevil assented quickly. "Yes, we're definitely doing this. I accept the quest."

"Thank you, brave adventurers," Dastard replied lackadaisically.

DicingDevil turned to explain to the party. "Those stones are valuable, they increase the gold yield from a Guild having influence over an area or controlling a town. They also give a boost to Guild members' stats when involved in Guild-based events. So it looks like we're rummaging around looking for dead miners."

"Sounds good," Starfighter replied. "Let's go."

As they walked further North, the path began to sway queasily from side to side. Soon, they saw a few small huts, indicating a settlement. A few men were sitting by furnaces outside these huts, manning small stalls which sold raw crafting materials such as iron, straw and wood sourced from the surrounding area. Crucis noticed that one stall was selling various forms of exotic, often decorative paper. A few of the items had seemingly been bought recently, judging by empty spots on several stalls.

As DicingDevil went briefly to have a chat with the stall owners, Crucis had a look around the settlement. It was overhung by tall trees with thick, dark-green leaves, making it quite humid and shadowy. The grass here had been trimmed, but still grew wild and long in some corners of the settlement, while a few bats rested upside-down on the trees just North of the settlement.

It was a curious choice of location for settling into, but Crucis guessed it might have been chosen due to its proximity to the former mine - this area may have been more crowded and ripe for trade in the recent past.

"The mine is Westwards," DicingDevil said, returning to the group. "There was a convenient quest here involving the mine, which would have dovetailed nicely with our other quest, but it's been taken. That might mean that someone else is in the mines. Keep a look out. But we don't know their level."

"Yeah, it also looks like some items from the stalls have been bought recently," Crucis said, sweeping his hand in the direction of the stalls. "We're likely to have company here. But they look to have only bought from the stalls which don't have items level-locked to 50 and over, so at least some of them are low-level. If so, we might have some decent targets."

"Observant. Yes, hopefully we get some kills, especially since these guys seem like wealthy crafters and might have good materials and gold on hand. Let's be on our way."

Walking down a thin, muddy path to the left of the settlement, surrounded by large trees, the group soon passed by what looked like a large, square-shaped white building to their right. Its window-frames were empty, but were carved into a delicate accolade shape at the top. Inside, it was quite dark, but was seemingly lit up by a lilting fire in one corner of the room.

"This looks a bit luxurious for the middle of nowhere," Akshel commented.

"I'm sure we'll find some eccentrics inside," DicingDevil said. "But let's check out the mines first."

Through the window, Crucis could dimly make out two figures playing chess by the fireside, though one player seemed to move stiffly and almost mechanically. The other player seemed a bit frustrated with their position, but seemed to be generally in good spirits, and his chest would occasionally heave in and out as if laughing.

Further down this narrow path, the group finally came across a large rockface with a cave-like hole screaming into the sky. Next to it was a tattered sign saying, 'J.H. Mines,' with the word 'disused' scrawled hectically above this. The rocks inside the mine's entrance were black, and it looked like the large mouth of a basking shark or whale shark. Around the entrance, wet mud had begun to spread along the ground, left unchecked now that the miners were away.

In this mud, there were clear footprints, which DicingDevil went up to inspect.

"These are definitely fresh," he said. "All are leading in, none coming out. It's likely they're still in there. Our Assassins should go in first, to get the drop on anyone in there. The rest of you, stay at the entrance, and prevent them from escaping."

Starfighter nodded and drew his sword, then stood tall at the entrance.