Prologue
Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes it gives you ashes.
The smell of...
Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes it gives you ashes.
The smell of...
-
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Is it wrong to try to avoid girls in dark dungeons? [Dark Souls/DanMachi/SI]
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Prologue
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Prologue
Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes it gives you ashes.
The smell of burning wood filled my nostrils, pushing through my lungs as I breathed it in deeply. This wasn't a barbecue; there was no meat burning on the grill. The crackling of the flames was near enough that I instinctively moved away from it, my finger clutching some sort of dirty stone pavement. My eyes bleakly put into focus my surroundings, an abandoned house made of stone, a leaky and half-broken roof covered in hay, and a precarious chimney. It was, rather than a house, a single room with a broken, creaking door that led outside into a field of uncultivated grass.
I barely managed to push myself up on my two feet, my eyes turning towards the fire, the familiarity of it ricocheting through my befuddled memories as I swallowed nervously. Either I had been kidnapped for a really intensive Larping event, or someone had thrown me in a Candid Camera of sorts.
The crackling fire wasn't just a fire. It was a bonfire. A sword, twisted and broken, stood deeply embedded within it. Skeletal remains bleached white from time and the heat of the flames crackled within, the smell of smoke a faint reminder. I rubbed my eyes, or at least, went for it. I stopped with my left hand raised to my eye level.
I took a deep breath. The Darksign's pitch-black existence twirled surrounded by flames on the back of my left hand. It hissed and whispered words that made no sense, but as I awkwardly neared my right hand towards the edges of it, I knew it wasn't a phony copy. The moment I touched it, ashes surrounded my entire frame, my vision turning dark. My body, once more, was slumped on the ground of the house.
I turned on my back, a sharp cough leaving my throat as I stared at the ceiling of the abandoned house.
This wasn't a joke.
I stood up, carefully making my way out of the door. The sun nearly blinded me, but past the glares and the lukewarm heat it emitted, I saw fields of green and a dirt road which snaked across the greenery towards a city near the horizon.
It didn't look like a city I knew of, and it definitely wasn't Lordran or any other settings that belonged to Dark Souls. I glanced down at my clothes before stepping outside, and once I realized I was wearing simple, everyday trousers and a thick wool shirt, I reckoned it could have been worse.
I could have started inside an Asylum with a broken sword.
Thus, I began to walk towards the city.
Had I known where that road would lead me...
...I would have gone the other direction.
Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes it gives you ashes.
The smell of burning wood filled my nostrils, pushing through my lungs as I breathed it in deeply. This wasn't a barbecue; there was no meat burning on the grill. The crackling of the flames was near enough that I instinctively moved away from it, my finger clutching some sort of dirty stone pavement. My eyes bleakly put into focus my surroundings, an abandoned house made of stone, a leaky and half-broken roof covered in hay, and a precarious chimney. It was, rather than a house, a single room with a broken, creaking door that led outside into a field of uncultivated grass.
I barely managed to push myself up on my two feet, my eyes turning towards the fire, the familiarity of it ricocheting through my befuddled memories as I swallowed nervously. Either I had been kidnapped for a really intensive Larping event, or someone had thrown me in a Candid Camera of sorts.
The crackling fire wasn't just a fire. It was a bonfire. A sword, twisted and broken, stood deeply embedded within it. Skeletal remains bleached white from time and the heat of the flames crackled within, the smell of smoke a faint reminder. I rubbed my eyes, or at least, went for it. I stopped with my left hand raised to my eye level.
I took a deep breath. The Darksign's pitch-black existence twirled surrounded by flames on the back of my left hand. It hissed and whispered words that made no sense, but as I awkwardly neared my right hand towards the edges of it, I knew it wasn't a phony copy. The moment I touched it, ashes surrounded my entire frame, my vision turning dark. My body, once more, was slumped on the ground of the house.
I turned on my back, a sharp cough leaving my throat as I stared at the ceiling of the abandoned house.
This wasn't a joke.
I stood up, carefully making my way out of the door. The sun nearly blinded me, but past the glares and the lukewarm heat it emitted, I saw fields of green and a dirt road which snaked across the greenery towards a city near the horizon.
It didn't look like a city I knew of, and it definitely wasn't Lordran or any other settings that belonged to Dark Souls. I glanced down at my clothes before stepping outside, and once I realized I was wearing simple, everyday trousers and a thick wool shirt, I reckoned it could have been worse.
I could have started inside an Asylum with a broken sword.
Thus, I began to walk towards the city.
Had I known where that road would lead me...
...I would have gone the other direction.
- Location
- Elsewhere
But thanks to the way the darksign will operate, it's likely that whomever sells him coffee will overcharge him or spit on the holy beverage.
Ashen lemons taste like ashes, even if they are lemons.
The reference for coffe is as part of Hostess of Fertility's menu. Thus the response are
1) customers who buys from inferior place is asking to get inferior products, coffe addiction is no defense from caveat emptor
2) Mama Mia and Ryuu will wipe the floor with you and make you enable to taste drink anymore you dare implying such things in regard to Hostess of Fertility
Chapter One
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter One
The world of Dark Souls was not unfair. Let us be honest; the game itself was difficult, but not dishonest. Skills would let anyone go through with minimum fuss. You could be a heavily armored knight, a scantily clad hollow with a broken blade, or a lunatic on a speedrun using bananas as controllers, but you would still have a fair chance at beating the game. The knowledge of your enemy would be your strength; the attack patterns would become known, and the correct mixture of courage and cowardice would allow you to strike in the right moment and achieve victory.
It also helped that enemies would mostly be fought one, two, or at most three at the time unless you did something extremely wrong.
Orario wasn't fair like that. I had learned it on my skin, time and time again.
The fickle lights cast upon the dungeon's walls were a product of the dungeon itself. No one would be foolish enough to step down on the fifth floor to place candles for the adventurers to see. The ground was even, the corridors large enough to allow the comfortable passage of a group of four to five adventurers, and yet there I was, alone. My eyes were used to the faint illumination cast off by the candles. Even if I did something as silly as knock them off, new ones would form in their place.
The dungeon liked to properly see its monsters eat adventurers whole, though with me, he had made a terrible investment.
I clutched on to the leather handle of my long two-handed sword with my right hand near the guard, my left firmly gripping the bottom of the handle. Most of the enemies on the fifth floor had poor reach, but terrifyingly sharp claws or attacks. The random minotaur was an exception, but they usually didn't come all the way up from their fifteenth floor unless bothered by an adventurer and in hot pursuit of them.
My swing came down precisely, slicing the neck of a War Shadow as its blood copiously dropped like some sort of shower. The creatures either had the strongest pumping hearts in the world, or Quentin Tarantino had taken over the show somewhere in the middle of production. I took a step back, bringing the blade in a strike from the left to deal with a friend of the War Shadow, before sidestepping the blow from the third monster and closing in, the sharp edge of the sword's handle opening a grievous wound on the chest of the monster in question.
The monsters fell neatly on the ground, their corpses quickly turning into mush as magic stones and scraps remained behind. I knelt with a sigh, my left hand grabbing hold of the stones and carefully pulling them one by one into the pouch by my side. I could throw them in my inventory, but so close to the surface chances were high I'd encounter adventurers on the way out. It wasn't that I was keeping my ability to use an inventory a secret, but I wasn't inclined to share or make a show of it.
I stood back up from the puddle of blood that had dried, shaking grimly my head at the lack of flickers of soul from the monsters. The Dungeon birthed them in great numbers, but even so most often than not he forgot about throwing a soul into the monsters in question. This was especially true after I ended up passing through the area myself a few times. While it made monsters easier to fight, since they apparently began to follow the same repeated tactics while soulless, it also meant they were a waste of time for the likes of me.
I could still earn money through the conversion of the magic stones into golden coins, but coins stopped having value when it was your soul getting devoured instead.
I began to walk through the hallways, carefully ensuring I wouldn't lose my way from the tunnels I knew of. One thing I discovered was that, unfortunately, the most dangerous moment for an adventurer wasn't entering the dungeon, or traveling it. It was coming back from it. The moment the mission was done, the necessary ingredients gathered, the specific monsters killed and their bits and pieces collected adventurers of a certain type tended to drop their guards. In that moment, the dungeon usually struck without particular malice or a penchant for sadism, but struck all the same a killing blow on some unfortunate soul.
This was the reality of the dungeon of Orario, which the Anime show didn't even bother telling. Adventurers died all the time, and on the levels that went from five to seven, they tended to die really fast if they were stupid, or prone to arrogance. Unashamedly, I was a rather stoic collector of equipment belonging to dead men, as well as souls that belonged to them too. I didn't feel sad about it; they had chosen their life, and in death they definitely had no use for a spear, or a shield.
Normally such act was frowned upon by the Guild, since the belongings of dead adventurers belonged to their Familia, but it was implicitly understood that weapons and shields might have broken against monsters, and thus there was no need to drag them back up. The Guild actually gave a small reward for every corpse successfully brought back up; it had been a strange thing to discover, and one that usually wouldn't make the cut neither in the novels or in the anime, but it was pleasant all the same.
I felt the ground tremble below my armored feet, and stopped my ruminations. My helmet tinkled, my eyes narrowed as I carefully lifted the face-protector to have a better view of the incoming enemy. I turned my head right and left, the corridors and hallways all the same, but the rumbling growing closer all the same.
The Zweihander that had been nestling on my shoulder soon ended up wielded in front of me in a low guard. It could be Killer Ants after all. Poking them as they broke through the ground made them easy pickings.
"Help! Somebody help me!" a voice caught my attention, a blur of white hair and brown clothes coming towards me from the far end of the corridor, a minotaur behind it. I inwardly snorted. My stance went from low guard to high-guard, my left leg placed firmly behind me as I prepared to swing.
The blur passed me by, the minotaur hot on its heels, but not stupid enough to ignore me. Its crimson eyes turned in my direction as it howled, its voice burning with wrath as it brought its bare fist down towards me. It lunged with its right fist. I stepped in and swung down, the blade slicing through the muscles on the monster's armpit, blood thickly spraying out as I bent my right leg, pulled back, clutched the Zweihander by the middle-grip and thrust straight through the monster's stomach. For a brief instant I smelled the sweat of the fur, the taste of copper of the blood, and then it was over.
There was a sharp sound as my weapon dug through the taught muscles of the Minotaur, my grip not faltering as I used my weight to drop to the side while still holding on to my blade, opening the wound to the point of it being lethal without doubts. The minotaur exploded in vicious black pieces, a flickering soul burning within its frame. I sighed in relief as I extended a hand towards it, the Darksign hungrily feasting while I pushed my hand further down, grabbing hold of the Magic Stone beneath it.
I then stood back up, sighing and turning towards the direction where the blur of white hair and brown armor had gone. Only, the blur wasn't gone beyond my sight. It apparently belonged to a white haired youngster, crimson eyes staring up at me with wide surprise. A few seconds later, and I heard footsteps coming closer from the opposite side of the hallway.
I rested my Zweihander on my shoulder, and turned to leave in the direction of the white haired individual.
"Ah...thank you very much, Mister Adventurer!" the youngster said, bowing primly with both of his hands clasped together.
I looked at the figure, some familiar memory trying to surface in the back of my mind, half-fogged by the Darksign. The face felt familiar, the curls of white hair, the soft baby-like face, the crimson eyes, the brown long-sleeved jacket and boots. The singular piece of metallic chest-plate. However...I couldn't fully place the figure.
"Don't thank me," I grumbled. "You've been lucky I was—"
"Oi! Did ya see a minotaur pass by here?" a voice called at us from the other side of the tunnel, two figures standing there. One of the two, I easily recognized as Aiz Wallenstein. The blond hair, the emotionless-face, the expression that seemed a mixture between being utterly bored and outright stone-faced...the other was the wolf-guy, that Bete-something with his spiky white or silver hair. The latter had been the one to ask the question.
"Taken care of," I replied, raising a hand.
I then let the hand fall down by my side as the duo left a few seconds later. I blinked. I looked down at the spot where the minotaur had been defeated, and then turned to look at the white-haired figure that hadn't yet moved. The figure realized I was looking at it, because the next instant it began to fiddle with a lock of snow-white hair.
I then turned back to the far end of the tunnel, the weight of what had just transpired burning itself deep into the bottom of my stomach.
Did I just...did I just ruin...
"Mister Adventurer..." the white-haired figure spoke, throwing me off my wildly delusional train of thought to concentrate on the figure in front of me. "I still want to thank you for saving me," she said with an earnest and kind smile.
It was at that moment that I finally stopped blinding myself to the honest truth laid bare in front of my eyes, and actually accepted the gravity of the situation for what it truly was worth.
The figure in front of me was definitely female.
It was definitely white-haired, and red-eyed.
"My name is Bell Cranel, of the Hestia familia," she said while flustered due to the intensity of my stare, even though my face was hidden by my helmet. "Would you like...to make a party together?"
She even began to fidget with her fingers while in wait for an answer.
...
Once more, I turned to look at the far end of the hallway, half-tempted to extend a hand with the unspoken desire to have Aiz Wallenstein return and set things straight.
She didn't.
I ended up not having a choice.
Congratulations! You have successfully acquired Bell-chan as a member of your party!
The world of Dark Souls was not unfair. Let us be honest; the game itself was difficult, but not dishonest. Skills would let anyone go through with minimum fuss. You could be a heavily armored knight, a scantily clad hollow with a broken blade, or a lunatic on a speedrun using bananas as controllers, but you would still have a fair chance at beating the game. The knowledge of your enemy would be your strength; the attack patterns would become known, and the correct mixture of courage and cowardice would allow you to strike in the right moment and achieve victory.
It also helped that enemies would mostly be fought one, two, or at most three at the time unless you did something extremely wrong.
Orario wasn't fair like that. I had learned it on my skin, time and time again.
The fickle lights cast upon the dungeon's walls were a product of the dungeon itself. No one would be foolish enough to step down on the fifth floor to place candles for the adventurers to see. The ground was even, the corridors large enough to allow the comfortable passage of a group of four to five adventurers, and yet there I was, alone. My eyes were used to the faint illumination cast off by the candles. Even if I did something as silly as knock them off, new ones would form in their place.
The dungeon liked to properly see its monsters eat adventurers whole, though with me, he had made a terrible investment.
I clutched on to the leather handle of my long two-handed sword with my right hand near the guard, my left firmly gripping the bottom of the handle. Most of the enemies on the fifth floor had poor reach, but terrifyingly sharp claws or attacks. The random minotaur was an exception, but they usually didn't come all the way up from their fifteenth floor unless bothered by an adventurer and in hot pursuit of them.
My swing came down precisely, slicing the neck of a War Shadow as its blood copiously dropped like some sort of shower. The creatures either had the strongest pumping hearts in the world, or Quentin Tarantino had taken over the show somewhere in the middle of production. I took a step back, bringing the blade in a strike from the left to deal with a friend of the War Shadow, before sidestepping the blow from the third monster and closing in, the sharp edge of the sword's handle opening a grievous wound on the chest of the monster in question.
The monsters fell neatly on the ground, their corpses quickly turning into mush as magic stones and scraps remained behind. I knelt with a sigh, my left hand grabbing hold of the stones and carefully pulling them one by one into the pouch by my side. I could throw them in my inventory, but so close to the surface chances were high I'd encounter adventurers on the way out. It wasn't that I was keeping my ability to use an inventory a secret, but I wasn't inclined to share or make a show of it.
I stood back up from the puddle of blood that had dried, shaking grimly my head at the lack of flickers of soul from the monsters. The Dungeon birthed them in great numbers, but even so most often than not he forgot about throwing a soul into the monsters in question. This was especially true after I ended up passing through the area myself a few times. While it made monsters easier to fight, since they apparently began to follow the same repeated tactics while soulless, it also meant they were a waste of time for the likes of me.
I could still earn money through the conversion of the magic stones into golden coins, but coins stopped having value when it was your soul getting devoured instead.
I began to walk through the hallways, carefully ensuring I wouldn't lose my way from the tunnels I knew of. One thing I discovered was that, unfortunately, the most dangerous moment for an adventurer wasn't entering the dungeon, or traveling it. It was coming back from it. The moment the mission was done, the necessary ingredients gathered, the specific monsters killed and their bits and pieces collected adventurers of a certain type tended to drop their guards. In that moment, the dungeon usually struck without particular malice or a penchant for sadism, but struck all the same a killing blow on some unfortunate soul.
This was the reality of the dungeon of Orario, which the Anime show didn't even bother telling. Adventurers died all the time, and on the levels that went from five to seven, they tended to die really fast if they were stupid, or prone to arrogance. Unashamedly, I was a rather stoic collector of equipment belonging to dead men, as well as souls that belonged to them too. I didn't feel sad about it; they had chosen their life, and in death they definitely had no use for a spear, or a shield.
Normally such act was frowned upon by the Guild, since the belongings of dead adventurers belonged to their Familia, but it was implicitly understood that weapons and shields might have broken against monsters, and thus there was no need to drag them back up. The Guild actually gave a small reward for every corpse successfully brought back up; it had been a strange thing to discover, and one that usually wouldn't make the cut neither in the novels or in the anime, but it was pleasant all the same.
I felt the ground tremble below my armored feet, and stopped my ruminations. My helmet tinkled, my eyes narrowed as I carefully lifted the face-protector to have a better view of the incoming enemy. I turned my head right and left, the corridors and hallways all the same, but the rumbling growing closer all the same.
The Zweihander that had been nestling on my shoulder soon ended up wielded in front of me in a low guard. It could be Killer Ants after all. Poking them as they broke through the ground made them easy pickings.
"Help! Somebody help me!" a voice caught my attention, a blur of white hair and brown clothes coming towards me from the far end of the corridor, a minotaur behind it. I inwardly snorted. My stance went from low guard to high-guard, my left leg placed firmly behind me as I prepared to swing.
The blur passed me by, the minotaur hot on its heels, but not stupid enough to ignore me. Its crimson eyes turned in my direction as it howled, its voice burning with wrath as it brought its bare fist down towards me. It lunged with its right fist. I stepped in and swung down, the blade slicing through the muscles on the monster's armpit, blood thickly spraying out as I bent my right leg, pulled back, clutched the Zweihander by the middle-grip and thrust straight through the monster's stomach. For a brief instant I smelled the sweat of the fur, the taste of copper of the blood, and then it was over.
There was a sharp sound as my weapon dug through the taught muscles of the Minotaur, my grip not faltering as I used my weight to drop to the side while still holding on to my blade, opening the wound to the point of it being lethal without doubts. The minotaur exploded in vicious black pieces, a flickering soul burning within its frame. I sighed in relief as I extended a hand towards it, the Darksign hungrily feasting while I pushed my hand further down, grabbing hold of the Magic Stone beneath it.
I then stood back up, sighing and turning towards the direction where the blur of white hair and brown armor had gone. Only, the blur wasn't gone beyond my sight. It apparently belonged to a white haired youngster, crimson eyes staring up at me with wide surprise. A few seconds later, and I heard footsteps coming closer from the opposite side of the hallway.
I rested my Zweihander on my shoulder, and turned to leave in the direction of the white haired individual.
"Ah...thank you very much, Mister Adventurer!" the youngster said, bowing primly with both of his hands clasped together.
I looked at the figure, some familiar memory trying to surface in the back of my mind, half-fogged by the Darksign. The face felt familiar, the curls of white hair, the soft baby-like face, the crimson eyes, the brown long-sleeved jacket and boots. The singular piece of metallic chest-plate. However...I couldn't fully place the figure.
"Don't thank me," I grumbled. "You've been lucky I was—"
"Oi! Did ya see a minotaur pass by here?" a voice called at us from the other side of the tunnel, two figures standing there. One of the two, I easily recognized as Aiz Wallenstein. The blond hair, the emotionless-face, the expression that seemed a mixture between being utterly bored and outright stone-faced...the other was the wolf-guy, that Bete-something with his spiky white or silver hair. The latter had been the one to ask the question.
"Taken care of," I replied, raising a hand.
I then let the hand fall down by my side as the duo left a few seconds later. I blinked. I looked down at the spot where the minotaur had been defeated, and then turned to look at the white-haired figure that hadn't yet moved. The figure realized I was looking at it, because the next instant it began to fiddle with a lock of snow-white hair.
I then turned back to the far end of the tunnel, the weight of what had just transpired burning itself deep into the bottom of my stomach.
Did I just...did I just ruin...
"Mister Adventurer..." the white-haired figure spoke, throwing me off my wildly delusional train of thought to concentrate on the figure in front of me. "I still want to thank you for saving me," she said with an earnest and kind smile.
It was at that moment that I finally stopped blinding myself to the honest truth laid bare in front of my eyes, and actually accepted the gravity of the situation for what it truly was worth.
The figure in front of me was definitely female.
It was definitely white-haired, and red-eyed.
"My name is Bell Cranel, of the Hestia familia," she said while flustered due to the intensity of my stare, even though my face was hidden by my helmet. "Would you like...to make a party together?"
She even began to fidget with her fingers while in wait for an answer.
...
Once more, I turned to look at the far end of the hallway, half-tempted to extend a hand with the unspoken desire to have Aiz Wallenstein return and set things straight.
She didn't.
I ended up not having a choice.
Congratulations! You have successfully acquired Bell-chan as a member of your party!
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Evillevi
A Pikachu for everything - Shadow Pikachu,2015
So a couple of things most of them minor
Regardless this is a workable intro paragraph
Both of these things are really really really good. Just the right edge of meta but serious enough to be taken literally.
The greatest problem here is that you don't really obviously specify how long has passed from teh prologue nor did you set up the Dark Souls mysterious find out our super secret and hidden lore yourself method of story telling. And it's a touch annoying because it's an important information that could have been used better. Regardless a minor problem so far.
there's a bit too much commas here. A slight optimisation could have been the removal of some of the commas and an extra line or two of characterisation. Like (People more optimistic or who are more polite than me would have called this a broken down house)
Regardless this is a workable intro paragraph
- Location
- Malaysia
It has it own thread at last. I could see the minor difference here
Rictek
Burning hear to the burning way
- Location
- Colombia
good bye rails of cannon was nice to meet you, thanks to shade i started to watch the series and well i think the timeline is kinda long the stay of shade in the danmachi world because the minotaur chasing adventurers becomes kinda normal to him
- Location
- universe
Watched, I've been looking for some descant Dark Souls fics.
shadowace2400
Planeswalker Extraordinaire
- Location
- Texas
Welp, you just took out a level 2 monster. Which begs the question if you've even joined a familia, and how the Dark Souls system stacks up the Danmachi system in superhuman feats (not in a versus thread type way, but I wonder how many souls you sacrificed to the bonfire to get that strong).
Ars Poetica
ULTIMA RATIO NEMO OBLIGATUR
- Location
- The Kingdom of Fiore
- Pronouns
- He / Him / His
I'd praise it.
Big swords are nice, but every sunbro needs his lighting strikes.
Eh Apollo in Danmatchi is kinda a shit.
Malbutorius
C'est le bien qui fait mal
There needs to be an Ameterasu familia you mean. Or a Gwenevere familia if you want to DS it up. She did ditch with a foreign god after all.
Ars Poetica
ULTIMA RATIO NEMO OBLIGATUR
- Location
- The Kingdom of Fiore
- Pronouns
- He / Him / His
Meh. There's more than one sun god. "Solaire" going around and telling people his name doesn't give anybody a hint as to where he could be from, or what guild he's a member of, or what familia he might be a member of -- except not really, because he doesn't need a familia.
- Location
- Your heart
Hmmmm does Shade still possess Darksign Hate-Curse in this version?
- Location
- Australia
I have been waiting for Shade to make this a separate thread and I can't wait to see the madness his existence will cause.
Just to be sure I am a little rusty from Dark Souls lore but will the god's notice Shade immediately as an enemy if they met him, he has the dark sign and if I remember correctly the curse started because Gwen refused to let mankind take their place as the head of the next cycle right.
So I am really curious how they will react to him but from Bete and Aiz meeting him, they don't seem that hostile yet.
Speaking of Sun gods isn't Apollo Sun God one that will force Bell to join his Familia in the future. So if Solaire praises the sun, it might inflate his ego more or start him ordering his familia to copy Solaire.
By the way, what can shade do from what I have read from the hugs corner and here.
And most importantly about the guild don't you have to register to use their services money exchange If Solaire registered what information did they need like name age etc but more importantly the god he serves?
Just to be sure I am a little rusty from Dark Souls lore but will the god's notice Shade immediately as an enemy if they met him, he has the dark sign and if I remember correctly the curse started because Gwen refused to let mankind take their place as the head of the next cycle right.
So I am really curious how they will react to him but from Bete and Aiz meeting him, they don't seem that hostile yet.
Speaking of Sun gods isn't Apollo Sun God one that will force Bell to join his Familia in the future. So if Solaire praises the sun, it might inflate his ego more or start him ordering his familia to copy Solaire.
By the way, what can shade do from what I have read from the hugs corner and here.
- He is an undead so immortality with side effects
- Can use the inventory
- Can absorb souls and level up
And most importantly about the guild don't you have to register to use their services money exchange If Solaire registered what information did they need like name age etc but more importantly the god he serves?
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Chapter Two
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Two
I inwardly rattled off a few set of curses against my own person as I stared at Bell's form. She looked every bit like the male version, if with slightly longer white hair, and a bit more curvier in certain spots. She must have felt my stare from beyond my helmet, because she made an effort to smile and stand up a bit straighter. My helmet rattled slightly as I nodded, extending my right hand towards her.
"Solaire," I said with a small grumble, "Solaire Astora," I added. She gripped the gauntlet to shake my hand, and as I let go a couple of seconds later, I looked past her to the hallways of the dungeon. "Do you want to continue hunting for magic stone?"
The girl nodded eagerly, a smile fixed on her face. I was starting to think that she was one of those people who'd naturally smile no matter the situation. The strange situation of having the genderbent protagonist of a Romcom by my side notwithstanding, the rest of the day went by with a honest smoothness I hadn't predicted. Bell wasn't weak by any term, and in fact proved more often than not a valuable addition. She was nimble, fast, and quick to take action.
Whereas I was a slow bulwark, she'd easily slip past the enemies' lunges to strike with the starting dagger at their weak points. Honestly, she was a rabbit with teeth. The terrible rabbit of Caerbannog had a humanoid version in Bell-chan. We split the loot fifty-fifty, and then bid each other goodbye.
I sighed as I stepped inside the Pantheon, the Guild building where adventurers would normally go to talk to their advisers, or to exchange magic stones and monster drops for money. Bell most certainly would exchange her loot for money and then proudly present it to Hestia. I, meanwhile, exchange my loot for money and then trudged my way into a nearby office.
I sat down on a plush and comfortable sofa, exhaling in fatigue as I pretty much became one with the sofa itself.
"You look tired," a voice mused from the office's only desk, a figure shrouded in black sitting by the desk. Skeletal fingers gathered together as a skeletal face appeared within the cloth. "Did something happen?"
Fels was an undead. He was, perhaps amusingly so, an Undead that was neither a Lich nor a simple Skeleton. Whatever version of Undeath Orario naturally had was nothing as grandiose as one might think. He was without a doubt a powerful adventurer, but even so he had his limits, which still made him a dangerous and cunning foe, but a foe that wasn't beyond reach if one applied himself.
Not that I wished to fight him. Honestly, if it hadn't been for him, I probably wouldn't have been able to step into the dungeon to begin with. Well, no, that was a lie. I could have gone through Daedalus street, but that would have required a different kind of path which I was pretty sure lead to the Ruler of Hollows ending.
"I made a mistake," I answered as I slowly pushed my body away from the pleasant softness of the feather-stuffed sofa.
Fels skeletal head cocked to the side, his eyes glimmering as he glanced at me. "That mistake being..."
"I ended up in the protagonist's party," I grumbled, shaking my head and making my helmet rattle at the same time.
"Ah, well, then it's not a mistake that matters to us," Fels added, nonchalantly returning to the papers on his desk. Though he had skeletal hands, he could still write with proper calligraphy by dipping the tip of one of his bony fingers in an ink pot and then tracing the lines with practiced ease. "Things will happen with or without the hero's intervention."
"Well, whatever," I shrugged as I stood up, "However...did you know he was a girl?"
Fels nodded slowly, his skeletal head somehow taking on a cocky smirk. Though he had no muscles to twitch, though his skull remained as a bleached white skull, it felt as if he was smiling. "Nothing eludes my sight when it concerns the guild. Be it a strange man willing to test the dungeon without a Falna, or someone with a name I was told to look out for." He glanced in my direction. "Still, I doubt that was an intentional mistake on your part during your appeal."
"It wasn't," I dryly replied, "I want nothing to do with your politics, or your decisions for Orario. Even if the city fell into the depths of darkness...I'd still trudge on with my own two legs."
Fels' mandibles clacked noisily. It was his chuckling sound. "Being unable to die does change one's perspective of life itself, does it not?"
"Being unable to die of old age, and being unable to die in general, no matter what..." I replied with calm tranquility, "Does indeed change one's way of seeing life." I glanced one last time at the Undead shrouded in darkness, and then asked, "Do you want me to go fetch the crystallized monster fetus?"
"No," Fels replied, "As I said before, do not worry about things on my side." He flexed his bony fingers together, the ink on one of his fingers quickly drying and disappearing in thin air, as if it had never been there to begin with. "I had your Status updated," he continued. "Though it won't hold to scrutiny, no one is going to bother with one more adventurer at Level 3."
"Too gracious," I said, my lips twitching into a smile. "Am I a powerful triple-S stat-ranked individual?"
"i threw dice and made the numbers random," Fels said, making a 'shoo' gesture with one of his bony hands. "Now go, I have work to do, and you've already dirtied my sofa and carpet with blood."
I glanced down, and then back at the sofa I had been sitting on. The blood of the dungeon's monsters remained past the monsters' death, and usually while viscous enough, it dried in a short amount of time. It still stained, and sometimes dropped down from one's armor or skin with enough humidity in the air.
I bid Fels farewell, and trudged out into the streets towards the abandoned church I slept in away from everyone and everything else. It was a nice place with stone walls, half-broken windows, empty and dust-covered wooden benches and an altar cracked and left there at the far end of the entrance. These kind of churches were a dime in a dozen, all abandoned once it became clear that the Gods didn't need you to pray to them, but simply walk up to them on the streets and wave a hand in their direction.
I had dusted off most of the place out of boredom, placed a couple of curtains to seal the broken windows, and generally did a nice enough job to make it a livable place for the likes of me. The old priest's quarters were in a decent state, though nothing of value had remained. Unfortunately, there was no bonfire for me to light. Trying to move the bonfire from the broken down house in the outskirts of Orario within the city had failed miserably, no amount of strength capable of pulling the sword out.
I even had a potted plant in a corner, which I watered once a day with the water taken from a well in the backyard. I didn't have a fridge, nor a peculiarly cold cellar, but I thankfully didn't really need to eat.
As I watered the plant, I removed the armor with my left hand, my Zweihander dropping into my inventory. It was one of the few benefits of the Game-like version of Dark Souls that I seemed to be operating with. Being capable of carrying an unlimited number of armor pieces and weapons made for quite a versatile approach to problems, and when the day was over it was bliss to remove the heavy armor and just lounge about in a pair of comfortable slippers and a nice fluffy dressing gown.
I grabbed hold of some pieces of chopped firewood from a corner of the room, held them tight against my chest, and then walked my way to the backyard. Meticulously taken care of, the once wild grassland was now prim and proper, with a large metallic bathtub in a corner protected from sight by tall wooden walls I had personally nailed together, and which was my pride and joy.
I could have hot baths. It took a while to set fire to the wooden logs, and even more so to draw water from the well and throw it in the bathtub, but once everything was set, I could simply throw myself into one of the most pleasant sensations ever known to mankind. Hot water in a hot bath without a care in the world for what was meant to be. I sighed in relief once I stepped inside, carefully letting the hot soaking sensation drive through my skin.
I might be a Chosen Undead, or an Ashen One, or whatever really, but a hot bath made every problem disappear.
Well, every problem barring the cursed Darksign on the back of my left hand. My eyes were naturally drawn to it, even as I half-closed them. It wouldn't be the first time I dozed off inside the bathtub. Chosen Undead and Ashen Ones didn't catch colds apparently, just like stupid people and brawn-for-brains.
I fully went under the waterline with my head, making bubbles as I began to think back about the events of the day.
There was a female Bell Cranel.
Had I gotten other things wrong? Fels had been pretty much chill about it, but then again, perhaps only certain things had changed. It was no use bothering about the potential changes, not yet anyway. Bell could still return on the right track, after all the Darksign had yet to fully get working on her. It had just been a day, and not even most of it. The more time passed in my presence, the more the Darksign would twist and corrupt her, bringing out the evil hidden within her frame. Eventually, she'd just mistakenly slam her dagger in my spine and leave me to die there in the dungeon, as had countless other adventurers before I grew wise about the tiny, itsy-bitsy insignificant detail of the Curse.
Normal people didn't feel much, mainly due to how they weren't attuned to the feelings of fear, loss, or anger at the Dungeon.
Adventurers were a varied breed, but cocky and arrogant ones were usually unaffected for a while, just as starry-eyed and naive ones were too. The genre-savvy guys could withstand it too, but even so, it depended on their life experiences. People who had faced losses, who had seen their loved ones die, they were the ones worst affected. Basically, any Adventurer who wasn't a starting Level One, or a powerful Level Five or Six, would be affected very, very quickly. The others would take a day, a couple, or at most a week.
Then they'd somehow slip, miss, sling by mistake or otherwise snap by instinct in my general direction. In a group, the Curse worsened considerably as it fed on each other's naturally occurring misunderstandings, or envious feelings.
Due to that, I had to clear the dungeon alone most often than not.
It was fine. Dark Souls was all about facing off great and powerful enemies while alone.
My eyes glanced up at the sky, turning darker as the sun began to die over the horizon, bleeding crimson colors in the air.
"There is no Sun in the dungeon," I whispered as the first twinkling star appeared.
I clenched my left fist tightly.
If there was no Sun...then you just had to make your own.
I inwardly rattled off a few set of curses against my own person as I stared at Bell's form. She looked every bit like the male version, if with slightly longer white hair, and a bit more curvier in certain spots. She must have felt my stare from beyond my helmet, because she made an effort to smile and stand up a bit straighter. My helmet rattled slightly as I nodded, extending my right hand towards her.
"Solaire," I said with a small grumble, "Solaire Astora," I added. She gripped the gauntlet to shake my hand, and as I let go a couple of seconds later, I looked past her to the hallways of the dungeon. "Do you want to continue hunting for magic stone?"
The girl nodded eagerly, a smile fixed on her face. I was starting to think that she was one of those people who'd naturally smile no matter the situation. The strange situation of having the genderbent protagonist of a Romcom by my side notwithstanding, the rest of the day went by with a honest smoothness I hadn't predicted. Bell wasn't weak by any term, and in fact proved more often than not a valuable addition. She was nimble, fast, and quick to take action.
Whereas I was a slow bulwark, she'd easily slip past the enemies' lunges to strike with the starting dagger at their weak points. Honestly, she was a rabbit with teeth. The terrible rabbit of Caerbannog had a humanoid version in Bell-chan. We split the loot fifty-fifty, and then bid each other goodbye.
I sighed as I stepped inside the Pantheon, the Guild building where adventurers would normally go to talk to their advisers, or to exchange magic stones and monster drops for money. Bell most certainly would exchange her loot for money and then proudly present it to Hestia. I, meanwhile, exchange my loot for money and then trudged my way into a nearby office.
I sat down on a plush and comfortable sofa, exhaling in fatigue as I pretty much became one with the sofa itself.
"You look tired," a voice mused from the office's only desk, a figure shrouded in black sitting by the desk. Skeletal fingers gathered together as a skeletal face appeared within the cloth. "Did something happen?"
Fels was an undead. He was, perhaps amusingly so, an Undead that was neither a Lich nor a simple Skeleton. Whatever version of Undeath Orario naturally had was nothing as grandiose as one might think. He was without a doubt a powerful adventurer, but even so he had his limits, which still made him a dangerous and cunning foe, but a foe that wasn't beyond reach if one applied himself.
Not that I wished to fight him. Honestly, if it hadn't been for him, I probably wouldn't have been able to step into the dungeon to begin with. Well, no, that was a lie. I could have gone through Daedalus street, but that would have required a different kind of path which I was pretty sure lead to the Ruler of Hollows ending.
"I made a mistake," I answered as I slowly pushed my body away from the pleasant softness of the feather-stuffed sofa.
Fels skeletal head cocked to the side, his eyes glimmering as he glanced at me. "That mistake being..."
"I ended up in the protagonist's party," I grumbled, shaking my head and making my helmet rattle at the same time.
"Ah, well, then it's not a mistake that matters to us," Fels added, nonchalantly returning to the papers on his desk. Though he had skeletal hands, he could still write with proper calligraphy by dipping the tip of one of his bony fingers in an ink pot and then tracing the lines with practiced ease. "Things will happen with or without the hero's intervention."
"Well, whatever," I shrugged as I stood up, "However...did you know he was a girl?"
Fels nodded slowly, his skeletal head somehow taking on a cocky smirk. Though he had no muscles to twitch, though his skull remained as a bleached white skull, it felt as if he was smiling. "Nothing eludes my sight when it concerns the guild. Be it a strange man willing to test the dungeon without a Falna, or someone with a name I was told to look out for." He glanced in my direction. "Still, I doubt that was an intentional mistake on your part during your appeal."
"It wasn't," I dryly replied, "I want nothing to do with your politics, or your decisions for Orario. Even if the city fell into the depths of darkness...I'd still trudge on with my own two legs."
Fels' mandibles clacked noisily. It was his chuckling sound. "Being unable to die does change one's perspective of life itself, does it not?"
"Being unable to die of old age, and being unable to die in general, no matter what..." I replied with calm tranquility, "Does indeed change one's way of seeing life." I glanced one last time at the Undead shrouded in darkness, and then asked, "Do you want me to go fetch the crystallized monster fetus?"
"No," Fels replied, "As I said before, do not worry about things on my side." He flexed his bony fingers together, the ink on one of his fingers quickly drying and disappearing in thin air, as if it had never been there to begin with. "I had your Status updated," he continued. "Though it won't hold to scrutiny, no one is going to bother with one more adventurer at Level 3."
"Too gracious," I said, my lips twitching into a smile. "Am I a powerful triple-S stat-ranked individual?"
"i threw dice and made the numbers random," Fels said, making a 'shoo' gesture with one of his bony hands. "Now go, I have work to do, and you've already dirtied my sofa and carpet with blood."
I glanced down, and then back at the sofa I had been sitting on. The blood of the dungeon's monsters remained past the monsters' death, and usually while viscous enough, it dried in a short amount of time. It still stained, and sometimes dropped down from one's armor or skin with enough humidity in the air.
I bid Fels farewell, and trudged out into the streets towards the abandoned church I slept in away from everyone and everything else. It was a nice place with stone walls, half-broken windows, empty and dust-covered wooden benches and an altar cracked and left there at the far end of the entrance. These kind of churches were a dime in a dozen, all abandoned once it became clear that the Gods didn't need you to pray to them, but simply walk up to them on the streets and wave a hand in their direction.
I had dusted off most of the place out of boredom, placed a couple of curtains to seal the broken windows, and generally did a nice enough job to make it a livable place for the likes of me. The old priest's quarters were in a decent state, though nothing of value had remained. Unfortunately, there was no bonfire for me to light. Trying to move the bonfire from the broken down house in the outskirts of Orario within the city had failed miserably, no amount of strength capable of pulling the sword out.
I even had a potted plant in a corner, which I watered once a day with the water taken from a well in the backyard. I didn't have a fridge, nor a peculiarly cold cellar, but I thankfully didn't really need to eat.
As I watered the plant, I removed the armor with my left hand, my Zweihander dropping into my inventory. It was one of the few benefits of the Game-like version of Dark Souls that I seemed to be operating with. Being capable of carrying an unlimited number of armor pieces and weapons made for quite a versatile approach to problems, and when the day was over it was bliss to remove the heavy armor and just lounge about in a pair of comfortable slippers and a nice fluffy dressing gown.
I grabbed hold of some pieces of chopped firewood from a corner of the room, held them tight against my chest, and then walked my way to the backyard. Meticulously taken care of, the once wild grassland was now prim and proper, with a large metallic bathtub in a corner protected from sight by tall wooden walls I had personally nailed together, and which was my pride and joy.
I could have hot baths. It took a while to set fire to the wooden logs, and even more so to draw water from the well and throw it in the bathtub, but once everything was set, I could simply throw myself into one of the most pleasant sensations ever known to mankind. Hot water in a hot bath without a care in the world for what was meant to be. I sighed in relief once I stepped inside, carefully letting the hot soaking sensation drive through my skin.
I might be a Chosen Undead, or an Ashen One, or whatever really, but a hot bath made every problem disappear.
Well, every problem barring the cursed Darksign on the back of my left hand. My eyes were naturally drawn to it, even as I half-closed them. It wouldn't be the first time I dozed off inside the bathtub. Chosen Undead and Ashen Ones didn't catch colds apparently, just like stupid people and brawn-for-brains.
I fully went under the waterline with my head, making bubbles as I began to think back about the events of the day.
There was a female Bell Cranel.
Had I gotten other things wrong? Fels had been pretty much chill about it, but then again, perhaps only certain things had changed. It was no use bothering about the potential changes, not yet anyway. Bell could still return on the right track, after all the Darksign had yet to fully get working on her. It had just been a day, and not even most of it. The more time passed in my presence, the more the Darksign would twist and corrupt her, bringing out the evil hidden within her frame. Eventually, she'd just mistakenly slam her dagger in my spine and leave me to die there in the dungeon, as had countless other adventurers before I grew wise about the tiny, itsy-bitsy insignificant detail of the Curse.
Normal people didn't feel much, mainly due to how they weren't attuned to the feelings of fear, loss, or anger at the Dungeon.
Adventurers were a varied breed, but cocky and arrogant ones were usually unaffected for a while, just as starry-eyed and naive ones were too. The genre-savvy guys could withstand it too, but even so, it depended on their life experiences. People who had faced losses, who had seen their loved ones die, they were the ones worst affected. Basically, any Adventurer who wasn't a starting Level One, or a powerful Level Five or Six, would be affected very, very quickly. The others would take a day, a couple, or at most a week.
Then they'd somehow slip, miss, sling by mistake or otherwise snap by instinct in my general direction. In a group, the Curse worsened considerably as it fed on each other's naturally occurring misunderstandings, or envious feelings.
Due to that, I had to clear the dungeon alone most often than not.
It was fine. Dark Souls was all about facing off great and powerful enemies while alone.
My eyes glanced up at the sky, turning darker as the sun began to die over the horizon, bleeding crimson colors in the air.
"There is no Sun in the dungeon," I whispered as the first twinkling star appeared.
I clenched my left fist tightly.
If there was no Sun...then you just had to make your own.
LordVile
There's thinking and thinking with explosives.
- Location
- INDIA
So, nuclear detonation when?
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
white hair, and a bit curvier in certain
a dime a dozen, all
I was thinking he'd taken Hestia's church home at first, and would come home to find her living in the basement. But no, seems he has another one - no doubt Bell shall find it neat how her stronger, wiser sempai also lives in a church.
- Location
- Tampere
Is it explained why Bell got Realis Phrase to begin with? Was it a result of the event in the dungeon or was someone (god?), going to give it to him at the first opportunity?
Events were not exactly the same here so she might have gotten nothing.
Events were not exactly the same here so she might have gotten nothing.