A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
Can the Page Gang go further beyond?
Straw poll: do we actually want Bearic? He tried to kill Letrizia, so unless he's undergone some serious character development during his metaphorical three days and nights in the belly of the Fish, he dies. Just because they don't give picks doesn't mean we can't kill people who deserve it!
Titanomachy
Rihaku
The Internet
Titanomachy
Blue.
Endless, tireless blue. The pale ragged blue of the sky and the steep pounding blue of the waves and the raw, limitless blue of the Fish as it surged and heaved and raged against its purposeless squalor. And him, alone and unwashed at the heart of the beast - sweat and brine and monster's spittle covering him like a mucus coating, a deep sea cocoon - alone and untouched by the wrath of the Fish his residence, a meditant alone in the eye of the storm.
How long now had he been entombed in the blue? Even when he surfaced there was hardly any escape from it. But that was only fitting for the Blue Swordsman.
He'd desired power, once. Such a nebulous goal, ill-conceived. What was power? Was it the thrill of domination, the joy of foes crushed and bleeding before you, corpses like ripe tangerines splattered upon the fetid earth? Was it glistening fear in the eyes of one's counterparts when one brandished the sword and was followed by the Blue? Was it the secret, shameful joy held close to one's heart in walking amongst others and knowing with absolute certainty that you were their better, in ability if not in worth?
Or was it merely safety?
It had been a long time since he'd felt safe. Not since the limits of his System had been exposed, its threadbare omniscience revealed for a farce. Did that mean he was bereft of power?
If the System couldn't be trusted then neither could its inputs, and that left him in chaos. His only recourse had been to grow, to hope he could outpace this threat as he had every other. That was the promise of the System, that with effort came achievement, a corollary too-often broken by the twisting chaos without.
He'd been fortunate. He'd stumbled into power beyond his furthest estimates, out here in the blue-on-blue-on-blue. Here was the nexus and the corollary to the magic of Color that he wielded, the solemn thrumming singularity of its emergence, and merely by residing in its shadow he cast net aloft and harvested towering swathes of power.
The System hadn't enjoyed that. He'd felt it strain against the pressure, interfaces glitched and jangling, all but capsizing beneath the load of the power he'd accumulated, dense as caged atomics in every finger and sinew, well beyond the remit of its Level Cap. There was no science to this, no dance of computation and leverage, none of the reasoning which he'd excelled at and which had drawn the System to him. There was only naked, ceaseless power, pulled towards his grip with the tiresome ease of water flowing downhill, and himself growing fat and rotted in gorging upon it.
But what else could he do? Stop?
It was not in him to surrender so blatant an advantage, no matter how unsportsmanlike it felt. It wasn't as if he was above hacking, so long as there was no chance he got caught. Most people would, if the stakes were high enough, though few dared to admit it.
Bearic understood patterns. They'd called him gifted at patterns, which was false, for people were comprised of patterns and he wasn't gifted at people. Too much recursion, too many feedback loops, uncertain information, hidden states, layers of counter-signaling and willful delusion, paradoxical reasoning: it wasn't possible to reason about people in the abstract with only the mind of a person, you could only rely on empirical experience and that was so time-consuming, there was no leverage in that-
He wasn't gifted, but he was specialized. What he specialized in, were those patterns which could be formalized, abstracted into the theatre of consciousness. Those things which were reasonably straightforward to perceive, he perceived. He could see the world as it was, and act accordingly. That had sufficed.
It had sufficed to bring him into the highest echelons of competition, before the strictures of fate had deposited him here, before all his dreams had come true. The System unfurled, the Blue attained; Beth, Esterarc, Seralize.
And yet there were no happily ever afters, even after their first Mission was done. There was only life, stretching forth without limit, until it was brought to an end.
The Hungering One had ended Seralize, and with her all hope of Esterarc's true salvation.
Who was the Hungering One, and why did he defend the Devouring Giant? Why was he - it - the only thing his System could not Assess? How had he slain a Companion designated by the System?
Her slot still lay fallow on the side of his interface. Seralize von Esterarc. HP -37/2569.
She was dead and buried, without even a completed quest to show for it. No mechanism had appeared to return her. Was he crippled in her absence, lacking an external perspective he could trust? By the power of the System he'd mastered the world without, but the people within it were as ever an enigma to him. He'd tried searching for other Companions but had found none, as if the System itself were admonishing him for taking poor care of his first. Perhaps his Companions would have lead him to a less foul and tedious source of power than this, if he'd managed to protect them.
After escaping he'd raged at the unfairness for a time. The System had reneged on its promise. He abided by its rules, followed the quests it issued, and in return it segmented reality for him, organized it into orderly encounters from which concrete patterns could be extracted and employed. He'd held up his end of the bargain, so why had it faltered then?
Perhaps it had simply lacked the strength. Entropy could be decreased in a finite space only at the cost of increasing its total sum. Any temporary order would hasten the final ascent of chaos. Perhaps they'd simply been unfortunate enough to encounter the embodiment of that reality. A greater power. How was he to know the limits of that power, if all of his methods offered nothing to perceive?
The Hungering One. Chaos incarnate. The appearance of a nondescript add, but who twisted reality by its very presence, shattering the System's careful precision to leave Ber uncertain and reeling.
Thus, the degradation of his interface bothered him little. The slow disintegration of the System, was merely evidence that he was growing beyond its permissible bounds, growing to a level that might be capable of avenging his companions.
Still he had much further to grow. Not until he'd exhausted every facet and seam of the Blue would he be content to face the Hungering One, content in the knowledge that he'd done all that he could. Only then would he have the equanimity to face death - or the unknown - with grace.
There was a great ripping sound, a tearing as if through vast layers of flesh. It was followed by a dull roar from the Fish around him, sound so immense that seemed to engulf his entire world. He marshaled the Blue, casting it as a mantle about him, and tore free from the cocoon of brine to face this interloper who had wounded his home.
No one was there.
He looked up. Through the fathomless mountains-deep flesh he could see the faint line of the open sky above, a cut that had penetrated all that fearsome musculature to stop finally at this esophagus-cave within.
Ber clenched his fist. A level-appropriate enemy? The System displayed only static and anarchy, meaningless characters shifting across panels. No help from that quarter. To so wound this Fish of the Blue would require serious power, strength physical and magical beyond the limits of ordinary magi. With his mastery of the Color he could level cities with a gesture, yet it would not be wise to overestimate his strength. The depth of this enemy's cut had shown them capable of the same, but offered little data on the upper limits of their capacity.
Still, he could not meekly hide away. The Fish of the Blue was the source of his strength; he was akin to a barnacle feeding parasitically off its exuded power, and to abandon it now would be to abandon his own progression, for the System was too bereft to offer any concrete aid further. If this enemy was a specialized hunter, lacking general strength but unusually effective against monsters of this size, then maybe Bearic stood a chance. If, however, they were truly the Fish's equal in strength, then retreat was the only prudent path.
He would scout out the foe and see if they were something he could overcome.
Ber scrambled up the interior walls of the Fish and peeked his head out of the cut their attacker had made. He moved with utmost speed, scarcely a blur to the senses of magi, utterly invisible to the unaided eye.
And yet, as soon as he broke the surface, he was flying, spinning, plunging into the sky, spray of blood half-obscuring his vision as he tried to turn and found his neck unresponsive. Finally he saw his headless body fallen limply below, arterial spray rapidly discoloring the form.
The Hungering One stopped next to his corpse, nose wrinkled in distaste, and looked curiously up at him. There was faint recognition in that golden, glistening eye.
It had two arms now, its sword unbroken, shining with a colder, more-piercing shade of Blue. The shock of its unfurled Pressure was like nothing he'd experienced before, a bomb-blast of abrupt terror as sudden and total as a child's first peal of thunder. He summoned his Color about him, hoping wildly that it could transport him downwards, somehow stitch him back onto his body - but it could barely exist in the wake of that Pressure, let alone exert his will.
Ah, he thought finally. He'd never stood a chance.
Blue the sky and blue the sea and blue the titan thundering below, and white the froth of the wrath-tillered waves as they slapped uselessly against the titans warring. The Fish of the Blue was dying. Spinning still, he fell further now, and struck the cold salty waters of the ocean below.
The Blue was receding at last. Darkness instead claimed him. This, at least, had been of a pattern he could understand. The Hungering One was a Secret Boss, and Ber had not been prepared.
Game over.
---
Get R A N K E D son
Vote update coming tomorrow.
If you enjoyed the chapter, please consider subscribing on Patreon! Subscribers receive lots of patron-exclusive content, including early updates, timed exclusives, Discord roles, and bonus chapters. A huge thanks to existing subscribers, the amount of support has been breathtaking! Another timed exclusive chapter will be coming soon!
If you'd like to discuss the quest in real-time or just chat with the questers, you're welcome to join us on the AST Discord! We encourage substantive posts still to be made in the thread, and shitposting within the Discord.
Blue.
Endless, tireless blue. The pale ragged blue of the sky and the steep pounding blue of the waves and the raw, limitless blue of the Fish as it surged and heaved and raged against its purposeless squalor. And him, alone and unwashed at the heart of the beast - sweat and brine and monster's spittle covering him like a mucus coating, a deep sea cocoon - alone and untouched by the wrath of the Fish his residence, a meditant alone in the eye of the storm.
How long now had he been entombed in the blue? Even when he surfaced there was hardly any escape from it. But that was only fitting for the Blue Swordsman.
He'd desired power, once. Such a nebulous goal, ill-conceived. What was power? Was it the thrill of domination, the joy of foes crushed and bleeding before you, corpses like ripe tangerines splattered upon the fetid earth? Was it glistening fear in the eyes of one's counterparts when one brandished the sword and was followed by the Blue? Was it the secret, shameful joy held close to one's heart in walking amongst others and knowing with absolute certainty that you were their better, in ability if not in worth?
Or was it merely safety?
It had been a long time since he'd felt safe. Not since the limits of his System had been exposed, its threadbare omniscience revealed for a farce. Did that mean he was bereft of power?
If the System couldn't be trusted then neither could its inputs, and that left him in chaos. His only recourse had been to grow, to hope he could outpace this threat as he had every other. That was the promise of the System, that with effort came achievement, a corollary too-often broken by the twisting chaos without.
He'd been fortunate. He'd stumbled into power beyond his furthest estimates, out here in the blue-on-blue-on-blue. Here was the nexus and the corollary to the magic of Color that he wielded, the solemn thrumming singularity of its emergence, and merely by residing in its shadow he cast net aloft and harvested towering swathes of power.
The System hadn't enjoyed that. He'd felt it strain against the pressure, interfaces glitched and jangling, all but capsizing beneath the load of the power he'd accumulated, dense as caged atomics in every finger and sinew, well beyond the remit of its Level Cap. There was no science to this, no dance of computation and leverage, none of the reasoning which he'd excelled at and which had drawn the System to him. There was only naked, ceaseless power, pulled towards his grip with the tiresome ease of water flowing downhill, and himself growing fat and rotted in gorging upon it.
But what else could he do? Stop?
It was not in him to surrender so blatant an advantage, no matter how unsportsmanlike it felt. It wasn't as if he was above hacking, so long as there was no chance he got caught. Most people would, if the stakes were high enough, though few dared to admit it.
Bearic understood patterns. They'd called him gifted at patterns, which was false, for people were comprised of patterns and he wasn't gifted at people. Too much recursion, too many feedback loops, uncertain information, hidden states, layers of counter-signaling and willful delusion, paradoxical reasoning: it wasn't possible to reason about people in the abstract with only the mind of a person, you could only rely on empirical experience and that was so time-consuming, there was no leverage in that-
He wasn't gifted, but he was specialized. What he specialized in, were those patterns which could be formalized, abstracted into the theatre of consciousness. Those things which were reasonably straightforward to perceive, he perceived. He could see the world as it was, and act accordingly. That had sufficed.
It had sufficed to bring him into the highest echelons of competition, before the strictures of fate had deposited him here, before all his dreams had come true. The System unfurled, the Blue attained; Beth, Esterarc, Seralize.
And yet there were no happily ever afters, even after their first Mission was done. There was only life, stretching forth without limit, until it was brought to an end.
The Hungering One had ended Seralize, and with her all hope of Esterarc's true salvation.
Who was the Hungering One, and why did he defend the Devouring Giant? Why was he - it - the only thing his System could not Assess? How had he slain a Companion designated by the System?
Her slot still lay fallow on the side of his interface. Seralize von Esterarc. HP -37/2569.
She was dead and buried, without even a completed quest to show for it. No mechanism had appeared to return her. Was he crippled in her absence, lacking an external perspective he could trust? By the power of the System he'd mastered the world without, but the people within it were as ever an enigma to him. He'd tried searching for other Companions but had found none, as if the System itself were admonishing him for taking poor care of his first. Perhaps his Companions would have lead him to a less foul and tedious source of power than this, if he'd managed to protect them.
After escaping he'd raged at the unfairness for a time. The System had reneged on its promise. He abided by its rules, followed the quests it issued, and in return it segmented reality for him, organized it into orderly encounters from which concrete patterns could be extracted and employed. He'd held up his end of the bargain, so why had it faltered then?
Perhaps it had simply lacked the strength. Entropy could be decreased in a finite space only at the cost of increasing its total sum. Any temporary order would hasten the final ascent of chaos. Perhaps they'd simply been unfortunate enough to encounter the embodiment of that reality. A greater power. How was he to know the limits of that power, if all of his methods offered nothing to perceive?
The Hungering One. Chaos incarnate. The appearance of a nondescript add, but who twisted reality by its very presence, shattering the System's careful precision to leave Ber uncertain and reeling.
Thus, the degradation of his interface bothered him little. The slow disintegration of the System, was merely evidence that he was growing beyond its permissible bounds, growing to a level that might be capable of avenging his companions.
Still he had much further to grow. Not until he'd exhausted every facet and seam of the Blue would he be content to face the Hungering One, content in the knowledge that he'd done all that he could. Only then would he have the equanimity to face death - or the unknown - with grace.
There was a great ripping sound, a tearing as if through vast layers of flesh. It was followed by a dull roar from the Fish around him, sound so immense that seemed to engulf his entire world. He marshaled the Blue, casting it as a mantle about him, and tore free from the cocoon of brine to face this interloper who had wounded his home.
No one was there.
He looked up. Through the fathomless mountains-deep flesh he could see the faint line of the open sky above, a cut that had penetrated all that fearsome musculature to stop finally at this esophagus-cave within.
Ber clenched his fist. A level-appropriate enemy? The System displayed only static and anarchy, meaningless characters shifting across panels. No help from that quarter. To so wound this Fish of the Blue would require serious power, strength physical and magical beyond the limits of ordinary magi. With his mastery of the Color he could level cities with a gesture, yet it would not be wise to overestimate his strength. The depth of this enemy's cut had shown them capable of the same, but offered little data on the upper limits of their capacity.
Still, he could not meekly hide away. The Fish of the Blue was the source of his strength; he was akin to a barnacle feeding parasitically off its exuded power, and to abandon it now would be to abandon his own progression, for the System was too bereft to offer any concrete aid further. If this enemy was a specialized hunter, lacking general strength but unusually effective against monsters of this size, then maybe Bearic stood a chance. If, however, they were truly the Fish's equal in strength, then retreat was the only prudent path.
He would scout out the foe and see if they were something he could overcome.
Ber scrambled up the interior walls of the Fish and peeked his head out of the cut their attacker had made. He moved with utmost speed, scarcely a blur to the senses of magi, utterly invisible to the unaided eye.
And yet, as soon as he broke the surface, he was flying, spinning, plunging into the sky, spray of blood half-obscuring his vision as he tried to turn and found his neck unresponsive. Finally he saw his headless body fallen limply below, arterial spray rapidly discoloring the form.
The Hungering One stopped next to his corpse, nose wrinkled in distaste, and looked curiously up at him. There was faint recognition in that golden, glistening eye.
It had two arms now, its sword unbroken, shining with a colder, more-piercing shade of Blue. The shock of its unfurled Pressure was like nothing he'd experienced before, a bomb-blast of abrupt terror as sudden and total as a child's first peal of thunder. He summoned his Color about him, hoping wildly that it could transport him downwards, somehow stitch him back onto his body - but it could barely exist in the wake of that Pressure, let alone exert his will.
Ah, he thought finally. He'd never stood a chance.
Blue the sky and blue the sea and blue the titan thundering below, and white the froth of the wrath-tillered waves as they slapped uselessly against the titans warring. The Fish of the Blue was dying. Spinning still, he fell further now, and struck the cold salty waters of the ocean below.
The Blue was receding at last. Darkness instead claimed him. This, at least, had been of a pattern he could understand. The Hungering One was a Secret Boss, and Ber had not been prepared.
Game over.
---
Get R A N K E D son
Vote update coming tomorrow.
If you enjoyed the chapter, please consider subscribing on Patreon! Subscribers receive lots of patron-exclusive content, including early updates, timed exclusives, Discord roles, and bonus chapters. A huge thanks to existing subscribers, the amount of support has been breathtaking! Another timed exclusive chapter will be coming soon!
If you'd like to discuss the quest in real-time or just chat with the questers, you're welcome to join us on the AST Discord! We encourage substantive posts still to be made in the thread, and shitposting within the Discord.
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Rihaku practicing for when he kills off Hunger.
Tyrant_Rayne
Probably Not Evil… Maybe
- Location
- Canada
Did he... Did he refer to himself as Bearic? Is that actually his name?!? I thought that was a meme!
- Location
- Victoria
I feel kinda sorry for the guy
- Location
- Earth
Uh...
...wow.
F
...wow.
F
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Delightful.
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Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
My sympathy for Ber rises, putting a backstory to the more egregious nonsense in his first appearance.
Aaand it falls back down again. Even by your own pattern, he did it by reducing her HP below zero lol.
Taking people advice from Seralize? No wonder you turned out like this, she has the lowest Wis of any character we've ever seen, and that includes the Tiller Wurm.
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That's what you get for having only a knock-off Praxis instead of a real deal. Still, I wonder if Ber could have advanced the System further beyond if given the chance?
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
I feel like it shouldn't be impossible, but Ber needed Apo-chan's help (which is basically a "totally unjustified breakthrough") to get this far. Without further intervention, I don't think he'd be likely to break the pattern.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
He assumed that The System was it. You follow its rules and do as it says because it will set all the factors for your success. Carry its will and be granted its boons.
I don't think blind ambition is the right term but certainly limited in scope.
Also anyone else reading him as likely being on the autism spectrum? Social awkwardness, focus on patterns, monofocus, strong internal emotions with seemingly little expressed, etc..
Almost certainly not a one to one, just flund it interesting to note.
I don't think blind ambition is the right term but certainly limited in scope.
Also anyone else reading him as likely being on the autism spectrum? Social awkwardness, focus on patterns, monofocus, strong internal emotions with seemingly little expressed, etc..
Almost certainly not a one to one, just flund it interesting to note.
- Location
- Victoria
Definitely reading him as autism spectrum.
- Location
- Philippines
If anything, Apo-chan might've raised all of Ber's parameters and whatnot but the true weakness was the loss of the base ability for pattern recognition.
Also for fuck's sake, the System's Designation for Hunger is The Hungering One. Really, system? Bad enough that it sounds like a bargain bin epithet for Gluttony but it couldn't even be better than Rotbeast Reckoner
Also for fuck's sake, the System's Designation for Hunger is The Hungering One. Really, system? Bad enough that it sounds like a bargain bin epithet for Gluttony but it couldn't even be better than Rotbeast Reckoner
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
Yeah, his speech about patterns was fantastic, it would be a great core for a really cool, relatable character! Unfortunately, it got Ber instead.
No, it's just that he aaaaalmost is, except for basically everything about him.
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Enohthree
Hypersane
I'm sorry, I can't get over this observation.
What, did he think that the HP stat was just for show?
Whew. So I don't need to find a way to turn into a salt pillar after all. That was close.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, most videogame companions are invincible. Moreover, it's entirely possible he had actual reason to believe that she would be alright from previous missions with her or something.
Projectile
Thinking of Rabbits
- Location
- USA
It looks like it. For an uncharitable interpretation (which is all I wanna give him), there's the pattern of the system, which he professes to follow, and the pattern of color-by-numbers Royalroad litrpgs, which he actually follows.
Tyrant_Rayne
Probably Not Evil… Maybe
- Location
- Canada
My understanding is that he thought hp couldn't go below 0 and that revival should be possible. But well... Cursebearers you know?
Rihaku
The Internet
I think you mean Numbers by Color! The color Blue.
