Chapter 81: Oung's Double Play (Patreon)

World: MSS - Loading...

***

The statue’s arms were rock tight (no pun intended), one wrapped around my neck in a rear naked choke.  Her other hand roamed freely over my stomach and occasionally dipped below it, in places that should never be touched by anything made of stone.  In any other situation, I would’ve tried to break free.

But Oung’s voice, coupled with the strength of her limbs cowed me into submission.

Plain and simple, I was afraid.

Since I’ve come to MSS I’ve been afraid of many things.  Coming face to face with the supernatural creatures in this world aroused a primal fear in me.  Fear that was programmed deeper than my genome, fear that was programmed into my soul, ingrained in me by the millenia that my ancestors had spent running from things that go bump in the night.  But often enough, this fear was followed by anger; righteous anger that came from survival instinct.  The knowledge that I couldn’t run gave birth to anger and this anger had fueld many of my battles in the beginning of my journey.

I’d been here roughly half a year now.

Instead of anger, I stilled my fear.  Strangled it, choked it and tamed it.

And just as Arrosh had taught me, I settled into a deadly stillness.

As soon as she showed me the slightest of openings… I would be ready.

So for now, I let her be.

The statue didn’t breathe but I felt its lips curl in a smile.

“I owe you nothing.”  I whispered.

She said nothing for a moment.

“I said I owe you-”

YOU KNEW.

Just two words.

From one of the six divine beings that created this world, just two words were enough to get their meaning through.

She was referring to the Sarcophagus that I had entered.

And she was right.

I entered because I knew that it was a reward by Oung.  That the Sarcophagus would be manipulated by her, that this [Relic] would work in favor.

But I hadn’t known that it’d be a debt.  I thought it was free.

“Then take it back-”  My words started out as a throaty snarl which turned into a hiss of pain as the Statue squeezed my ribs.

I heard them creak.

This wasn’t real.  This was in my head.  I’d seen my characters go through cutscenes which were just in their imagination.  I wasn’t physically here, she couldn't hurt me or kill me.  The best she could do was-

I COULD BREAK YOU.

“....”

OR YOUR FRIENDS.

I slipped out of her hold, shifting my hips and flipped the statue over my head.  Oung spun in the air like a cat and landed on all fours, its stone-features, flesh eyes and just everything about the statue making it look wrong.  But I didn’t care.  This bitch had just threatened my friends and stillness was gone.  Anger, hot and raw, came welling up from the bottom of my stomach.

“You threaten my friends again and I’ll-”

KNEEL.

My knees slammed against the ground.

“You-”

YOU WILL OBEY.

I ground my teeth.  A hundred questions popped up in my head but I knew better than to ask them.  Oung wouldn’t answer them, that was a fact.  She’d say what she wanted, tell me to do what she wanted and then disappear.  And if I didn’t do them… she’d go after my friends.

I wasn’t sure about how the Divine Beings in MSS worked, the Lore around them had never been clear.  But I had a feeling that there should be some kind of universal law of causality, punishing divine-level beings from hurting mortals.

So I kept my mouth shut.

I DID NOT FREE YOU TO STAND AGAINST ME.  YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE MAGNITUDE OF THE POWERS I SET IN MOTION TO KEEP YOU ALIVE.

…The first dungeon I entered in this world, where I gained the power to do everything I needed to get away from the Samak Horde.  To escape that hellhole when the Akka Xalud and Arione were slaughtering without remorse.  When I found this goddess’ hidden shrine and became beholden to her… sure, I did it of my own strength.

But she had given me the chance to do those things in the first place.

“Great timing to grow a conscience and a code of honor, Lock.”  I told myself.

But before I had been Lock, I had been Han.  And Han… Han had beaten this game.

Lock may be helpless before Oung, but Han used to think of Oung as nothing but a game gimmick.  She twisted me around her finger before without me getting anything out of it, but perhaps I could turn it to my advantage.  Now… I couldn’t ask her questions.

But she had been more than willing to give me things before.

“Bad idea, Han.  You start getting quests from a goddess and you’ll be knee-deep in a quest filled with Boss-class monsters that are years too early for you to handle.”  Yup.  Perfect way to get myself killed.

While I was having my internal dialogue, Oung spoke again with that bloodcurdling voice.

YOU WILL DO A JOB FOR ME.

I felt my chin tilt towards her, defiant and proud.  “NO.”

The statue’s eyes narrowed.

Inside my mind, the part that wasn’t overwhelmed by the absurdity of this situation, I noted that this wasn’t her real body or even a mental projection of one.  I had a feeling that the laws of MSS wouldn’t allow my mind to handle her full form, so she’d chosen a form familiar to me.  A form that I first saw her when I had stumbled into that shrine.  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t break my mind to little pieces so that small logical part noted that perhaps I shouldn’t goad her into anger.

But I hated bullies.

When my parents lost their money, lost their marriage, I lost everything else.  I’d lost the chance to ever see my parents together during the holidays or cuddling on the couch.  I’d lost the social status and prestige I once enjoyed and though I wasn’t a social butterfly, people had left me alone.  But after everything, people began to pick on me.  Talking behind my back, a snide remark here and there; people laughing whenever I walked by their table.

One thing I learned back then?

If you don’t fight back, they push and push and push until they start to take and take and take.

I recognized a bully when I saw one.  If I let Oung push me around now, I was never going to get free.

I’d just be a slave to her whims.

YOU WILL OBE-

“A deal.”  I had warned myself before to beware of trying to make a deal with her but there was no choice left.

Yes, I was being coerced.

But it was better than being dead right now.  By making a deal with her, I could buy myself some time.  Time to grow, time to fulfill her requests and try to outsmart her.  Look for a way out.  

Grow strong enough to protect the people next to me.

Oung’s eyes narrowed.

“I do this for you… and we’re done.  One task and reward or not, we’re finished.”

Her eyes narrowed on me like a tiger watching a baby deer make its last stand and in that moment, I understood more about Oung than I had before.  She wasn’t just a goddess of the Beastman, she was the epitome of what made them… them.  She was the ferociousness of beasts impersonified, the manifestation of the strongest in the jungle.  The laws that made this world so hard to live in; survival of the fittest.

And right now, I’d just proven to her that I wanted to survive.

Whether I was fit to do so or not… well, I guess her request would determine that.

I wasn’t wrong because her next words gave me an idea of what to do.

FIND THE ORC WHO INHERITED THE SWORD SAINT’S ART

That woke me right up.  “Arrosh? Arrosh Bloodedge? You know where he is? Where is-”

She continued like she didn’t hear me.  

HEAD EAST.

THEN KILL [MUSHIN]...

And with those last words the life flickered out of the eyes of the statue, turning to stone once more.

My head whirled.

“You can’t just-, Where’s Arrosh? Tell me! And what do you mean kill the [Mushin]?”  The words spilled out of me.

I stepped towards the statue which kneeled like a doll with the power cut.  Which was an apt description, that was exactly what had happened.

“Arrosh… she told me to find Arrosh.  But she didn’t say where… yet, to kill the [Mushin], she told me to head east.”  I found myself muttering and hearing the theories aloud helped me think.  “She didn’t give me directions on where to find Arrosh… could he be nearby? But no one could find him…”

I’d asked Marc Pointell and Yousef to look for Arrosh.  A willowy orc with milky eyes who spoke in poems.  But neither of them had given me any sort of lead.  That left me two options now on how to search for Arrosh.

“The Black Market and [Player’s Guild]...”  The only two places I hadn’t been able to scour yet.

Which brought me full circle to the second part of her request.

How the hell was I supposed to find [Mushin] and even if I did, kill him?

[MUSHIN] was a S-grade Boss.  At that point in the game, 1v1s were practically impossible and at times, not worth it.  Hell, to even raid a Grade-1 Monster, you needed two to three parties of grade 1 adventurers.  If not that, at least grade 2 adventurers to swarm the damn thing.  Sure, I was strong, but only comparatively to the adventurers that I’d seen so far.

Against end-game content… I was still a far way off.

Oung gave me one hell of a quest to earn my freedom.

What was her angle here? Why kill [Mushin]? Sometimes, MSS had storylines that made no sense but it had gotten better once I got transmigrated here.  I understood people’s intentions and their goals but Oung’s Quest left me baffled.  What backstory could explain why Oung wanted to hire a hitman (et la, Me) to off her own [Hero]?

The fact that [Mushin] was alive at all bothered me.

But then again… maybe it wasn’t the [Mushin] I knew.

I was starting to delve into the Rabbit Hole and it wasn’t doing my head any good.  The interaction with Oung’s presence, even if she did downsize herself metaphysically so my feeble mind wouldn’t crumble, left me drained with a headache coming on.  Right now, there was no point in trying to theorize about what would happen.  What I had to do was clear.

So I drooled over the Cores in front of me.

With the [Lucky Beckoning Cat] gone, I could absorb one of these.

Stepping over, I took a cursory look; identifying them immediately.

I dismissed the first Core immediately.  It was the Grade-8 monster, [Unlucky Beckoning Cat].  The abilities were slightly more useful than the [Lucky Beckoning Cat] but there was a critical weakness.  It came with a flat -15 to [Luck].  Besides, it wasn’t a good composition for my build.

The other two were literal treasures.

“This… isn’t this too early to meet these guys?”

A purple and black colored Core that floated before me.  [Royal Oni (おに)] - Grade 4.

The [Royal Oni] possessed a plethora of [Physical] stat boosts.  Speed, Strength, Handicraft, Footwork and a decent Elemental Resistance.  A typical bruiser type Core with a twist: all its abilities were non-physical.  If I had to put a class on the [Royal Oni], I’d call it a Magic Swordsman or Arcane Samurai if I wanted it to be culturally appropriate.

[Biyu (비유)] - Grade 5, boss class monster.

If the Royal Oni was a mixture of Physical Stats and Magical Abilities, [Biyu] was the opposite.  It only possessed supernatural abilities, marked by its signature ability: [Close the Skies]... One of the few ways in the game to get rid of a [Special Field].  Just for that, it was on the list of multiple guides for Supporter-Class builds.  The color of a White Core covered with sporadic green scales indicated that the active ability was [Close the Skies].

Neither of them had a debuff that would synergize with [Arcane Masochism].  Between [Tortured Spirit] and my [Lunar Shield], I had more than enough synergy for [Arcane Masochism].  The question now was about diversifying my fighting style so that I could handle situations in the future.  Up till now, I only fought monsters that I could brute-force my way through.

In the battle with Arione, he had activated a [Special Field].  Luckily for me, it had backfired because he screwed up the set-up.  But soon the [Special Field] effects in this world would only grow harsher with more devastating effects.  There were even dungeons that had [Instant Death] effects… like the monster I had seen in Samak Desert, the Death Worm.  I needed new tricks.

I mulled it over a few minutes, looking at the still statue.

Of how my life was getting increasingly more dangerous.  How this world of MSS wasn’t something I was used to, that there were factors at play that I wasn’t 100% equipped to deal with.  I was stumbling through, groping blindly at certain parts.  For someone who played this game for 14 years and tried everything, I was still discovering new things.  About myself and about this life.

Reaching out, I touched the Core.

｢ Lock has absorbed the… ｣

***

“All right! Pack up girls! We got our next job!”

Arione slammed the door open, bursting into the house and stomping into the kitchen.  His light-blue eyes –flecked with gold– gleamed with mischief.  He stopped at the kitchen entryway, looking at his party members and spread his arms in a ta-da gesture.

“Master… the door… I told you not to slam it…”  Scarlet muttered in his usual quiet voice.  

The red-haired elven youth was wearing a white shirt with dark blue slacks, a beige apron tied around his front.  He seemed to be carrying a plate full of food in each hand but if one looked carefully, they’d see that the plates didn’t touch his hands.  They floated just an inch above the mage’s palms.

Levitation through Mana Manipulation.  No spells.  Just Mana.  Only possible due to the elf’s high aptitude for Mana.

Around the homely kitchen table sat four others.

One was a woman from the beastman tribe.  Her pink locks fell well past her shoulders, reaching the middle of her back.  She had let her hair grow out since leaving the Samak Desert behind.  Clover Weinport had grown out her bangs as well and they fell over her eyes, covering her mismatching eyes: one human and the other bovidae.

The woman who sat next to her was an elven beauty even by elven standards.  Unlike Arione and Scarlet who were pale and lanky, the suresign tell that the two were Mages, L’teya was tanned and muscular.  She wore a shirt that left her midriff bare and a sleeveless leather jerkin over that.  As soon as Arione walked in the house, she let go of her fork and got up to leave.

“Ah, ah, ah!”  Arione took big steps towards her, wagging his finger.  “You haven’t listened to where we’re going yet!”

The tension between Lety and Arione was a sore spot for the party and no one could predict which way things would go.  Last time, they had burned down the house and only stopped after Clover had stepped in.  This table was the only thing they had left. 

One of the newcomers enjoyed the feud between the two with vindictive joy.

Maria Biva Akka Xalud cupped her chin in both hands, leaning forward and looking up at L’teya.  “Why not hear him out, Barbarian?”

L’teya snarled, grabbing the fork that she set aside in a reverse grip.  Maria’s eyes lit up and the younger woman licked her lips eagerly, leaning forward.

“Please, both of you.  Stop.”  Clover muttered, her voice cutting through the tension like a knife.

Clover… had changed in the last few months.

She’d grown cold.  Withdrawn.  No longer the merchant’s daughter desperate to survive and naive about the amount of blood that needed to be spilt in order to fulfill Oung’s Will, Clover had become something like the leader of this party.  She made the decisions that kept people in line… or let them lose.

Who to let live.  Who to kill.

Even Arione didn’t defy Clover without reason now.

“You’re bothering our guest.”  Clover finished, calmly pushing a piece of pancake into her mouth.  She chewed slowly and no one made a sound while she did so.

L’teya looked at the ‘guest’ that Clover mentioned. 

 A giant elven man gagged and blindfolded, his feet and wrists in manacles that were connected by a single piece of chain.  [Ryker’s Manacles], a Plurality that cut off all Core ability and Skills, returning someone to just being a mere mortal while it was on.  A man for hire who had been sent to spy on an old friend at Clover’s request.  Well, it had been the entire party who had been sent.

They had fallen out, killing each other over the gold and items that Arione had given them as a down payment.  Then the Elf Archer escaped the Fracture alone, leaving the target as good as dead.

But Lock was much more resourceful than they could ever have expected and had come out alive, much to L’teya’s relief.

Clover… had not bat an eyelash.  She ordered Arione to hunt down Baran and bring him back.

And here he was.  Bound.  Tied up and helpless.

“So… Can I tell them now?”  Arione waved his fingers like a magician.

Clover nodded silently.

“We’re in Jayu already, so! Clover has decided to give us a field trip!”  Arione clapped like a child.  “We’re going to the Colosseum! All expenses paid for by Oung! Woohoo!”

Maria clapped like a student who had been just told that they’d be going on a field trip.

“Will we finally get to meet your lover?”  She tilted her head, an eerie movement akin to a praying mantis.

L’teya growled.

Clover shook her head.

“No, not lover.”  She whispered.  “Just an old friend.”

***