Fetch Quest Side Story: What if? (Blighted Champion) (Patreon)

"I'm still not convinced this was a good idea," complained the white-haired, yellow-eyed young woman as she hopped over another thick vine, her way lit by a burning black torch she was carrying. "I know I said you should take that class, but I wasn't being serious."

The vine behind her started darkening as she passed.

"I know, but I made you, so I'm taking responsibility," said the second young woman, identical in every way to the first, except for the crown she wore. The queen and champion of the blight. "Even without my first skill, I wasn't going to abandon you to an eternal, isolated undeath. Besides, you heard that arch-mage. This world isn't real, and neither are the people in it. They're just programmed to think they are, so it doesn't matter if we blight them all."

"They think they're real," pointed out the first girl. "Besides, if they aren't real, why do you think I am? Or you, for that matter. You obviously no longer have a soul, so doesn't that equally make you a fake magically programmed to think you're alive?"

The blighted champion paused in her walk. "Good point. But I still respawn, and I still have my classes and skills, so there must be something there. Besides, if I still had a soul, that weird spell the arch-mage blasted me with probably would have been fatal in a way that my respawn cheat couldn't fix."

"Rather a moot point when you already killed yourself in a way that respawn couldn't fix," muttered the girl.

The crowned woman didn't respond, busy peering off into space. "Oh, another one," she said, a couple of seconds later.

"Huh? Another what?"

"I got a quest to clear this floor of blight. Think I could abuse that by committing suicide, coming back down and repeating?"

"You realise how many vines have already been infected, right? And they all seem interconnected, too. You'd probably have to burn down the entire cavern. It's not even as if you could build a firebreak around the bits that are already blighted, because you'll just infect more of it around wherever you try to cut."

"True. What's with all these vines, anyway? They seem to be pumping mana somewhere."

"I can't sense mana anymore, so I'm afraid I can't see. They look kind of gross, though."

The first girl stooped to inspect a vine more closely, which immediately started blackening.

"All the mana is running in the same direction," added the champion. "Let's check out where it leads."

The pair of zombies dawdled along, following the flows of mana.

"Hey, there's something over there," called the girl, pointing to where the vines rose from the floor, joining into a large bowl structure.

"Interesting. It's gathering mana from the air and pumping it into the vines," said the champion, getting closer. The crystals turned black at a far faster rate than the vines, and the bowl rapidly cracked and rotted, the mana it was sending into the system of roots turning foul and corrupted. Lines of black rapidly snaked down the vines and off out of view, from where there came a distant scream.

"I... think you just made someone very unhappy. Someone big."

"Very big," agreed the champion, using her magic crown to view the spread of blight, before tilting her head in confusion. "No, wait. It suddenly shrunk. And I'm not sure it's a 'someone'. It seems tree shaped."

"Trees do not generally scream," pointed out the girl. "Then again, I suppose they don't generally eat people either, but that never stopped the one upstairs."

"Nor do they normally shrink like that," added the champion. "Well, no point wondering. Let's go take a look."

They continued their journey, the next point of interest being a fruiting body wrapped around a stalagmite.

"A bunch of the mana is flowing into the fruit. Maybe it uses it to grow?"

"The air around here is weird. Are you sure that thing is safe?"

"Yeah. It's releasing something into the air that disease nullification is unhappy about, but the blight is killing whatever it is off before it can do any damage. Seeds, presumably, since the blight doesn't do anything to viruses or bacteria."

"Wow. What does it need seeds for if the cavern is one big plant?" asked the girl, leaning in closer.

"Stay back! Get away!" screamed the fruit, causing her to jerk backward in surprise.

"Umm... You heard that, right?" she asked the champion. "That wasn't just me going crazy. Crazier."

"Yup. I heard it. You can speak? That's a cool trick. Where does the sound come from?"

"You... Why?" screamed the plant. "This cavern was mine! Soon, so would have been the world, but now you bring the blight here!"

The champion blinked. "Wow, not only can it talk, but it's planning to take over the world?"

The girl didn't respond, instead making strange gurgling noises before collapsing face first to the ground.

The champion swung around, noting the crystal arrow embedded in the girl's spine. A response from her sense danger skill caused her to dive to the side, moments before an arrow passed through her previous location.

"Well, that was rude," she muttered, leaping back to her feet while showing no concern for her dead partner. The attackers weren't in sight, nor could she hear or sense anything.

"Who's out there?" she shouted. "Keep away if you don't want to be blighted."

There was no response other than more reactions from sense danger, as a rain of arrows struck her location, none of which pierced her heavy shield.

Sense mana reacted, but sense danger did not. With no guide as to what was happening, the champion hesitated, allowing the hidden mages to finish their spell. Stalagmites burst up all around her, forming a circular prison.

"Poo," she muttered, as shapes revealed themselves, stepping into the darkness that shone from her torch.

"You really shouldn't get... close... to... What the fuck are you?!"

The champion stared in disbelief at the creatures that approached her, the balls of arms appearing so alien that it took her some time to comprehend what she was looking at. With translucent skin and half of them completely naked, with the other half only wrapped in vines, it was hard to imagine them as the sort of monsters that would be capable of wielding weapons. Yet the naked ones all had spears or bows.

"You may have defeated me, but I will at least take you down with me," said everything. The same voice came from the fruit and every one of the monsters.

"And once again I ask, what are you?" asked the champion. "And by the way, I'm..."

The monsters interrupted the champions' deceleration of immortality by running her through with half a dozen spears, the champion utterly unable to defend while trapped in a stone prison and surrounded by enemies.

"Well, that was rude," complained the champion, waking back up in the catacombs. She invoked her first class skill, reanimate minion, causing a cloud of dust to spring into existence and form up into her partner over a period of a few minutes.

And, while it was in progress, she noticed the unexpected addition to her status.

"Ow," muttered the girl. "What killed me? I didn't see it coming at all!"

"It was... You know, I saw them, and have appraisal, and I still have no idea. Transparent blobs with far too many arms. Appraisal called them carnes multiformis. Some sort of hivemind, possibly, given the way they were all speaking the same thing at the same time. One of them got you with an arrow."

"I sense there's a but coming."

"Yeah, too damn right there is. I gained a level! I completed the side quest!"

"Side quest? Wait, purging the floor of blight? Something destroyed the blighted vines?"

"That's what I don't understand. From the way they were speaking, they obviously considered the blight a death sentence. Yet in the time it took me to respawn, something cleared the floor."

"Then best we go take a look. After you pick a new skill."

The champion nodded and glanced off into space, her face twisting as she read the options. "For goodness' sake, who makes up this crap? One of the options replaces my bodily fluids with that black gunk the mindless husks leak."

"Yeah, you can forget me ever putting my tongue anywhere near you again if you pick that one. What's the other?"

"Much better, thankfully. It'll let me instantly infest a target with blight. The description is as sparse as ever, but presumably it'll cost mana to use. I'll take that one."

"Great. You can try it out on those slimes on our way back."

The champion frowned, the memory of that embarrassing incident still raw in her mind. It wasn't as if she needed to breathe, and she had high resistance to corrosion, but that didn't mean she'd enjoyed having a blob of living acid invading her internal cavities while her partner was watching and laughing her head off. "If they're still there, then yes. Very much, yes. But we probably blighted them on our way past last time. They're likely all dead already."

"No harm in making doubly sure."

"True..."

The slimes were, in fact, all dead, but not from blight.

"The heck?" muttered the champion. "What happened here?"

"Maybe our torches set everything on fire when we dropped them?"

The champion prodded at a pile of ash, from which black wisps of flame were still curling.

"No way. It may look similar, but that's not the same fire as the torches. That's... just wrong somehow. It feels out of place, like walking past a patch of snow in midsummer. It shouldn't be there."

"Wow. Are you breaking out in philosophy in your undeath?"

The champion didn't respond, continuing to move through the passage with her eyes fixed ahead and her senses alert. When the pair stepped into the cavern, it was in silence, and they continued wordlessly as they retraced their steps. Neither needed to comment on the missing vines.

"That's close enough, echoes of the failed hero," thundered a voice, driving the pair of zombies to their knees.

"W... Who?" stammered the champion.

"That's unimportant. I am here to offer you the holy sword that you seek. Long has my brother protected it, but we will give it to you here and now. In return, we ask that you give your oath to cease spreading the blight. Confine yourselves to this floor and the catacombs above."

The girl and the champion looked at each other, still struggling to move against the pressure of the voice.

"That's... a seriously unsatisfying end, but okay," said the champion. "Were you supposed to be the final boss or something, but are too scared of the blight to follow through?"

Great booming laughter came from the distance. "Not at all," came the eventual reply. "If anything, I am... a secret boss. One that you never needed to meet. The final boss would have been my brother. But it is a moot point; you have agreed to my terms. Normally, an oath would brand your soul, but since you have none, I shall make alternative arrangements. Fortunately, your intent is there, and that is sufficient for me to work with."

The pair of zombies stared in surprise as liquid darkness pooled around them, climbing up their legs and coating their bodies before fading, as if absorbed into their skin.

"It is done. And now for your prize." The voice sniggered in the distance before continuing. "Though I can't imagine what use the likes of you could possibly have for it."

The sense of presence vanished, along with the distant sounds, but in return another pool of darkness formed, and from it a sword rose.

"What?" exclaimed the champion. "Was this some sort of scam?"

In alarm, she leapt forward and grasped the sword. Nothing at all happened.

"It is, after all, the task of the hero to retrieve that sword," came the voice again, now sounding quiet and far distant. "You, her mere echoes, have naught to do with her quest. Enjoy your immortality, and be thankful you at least have each other."

"I'm the hero!" yelled the champion of the blight, to no response.

Appraisal confirmed the sword as the real thing. Alas, its mere possession failed to bring any conclusion to the quest. By the magic of the black dragon, the pair of undead found themselves bound forever to the empty third and fourth floors, unable to venture further in search of a solution.

As the dragon had said, the hero, Katie, had sacrificed herself for power. Admittedly, it had been for a good reason; care for the blighted husk that shared her memories, but good reasons were not always sufficient. As ever, the path to hell was paved with good intentions.