CHAPTER 2 — “Dead Soil” #3
I find a spot at the edge of the village where I can see the road back to my farm. The sun’s starting to set, painting the sky in oranges and reds that would be beautiful if I was in the mood to appreciate beauty. I’m not. I’m in the mood to make plans.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ CURRENT OBJECTIVES │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Primary: Survive ││ Secondary: Get stronger ││ Tertiary: Eventually murder everyone who ││ betrayed you (long-term goal) ││ ││ Immediate Concerns: ││ --- Level 1.
Pathetic. Fix this. ││ --- Village dying.
Could be useful allies. ││ --- Dungeon accessible.
Only to you. ││ --- Monsters attacking. Kill them first. ││ ││ Resources Available: ││ --- 12 MP (laughable) ││ --- 45 HP (adequate) ││ --- 200 years of Archmage knowledge (useful ││ but currently inaccessible due to mana ││ restrictions) ││ --- Spite (unlimited) ││ ││ "At least you have a plan.
Sort of." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Spite. That’s what I’ve got. An unlimited supply of spite and twelve mana points.
It’ll have to be enough.
The tavern is standing room only by the time I arrive.
Which is to say, there are maybe twenty people crammed into a space meant for fifteen, and half of them are standing because there aren’t enough chairs. The air smells like cheap ale and desperation, and the conversation cuts off the moment I walk through the door.
Twenty pairs of eyes. All suspicious. All tired.
“New guy,” someone mutters. “Edrin’s place.”
I nod. Find a spot against the wall where I can see all the exits. Old habit. Useful habit. The kind of habit you develop when you’ve been betrayed by everyone you ever trusted.
Granny Thorn is at the front of the room, standing on a crate so everyone can see her. She catches my eye, nods once, then raises her voice.
“Alright. We all know why we’re here. The attacks are getting worse. We lost the Brennan boy last week, and the Miller family before that. Dungeon’s spitting out more monsters every month, and we don’t have the people or the weapons to hold them off.”
Murmurs through the crowd. Not disagreement—agreement. The heavy, hopeless kind.
“Way I see it, we’ve got two choices. We pack up what we can carry and head for Thornwick—that’s three days’ travel through monster territory, with everything we own on our backs. Or we stay here, dig in, and hope the dungeon calms down before it kills us all.”
“It’s not going to calm down.” That’s Garrett, the old adventurer. His voice is rough, unused. “Dungeons don’t calm down. They escalate. Whatever’s making it worse, it’s only going to get worse.”
“Then we leave,” someone says. A woman, middle-aged, clutching a child to her side. “We leave before it gets worse.”
“And go where?” Another voice, male, angry. “Thornwick doesn’t want us. The cities don’t want us. We’re frontier trash to them. They’ll take our coin and spit us out the moment it runs dry.”
“Better spit out than eaten.”
“Is it? Is it really?”
The arguing starts in earnest then, voices overlapping, everyone talking and nobody listening. I watch it happen, watch the fear boil over into anger, watch the community fracture along fault lines that have probably been building for years.
This is what despair looks like. This is what it does to people.
I should stay quiet. I’m nobody here. I have no standing, no reputation, no reason for anyone to listen to me. The smart play is to keep my head down, grind the dungeon in secret, build power until I can actually do something useful.
But there’s a little girl by the graves who talks to her dead father.
And there’s a young man at the forge who keeps trying even though nothing works.
And there’s a retired adventurer who stares at nothing because he remembers when he could make a difference.
“I’ll clear it.”
The words come out before I can stop them. The room goes quiet.
Everyone’s looking at me.
Granny Thorn’s eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “You’ll what?”
“The dungeon. I’ll clear it. As much as I can, anyway. The first three floors, at least. Get the monster spawns under control.”
Silence. Then someone laughs—not cruel, exactly. Just disbelieving.
“Boy,” Garrett says, and his voice is gentle, the way you’d talk to a child who doesn’t understand the world yet, “I was Level 42 in my prime. I had a party of five, all above thirty. We couldn’t get past Floor 3. The seal—”
“I know about the seal.”
More silence. Heavier this time.
“I’m not saying I can break it,” I continue. “I’m saying I can clear the floors that are open. Reduce the spawn rate. Buy us time.”
“You’re Level 1,” someone says. “I can see your stats from here. You’re a healer. You don’t even have a combat skill.”
“I know.”
“Then how—”
“Because I’m very stubborn,” I say. “And I’m very angry. And I’ve got nothing better to do than make something’s life worse. Might as well be the goblins.”
Another silence. This one feels different. Not disbelieving anymore. Evaluating.
Granny Thorn is staring at me with those sharp eyes, seeing something the others don’t. Garrett’s expression has shifted—still skeptical, but interested now. The woman with the child is looking at me like I might be insane, which is fair.
“You’ll die,” Garrett says finally.
“Maybe.”
“Almost certainly.”
“Probably.”
“Why would you do that for us? You don’t even know us.”
I think about Edrin Thatch, dying alone in a cottage, writing a letter to no one, asking someone—anyone—to take care of his tomatoes.
I think about the little girl by the graves.
I think about all the people I couldn’t save in the last war, all the villages just like this one that I watched fade away because I was too busy being important to notice.
“Because nobody else is going to,” I say. “And because I need the XP anyway.”
That gets a few surprised laughs. Not many. But a few.
Granny Thorn studies me for a long moment. Then she nods.
“Alright, new guy. You want to throw your life away, that’s your business. But if you actually manage to clear a floor—if you actually make things better—this village will remember it.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“No it’s not.” Her eyes are sharp, too sharp. “But I’ll pretend I believe you. Meeting’s adjourned. Everyone go home. Try not to die before morning.”
The crowd disperses, muttering, giving me looks that range from pitying to curious to outright hostile. I ignore them. I’m good at ignoring things.
Garrett catches my arm as I head for the door.
“You’re lying about something,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what. But you’re not as stupid as you’re pretending to be.”
“Maybe I’m exactly as stupid as I’m pretending to be.”
“No.” His grip tightens, just for a second. “I’ve seen your type before. The ones who walk into death like they’ve already been there. You’re not afraid of that dungeon. You’re afraid of something else.”
I meet his eyes. Old eyes. Tired eyes. The eyes of a man who’s seen too much and can’t unsee any of it.
“Everyone’s afraid of something,” I say.
“That’s not a denial.”
“No. It’s not.”
I pull my arm free and walk out into the night.
The stars are out. Different constellations than I remember—two hundred years of planetary drift, maybe, or maybe I just forgot what the sky looked like. Everything’s different now. Everything except me.
I start walking back to the farm.
Tomorrow, I enter the dungeon.
Tomorrow, I start taking back what’s mine.
One goblin at a time.