Chapter 1

The city was completely empty, and contrary to what either one of them would have expected a mere twenty-four hours ago, the fact that it was empty made them furious.

“I'm not going to be a [Royal Sage]!” Vivi cried, his eye-stalks drooping as they carefully made their way through the completely and obviously abandoned city.

“This is such complete bullshit,” Ben didn't quite shout, but he wasn't keeping his voice down either. “You told me they were insane! You told me they wouldn't leave no matter what!”

“How was I supposed to knoooow,” Vivi said, moaning quietly.

“Dammit,” Ben said, also lowering his voice, “now I feel extra stupid about those fucking chests.” Something about this empty city, and empty cities in general, gave him and most people the creeps. His nope sense sat at a comfortable 'keep an eye out', but his skin was still crawling from the eerie silence.

“It was supposed to be easyyyyyy!” Vivi softly wailed, “We,” sniff, “we were supposed to be able to just walk in and start building...” sniff, sniff “building lanes of traffic?” his voice was getting higher and progressively more hysterical as he went on. “And stop signs? And a proper water distribution system?”

“Let's be real Viv, all we needed was a guy with a Stop/Slow paddle, just standing in their main area and directing traffic. Could have solved half of their problems in a day, and by the end of the month we could have had a city crystal all to ourselves. Fuck,” Ben whispered then kicked the surprisingly solid canopy of the Overcavern Forest.

“Not even any roads, not really,” Ben whispered, looking around with a more critical eye. “Viv, look around and tell me what you see.”

“An overgrown fairy village, stacked on top of an even more overgrown fairy village. A reason to practice casting [Blase's Puzzle Shield]. A distinct lack of fairies,” Vivi wasn't so much listing things off as he was making statement after statement, his expression and body language listless and distant. “Say, would you still be willing to offer me the [Royal Wizard] position?”

“No way, you blew the interview,” Ben said quickly, his voice lacking any sort of focus or attention, “Look over there,” Ben said, pointing to a cluster of buildings built like a warehouse with an open rectangle where an Earthling would put a garage door.

“Ugh,” Vivi said, his body rippling in disgust, “filthy. I believe that is the communal waste area; what are those bags?”

Vivi was referring to a pile of leather 'bags', which required some explaining to properly understand; imagine a rectangle of brown leather, and off of the corners of the long ends were very long hoops or straps. The hoops, if strapped on the shoulders of a flying creature, would lift up, and the leather rectangle would become a bag and carry whatever was on top of it. It looked a bit like what a fictional stork would carry a fictional baby in, if a nervous and abnormally prudish parent was confronted with the 'where do babies come from' question and had to come up with an answer on the fly.

In this case it wasn't a baby being delivered; it was fairy shit.

“Wow,” Ben said, a deep frown on his face. Vivi was laughing nervously, and Ben's mind noted crude wheelbarrows and badly made shovels, likely for loading the bags.

“Is this normal for a fairy village?”

“No!” Vivi said, pointing with an eye-stalk, “fairies just go wherever they like, usually a bush. In a regular sized village this would never be a problem.” Vivi paused and looked around, his sphere eyeballs rotating three-hundred and sixty degrees freely atop his eye-stalks. “I guess with this many fairies there would be a problem.”

“No, sorry,” Ben said, “I should have clarified; I meant the wheelbarrows and shovels. Do fairies typically engage in manual labor like that?”

“Uh, no.” Vivi said, then gave Ben a knowing look, “Fairies don't work if they can play, and they can always play. They leave all that to the village chief, he handles everything.”

“Mmm,” Ben said, then continued searching around for more details. The remains of a smithy, with more flight-bags nearby, holding what Vivi referred to as 'very poor iron ore'. Directly next to the smithy was an open-air workshop with various little crystals sitting on tables, mostly quartz. He noted the attempts that had been made at cutting and polishing them; Ben didn't need Vivi to tell him the cuts were bad.

There was a tailor's workshop, and Ben saw a display of well made fairy clothing. It was a green tunic and pants, along with a green hat. It was all made out of a suede type leather. He walked over to it and felt the fabric; it was soft and pliable, good. Examining the clothing Ben realized that it was the same outfit over and over again, standardized between the sexes. It seemed to be the only outfit they'd figured out how to make well.

“Fairies typically make clothing out of leaves and flower petals,” Vivi said, observing the outfits then moving on, “those look comfortable.”

“They do,” Ben said, then moved on and adjusted his crown, feeling his class whispering something he couldn’t quite hear. It was affecting his mind, he just wasn't sure how yet. It didn't feel sinister, it felt. . . Ben shook his head and started walking away from the tailor's shop a little bit faster.

The tannery, where they worked the leather, was next to the tailor. Inside it, Ben saw the enormous hide of something the fairies had taken down. It must have been the size of a wild boar, an enormous foe for the [Extremely Tiny]. He was pretty sure it wasn't a boar, because the hide was bright green. Now he knew what the fairy outfit was made from.

“What did they kill?” Ben asked.

“Likely a Wood Pig,” Vivi said, “that looks like Wood Pig to me.”

“Is that a pig that lives in the woods?”

“No, it's a green pig that eats wood as its primary food source. They're quite the pest if they get loose, but the Wood Men keep them penned up; there are wild packs of them of course.”

Ben gave Vivi a level look.

“The Wood Men are humanoids, and their primary food source is wood as well. There are no finer [Lumberjacks] around.”

“Are they green and made of wood? Also, are the wood pigs made of wood as well?”

“The short answers are yes, and yes. They're quite dexterous, and very tough. Impossible to burn, they're too wet.”

“Mmm,” Ben said, then continued his tour, seeing more of the same, until he was standing in front of the communal toilet once again.

“Is there a reason?” Vivi asked, squinting and looking away from the disgusting sight. It all seemed to make him terribly uncomfortable.

Ben didn't answer, he just stared at the flight-bags, and imagined what it would be like to do that job. He didn't have to imagine very hard, he'd been a janitor for like a year in a library in a city infested with the homeless, he knew his way around shit. He'd been a laborer too, and he was no stranger to what he was looking at.

Ben shook his head, a very small motion, and gently blasted some air from his nose.

There was no way it didn't stink, and every time the guy holding it looked down, he'd see it. It was a wet and heavy load too, making for a hard, exhausting flight. Ben's shoulders winced in sympathetic pain, imagining the straps digging into him. By the end of a shift of that, there wasn't a chance the guy wouldn't be dirty.

Day in, and day out, for at least a decade. Ten years of that shit.

“They wanted this so bad,” [They wanted this so bad.]

When Ben spoke aloud, the [Prince] class spoke in his mind, as though they had come to the realization at the same time. Vivi didn't say anything, but his eyes lowered, then widened as he saw what Ben was seeing and squinted a bit in shame.

“They believed in this so much.” Ben said, looking at the obvious, dogged struggle it was to survive out here in such great numbers. “Why? I would've quit after three months of this, but they just kept going and going. Were they insane? Did they just not notice? What could possibly be worth the struggle? They had to know they were failing, they had to know,” Ben said, his face troubled.

[Sit and think,] his class suggested, and Ben sat. He felt more guidance and began to activate his skills, [Secret Sense], [Sense Emotion], he even activated [Annex], not to claim the area, but to feel it. Nobody remained who had a claim on this place, on this tree; nobody but him. Between his skills, his class, and his desire to know. . . something revealed itself to him.

He felt it flicker on the edge of his perception, the answer.

The [Dream].

Ben reached out and touched it, and he beheld 'The City'. For a long moment he saw it and understood. Saw that it was possible, that it was something inside of them, a dream inside of everyone. Ben reached out further and saw deeper into the dream than even the [Dreamer], and saw just a glimpse of what lay beyond even the city.

Ben glimpsed ‘The Kingdom’.

–

High above them, unnoticed because Ben had yet to gain the skill [Look Up Every Once And A While], a True Elf Fairy gently stood atop a high building, watching the intruders.

When they'd first walked into Strange Town he thought they might be looking to immigrate; a thought which sent a fresh wave of grief through him, because of course fairies would still be seeking this place out. What was he going to do about that? What would he tell them?

Then, he'd heard them speaking. First, he wanted to laugh; then, he was shocked. After that he grew angry, and after that?

Very angry.

He'd never, in fact, been more angry in his entire life. The way they talked, the casual way they walked, the smug certainty that they could have done it all better; any other day, it would have merely made him mad. Today, so close to the day it had all fallen apart? While he was so fresh in his mourning?

He would not stand for it.

Instead, he watched with a stony expression as they toured the corpse of his city, like maggots crawling, looking for a good place to eat their way in. He waited patiently for them to begin looting, intending to wait till they were completely over-burdened before he struck.

Nothing had been stolen. Ghost Ears would have allowed for the one with the crown to take an outfit from the store, but he didn't seem interested in putting anything on. Ghost Ears had frowned at that, some part of his brain realizing the man was completely naked, but unable to form an opinion about it. All he could notice, really, was that the man wore a badly made crown very well.

‘Some skill,’ he thought, ‘and a very strange one’.

They'd gone back to the community toilet, and the man had stared at it for a while before the most unlikely thing happened; the man sat down, reached out, and touched the [Dream]. Even more unlikely than that, he was moved by it, possibly even more than Ghost Ears had been when he'd originally dreamed it!

“Vivi,” the man said, and Ghost Ears turned his head, directing the holes his ears had once covered towards the strangers, not wanting to miss a word, “we're leaving.”

“Where are we going Ben?”

That was the man's name, Ben.

“We're going to scout. We're looking for a river, that's the most important thing. Preferably a river close to a mountain, somewhere with good soil. Somewhere naturally protected by hard terrain, but easy to travel around inside the borders. Somewhere we can get everything we need, and positioned well enough to trade for what we can't get. and. . . what's important for valuable land... what haven’t I named yet?”

“High mana density?” Vivi said, putting forth real effort to follow along Ben's line of thought.

“Yes, high mana density. A dungeon, possibly?”

“Why?”

“Because Viv, we're leaving this place. We're going to find some good land, and we're going to make this work. We're going to build that city, you and me, and whoever else we can find. I swear it by my crown, and by my title as a [Prince], we are going to build this city. There's an entire people out here, hardworking people willing to carry shit in bags for miles to keep the land around them from being polluted. My people, my Kingdom. My subjects. We're going to build this [Dream], Vivi, and you're not going to be a fucking [Royal Wizard], you're going to be the first damn Aeon Slug [Royal Sage] in the history of your people!”

Ghost Ears felt something like a wave of heat pass over everything; the man's crown was shimmering as though it were metal straight out of the furnace. It was something deeper than that though, something felt by the being rather than the body.

The heat of passion. The fire of his soul.

“Fairy shit,” Ghost Ears said, shocked at the intensity, uttering a curse he'd invented during his many, many rotations carrying waste away from the city. “He's got to be an Inferno grade, no, Solar? He couldn't be a Quasar, could he?” Ghost Ears didn't know, but he knew, “Fairy shit,” he whispered again. He'd missed what Ben and Vivi had done after that, except to see the Aeon Slug-

“Fairy shit, that's an Aeon Slug, how did I miss that?”

Ghost Ears shook his head, noting how Vivi seemed to be extremely excited, judging by the way his eyes were thrashing about.

The duo started looking for a place to spend the night, and Ghost Ears looked over the wreckage of his city. He looked in the opposite direction the [Prince] and the Aeon Slug had gone, and imagined flying off to be a village chief again. It was hard, even before this, to get excited about.

Now? He felt something tugging on his soul, something bright and fiery, something that called him and washed away his mourning.

“One more time then.” Ghost Ears said, “Just one more try, what's the harm? If this doesn't work, well, what's a little more failure after all this?” he whispered to himself, then began to stealthily follow after Ben and Vivi.

--

It was night and the orderly uniform stars of The World made for a bland and uninteresting sight. Still, Ben stared at them out the open window of the fairy sized apartment he and Vivi were squatting in. It clearly belonged to a male, and one without a family, because it was utterly spartan with its lack of furniture and decoration.

The stars were arranged equidistant from one another in a cubic grid that extended outward for what Ben assumed was infinity. He stared, then shook his head and looked away. “Your world’s got a shitty sky my dude,” he said. Vivi was currently inspecting every slightly dirty surface, and then grimacing away from them before pathologically going to the next dirty surface and then getting disgusted by that one too.

“I’ve heard new arrivals often comment on the night sky,” Vivi said, inspecting a small stain on a wooden wall with sick fascination, “but I like it. It’s honest.”

“Honest?”

“Out in your universe,” the Aeon Slug said, “there are planets and galaxies and all sorts of things just floating around, waiting to be explored and discovered. Here, there isn’t.”

“There isn’t?” Ben asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No.” Vivi turned away from the stain and slugged his way over to Ben, joining him by the window. “All those eons ago when The System came along, he. . . condensed our plane of existence down to The World. There used to be a universe out there sure, but. . . those aren’t stars Ben. They’re some sort of constructs that gather and direct all the power of the Plane of Wild Magic and concentrates it here in The World, where it’s consumed by The System for. . . well, whatever it is he does.” Ben turned away from Vivi and with new eyes looked out again at the night sky.

“That’s fuckin wild,” Ben said quietly, “wait, that’s wild right?”

“It’s pretty wild,” Vivi confirmed.

“Wow,” he said, letting the new information wash over his mind and expand it.

“Prince Ben,” Vivi said, his voice quiet, “I think we need to talk.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, looking away from the sky and finding a semi-uncomfortable looking wooden chair to plop down in. The chair creaked like it was on the verge of breaking, but held. Some small part of Ben’s mind registered that the chair was made of twigs, but that wasn’t really important.

“You made a Royal Oath that you were going to build a City. You swore it pretty much every way you can swear an oath.”

“Well, I meant it,” Ben said, leaning back in his creaky, dangerously unstable chair, “I don’t know exactly how yet, or when, but I’m going to do it. Why not?”

“Because it will be very difficult,” Vivi said, “and it’s going to require more than the two of us. And you’re an [Extremely Tiny], very low leveled [Prince] with no property, no wealth, and a single follower.” Frankie portaled in at that last comment, landing right in front of Vivi. He glared at the Aeon Slug with his faceless front, and then Vivi hastily corrected himself. “Two followers.” Frankie nodded at him, then portaled back into the Utility Pocket.

“Yeah,” Ben said, “those are all problems all right, but they’re solvable problems. What else is stopping us?”

“Well,” Vivi said, happy to complain in a constructive and useful way, “The reason we’re doomed to failure,” Vivi said, sounding excited, “is that to build the kind of city you’ve said you will, we’ll need to find the perfect location. Unfortunately, perfect locations like that tend to already be inhabited. By monsters. By very, very powerful monsters. The hard reality is, outside of the very, very small pockets of civilization that have been carved out over eons, The World is. . . uninhabitable. It is so, so unbelievably dangerous out here. So, it’d take a miracle or a powerful wish for us to find good land we could settle and fortify before the monsters started attacking.”

“Hmm,” Ben said, “yeah, that’s a big problem. Can’t really do anything about that right now. Anything more. . . immediate? Something we can work on right now?”

“We need to get out of the Overcavern Forest,” Vivi said seriously, “before we can do anything. There’s no guarantee we’ll pull that off.”

“Why’s that?” Ben asked, “So far, this place doesn’t seem that bad.” Vivi laughed.

“Then you are one of the most insanely lucky individuals I’ve ever met. There are monsters, dungeons, lairs, void forbid we come across a Citadel. Very old and established gremlin tribes live out here, far from where adventurers can easily exterminate them. Don’t let anyone mislead you, old gremlins are dangerous.”

“Those are the little brown furred fuckers with the big bulging red eyes and the really long teeth?” Ben said, referencing the extended lower canine teeth of gremlins, and Vivi nodded with an eye-stalk, “Hate those guys. They totally destroyed the last town I was in. . .” Ben trailed off, the memory of Grayport 3 unpleasant enough that he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Our best bet would be to head for Solas,” Vivi said, “the capital of the Sunlets. It’s a big city, and luckily for us, it borders the Overcavern Forest. Solas is the city of opportunity, we’ll be able to find our fortune there.”

“Ok, I like this,” Ben said, standing up and starting to pace around, “This sounds like a plan, ‘Get out of The Overcavern Forest and go to Solas’, ok,” Ben said, starting to smile, “this is something we can do right away. Let’s get some sleep then and start that tomorrow.”

In response Vivi yawned, nodded his eye-stalks, and then slugged his way over to the cleanest corner of the apartment. He curled up like a dog, and Ben thought he was asleep until he spoke one last time.

“I’m mad we didn’t get to take over Strange Town,” he said, “but I’m still glad I left the dungeon. Good night Ben.”

“I’m mad too,” Ben said, “and I’m glad to have you. Good night Vivi.

Ben laid down on the hardwood floor and stared up at the ceiling for what felt like a long time before sleep finally claimed him. And outside, Ghost Ears clung to the side of the building, thinking about what they had said.

–

Under the canopy of the Overcavern Forest a great white shadow stalked through the forest. A master of [Stealthy Movement], like a shark in the ocean.

But he was not in the ocean anymore. He'd still call himself a shark though, and he'd tell anyone who asked, and anyone who didn't ask either, that he was a shark. Short Bus was proud of who he was, and right now, he was proud of how powerful his nose was.

“The hunter follows his nose, a gigantic predator unrivaled by anything the land has ever seen,” Short Bus said in what he thought was a whisper; unfortunately he was half-deaf by human standards, so it was more of a stage-whisper than anything else.

“His sense of smell-memory is eidetic, perfect, practically a hallucination in its vividness. Right now,” he said, raising up an arm and touching his enormous shark nose, patting it fondly, “it's telling him his little buddy is close. Very close. Right here. But he's not here,” Short Bus said looking around, turning his head carefully and taking in the details of the forest.

He'd slept recently, and his skill [Common Knowledge], which came with his plus perk [The Bright Spark], had filled in a great deal of the blanks.

He didn't know much, but he got a sense about things. Rather than being a confusing mess, the forest around him had opened up to him a bit, revealing information that previously would have been hidden. He put a hand on the soft green glowing tree next to him and patted it, thinking. He knew the tree was radiating mana, and that sleeping near it would strengthen his body.

“He's right here, or very close by. No,” Short Bus said, turning his head and shutting his eyes. “Ha! You can't hide from me, I can see you with my nose,” he said, then started silently moving through the forest again.

Silent, except for his loud, external monologue.