“It makes me sick, you know?” asks the odd figure, lurching closer towards Canta with odd, janky and quickly snapping movements that only ever appear together with the vibrating sensation of the strong heartbeat that Canta can feel down in his feet, coming into his body through the ground.

Its head tilts left and right with sharp ticks, like that of a twitching lizard or bird observing them, the limp arm drags the long lance behind it through the dirt as it approaches. “It makes me sick,” whispers the thing, clutching its one eyeless socket with a free hand in a hissing voice.

Alleluia pulls Canta back, jumping to his side. “Stop!” says Alleluia, raising a fist threateningly.

“Stop?” asks the figure, its purple armor starting to shake as if the undead creature, the skeleton in the ornate purple-armor, had become deathly cold all of a sudden. “Stop…?” it mutters, looking at the ground as if searching for something that it can’t find. “Guy, did you hear that?” it asks, lifting its head to the side and speaking to some imaginary entity. The fingers of its free hand dig down into the bottom of its empty socket and begin to pull. The skull cracks and a piece of the bone comes free, crumbling beneath its metal fingers. “Stop? Stop?! STOP?!” it shakes, its breastplate lurching in and out as if it were hyperventilating. “STOP?!” yells the thing, indignantly.

It screams and lunges forward. Alleluia’s fist flies. There is a loud crack and a second later, the thing’s head is gone, pulverized. The armor falls over.

“What the fuck was that?” asks Canta.

“I don’t know, honey,” says Alleluia. “Let’s get out of here,” she says, looking around the odd-forest. “This is probably some kind of trap. We should go!”

Canta nods, agreeing with her. “Yeah.”

“That’s your problem, guy,” whispers a voice into his ear in a tone that Canta can only unnervingly describe as… loving. He jumps up in surprise and Alleluia also lets out a shocked yelp. Her boot kicks the suit of armor that has risen back up to its feet and stands behind them. It flies across the field, tumbling over and over, all of the bones inside of it snapping with audible intensity.

“The fuck?!” shouts Canta. Alleluia grabs his hand and they run. Canta isn’t sure why it catches his eyes, but he sees a skittering spider down in the field, rushing through the tall grass. He doesn’t really feel like eating right now though. But man, he could really go for a sin right about now.

Alleluia stops and Canta, his eyes locked down on the spider, stumbles forward, falling down. She catches him, pulling him back up to his feet. Canta’s eyes go wide as he stares at the janky skeleton, walking out of the forest ahead of them, coming down from the top of a broken staircase that leads to nowhere. He turns around, looking where it just was a second ago. It’s gone.

“It really makes me sick to my stomach, when I see it,” says the entity again, the blade of the lance that it is dragging behind it strikes against the steps with an audible clanking. “When I see those DISGUSTING eyes of yours!” It breaks its own skull again. “It makes me SICK!” Its chest lurches forward as the dented breastplate is pushed back outward, as if by some unseen force, pressing against it from behind. “Where is your resolve?!” The lance strikes against some rocks as it lurches across the field. “Why is ‘stop’ an option?! Where’s your TWINKLE?!”

“What the FUCK are you talking about?!” yells Canta across the field. He’s heard of this phenomenon, of course. Some undead don’t go completely undead, they retain a semblance of their humanity when changing. But the contrast tends to make them a little… loopy. He assumes that this is what that is. As for how the entity is regenerating and teleporting, well, that’s another matter. He’s assuming that it’s some form of distorted, but there isn’t a smell of sin anywhere near it. It’s simply indistinct.

The entity stops. He and Alleluia get ready for a fight.

“What? No, it’s MY body!” says the skeleton argumentatively, looking to its side. “Huh?! How is that relevant?” it asks, planting the base of the lance on the ground. Canta and Alleluia exchange a confused glance. “One time! I was a slime-girl ONE TIME and you’re never going to let me forget it, huh?!” It looks around the field. “Let me have this one! HE NEEDS SOME CONVICT-”

It stops moving, its body entirely frozen in place where it stands, its jaw still half-open in speech, but no words come out. Canta blinks.

“Should we run?”

“I… don’t know,” says Alleluia. “Maybe we should just try to kill it again, but, better?”

“Kill it better?” asks Canta. Alleluia nods. He shrugs. “Okay, I can work with that.”

The frozen skull moves, taking a sharp right-ward turn to look their way.

“Hello!” says the skeleton, its voice sharply shifting to something oddly chipper and feminine. “Sorry about that!” it apologizes, lifting a hand in a non-threatening gesture and slowly setting the lance down. “My adopted-brother gets twitchy,” says the new voice, spinning a free finger next to its skull. It stares at their confused expression, tapping against its head once. “There are a few of us in here. He has some, uh…” it looks around. “- social difficulties, you see.”

“Wow, great,” says Canta. “I don’t give a shit, we’re leaving. Bye!” he says, grabbing Alleluia’s hand and turning the other way.

“Ah, no, you can’t -”

“BYE!” repeats Canta. The two of them run away. Looking back, he sees that the skeleton stands there, exactly in place, just watching them go. Maybe it has multiple personalities, or maybe it’s just deranged and rabid. Either way, they’re leaving. This is a firm ‘not my problem’ moment if he’s ever seen one.

The two of them run through the odd-forest for a while, running around ruins and rubble and floating crystals and all the same strange things that they’ve encountered on their way here. Such things seem to span out in all directions, no matter which way they go.

They run through the odd-forest, sleep in the odd-forest, find a quiet, private corner for themselves in the odd-forest. Canta is seriously hungry. He notices that his body doesn’t regenerate anymore and that his temperature is spiking, he’s getting a slight fever. But there isn’t a single sin for miles. So he eats more frogs instead.

Pond frog 500 g Calories: 73 Protein: 16 g Fat: 0.3 g *Carbs: 0 g Fiber: 0 g Sugars: 0 g Rich in POTASSIUM

Days later, they emerge from the forest and stand…

At the edge of the field where they began. The purple-armored skeleton sits there again, its cape billowing in the wind. It turns its head around, looking at them with a singular glowing eye.

“What the fuck is this?!” yells Canta at it.

“You can’t leave,” says the entity in the feminine voice again. “It’s a metaphor.”

“Huh?” he looks around.

The skeleton looks back forward. “It’s a metaphor,” it repeats. “You can’t leave the dungeon until you’ve learned your lesson.”

Alleluia gasps, hitting her fist into her open palm. “Wait!” she looks around them for a while, the whirring of the mechanical components of her body are the only sounds that fill the area. Suddenly, her hand grips his shoulders, her eyes going wide, having come to some realization. “Is this THE metaphorical-dungeon?!”

“It was,” replies the skeleton. “But that was a looong time ago, sister.”

“The meta-fucking what?” asks Canta. Alleluia explains to him that back when dungeon-magic used to be abundant beneath the surface of the world, there used to be thousands of ‘normal’ dungeons like the one she used to live in. But there was one special dungeon that all dungeon-dwellers knew about. A hole in the world that was chosen by the dark-god himself, to serve one particular, highly specific purpose.

Education.

“Huh…” says Canta unenthusiastically. “That’s… it?” He shrugs. “That’s lame. No wonder the gods all died out, if that was the best they could come up with.” He sighs. Hearing of such a thing explains many other things to him. Of course the cosmic-system was fucked from the start, if it was made by ‘people’ who thought such an idea as an ‘educational dungeon experience for evil creatures’ was a smart idea. “So, what happened?” he asks. “Doesn’t look like much of a dungeon to me,” notes Canta, looking up at the sky above their heads. Dungeons tended to be underground, generally speaking.

“The dungeon-magic ran out,” explains the skeleton.

“Who would have guessed?” he sighs. Alleluia nudges him, trying to get him to be quiet.

“So we didn’t use dungeon-magic to keep it going,” says the skeleton, looking at Alleluia’s clockwork body curiously. “We used hero-magic.”

Alleluia gasps again, realizing something he doesn’t. “That’s why it’s all on the surface now!” The skeleton nods. “But how did you get hero-magic?”

The skeleton tilts its head. “We got a hero.”

“Oh,” replies Alleluia, a little taken aback by the plain answer. “That must have been hard.”

She shakes her head. “He’s my step-brother.”

“You sure have a lot of fucking brothers,” says Canta.

“I do. My name is Sister,” says the skeleton, looking over its shoulder. “You can’t leave the dungeon until you’ve learned your lesson. Them’s the rules.”

“And what fucking lesson is that?” he asks.

“Dunno. It’s not my problem,” replies Sister, shrugging indifferently. “What? Oh come on,” it sighs, looking the other way and talking to someone. “Gluttony? Who cares, he’s dead. Everyone’s dead. Yeah?” It stops. “Yeah? Are you sure?” The skeleton groans, spinning its head as if dramatically rolling its eyes. It looks back towards them. “My brother says you need to straighten up your act -” it looks back to the side. “What? I’m not gonna say it!” it hisses. “Ugh! Fine!” it relents in a complaining tone only a moment later. The skeleton sighs, turning back to them. “My brother says that to escape the dungeon, you need some…” the skeleton’s eye twitches, as if it were struggling to say the next word. “- conviction.”

Canta crosses his arms. “What does that mean?”

“It means you need to get your shit together, so that you can eat the demon-king.”

He blinks. “How do you know about that?”

“Dungeon-master’s in my brain,” explains Sister, tapping their skull.

“Dungeon-master’s in your brain?” asks Alleluia.

“Dungeon-master’s in my brain,” repeats the skeleton.

“Really?!” asks Alleluia, rushing forward towards the thing. Canta tries to stop her. “That’s really great! A real dungeon-master?!” she runs over towards the skeleton, looking into its one eye. “Hello!” she says, waving to it from up close. “I’m from a dungeon too!” she explains excitedly, spinning around. “Look! We also ran out of dungeon-magic, so we used machines instead!”

“Are we…” Canta stops. “Are we just accepting this then?” he asks, gesturing around to broadly everything. They don’t answer, engrossing themselves in a conversation without him. Apparently they are. Apparently this is going to be a thing now.

Great.