How long has it been?

Sweat drips down Canta’s face as he runs up the staircase again, panting, heaving and gasping for breath. He’s been running for -

Canta blinks, getting the sweat out of his eyes.

- How long has he been running for now? Days? Weeks? He’s so hungry. It’s been a while since he got a sin from Sister.

Canta’s hands land on his knees as he bends over forward, gasping for air, his eyes scanning the area around himself. He’s in some kind of oddly pink forest. Wiping his forehead on his upper arm, he keeps running, reaching the top of the staircase that leads to nowhere. His foot hovers over the abyss that comes after that final step, but instead of falling freely, it finds a new stone surface beneath itself a moment later.

Canta runs through this new ‘floor’, which is some kind of crystalline field, searching for the next staircase that is hidden on the other side of it. It’s odd, it’s sort of like progressing through a dungeon. But the dungeon is spread out all around the forest and every time he reaches the top of a flight of stairs, he simply appears at the other end somewhere else, despite some of them being kilometers away from each other. The dungeon-magic of the stairs was kept alive, in a sense, by use of a different kind of magic known as ‘hero-magic’. However, this needs sunlight to function, hence why everything is outside.

It has been several weeks since the two of them had arrived here, in the ‘metaphorical-dungeon’. How many weeks exactly though? He isn’t sure. At least four. It’s been a while.

Sister has been training him. During the day, he has to run through the metaphorical-dungeon by himself, fighting small token-monsters on the way that are always related to the floor that he finds them on and then, during the night when the moon is bright and shining in the sky above them, Sister teaches him how to fight.

As for the sins he was promised, Brother, the masculine, odd-ball voice of Sister, has been delivering. But only every time he clears a full hundred staircases, only then does he ever get a tiny morsel to satisfy his hunger. As of now, he’s inclined to believe the skeleton’s ramblings of sharing a body with hundreds, if not thousands, of other souls. The sins he has been given are all from different people, places and times. All of them carry a different smell, a different taste, a different memory.

As for Alleluia, she’s made herself comfortable in what amounts to a den that she and Canta had made, to keep her sheltered from the elements. She spends her hours reading books. Apparently, in their free time, which they have had aeons of, the female voice in Sister had wrote many such things. More aptly said, Sister had transcribed books that had already existed from their memory, returning them to paper. Canta isn’t so much interested in the sourcing of said paper, as he is of the ink. But he decides it would be best not to ask.

On the plus side, he’s not only been eating, but he’s been gaining levels again. Brother’s sins are different than the many that he has eaten until now. They’re dry-aged, refined. Even small sins give him giant amounts of experience and the real combat-training with Brother is a great boon to him, if not deeply painful. Brother doesn’t go easy on him, saying that he needs to scream to show that he means it. Besides, his body can regenerate, so it’s fine. Suffering is just part of the educational experience.

The physical eating of the sins is fairly pleasant as well, involving him eating some fruit or some flowers that make him oddly tired. Except for the one time Brother had given him a dead snake to eat and simply stood there chanting ‘meat-snake, meat-snake’ over and over until he ate the snake, which was indeed, made out of meat. He supposes it would have been odd if it wasn’t.

Meat snake 500 g Calories: 93 *Protein: 18 g Fat: 5 g Carbs: 0 g Fiber: 0.2 g Sugars: 0 g

A week passes. Canta, still continuing with his own exercises as well, notices the first real muscles growing on his arms. Alleluia notices as well and training ends up being postponed for half an hour.

“You’re really strong,” says Canta, dangling upside from a tree-branch that Brother had smashed him into with its lance during the next day. “Do you just wanna kill the demon-king instead?”

“No,” says Brother. “I don’t leave the dungeon anymore. Not since I was a lizard.”

Canta shrugs, still upside-down, ignoring that last remark. “I mean, I get it, it sucks out there. But you could fix that.”

Brother shakes, their body shuddering in a spasm that Canta has become familiar with. A peaceful transition of power. Sister has returned. “No, we can’t leave,” it explains. “The hero-magic in this place is what keeps this body alive.” Sister begins poking him with the blade of the lance, trying to coerce him to drop back down. “Without it, this body and the souls inside of it will all fade.”

“We all gotta die eventually,” notes Canta, pointing at them.

“Correct,” says Sister. “So make sure this demon-king of yours does.” It pokes him again and Canta drops to the ground.

He gets a particularly big sin that night, a fine, old, refined one that belonged to some odd man named Piotr. It’s just standard run of the mill stuff though. Apparently, he had the hots for someone else, despite already being married. No big deal in Canta’s eyes, he’s seen a thousand of these already. But the cosmic-system seems to disagree and gives him the amount that he would have gotten for five or six people all at once.

Another day passes.

Canta keeps running up the stairs, sweat dripping down his body. He hasn’t bothered wearing a shirt for days. He only has one and it already looks like shit. But he’s going to break another hundred today or die trying, he’s determined to do it.

Another day passes.

Stairs. Stairs. Stairs. Canta runs, completely focused on the stairs. The stairs are the key to his success. By climbing the stairs, he gets food, by getting food, he gets stronger, by getting stronger, he can climb the stairs better!

Another day passes and soon the rest of the week as well.

Sister’s body is controlled by someone else today, someone he hasn’t met yet. Someone who is not of many words. The skeleton walks up to him, pulling on his head to get his posture straight, pressing against his stomach. It nods, satisfied. Bending down, Sister picks up a pair of sticks from the forest, handing him one. Confused, Canta takes it and watches as the skeleton stands next to him with sure footing, grabbing its stick like a sword. It lifts the improvised weapon over its head and swings it forward into the empty space before itself.

Canta watches as it continues to repeat this movement over and over, listening to the air being sliced by the stick through the movements of an expert swordsman. Getting the gist of it, he then copies its posture and motions and the two of them stand there next to each other, swinging their sticks over and over for the better part of a few hours.

“You’re doing great, honey!” calls Alleluia from the side, waving with an idle hand, not even looking up from her book.

The next day comes.

More swordsmanship.

Then another day.

More stairs! Canta loves the stairs! Stairs!

Another week passes.

Canta is getting stronger and stronger. He’s super excited about tomorrow’s training! Tomorrow is another stair-day.

Tomorrow comes. Sister looks at him, lifting a finger. “Okay. I think you got it. Bye,” nods the skeleton, giving him a thumbs-up.

“…Huh?”

“You learned your lesson about hard-work paying off even under impossible circumstances. About how even in the worst situations, you can still find the resolve to grind and do what you can do. Now it’s time for you to leave the dungeon. Bye!” waves Sister.

Canta blinks. “Wait, what?”

Alleluia gets up, dusting herself off. “Oh, I’m relieved. I reread this one book six times now,” she says, setting the book back down onto the pile. “It’s good though,” she says. “Thank you for having us in your home!” says Alleluia, curtsying to Sister.

“Sure thing!” says Sister. “Good luck with the whole demon-king thing!” says the skeleton, its cape billowing in the wind. “If it doesn’t work out, then come back in an aeon or two, when the dungeon is back running again for real. We could always use some more people here.”

Canta blinks, somewhat taken aback. “I mean… I don’t mind going, but couldn’t you just… you know, give me all of the sins you have?” he asks. “I could really use them. Really power up and then stomp the demon-king in five minutes flat.”

Sister stares at him and then sighs. “Ah, damn it. Now you’ve done it.” Its body shakes and Brother returns, the one eye glowing ominously bright.

“SICK!” screams the skeleton. “YOU MAKE ME SICK!” it yells. “FORTY-NINE DAYS!” it grabs his shoulders. “Everyone spends forty-nine days in the Bardo!” The eye seems to spasm inside of the skull a little. “How fun do you think it would be, to just give you INCREDIBLE, UNIMAGINABLE, DELIRIUM-INDUCING POWER?!”

Canta lifts a finger. “A lot. It would be a lot of fun.”

The skeleton shoots downward in a sharp motion, pressings its face close to his. “I’ll make you a deal, brother,” says Brother. The skeleton leans in towards him, whispering into his ear. “You go out there and bring me the demon-king’s eye and I’ll tell you about the time I was a slime-girl.”

Canta blinks. “I really don’t want to know that story.”

“GOOD LUCK, BRAVE ADVENTURER!” yells Brother, getting up and rubbing its eyes as if crying. “This part always gets me,” it sobs, before turning to Alleluia. “Miss.” Alleluia waves goodbye.

“Wait? That’s it?” asks Canta as Alleluia grabs his hand and begins dragging him off. “What? What was any of this? I didn’t learn shit! None of this makes any sense!” he protests. Alleluia just hums, dragging him along and the skeleton, Sister or Brother or whoever it is now, waves goodbye. “Why are you all pretending this is normal?!” yells Canta, but he receives no real response.

The two of them leave the metaphorical dungeon. The purple-armored skeleton vanishes out of his line of sight as it returns back to its spot in the meadow to sit back down in quiet peace, perhaps waiting for the next passerby to find it.

“So now what, honey?” asks Alleluia. Canta grumbles, winding her crank back up. “Do you think you’re strong enough to eat the demon-king now?”

“No,” says Canta, plain as day. “But whatever, we’ll figure it out on the way,” he explains, pointing towards what he assumes is the east. “We’re going to have a long trip back around and then back towards the big-tree city,” he nods. “Let’s go.”

“Is that really what you want to do?” asks Alleluia, grabbing his hand.

“Hell if I know. But what else is there to do?” asks Canta, lifting his foot to climb up the next step of the staircase. He stumbles over the completely flat field.