The Party
Triste — Fade, Mystic (Level 10) — She/Her — Description: 4'8", 103lbs, F-cups, Black/purple hair, Purple eyes, White/violet skin, black corset dress, Knee-high boots, Curved dagger, multiple piercings
Astra — Vulpera, Warden (Level 7) — She/Her — Description: 4'10", 105lbs, B-cups, Orange hair with white tips, Blue eyes, Human complexion, black studded-leather skirt, White knee-high socks, black studded-leather crop-top, Short bow, dirk.
Morgan — Selkie, Skin-mender (Level 8) — They/Them — Description: 2'11", 48lbs, B-Cup, Dark-blue hair, Light-blue eyes, Black skin, Blue kimono robe, Driftwood staff
Bronte (formerly Suzy) — Unseelie, Blade-weaver (Level 8) — She/Her — Description: 5', 135lbs, C-cups, Sky-blue hair, Black eyes, Blue skin, Red Kilt, Platemail bra, Glave sword
Vladimir — Pixie, Pilferer (Level 6) — He/Him — Description: 3'2", 72lbs, B-Cups, Violet hair, Violet eyes, Human complexion, Violet leather shorts, Violet leather bra, Cutlass, and Blow dart.
Lynesse — Felinoid, Fleshomancer (Level 5) — She/Her — Description: 5'8", 160lbs, C-cups, Silver-black hair, Gray eyes, pale human complexion, skimpy white lace dress, Sycamore wood staff.
"It's the only fair solution," Astra says.
Bronte responds in a pouting tone, "You say that, but I really don't want to touch that stone, and I don't think anyone else should either."
"People. People." Morgan says in a calming way. "I really don't mind using it again."
Bronte throws her arms up. "If you keep using it, you won't even be recognizable as a human being anymore!"
"I don't think it will be that bad."
Lynesse says, "And it isn't really a fair method, is it? If Triste selects the short straw, she can't use it, so we have to keep drawing until it's one of us."
"If Triste draws it," Vladimir says. "I'll take her place." He looks up at me with adoring eyes. I take a covert step away from him. Ever since Astra and I emerged from the crypt we'd slept in, Vladimir has kept trying to position himself beside me. And his flushed face and damp fingers when I first saw him suggested he'd been thinking about me during his alone time—a lot. Not to mention. he'd probably had dreams too.
Come to think of it, the front of Bronte's kilt is a sticky mess, the wool is white and crusting over. And she looked all guilty when I said hi to her. But she'd been uncursed. It must just be a coincidence.
"If it comes down to Triste, I'll take it," Astra says. Then, when Vladimir looks at her hurt, "What I mean is Lynn and Bronte won't have to worry about a re-draw. Let's just do this before we die of old age down here."
They weren't actually going to draw straws. I don't know where we'd find straws even if we wanted to. Astra had found a function in the system that would choose a party member at random. She activates it.
Selecting... Tick-tick-tick <sound of wheel spinning> Party Member chosen: Lynesse! Congratulations! |
"No fair! That wasn't done properly! Redo! Redo!" Lynesse squeals.
Re-selecting... Tick-tick-tick <sound of wheel spinning> Party Member chosen: Lynesse! Congratulations, bitch! |
"Ghaa! Now, Katie is just going to keep picking me out of spite. We need to find another way to chose someone."
But Morgan says, "Hey, you wanted to join our party. Now, you have to take the good with the bad."
"When do we get to the good!"
Morgan presses a finger to their temple. "There! I transferred the Testicle."
Lynesse grumbles as we get on our way and climb the stairs to level 6. To all of our surprise, there's no Lich waiting for us. In fact, the hub room is completely deserted.
"Yes!" Lynesse says. "I won't have to use that stupid thing."
My first thought is that it's another temple floor, but the wall is an unbroken circle with six crypt doors. Five of which are iron and whole, shutting the graves up tight. The sixth has suffered a cave-in. The door has been blown off it's hinges and rubble chokes the opening.
Astra says, "The scepter is here! I can feel it."
"Feel it how?" I ask.
"My intuition, I think."
Morgan says, "Didn't you say we had two or three more levels. Are you sure that intuition power is still working?"
"Yes, I've been tracking it. It expires in a couple of hours, actually. Along with your fearlessness. And I said there was two or three more levels to the dungeon. And I stand by that. But the scepter is on this floor."
"So, where?"
"That I don't know. We should do this systematically."
We pick the door to the right of the caved-in crypt and plan to work our way around clockwise. It opens up onto the typical pie-shaped crypt with a large sarcophagus in the center and four smaller, less ornate ones arranged around it. We've barely entered, when they all burst open and undead figures rise from them.
They are fully armored and hold various weapons. Their skin looks like it has been petrified and become gray stone with a shriveled texture. They don't look like Lich's or zombies, so I pull up Detect.
Monster. Species: Revenant Warriors Level: 9, 7(x2), and 4(x2). Notes: These undead were fierce warriors in life, and due to being cursed, they remain so in death. They may fight with one or two-handed weapons and will attack any not of their kind. Like all undead, they have an resistance to magic not specifically designed to affect reanimated monsters. Revenants exist in hives, spreading their reanimation like a virus among any dead in the area. So long as any revenants remain in the hive area, their fallen comrades will rise again one hour after they've been dispatched. |
Well, at leas they can't control us or cast spells. But dang, a level 9 and two sevens aren't going to be easy.
Although, I think I've underestimated my team, because although these revenants put up a good fight, we're never really challenged by them. With everyone at higher levels and no debilitating spells being thrown at us or hordes of undead, we eliminate them rather efficiently.
We search the crypt and there's no scepter. We even have Vladimir check for secret rooms or compartments twice. So, we grab the treasure and hit the next room not wasting any time. Astra guesses the "hive area" is the level, so we have to kill every last one of them in less then 60 minutes or the ones we already killed will join the fight.
Like most dungeon setups in Feronia, the next room is very rinse and repeat. Only this time, the head revenant is level 10, and she's backed up by five more with levels between 4 and 8. So, the same again but harder. This seems to be the pattern with the following rooms as well.
Because we're in close quarter combat, I typically catch most of the revenants in my Dance of Death range and since they tend to be of higher levels, I quickly gain enough experience going from one crypt to the next to reach 11 and soon after 12. And I'm not the only one getting stronger. Everyone else levels up at least once too. At some point, Bronte hits her evolution. We don't take the time to ask her all the details, but I can't help but note the differences.
Her ears have become crazy long and have entered World of Warcraft elf territory. That's not the only bit of anatomy to have lengthened either. Unerect the tip of her penis now hangs below the hem of her mini-skirt kilt. It looks like her breasts have gotten bigger too. Otherwise, her skin has deepened from a smurfy blue to a duskier gray-blue. Her hair has remained its lighter shade of sky-blue but is now done in multiple braids. Some of them tie the others into a bundle at the back. Also, her face seems even more angular than before. You could cut your finger on her cheek bones, but it doesn't make her any less attractive.
When we hit the fifth and final chamber, we still haven't found the Scepter. We're doing good on time and have at least twenty minutes before the undead in the first room start to rise again. But this last room is led by a level 12 revenant and seven companions. Three of which are level 8. This is by far the hardest group we've met.
The high-level foe is an ogre of a man, standing nearly seven feet tall and broad like an ox. He wields a two-handed great sword that has to be as long as I am. Otherwise, he resembles all the other male revenants, except for the mustache he sports that looks like it came straight from a '70s porno. Not that I've ever seen one of those, but this is how I've heard this style of mustache referred to before.
We keep to the strategy that has been working for us. I charge up to the head ghoul, get right in its face, and begin dancing. With how high my defense Rating has gotten, I can hold my own with these near-boss-level baddies. Bronte and Vladimir follow me, trying to herd the lower level minions into my dancing range, while Astra and Lynesse fire at a distance. And Morgan holds back for healing.
Right away, we can tell this will be a different fight. The group scatters and breaks from our forward assault. We manage to keep the boss and three of the others in my range, but four go after our rear lines, viciously lunging at them with swords and pickaxes. Under direct attack, they are forced to switch to melee, which is none of their strong point.
My dance drops two of the revenants quickly, but Porn-stache raises them back up immediately. And when Lynesse drops the undead attacking her, he raises it with a wave of his hand.
Bronte has moved in to help Morgan, leaving Vlad and me to face the replenished forces alone. I can cope with going toe-to-toe with a powerful enemy but being wailed on by three is a problem. And no matter how many of the revenants we knock down, he keeps bringing them back up, so we make zero progress.
"This isn't working!" Vlad calls out. Because it isn't. We'll never win this way. Soon, it will be us falling, and we have no one to resurrect us.
With Morgan fending off an attack, they're not healing us, and my health steadily runs down. I imagine everyone in the party is having the same problem.
Then luck strikes, and I get a critical-hit on the massive leader, finally knocking his Health down to the point where he won't have long left. Once he's out of the way. The others should stay dead.
Except, he has more tricks up his sleeve and casts a spell on himself.
Now it's my turn to cry out in dismay, "He's healing himself."
Morgan yells, "If you're not going to use the stone, give it back to me!"
"Fuck!" Lynesse curses. Then, I'm hit as if by a blow from behind as the weird black rays fill the room. I almost feel like this has only made things worse, except Porn-stache no longer seems to be able to raise his comrades. He keeps trying, wasting his attacks.
One by one, we knock the lower level revenants down. Morgan starts to cast healing spells again. Astra's free to fire arrows at the leader again. Bronte is mopping up the remaining minions, his charged sword dealing devastating damage now that the undead's magic protection is nullified. Lynesse holds onto the stone, white knuckled, screaming, "Noooooooooo!"
When Porn-stache finally collapse in a mess of ruined petrified flesh, I hit level 13. But there are still one of the others left, so I don't check my character sheet just yet. And even after we've cleared the crypt, there isn't time.
Astra yells, "Quick look for that Scepter and secret doors. If there's another room, there still may be more of those things around and—" She stops suddenly as she scans over the room and spots something wrong.
My eyes follow hers, and a see a strange figure standing by the entrance. My first thought is: who the hell is that!?! But then I notice the familiar white dress.
"Lynesse is that you?" Astra asks.
The woman kicks the large black Testicle across the room. "Stupid cursed piece of shit! Someone else can use it on the next floor."
I want to ask what happened, but it's pretty obvious. She's no longer a Felinoid. She's now green, extremely buxom, and shorter than me. Somehow it changed her species and she's now a Pooka, the game's goblin equivalent. Her dresses has shrank to fit the same as in her previous form. Although it looks far lewder with her butt and boobs bubbling out.
"Did anything else happen?"
"Isn't this enough?!? But, yes! The stupid thing apparently did something with my memory."
"What did it do?"
"I don't know. I seem to remember everything just fine."
Astra ponders this a second. "Considering how Katie operates, my guess is she messed with your memories of before Feronia."
"Hmmm," Lynesse considers this. "I don't know I seem to have no problem remembering everything. I can go back to my first memories of around age four or five all the way up to the day I entered the game-pod."
"Everyone get looking!" Astra says while she puts a hand on Lynesse's shoulder. "Maybe it's something weirdly specific. Lets start with that day you started the game. What happened?"
"Not much. Pretty regular, really. Got up made some coffee, looked through my social feed, answered a few messages, gave blowjobs to two of my roommates. All pretty regular."
"O-kay," Astra takes her hand away and gives her an assessing look.
"Wait!" I said, looking up from the coffin I was examining for loot. "Didn't you say that in the hallucination you slept with your roommates but didn't in real life?"
"What hallucination?"
"That must be it!" Bronte says. "It made her forget about that weird dream from the spider orb."
Astra groans beginning to put the pieces together. "No. Katie would never remove a disturbing memory she gave. Triste, what did she say about the hallucination?"
"That she was back in the real world, but everything was like Feronia. You know with all the sex and stuff."
Astra asks Lynesse, "What were you wearing when you went to the game center?"
"My work clothes. I have a shift at the Gap after my game session. So, a g-string, stocking, garter, and Gap branded pasties."
Astra groans again. "It's not the hallucination that's been erased. It's reality. Her old reality."
"What the hell are you talking about? Reality wasn't erased." Lynesse looks at her like she's crazy.
Shaking her head, Astra says, "Never mind. How are we doing with the Scepter?"
"It's not here," a bunch of us answer. Vladimir says, "No secret doors either."
"Looks like your intuition is wrong," Morgan says.
"No. I'm sure it's here somewhere. But—" Her eyes suddenly open wide. "The caved in crypt! It must be in there. We have to clear the rubble."
Bronte says, "There's no way were doing that before the revenants start rising again. If it's there, there must be some secret way in."
Astra slaps her thigh. "No. No secret way. But if one of us could become insubstantial, they could walk straight in." She looks at me.
"Oh, hell no!" I say.
Did this get dropped? There hasn’t been any activity in a few weeks.
Yeah I guess it has been.
Looks soo. Too bad both were going pretty well!
Oh Dear. Would that count as an identity death? Losing the entirety of your original life? Katie is.... not messing around anymore. It already had dark undertones but damn.
Thank you for the chapter!
I think it counts 😬😬😬
@sippysupcup That depends on your definition of identity and self. If you believe they arise exclusively due to the soul, no amount is manipulation is going to change that. But if you believe that an individual is the sum of their memories and experiences, then yes.
@Xyll-246 I count it as being memories and experiences. If you don’t have those you’re not the same person you were before.
@Xyll-246 The soul is a blank slate that memories and experiences are written upon. Take those away and you might not be erasing your existence but you're definitely erasing your identity which is what makes you you. It's why reincarnating with your memories intact is such an appealing part of Isekai. If you reincarnate without your memories then YOU are still dead. Lynesse just got murdered.
@AnimeFreak1982 Not sure I would completely agree with your reasoning. Are you implying that someone with amnesia, that has completely forgotten who they are is dead? How about people with dementia? Memories are more fluid, and over time they change even. It’s erotic horror. If it offends you, don’t read it.
Personally, I have really enjoyed this story. I typically don’t comment online as a story progresses, mainly because I don’t want to influence the story as it’s being written. I’m concerned that good authors are discouraged from their passion due to the negative comments. I just hope the community has not lost another great writer at this time.
@Plankton I have been thinking about it some more and I've been forced to reevaluate my opinion on the matter. I still believe identity death is murder but I've thought a little harder about what exactly constitutes identity and identity death. I've done so by examining three different scenarios: amnesia as you mentioned, cloning and brainwashing like we have in this story. Your absolutely right that amnesia doesn't mean identity death. A person without their memories doesn't just suddenly become a different person. Amnesiacs have the same personality and don't behave too differently then how they normally would and even if they do seem to be behaving differently they're just acting how they naturally would without the information from those lost memories to go on. I believe the reason for this is because even if the memories are gone the experience attached to those memories that helped shape the person into who they are still remains. Identity isn't just memories, experience plays an important part too. To better explain this let's look at the opposite situation of an amnesiac by answering the famous question "If someone made a clone of you and implanted all your memories into the clone would the clone be just like you?". The short answer is no because while the clone has your memories it never personally experienced the events in those memories so it can't identify with them. It's the reason why so many clones in fiction develop personalities that are completely different from the original, sometimes even becoming mortal enemies with the people the original loved. The clone doesn't care he has memories of being your best friend, those are someone else's memories, you're nothing to him. Some clones might try to go the other way and use the inherited memories to develop a personality like the original but they can only ever be like the original. The lack of experience will forever bar them from being completely the same. Now we get to the final scenario, brainwashing. People's personalities naturally change over time and while forcefully changing a person's personality with brainwashing is far from natural I think that if a certain amount of the original personality is left or if the changes aren't too different from how someone could have or would have changed naturally then identity death doesn't apply. In more severe cases, maybe you could call it partial identity death. But what if the personality is completely overwritten and destroyed leaving nothing left resembling the original personality but the memories are still there? In that case I believe identity death would apply because the new personality wouldn't be able to identify with those memories leaving them in a situation similar to the clone. Though since brainwashing can be undone I suppose you could call it temporary identity death. Think of it like being killed then resurrected when the brainwashing is undone.
With all that out of the way my new diagnosis of Lynesse's condition is she's an amnesiac with partial brainwashing. She's not dead yet but she's pretty dang close.
Also I wasn't trying to be negative with my comment, I was just trying to state an objective opinion though that opinion was greatly flawed. I hope I've corrected that now.
It's a stupid argument of doing a false equivalency between the mind control and death. Blatantly stating that changing minds through supernatural means is murder. It's hella a downer, borderline kinkshaming the brainwashing fetish stuff.
I personally feel like the viewpoint of 'replacing' a person with another one cheapens it. The appeal of brainwashing is the change of someone. Like damn, when a character becomes unable to relate to their actions and viewpoints they use to hold there is dissonance and that's incredibly enthralling. But if you view the whole thing from the viewpoint of replacing a character with another character all nuance is killed, the whole thing is lessened IMO. It stops being the same person being altered and it becomes 2 unrelated characters interacting. There being a personal narrative that keeps it all connected makes it amazing, like a ship of theseus thing, it's possible to replace everything yet it's still considered the same ship since there is a journey cutting through it all.
@Edifier I wasn't trying to equate mind control to death per se, I outright said mind control doesn't equate identity death in my comment, try reading what people say before you insult them. What I considered identity death was complete mind destruction. Do you really think someone can be considered the same person if you literally erase everything that makes them them? I'm not sure what you think of when you hear identity death but to me it's the complete death of every part of a person's being aside from the body and a blank soul. Putting in a different personality with different memories after that isn't mere mind control. For all intents and purposes it's no different than yanking out and discarding a person's soul and then putting someone else's soul in the empty shell. You can't possibly claim it's still the same person after that. The body might still be alive but it would certainly not be a false equivalency to call the original occupant of that body dead at that point.