Level 1 Fallen

Why had I been the only one to die when entering the dungeon portal? What was different about me compared to the others? My mind raced, trying to find the answer.

Admittedly, I was the only male of the group that had entered, but why would that matter? What did gender have to do with being ‘pure of heart’. Similarly, there shouldn’t have been something like a level requirement, given that these dungeons operated on the presumption that the Player system didn’t exist. Otherwise, the Trials of Resolve or Wisdom no longer made sense, as both could be completed by any Player given enough time.

I tried to message Bella or Diane, only to receive the familiar error message that both of them were within a special instance, unable to accept messages. Realizing this, I knew that they must have successfully entered the dungeon.

Then, thinking about that, a stray thought crept into my mind. What if I had also entered the dungeon? The Trial of Resolve had altered my perception, and even fabricated system messages. What if I was actually in the Trial of Blood at the moment?

If that’s the case… I looked around at all of the passing civilians, unsure what the contents of the trial would be. Given that name, one would expect it to require combat, but everything here was peaceful. Together with the line, ‘only the pure of heart shall pass’, did it mean that I had to protect what was important to me from some external threat?

Thinking this, I teleported to the town wall, scanning the horizon as patrolling soldiers greeted me respectfully. I couldn’t see any dangers looming…

Just as I was wondering what the contents of the trial could be, a message arrived from Bella. Drake? Are you back at Fallcry?

I froze, briefly wondering whether or not this was part of the trial, or if I had truly died trying to enter. Either way, there was no point in not responding.

That’s right. I died upon entering the portal, and respawned back in Fallcry. What is the situation on your side?

If this was really all part of the trial, then that would mean that this conversation with Bella was also a scripted event. Playing along would let me better understand the meaning behind the trial.

Well, it’s… a bit difficult. Could you come back to the dungeon gate? Marron says that she can explain.

I paused again at this. Had I… really just failed the dungeon by default? My suspicions about being stuck in some grand illusion were just me trying to escape the reality that I had been unable to even set food inside the dungeon?

Shaking my head, I returned to the dungeon gate through World Walking, finding the trio standing outside the gate once more. Marron had a red face that had nothing to do with the cold. “S-sorry! This is my fault!” she cried out as soon as I appeared, lowering her head.

“What is?” I asked, utterly confused.

“It was a mistranslation,” Diane sighed, shaking her head, before letting Marron explain.

I looked back at the dogfolk girl, who gulped nervously. “Well, remember how I said that the Cromoran language, at least in my perception, was an encoded Spanish? Well, when I saw the quote that said ‘only the pure of heart shall pass’... there was a slight error in the translation. The word that they used was ‘alma’, which can mean heart or soul. But… it can also mean lifeblood, in the literal sense.”

My eyes widened upon hearing this, thinking back to the murals that we had seen in the previous dungeons. Indeed, all of them had shown beings of individual races such as elves, with none showing traits of being mixed blood. I hadn’t paid too much attention to that at the time, finding it more unusual that such races were shown as opposed to Chimerae.

“So… the reason that I can’t enter the dungeon is just because I’m a halfblood?” I asked incredulously. A dungeon where only those with pure blood were able to pass?

No wonder there wasn’t a village or any kind of settlement around here, despite the door being wide open. Not a single Chimerae would be able to enter unscathed. In fact, given that the doors were open, it would not surprise me if there was once a village here, but those within it had decided to challenge the dungeon, only to perish upon entering.

“Y-yeah…” Marron answered sheepishly. “That’s apparently what the Trial of Blood is meant to represent, testing if a challenger has a pure bloodline.”

All this time, I had been believing that the name meant that there would be combat involved in some way. But for the trial to really be just as simple as whether you were capable of walking through the door or not…

I let out a long sigh, shaking my head. “Were you able to get any more information from inside the dungeon, or are there more challenges in there?”

“No challenges,” Diane said simply. “It goes straight to the final room. We didn’t take the time to note down the murals, since we wanted to come out and let you know what the problem was.”

Inwardly, I was thankful for their decision. If they had lingered inside for too much longer, I may well have gone paranoid looking for threats to Fallcry that I was meant to defeat. Still, I looked towards the gate. “You might as well finish your work. The main ruins said that there was information from all three trials that you needed to gather before you could complete your mission. I’ll… wait out here until you return.”

Marron sent one last apologetic look my way before stepping back into the portal, with Diane following behind her. Bella smiled softly, moving over to stand next to me. “I’ll stay out here with you. If there are any traps inside, Diane can handle it, but it’d be boring out here on your own, right.”

I gave a somewhat bitter smile at her assessment. “Thanks. I hadn’t expected that we would be able to get through this whole request without actually fighting a single enemy.”

“We might not still,” Bella pointed out. “We still have to make our way to the central ruins after this is over, and there might be enemies there that we need to fight. Though, from what we’ve seen so far, I kind of doubt that that would be the case.”

I nodded my head in agreement. After comparing this trial with the others that we had already faced, I realized that this was never really meant to be a combat trial to begin with. This whole thing was meant for players that preferred a casual approach to their adventures, as shown by how each trial could be resolved without any violence whatsoever.

For the first trial, there was no doubt a way to get through the village of natives with sheer persistence and diplomacy. As for the trial itself, as long as you were able to resist the urge to stop moving forward, you could pass it with ease.

The second trial was the one that really had me thinking that combat was necessary, but we never even tried to approach it diplomatically. Not only that, but the fact that some of the questions couldn’t be answered by the knowledge recorded in the Sage’s Sanctum showed that there were clues that were probably only obtainable through peaceful dialogue with the natives.

This really was, from start to finish, a dungeon series for peaceful players. That said, a ‘normal’ peaceful route would have likely taken far longer to complete, so it wasn’t exactly like we were wasting our time by helping Marron. Just the travel from one dungeon to another would take days under normal circumstances, and this was absolutely not just me trying to find a bright side to what we were doing.

“By the way, what was the reward that Marron promised for helping her with the request?” Bella asked curiously, causing me to freeze up. Seeing this, Bella perked a brow. “There’s a reward, right?”

“Of course there’s a reward…” I muttered, before quickly flipping back through my chat history with Diane, finding the series of screenshots that she had sent listing each of the job offers that had come her way.

It took me a few minutes to find the one that I was looking for under Bella’s increasingly amused gaze. “Ah, here it is. She offered to pay Bella in player currency, and provide us with a relic weapon that she found in a previous ruins exploration.”

Bella blinked in surprise. “I’m not against Diane getting paid for this, really. But what could we need from a relic weapon? Anything that old is bound to be falling apart after so long?”

“It’s an energy rifle,” I added, looking at the hand-drawn image at the bottom of the request.

“On further consideration, this seems like a really important quest,” Bella nodded her head seriously. “We need to understand the people who once lived on these lands in order to learn the truth of the past. Maybe we’ll be able to find some shocking secrets.”

I looked at Bella’s sudden change in demeanor with an amused smile. After Diane got her wires, it was only natural that Bella wanted something special as a weapon upgrade as well. And while I was having Hammerhead make some items that would work for both of them, I hadn’t revealed that fact yet, wanting to save it as a surprise.

As I was thinking that, Diane and Marron emerged from within the gate, a complex look in their eyes. “Let’s go,” Diane said, looking at me. “We’ll take the car this time. You’ll want to be able to participate in this conversation.”

Blinking, I pulled out the car, placing it on a projected platform to prevent it from simply sinking into the snow. We all got into the car, with Marron sitting in the front passenger seat to act as the navigator.

“You guys really found some huge secret?” Bella asked from the back seat in astonishment, having only said that as an excuse to get the energy rifle.

“You could say that,” Diane answered, organizing her thoughts as I took to the sky. “After piecing together the information from each of the ruins so far, we were able to come to a few conclusions.”

“First of all, the current form of the Chimerae, and even the planet itself, are drastically different from what they once were. At some point in time, Chimerae had a more logical layout, without all of these random biomes scattered around. In addition, it should have been far bigger than what we see today.”

“As for the people, the concept of mixed blood was rare back then. Almost everyone was one normal race, such as elves, dwarves, or humans. A successful halfblood birth was incredibly rare. Then, after an event that they called the Convergence, everything began to change. Halfblood birth rates increased, and the Cromorans were faced with a choice.”

“They could either self-impose strict rules regarding racial pairings, preserving their racial identities and culture, or allow the various races to intermingle. This split the Cromorans into two major factions, known as the Traditionalists and the New Blood.”

“The New Blood believed that the answer was to have all races interbreed, becoming a single new race with all of the beneficial traits of their ancestors. Unlike halfbloods today, those of the Cromoran age could continue to reproduce, further mixing their blood.”

“Meanwhile, the Traditionalists violently opposed this, believing that mixing their blood in such a way would bring their lineage to ruin. And so began the Bloodtide War.”

I listened to Diane’s story curiously, only speaking once she had finished. “It… sounds like the Chimerae are the descendants of the New Blood faction, right? That’s why their bodies look like a mix of a bunch of different races. If that’s the case, it means that they ultimately won the war, right?”

“That’s the weird part,” Diane answered. “According to the murals in the Trial of Blood, it looked like the New Bloods had been pushed back, and were on the verge of defeat. The Traditionalists had even created a medicine that their purebloods could take, and it would cause any halfblood children to be born sterile. Meanwhile, the New Bloods were becoming weaker with each generation, as they inherited the racial weakness of each parent race.”

“Logically speaking, this process should have ultimately led to the victory of the Traditionalists. However, the exact outcome of the war wasn’t shown in any of the three ruins. Because of that, we don’t actually know how Chimeris ended up in its current state.”

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