Saga of the Soul Dungeon

"Anyone who thinks skills solve their problems, has never had a real problem. Anything that can be solved with the mere application of force or money is a mere obstacle. Real problems are the things that require us to work on ourselves, and the Gods didn't make that so easy."

- Ingati Hargani, from the preface to Mastering the True Skills: The Art of Managing What the System Doesn't Codify.

==Caden==

The biggest problem, I decided, was that I didn't think I had time for this.

The pounding sensation of the notifications was getting more intense, rather than less. Honestly, I had hoped they would at least hold steady.

Apparently the System doesn't like it when we wait to open our mail.

Of course, simply letting the situation exist, letting the Adar be essentially slaves… well that wasn't acceptable, ether

Of course, that was a false dichotomy.

Choosing to let the issue wait a bit longer, for a valid and urgent reason, was not the same as simply ignoring or condoning it.

Waiting was the prudent choice. Acting should only happen once I knew more about the situation anyway. And when I wasn't likely to become nonfunctional due to the increasing pressure bordering into pain while in the middle of it.

No, the issue would simply have to wait.

"Zidaun, I'm going to deal with my notifications. They have been building up while I was unavailable. I'm not sure if any of them will deal with languages, or will cause me any issues."

"Of course, Caden," he replied, in the same subservient tone of voice. "Ah, at least one title should deal with the skill books, unless you have consumed multiple at that level before within a day?"

I shook my head.

"No, no I have not."

And hadn't that been a nasty surprise.

Zidaun had explained that too. How the high level ones were always fatal to make. That the loss of a skill of that level… was too ingrained.

I had done my best not to react.

I pictured an entire skill being ripped out of my soul.

I wonder if they just die from the shock?

Zidaun had explained how his teacher was getting old, how he had reached the stage where his skills would start to decline. That it was better that it not go to waste, when it could help me.

He had been so earnest, so sincere, that it almost hurt. Especially when I could see the grief buried beneath.

Either mind control or indoctrination… or both.

Part of me wanted it to be mind control, simply because that would be easier to deal with. Indoctrination meant it would be a long slow process of changing how they thought as a culture, or at least the part of the culture that ended up living in me.

Unfortunately, I suspected that both was a more accurate answer.

I sent Zidaun off, teleporting him back to join the others as they partied.

A few idiots, who had already had too much, tried to open the sealed gates to the dungeon, and I teleported them into the ice cold fountains.

Best to help train them out of their stupidity. Who the hell would try to enter a dungeon drunk?

I shook my head and set up a puzzle command. Trying to open the doors was an immediate teleport into a fountain.

Some idiots are probably going to make a game out of that.

I rolled my eyes at the thought.

Let them, it's better than going into a dungeon drunk.

I felt some amusement that I could teleport the first few directly into the fountains like that.

Saving people from themselves is still a benevolent gesture, even if I am snarky about it.

I still needed to deal with the notifications.

There was still some excitement for them. Some anticipation at what I would gain, but it had been supplanted by the reality of the world I now inhabited. And by what came after…

… the corpses.

Well, let's see if I can make this easier.

The System, for whatever other faults it might have, had personalized my messages, tweaking aspects of what it showed.

I focused on my notifications. I wasn't trying to open them, I was trying to break them apart, to give me time to deal with each piece on its own, and have the relevant information together. A flood of information would just sweep me away, and there was a greater chance that something would get lost.

The insistent pulse of the flashing notification shifted, gaining depth. Now it was a bright light, with a cascade of lights behind it, like looking down a tunnel of lights.

Okay, let's begin.

I waited for a moment, seeing if more was coming…

Nothing happened. It looked like my plan to break up the notifications had worked. The pounding had diminished substantially, but I could feel that it was beginning to rapidly mount back up.

Looks like the system understood me all too well. It was giving me enough time to process, but not enough to actually induce any significant delay.

Stupid overly intelligent broken AI…

The thought was, perhaps, undercut by my grin.

The grin faded away as I looked at the notification more carefully.

The System wasn't outright saying the Adar were slaves, but it was pretty clear about them being subject to my will. The secondary connections could be broken, potentially, which gave me some hope that there were appropriate limits.

Zidaun was stuck with me… forever. Or well, if I died and my soul was whisked away by GAIA… he was probably stuck with Exsan.

Fate worse than death? Yes, no? Answer the poll, we want to know!

I waved away the irreverent thought.

At least… I'll never be alone.

For a moment I thought back to the isolation of my arrival. Tam had been there, but there was no communication, just me in a room trying not to go insane…

I was always going to have someone here, in this life. Two people, actually. Zidaun and Exsan. Unless Zidaun ran away, which he might do, if he was truly a slave. He would always have my permission to leave.

Guess I'm stuck with just Exsan for sure…

The same joke about fates worse than death flashed through my mind and was waved away with absent exasperation.

Unfortunately, that just brought the problem of Zidaun into greater focus. I had to make sure I did right by him. Exsan would probably be perfectly happy to essentially treat him as a slave. Perhaps a valuable and cared for slave, especially with his newly gained capacity to feel more, but Exsan didn't see a problem with being worshiped as a god.

If Exsan wanted to form a cult to worship him… honestly I didn't care that much. As long as he didn't treat them too badly.

As long as people had a choice… well that was it. As long as people had a choice.

If the Adar didn't have a choice, then I wasn't okay with their situation.

I sighed.

Not the time to deal with this. Next!

For a moment, I was dizzy, but only a moment.

It was the last skill that had done it.

I had already done the hard parts by learning the two languages. The cryptography had simply added context. It had highlighted something I already knew, and codified it into knowledge that I could apply elsewhere.

I had already been listening to both the adventurers and Adar. It had been easy. Honestly, if I was paying attention, I couldn't prevent myself from hearing them even if I wanted to.

My mind tried to focus on death again, but I just shoved it aside. I would deal with that in the future. I wasn't avoiding it. It would be dealt with after all of this.

Hopefully I'll never need to use those titles.

For now, I needed to continue.

The Adar language… was fascinating. Their shared history, beliefs, and culture was woven into it. Not just as background information, but rather as a way to deliberately obscure what they were talking about. You needed to know, not only what the words themselves meant, but also the context of the culture. Without both, it was impossible to decipher.

Interestingly, I had been given the meaning of all the phrases, but I didn't know why they existed.

For example, if you wanted to talk about mortal danger, you could make any of a dozen references: the baths of Hebar, the winds of Camalac, and so on…

Yet, when I heard the language, my brain skipped over all of that, simply translating it into meaning.

Honestly, I wasn't certain how much the individual Adar understood about their language, either. Still, I thought it might explain a bit about them as a society.

When your entire language is built on secrets, what does that do to your thoughts?