Hopping Celestial Fox

“God, it’s so nice to be human again,” Michael, the dungeon boss, grumbled.

After we had proven ourselves, we’d cured everyone else in the room, including him, and he’d immediately invited us to sit down to discuss the situation. Oliver, the very first undead we had cured – who had since found some pants – sat down with us, while the rest of the newly cured humans ran around, packing up and preparing to finally leave the dungeon.

“So this… divine crystal. Where did you get it?” Oliver asked, eyeing Casey’s staff.

“From another world,” Casey replied blithely. “We made a deal with a dragon there and he gave us the crystal.”

Michael stared at us for a moment before asking, “How did you come to this world, anyway?”

Casey and Frank both looked at me, which prompted the two ex-undead to look at me as well. I squirmed under everyone’s attention.

“I can… open portals to other worlds. It’s my unique ability,” I admitted.

Michael’s eyes narrowed as his voice rumbled.

“And who are you, exactly? Where does your ability come from?”

I gave an awkward shrug.

“I… thought I was just a normal person, but I’m not so sure anymore,” I murmured. “Some people have called me a… divine being or a goddess, but… well, I don’t know.”

Michael then snarled, making me flinch.

“Goddess…?!”

Oliver put a calming hand on his shoulder though.

“If… you are really a goddess, then you are much more deserving of the title than this world’s gods,” Oliver stated, looking at me with wide eyes.

I blinked.

“Did, uh… the gods of this world do something to you…?” Frank carefully asked.

Michael scoffed.

“Did they?”

“They treated us like cattle,” Oliver said bitterly. “They barred us from ever leaving the ruins when we first came here, and when we dared to defy them, they mutated the undead curse we were all carrying and trapped us down here in the dungeon. They even put another curse on us so that we could be killed over and over again and would always come back, but could never leave. I’m pretty sure you’ve rid us of that curse as well.”

A chill went down my spine.

He meant respawning.

Why would… This was… 

No…

From the devs’ perspective, they were just making new content for the game and moving game assets around, weren’t they?

But from the perspective of Michael and everyone else…

Oh my god.

“Oh, fuck…” Frank murmured, probably realizing the same thing.

“They don’t see us as people. These sick and twisted beings calling themselves gods only want us to be their entertainment,” Oliver added.

This was so messed up. The worst part was that he was completely right. The devs didn’t see them as people. They saw them as monsters or NPCs. Just mobs to be killed by players for loot over and over again…

It kind of reminded me of Elyssa. Players had only gone to her to learn the true form skill and then never interacted with her ever again after using her. This situation was just a million times worse.

“We could… try to talk to them,” Casey suggested after a moment of stunned silence. “Try to make them understand that you are people.”

Michael stared at us for a few moments before shaking his head.

“Don’t bother. Even if you are fellow gods, they wouldn’t listen to you. They are too selfish and arrogant to reason with,” he muttered.

I firmly regretted not contacting the devs back when I’d had the chance now. I still had no idea what I would say if I did contact them, but letting them condemn more innocent people to the life of… being an undead mob in a dungeon…? That didn’t sit well with me at all.

“Right… So… I wanted to ask. How and why did you come to this world? And where did the curse even come from in the first place?” Frank asked, changing the subject.

Michael gave us a long look before he and Oliver locked eyes and gave each other a nod.

Oliver then took a deep breath and got a faraway look in his eyes.

“It’s a long story… We used to live in Abyground, a large city in the kingdom of Gladekin, back in our world. I was a priest in the local church, offering aid to anyone in need of it. Mike was a warrior working for the guild,” he said as he cracked the tiniest of smiles. “We first met when they brought him into the church after a wild monster nearly bit off his arm.”

Michael audibly scoffed, yet he couldn’t hide the expression of being lost in a fond memory.

“Anyway, it happened about three years after Mike and I first met.” Oliver’s expression turned serious. “The church began to flood with people suffering with serious headaches and fish-like scales covering their skin.”

I clenched my fist, already knowing where this was going.

“Soon enough, everyone in the city was affected and our city’s lord commanded me to find a cure to this disease no matter the cost.” He grimaced. “I ended up doing a lot of things I wasn’t proud of back then, but we did eventually find the cure.”

“Wait, you did?” Frank asked in surprise.

Oliver nodded.

“Magic stones, the hearts of monsters, hold great power,” he explained. “We figured out that these stones, when extracted from their stomachs–” my eyes widened as I remembered the message from the treasure hunt “–and then submerged in holy water for an hour, can act as charms to ward off the curse, as long as they stay on one’s person.”

“Like… charms? Hmm…” Casey hummed as her eyebrows creased.

“Yes. That was the problem. Good quality magic stones were rare and we couldn’t possibly make charms for everyone in the city. And the lower quality ones often weren’t enough to ward off the curse,” Oliver explained, his expression pained. “We had to make charms for the royalty and the nobles first and were forced to turn away a lot of common people coming to us for aid.”

He shook his head.

“And that was a huge mistake. The infected soon began to lose their minds when left untreated for too long and started attacking other people. It was absolute chaos, but things were only getting worse. The whole city was corralled off. Nobody was allowed to leave.”

His expression turned into anger.

“So the lord then ordered the church to hand over all the magic stones and holy water, saying that his personal team of artificers needed to conduct experiments on them to save the city from the curse.” He grit his teeth. “That was a lie. Instead of searching for a way to cure everyone, they were searching for a way to weaponize the curse. I don’t know what exactly they did, but one day, a giant monster with tentacles and an eyeball appeared in the city’s central colosseum and began wreaking havoc.”

The octopus boss…

“Not only that, but the monster also created some kind of aura around the entire city, periodically plunging everything underwater, killing those who hadn’t yet been affected by the curse enough to gain the ability to breathe underwater.”

The bubble…

“The city was too weakened to do much about it. The remaining mages in the city merely trapped the monster inside the colosseum with a barrier. It was them who realized that the monster held all the confiscated magic stones inside it. In its stomach, just like normal monsters.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

And now, things were finally clicking into place. The only piece of the puzzle left was…

“And then one day, while we were still struggling to find a solution to the mess, the royal army came to the city and surrounded it. They claimed that they wanted to use a large-scale spell to cure everyone in the city…”

“Ah, shit. That was a lie too, wasn’t it?” Frank grumbled.

Oliver nodded sadly.

“Instead of curing the city, they used a forbidden spell to send the entire city into another world.” He scowled. “And as soon as we got here, the gods of this world swarmed us like vultures and forced us to do what they wanted. And… well, you probably know the rest…”

We stayed in silence for a moment as we digested everything. It was a lot to take in. A backstory for NPCs was one thing, but these were real people now.

Was it… my fault? Was making them real cruel? Would it have been better to stay away?

Well, it didn’t really matter at this point, did it? We just had to find a way to fix everything.

“Enough about the past. We’re cured now; that’s what matters,” Michael said, breaking the silence. “And with this thing, we can cure everyone in the city.”

We all glanced at Casey’s staff.

“We just have to be careful not to attract the shitty gods’ attention…” he added with a growl.

“How does it work, exactly?” Oliver asked, eyes sparkling as he admired the divine crystal.

“It, um… It’s meant to purify things, restore them to their correct state. It should be able to cleanse any disease or curse, including yours,” Casey explained.

“I see… That’s incredible… I’ve never seen a genuine divine artifact. A tool of genuine good gods…”

“Created by a goddess, too,” Frank quipped with a grin.

Oliver’s eyes widened even more as he looked at me.

“You even created this?”

“Uh, no. Casey did,” I murmured.

“You are a goddess too…?” Michael whispered while shooting Casey an inquisitive frown.

“I…” Casey grimaced. “I guess I am now… I created a world and can see everything happening inside it. But it was Renee who made me into one. She’s the primordial goddess here.”

I pursed my lips.

“Not on purpose… And speaking of, I… I think I’m the one who made the gods of this world into gods as well.”

“You what?!” Michael shouted.

“Accidentally! I didn’t really know who I was or what I was capable of back then! I didn’t know they would get so much power over other real, living people!”

Mike kept up his glare on me even as Oliver patted his shoulder to calm him down again.

“Could you revert it? Take away their divinity?” the former priest asked.

“I…” I blinked. “I don’t know? I never tried. Don’t even know how I would try doing that, to be honest.”

We sat in silence for a moment before Oliver gestured to Casey’s staff again.

“Perhaps the divine crystal might work? You said that it’s supposed to restore one into their correct state. Would it also erase their divinity?”

My eyes went wide and I exchanged a glance with Casey.

“... I never tried using it on myself,” Casey admitted. “I always excluded myself when I used it, actually.”

Would it really work? Part of me thought it wouldn’t, but…

“I made it based on what Elyssa had told me about the true form,” Casey muttered. “But I have no idea how it would interact with divinity…”

I belatedly realized that we had all come to refer to these nebulous powers as divinity already, despite still not really being sure what it was.

“Wait, hold up!” Frank held out his hand. “You’re not going to test it on yourself, are you? What if you lose your cool goddess powers forever?!”

Casey gave him a dry look.

“Being a goddess still feels weird, you know? And I don’t really know if I deserve it…”

“We still promised to help Cradence, though! And it will be harder to help if you’re no longer the big sister of that world!” Frank argued.

Casey grimaced.

“You’re right, I guess… But how can we test it? Unless we just walk up to the devs and I blast them with it?”

“Could I take a look at the crystal? I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I often worked with blessed items and maybe I can figure something out about it,” Oliver suggested.

The shine in his eyes told me that he also just really wanted to hold a divine tool.

“Sure… But I’ll need it back. It’s crucial for turning people back, after all,” Casey said as she plucked the crystal out of the staff and handed it to Oliver.

He carefully inspected the crystal from all sides with wide eyes. After a moment he spoke again. ”There was an artifact in my old world that I recall was somewhat similar to this… Let me see if I wrote down anything about it.”

He got up from his seat and moved over to another table in the room. The rest of us followed.