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Chapter Type: Social

I had expected to wake to a loud crash, to the screams and curses of the doomed. Instead, it was the sun with its intrusive and painful light that woke me.

“Mngunoooo...” I said, or something like that.

I tried curling up under the thickest cover I had, but it was too late. I was awake, and would remain so until it was again time to sleep. With a sigh of reluctance, I folded back the covers and began the ritual of waking up with the traditional stretch and yawn.

“How do you do that?” Do Meng asked.

“Mnglsh?” I asked. “Do what?”

“That thing where your head flips back like a pot lid.”

“I forget why I chose to have a flexible neck, but I’ve never regretted it.”

.....

“You... chose your neck?” Xeng Dai asked.

“Most of what I am, this body, is the cumulative choice of evolutions gained from the natural world. I am... I don’t know how much of my original birth traits are left, but it can’t be many.”

“What about your mind and soul, the emotions of your heart?” he asked

I gestured my helplessness. “Which of us can claim what is ours naturally, and what parts we’ve learned from our environment? I was born with the Curiosity trait, but I’ve replaced that with another stronger version of that trait. Do I count that as natural, as evolved, as chosen, or as something forced on me by a need for higher System numbers?”

Do Meng snorted. “I have heard of systems that use letters to denote bands of ability. My own uses colors. I have met a blind fisher-woman who claims her system uses musical notes to denote different ability levels.”

“Paying a woman to spend the night with you doesn’t count as meeting them.” Xeng Dai said.

“It does if she doesn’t make you pay for the nights afterward.” Do Meng said.

“And you still pay her to take care of your son?” he pressed.

“Go to the hell where people are crushed under the weight of money, Xeng Dai.”

“After I see you to the hell where ignorant people are kept in the pitch black dark.”

Both of them were busy dressing as this banter went on, so I joined them.

“Why do you wear that armor?” Xeng Dai asked me.

“Because I can’t find armor with a higher protection rating. Unless you were offering such?”

“Ah-ah. I see you like me enough to join me in my corner of the Hell of Greed.”

“I’m reasonably sure I’m going to Gluttony, or Vanity if not. I certainly doubt that I’ll be in any of the multitude of heavens.”

Do Meng snorted. “Read your holy literature; most of the heavens are hells under a different name.”

“Careful.” Xeng Dai warned, “There is a special hell for those who blaspheme.”

Someone banged on our door. “There is a special hell for those who keep their mystic teacher from being on time to breakfast.” Du Jing shouted. “Half rations are hard enough without missing meals. Move it, or I eat without you.”

Etiquette. It’s a Charisma skill.

After a brief breakfast of millet with cuts of celery and seasoned rat meat, we returned to the pit. It was another day of moving walls of stone, but without yesterday’s stressful interlopers. We even made good progress toward where Du Jing indicated the other side’s pocket was.

The sounds of combat reached us from far above.

“Ah.” Du Jing said. “We have lingered too long. Arminger in the front, cover the rest of us while we retreat.”

“Will we not fight?” Do Meng asked.

“Do you remember Xu Hong?” Xeng Dai asked.

“She died, leaving the position of second apprentice open for me to take.” Do Meng said.

“While she lived, she also liked engaging mundane soldiers.” Xeng Dai explained.

“We aren’t here to fight; we are here because the bedrock beneath the wall needs to be repaired, before the whole thing falls down and our army loses the outer wall.” she reminded us. “The soldiers do their duty, and we do ours. They risk death by the sword, we risk death by magic. Both sides must perform their tasks, or we lose this war, which we are so very likely to lose anyway.”

They looked at me.

I shrugged. “I said nothing. I’m more likely to die to an arrow than a sword or spear, the way this siege is going, but my mana pools are mostly empty.”

“You have separate mana pools?” Do Meng asked. “What, does each have room for only one mana?”

“Some of them.” I said. “Others...”

He interrupted me with laughter, shoved me up the stairs.

We were a rotation or two from the surface when the first enemy soldier, spear in one hand, torch in the other, came into view, pushed in turn by those behind him.

What followed was not battle; it was not slaughter. It was a shoving contest, with occassional sharp bits being thrust one way or the other. It was long and it was loud, and even with a Labor rating of six, my arms felt about ready to fall off when the last of them died, and we almost got swarmed under by friendly soldiers.

We were on the surface before custody of the pit switched again.

“I don’t understand.” I said. “We’d lose fewer soldiers just holding the upper lip on our side. Why fight for possession of that charnel hole?”

“You are a man.” Du Jing told me. “You explain this to me.”

“Pride.” said Do Meng.

“Honor, valor, duty, call it what you want.” said Xeng Dai. “It is the need to be seen as willing to do one’s profession, even if that appearance gets in the way of actually performing said duty.”

I looked to where the torches lit the top of the enemy wooden fortress. So dreams or no dreams, the elementals hadn’t returned yet. I had little thought that they were sentient and sapient, and might actually change their mind.

Whenever one side or the other would look like they had more troops in the pit, the other would volley fire archers. To be fair, most of those arrows fell onto enemies rather than friendly troops. Most of them.

“Stop looking at that, fool. We’ll get little enough sleep, with all the noise this night is producing.” Du Jing scolded.

I sighed. I was tired, it just ... it seemed wrong to leave a fight with more than half my health.

Possibly how I ended up in so many fights when I was hopelessly wounded.

But I had seen enough. The pit, no matter how well defended, certainly looked like a weakness in our wall, no matter how many enemy corpses made up the floor.

It was just... no, I turned away. If I kept throwing myself into lost fights, sooner or later, I’d die doing just that. Besides, as we forced our way through the ranks of eager soldiers, I knew that if nothing else, we would hold the wall that night.

And we did, even if the carpet of dead people concealed our entrance for half of the next day. We made our way down the bloodied steps, and across the gummy pool of already rancid blood at its base. Du Jing frowned at her pants legs, which she must have thought permanently ruined.

“Well, hurry up. Barring exceptional circumstances, stone doesn’t relocate itself.” she said.

And so we took up our roles from the previous days, moving through the earth at a rate that made mockery of mining tools.

The result of that third day was to be vastly different, though. When Du Jing and Xeng Dai opened the last bit, there was the statue of a man there, or rather a thing that looked much like the statue of a man, carved out of the local grey bedrock.

“Grey man!” Xeng Dai said. “Master, we must...”

But we would never know what Xeng Dai thought we must do, for the Grey Man moved like a breath of air, one hand clutching the top of Xeng Dai’s head while the other formed a fist, which it swung upward to catch in the palm of its hand.

All which was Xeng Dai in the space in between exploded outward in a splash of red, filled with gibbets of flesh and shards of sharp bone.

Du Jing stumbled backward, catching herself and almost tackling the space between Do Meng and I to get away from it. “Soldier. Arminger. Forward!” she commanded.

There was no time to move forward. I barely had time to begin fastening my shield before it was on me, striking with rapid kicks and punches.

Yes, I, who had been discriminated against, unfairly branded monster well before I adapted to actually become one, did this. I unfairly discriminated against the earth spirits, sold short their minds in favor of their actual strengths. I don’t even think the fact that I turned out to be correct excuses how I reached my conclusions. In my defense, I was three.

Our mining tools, not yours. Unless you use bits of iron and steel on the end of wooden handles to strike at the earth, in which case yes, yours too.