Chapter 108
Ellen’s birthday did not always line up with the spring festival, but it was pretty common for that to happen. Today she watched as the villagers walked to and fro, doing their various activities. Some of them weren’t quite used to how many Ellens were around now, so they would sometimes pause and watch as a group of two or three chatting redheads wandered by.
The various adventurers had calmed down for the festival, but now they had a chance to get a good idea of how many Ellens were available. A few of them looked her way while she stood by the entrance to the inn, but she paid them no mind. She’d healed up fully by now and did not even have any aches to speak of.
A few of the adventurers were chattering about her and the battle she’d fought. It was relieving to hear that most of them assumed her good health was due to the combination of whatever protection spell was on the inn and magical healing. Priestess had chosen to wear the symbol of Celeste while she walked around the village, which certainly helped back up that idea.
“Are they doing all this for your birthdays?” asked Dungeon Ellen. The other Ellens could hardly leave her alone and unmonitored, but none of them wanted to stay there to watch while the festival was going on. Ellen had heard that it had caused something of an argument until Bookkeeper had proposed just bringing Dungeon down with them. Since Dungeon had not tried to escape and it was doubtful that anyone except possibly Shadow or Ellen herself could stop the almost-Ellen, this had seemed reasonable.
“No, this is just something that happens every year once they have enough spare food to throw a little bit of a party,” Ellen answered. “It’s a common tradition, but here in a village this small it’s not very fancy.” She gestured down the road at the simple decorations that had been hung. A few wildflowers had been shaped into small sprays of color that had been placed around the door frame of the house just within sight.
Dungeon tilted her head to look down the street and then shook it slowly. “I don’t really understand,” she admitted. “I’ve already messed up once, and I don’t want to make such an error again. I’ll just watch for now.”
Ellen sighed and frowned at the girl next to her. “You do realize that an apology would go a long way,” she pointed out. “I’m not sure that the two new ones would accept it, but you could at least try… if you really regret what you did.”
“What if I don’t actually regret it?” Dungeon asked. “I regret that they are upset, but I think it was still the right decision with what I knew at the time. This is the best way to deal with the problem. I don’t understand why they are so upset.”
And this was why Dungeon couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. Ellen rubbed her temples as she tried to think of how to put the situation to the strange creature that looked like her. Eventually, she gave up and remained silent about that, letting the independent Dungeon monster puzzle over the situation by herself. This wasn’t really the time to try to teach the confused girl with only half-formed memories about the value of life and death, or about the concept of a white lie.
It didn’t help that she suspected some of the Ellens secretly shared that same point of view. The Adventuring Party had been particularly fatalistic in some ways, even if their deaths in the end had been unintentional. Ellen was glad that the octuplets that had spawned from the Party didn’t seem to share that viewpoint, but the fact that it had occurred once was worrying enough.
Ellen was pulled out of her wandering thoughts by a light cough nearby. Jack was standing there, scratching the back of his head and looking at Ellen, with only an occasional glance of uncertain curiosity at Dungeon. As soon as she met his eyes, he looked aside and shuffled his feet.
“Sorry if I’m bothering you,” he mumbled. “It’s just that, um, if you look over there… you can see…” He trailed off and gestured toward the village center, where the sound of flutes and clapping was easily heard by Ellen’s unnaturally sharp ears.
“I’m flattered, Jack,” she answered, “but I’m sure you have a lot of other girls closer to your age. Besides, one of the other Ellens would probably be a lot better at dancing anyway.”
Jack’s face turned bright red, but he nodded and quickly turned away to hurry back toward the dancing and revelry. Ellen was impressed he’d managed to get his courage up enough to ask her, and sighed to herself. If she’d been a few years younger, she might have considered it… or he a few years older. They were living different lives right now, and he couldn’t see it. Besides, she wasn’t sure that she should get attached to anyone with her lycanthropy, even if it was under control.
“Why did you refuse?” Dungeon asked. “I am very confused by human customs and behavior, but even I can tell that he wanted to mate with you. I thought that humans did that for fun.” She scratched the back of her head and stared at Ellen with a half-frown on her face.
Suppressing a shiver at how similar the expression looked to that of any of her sisters, Ellen shook her head. “It’s something that I really don’t want to talk about, and I don’t think you’re ready to understand,” she replied. In a lot of ways, Dungeon was like a child, and she didn’t want to have that talk. Out loud, she continued: “Do you even know what dancing is? You can talk like us and seem to know a lot about what to do, and then you ask some very strange questions.”
Dungeon shrugged. “Like I said to the others, I was given a lot of information, but there are just holes in it. I really do want to help you and the others. I wouldn’t exist if not for what all of you did. I think that this day of birth thing that you are celebrating happened for me just days ago as well.”
“We will definitely talk about that later,” Ellen replied. She doubted that the other Ellens would be in any mood to give this one any sort of celebration for a birthday. The girl’s murder of Smith was still a fresh wound every time the new Ellens—Forge and Runic—passed by. They had kept to the other side of the festivities to avoid the inn just so they wouldn’t have to see Dungeon.
That brought Ellen to thinking about this evening. Like many small villages, the inn was a center of socialization for the villagers. When dusk started to fall, it was going to get very busy, and both Jack and Camilla would likely want to take part in those activities. Ellen didn’t mind handling the drinks and food, but she doubted the younger ones would want to help her like they usually did.
“Dungeon, if you could take another name, which name would you take?” she asked.
The almost-girl looked startled and then tilted her head down to stare at the ground. She was silent for a surprising length of time… Ellen hadn’t seen her this contemplative before. When she finally did look up, it was with a shrug.
“Dungeon works for now, but I think I understand what you are really asking,” she said. “You need a name for the villagers to call me, don’t you? In that case, maybe you could call me Guardian Ellen. If not that, then my choice would be Watcher Ellen.”
The others wouldn’t like the decision that Ellen was about to make, but a plan was already forming in her head. She turned up toward the mountain as if she could see the entrance to the dungeon, even though it was obscured by countless trees. Even if she avoided the thing, it cast its shadow over her life.
“When do you think the dungeon will open?” she asked.
The other girl shook her head. “I can’t be sure of that. When I was fully attached to the dungeon I couldn’t think the way I can now. I don’t think it will stay closed much longer, even though it collected a large amount of mana.” She went quiet for a moment and looked up the mountain, just like Ellen. “Dungeons have a purpose, and they can’t resist that purpose for very long.”
“Do you remember who gave them that purpose?” Ellen asked. “Are you given a purpose by the gods? Should I even be saying you, or do you not even consider yourself the dungeon in any way? This is still very confusing for us as well.”
The barrage of questions brought another look of confusion to Dungeon’s face, but it cleared up a moment later and turned into a smile. “You can think of me as a free dungeon that doesn’t build things,” she answered in a lighthearted tone. “In a lot of ways, I’m like you and the other Ellens because I am built around a core of mana. In other ways, I am not like you at all because my core never goes away. I don’t think I will ever turn human like the rest of you will.”
Ellen tried not to let her shock at the casual revelation show on her face as the rambling mana creature continued.
“I know it isn’t the gods,” Dungeon continued. She was not paying attention to Ellen’s face, thankfully. “I barely know what gods are, but they are definitely not what gives dungeons their instructions. Dungeons receive instructions directly from the System. It took me a day or two to realize that is what you are all talking about. The System talks to you and gives you a Class, but it talks to a dungeon in a different way. It doesn’t speak to me at all.”
The revelations kept coming. Ellen narrowed her eyes at Dungeon and held up a hand. Fortunately, the monster in the shape of a girl understood the gesture and stopped talking.
“Are you saying that you don’t have a Class or the ability to choose a Class? Do you not have a Level at all? Do you receive any notifications?” She held herself back from throwing any more questions at the girl. This would be something that Bookkeeper would have to interrogate the strange girl about.
Dungeon nodded, but when she spoke, she made a minor correction. “I don’t have a Class or Level, but I know what a notification is. I still get those when I do some of the things that you have seen me do, like when I ate that man’s magic. I don’t know why the System isn’t talking to me. Maybe it just hasn’t figured out what to do with me, so it isn’t doing anything but what it has to.”
“You sound like one of those Faith of the System devotees,” Ellen observed. “The way you’re talking, you make it sound like the System is something you can have a conversation with. The Faith of the System thinks that it’s an intelligent being as well.”
Dungeon opened her mouth, and then she shut it to rub her cheek. “I think that I need to talk to all of you together again,” she said quietly. “I thought that I only had small gaps in what I knew, but I think there are many more things to talk about. Should we settle on a name for now?”
She wasn’t sure if Dungeon was dodging the question or not, but Ellen shouldn’t decide anything about the things Dungeon was telling her. Prying into it would be fruitless when it was something the rest of the Ellens would need to know… and two of them weren’t even available. She would just handle the immediate problem.
“I don’t think Guardian would be a good name,” she chuckled, with a small smirk. “Militia would definitely not like it, and I admit I’m not comfortable with it either. We’ll call you Watcher Ellen, in public. I assume you want to be in public more so you can learn about people, right?”
Watcher Ellen—as she was to be known now—nodded her head silently. This made Ellen grin more broadly.
“All right, let’s step inside… and I’ll show you how to wait on tables.”