The Archipelago (5)
About a year or so after Soul Academy came out, I suppose? Up until that point, people hadn't dared touch the idea of making mods for the game.
I'd given up on learning programming after repeating Day One about a hundred times, so I never fully understood the technical jargon people threw around back then — but the gist of what they were screaming on the forums went something like this.
The coding is so fucking cursed that nobody in their right mind wants to touch it.
It's a thing where the arm is where the head should be, the leg is where the head should be, the torso is where the arm should be — and yet somehow it walks around just fine, and nobody can figure out where to even begin tearing it apart for modification.
What the hell does the company that made this game even do? How does a game run when it's programmed like this? Did the God of Coding descend and perform a miracle?
It got to the point where people were spouting nonsense like, "If anyone ever manages to reverse-engineer this game's code, the God of Coding Himself will send a personal message." That was when a single user dropped a post on the community.
They'd figured out how to make mods for Soul Academy.
Dumb as I was even then, I understood absolutely nothing of that user's post — but that moment marked a turning point. A revolution, people cried, and one by one they began building the mods they'd always dreamed of.
Mods for indulging humanity's basest instincts, to start. Mods for ironing out the game's countless inconveniences. Mods that added new characters, weapons, traits, and skills. And on top of all that — brand-new dungeons, born of their own creative vision.
The ideas one user brought to the table gave Soul Academy a second golden age, and in the middle of it all, I gleefully stuffed myself with every mod under the sun and knew happiness. blissfully unaware that the golden age would soon come to an end.
No — it's not like I could see the future, how was I supposed to know? How was I supposed to know that a content drought of several years was coming, where no DLC and no proper mods would appear?!
If I'd had precognition, I would've rationed them out and savored them one by one!
Anyway, back then, what captured my interest more than anything was the new dungeon mods.
I'd spent a full year wringing every last drop of content out of one game, so a new dungeon was something I absolutely had to clear.
And fittingly for mods slapped together by random users rather than the developers, the quality varied wildly.
Like I've said before, most of them were garbage, and most of the garbage existed purely for trolling.
Even so, I never stopped hunting new dungeons. There wasn't anything else to do, and every so often you'd dig a pearl out of the trash.
And the dungeon I was clearing right now was, without question, one of those pearls.
<"Monstrous, this place. It's saturated with malice — malice meant solely to kill whoever sets foot inside.">
Halbae declared it the moment I lightly sidestepped a spear that had come flying out of nowhere. That spear had been charged with mana — it wasn't designed to pierce flesh so much as to detonate, and the sheer viciousness of it left me no choice but to marvel at the dungeon-maker's spite.
Of course, since I'd blasted that force into empty air, the trap left nothing behind at all.
'Right? I'm telling you, whoever built this dungeon was pure evil.'
If I hadn't once dismantled this dungeon from the ground up for the express purpose of spiting its creator, even a rotten-water veteran like me might have been in genuine danger.
Anyone else? Don't even get me started. Four steps past the entrance, they'd get hit by a combination of three stacked traps and end up conducting field research on the afterlife.
<"Ahem.">
As I let slip some colorful language while recalling all the times I'd been burned by this place, Halbae cleared his throat.
Under normal circumstances he'd be right there chiming in with commentary of his own, so his sudden thriftiness with words was odd — though understanding it wasn't hard.
'Ah. Could it be you're holding your tongue because the Chief God might be the one who built this dungeon?'
<"Ahem, ahem.">
And defusing that suspicion was even easier.
'Come on, Grandpa. There's no way the almighty Chief God built a hellhole like this. Not a chance.'
<"Is... is that so?">
'Obviously! It makes no sense that a benevolent Chief God would design a dungeon this vicious! Think about it — what you're doing right now is basically doubting Him!'
<"...Hm, that's oddly persuasive. Yes. You're right. I doubted my own Chief God. As if He would ever craft a dungeon congealed out of pure malice like this one.">
Halbae's faith wasn't fanatical, but it was fairly firm — and with that, he seemed utterly convinced this hellspawn dungeon couldn't possibly be the Chief God's work, and launched into the rant he'd been holding back this whole time.
That the dungeon's creator must be a wicked being who savored the sight of blood. That you'd have to love human despair to conceive of traps like these. That even an evil god's dungeon would be tamer than this.
Not a single word of it was wrong. But there was one rather large problem with the whole speech: the fact that this dungeon was, unmistakably, the Chief God's handiwork.
Because most mod-made dungeons were trash, the treasures that shone among them carved themselves into memory more deeply than anything else.
That was exactly why I remembered this place so vividly. It was a place congealed out of the most poisonous, unrelenting malice — and at the same time, it was also a masterfully built dungeon.
A cut above the other flimsy mod dungeons — a place that wouldn't have felt out of place folded into the base game itself.
Mods like this surfaced every now and then, which is why I kept hunting for them, cursing my way through every single day.
And through that hunt, I arrived at one certainty: I had no idea how many of them there were, but the creators of the high-quality mods had to be the same people who made the game itself.
All the little habits and quirks that bled through the base game's dungeons showed up untouched in the mod dungeons — and there's no way a Soul Academy rotten-water veteran like me wouldn't recognize that.
Back then, my thoughts ran along the lines of, oh, something must've happened at the company. Damn, so we're not getting DLC this year either. But now? Now it was different.
The fact that a mod I'd cleared had been recreated here, pixel for pixel, meant its creator existed in this world.
And that mod's creator was almost certainly the same person — or closely connected to the person — who built the mesugaki mod and dragged me into this world.
But I mean, come on. Our pathetic Chief God showed absolutely obsessive interest in me the moment He laid eyes on me? He even went half-blackmail to forge the Apostle contract with me when I nearly died to that Alchemist bastard?
At this point, even a moron like me has no choice but to figure out who the culprit is!
You pathetic excuse for a Chief God, you bastard! If you were going to build a mod and isekai me into it, you should've at least made it a decent mod!
Why would you create something like the mesugaki mod and reduce a human being to this?!
Is it your taste?! Did you cram all your personal fetishes into me while you were at it?!
You fucking perverted freak! Fine! I'll curse at you all day long, exactly as you desire! I'll hammer abuse straight into your ears until the joy drives you insane!
Except that'd probably just delight you, so I'll pile Grandpa's curses on top as a bonus! Take the combined wrath of Grandpa toward this dungeon's creator and my own direct, heartfelt hatred — all at once!
Even as I spewed invective in my head, I advanced through the dungeon at a brisk pace.
This was a dungeon I'd cleared countless times to spite the creator who'd once provoked me, and afterward too, I came and went whenever the mood struck, grumbling that nothing else matched its quality.
Even after all this time, the scenery here was more vivid in my memory than the dungeon I'd cleared just this afternoon — so my footsteps never once faltered.
Hold on, wait a second. Doesn't that mean the guy I traded trash talk with back then... was our pathetic Chief God?
Oh. Shit.
You're telling me I get to desecrate your dungeon like this? How's it feel, pretty impressive, right?
Why are you trembling with rage? I know you strained every nerve squeezing out your pathetic creative juices, but squeezing doesn't exactly produce creativity you never had.
This is your limit, so what can you do? Chin up. Fighting. Anyway, thanks to you, I had a blast.
And the person I'd taunted like that... was the pathetic Chief God?!
Once I chewed over all the things I'd said to that dungeon creator, I could finally understand the pathetic Chief God's behavior. If you took a beating that thorough, you'd want to pay some of it back.
But wait — is a good and benevolent Chief God allowed to take revenge? Shouldn't a benevolent god embrace even insolence like mine with His warmth?
No, hold on — it was the pathetic Chief God who built a shit dungeon and provoked a person first. I just returned what I'd received. Do I really deserve to be called a karmic debtor here? So He was a disgustingly petty bastard even back then?
I could feel what little faith I had — already nonexistent — draining further. At this point, I'm pretty sure I could lock the pathetic Chief God in a room, feed him nothing but fried dumplings, and threaten him into churning out dungeons without a shred of guilt.
While I was lost in one thought after another, the door leading to the boss room revealed itself before I knew it.
I already knew what waited beyond it. I even knew how to toy with the boss like a puppy before putting it down.
Given that everything up to this point matched my memory to the letter, that would hold true beyond the door as well.
Let's finish this fast and head home. I'm technically the kind of person who can go a week or so without sleep, but honestly, getting some shut-eye is the better call.
<"Hold a moment, child.">
The instant I reached for the door as a matter of course, Halbae spoke. His voice was nothing like the animated tone he'd had while unknowingly cursing the Chief God moments ago — it was tinged with worry.
'Why? What's wrong?'
<"Something is off. I sense no threat whatsoever from beyond that door.">
'...Huh. That can't be right?'
If what lay beyond was that boss from my memory, there was no way it wouldn't register as a threat.
Not that it could be Halbae's imagination... not that there's much chance of that, considering he's the living biological radar I've been exploiting this whole time.
His senses had never been wrong. Not once. I've eaten hardship because his radar responses lagged a few times, sure, but never wrong.
<"You're entertaining some irreverent thought right now, aren't you?">
'Mind reading is forbidden! Respect my privacy!'
<"Which is to say, you were.">
'...Ah. That. Ahem. Well, who's to say? I haven't the faintest idea what you mean?'
<"As I've told you time and again...">
I did my best to let Halbae's suddenly-launched lecture wash over me as I studied the door.
If what he'd just said was true, then what lay beyond was an unknown enemy. An enemy harboring who-knew-what dangers. And yet, knowing that, the corners of my mouth curled upward instead.
If anything, this was good news. I'd been bored out of my mind clearing this endlessly recycled dungeon one more time, and now fresh content had finally popped up.
Since this place was unmistakably the pathetic Chief God's creation, there was no need to fear the challenge. Worst case, my head wasn't going to roll.
More than anything, that pathetic bastard's creativity has a hard ceiling. Whatever waits beyond this door is bound to be a rerun of something he's already made.
It's not like I've cleared his dungeons once or twice — you think I'd fall for his tricks now?
Either way, I'd clear this lightly, then give the pathetic Chief God a piece of my mind.
Now, what was it that infuriated him the most back in the day? I threw the door to the boss room open without a flicker of worry —
— and froze solid on the spot.
Something I hadn't anticipated was waiting on the other side.
Was it some terrifyingly dangerous enemy, you ask?
No. If it were, that'd honestly be a relief.
Any boss that exists within Soul Academy is one I can find a way to clear.
But that thing isn't an enemy at all.
How could the Lucy of my childhood possibly be an enemy?