If Ryan was being honest, he didn’t quite understand the dynamics between the species of Sector Four and the other Sectors. For Earthers like him, it was easier to just group up all the people of The Realm as ‘Realmers’ and just argue with them when they said something stupid online. Realmnet really made it too easy to be tribalistic with that (Realmer) tag vs (Unverified) tag.

  Besides, it wasn’t like anyone else really knew what happened to the world of Sector Four either. The things that adventurers had dug out all indicated that: ‘shit got worse, then it got worse and things kept escalating.’

  Beyond that, the dwarves and humans of Sector Four didn’t know either. They were more albino than their cousins from the other Sectors.

  The elves had apparently taken it a step further. really discussed whether these skin shamblers were malformed elves. Elves from other Sectors didn’t like talking about if skin shamblers… no if the Unwanted were what happened if you put elves deep underground with no light and had to contend with all the monsters that hid underground.

  Or maybe it was just this world. With its corrupted mana, being surrounded in the ruins of countless civilizations with no hope in sight.

  Ryan really didn’t know. All he thought about was The Realm’s own history. Orcs apparently had a huge conflict with the Pioneers in Sector Three. The drake species had come in Sector Seven. Both apparently had questions raised about whether they could be civilized at all.

  Tar’el sure as hell didn’t look like he’d accept their integration at least.

  It had only been twenty minutes into their walk and Ryan was already going a little crazy in the silence. They kept at a staggeringly slow pace. With the Unwanted elf in front stopping sometimes to listen ahead. Tapping at the tunnel walls, ears twitching for any anomalies.

  Ryan nudged at Tar’el with his shoulder.

  “Hey Tar’el, which one is worse. That unwanted elf or me?”

  “Don’t call that thing an elf.”

  Their guide pretended not to hear them. Ryan turned his head at Tar’el with clear judgment in his eyes. The elf looked away in a bit of embarrassment.

  “You are worse. For you represent a greater threat. You’re the enemy that will grow without end. You who pretend to be–”

  Ryan interrupted before Tar’el could blurt out his stupidity. “Then fucking act like it! Don’t just have your jaw open like a moron because that guy looks scary. That’s not fair for people like me that’s actually had to work hard to become a monster.”

  The elf on his shoulder had no idea how to respond to that. Though Ryan was paying more attention to the monster in front of them.

  “Hey, unwanted. Are you a guy or a girl?”

  The creature did not respond. That was fine, Ryan had a big enough mouth for the both of them.

  He came in with the hammer. “Do all unwanted elves have the capability for speech? Have adventurers been hunting down primitive people this entire time?”

  Both elf and unwanted elf turned to stare at him. It shook its head.

  “We are not elves, yes? Just unwanted.”

  Ryan picked at his own ears. “Pointy ears. Look like elves to me.”

  That got a glare from both elves.

  …

  An hour later, Ryan was still riffing off jokes. You had to remember he had them all, he had gone through an entire online historical document called ‘hatedoc’. A place where both Earthers and Realmers had joined together to make fun of each other. Well, that wasn’t really how the rest of the world saw it but it sure was how he saw it.

  “And that’s why good elven parents put their parental controls at forty years old. It’s just a reasonable thing. Elves take decades until they realize that every elf using Leaflegend as a username is a cringe thing.”

  Tar’el had his head hung down in shame. Possibly because he had done the exact thing. Or possibly it was because he couldn’t handle how Ryan was spitting really hard hitting truthbombs.

  Finally the unwanted elf groaned. “Please stop. Yes? There are beasts down here that can collapse these tunnels. It will take longer if they do.”

  “Oh come on. They won’t come near because of my big bad aura.”

  “If they do not then I might have to find one to throw myself into, yes?” their guide muttered under its breath.

  Ryan grinned. “Did you hear that Tar’el? He just said a joke! Or she. I don’t know!”

  “I don’t have the [Translate] skill I don’t understand what it’s saying, stop moving me around. Let me walk on my own!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll translate for you.” Ryan looked up at the unwanted elf. “Hey! Actually what’s your name?”

  Neither

  …

  .

  “And they said ‘hey poindexter what’s your name?’ and neither the nerd nor the elf knew who he was talking to!”

  Tar’el finally snapped. “For the love of–WILL YOU JUST TELL HIM YOUR NAME ALREADY!?”

  The gaunt elf up ahead sagged its shoulders. A very normal action. It looked like exhaustion was a similar behavior for them too. It turned around.

  “If I tell you my name you will shut up, yes?”

  “You gotta tell me what you’ve got under your skirt. Wait, that came out wrong. I don’t really care what you’ve got under your pants. Just tell me if I should call you a he, she or a it. I’m happy to call you whatever–”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “XxSharesshvil. I am a she. Now you shut up, yes?”

  “Can I call you Shara?”

  …

  Ryan nudged Tar’el “Didn’t expect Shara to have a name did you? And a gender?”

  Both elves glared at him.

  “What?”

  Shara was the first to speak. “You promised to shut up, yes?”

  “No, I never agreed to that. I just said you gotta tell me what to call you. Think of this as a free lesson in wordplay. You never know when you might go up against a Witch Tyrant after all.”

  That perked up interest from both his captive audience.

  “Oh now that’s got you both interested. You often hear stories about the Witch Tyrant Shara?”

  Shara nodded. “Some of us know of history. We study how they won the war against Earth, yes? How they won freedom for the Realmers.”

  “Well, the story never ended there. And listen up, because the story is quite a tragic one. It’s the main reason I became Artigan in the first place.”

  Both elves strained their ears to listen. Shara stopped walking up ahead and turned around to look at him.

  He leaned in–and grinned.

  “Gotcha.”

  He laughed at them both as both elves turned away in embarrassment. Ryan laughed for minutes on end. If Clara saw him, she would instantly know that it was a fake laughter. His internal thoughts were of something else.

  No Gamielle hovering over him to give him badly hinted warnings. No Witch Tyrant to guide his decisions. In a real sense, he was free to say what he wanted. Of course, that might only be for him. No matter how much he was punishing Tar’el for being stupid, he still didn’t want to risk the elf’s life on a guess.

  …

  .

  At this point even Ryan with his [Rogue] class and his improved memory had lost track of where they walked. They hadn’t followed a singular main tunnel. Sometimes going up winding paths and then down then to go back up again. It was very possibly a tactic so that there was no way for him to figure out how to get back by himself.

  There were no obvious markers, no consistency in tunnels. Some looked like they were barely supported on by rusted metal struts. Some tunnels were so large that a commercial liner could taxi through it.

  Finally, in a random tunnel, in a small unseeming corner, Shara lifted a metal plate that led to darkness. A small opening that Ryan could barely fit through.

  There Shara slipped in. One limb going through, grabbing onto a handle on the other side, and started pulling the rest of her body in. Head first, shoulder angled unnaturally so it would fit. Almost like she had dislocated it. Then the torso and the hips.

  Both Ryan and Tar’el looked away for Shara’s modesty. They had been so entranced at the contortionist act that they completely forgot Shara was wearing a skirt.

  As they made their way in this cramped tunnel it became clear that the unwanted elves were adapted to the underground. Shara seemed to have no trouble pulling and pushing herself through despite how cramped it looked. Meanwhile Ryan had to struggle a little bit to get his thicker frame and the elf on his shoulder through. At a certain point he was forced to take Tar’el off his shoulder and carry him.

  After five minutes of an increasingly narrower tunnel Ryan heard it. Metal on metal. The moving of great gears and… people.

  Shara pushed what looked to be a dead end and the whole wall smoothly opened up. Ryan pulled himself through to find themselves overlooking what looked like an entire goddamn city.

  They were on a ledge that ran around the cavernous area that was perhaps half the size of the Obsidian Sect. Only it was even more crammed with great buildings made of stone, metal… and skulls.

  Skulls of each other, of monsters and other creatures adorned the front of every single door they found. Some creatures wore them like they were helmets. Some particularly humanoid skulls drew the eye and horrified them.

  The unwanted elves shambled around in droves. A community of thousands, maybe… no considering how much room each unwanted elf took it was probably only a couple thousand strong. But it was a city, like something someone took out of a horror novel in the industrial era of Earth and made it worse. What looked like massive warehouses littered the city haphazardly. All of them belted out thick smoke that filled the air.

  Ryan took out his phone and started recording. He gave the camera a wink “Hello everyone. It’s Artigan. Coming at you after that great event at the Fourther Tournament. I’m trying to keep you all updated with what’s going on and damn do I have a story for you.”

  He panned to the city.

  At this point much of the city had spotted them and were pointing at them. Some crying out in alarm while Shara tried to signal with her hands to calm down. Ryan’s voice did nothing to stop the panicking.

  The unwanted elf turned and glared at him. “No need to scare everyone, yes? You should stop recording.”

  Ryan grinned, camera showing both the front and back. Showing how angry she was that he was causing a panic

  He rudely ignored her as he panned back out over the city.

  “Would you look at that? An entire city, growing and thriving down here. A society. Oh my god look they even have kids!”

  He acted like one of the most obnoxious tourists in the world. . Running around, screaming in their slightly creepy language. Those that hadn’t noticed him were laughing. Ryan thought, they were laughing, anyway.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been simple or even popular but she was a goddamn Tyrant. She could have waved her hand and fixed all of this.

  There was hostility here. Instinctual, integrated hostility. They knew the world above existed. They wanted it and found it unfair that perfect beings like elves existed while they toiled here. Hunted like monsters, surviving off the scraps of long dead civilizations.

  Ryan stopped smiling and put his phone in his pocket. He was having a hard time acting like an arrogant uncaring monster.

  Life down here was clearly not kind.

  Many of the Unwanted had missing limbs. Exposed flesh. One even scraped around in the ground with their long limbs. Their eyes being long gone.

  It was like a dark mirror of the Obsidian Sect. And that thought annoyed him even further.

  All of this was simple to fix. Yet the Witch Tyrant wanted them to wage war. He understood the reasoning too. It came back to Gamielle. Back to achievements and what the Witch Tyrant wanted.

  Chaos and strife.

  . As she once said. The Settler war had created more top tier Trialists than any other generation. Back then, reaching Trial outposts wasn’t a right given to all adventurers. It was earned with the blood of your team members. Back then, even reaching the fifth Trial outpost would cost one or two of your squad. Sometimes, the fighting got so bad that countries sent in multiple squads,

  He had started to form a plan and the video recording was one aspect of it. No… calling it a plan was too generous. It was just a bunch of ideas with nothing to connect it together.

  The biggest problem was whoever was leading this whole thing. Whoever the Witch Tyrant had contacted. Ryan needed the full picture before he made his move.

  They walked in the now silent streets of the city. A great warehouse with a belting forge that belted out grey smoke that filled the cavern.

  An Unwanted elf was in the middle of a factory setup. Pulling and stretching metal plates. Bending them into long cylindrical shapes. Putting runes on them as it did.

  This Unwanted was smaller than the others. Smaller than Shara by far. Though from what Ryan could tell, it wasn’t a child either.

  It turned around and gave them a friendly smile. Almost, normal looking. It reached over and grabbed something under a bench. It pulled a great squirming grub and offered it to him.

  Ryan declined and patted his elf. “No thanks. I have my meal packed. Tar’el do you want some?”

  The elf vehemently shook his head. Tar’el seemed unsettled by how advanced the magic on display was. Actually Tar’el was probably just unsettled by everything down in the Cataclysm Abyss.

  The Unwanted elf leader put the grub in its mouth and chewed with its mouth closed. More politely than you would expect from creatures that lived in the dark.

  “My name is Kraxxksken. It is nice to meet you Artigan the Destined and Tar’el the Leafstalker.”

  Ryan tilted his head. “Can I call you Rax?”

  “Feel free. Names are not too important in the dark, yes?”

  “Yup.”

  The introductions were civilized and cordial. The creature in front of him even seemed genial like the elders of the Obsidian Sect. Despite that, for some reason, whatever it was, the thing opposite Ryan made his skin crawl.

  He was pretty sure the creature opposite him was a monster.

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  24 chapters ahead!