Chapter 21: Ninety-Nine

"Is this it?"

Kaiden Anthony Lorde shakes the sleep from his head and turns to the cab driver. He glances outside and after confirming he is indeed in the right place, hands the driver a twenty before disembarking. He waves the driver down, not needing help with his luggage.

He doesn't know this is the fourteenth time this has occurred. He is unaware as he walks up the path. There are never any differences before he enters the dungeon for the first time. His every action and thought are the same as the last thirteen times.

He eventually makes his way to the backyard, and just like last time, almost trips on the hatch. He opens it and ventures inside.

The moment his foot crosses the threshold of the gate into the dungeon, things change. He blinks more than the last time, scratches an itch, glances at his phone, and checks his messages as he walks. He notices the rat too late. It screeches, and by the time he looks up, it has already leaped. Kaiden dies, torn apart and then devoured by the rat.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 14]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden makes it to the zombie caverns of the first floor before he makes a mistake. He enters a room where two headless zombies wait. He is unable to kill them and has his neck snapped before he is torn limb from limb.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 15]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden manages to make it all the way to the third floor before he is ambushed and killed by monsters, too cocky and unalert. He dies screaming.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 26]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden's mother visits the home and tries to talk Kaiden into selling it. He refuses, but she does not care. As his mother, she believes she has a right to the decision and as a professional lawyer she knows ways to make things happen.

The house is sold despite Kaiden trying everything he can and after getting drunk and being lectured by his mother, he lashes out and accidentally kills her. He is caught and sent to prison where he is stabbed and killed while taking a shower,

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 32]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden meets Linda earlier than most before, and after an accidental slip of the tongue, he is murdered on his way back home, drunk, after his dinner with Maya and Evelynn West.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 48]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden makes it to Razeal and is awed by the city. It is unlike anything he has ever seen. People, races, and cultures from different worlds mix to create something unique. Items of all kinds trade hands. An artificer bargains with a toad-like creature, offering his services, in return for one of the toad's children.

A mage locked away in a tower grins as he has finally procured all the necessary ingredients to make a potion of immortality. Others have accomplished it via just their magic but he is a hedge mage and does not possess their powers nor wealth enough to buy them.

He is turned into a fine grey powder the moment he adds the final ingredient. Early that day a fly flew in through a window and landed in the substance, sticking to it and dying. It melted, contaminating the ingredient.

Markets, hotels, inns, taverns, brothels, castles, palaces and a hundred more places to be found. It is often said that anything can be found in Labyrinthea.

Kaiden finds love.

After returning Dill to his sister, he joins them as a delver growing powerful and making a name for himself. The onslaught, they call him, and on the eve of his third year as his friends celebrate, on a balcony overlooking a vast stretch of the city, Kaiden kneels and proposes.

He is killed in his sleep a few days later by a jealous admirer of his bride.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 55]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden progress through the dungeon floor by floor until he reaches an outpost and slowly becomes familiar with the way of things. He learns as he travels toward the city of Jull. After arriving he becomes a delver and forms a group. He spends half a dozen years living in Jull but as time passes he grows more disgusted with the way things are. After growing tired of the way things run in the cities, he sets off to build his own.

Slowly but surely, by way of his ever-increasing power, he manages to build a great city, unlike the rest. A city with problems but far less so than any other. Most have full bellies and smiles on their faces. There is no discrimination and they work together to improve life for everyone.

The city burns as armies march over it and the surrounding lands. The councils feared its growing power and so it was put to the torch. It takes thousands to kill Kaiden, and with his death, he shatters the network which links cities, gates, and more.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 63]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden gets a harem. After making it to Razeal he falls for Dill's sister but once he makes it back to the surface, he finds he still feels something towards Maya. He doesn't know what to do, but eventually, he tells Dill's sister who breaks away for a time, leaving Kaiden with Maya whom he grows to trust. He takes her to Razeal where she meets Dill's sister and after coming to an agreement, they decide to share him.

Throughout his years, he gains more lovers and builds a large harem. He has many children and lives for a great amount of time before he is betrayed by one of his wives who had acted the part for many years, hired by an enemy.

He is so shocked he does not react quickly enough and she knows his abilities. He manages to wound his killer and they die together.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 71]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden does not manage to rescue Dill, but he does find the compass and follows it to the Razeal. He is shocked and without Dill there to guide him, he makes an error. He interferes as a well-dressed man beats a woman in an alleyway. He saves the woman but is captured hours later and a magical collar is forced around his neck.

He spends ten years as a slave before escaping during a hunt, in which he was the prey. It is a game his masters play with him. He makes his way through a gate and to a world wholly unlike his own. Though slavery has broken him, he has grown and after a time, he heals and spends the rest of his days in quiet comfort. He marries, has children, and dies.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 80]

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"Is this it?"

Someone else touches the orb before Kaiden. A neighbor's teenage kid, and for a while, nothing happens. Until the teen kills a classmate with a punch. Kaiden is questioned, but nothing occurs until the teen tells the police about the hatch in the backyard.

The house is taken into government custody and after a throughout questioning, Kaiden is killed.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 88]

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"Is this it?"

Kaiden tells Maya about his system, and by accident, she reveals it to a friend which eventually leads to the United States government sending people to investigate. He is discovered returning from the dungeon. He is captured and detained. He is guilty of no crimes, but nevertheless, he becomes a guinea pig, and when they cannot replicate his power, they attempt to control him.

After many months of imprisonment and playing the trained dog, he ends his own life at midnight and is found hanging in his room by his guards the next day.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 95]

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"Is this it?"

Kai has made it. He is close to the center and feels the broken core. His entity class makes him a god amongst men, and far beyond any of the inhabitance of the dungeon. Stars supernova and galaxies crumble with a wave of his hand. He has fought for hundreds of years to get here, but he is in for a rude awakening.

The Worm blocks the way forward, and for the first time in a long time, Kai finds an opponent stronger than himself. At first, he is glad for a challenge, but what occurs is no fight. The Worm is beyond him. It is something from before the death of freedom, before freedom itself. Before freedom was caged and the lie was created. It had a part to play. From the faint link with the core, and access to its stores of information so large that even a percent of a percent spans years of which there is no human number, Kai learns the truth. The Worm is of a species thought dead, a weapon from a war long ended.

A bullet fired and still firing.

The core can do nothing else but ready its self-destruct which will tear apart all of its creation. All of its existence. The core no longer has enough power to create scenarios but only repeat the current one. What use is there in trying again? The Worm has interfered from the beginning forcing it to create these scenarios. Trapping it within them. With each scenario it has drawn closer.

Even with his O-energy, Kai is unable to do any sort of harm to The Worm for this creature is not of this existence and does not follow its laws. What is harm to a creature that can never know it? The very concept is denied or is it?

Kai is lucky The Worm does not think like he or the core or he would already be dead, more than dead. This worm does merely kill what it eats. It denies their existence and erases them completely. Absolute nothingness.

Kai only has a drop of O-energy left, and a single idea which he sends to the core. The core thinks it will fail, but still aids Kai with what little it has left. Kai will fail here, he knows, but in the end, he will win. He believes it with all he has. He believes it as he ends himself.

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[Error! Admin terminated!]

[Unable to repair fault! Core link disabled!]

[Ending scenario 7,274,102,123 - 99]

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