I Was Reborn as a Daddy in Another World

Into The Abyss - Part 2

Val found the citizens of the city-state of Al'Lachia, a place he was not surprised to have never heard of, to be enormously free with their words on the night of the festival. He picked a bustling tavern at random, and plied the chattiest of the townspeople with drink from the modest purse he had been gifted, taking advantage of the celebratory mood of the populace to learn all he could from the common folk.

Al'Lachia was built above, and around the entrance of, the thousand floor labyrinth, an enormous series of dungeons and caves that existed long before the city. Every day, members of the various guilds would enter through the giant pit in the crystal plaza, seeking treasure, resources and glory. For their heroics, and facilitation of the various economies that the city exploited from the resources in the labyrinth, the guilds and their members were lauded as heroes by the populace.

To date, the deepest the guilds have ever managed to travel through the labyrinth was level seven-hundred and forty-nine, but that was during what was known as the second platinum age, almost four hundred years prior. The modern guilds tend to float between level fifty, considered to be the cap for even the most capable solo adventurer, and two-hundred.

The city itself was ruled by a royal family, descendants of the city's founder, a warrior woman known as the Boltblade Queen, the most capable of the first adventurers to descend into the labyrinth. When her husband was killed in battle, she returned to the surface and never entered the dungeon again, giving birth to five children, triplet brothers and two girls, powerful warriors in their own right, who spread the royal line.

Directly below the royal family and the current queen, Celia, and wielding much political capital, stood the five major guilds and over thirty minor guilds that formed the gilt council, the leaders of which Val had met earlier that evening, and had been found wanting.

Before long, Val found what he was looking for. In the back of a smoky courtyard, a heavily scarred, grizzled woman with shoulders like a linebacker waved the stump of her left arm in Val's face and told him what awaited the adventurers on the deepest floor of the labyrinth, at least according to legend.

When the abyss had opened, so it was told, a giant being of the purest light had climbed forth from the depths, tearing the hole that was now the entrance to the labyrinth. Seeing the nomads who had settled briefly in the verdant valley that was now Al'Lachia, apparently surprised by the presence of such tiny, frail creatures, he told them that a grand treasure awaited any warrior brave enough to descend into the depths that he had just climbed from.

On the thousandth floor, beyond a frozen lake that seems to go on forever, there was, to be found, a simple urn. Within the urn, the being told them, was imprisoned the twin flame of its own essence, a being of such great power that, as the charge for its freedom, could grant any wish. A being of such overwhelming power that it could wield control over space and time itself, but that would be held fully in thrall by any who could claim the urn that bound its cosmic power.

The wine on the woman's breath gave Val no small pause in considering her tale, but he figured it would be easy enough to see how widespread the legend was. In this world of magic, he was sure that there was more than one potential way to tear open an interdimensional gateway back to reality, but it was the best lead he had for now. In the millennia since the abyss opened, thousands of warriors had entered the abyss and never returned, or returned in pieces, but the danger of his quest was the least of his considerations.

The more immediate concern was that without a guildmark, a kingdom-issued coin of opal and steel, a deliberately limited resource that the monarchy issued to the guilds, and the guilds issued to their members, he would not be able to enter the labyrinth at all. He was unconcerned, at first, by the lack of interest on the part of the major guilds, but unless he could convince one of the guilds to take him on as an adventurer, he would have no chance of reaching any level of the labyrinth, let alone the depths no other adventurer had ever reached.