Dungeon Raider System

When the sun finally set it was like the whole swamp had come alive to the tune of chirps and hoots of all sorts of nocturnal birds and insects. The corporals stood in front of the fire and Young threw a bunch of herbs that were said to keep mosquitoes away in the campfire. It was just one of the tricks she picked on her deceivingly long life.

"What do you think happened to him? One moment he was a very handsome and patient man, then the next it was like he got a stick up his butt." Mayhem complainen.

"Who knows, maybe his patience reached its limit." Young replied.

"Who cares? I don't know about you, but I'm not taking orders from him anymore. He made us do all the job while he laid on his back the whole day." Rusty scoffed.

It had been a long day for them, made even longer by the unpleasant presence of insects. Even Young who was the only ascended in the unit was vulnerable to those pesky little bugs, but Mayhem and Rusty had it even worse since they were evolved and their skin was like that of a regular person.

Even if they were pretty strong for their ranks, it made no difference to the ever hungry insects that fed on human blood.

Now that everything was dark, Uriel couldn't continue with his research any longer, but it made no difference since he already had everything he needed to understand more or less the story of that plaace. Thinking that the best thing of becoming a heavenly rank hunter so far was that he became immune to insect bites, Uriel took a spot near the fire along with the corporals and began speaking.

"Therea's something I want to ask you, Young."

"Yes?"

"How old are you?"

"That's not something you should ever ask a lady!" She replied offended.

"It's not like that, I mean, since Mayhem is your daughter, I can only assume you were already an adult during the arrival. Am I correct?"

"Well, yes."

"What can you tell me about the arrival? And I don't mean the government propaganda garbage they feed us, I want to know what was your personal experience." The question took everyone by surprise, but Uriel didn't miss the look of sadness on their eyes.

Uriel was the youngest among them and he didn't remember much about his childhood, let alone about the arrival, but from their reaction he could tell they all remembered it.

"It's... complicated," Young began speaking. "First you need to know a couple things. The event they call 'the arrival' happened at different times on different places."

"I already figured out as much." Uriel nodded, prompting Young to continue.

"First, we lost all contact with the south hemisphere and they said it was due to solar flares. Because of that, no one thought much when we started losing electricity from time to time until we lost all means to contact other people.

We were completely out of reach and we took refuge in our home, we could hear police and firefighters at the distance, then shots being fired, but we thought it was riots. At some point we ran out of food and my late husband went for supplies, but he never came back." Both Young and Mayhem seemed completely distraught by the sour memory

"What happened next?" Uriel asked with complete disregard for their feelings.

"The whole neighborhood joined hands to secure food and water, but we noticed that people who went out at night usually went missing so we only ever went out in daylight. At some point we picked up a radio signal and the world government informed about the cryptids and traits, but by that point we had a couple hunters in our midst already."

"And then megacities were formed. Those we were lucky enough to have them built around them had it easy, but the refugees were forced to live on the outskirts of the city, creating the slums." Rusty added.

"Why are you asking me all this?"

"What if I told you that cryptids live among us way before the arrival? Would you be open to believe something like that?"

"That's nonsense! If those things were here before the arrival we would have had hunters to, something like that would be impossible to hide." Rusty grunted.

"I thought the same too, but I'm starting to believe things aren't so simple and this place might hold some answers to questions I hadn't even thought yet. You see, from the different artifacts we dug up and the buildings I learned a few things." Uriel showed them an old photograph, some porcelain figures and an old iron key and then continued explaining.

"The people who lived here were aristocrats, that's for sure since we know they were french and wealthy and they were obsessed with the supernatural, more specifically with therianthropes."

"That picture is too damaged, there's nothing there!" Said Rusty in his usual angry tone. The picture wasn't of a landscape or a person, it was filled with odd shapes and it was impossible to tell what they were making everyone think it was just too old, buyt Uriel thought differently.

"That's not the case, it's incredibly well preserved considering the circumstances. The process used to take this picture involves several steps, it's a wet collodion glass plate and it was varnished with a protective layer, but that's not the reason why you can't tell what is this picture about. This isn't a regular picture, it's a 'ghost picture'.

The kind of esoteric photographs people who believed in the supernatural used to take to prove the existence of life after death. This figurines represent a mix of humans and animals, which isn't too strange by itself... but then there's this key."

"What about it?"

"Back then, people used to keep most rooms locked. It was as much to protect their items from being stolen as it was for convenience, since a locked room was out of bounds for children. The thing is, this key is too big for a normal door and it can only mean one thing: there is a basement somewhere nearby."