After the initial 'party' part of the meeting was over with, all of the leaders as well as an old man, an official of the Holy order and also many other people, mostly important merchants and representatives of knight establishments, they wouldn't say much, they were first here to listen to what would be said.
The one leading the conversations was obviously the official of the Holy order, despite looking he would die at any moment anyone could feel that he was still very much lively.
"Are there any questions?" he asked after going over the presentations of each of the participants.
Malahad, leader of Rush raised his hand, he too seemed old but that was mostly due to his overgrown grey beard and bald head but he wasn't nearly as old as the Holy order's official.
"Yes, Malahad?" spoke the old man.
"I would like to know the reason for the added tax this month" he said and everyone got very attentive, suddenly shifting their gaze to the official.
"Uuuh, I can't tell you a straight answer, I am not aware on such decisions" he responded, he hadn't been told a tax had been added.
'Those fuckers! That's why they sent me, someone who wouldn't be able to talk about this!" thought the old man.
Hearing the answer everyone understood that they wouldn't get any answers and lost their interest.
"Any other questions before we go onto the main topic?" he then asked, trying to change the subject.
"No? Great then let's talk about the world dungeon!" he exclaimed, seemingly very excited about the main topic, this was his thing, the old man was a fighter.
"Very well, so I am sure you are aware that the Holy order is planning to delve deeper into the world dungeon than ever before, we are planning on searching all of the dungeon to find great artifacts and secrets, as is believed by the Holy order, the world dungeon is a gift that was granted onto us, the people of these lands and it is our mission to unwrap said gift to the fullest!" he spoke solemnly.
"The mission is going to last for an indefinite, members of the Holy church accompanied by experienced ruin knights will stay in the dungeon far maybe years and we would like to ask for all of your helps in this holy mission, be it in any way that you can" he continued.
"Of course, even though the honor of participating in such a holy mission should be enough by itself, compensations will be given in exchange of help" he added afterwards, predicting an obvious question.
Duaparc raised her hand and the official was a bit worried of what she was going to say but her question ended up being perfectly normal, making him even more worried actually, she had just asked if they would provide the details of how they would set up camps, how long they planned on staying on each floor, if they planned on attempting bosses multiple time to try and see if they were variations, Et cetera.
While he was answering the simple questions and going over how they would be staying on each floor based on the amount of point of interests in each of them, a very mundane answer and one to be expected but for some reason, for a split second, he and he felt something abnormal in the room.
For no more than a millisecond, he sensed danger, as if someone had let a goddamn, abomination from the depth of hell into the room and that it had somehow chosen to focus on him first but only sensing for but a moment and noticing that nobody else seemed to have noticed it, he assumed he had hallucinated.
'Am I becoming senile?' he wondered, he anyone else had sensed that bloodlust they would have said it, the recruits that were brought along would have certainly fainted on the spot.
He decided to ignore that and carried on with the meeting, it had turned out that everyone was willing to lend at least a bit of help, usually when asking for help everybody would collectively agree on not helping at all but apparently everyone was interested in the compensations and probably interested in the discovery that could be made thanks to this expedition.
Vlasfimia was satisfied with the information he had obtained in this meeting, never had the Holy order made itself so vulnerable, exploring the dungeon was a great idea, strange that they hadn't thought of it earlier, the ruin knights have been on it for a while, it was said that one had descended to the seventieth floor.
Vlas had gotten so joyful as he heard of it, that his flame had momentarily came out and had apparently shared his happiness, thankfully it hadn't seemed like anyone had noticed it.
The next few months, perhaps even years would be very entertaining.
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Corruption, what does that word mean? Is corruption necessarily, a shift from 'good' to 'evil'? What are good and evil anyways? Are they synonyms of order and chaos? They are nothing truly meaningful, they are but tools for cooperation, order is but the monotony of a being, what a rabbit does is order to a rabbit, chaos is the everything else, what is order to a centipede is chaos to the rabbit.
Never would you find a common rabbit pondering on what is good or evil, to the rabbit the fox that devours it, was simply stronger, the rabbit does not hold a grudge.
Getting back on track, would a rabbit suddenly holding a grudge be corruption? I would say that it is, however corruption necessitate the intervention of a third party, something that changes what should be into something it should not, a man-eater deciding to starve because the men it devours have families that mourns them, is nothing short of corruption.
But then a new question come into being, what should be and what should not? Maybe the man-eater was always destined to revile its previous diet, how is anyone supposed to know?
Most can not and thus shouldn't worry about such things, after all, perhaps there is no corruption at all or perhaps everything is corruption, anything goes when you are without knowledge.
So do not worry as for all you know, maybe our world was always destined to what it is now.
-An optimistic writer.