Chapter 126 - Alignment Dilemma

Leaving the checking of Gabby and Benny's Stats to his older brother, Brance floated off a few feet away from the group with his mind and heart in turmoil. As someone who on Earth could have been called a good God-fearing, Christian man, the tale Cynrik had dropped on him seemingly out of nowhere shook Brance to his core.

'Tobs…is what my brother told me true?'

-Everything Host Cynrik informed you of is the truth; he has, however, added his own speculation in some parts. Even so, there were no lies told.-

Brance's heart dropped to the floor after hearing Tobs. The God he spent both his lives praying to and worshiping had gone behind his back and basically installed a time bomb into his soul, all for greed and selfish gain. The only upside to this fiasco was that Cynrik was pretty confident that Brance wouldn't have to fight a Spirit Being such as Ragnar. From what he speculated, the fact that Brance was oddly intuned and perfect morally and mentally when it came to the Lightbringer Bloodline meant there was a slim chance of any corrosion.

Although there was still a chance Brance would have to face a Spirit being, just as Cynrik had for domination of his body, the percentage of it happening was less than 10%.

None of this made Brance feel any better about the situation, though. The way Cynrik had spun his story fit a specific narrative, The Deities are selfish, greedy beings who only sought after more territory to claim for themselves. To do so, they required a freshly dead soul who worshiped them. Then, said Deity, would chip off a part of their own Divinity and merge it with the soul of the being, and after some crafty work on the back end, would nudge that being into the territory they wanted. In the case of Cynrik and Brance, it was Cynrik who was picked, leaving Brance as a plus one package deal.

Cynrik's knowledge of Isekai stories and anime made him a prime target for Odin and Yahweh since Vinestra fit well into the genre of stories that Cynrik was well accustomed to.

The only thing Brance had a hard time dealing with was how his brother believed that the two Deities had malicious intent. However, even if they didn't, Cynrik wasn't about to reveal his cards and had opted to choose to fight against their control. His one-track mind simply chose to view Odin and Yahweh as beings that couldn't be trusted, while Brance was adamant that they didn't know the whole story, only bits and pieces filled with conjecture.

To some extent, both Brothers were correct, but Tobs couldn't confirm or deny and had to be a neutral party as that's how she was programmed.

Brance sighed loudly and began massaging his temples. To make matters worse, the party had found themselves trapped in an area that was transferred into the spot a Dungeon Boss room should have existed. So instead of facing a typical Egress boss, their party now had to fight a suped-up reincarnator just like themselves. 

Brance wanted to scream and punch something until he broke both hands.

'Why the fuck is this happening to us. Would it have fucking killed Odin and Yahweh to tell us ahead of time, or even give us the common decency to ask if we wanted to participate? HELL, THEY DIDN'T EVEN MENTION THE RISKS.'

The longer Brance thought about this topic, the more confused and hurt he became. The constant internal back and forth triggered something deep within his soul. His Alignment had begun shifting; this change from Lawful Good to Lawful Neutral had caused a drastic modification within his soul, allowing his Bloodline to start corroding him slowly, as it had Cynrik.

Cynrik, who had been watching his brother out the corner of his eye since they had left the SOC, picked up on the acute body language changes Brance was presenting and narrowed his eyes in thought.

Seeing Cynrik narrowing his eyes as he stared at the papers given to him by herself and Benny, Gabby started getting nervous. She noticed that Cynrik had been shuffling the papers over and over like some kind of nervous tick, which to some extent it was, as it was an old habit Cynrik had developed from playing card games for more than twenty years on Earth.

"Big Bro Cyn, is everything ok? Did we do something wrong?" Gabby's nervous voice snapped Cynrik out of his thoughts, and he tossed a reassuring smile towards the little girl.

"Nope, it's all good; I am proud of you both; you did well. I see you even have some points to spare; that's good. Be sure you go over all your newly acquired skills. You should have gotten a couple from your Affinities, as well as your Class. I want you to have a decent grasp on how they work."

Cynrik's words caused Gabby to cheer up instantly. Then, after a few more sentences of idle chatter, both she and Benny closed their eyes and started digesting all the information they had obtained from their systems about the new skills.

Cynrik floated away towards Brance, allowing the Sanford Siblings to study in peace. Then, moving through the void of the Shadow Realm like an astronaut in the International Space Station, he eventually reached Brance several meters away and could instantly tell that Brance was having a mental breakdown.

Reaching out, Cynrik caught Brance by the shoulder and spun him around, making his younger brother face him and gripped both Brance's shoulders tightly.

"Listen to me very carefully, Brance." Cynrik shook Brance twice when he saw the unfocused look in his eyes.

"Stop thinking about it; the more you do, the worse it gets. I know what you are feeling right now but drop it. If you don't, I swear to God I'll start singing Frozen."

-Now playing "Let it Go," Performed by Idina Menzel-

{TOBS, STOP NOT NOW! IT WAS A JOKE. BAD AI!}

Instead of listening to his command, Tobs turned up the volume causing Cynrik to grab at his head angrily.

{NO DAMN IT, TOBS, I SWEAR, STOPPPPPP! FUCK, NOW IT'S GUNNA BE IN MY HEAD ALL FUCKING DAY, UGH!}

Seeing Cynrik's pain, Brance's eyes focused, and his mind got lighter for some reason; he chuckled lightly and even started singing along.

{Couldn't keep it in, heaven know's I've tried…}

{NOOOOO! DON'T YOU FUCKING JOIN HER BRANCE, TRAITORRRRRRRRRRR!}

{Don't let them in, don't let them see, be the good boy you always have to be.}

{FUCK YOU, BRANCE, FUCK OFF! RAGHHHHH} Cynrik's face contorted, and he whispered the follow-up verse. {Conceal don't feel, don't let them knowwww.}

Brance smiled widely and shrugged off Cynrik's hands, "WELL NOWW THEYYY KNOWWWW!"

Accidently, Brance sang the line out loud, drawing both concerned looks and confused ones from Cynrik, Gabby, and Benny.

The thing with mind link was when singing; you had perfect pitch since it was all in your head; however, the second Brance verbalized the song out loud, he very, VERY, quickly realized…he couldn't sing for shit. In fact, cats' yowling was more attractive than the tone-deaf screeches coming from Brance's throat.

But this didn't stop him for a second.

"Let it GO! LET IT GO! CAN'T HOLD ME BACK ANY MORRREEE!"

"AHHH, NO, BRANCIE, STOP, PLEASE!" Gabby screamed at the top of her lungs while covering her ears.

"KILL IT WITH FIRE, QUICK; DON'T LET IT SPREAD!" Even Benny joined in on the shenanigans.

"OI," Cynrik held up two fireballs, "I GOT THE FIRE! QUICK HOLD HIM DOWN!"

"I DON'T CARE!!! WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO SAYYYYYY!"

Booom, BOOOOOM, BOOOOOOM!

Loud explosions echoed throughout the neverending void as Cynrik hurled fireballs at his little brother, who easily dodged while continuing his horrendous rendition of the beloved song.

Acting as if possessed by the spirit of a Princess, Brance danced around in zero-g, leaving the rest of his party to chase after him, screaming at the top of their lungs, attempting to silence him.

Eventually, the song came to a close, with it, Brance's Alignment quit wavering and locked in place at Lawful Good, that…and the three tackled him into a shadow pillar, making him laugh so hard he started crying. Not a single one of them had even a remote inkling that Brance had just come dangerously close to permanently changing his Alignment, spelling future disaster.

The only beings who even truly knew what was transpiring were Odin, Yahweh, and Tobs, leaving Brance and Cynrik entirely out of the loop. But, that wasn't all; Yahweh and Odin were metaphorically sweating bullets, as they had no idea what caused the sudden shift away from Lawful Good, to begin with.

"Alright, get off me, you baby hippos." Calming down from the earlier mishap, Brance shoved his brother and two friends off and straightened himself up.

"Never again, Brancie." Gabby waved her finger at him, still in shock how there was actually something that existed that Brance wasn't good at.

"HERE, HERE!" Benny and Cynrik chimed in simultaneously before looking at each other in surprise and laughing merrily.

"Ok, enough fooling around, haha, we need to get serious; there is still a batch of Kobolds we need to take out as well as the Boss." Cynrik clapped his hands twice, drawing everyone's attention.

"Plan time." Cynrik waved his hand, bringing up the quest information, and told everyone to follow along.

-Emergency Quest – Subjugation Mission.-

-Because of an Anomaly created by -OMITTED-, a third party, this Quest is issued to the group known as "MyrkLys." This third party has infused a massive amount of Mana into A-G 22097's Egress Core, explicitly affecting the randomly generated Instance, causing the Dungeon Boss Quest to undergo abnormal and unpredictable changes.-

-Instead of facing a randomly generated boss creature. A chunk of land from an unknown location has been forcefully moved into the space formerly occupied by the Egress's constructed Boss room; as such, it falls onto you and the members of your party to wipe out and rectify this occurrence.-

-Subjugate Kobold Soldiers: 38/84- (incomplete)

-Subjugate Kobold Villagers: 68/68- (complete)

-Subjugate Kobold Shaman: 0/1- (incomplete)

-The above-listed tasks are shared between all members of MyrkLys and do not need to be met individually.-

-For the duration of this Quest, all XP will be shared equally between party members no matter the distance between them.-

-The time limit to complete this Quest is the same as the time remaining to complete the Instance quest. 12:33:06-

-Rewards: ???-

-Penalty for Failure: All party members will die, and the Egress Core will spiral out of control before exploding with a force equivalent to an attack from a Tier-7 existence.-

"As you all can see, there are still 46 Kobold Soldiers remaining, and they are stacked up over there." Then, Cynrik pointed up to the left of everyone's heads, where they could all clearly see a large group of Reptilian Kobolds in armor, aimlessly roaming around in search of them.

His eyes rapidly flicked around with [Inspect] active, registering every single one of the 46 beings Level and Tier.

"Of the 46, there are a total of 12 Peak Tier-1 beings, meaning the remainder are all Tier-2. Their levels are between 22 and 25, with the highest being their leader, who tips the scales at Level 27. HEHE." Cynrik ended his statement with his usual creepy laugh.

"Unlucky for you folks, who are all too strong to get double rewards from them HAHAHAHHAHAHA," Cynrik struck a supervillain pose and cackled maniacally.

"Tsk, coming from the sole Level 11, that's not really saying much."

Brance instantly brought Cynrik down a peg.

"SHUT UP YOU… YOU… YOU DONKEY!"

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