Chapter 172: 172 – Cultural Differences

“For your second question, think of it this way: the world is an island, the dungeon is a boat, and the Core is both the captain as well as the tarred rope keeping water from flooding in. Without the Core, the whole thing floods and sinks. Your third question connects to this; when something sinks, it makes waves. The Emperor thinks the waves of a Dungeon sinking will be tall enough to breach the blackwall and let him in.”

Zel found it genuinely surprising that she got a concise and sensical explanation without mysticism attached, yet it did nothing to sate her curiosity. It was just redirected from the concept of something sinking into the Sea of Fog, to the Divine Emperor. She also sat down properly and threw out request for information, “Tell me about the Emperor.”

The Caster looked off to the side as if he were reluctant to speak, only for the Spearman to eagerly fill the silence.

“Let’s see…” the Spearman began, staring off into space as he counted out traits on his fingers. “Face so pretty it’s almost unsettling, sharp jaw and all. His hair is platinum blonde with golden and silver strands, always done up into some impossible spiky hairstyle. Left eye is silver, the right one is gold. Loves to wear lots of artifact jewelry, sometimes gives a ring or an earring to a subordinate he likes. Oh! And high collars. Very fond of clothing with high collars and deep v-necks. Has more scars on his chest than clear skin. Oh! And rumor goes, he also has a living tattoo of a dragon across his entire back. I… Think that’s everything.”

He looked over to the Caster with a questioning expression, looking for confirmation. “Is that all? Or did he change how he looks again?”

Giving a slow nod, the Caster agreed, “You described the Emperor as accurately as I would expect. Only missed the part about that flying sword of his that he rides around everywhere.”

The description had painted a pretty solid picture in her mind’s eye. It sounded exactly how she would expect someone called the Divine Emperor to look.

“So he looks about as self-absorbed as he sounds,” she quipped with a venomous smirk. 

While the Spearman smirked back, the Caster flinched, thumping his staff against the ground. They kept on talking for a little while, with Zelsys making no attempt to hide her intentions of extracting military information, and the two locusts making no attempt to withhold said information.

They went through weaponry, to armor, to supplies, to rations, and through rations, to guidelines on producing sweet cakes made with glutinous rice flour. Then, it came to insults. From Pateirian insults against other nations, ethnicities, or even general social groups, to the insults of other groups against Pateirians.

“Many of our Ustrenese comrades were confused when they heard the snowmen call us cat-eaters, because such a thing is not insulting to them,” the Spearman said, himself sounding as detached from these people as Ikesians were from Grekurians. Zel supposed it made sense, if the Pateirian Empire was as vast as she had assumed it to be.

He continued before she could even ask the inevitable question, confirming that, “Yes, they indeed eat cats in Ustren, and their culinary traditions are not even particularly strange! Did you know that in some places they eat live newborn mice dipped in honey? They call it the “Three Squeaks Delicacy” because they squeak once when you pick them up, once when you put them in your mouth, and once when you bite down!”

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“It’s no more disgusting than those islanders that eat raw fish, if you ask me,” the Caster cut in. “Now, what they do in Apresh…”

Instantly, the Spearman’s face went from the amused bewilderment of regaling a stranger with tales of bizarre regions from one’s homeland, to wide-eyed revulsion.

“That’s a myth, though…” he murmured, disbelievingly.

“Officially, yes it is,” the Caster nodded. “They still do it, though. I’ve seen them do it, I’ve been offered a piece of the meat.”

Zel’s thoughts instantly went towards cannibalism, but the clarification that she received when the Caster refocused his eyes on her was somehow worse.

“You see, in Apresh, they skin and cook dogs alive over the course of hours, because they believe the animal’s suffering enhances the flavor of the meat.”

This less serious line of discussion progressed to far more serious societal concepts, such as a Pateirian concept that the Caster translated as “Face”, or more generally “Reputation”. From Zel’s understanding, it was to some degree the more universal idea of a reputation mixed with a heavily stratified caste system, wherein prostrating oneself to one’s superiors could both increase the Face of the superior and the subordinate, whereas disobedience would degrade the Face of both.

On a surface level it just sounded like a different form of one’s general reputation among their peers, but the way the two bugmen spoke about it made it sound far more rigid. They made it sound like questioning an elder’s or superior’s opinion could completely ruin someone’s life. 

At one point, Zel found herself driven past the point of trying to understand without judging. It came when the Caster said that anyone who cared about their Face would pay penance for any perceived offense to their superiors, even if the offense was not intended, and even if the superior acted maliciously in retribution. In this way, one might increase their Face while hurting the malicious superior.

“Why should I pay penance to those that would see me made a slave or killed and dissected?” she questioned without thinking. “If anyone goes after me, for any reason, I will visit upon them proportional retaliation. It doesn’t matter who they are. In fact, I’d much rather beat the life out of some degenerate oligarch than an impoverished thug.”

“Why would you exercise until it hurts? Or work a job you don’t like, but that your boss needs to be done?” the Caster asked with a calm sadness to his voice, his beady eyes conveying his exhaustion with the very system he had described moments earlier.

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