Author's Note: This is the story that I began during my phase of writer's block on my other story, Allies of Krita. It really helped me get to writing again, especially after I promised myself that I would release both stories simultaneously, and so I wouldn't be able to release this until I finished the latest chapter of my other story. XD I also figured that this would be a good time to release this story, immediately after the release of the Korean Folk Town, since it plays a heavy role in this story.
This story is intended to be a partner to Alpha Slave's story "The Users", taking place chronologically about a year before. We're collaborating and exchanging a lot of ideas between eachother, so they should be considered parts of a series. The two stories are based around an unofficial Maple timeline that I started writing for AoK, from Creation till the modern day. After she came up with the idea of writing her own story based off of that, I figured I wanted to join in and flesh it out a bit myself; hence, this story.
The main character is loosely based on my Maple character, just as most of the other characters are based off of those of people I've met in the game, friends included. I feel I need to stress that this character is not intended to represent me; I chose my pen name after my character, not the other way around.
But anyways, you didn't come here to read a long-winded author's note, so get to the story! X3

Chapter 1 – Gestation

"There's something you may like to see," the old man had told him, "in the eastern domain of Sun Quan."

"Sun Quan, sir?" The Wizard boy asked.

Grendel nodded. "I'm afraid I cannot direct you any further than that. I must return to my studies."

Sun Quan. Axzem was certain he'd heard the name before. If his mentor had called him to the Library of Magic for that and nothing more, though, it must have been a matter of considerable import.

Research was the only way about it.

There was only one book in the entire library, it turned out, that had any information on him. Sun Quan was the king of the realm of Luda; he ruled it from a giant skyborne city called Ludibrium.

So he was this elusive King of Ludibrium that Tigun had spoken of.

He had been to Ludibrium before, but royalty these days never seemed to be of the mind to have much of a public face. Why, it was neither Axzem's job nor inclination to guess.

But at any rate, the question now was of what he was looking for in Ludibrium. Most of the interesting features of the city were in its central and western areas; namely, the giant clock tower (with a dimensional tear in its center that was either a Monster Hunter's dream or nightmare), Ludibrium Village, and Eos Tower.

Eos was the western column that held the city aloft, and it doubled as a passageway into Omega Sector in Lower Ossyria. The tower visibly stopped after its 101st floor, but any Monster Hunter of experience knew that the tower was a full nine floors higher. A long time ago a monster called Alishar had attempted to swallow the entire city up into the pocket dimension he called home. As the legends go, a great hero arose then, one of four, and fought him back, stifling his advance and confining his control to the top nine floors of the tower. That was when he and the other three heroes formed the Monster Hunter's Guild, a group dedicated to training people in the art of Monster Hunting. It was Monster Hunters, like Axzem, and like those original four, who fought to stave off Alishar's advance as it continued even to this day.

That hero, according to the book, was our mystery man Sun Quan himself.

"Quite the lifespan on this guy," Axzem muttered aloud.

In a nutshell, all of this meant that most of the interesting and noticeable features of the city were automatically ruled out of his search. What was left?

He'd visited the eastern side, if briefly. What had been there?

The eastern column. Of course!

The eastern mirror to Eos, Helios was considerably less remarkable than its sister tower. All it seemed to contain was a few monsters and an elevator shaft to nowhere. He'd been told that a large library lay at the bottom of the tower, but there was nothing there to be had for an ordinary Monster Hunter such as himself.

Or rather, there wouldn't be, if Grendel himself hadn't just directed him there!

"Sir," Axzem said to his mentor after putting the book away and quietly approaching, "I'll be heading to Ludibrium now."

"Congratulations," Grendel said, not even looking up from his book. "You pass."

Axzem blinked and maintained a stunned silence for several seconds. Grendel continued.

"Take the envelope on that table over there. Do not open it until your search has been halted again. You'll know how to use it if you open it when you need it."

He took the large manila envelope in his hand and looked at it. It was unmarked, except for the large Monster Hunter's Guild emblem stamped on the front. It was a large blue letter G with an ornate sword vertically through its middle.

"I understand. Thank you, sir," he said. Grendel didn't speak another word.

-

-

It was a long- and well-established fact that the seas of Bera were not safe for travel by ship. Things lurked in those waters that not even accomplished Monster Hunters, let alone a wooden seacraft, could survive against. That's why the main mode of transportation between Victoria and Ossyria was airship.

However, Ossyria itself was far too wooded and mountainous to land an aircraft on with anything resembling safety and precision. That's why the sky-city of Orbis was the main gateway between Ossyria and the rest of the world.

Axzem could hear a leathery beating of wings outside the cabin as he sat mulling over his task. Even the sky route between Victoria and Ossyria barely passed safety standards nowadays. It wouldn't exist anymore if not for the storage cabin passengers could access from the main deck. Thankfully, the Balrogs never had the temerity to try and attack people in there.

Axzem studied the envelope, but determined not to let his curiosity overtake him. Opening the envelope now could mean failing whatever test Grendel had put before him.

He sighed. A full eighteen years, and ten of them had been under the instruction of Grendel the Really Old. He'd achieved a Monster Hunter rank of 49, yet he had never heard of a test like this before. What was the nature of the lesson his mentor was trying to teach…?

He adjusted his glasses and returned the envelope to his jacket.

He wasn't an unattractive individual, at least by what he had been told. He was forced to take them at their word, though, since beauty wasn't something he recognized in himself. His brown hair sat in a mop over his head, and he wore a pair of orange-tinted glasses over his emerald green eyes. He wore a suit top with a green tie draped down over his front. It was the first outfit his mother had given him to start off his living independently as a Monster Hunter, but he'd always thought it made him look stuffy and pretentious. He wore it anyway, though. Maybe it made him a hypocrite. He didn't care much. A pair of jeans and sneakers finished the odd outfit off. He'd often been compared to a lawyer in that ensemble; it had almost become a running joke. He went along with it; nothing makes you stuffier than not being able to have a laugh at your own expense, after all.

He wore a pair of Blue Moon earrings and Dark Arten gloves; they were some of the standard-issue Monster Hunter equipment he could actually stand to wear. His Dark Calas showed off too much skin, and the Guiltian was just gaudy and impractical in its ridiculous size. Their magical properties were indispensable, though; which is why Mask Magic existed.

It was a unique way to effectively wear two outfits at once; one for practical value, and one for aesthetics. It was a suborder of Higher Magic, which only some Hunters could use; the test for who qualified and who didn't was never clearly understood, though. Axzem had simply received notice one day from Grendel, when he was still in his thirties in rank, that he was now allowed to use it. And that, apparently, was that.

He loved the Path of the Magician, but sometimes he longed for a less enigmatic mentor. Why couldn't Athena Pierce have been a spellcaster?

At any rate, the ship eventually alighted on its destination platform and Axzem disembarked onto the floating city of Orbis. Now all that was left was a short ride on the intracontinental airship route to Ludibrium.

The airship to Ludibrium was quite the sight, to say the least. It had been constructed by Ludibrian engineers, and bore the city's... distinctive style, so to speak. It looked for all the world like a toy train, and in fact, anyone who hadn't seen it fly was usually inclined to refer to it as such. Axzem could never help but feel silly when riding the gaudy thing. Luckily, the ride was brief.

Ludibrium itself was, if nothing else, an amplification of the boat's level of silliness. The entire city was constructed of what appeared to be ordinary plastic, in the form of children's toys. One could feel the hollowness of the giant plastic building blocks underfoot with every step. It might be assumed that the city's floor was fragile and easily breakable, if the observer didn't know that it was actually many miles thick. The engineers that built the place, Axzem supposed, were quite good at their job, odd sense of aesthetics notwithstanding.

There was no reason to feel silly walking through the streets of Ludibrium as he had on the ride there; with the nigh limitless monsters to be fought and quests to be had within and without its limits, the city was a staple destination of Monster Hunters everywhere. If anyone was to feel embarrassed, it was the Monster Hunters as a collective.

Since the Hunters as a collective had nothing to prove to the rest of the world, it was safe to say that this never happened.

Landmarks were never difficult to locate within the city's limits; if there was one more lucrative business in Ludibrium than Hunter supplies and amenities, it was tourism. And reasonably so; the city itself was practically nothing more than one big spectacle, after all. The tour guides cheerily and energetically led the way to the eastern tower when asked.

Axzem noted with a touch of cynicism that, for all their helpfulness, they would never go so far as to actually enter the tower. Instead they waved their cheery goodbyes as they pushed him off into its treacherous depths on his own.

Being a Monster Hunter for most of one's life teaches you a few things. For one, never take a monster's appearance for granted. The Monster Hunter's Guidebook defines a monster as "any creature, derived from the original corruption of the Tree of Life by the god of Chaos, who bears a blind and uncaring malice towards order and life in general". The long and short of it was, no matter how cute and cuddly the thing looked, if the Guidebook classified it as a monster, then it would gladly gut you alive if presented half the chance.

It was this precept that Axzem had to keep in mind as he faced the fauna of the eastern tower, or for that matter, of the entire city.

The same theme that was present in the city's architecture carried over to its monsters. Each and every one, up to and to a certain extent including the monsters in the Clock Tower's dimensional rip, resembled children's toys. From stuffed teddy bears to toy soldiers to wind-up planes and everything in between, their appearances were not intuitively harmful or malicious. Most of them were more humorous in appearance than in any way intimidating. However, they appeared in the Guidebook as monsters; in the subsection with the Aliens of Omega Sector. To explain the reasons why the two groups were lumped together with anything resembling detail would first require a lengthy discussion of Taxonomy as it exists in the world of The Maple, which is a subject for another time.

Axzem weaved his way through the wind-up gerbil creatures as he descended the tower, careful not to let them snap at his heels as he passed. They may have been plastic, but they packed a nasty bite. The Dark Crystal energy they were infused with made certain of that. He barely managed to suppress the inexplicable urge to zap them all to death with a round or two of Lightning.

At the bottom of the 99th floor was the elevator. He tapped the "down" button by the elevator door and waited. It felt odd, doing such a mundane task as summoning and waiting for an elevator in the middle of this monster-infested tower loft, he mused.

At last a metallic ding sounded and the elevator door opened. With a mechanical lurch, it began its descent once again.