My Self - Insert Stash

-A SI Dark Souls(f.u.c.k this game) & Danmachi fic, a fun read!

Sypnosis: ???

Rated: M

Words: 120K

Posted on: forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/is-it-wrong-to-try-to-avoid-girls-in-dark-dungeons-dark-souls-danmachi-si.42009/threadmarks/ (shadenight123)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (*´ー｀*)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Prologue(exceptional)

Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes it gives you ashes.

The smell of burning wood filled my nostrils, pushing through my lungs as I breathed it in deeply. This wasn't a barbecue; there was no meat burning on the grill. The crackling of the flames was near enough that I instinctively moved away from it, my finger clutching some sort of dirty stone pavement. My eyes bleakly put into focus my surroundings, an abandoned house made of stone, a leaky and half-broken roof covered in hay, and a precarious chimney. It was, rather than a house, a single room with a broken, creaking door that led outside into a field of uncultivated grass.

I barely managed to push myself up on my two feet, my eyes turning towards the fire, the familiarity of it ricocheting through my befuddled memories as I swallowed nervously. Either I had been kidnapped for a really intensive Larping event, or someone had thrown me in a Candid Camera of sorts.

The crackling fire wasn't just a fire. It was a bonfire. A sword, twisted and broken, stood deeply embedded within it. Skeletal remains bleached white from time and the heat of the flames crackled within, the smell of smoke a faint reminder. I rubbed my eyes, or at least, went for it. I stopped with my left hand raised to my eye level.

I took a deep breath. The Darksign's pitch-black existence twirled surrounded by flames on the back of my left hand. It hissed and whispered words that made no sense, but as I awkwardly neared my right hand towards the edges of it, I knew it wasn't a phony copy. The moment I touched it, ashes surrounded my entire frame, my vision turning dark. My body, once more, was slumped on the ground of the house.

I turned on my back, a sharp cough leaving my throat as I stared at the ceiling of the abandoned house.

This wasn't a joke.

I stood up, carefully making my way out of the door. The sun nearly blinded me, but past the glares and the lukewarm heat it emitted, I saw fields of green and a dirt road which sn.a.k.e.d across the greenery towards a city near the horizon.

It didn't look like a city I knew of, and it definitely wasn't Lordran or any other settings that belonged to Dark Souls. I glanced down at my clothes before stepping outside, and once I realized I was wearing simple, everyday trousers and a thick wool shirt, I reckoned it could have been worse.

I could have started inside an Asylum with a broken sword.

Thus, I began to walk towards the city.

Had I known where that road would lead me...

...I would have gone the other direction.

Chapter 1

The world of Dark Souls was not unfair. Let us be honest; the game itself was difficult, but not dishonest. Skills would let anyone go through with minimum fuss. You could be a heavily armored knight, a scantily clad hollow with a broken blade, or a lunatic on a speedrun using bananas as controllers, but you would still have a fair chance at beating the game. The knowledge of your enemy would be your strength; the attack patterns would become known, and the correct mixture of courage and cowardice would allow you to strike in the right moment and achieve victory.

It also helped that enemies would mostly be fought one, two, or at most three at the time unless you did something extremely wrong.

Orario wasn't fair like that. I had learned it on my skin, time and time again.

The fickle lights cast upon the dungeon's walls were a product of the dungeon itself. No one would be foolish enough to step down on the fifth floor to place candles for the adventurers to see. The ground was even, the corridors large enough to allow the comfortable passage of a group of four to five adventurers, and yet there I was, alone. My eyes were used to the faint illumination cast off by the candles. Even if I did something as silly as knock them off, new ones would form in their place.

The dungeon liked to properly see its monsters eat adventurers whole, though with me, he had made a terrible investment.

I clutched on to the leather handle of my long two-handed sword with my right hand near the guard, my left firmly gripping the bottom of the handle. Most of the enemies on the fifth floor had poor reach, but terrifyingly sharp claws or attacks. The random minotaur was an exception, but they usually didn't come all the way up from their fifteenth floor unless bothered by an adventurer and in hot pursuit of them.

My swing came down precisely, slicing the neck of a War Shadow as its blood copiously dropped like some sort of shower. The creatures either had the strongest pumping hearts in the world, or Quentin Tarantino had taken over the show somewhere in the middle of production. I took a step back, bringing the blade in a strike from the left to deal with a friend of the War Shadow, before sidestepping the blow from the third monster and closing in, the sharp edge of the sword's handle opening a grievous wound on the c.h.e.s.t of the monster in question.

The monsters fell neatly on the ground, their corpses quickly turning into mush as magic stones and scraps remained behind. I knelt with a sigh, my left hand grabbing hold of the stones and carefully pulling them one by one into the pouch by my side. I could throw them in my inventory, but so close to the surface chances were high I'd encounter adventurers on the way out. It wasn't that I was keeping my ability to use an inventory a secret, but I wasn't inclined to share or make a show of it.

I stood back up from the puddle of blood that had dried, shaking grimly my head at the lack of flickers of soul from the monsters. The Dungeon birthed them in great numbers, but even so most often than not he forgot about throwing a soul into the monsters in question. This was especially true after I ended up passing through the area myself a few times. While it made monsters easier to fight, since they apparently began to follow the same repeated tactics while soulless, it also meant they were a waste of time for the likes of me.

I could still earn money through the conversion of the magic stones into golden coins, but coins stopped having value when it was your soul getting devoured instead.

I began to walk through the hallways, carefully ensuring I wouldn't lose my way from the tunnels I knew of. One thing I discovered was that, unfortunately, the most dangerous moment for an adventurer wasn't entering the dungeon, or traveling it. It was coming back from it. The moment the mission was done, the necessary ingredients gathered, the specific monsters killed and their bits and pieces collected adventurers of a certain type tended to drop their guards. In that moment, the dungeon usually struck without particular malice or a penchant for sadism, but struck all the same a killing blow on some unfortunate soul.

This was the reality of the dungeon of Orario, which the Anime show didn't even bother telling. Adventurers died all the time, and on the levels that went from five to seven, they tended to die really fast if they were stupid, or prone to arrogance. Unashamedly, I was a rather stoic collector of equipment belonging to dead men, as well as souls that belonged to them too. I didn't feel sad about it; they had chosen their life, and in death they definitely had no use for a spear, or a shield.

Normally such act was frowned upon by the Guild, since the belongings of dead adventurers belonged to their Familia, but it was implicitly understood that weapons and shields might have broken against monsters, and thus there was no need to drag them back up. The Guild actually gave a small reward for every corpse successfully brought back up; it had been a strange thing to discover, and one that usually wouldn't make the cut neither in the novels or in the anime, but it was pleasant all the same.

I felt the ground tremble below my armored feet, and stopped my ruminations. My helmet tinkled, my eyes narrowed as I carefully lifted the face-protector to have a better view of the incoming enemy. I turned my head right and left, the corridors and hallways all the same, but the rumbling growing closer all the same.

The Zweihander that had been nestling on my shoulder soon ended up wielded in front of me in a low guard. It could be Killer Ants after all. Poking them as they broke through the ground made them easy pickings.

"Help! Somebody help me!" a voice caught my attention, a blur of white hair and brown clothes coming towards me from the far end of the corridor, a minotaur behind it. I inwardly snorted. My stance went from low guard to high-guard, my left leg placed firmly behind me as I prepared to swing.

The blur passed me by, the minotaur hot on its heels, but not stupid enough to ignore me. Its crimson eyes turned in my direction as it howled, its voice burning with wrath as it brought its b.a.r.e fist down towards me. It lunged with its right fist. I stepped in and swung down, the blade slicing through the muscles on the monster's armpit, blood thickly spraying out as I bent my right leg, pulled back, clutched the Zweihander by the middle-grip and thrust straight through the monster's stomach. For a brief instant I smelled the sweat of the fur, the taste of copper of the blood, and then it was over.

There was a sharp sound as my weapon dug through the taught muscles of the Minotaur, my grip not faltering as I used my weight to drop to the side while still holding on to my blade, opening the wound to the point of it being lethal without doubts. The minotaur exploded in vicious black pieces, a flickering soul burning within its frame. I sighed in relief as I extended a hand towards it, the Darksign hungrily feasting while I pushed my hand further down, grabbing hold of the Magic Stone beneath it.

I then stood back up, sighing and turning towards the direction where the blur of white hair and brown armor had gone. Only, the blur wasn't gone beyond my sight. It apparently belonged to a white haired youngster, crimson eyes staring up at me with wide surprise. A few seconds later, and I heard footsteps coming closer from the opposite side of the hallway.

I rested my Zweihander on my shoulder, and turned to leave in the direction of the white haired individual.

"Ah...thank you very much, Mister Adventurer!" the youngster said, bowing primly with both of his hands clasped together.

I looked at the figure, some familiar memory trying to surface in the back of my mind, half-fogged by the Darksign. The face felt familiar, the curls of white hair, the soft baby-like face, the crimson eyes, the brown long-sleeved jacket and boots. The singular piece of metallic c.h.e.s.t-plate. However...I couldn't fully place the figure.

"Don't thank me," I grumbled. "You've been lucky I was—"

"Oi! Did ya see a minotaur pass by here?" a voice called at us from the other side of the tunnel, two figures standing there. One of the two, I easily recognized as Aiz Wallenstein. The blond hair, the emotionless-face, the expression that seemed a mixture between being utterly bored and outright stone-faced...the other was the wolf-guy, that Bete-something with his spiky white or silver hair. The latter had been the one to ask the question.

"Taken care of," I replied, raising a hand.

I then let the hand fall down by my side as the duo left a few seconds later. I blinked. I looked down at the spot where the minotaur had been defeated, and then turned to look at the white-haired figure that hadn't yet moved. The figure realized I was looking at it, because the next instant it began to fiddle with a lock of snow-white hair.

I then turned back to the far end of the tunnel, the weight of what had just transpired burning itself deep into the bottom of my stomach.

Did I just...did I just ruin...

"Mister Adventurer..." the white-haired figure spoke, throwing me off my wildly delusional train of thought to concentrate on the figure in front of me. "I still want to thank you for saving me," she said with an earnest and kind smile.

It was at that moment that I finally stopped blinding myself to the honest truth laid b.a.r.e in front of my eyes, and actually accepted the gravity of the situation for what it truly was worth.

The figure in front of me was definitely female.

It was definitely white-haired, and red-eyed.

"My name is Bell Cranel, of the Hestia familia," she said while fl.u.s.tered due to the intensity of my stare, even though my face was hidden by my helmet. "Would you like...to make a party together?"

She even began to fidget with her fingers while in wait for an answer.

...

Once more, I turned to look at the far end of the hallway, half-tempted to extend a hand with the unspoken d.e.s.i.r.e to have Aiz Wallenstein return and set things straight.

She didn't.

I ended up not having a choice.

Congratulations! You have successfully acquired Bell-chan as a member of your party!