One

You're browsing the threads. Not much better to do.

Well, that was a lie. More accurately: Out of all the things you could be doing, this was the thing you didn't want to be doing the least.

At least they were active. You post some art without thinking about it, refresh the thread and go over the new discussion.

Refresh again.

The most recent post is a (You)farm saying that if you reply, you get transported to the /utg/ dark world. Formatted like Gaster dialogue, because of course it is. Without really thinking about it, you type out a reply, attach some generic image, go through the captcha and send-

With no transition, you're falling through the darkness.

Vertigo hits, and you're tumbling. You feel the urge to throw up and wheeze and throw your hands out and curl up into a ball all at once.

A few more seconds of airtime and you're getting your bearings. You're plenty resistant to motion sickness, thankfully, so that ought to help you out at least a bit. Are you dreaming? Not clear. But you are falling.

Maybe you should address that first.

Okay, step one: Don't die from ground collision. You're not entirely sure what the procedure is. Maybe you are sure, actually, but right now you're too high on adrenaline to fetch that memory, so functionally you're entirely winging it. You spread your arms, maximizing your body's surface area. You need to roll, maybe? Not quite clear.

Second order of business: What are you falling towards? Getting your bearings and telling up from down was difficult, but having done that you can look down and see some kind of huge tree, sprouting up from an ocean of inky blackness. It's... huge. The scale is unfathomable. Even falling at probably-terminal-velocity, it takes seconds to register the movement of the whole thing getting closer to you. A slight problem, though, is that if you keep falling directly downwards you're going to fall into the dark void below the tree, which wouldn't be good. So you'll have to change your trajectory somehow.

Bursting from the top of the tree is a pillar of darkness stretching upwards seemingly indefinitely. It's hard to describe, but everything in the world is lit by the fountain. The fountain doesn't create light, though, either. Despite how colorful the tree seems, comparing it mentally to the real world makes the tree look dull.

The tree's branches are hard to describe, all twisting around each other and themselves, but they come off more like threads of cloth than like branches. You wouldn't have identified the thing as a tree if you weren't looking at it from so high up. At pretty much every point along the 'trunk' of the tree, those threads split off from the main structure and turn into flat platforms. They're almost but not quite leaves.

It takes another few seconds of staring at the tree and ignoring the wind screaming in your ears to realize that all of the threads that make up the tree are very slowly moving, writhing in a generally upwards direction.

Third-ish order of business: Something about your brain has changed. You're not the most self aware person in the world, but this is weird even for you. You're not quite this analytical, and your inner monologue would never be this pronounced. On top of all that, some of these word choices wouldn't be your first pick. You shelve the thought for later.

Fourth order of business: This is a dark world. You're in the /utg/ dark world. That's... not good.

You glance above yourself and catch a glimpse of a significant collection of sparks of light. Darkners from the room you were in before, maybe? Would they petrify here?

Wait, dark world. You look down at yourself. It takes a few moments to register your own appearance. Your clothes have changed.

Your bare stomach and part of your chest are showing, but they're both well defined with muscle that wasn't present before you arrived. No hair at all, too. There's a thin jacket, around your arms, which you know is filled with hundreds of little pockets. A leather strap around a shoulder and across your chest secures a battleaxe on your back. Your skin glows a soft orange.

You look like a barbarian from some kind of fantasy novel. Or maybe a very, very angry merchant.

So, a merchant, but a merchant who does combat as a barbarian. That... seems pretty accurate.

You hit some wind and waver a bit. Okay, new priority, get your feet on the ground. Assuming this goes by traditional Deltarune dark world rules, you should be fine as long as you land on your feet and don't stumble. With a heave of effort, you pull your limbs close to your body as much as you can, aiming for the thread highest up on the tree. The air roars louder against you as your descent accelerates.

As you get closer, you feel the air beating. It's... pushing you away from the fountain. To prevent people from sealing it by flying into it, maybe? You adjust a little, aiming more for halfway down the thread tree, on a platform just a little further out than the others.

You tense, and then your body relaxes and you hit a perfect three-point landing.

Some kind of dark world magic to allow rule of cool stuff to happen, maybe? You file the thought away for later.

It's good being back on solid ground. You take stock of the thread you landed on. It seems to be a pale blue, but others around you differ wildly in color. On the platform you landed on, you can make out some strange symbols, but you don't recognize the language. The platform is connected to maybe five or six other platforms by thin threads. Off in the distance, you can make out little shapes standing on other platforms. Darkners?

Soft music fills your ears. Almost jazzy, but with an undercurrent of something frantic, almost techno or disco. The genre is very hard to place.

You turn the other way, taking in the dark sky. Then, you look up.

What must be thousands of sparks of light fill the world. None close to the main fountain, but every other part of the upper sky is filled with them. When you'd been transported, some items had been pulled in from the light world with you. No doubt, you'd encounter them again as darkners. Assuming that replying to the thread brought anons to a dark world... There'd be plenty more here in short order.

It's beautiful. If you had time, you could look at this for hours.

But, for now... were you the first to land? That meant opportunities. Being here first meant more time to take stock of everything, to get leads regarding the shadow crystal holder, to farm dark dollars or acquire items from existing sources.

Surprisingly enough, it’s easy to open up the equipment menu. It shows a little pixel art version of your head, labeled “ANON,” and your equipment. You check all of it, eyes skimming over the text as quickly as possible. There seems to be a little more information than there was in the original, and there’s also a fourth slot for you to equip things into, with a little icon of a glove next to it.

WhirAxe - Waraxe - A deep gray handle that causes the actual axe part of the waraxe to vibrate, dealing extra damage to foes. +8 ATK
The slot with the glove next to it is empty.
Anonamasque - Mask - Cat-themed mask hides your true identity, while still keeping you identifiable to others. 50% damage from CAT element damage.
StorageBracer - Bracer - A metallic bracer which increases DF. Holes and metal clips greatly increase inventory space. +4DF +INVSPACE

You close the menus, then take in your surroundings again. One of the platforms connected by thread to this one is pretty close, and there’s some sort of darkner on it.

You take a few steps, get a running start to jump and way overshoot the platform.

Woah.

Okay, so there is less gravity, at least when trying to jump from one platform to another. You file this information into your mind, then turn and land on another platform. This one’s larger, but the strange text written on it is the same size. Were they posts? Or ideas, maybe? You look around, and some of them do seem to have images attached.

You spot another platform close by, with some sort of chest on it. You take steps back, get a running start (accounting for altered gravity this time) and leap to the other platform. Surprisingly enough, you get it on the first try.

You reach out to the chest and, with no transition, it pops open.

ArrowNails - Arrow - A collection of sharp, curved arrows to be used in conjunction with a bow.

You try to equip them, just to see their stats, but they won’t fit in any of your slots.

Weird… If there are a ton more item types, it might be worth looking into cataloging them. Or selling them. If those lights in the sky were other anons, that meant customers. Something strange in your mind is called to attention by that stray thought.

You smile involuntarily.

Right, priorities. You have to find the shadow crystal holder. Given how dark worlds in Deltarune work, there’s only one shadow crystal per world, and finding it quickly means you get to it before everybody else which means you have something that is in very limited supply. In this world, there’d probably be more than one, but you’d be surprised if they were as common as kryptonite.

You turn towards the center of the tree. You can feel the energy of the dark fountain thrumming from within.

A few steps back, and a leap of faith forwards…

There’s work to be done.

Two

Act > Chameleator > Check

Chameleator - ATK 30 DF 5 - Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The thing in front of you is a Darkner. It vaguely resembles Monsterkid, but it's... wrong.

The limbs are all weird lengths, and the thing doesn't move the way anything should move. When it tries to speak, all that comes out are stutters and smooth sounds that sound like they should mean something but are all gibberish.

It attacks, bringing your Soul into the field and making you dance past a few simple patterns. No damage. The availible ACTs are Mirror and Mock. Mirror increases Mercy, Mock increases its ATK but provides 16% Tension.

Act > Chameleator > Mirror (+25% Mercy)

Another attack. You reach 100% Tension.

Spare > Chameleator

The thing disappears in a shimmer of light. The rest of the world shifts back into view. A few hundred Dark Dollars manifest inside your inventory.

It's suprisingly difficult to navigate. As you get further into the thread tree, some threads wind around each other or solidify into solid walls and structures. You've got a good sense of direction, but this place has enough twists and turns to confuse you.

Right now, you're still in a relatively open space. It's kind of tube-like, threads having wound themselves around an empty area, but the interior of the tube was also filled with platforms connected to each other. You'd been traveling inwards aimlessly for almost twenty minutes, and still had no clues on the path to the fountain or to the shadow crystal holder. You have been travelling vaguely downwards, though, which could be a hint.

Thankfully, you'd also found a few items. None of the Waraxe type, but plenty of other weapons and armor.

Still, there were probably going to be more people showing up, as well as all of their darkners. Resurfacing could be very dangerous, right now.

So, deeper it is.

You make another few leaps from platform to platform, landing well each time. You're actually getting pretty good at moving around down here.

The next leap brings you to an opening out of the tube-structure. Outside, it's just... more platforms. Some thicker weaves of wires forming other tubes like this one, some solidifying into huge structures, presumably hollow. You can't see the point where the platforms stop and open to the sky, or where the fountain is.

It's still difficult for you to get your head around the sheer size of the thread tree.

The only thing that sticks out to you is some kind of commotion happening on a platform around a hundred yards away. The thing on it reminds you of that one painting of Tenna, complete with bursting pipis.

On a whim, you try and Check it, but it's way too far away. The magic fizzles out maybe a fifth of the way there.

The thing is screaming. Moment by moment, more pipis also seem to be appearing faster than the thing can consume them. Some kind of darkners you hadn't seen before were trying to damage the thing, but nothing was happening.

It's disgusting to watch.

Your revulsion and urge to vomit is interrupted by a rumble, shaking the whole world. It's strong enough to send you flying off the platform you'd been standing on, and it takes you a moment to redirect and land on another.

The threads tremble, the platforms shaking. You look around, eventually spotting the cause of all the disruption.

It's... not quite a worm. Dark grey, tube shaped, around ten yards across, and easily the largest living thing you've ever seen. The 'head' doesn't have a top or bottom, just a circular maw. It's also the fastest living thing you've ever seen. Every few yards, a set of long, spindly limbs sticks out of it, and all of those limbs place themselves on platforms to move the thing.

It practically flies past you, crawling around at about the same distance from you as the Tenna is. You look down off of your platform, and you can't see where the thing ends.

It coils around the monstrosity. The darkners you don't recognize see the thing and flee in all directions, abandoning their harassment. One of the limbs grabs onto the platform you'd fallen off of.

Almost without thinking, you gaze up at it, and...

Check.

Janitor - ATK 800 DF 800 - Cleanup.

Holy shit.

The Janitor twists, reorienting itself so that its maw is above the Tenna, pointing downwards. A wave of energy travels up from where you can't see around the thing's body towards its maw.

With a flash of light, an ear-splitting BWEEEN fills the air. You stumble again, barely catching yourself. It takes a few seconds for your vision to clear up, but when you recover your sight, you look to where the Tenna was.

There's nothing there but wisps of energy. Further down, you can see a spot where the beam clipped a platform, and half of it is burnt clean off. A black liquid pours out of the broken platform.

...Okay.

The head of the thing turns, and it starts moving again. It picks up speed and just keeps picking up speed, the rumble of the world increasing and increasing until it's moving away and the sound quiets.

Holy. Shit.

Definitely not something to take on. That thing would kill you in one hit! Four times over!

Was there even a way to defend against that thing, other than to just avoid it?

You take a minute just to breathe before your brain catches back up with what's going on. The Chameleators were relatively weak and kind of common, with clear relation to what was going on in the actual thread. Presumably, the platforms were representations of posts in some way.

Janitors, in the light world, were real people. But the concept of a Janitor or a Moderator was someone involved in cleanup. Someone who could reach a little into the backend of this world and remove things from it. A purely destructive force, of course, single-minded in its goal but still powerful.

What would happen if a real lightner janitor got dragged inside? If the worm-thing was a representation of the idea of a janitor, handling things that got out of control, what would the world do to someone who actually had that power?

The implications of this kind of dark world were starting to become important to the literal current happenings. You don't really know the rules of this place, given that you got pulled in with a portion of the light world. You're going to need to coordinate with some other people, or do some research or something.

Which means resurfacing. Where all the other lightners are. You sigh, long. You've got plenty of weapons, armor, and items. Could you... set up a shop? You haven't seen any around, and you're not even sure if you can do that as a lightner, but it's worth a try.

Well, there are some convenient darkners nearby to ask. The darkners that had been harassing the Tenna thing have reconvened a little further away from where you were.

A few leaps and you're close enough to Check them.

Check.

Qualiposter - 10ATK 10DF - Mild quality posting habit keeps order.

Some kind of fodder enemy, then. If they're interested in maintaining order, they'd probably be friendly, and if they weren't then their stats weren't anything too impressive.

Another leap puts you on the same level as one of them, and you call out.

"Hello!"

One turns. It's actually pretty human-like, if you ignore the fact that where every feature should be there's instead a line of text describing that feature. Hair is just repeated instances of the word 'hair,' with descriptive words either baked into the positioning of the text or sprinkled in among the other terms. In response to your greeting, some words flow out of its mouth. "Hello, lightner-anon!"

You wait a few seconds for it to say anything else.

...Okay, not one for conversation, then.

After a few more seconds of awkward silence, you speak. "Would any of you know how to set up a shop? Uh, like... the magic variety. With the menus."

Words flow from their mouths. It takes a minute or two to read through all of them, but by the time they're done you understand the basic magical process to mark a space as a shop. Doing so grants several powers in the space (which they called a demesne,) as well as a convenient way to set up sales for when you aren't physically present. It was pretty labor-intensive, but gave pretty good returns.

Extremely valuable information, given away freely. But, then again, how many anons would think to randomly ask that? An idea half-forms in your mind about implementing the wrong impression in people about that kind of thing, and you shelve it for later.

You think for a few more moments. "How..." it takes you a few seconds to come up with the right word. "How orderly is the surface right now?"

More words pour out from their mouths. Some of them are in greentext form, some just describing the general situation in plaintext. After another minute of reading, you divine that the basic gist is that it's a mixed bag, with some fighting, some confused, and some doing the same thing you'd been doing.

One more question. "Is there any convenient way to get around the threadtree?"

Even more words, like a river. It takes you a few minutes to read through all of them and to understand. There were four main forms of transport. One was the small threads linking platforms. Touching one would apparently teleport you to the other platform it connected to. Another was a "Text World," apparently some alternative demense which could be accessed through some of the threads linking platforms together. Traditional doortals were the third, and the fourth was some kind of darkner you hadn't seen yet called a Composcreen.

After acquiring rough directions to the nearest doortal, you turn and begin moving.

Edit

Pub: 18 Aug 2025 05:22 UTC

Edit: 27 Aug 2025 19:54 UTC

Views: 76