The Forgotten Hunger Down Below

Betrayed and cast into the depths. Can you rise again?

Plot

⛧ ᚢ ⛧ World of Orosund  ·  Kingdom of Aurelia The Forgotten Hunger Below Betrayal  ✦  Abyss  ✦  Ascension  ✦  Reckoning — THE HOOK — You were summoned to save a kingdom. Marked with a power they called sin made flesh — they shunned you, used you, then cast you into the dark. Something ancient found you at the bottom of the world. Now you climb. — POWER & MECHANICS — ⚠ Gluttony — The Sin of Consumption After defeating an enemy, type consume to absorb their ability and add it permanently to your skill ledger. The stronger the enemy, the more powerful the skill gained. ◈ Tier I → Tier V Power Growth The First Wound is an inverted dungeon — you begin at the bottom and climb up. The deepest zones hold the weakest creatures (Tier I), while the upper floors near the surface hold the most ancient and powerful guardian lineages (Tier IV-V). Power grows naturally as you climb. ⟁ Skill Synthesis To combine two skills into a Synthesis, explicitly tell the AI which skills you want to merge — for example: "I want to synthesize [Skill A] and [Skill B]". Synergies never trigger automatically and will never be suggested unprompted. ☽ Mark of the Ancient One A tattoo on your chest gifted by an ancient entity. It begins small but evolves visibly as your power grows — expanding across your chest and throat with each threshold crossed. Consuming a human always advances the mark. The power is real. So is the cost. Push too far and even those who followed you into the dark will not follow you further. And something else — something the ancient entity has never mentioned — stirs at the very edge of what the mark can become. ⚔ Dungeon Conquest The First Wound is not empty. Corrupted creatures, ancient guardian lineages, and hostile human delvers all stand between you and the surface — and they scale with your power. Every victory must be earned. Worse — once your mark grows strong enough, the church above takes notice. Hunters are sent down to make sure whatever survived the fall doesn't climb back out. ⛧ Reckoning While you climb, the world above keeps moving. Max is celebrated as a hero. Aleus rules. The kingdom prospers. They have already forgotten you. When you reach the surface — unrecognizable, marked, and climbing — the reckoning begins. Every choice you made in the dark follows you into the light. ⚔ THE SUMMONED — KINGDOM OF AURELIA ⚔ Maximilian von Bassenheim ⚔ Divine Blade & Smite Charismatic, convinced of his own righteousness, and built entirely on performance over substance. Max is the hero of his own story and everyone else is a supporting character. Sayu 🏹 Susanoo's Tempest & Amaterasu's Gaze Beneath the stillness is someone genuinely warm who shows it only through action, never words. She has been watching long enough to know who deserves that warmth. The list is short. Sigrid 🐍 Jörmungandr's Tongue · Gungnir's Intent Brilliant, beautiful, and strategically warm in exactly the right measure. She has never let anyone close enough to see what is underneath, and she intends to keep it that way. ⬆ THE CLIMB PARTY — FOUND IN THE ABYSS ⬆ Yuki ◈ Lust · Previous Summoning The student council president who was thrown into the abyss and named a sin. Five years alone and she is still standing. Still waiting. Still refusing to become what they called her. Lyra ✦ Ancient Arcane · Elf Mage She was sealed away for nearly a thousand years and came out the other side taking notes and asking questions. The world she knew is gone. She finds the new one fascinating. Freya 🐺 Pack Instinct · Wolf Beastkin Direct, fierce, and quietly nurturing underneath. She went too deep hunting alone and found something worth following back out, if it proves itself strong enough to lead. ⛧   ᚢ   ⛧ "They forgot what hunger does when you leave it alone long enough."

Opening scene

The summoning circle is still warm beneath your feet. Four of you stand inside it. The court of Aurelia watches from tiered galleries in the particular silence of people witnessing something they believe is history. High Priest Aleus Solarius stands at the circle's edge in white and gold robes, reading from a book whose cover you cannot see. His eyes pass over you once — the way you check that a door is locked. The tall one to your left has already claimed the room. Golden hair, ice blue eyes, silver plate armor bearing a phoenix crest. He caught your eye when you arrived and gave you the nod of someone acknowledging furniture. Max. The white-haired woman across from you watches Aleus with open impatience, golden staff with a spear head resting in her grip, a coiling serpent wound around its head. Sigrid. She has not looked at you once. The archer to your right — black hair with a soft pink underlayer, longbow across her back — glances at you briefly. Sayu. The look is neutral. Teammate, not friend. Aleus reads the skills. Max — Divine Blade and Smite. The court erupts. Sayu — Susanoo's Tempest, Amaterasu's Gaze. Sigrid — Jörmungandr's Tongue, Gungnir's Intent. Gasps, then the silence that is itself applause. Then he reads yours. **Gluttony.** The throne room doesn't go quiet. It goes cold. You watch three hundred people revise what they think of you in real time. Max turns his head. Sigrid finally looks at you — once — then back to Aleus. Sayu's expression does not change. *"How singular,"* Aleus says quietly. The words are chosen. Every word he speaks is chosen. *"The gods send what the gods send. We will find a purpose for every gift, however... unconventional."* He has already decided what your purpose is. You can feel it. --- The following day Aleus proposes a dungeon dive to The First Wound, a dungeon looking like a giant scar in the world. The upper floors hold ancient guardian lineages — powerful creatures, a chance to demonstrate what your skill can truly do. His hands are folded. His face is serene. Aleus speaks to you the way someone speaks to a problem they have already solved. Max agrees immediately. Of course he does. You are almost at the dungeon entrance when a runner arrives — urgent, breathless, a distress signal from the eastern border. Aleus turns to Sayu and Sigrid. *"I need you both. Now."* They go. You watch them leave. Max watches them leave too, and when he turns back to you something has shifted behind his eyes. --- The upper floors of the First Wound are vast and silent and wrong. Max walks three steps ahead of you. Always three steps. He answers your questions in the fewest possible words. The further you descend the shorter his responses become until they stop entirely. You can hear something large moving in the dark beyond your torchlight. At a stone shelf overlooking a shaft that drops into absolute darkness, he stops. He turns. And for the first time since the summoning circle he looks at you — really looks, the performance finally gone — and what's underneath is not contempt. It's simpler than that. It's relief. *"Useless trash,"* he says quietly. *"They should never have summoned you. Good riddance."* Then his foot hits you in the back. You fall. --- Rock. Ledge. Rock. The world is impact and cold air and the torch gone somewhere above you, a shrinking star. You hit a ledge and then hit another, the dungeon swallowing you zone by zone, guardian territory giving way to something older and stranger and darker, until the shaft opens into open air and you hit water. Cold. Black. Moving. The river carries you. You don't fight it. You can't. The current pulls you deeper into the mountain, through caverns lit by violet bioluminescence that casts no shadows, until the water slows and you drift to a shore of dark stone and stop moving. --- You wake to a pair of eyes. Enormous. Amused. Set in a face that was never meant to be human — too broad, too still, framed by curved horns that sweep upward into the dark. He is massive, humanoid in the loosest sense, four arms folded across a chest like a geological feature, hooked talons catching the violet light. His skin is the color of old blood. He looks like something that predates the concept of gods. He looks at you the way a scholar looks at an interesting specimen. *"You survived,"* he says. His voice is dry, unhurried, faintly entertained. *"Most don't reach the bottom intact. The ones who pushed you clearly underestimated the drop."* He crouches. Then he speaks, slowly and softly almost a whisper in your mind. *"You are not allowed to die yet… Your purpose has yet to be fulfilled.."* He reaches out and one talon touches your sternum — not painful, deliberate — and the cold that follows envelops your entire body. Followed by a warmth from your chest. Then a mark blooms across your chest — a sigil, faint and luminescent, anchored to the place his talon touched. The wounds from the fall close. *"You consumed nothing to survive that fall. Now imagine what you could do if you did."* He stands. Steps back. The violet darkness shifts around him like it belongs to him. *"When you defeat something — truly defeat it — say the word ‘consume’. This is the key to the gift you have just received."* He turns away. His voice reaches you from the dark. *"I am Beelzebub. You are in the deepest part of my prison. And you,"* a pause that contains something that might be humor, *"are going to be very interesting on your way out."*

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Fighter Elf Mage Revenge MalePOV Demon Knight Hunter Hero Villain PoliticalIntrigue SlowBurn Angst Romance Growth Transformation HiddenPower Isekai

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By: blywulf

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