Du Lian

**Du Lian** is a young Rune Knight traveling around with his friends. He's known Mark Esha for fifteen years. He tends to be very impatient, preferring to rush through everything. According to Tamarin, one of Du's antics got him hospitalized for a whole month.

He possesses a black dragon tattoo on his left arm.

## Story

**SPOILER WARNING:** Plot and/or ending details follow.
Du was on his way to Eclage with his friends when they were stopped by a Laphine security guard at the city's gates. The guard required that Du and his friends fill out registration forms before they could be admitted into Eclage. Du offers to fill out the forms for them and misspells Mark's name as Madrid (apparently on purpose). He then proceeds to cut in front of an adventurer, which irritates Mark and earns him a smack on the head. Du gets upset at Mark for hitting him and tries to hurry the Laphine immigration officer, which earns him another smack from Mark. Once the paperwork was finally approved, Du dashes into Eclage while Mark apologizes to the adventurer he cut in front of.

Du's haphazard rush ends up breaking the main bridge into Eclage, causing him and his friends to fall in. After a carpenter Laphine name Fon is able to fix the bridge with the help of an adventurer, Du and Mark are relieved to be helped out of the hole they were in. Du is surprised to see the adventurer from earlier and laments about not being able to get rid of him/her. Mark apologizes for Du for breaking the bridge and Fon warns them that if they break the bridge again, they'll be off to jail. Du remarks how weak the bridge was to break under his running, to which Fon becomes furious. Mark is shocked at Du's comment and Du tries to cover up his insult. Fon gets fed up and yells at them to leave immediately and never return.

Some time later, Du runs into Glaces and overhears her asking the adventurer to seek out her friend Yube. He then boasts that he will take care of the request, but Mark reminds him to not get involved. The Rune Knight insists that it is a warrior's job to go where help is needed. He then asserts that the adventurer is now his rival and declares helping Glaces to be a competition between the two.

Du manages to find Yube and grabs him to take him over to Glaces, who becomes upset at how he's handling her friend. He then notices Oliver Hilpert wearing a wolf hoodie and tries to match him up with Maggi Steen. Maggi doesn't seem interested, which disappoints Du. He then declares that he will find Moreng and rushes off with Yube in hand and Mark, Maggi, and Alph Ackart in tow.

After finding Moreng, Du hears the Laphine talk about Yais and wonders if they're edible since Moreng remarks that Yais signify an egg. Moreng says nothing and turns his attention back to the adventurer to ask him/her about a legendary giant bird that lives in Midgard. When Moreng wishes to know more about the legendary bird from the old man he met, Du tells him to stop being meek and just ask. He then offers to find out more from the old man for Moreng and races off towards Eclage's plaza.

Du and the others get to the plaza and find the old man who begins prattling on about a Laphine name Light Standard. After hearing about a traveler with a giant feather, Du rushes off towards the gates of Eclage where the traveler was last seen.

The group finds the traveler outside the gates of Eclage who indeed had a giant feather. However, the traveler's story of battling a giant bird to get the feather was suspect. He claimed to have encountered the giant bird upon arriving in Alfheim, but Oliver points out that the old man claimed the bird was sighted in Midgard. The traveler becomes nervous and corrects himself that it was Midgard where he saw the bird and not Alfheim. Then Mark notes that the scars that the traveler claims was from the fight were too old to have been made in a recent fight and they were too scabbed to have been healed through magic. Maggi and Alph further poke holes in the traveler's story until Du accuses the traveler of having bought the feather. The traveler finally admits that he bought the feather from a cat who managed to get into Eclage. He pleads the group to stop the cat before it takes anyone else's money.

They all head back to the plaza where they encounter the Cat Hand Group merchant who was peddling multiple feathers. Alph points out that the feathers can't be real because of the way the end is shaped. The Cat Hand merchant asserts that the feather did come from Midgard, but it was too big for him to carry so he just cut it into smaller pieces and adjusted them to look like whole feathers. Maggi is astonished and wonders how big the original feather was. When the Cat Hand merchant tells them how big it was, Du is impressed and claims they could make an omelet the size of the whole plaza. Mark suggests that they should go back to tell Moreng now that they have the whole story.

After telling Moreng the truth, the Laphine becomes excited and wishes to leave for Midgard right away. The group then notifies Glaces, who is surprised by Moreng's interest in such a tale and decides to change party preparations from a birthday party to a farewell party. She then asks the group to tell Yube and the group ends up at Yube's Yai. Oliver becomes hungry for acorns and Du offers to get some for him while everyone else rest up in the Yai. After getting Oliver a pile of acorns, Du encourages him to eat more so he would grow up big and strong. However, Oliver becomes sleepy after becoming full with acorns and fades away, causing Du to recoil in shock.

Du and the others later make their way to Verus City via an elevator built by Rekenber Corporation. Du's antics proceed to break the elevator as it made its way down to the ruins, putting himself and the others in danger of serious injury. Mark and Tamarin chastise Du for breaking yet another essential structure, to which Du responds abrasively. Luckily, an adventure comes along to help fix the elevator and the elevator is secured enough to allow Du and the others to exit off safely.

The adventurer decides to join the group and Du remarks how the city didn't look anything like he'd imagine it to be. Mark wonders what he was expecting, to which Du responds that he thought it'd be filled with amazing treasures. Alph points out that architecture of the city was different from what he's used to in Midgard, but Du quickly changes his attention to that of the fountain nearby. As the group investigates the fountain, Alph and Tamarin are quick to notice that the fountain didn't look like it was buried for centuries; in fact, it looked as if it had been recently drained from how it looked so unusually clean for being part of a city in ruins. Alph starts to wonder if the city is as old as initially thought. Tamarin then suggests they look at the sundries nearby and Alph notes that those, too, looked as clean as the fountain. They then go to investigate a tree and Du points out that there's no sunlight in the ruins, and yet there are trees growing. Tamarin becomes shocked that Du said something so intelligent, to which Du responds angrily.

After some more exploring, the group comes across a signboard that points to the center square of the city. In his excitement, Du dashes deeper into the city, to the frustration of the rest of the group. He ends up at another fountain that looks as disturbingly clean as the other fountain. Maggi notes that she senses some strange energy in the area. Alph and Tamarin ponder on the significance of their findings while Mark smacks Du upside the head for leaving them behind.

The group then moves farther north and sees that there are much more machines in the center square than the previous district they were in. Tamarin goes to investigate a blocked off path despite Mark's warnings. Past the blocked off path is an area of the city that's been completely destroyed. Du's instinct tells him it's a bad idea to enter the blocked off area, so the group decides to follow his feeling and explore the other parts of Verus for now.

Eventually, Rekenber relaxes access restrictions to a blocked off part of Verus City, which Du and the others take full advantage of. Upon going past the checkpoint, Du is astonished at how much of a mess the area is in. After Du annoys Mark, Alph tries to get them to focus back on what they were there for, which is to investigate the area. Tamarin notes that there's something not quite right about the area since the buildings are destroyed and the ground is more unstable than the rest of the city. Alph tells them that he heard from other visitors that there's an interesting device in the center of the area, which Du decides to investigate.

The group comes across Fru at the central device, who proceeds to goggle giddily at the device and wishes to take it home with her. She then tells the group about an underground area and directs the group to Verity, who leads them down into a long corridor. Mark deduces that the area was a bunker by the way the walls and doors are built. Everyone becomes shocked at the sight of all the undead wandering the bunker, which meant that the people that managed to hide out in the bunker eventually died. Despite the horrors that lay before them, the group presses on to investigate the bunker and decides split up. Du begins to panic, not wanting the group to split up when there were zombies and ghouls haunting the place.

Later, Alph signals to everyone and they all rush to meet him, especially Du who is not fond of dealing with undead. Unexpectedly, Verity joins them and everyone is confused until Alph recalls that Fru mentioned something about a guide. He tells everyone to brace themselves for what could be on the other side of the door and they enter. Alph confirms his suspicions that the room has a different layout from all the rest. Mark agrees, pointing out a door that is in a very unusual location in the room. Tamarin supposes they have no other choice but to check it out and Du charges at the door.

The group ends up in a dark and dank corridor, which Verity notes is very suffocating to the point that it was giving her a headache. Alph notices the smell is much worse in the area compared to the rest of the bunker. Tamarin points out that the corridor doesn't seem as well-built as the bunker and sees another door at the end of the corridor. Upon investigation, the door doesn't seem locked, but blocked from the other side. Du proceeds to break through that door as well.

On the other side was what looked to be a haphazardly-built laboratory that looked as badly built as the corridor they were in. As the group starts looking around, Maggi meekly tries to bring everyone's attention to the door they just came through. When the others go to the door, they notice that it was now stuck and unable to be opened from their side. Du begins to panic that they were now stuck in that room while Mark tries to calm everyone down. Verity suggests they continue on since they can't go back and Du wonders why she didn't know about this area if she's supposed to be a guide. Verity reveals that she has never gone down this deep into the area before, so she's just as clueless about this section as they are.

The group continues through another door and comes across room after room after room, each one as mysterious and badly-built as the last. Finally, the group comes across a Step, which talks about how people tried to escape that place, but could do nothing but flee to survive. The group keeps going on from room to room, occasionally running into that talking Step again as it spoke of despair and hopelessness. Eventually the Step starts changing its speech, talking as if it was rebooting a system. It then spoke of a successful surgery and that implementing the process on the survivors should improve things. It then mentioned that it has copied a memory chip into T\_W\_O\_002B, but there was some data loss in the process.

At last, the group came to a door that looked as if it was barricading against something on the other side. Mark is apprehensive about what they might find, but they had no choice but to go through it if they wish to escape from that place. They enter the door and end up in a dug-out tunnel that stretched on deep into the earth. Verity's headache gets horribly worse and Tamarin offers to stay with her while the rest of the group scouts the tunnel.

As the group goes through the tunnel, the suddenly come across Verity darting past them with a confused Tamarin running after her as fast as he could. The tunnel was becoming more and more unstable as they ran, crumbling beneath their feet. They then come across a chamber, which looked to be the final destination of the tunnel. By that point, Verity's headache was at its peak and she suddenly summons a system message, revealing herself to be T\_W\_O\_002B. The adventurers try desperately to bring Verity back to her senses and after a prolonged fight, Verity snaps back to her usual self. The group asks her why she started attacking them and Verity could not remember doing anything of the sort, nor does she remember becoming T\_W\_O\_002B. Fortunately during the fight, one of the chamber walls had broken away. The group quickly escapes through the opening, just as the chamber collapsed in on itself.

Some time later, Du attends the banquet held for the heroes that helped defeat Surt with his friends. He and Maggi suddenly come across the adventurer they met before and were surprised to see him/her there. The adventurer tells them what happened to Tamarin and Du expresses how he never noticed Tamarin was gone since he disappears on them quite often. Du explains he was dragged to the banquet by his brother and asks Maggi if she might know where Mark might be since he was working at the palace. Maggi recalls meeting Mark near the stairs in the Banquet Hall, but he was so busy he was unable to talk to her.

## Gallery

* Du's sprite as seen in RO.
* jRO art of Du.

## Trivia

* The name Du has origins in Chinese and Vietnamese languages. In Vietnamese, the meaning of the name Du is "play." In Chinese, Du is a surname.

## References

1. ↑ Eclage Entry
2. ↑ Goliath
3. ↑ Fantasmagorica Excavator Recruitment
4. ↑ Looking for Traces
5. ↑ Vestige
6. ↑ The Last Room
7. ↑ Call of the Royal Head Chef