Level 1 Fallen

Diane had said that she would wait only five minutes before moving. Knowing her, she truly planned to stick to that schedule. In fact, if I didn’t arrive in five minutes, she would probably directly turn around and fail the dungeon to wait for me, as it would indicate that I wasn’t able to get to her in time.

Thus, I had to move fast. Teleporting back to Fallcry’s main square, I found Bella and Marron standing around patiently. Bella smiled awkwardly, waving her hand. “There you are. We were wondering when you would show up for us.”

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but blink. “Didn’t you tell me that you had died to a trap, and I said that we couldn’t come back right away?” Was the entire conversation that I had with Bella also part of the illusions from the very beginning?

This time, it was Bella’s turn to be confused. “No? I tried to message you when I died, but the system said that you were in a special location and couldn’t accept messages.”

“I see…” it seemed that the dungeon had truly been insidious, wanting to exploit every chance it could to convince challengers to turn back. “I just reached the end of the dungeon, and Diane’s waiting. We’re in a hurry, though, so we need to go back now.”

Marron practically jumped over at that, her eyes wide. “You made it to the end? Let’s go!” she called out excitedly, extending a hand. I grabbed onto her and Bella, focusing on World Walker to take us to the intersection where I left Diane.

Target location is a special zone, and does not allow teleportation.

My eyes widened slightly at this message. Even the Sage’s Sanctum couldn’t block a grandmaster-level teleportation ability, but this dungeon could? I had no idea what the reasoning behind it was, but there was no time.

“Sorry, you two, but this is going to be a little uncomfortable for a minute,” I told them, changing my grip to lift each of the two off their feet. As they gasped in surprise, I chose to teleport to the start of the dungeon, before we hit the first intersection. There, we had been able to turn around and speak with each other without interference, so I assumed that the restrictions only came after passing through the intersections.

Sure enough, the teleportation succeeded this time, and I arrived in the dark corridor. I could feel Marron squirming, waiting to be put down, but I kept a firm hold on her. “Sorry, but I’m going to start running now.”

“Eh?!” Marron cried out as I kicked off the ground, pushing my speed to its limits to run forward. It felt like it had taken more than an hour of walking before to reach the end, and I had to make that distance in just a few minutes without relying on teleportation.

Almost immediately, I felt both of the girls shaking, hearing them shout for me to let them down. I could only block out the noise, assuming that anything I saw or heard beyond this point was part of the dungeon’s elaborate illusions.

I charged through the fire trap that had eliminated Marron before, and even ran straight through the rolling boulder. Now that I knew for sure that everything was an illusion, and had experienced so firsthand, I had no hesitation.

At this speed, I managed to arrive at the intersection with less than thirty seconds to spare. However, I couldn’t see Diane anywhere. Had I been taken to a different intersection? Did she count the time wrong and leave early?

No, she wouldn’t do that. I knew Diane well enough by now. When she heard that I was receiving system messages from Marron, she would absolutely not trust the system’s clock. She would either count out the seconds herself, or tell her Chosen not to move under any circumstances, then log out and wait for five minutes. Either way, she wouldn’t have moved one step from her spot.

Right… she wouldn’t move from that spot. I recalled how Diane had stressed that to me. If she had truly not moved, then this was another illusion that I was being shown by the dungeon, trying to encourage me to leave and look for her by showing me an empty passage.

I focused, activating Martial King to create a projected wall in front of myself, pushing it forward until it reached the far wall at the junction. Then, I dismissed it and walked forward myself, passing through the wall with Bella and Marron.

Inside the spacious chamber, I found Diane stumbling to the ground, her brand dim. She grunted, turning back to look at me. “Couldn’t you have done that a bit more gently?” she complained, but I chuckled, setting down the two girls in my arms.

“Sorry. I had to be sure that I got you in time, before your Player logged on. To me, the hallway out there was empty just now,” I explained, looking at Marron and Bella. “Are you two alright?”

Marron stumbled, leaning against a nearby wall, her eyes swimming. “Give me a moment… I can only see six of you right now…”

Bella, however, chuckled, stretching as she stood. “I had a feeling that you were going to do something like this when you grabbed us. A little warning would have been appreciated, but it looked like you were cutting it close with time.”

As she said that, Diane’s brand lit up, and she looked at me. “Good, you made it back with them. Were there any complications?”

“There… was one,” I admitted. “This place blocks teleportation. I had to sprint back to make it in time.”

Diane looked genuinely surprised by this, lowering her head in thought. “Really? When I heard that you could even break into the sanctum dungeon, I thought that there wouldn’t be a restriction on your skill anymore. That means that you still can’t break through legitimate dungeon mechanics, only those built by a dungeon master’s skill. I suppose I should have expected it when you said that your True Sight wasn’t operating properly.”

As we spoke, Marron seemed to recover, turning her gaze to the nearby room with wide eyes. She walked around to the various murals, seeming to study them. When she found a mural obscured by dust, she would pull a brush from her inventory to clear it off.

Eventually, she reached a plaque with strange symbols on it, looking down and reading. “Let your resolve remain unbroken, for indecision is the enemy of wisdom. Do not follow in our steps, but walk proudly on the path before you.”

“You can read that?” Bella asked in surprise, walking over and looking at the plaque.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah! It’s an ancient script. It took me a little while to understand it, but once I cracked the pattern, it was easy. It’s just a substitution cipher, and the original text is written in Spanish. Since I always dreamed of traveling around and exploring old ruins, I learned a few different languages.”

After saying that, Marron gestured to the text in front of her. “After I read this just now, my quest objective was updated. This ruin can be considered complete. Still, do you mind if we stay here for a little while longer? Since you said that you can’t teleport back here, I want to take the chance to learn everything that I can from this place before we move on.”

“That’s fine,” I nodded in agreement. “Do you know what our next trial will be?”

Marron hummed thoughtfully, moving towards one of the nearby murals and pulling out a sketchpad to draw it. “According to the central ruin, the three trials one must undergo are the Trials of Resolve, Blood, and Wisdom. Given how hostile the natives were out front, I originally thought that this was going to be the Trial of Blood, and we’d have to fight them to get through.”

Marron drew the figure of a winged beastfolk on her sketch pad conversing with a rocky, humanoid monster. “Strictly speaking, this trial’s difficulty couldn’t be assessed as either low or high. It tries to constantly distract you and force you to fail, but as long as you walk in a straight line without hesitation, you can pass without worry.”

“It really plays on your instincts, though,” Bella sighed, shaking her head at the memory. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to move out of the way if a log came crashing down at them out of nowhere? That’s just simple survival instincts.”

“That’s probably the point,” Marron mused, moving on to the next mural, this one showing a group of feline beastfolk tilling a field. “The quest will only complete when all three trials are passed, and their secrets are gathered. This trial might have been to ensure that the challenger could overcome an obvious danger before them, without letting it hinder their path.”

“In a way, we already cheated slightly there,” Diane chuckled, looking at me. “When I had you phase through the boulder with your stealth skill, that could have been counted as avoiding the danger. I’m guessing that the trial just didn’t register that because you continued in a straight line without looking back.”

“That’s entirely possible!” Marron smiled, turning her head to look at us. “Part of the trial might be to overcome dangers with more than just ignorance. Using the skills at your disposal to push through should be a viable path. Otherwise, he shouldn’t have been allowed to carry us in. Interesting… I wonder what caused the Cromoran civilization to think up trials like this…”

“Cromoran?” Bella asked, causing Marron to look at her.

“Hmm? Oh, right. That’s what they seemed to call themselves. In the first ruin, I found the name Cromora, which seemed to refer to either a country or the realm as a whole. It should be whatever civilization existed before the current Chimerae population spread.”

That earned a thoughtful look from Diane. “That’s probably one of the clues that we’ll need for the final puzzle.”

“Probably! It’s all so exciting! I’m really curious to see where the story of these ruins leads!” Marron quickly finished sketching the final mural, before heading to the central sculpture. “By the way, Drake, can you send one of those sentries up and out through the skylight? That silver light has me curious. If we’re still in that volcanic region, there shouldn’t be any way for silver light to stream in like that. Either the spatial passages moved us somewhere else, or there is something up above the skylight creating that light.”

I blinked at that, but didn’t refuse. A floating sentry appeared, flying up towards the hole in the ceiling where the light was coming in from. After flying through the hole, I was able to get a clear image of the space beyond.

What I saw was a crystal sky, the silvery crystals glowing and sending light down into the ruins below. Surprised, I sent the sentry around to investigate, only to find that this was not a crystal ‘sky’, but a bubble. The chamber that we were in was suspended within a bubble of solid crystal. I could not see through this crystal, so I couldn’t tell whether it went on forever or was simply hovering within some other space.

Still, I reported my findings to Marron, who jotted it down as a note. “Really? That’s interesting…”

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