Level 1 Fallen

After discovering the crystal sphere surrounding the dungeon room, I decided to test it for myself, flying up to exit the room. My plan was quite simple, using Beyond the Veil to pass through the crystal wall and see what, if anything, was on the other side.

However, as soon as I activated Beyond the Veil, my eyes went wide and I immediately cancelled the skill, descending back to the ground. Bella perked a brow, looking at my pale face. “Everything okay, Drake? You look like you’ve seen a ghost…”

“Not just one…” I muttered, my gaze shaking as I looked up at the crystal barrier, recalling the brief scene that I had witnessed. “That barrier… it’s made of countless spirits, screaming in torment. They’ve been packed so tightly that they took on a solid form. Even with Beyond the Veil, I can’t pass through that, and I’d rather not try again…”

The other three immediately looked up towards the crystal barrier in surprise. “I see…” Marron muttered under her breath. “Before the last big patch, I had heard about a material referred to as a ‘soul stone’, which could be crafted by refining the souls of the dead. However, according to the book that I read, refining a single person’s soul would yield a stone no bigger than an infant’s fist. How many people would need to be sacrificed to create a structure that large?”

“I suddenly don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to,” Bella said with a groan, trying her best not to look up at the silver light above. “Can we finish this up and move on to the next dungeon? Preferably one that isn’t built in such a morbid way?”

Marron blinked at this. “Ah, right. Give me just a few minutes, and I should be done. I just need to log out and copy the details while they’re still fresh in my mind. It should be okay to head back to Fallcry until I log back in.”

After saying that, her brand dimmed, her Chosen letting out a small sigh. “Sorry about that. My Player can get pretty absorbed in her work.”

“It’s fine,” Bella smiled. “We’ve all been there.” As she said that, everyone gathered together so that I could teleport us all out of the dungeon and back to fallcry. Every now and then, Marron’s brand would briefly light up, only for her to pull out her sketchpad and stare at it for a moment, then log out again.

It was nearly an hour later when she had finished copying the images over. Only then did we teleport back near the lava biome and get back in the car. Marron leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes and thinking. “The other two dungeons are in two different directions from here. One is to the north, within the vast frozen tundra, and the other is southeast of here, on a large desert island.”

“As for which dungeon is which, I honestly don’t know. The first ruins only told me their location, and gave vague hints like ‘follow your beliefs’, ‘only the pure of heart may succeed’, and so on. That’s why I couldn’t recognize the Trial of Resolve until I saw that it was destroying anything that tried to turn back.”

“Let’s head to the southeast, then,” I said, turning the car and immediately driving in that direction. “Do you have any landmarks that we should be looking for?”

Marron pursed her lips thoughtfully in response to my question. “The ruins said that there would be a great tower of stone. However, given the geography of the area, it’s entirely possible that the tower could have either collapsed or sunken beneath the sand. At the very least, I haven’t heard anything about a tower being found by players that work in that area.”

“You know about players that work on a desert island in the middle of Chimeris?” Bella questioned in surprise, but Marron simply shrugged her shoulders.

“One of the rifts of Chimeris is located on this island, so it’s not really surprising. I think that there was even a kingdom set up there. If I remember right, it was…’

However, it was Diane that finished her thought. “The Shattered Lands of the Lost King,” she said with a peculiar look, drawing a curious gaze from Bella.

“That’s… quite the name. Who is this Lost King?”

Diane took a deep breath before explaining. “The Lost King is one of the first kings to rise to prominence. His ten star trait is actually his negative, Illiterate, which prevents him from reading, writing, or accessing any form of information storage, such as maps, screenshots, or even an appraisal window. It’s the ten-star version of Marron’s own negative trait.”

“On the other hand, his nine-star positive trait is Skill Master. From what I know, you can think of it as a downgraded version of the Questing King’s, granting him increased skill experience, though not to the same degree as the Questing King himself.”

“Because he can’t use any form of skill or tool to help find his way, he is constantly getting lost, hence the moniker of the Lost King. From what I’ve heard, he can’t even use skill books or accept quests, so all of his skills are things that he developed himself.”

“If that’s the case,” Bella mused, “he probably doesn’t have any magic skills. I’m not sure how he’d develop one of those without a skill book or a quest reward.”

“My question is how he managed to withstand the waves of monsters assaulting his kingdom if he had that combination of traits,” I grunted, the car passing through an ash cloud to leave the lava biome.

Admittedly, I knew for a fact that magic skills weren’t necessary to survive those ambushes. However, the types of skills that he would have access to should have been far more limited than just saying all martial skills. He would have had to develop each skill from his own actions, then channel them to try to create derivatives to level up, and hope that they evolved into something useful.

“I watched his defense video,” Marron admitted thoughtfully. “Apparently, he wields a single sword. A rapier, to be exact. When he fights, he speeds around the battlefield insanely fast, and can poke holes through steel scorpions.”

“He even releases videos of himself trying to unlock new skills through manual effort. Or rather, those are most of his sponsored videos. And unlike the Questing King, since his skill options are so limited, he has no choice but to focus on training them thoroughly.”

I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity for this man. Players typically entered the game to enjoy themselves, but I could only imagine how difficult his adventure must have been starting out, unable to accept a single quest, or even use a skill book or read a sign.

The fact that he persevered long enough to become a king was surprising. Though, I couldn’t help but imagine that he had someone else essentially running the kingdom for him, similar to how I handed most affairs to Nuoda.

As I thought about this, the beach of the large desert came into view, and I could see the rolling dunes blanket the horizon ahead. At a glance, there didn’t look like there were any real distinguishing landmarks, not even a single structure to be seen, but we had just found the very edge of this island.

We drove for another hour before we started to see a few villages dotted on the horizon. More of these villages were centered around small oases, with flimsy buildings constructed out of sticks and palm leaves. Looking close, more than half of the Chimerae living in these villages seemed to have scorpion tails or lizard scales.

“I’m not seeing anything that looks like a tower,” Bella commented, her eyes scanning the horizon. “Do you happen to remember which section of this giant island it was on?”

“Let me try to draw it out from memory,” Marron mused, pulling out her sketch pad and tracing out the outline of the island. She pursed her lips, staring at the drawing before marking an X just north of the landmass’s center. “If I remember right, it should be in this area.”

With that as a guide, I once again adjusted course to look for the center of this island. Though, as we approached, there was one towering structure that we happened to see on the horizon ahead. Directly ahead, even, right on our marked path.

Diane pursed her lips, perking a brow as she looked at it. “This should be the right spot. Don’t tell me that the ruins are actually located under the rift?”

That’s right, while there was no tower reaching up and into the sky, there was the towering rift connecting to various realms. Which, inevitably, meant that there was a defensive camp centered around it.

“At least this should mean that we don’t have to deal with natives,” I muttered under my breath. “If this really is the location of the dungeon, then any nearby villages would have likely been either relocated or destroyed in a monster attack.”

“I’m not too sure about that,” Marron responded. “If this is the right spot, then that means that the tower has fallen beneath the sands. There might be an underground passage somewhere that we need to find.”

“Between wisdom and blood, I’d say that this is starting to look more like a trial of one’s wisdom,” Bella joked. “Let’s just fly in close and stay hidden. Maybe Drake’s skills will be able to find the tower underground.”

I nodded my head in agreement, activating Wraith Zone and flying us in towards the base of the rift. Once there, we put the car away and I crouched down, placing my hand on the ground. I focused on my True Sight and Detective Analysis, pushing the ranges of both to their limits while ignoring the nearby voices and footsteps from above the surface.

I continued to push my senses as far as they would go, but I found nothing but endless sand. Next, I switched to Walking Fortress, which was able to scan for suitable building materials. Its range was even further than Detective Analysis, so I could only pin my hopes on this skill.

This time, I did indeed find something. Hidden underground, over three hundred meters below the surface, was a reservoir of water, as well as several unconnected stones. “I think I’ve found something, but it’s out of range of my True Sight, so I can’t just teleport us down.”

Not only could I not teleport us down, but if I were to start using Walking Fortress to dig a hole for us, it would surely draw the attention of the nearby defenders of the rift. Marron thought it over for a few moments before making a suggestion.

“How about we look at some more spots. If we can find one far enough away that we can dig down without being seen, that would be for the best.”

The other two seemed to agree, so we got up and began to move around, stopping every hundred meters or so to investigate the ground again. It was hard to say for sure, as the only thing that I could accurately see were the ‘raw materials’ of water and stones at first, but that changed after we had moved more than half a kilometer.

As I did this final scan, something appeared almost immediately with my True Sight and Detective Analysis. A giant pillar of stone, more than forty meters wide, and less than twenty meters below the surface of the sand. I couldn’t see into this structure, but I could at least detect it, which meant that we were finally at the right location.

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