Level 1 Fallen

There was a brief round of applause as Sapphire finished her song, and I noticed Bella and Diane coming over towards me. “Did you get everything taken care of?” I asked, and the two nodded their heads in confirmation.

Bella looked over at Sapphire, who was taking a moment to recover between songs. “So… is she an actual dragon, or just someone that used the Transformation skill to look like one?”

“From what she said, a real dragon. I have no idea what’s going to happen because of this from here on, though.” I let out a low sigh after saying that. Would the dragons try to start more trouble at us for taking one of their rare players, or would they let the matter slide since it was clearly the decision of the player herself? Also, how would the Chosen act with all of this?

Either way, we made our way from the crowd. The sponsor clip was unlikely to last for more than one song, so I had fulfilled my promise to Sapphire. As she started singing her next song, I found that her voice carried surprisingly well, likely from one of her skills. Still, I looked at the other two inquisitively. “What should we do next? The big patch is in a couple of weeks, right?”

“Yeah,” Diane confirmed. “I think we should start seriously leveling Bella and I up. It’s been three weeks now since the war with Black Scale, and neither of us have gotten any substantial experience in that time. There was the puppet dungeon, but we didn’t even run that one all the way through because of the ambush.”

She was right. We had been busy with so many other things that they had lagged behind in levels. “In that case, let’s go looking for a good dungeon to level up in.” As I said that, I led the two of them away from the city square, towards the gates.

If we wanted a good dungeon for leveling, we would need one where players didn’t frequent, so we could monopolize it as long as we wanted. Once we were outside the gate, I summoned the car for everyone to climb in, and began driving off towards the south. Honestly, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to raid the fire spirit dungeon, but that dungeon had apparently been sealed when the dragons destroyed Nora’s village. I didn’t know if they had stolen the key and sealed it, or if Nora herself sealed it out of spite to prevent them from benefiting from it. That did sound like something she would do.

So, I drove further south, keeping the dungeon radar active. “How’s the performance of your new guns, by the way?” I asked, glancing back towards Bella.

The elven woman blinked in surprise, smiling softly. “They’re pretty good. The pistols are higher level than anything else I’ve gotten lately, but the rifle will take some getting used to. It doesn’t fire a bullet, so I can’t use any of my current gunner skills on it.”

“What does it fire, then?” I asked, surprised.

“It shoots a beam of light at the target. The longer I charge up the beam, the bigger and more destructive it is, but the longer it takes to recharge. But since it’s a beam, it gives my position away as soon as I use it.”

Listening to Bella’s explanation, Diane added on, “It’s mostly used for sniping bosses. You can sit back and charge up until you see an opening, then unleash a devastating attack on a boss. For larger groups… yeah, that’s not the best weapon.”

“Right? But in terms of damage output, it looks like it should easily surpass my normal rifle. It’s just another tool in my arsenal, I guess!” Bella gave a wide grin as she said that, her eyes scanning the horizon for any unusual landmarks.

After a few minutes, she pointed off towards the horizon. “That tower looks pretty out of place.” Following her gaze, I spotted a structure hidden deep within the forest, towering just above the trees. However, this stone tower certainly stood out among the surrounding foliage, its rooftop decorated with arcane runes.

“Looks like as good of a spot as any to try to level up,” I said, turning the car to drive towards that tower. Once we arrived, I set the respawn stone just outside the tower door, sweeping my senses through the area. “Most of the monsters in this area seem to be in the mid two hundreds, so the dungeon shouldn’t be too bad.”

With that in mind, the three of us entered the dungeon, finding ourselves within a large, stone corridor. This dungeon felt eerily familiar, especially since we weren’t seeing any monsters nearby. I looked at Diane, who gave a nod of understanding. “Can you sense them?”

I shook my head, unable to sense anything living within the dungeon aside from the three of us. Seeing that, Diane stretched her fingers out. Thin threads stretched out, touching everything within the corridor, whether it was the paintings, the decorative armors, or even the particularly bitey rug.

Yes… a bitey rug. As soon as Diane’s threads touched the far end of the rug, a mouth opened to try to snap around the threads. Bella grimaced in realization at what type of dungeon we had just entered. “Is it another Shrine of Greed?” she asked, but Diane shook her head.

“In that dungeon, the mimics wouldn’t react until a challenger was in proximity. No, it should be said that they weren’t actually mimics until that point. The dungeon’s mechanic assigned items as mimics as the challenger progressed. Here, the mimics just seem adept at concealing themselves.”

“Enough that they can hide from Drake’s grandmaster perception skill?” Bella asked in shock, but Diane simply sighed.

“His perception might be at grandmaster level, but not his identification skills. There’s nothing stopping him from seeing that the rug is there. But, since it doesn’t have any internal organs or structure that would give it away, there’s no way for him to perceive it as a monster instead of just a decorative rug.”

Still, now that she had brought the mimic out of hiding, I was able to appraise it. “Level two hundred and thirty. Think you two can use this for your training?” I asked, looking at the duo. I activated my Ancient Tutor skill, deciding to put it on Bella for now since it could currently only work on a single target.

“Mimics are annoying, but it shouldn’t be a problem,” Bella said as she pulled out the pistols that she had gotten from the Trial of Resolve. She fired a few rounds into the angry rug, which began to leak a viscous green fluid.

As we walked down the hall, we kept our senses peeled for any signs of movement from the other items in the corridor. Suddenly, Bella spun to the side, shooting one black bullet directly into a painting. The painting lit up in flames, but there was no attempt to fight back.

“What happened?” I asked, looking at Bella as she scanned the surroundings.

“I swear that I saw something move in the painting. A small figure, maybe a little boy. I just knew that something moved that shouldn’t, so I wanted to correct its mistake.” Bella huffed at that, realizing that the painting had been innocent of this crime.

“It might have just been a decorative mechanic,” Diane suggested, still sending her wires out to test every item ahead of us. “If the dungeon is designed to make us paranoid about mimics, there might be little quirks like shifting paintings or moving armors. Like that armor near the start of the hall. It wasn’t facing this direction when we first came in.”

Bella’s eyes widened, spinning around and confirming that one of the stationary armors at the start of the corridor had turned its head, now seeming to look directly at us. Despite this, it made no attempt to attack, and had not responded to Diane’s wires. She lifted one of her pistols, clearly contemplating whether to punish that statue for its crime of breaking the inanimate object code.

However, the sound of breathing caught her attention first, turning and firing on a chandelier. With a pained roar, the chandelier fell to the ground, sprouting legs to catch its fall. It charged towards us, forcing Diane to wave her hands and send her wires out to restrain it while Bella repeatedly shot her black bullets until its glittering mass.

“I hate mimics,” Bella said with a pout once the chandelier died. As usual, I chose to scavenge it as training for my Corpse Collector skill. And, for the first time since the skill was upgraded, I received a monster card.

Out of curiosity, I pulled the card from my inventory. It showed an illustration of the monster that we had just fought, though its crystal decorations were replaced with thin tongues. According to the card, I could use this to summon the ‘Chandelicker’ for sixty seconds. I couldn’t help but groan at the name of the monster.

In the next room, there was a chest off in an alcove to the side. Naturally, Diane swept her wires over it to test for a response, but the chest remained motionless. “I’ll check it out,” Bella said as Diane continued to investigate the other options in the room.

While Bella walked over to the chest, I spotted a banner on the wall near Diane shifting, a hand made of tassels reaching out towards her with needle claws. Without hesitation, I conjured a flaming dagger and pierced it straight into the offending banner. Diane spun around, ready to strike when she noticed the attack, but the mimic had been firmly pinned to the wall.

Just as we thought the fight was over, we heard a muffled cry from behind us. Turning around, we saw Bella’s lower body sticking out of the treasure chest, her legs flailing. There were countless teeth along the rim of the chest, so I ran over and pried it open with one hand, using my other hand to scoop Bella out of the squishy, tongue-like embrace of the monster within.

Once she was out of the mimic’s maw, she stood there like a wet dog, her hair plastered to her face with a thick layer of saliva. Her hands were twitching, gripping her pistols. After a few moments, she let out a scream, unloading dozens of shots into the mimic that had tried to make her its last meal.

“I. HATE. MIMICS!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, and I could swear that I spotted several other items in the room shuddering at her rage-filled cry.

The mimic chest collapsed to the ground, riddled with holes by the time Bella was done with it. She stood, breathing heavily before sending a death glare to every object in the room. “If it moves, I shoot it. If it twitches, it dies. I swear, if any more furniture tries to eat me today, I’m going to--”

Her words were cut off as the curtain lashed out, wrapping around her body and lifting her off her feet, tiny teeth appearing along the curtain’s lining. Diane and I reacted immediately, cutting the curtain to free a stunned Bella, who was now also covered in viscous green blood.

Bella stood there in stunned silence, her eye twitching for a moment. Then, she began to laugh. A dark, eerie laugh. “I’m going to burn this dungeon to the ground.”

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