Level 1 Fallen

I pushed open the door to the boss room, finding the Patchwork Shadow Horror on the other side. Its body was massive, stitched together from hundreds of bodies with screaming mouths and hollow eyes. Its various heads turned to face us, and then let out a shrill cry to signal the start of the battle.

Having been warned of its skills, Diane immediately pulled out her short swords to engage the monster in melee combat. She flickered towards the monster, slicing at the stitches holding its bodies together. These stitches ruptured, three bodies falling down to the ground with eerie crunches, but the overall monster seemed undeterred.

At the same time, Bella retrieved her pistols, aiming them towards the abomination. With each shot, she shattered the skull of one body, black blood leaking through the open wounds. To our surprise, the holes soon closed up with black threads, however, while the fallen bodies Diane cut loose were dragged back into the main monster.

The monster raised one limb of flailing arms and legs, slapping it towards Diane and making her leap away. Bodies broke off from the limb and slid on the floor before standing up with twitching movements. Their shadows stretched back towards the monster as they jerked forward.

Bella shifted, shooting the bodies that had begun walking towards Diane. As she burst the skull of one, it fell to the ground, its shadow severed. The other two were busy dealing with the amalgam horde and didn’t immediately notice, but I was a lot more free to watch the ordeal.

“That one’s not getting back up,” I shouted out, informing them. “If you kill them after they separate, they can’t return.”

When Bella heard this, she immediately shifted her focus entirely to taking down the bodies that had already fallen, especially those making their way back to the main monster. Diane, meanwhile, focused on evading its attacks, which splashed more bodies across the room.

The two of them were working well at first, killing more and more of the stitched bodies as the main monster dwindled in size. However, after roughly half of its bodies had been lost, it let out a sorrowful cry. The room went pitch black, and I saw through True Sight that the already-defeated bodies were slowly starting to heal. Not as fast as they had when attached to the main monster, but fast enough to be a problem.

At the same time, I sensed something else. Other people had entered the dungeon, likely coming to claim the first clear reward. Neither Diane nor Bella specialized in dealing area damage, so the time that it would take for them to defeat this monster would be too long, allowing the other party to catch up.

As such, I decided to step in myself. Lifting my hand, I conjured a scorching flame that spread over the bodies on the ground. “Sorry, you two. We’ve got company on the way, so we need to speed things up.”

“Ambush?” Diane asked, glancing back towards the door, but I shook my head and continued to expand the fire. Every body scorched released a pained cry that echoed through the chamber, joined together by the main body of the monster.

“No. It just looks like other players who found a new dungeon near Fallcry. I don’t want to have to argue over the first clear reward.” I didn’t give a chance for the bodies to regenerate, scorching them beyond recovery. Then, I activated my Infernal Hellstar. Immediately, all the flames disappeared at once, combining into a black orb above my head. This orb then released a beam to slice through the main body of the monster.

Using Greater Detect Weakness, I had seen that there was a core at the heart of the monster, so I focused my fire on that area. The screams halted the instant the core was shattered, and the darkness in the room receded with the wet thumps of the bodies hitting the floor.

I gave Diane a nod, signalling for her to loot the boss monster. As expected, she received the dungeon ticket that she was looking for. Afterwards, we quickly opened the boss chest before teleporting back to the palace. I could only shake my head and admit that the Players hadn’t really thought it through if they assumed that a new dungeon near the capital with this timing wasn’t one that I had created myself, and would therefore clear it immediately.

Once we were back at the palace, I looked at Diane. “Are you going to start making your dungeon right away, or do you want to go look for the monsters first?”

Diane pursed her lips, thinking about it for a few moments. “First, I want to look for monsters. The dungeon layout that I have in mind won’t work as well if we don’t have the right monsters to fill it. Between Oblivara, Noxveil, and Umbrahallow, Noxveil is unlikely to have the monsters I want. If they’re anywhere, they’ll either be in Oblivara or Umbrahallow.”

Thinking back to the two realms, I knew that Umbrahallow was probably a safe bet. Not only was it more populated, so there was more information on the monsters, but it was known to house multiple humanoid nations.

Though, at the same time, this made me question. “Do you want monsters that people already know about, or are you planning to use monsters nobody’s seen?”

Diane hesitated at this, understanding my point. If she used the known monsters of Umbrahallow, then it would be easier for other players to clear her dungeon. That would mean an overall net loss for her, compared to forcing players to improvise with monsters that they hadn’t seen. Of course, that wouldn’t last too long, and they would adapt over time, but the initial impression was still important.

“Let’s visit Oblivara first,” Diane ultimately decided. “It will take some time before Hammerhead is able to make the rewards that I asked for, anyways. He’s got to figure out the new rune and essence systems. Even though my requirements for the Shadowbound gear isn’t too high, it’ll at least take him a couple of days.”

Nodding my head in understanding, I teleported the three of us to Oblivara. Since we had been to that realm before, there was no need to wait for the transfer window with the planar gate. Soon, we arrived in the realm of eternal night, where the only light was the glowing eyes of prowling monsters or the rare shining moss.

“How are we going to find a dungeon here?” Bella muttered, looking around. “Even my eyes aren’t good enough to find something at a distance in total darkness. And if we drive with the lights on, monsters will swarm around us.”

“We could just have Drake use his True Sight while driving slowly,” Diane suggested. “Any ninja-themed monsters would probably be scared away by bright lights anyways.”

“Are you sure that you don’t just want me to use some sponsorship points to find the monsters for you?” I asked in an amused tone. Probably thanks to the concert with Sapphire, I had acquired a large number of points that could be spent.

Diane looked tempted, acknowledging that it would be quite difficult to find anything in this place. “Fine. But we’ll only need the basic information.”

Chuckling, I began to submit my query to the system. Diane is looking for monsters to populate a ninja-themed dungeon of roughly level three hundred. Where can we find suitable monsters to complete her objective?

There was a brief pause after my question was submitted, before a response came, detailing two prices. “Uhm… something’s weird here,” I spoke up, causing the two to look over.

“What is it?” Diane asked, looking suddenly concerned.

“The prices, they’re… a bit too low. The basic information only costs five points, and detailed information costs fifteen. I’ve got plenty of points to spend, so are you sure you don’t want to spend the extra ten on this?” I asked, and Diane seemed as confused as I was as to why the price from the system had been so cheap.

After a moment of hesitation, she nodded her head, and I paid for the detailed information. When the prompt appeared in front of me again, I read it aloud for both to hear.

“Player Diane Kagemura has already registered multiple Ninja-themed humanoid monsters. Levels can be adjusted during dungeon creation up to the maximum level available with the given certificate. To grant appropriate skills to the monsters, the Player’s own skills may be used. The Player may also, at their own discretion, enter a simulated battle mode to program combat patterns into the dungeon monsters. All of these features cost dungeon points, however.”

“Calculating points from retroactive dungeon clears. Player Diane Kagemura’s dungeon point balance should be sufficient for all requested actions.”

Diane stared at me, her eyes wide as I read the prompt. “So… you mean that all I needed was the ticket?” she asked. “Well, and the Shadowbound gear.”

“It looks that way?” I responded with a hesitant shrug. “Was there not a guide or anything released by the GMs?”

“Not yet. I checked before I logged on earlier. There was nothing about retroactive points being given, either. I guess they wanted Players to learn all of this by exploring the systems themselves?”

That made sense to me. Similarly, they made no official announcement to introduce exactly how runes or essences worked, whether in their original release or this new update. “What are you going to do, then?” I asked, looking at the halfling girl.

Diane hesitated, before letting out a sigh. “At this point, there’s no reason to put it off anymore. Sorry, but I think this will take me the rest of the day, and maybe tomorrow. Can we head back to Hammerhead’s place? He might not be able to make me the rest of the gear right now, but I can at least ask him for some of the lower-quality pieces from when he made our sets.”

Although our visit to Oblivara was brief, I didn’t hesitate to return us back to Hammerhead’s shop, where she made her request to purchase some of the scrapped items. He handed the gear over, which she stored in her inventory, and then immediately logged off.

Her Chosen, afterwards, was left standing there confused. “I feel like I just got cut off from some amazing adventure in a world of shadows. This is a very uncomfortable feeling.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that, shaking my head. “We can still go back to Oblivara. We just won’t have some specific goal, and we can wander around to explore.”

Diane quickly nodded her head, and I looked over at Bella for her own agreement as well. Seeing that both of them wanted to resume the adventure while Diane’s Player was logged out, I teleported us back to Oblivara once again. This time, though, we didn’t start thinking about how to find anything with the car, and instead just picked a direction and started walking.

Diane held her staff in her hands, Bella held her pistols, and I constantly scanned the surroundings to watch for danger. I couldn’t guarantee some epic adventure, but even I wanted to explore!

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