Level 1 Fallen

Almost as soon as we made the report to Wistera, she used her trait to teleport to our side. The tan-skinned foxfolk girl glared at us as soon as she appeared, ignoring the temporary weakness from using her trait to reach us. Clearly, she was not amused by our improvised infiltration.

“Explain,” she said the single word with enough force to cause all three of us to straighten our backs involuntarily.

“It should have all been in the reports,” Bella offered, but Wisteria shot her a look that made her shrink back.

“I want to hear it straight from you. What made you think that it was a good idea to infiltrate a monster city after randomly discovering one of their portals? For all you knew, they could have known you were there, and were just luring you into a trap.”

I cleared my throat, stepping forward to speak. “It was an opportunity that we just couldn’t pass up. Given our existing knowledge of the monster cities, we believed that it was safe. Even if the city blocked use from teleporting in and out with World Walker, we knew that we could use the portal that we entered through without any form of verification. And the dungeon it was connected to wasn’t a special instance that prevented teleportation.”

“So even if things went wrong, we were confident that we had an escape route. In the worst case scenario, we’d turn around and come back after gathering minor information.”

Wisteria’s eyes locked onto me at that. “No, in the worst case scenario, your little explosion stunt would have caused one of our undercover agents to be revealed. The master is gathering the materials for a forced recovery now.”

Diane’s eyes widened, shrinking back slightly as she heard about this. “I thought that we hadn’t been able to get anyone on the inside yet?” she asked in a surprisingly small voice. “If I thought that there were potential agents on the inside, I wouldn’t have caused such a scene on our way out.”

Wisteria let out a long sigh, massaging her forehead. “If we advertised this information to the lower-ranked members like you guys, it would leak to the monster side before we even realized what was going on.”

After saying that, she looked at us. “Right, you all should qualify as mid-ranked members now. You haven’t taken any missions in a while, so your profiles haven’t been updated.”

Wisteria typed a message out to send off to someone, eyes still narrowed. “Usually, we pair people up with missions in their vicinity, but there haven’t been any problems near Fallcry that needed our attention, and you haven’t been anywhere else long enough for us to find a mission for you.”

“Thankfully, you’ve got a World Walker in your group, so proximity is only a vague suggestion with your lot. To make up for this blunder, the master is assigning the three of you a mandatory mission. It won’t be easy, but that’s the point. Plus, I think this is a mission that the three of you would want anyways.”

I perked a brow at that. “What is the mission?”

“Your target is Yatagarasu Tensai, a Grand Duke of Athua. We’ve confirmed that this is the same man behind the dungeon incident that happened to you before, but that’s only the first of his crimes. After we started investigating him, we found that he has had another dungeon created through unofficial channels in the last month.”

“Like the dungeon that you found yourself stuck in, this one has a level limit of ten, making it impossible for us to infiltrate. However, we have seen multiple low-level Players entering this dungeon. Some of them come from Brita itself, and immediately made their way to the dungeon after being chosen. Others flew in from other countries.”

“None of the Players or Chosen that entered the dungeon have ever been spotted elsewhere afterwards. Thus, we believe that this is another trait farm, just one being operated with the cooperation of multiple Players. They enter this world, make their way to the trapped dungeon, and then immediately delete their characters.”

I felt my shoulders tense at this description. It was exactly the kind of thing I had always worried about back when I first started. “Are we sure that there aren’t any monsters working as ‘security’ in the dungeon?”

“Probably,” Wisteria answered with a shrug. “If there was even a weak monster, some of those players would have been killed before reaching the ‘farm’ zone. We believe that there is likely an environmental trap that passively kills them and collects their loot.”

“In the last week, Yatagarasu has sold at least four traits of unknown origin that we are aware of. We don’t know the level of the traits or how many people he has in his trap. However, that has not stopped us from creating this mission.”

“Your job is twofold. First, you must break into his trait farm dungeon and rescue the Fallen that he has captured. Given the level restrictions on the dungeon, it is highly unlikely that it can block a grandmaster-level teleportation ability. However, these level restrictions mean that you will have to undertake this part of the mission alone, Drake.”

I gave a firm nod at this, and Wisteria explained the second part of the mission. “Next, you must kill Yatagarasu Tensai at least ten times. How you do it is up to you, as long as you do not implicate any NPCs. After the tenth death, you will kill him one final time while holding an Imprisonment Respawn Stone. This will send him to a special cell within the league, where he will be forced to remain for two months.”

“This might seem like a short sentence for his crimes, but the time was decided based on Player habits. A major patch has been released every two months, with one exception so far recently. Players who are unable to participate for two months will find themselves an entire patch behind others, and would often rather delete their characters and start fresh, being able to participate in new content and quickly level up to where they were.”

“Thus, we believe that at the end of the two-month period, Yatagarasu will have deleted his character. If he has not, he will be released under observation.” Wisteria finished explaining, issuing the mission to the three of us. However, since this was a punishment mission, our reward was simply exemption from fines for the previous incident.

Diane and Bella looked towards me, the former speaking up. “Doesn’t seem like we’ve got much of a choice with this one. Still, the first part of the mission is going to be all on you. Do you think you can do it?”

I thought about that for a moment, looking at Wisteria. “How many people know that this mission is in the works?”

Wisteria pursed her lips, shaking her head. “Nobody but the master and the league’s officers.”

If that was the case, there was a very low chance that information would have been leaked. “Alright. Like you said, I should be able to teleport out if something goes wrong. Still, I’m expecting there to be someone in the dungeon acting as security to make sure that none of the prisoners escape. I learned from the Questing King that dungeons like this can come with a master key that can bypass the level restriction.”

“That’s true,” Wisteria confirmed. “However, even a Grand Duke doesn’t have the authority to have a grandmaster acting as a constant observer over a trait farm like this. At most, you’ll be fighting a normal high-level Fallen. For the record, this means a Fallen with a level of at least four or five hundred, but one that has given up a life of adventuring.”

“These people rarely train their skills, leading to relatively little improvement after their Players left. At most, they’ll have a single grandmaster-level skill that they learned when they had a Player.”

Bella raised a hand at this. “What’s the difference between that and a grandmaster, if they still have a skill of that level?”

Wisteria turned her gaze to Bella, letting out a small sigh. “The primary difference is whether they train or not. A true grandmaster will continue training after their Player leaves, leading to them possessing a level of skill far above what their character level suggests. For instance, Kelly from your city falls under this category. Even after losing her Player, she has constantly trained more than a dozen grandmaster-level skills.”

“On the other hand, there are those who lose their Player at a very high level, but immediately stop training to live a comfortable life. They are afraid that they’ll lose their skills or traits when they die, so they will only move if it’s an order. But because they enjoy so many more benefits, they also have to obey the local authority more.”

“Still, even if this is a level five hundred Fallen that has abandoned their training, you might have a shot at killing them once before their old combat instincts kick in. It just depends on how relaxed they’ve been.”

Despite Wisteria saying this, I shook my head. “Even if I do kill them, a trait trap will naturally have a respawn node for the prisoners. I wouldn’t be able to defeat the guard and get them out at the same time.”

Wisteria considered this for a moment, before typing out a message. “I’ll apply for you to get a second Imprisonment Respawn Stone, then. Any Fallen that is willingly taking part in a trait farm like this is worthy of spending time in the league’s cell. Of course, if there is no such security, you will be obligated to return the remaining stone after your mission is completed.”

I nodded my head in understanding, and Wisteria pulled out two stones to hand to me. “As usual, make sure that you have this outside of your inventory when you deal the killing blow. Otherwise, they will respawn normally, and you might not get a second chance.”

I accepted the stones, putting them away and looking at Wisteria again. “In that case, we just need the locations for the dungeon and Yatagarasu.”

“I’ll give you the dungeon coordinates first. As a Player, Yatagarasu is highly mobile, especially with the new patch having just dropped. We have eyes on him, but he will likely rush back towards Athua after his dungeon is cleared.”

That made sense. It was likely a major business for him, so he would have to hurry back if he heard it was in trouble. “In that case, one last thing. Is it alright for me to destroy the dungeon when I’m done?”

Wisteria’s eyes widened slightly, her lips tugging up into a grin. “You got Dungeon Break? Right, I remember seeing that in the report about the dungeon you had been trapped in. By all means, break it. Trait farms like this are better off destroyed. Just keep in mind that doing so won’t get back any of the lost traits.”

“The loot is likely being transmitted out of the dungeon through a Farm Collector. It’s a rare item that allows you to set up automated loot farms. Most people use it in conjunction with controlled minions like golems to farm a low-level dungeon on their behalf. And every Farm Collector is linked to a Farm Receiver, which will likely be in Yatagarasu’s inventory.”

“When you destroy the dungeon, everyone inside will be ejected to their last registered respawn point before entering the dungeon. This means that any of the prisoners inside will likely appear at the nearby city, where officials would probably capture them to imprison them again and keep them silent..”

“For that reason, it’s important that you make sure that everyone has been rescued from the dungeon before you destroy it.”

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