Level 1 Fallen

After Wisteria gave the location for the dungeon, I teleported myself and the other two back to Brita. The dungeon itself was about an hour’s drive to the north, so we got into the car and set off to complete our newly assigned mission.

As we were driving through the sky under the cover of my stealth skill, I looked over at Diane curiously. “How did your dungeon go, by the way? I wanted to ask earlier while we were at the monster city, but I wasn’t positive that communications weren’t being monitored.”

“Hmm?” Diane glanced up at my voice. “Oh, right. Yeah, it was actually a lot more customizable than I expected. When they advertised that you needed to defeat the monster that you wanted to include in your dungeon, I thought that they meant that you would only be able to choose between the exact types of monsters.”

“However, once I got started, it was just as the system told you. There were options to adjust the skills, fighting styles, and the level of each monster. I could even set up multiple monsters with the same appearance and different fighting styles if I wanted to. The whole ‘defeating the monster to unlock it’ part was just for the monster’s appearance and base stat distribution.”

“With that in mind, I themed my dungeon around a shadow ninja cult that had sealed an ancient dragon. Throw in a few dialogue options for the wandering monsters, and everything was set. The final boss is designed to be the ninja leader, who sealed the ancient dragon within his own body. As you approach the dungeon room, the seal breaks and he turns into the shadow dragon.”

“Thankfully, this part was pretty easy. I just had to give him the Shadow Dragon Transformation and Shadow King skills. Then, I ran a few simulations with the boss to establish a fighting style. It just took me so long because all of that still counted against my login time for the day. I wanted to set everything up so that the dungeon would be a challenge even for experienced players, and also fit the ninja theme. Hidden rooms, traps, all that. It just took a while to set up.”

Bella’s eyes widened. “Have any Players entered the dungeon yet?” she asked, and Diane glanced off into the distance, checking a menu that only she could see.

“Let’s see. Hmm? It looks like there were a few Players that tried it out while we were talking to Wisteria. Though, the number of clears is still zero, so I’m guessing that they weren’t that high level. Probably just a low-leveled group that wanted to test out the new dungeon system.”

Diane explained about some of the traps and hidden mechanics that she included in the dungeon. For instance, a hidden scroll within an optional side path that she set as a ‘seal reinforcement’. Using it during the boss fight would disable the boss’s dragon transformation skill. This would lead to a different boss fight, where the boss instead summoned waves of ninja minions while using puppet skills to harass the challengers.

Of course, this also changed the boss’s loot options, removing Shadow Dragon Transformation and Shadow King and replacing it with Wire Manipulation and Puppet Control. Diane seemed quite pleased with her dungeon, though that didn’t mean that there weren’t also complaints.

Her primary complaint was the size of the dungeon. She wanted it to be a sprawling complex with multiple buildings, but she only had the points to finish one of the buildings that she wanted.

I waited for her to finish telling me about her dungeon before interjecting. “By the way, when did you get the Shadow King skill? I don’t remember you reaching the grandmaster tier with that one.”

Bella blinked, having missed that detail of Diane’s explanation, while the halfling herself just chuckled. “My Chosen has still been practicing hard whenever she could while I’m offline. Since the skill’s still free for her to use while transformed, she was able to level it up quickly. It probably helps that she’s still benefiting from your experience buff, too.”

“That would probably do it,” I chuckled, not that surprised after she explained it as such. “Any idea how long it will take for you to finish your dungeon plans?”

Diane thought it over. “I’m not sure. It depends on a few things. If my dungeon blows up in popularity, I’ll get points faster. And if we conquer more new dungeons, I can trade in the certificates for even more points.”

“Before I logged on, I looked to see how many other dungeons were already live. To be honest, there really weren’t that many. Counting mine, I think that there were still less than ten. And one of them was even a blatant experience farm. I checked it out briefly, and it was terrible. Drops you in a large room packed with enemies that have low health and explode on death, causing a chain reaction to clear the room.”

“Technically, this can get you a lot of experience… if you can survive all of the explosions yourself. But, it’s only a level one hundred dungeon, so it’s not something that I’d be interested in anyways.”

I let out a low chuckle, noticing that we were approaching our destination. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the game masters changed things like that so that you don’t get experience from the monsters killing each other. That sounds like too much of an exploit.”

“Oh, definitely. But, it’s not as bad as some old games I used to play. In those, whenever players were given the chance to make their own dungeons, they always set up powerful friendly NPCs to do all of the fighting for the player, putting them in a forced party and sharing the experience. I don’t think that they’d be able to get away with doing that here, given how party experience is calculated.”

I gave a small nod as I lowered the car near a secluded farm. According to Wisteria, the windmill of this farm was the entrance to the dungeon. “I’m going to teleport everyone I find trapped inside to Fallcry. Do you want to wait for me here, or wait in Fallcry to welcome them?”

There was no way that I would send people trapped in Yatagarasu’s murder trap back to Athua. Even if their original Players had purposely landed them in these traps, there was no way that the Fallen deserved that.

Bella and Diane looked at one another. “I’ll stay here,” Diane answered. “If anyone shows up, it’ll be good to have a lookout hidden.”

“In that case, I’ll wait at Fallcry,” Bella followed up. “They’re going to be so disoriented when they are suddenly set free, so they’ll need someone there to help steady them.”

I nodded my head, stowing away the car and teleporting Bella back to Fallcry. Afterwards, I made my way to the door of the windmill, using Beyond the Veil to keep myself out of sight. Once I opened the door, I felt a blast of heat hitting my face, the inside of the building being vastly different from the outside.

Inside, the floor was made of stone, the air scorching my skin. This dungeon wasn’t particularly large, nor was it trying to hide its nature. In fact, I could already see the farm itself with my True Sight.

After a few twisting tunnels, there was a giant pit, more than twenty meters in radius. The bottom of the pit was filled with glowing, bubbling lava, illuminating the area above it. Hanging above the pit was a small respawn platform, barely three meters across. More than a dozen men and women were cramped together on that platform, crying as their bare feet hissed from contact with the piping hot metal. The lucky ones still wore shoes, but it was only a matter of time until they lost those.

The truly unfortunate ones were those that didn’t fit on the platform. Several more men and women had clearly not been able to keep themselves steady, having fallen off and grabbing onto the edge of the platform. Their fingers burned from the contact with the metal. Worse still, there was no room on the platform for people to be picky about where they stood, leading to people standing on the fingers of each person hanging from the platform.

As I watched, a new figure appeared on the center of the platform, dazed after his respawn. His sudden appearance caused a cry of shock from those at the edge, the crowd shifting enough to push two unfortunate souls off the platform. They scrambled to grab onto something, but their fingers failed to grasp at anything before they landed in the molten death trap.

I wanted to swoop in and get them all out in an instant, but I had to be careful. This was an official mission from the League of Assassins, and I had to make sure not to leave any loose ends.

Tearing my sight away from the lava pit, I continued to scan the dungeon. Deeper in, there was a prison where more people were being kept. Their eyes were sunken and emotionless, their bodies unnaturally thin. I could see a respawn platform in the middle of the cell, but there was no sign that any of them had been supplied with food.

Judging by their expressions compared to those above the pit, I could only assume that the group in the prison cell had already lost everything, with no loot left to provide for the farm. They had given up on life, living only because they had no way to truly die.

This made me think back to what I had learned from Erebus. If they continued to live like this, they may truly lose their humanity, becoming nothing but mobs in the dungeon.

Still, I kept looking. If there was a prison, there had to be someone that moved people between the pit and the cell when they outlived their usefulness. If I started rescuing people without knowing where that person was, they could ambush me halfway through the operation.

That was when my True Sight caught movement deeper in the dungeon. Multiple figures. I cast my senses in that direction, and then clenched my fists so hard my blood dripped onto the floor, evaporating in moments.

At the bottom level of the dungeon was a coliseum. Eight Fallen were trapped inside with wooden swords and shields, forced to fight and kill one another. Where the spectator seats should have been, there was a glass display case showing a bowl of simple porridge and a glass of water. Next to that was a rotund woman with black hair, a whip in her hand as she watched the battle with glee.

My anger surged, realizing what was happening. New victims were first taken to the pit, their deaths farmed again and again until there was nothing left to take. Then, if their spirits had been broken in the death cycle, they were thrown into the cell to rot. If not, they were forced to fight each other in death matches just for the chance to eat the most simple of meals, all for someone’s sick entertainment. I was absolutely destroying this dungeon before I left.

If there was one thing good to note, it was that the woman was too preoccupied with her gladiatorial deathmatch to monitor the pit. I kept a part of my attention on her as I rushed to the pit room, wrapping the entire pit in my Wraith Zone.

The prisoners noticed with a gasp, trying to back away from me. However, with their limited space, this resulted in three more tumbling off the side. Before they could hit the lava, I created a projected floor beneath the hanging platform. “Everyone, get over here,” I told them, keeping my voice down. I didn’t know what skills the woman below had, so I had to do this quickly. “I’m here to get you all out.”

It took a moment for them to respond, as if they had a hard time understanding the very concept of being rescued. One person, a halfling girl, was the first to make a move. She walked over, hesitantly putting her foot on the projected platform, and ran to my side. Then, one by one, the others followed.

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