Level 1 Fallen

“Explain,” I looked at Diane once we were back in Fallcry, narrowing my eyes slightly. “You didn’t get anyone swept up in your escape, did you?”

“Of course not,” Diane responded defensively, quickly shaking her head. “I made sure that there weren’t any NPCs near the area I lit up, so everyone would be able to get out before it became dangerous.”

I let out a sigh of relief hearing this, worried that Diane might suddenly become my next mission. That would not be something to look forward to. “Fine… what did you find, then?”

Diane glanced from side to side, making sure that we were alone before speaking. “The church is really up to something. There were over a hundred bodies kept preserved in their basement. Some of them belonged to nobles like Yatagarasu, while others were people from the church itself. According to Wisteria, some of the bodies belonged to people on the league’s watchlist.”

“Not only that, but there was a second basement level where people were being stored in a dungeon, all of them level one or two Fallen.” When she said this, I felt my jaw clench, my hands balling up into fists. “I listened in on a few conversations, and apparently the church has some kind of hidden operation going on.”

“Whenever a Player joins the game, and then either immediately deletes their character because they didn’t get the trait that they wanted, or finds that the combat is too difficult, the church swoops in and grabs the newly Fallen character. On the surface, they talk about helping the poor soul find a new way of life, but in reality they get sent underground, left to repeatedly die of starvation or thirst. The clergy don’t deal any actual damage themselves, they just don’t give the prisoners any food or water.”

Bella did not seem any happier about this turn of events than I did. “You reported everything to Wisteria, right? What did she have to say about it.”

“The league is going to conduct a full investigation into the church,” Diane answered. “If that’s what I found at one church, they want to see how much else they’re hiding, as well as how far this corruption goes. Until then, however, we’re being removed from the case.”

“What? Why?” I asked, surprised by the sudden declaration. “Shouldn’t we be part of something like this, since you were the one to discover it?”

“That was all an accident,” Diane sighed, shaking her head. “Originally, Wisteria just expected you to set down your respawn stone and kill Yatagarasu ten times in a single day to complete the mission. She didn’t think that we would drag it out for nearly two full weeks.”

“Given our standing as foreign nobles, or in your case, the foreign king, we are being pulled from the case. We can’t get directly involved with the major organizations or leadership of another country without risking a war between our countries. Athua may be among the weakest of the countries on Fal Nua, but any war involving them would lead to massive casualties among the NPCs.”

I couldn’t help but grunt, forcing myself to relax. We had managed to defeat the dragons in a war, so I thought that we would be more than capable of doing the same with Athua. However, thinking about it, Athua could likely defeat them as well. Individually, the dragons were far stronger than typical humans, but there were far less of them. Just in terms of the number of grandmasters available, Athua likely outclassed the dragons.

“Fine,” I groaned, shaking my head. “In that case, what’s our next move with the league? Do they have a follow-up mission for us?”

“Not that Wisteria told me. If they do, they’ll probably let us know after the chaos has cleared from this mission. Still, I expect that we’ve got some free time on our hands. Which is good, because I need to visit Hammerhead again.” With that, Diane turned to head for the door, the two of us following behind her.

“I assume that this is about the rest of your shadow gear,” I said, looking down at the halfling. “Has your dungeon become more popular?”

“Loads,” she confirmed. “Someone got the first equipment drop last week and posted about it on the forums. Once they were able to verify the equipment, a ton of players have been messaging me to try and figure out how to get the gear themselves. Since I didn’t answer them, their only option was to run the dungeon themselves.”

“Until now, I’ve been able to get away with the loot that I had because the drop rates were so low. But now that more and more people are going through the dungeon, I need the full set of gear, or else people will start to realize that I’m missing a lot.”

As we spoke, we soon arrived at Hammerhead’s workshop. Looking at the workshop from the outside, I could clearly tell that the building had changed. It was larger now, with a more complex outer design and multiple floors. Looks like they managed to get the materials for the blueprint I got off of Daichi.

I had left the blueprint with Hammerhead a while ago, given that the building was always meant for him and I was often out of the kingdom on other matters. It would appear that they had managed to build it while we were dealing with Yatagarasu.

Diane stepped inside, looking around. The front shop area itself hadn’t particularly changed, but there was a new woman manning the front counter. It took me a moment to recognize her, my eyes widening slightly. This was one of the people that had been rescued from Yatagarasu’s trait farm.

More importantly, it was one of the ones that seemed to have completely given up on life. Now, she stood there with a polite smile on her face. “Welcome to Hammerhead’s Forge. Is there something I can help you with?”

Diane seemed to recognize the woman as well, briefly taken aback by her presence. “I didn’t realize that he had recruited a receptionist,” she muttered, before walking up to the counter. “Is the boss in? He should be expecting me.”

The woman didn’t seem to recognize us, likely having been too out of it to even process what was going on by the time we showed up to rescue her and the others. She lifted a hand to signal for us to wait as she typed out a message. “He said that he will see you now. He’s at the second floor’s assembly line. Just take the stairs up, and it will be the first door on the right.”

The receptionist pointed towards a door off to the side of the counter, and the three of us went through it, finding a large staircase. Up on the second floor, we could hear the hammering of material and someone calling out orders. “That’s right! Make sure the runes are properly applied! We’ll break for lunch once this batch is done!”

Following the familiar voice, we found ourselves standing before a conveyor system with nearly a dozen workers handling various pieces of equipment. Just like the receptionist below, many of these were those that had been rescued previously, their task seeming to be appraising each stage of production to ensure quality, while the actual crafting process was handled by runes and other machinery.

“Ah, there you are!” Hammerhead called out to us when he spotted the three of us. “You’re here for the shadow gear, right?”

“Yeah… were you able to get everything set up with the new rune system?” Diane asked, looking at the assembly line. It was clear that what they were producing wasn’t the shadow gear that she had asked for. Instead, they were producing more of the mimic cores that Hammerhead had been selling previously.

“That’s right,” Hammerhead grinned broadly. “Took me a little bit, but once I realized the logic behind the new runes, I was able to get it set up. Not only did I get the processing down, I set up runic arrays to gather various elemental materials. Now, if I wanted to, I could make soulbound gear for darkness, light, ice, and crystal. Still working on getting fire and other elements to produce safely without harming the wearer, though.”

Diane seemed surprised at this, looking at the mimic core assembly line. “If you managed to set up a system to mass produce those, then why are you making so many mimic cores?”

“Little girl!” Hammerhead teased, looking at Diane. “Who said that the two items can’t work together? If the mimic core bonds with the soulbound item before anything else, you can get a synergistic effect. The mimic core itself becomes bound, allowing it to level up like the shadow gear you’re wearing, but it can also change its appearance into any other gear you feed it.”

“Since you’re planning to popularize the soulbound equipment, I need to make sure that I have enough mimic cores to take advantage of the inevitable boom. Thankfully, I was able to get a few dedicated workers to help me get everything organized now that I’m scaling up production.”

Hammerhead’s words only seemed to confuse Diane more. “Wait, but you’re the one that’s producing the soulbound items. The way you’re saying it, you’re not planning on releasing any of them yourself?”

Hammerhead simply grinned. “‘Course not. If I did that, I’d be as good as handing over the processing tech to all the other crafters. Once they learned that mimic cores and soulbound items were both made in this workshop, they would obviously send in spies to steal my designs.”

“But, if they only think that the mimic cores come from here, there’s less of a need to do so. At the same time, the necessary materials for the mimic cores all come from the local dungeon. If they don’t have their own mimic dungeon, the designs are useless. Meanwhile, the soulbound items can be made with almost anything. All you need is to use alchemy and deconstruct something to get the right elemental essences, then you can feed those essences into the assembly line. Theoretically, anyone can do it, so that makes this technology exponentially more valuable.”

“Now, if they think that the items from your dungeon are things that you yourself farmed a hidden dungeon for, they’ll believe that it might be equipment that can’t be properly crafted. Even if they do attempt to craft the same type of item themselves, they won’t know where to start. Any normal craftsman would start by trying to get normal elemental materials, like Shadow Wolf Hide for the cloak, which won’t produce the same soulbound effect.”

Realization slowly donned over Diane’s face. “In other words, you’re producing both sides of the synergy, but you’re driving up your profits with the mimic cores because otherwise the entire market could crash from excess supply.”

“Exactly,” Hammerhead chuckled. “On that subject, if you decide you want to include any of the other elemental variants in as future loot, just let me know. I’m sure that it will expand business even further.”

Diane thought about this, offering a brief nod. “I’ll consider it. I might include various elemental bosses in my dungeon, and have those act as the loot for them. However, in order to do that, I’ll need to get skills to give them, or find the appropriate monsters on their own.”

“No rush, no rush at all,” Hammerhead said, clearly pleased with the new business. “Let me know when you’re ready for each set, and I’ll craft it up for you.”

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