Chapter 54

“Master Fay, I put together plastic and wood to make this ‘Ordinary Umbrella.’ I crafted it anyway, hoping it might have some sort of secret effect, but it looks like it really is just a normal umbrella.” Fay give it a look. Then he said, “Well, hang onto it for now. Just in case.” Pearl was right—they could each carry only up to two items. Clogging up their inventory slots with stuff they didn’t know the effect of might seem inefficient, but Fay had a feeling that anything that could be crafted here must have some purpose. Even stuff that doesn’t seem to have an actual use as an item, maybe it’ll turn out to be crafting material for something else. This umbrella, for example. The description read: “Perfect for warding off the rain and snow.” Didn’t sound like much, right? But there was every chance that, by combining it with another object, it would produce a much more powerful item. “Okay. Are we about ready to move on?” Fay asked. At the moment, they were by a set of stairs that had brought them to the second level of the labyrinth. The monsters on the second level were stronger than those on the first, so they’d crafted everything they could get their hands on in hopes of finding a way to fight back, but it seemed that weapons that would enable them to defeat the monsters directly were few and far between. That’s a message: “Use your wits and your Arise.” The items in this game are just here to help you get through the maze. There was something else Fay noticed as they worked their way through the halls. He thought they’d been down there well over ten hours, but he didn’t feel at all sleepy or hungry. That was the sort of thing that could only happen in an Elements. “We’re on the second floor now, but we’ve barely moved away from the stairs. No telling what we might find here,” he said, walking forward as carefully as he could. Tak. It was then that they heard heavy footsteps coming from the intersection ahead. “Is it a monster?!” Pearl yelped, trying to scuttle backward. “Shh! Hold on, Pearl. Those are human footsteps if I ever heard them,” Nel replied, catching her by the shoulders. Quite a few sets of footsteps, in fact. Five people? No, at least ten. When Fay and the others listened, they realized they could hear voices having what seemed to be a conversation. “Fay! Do you think it could be the others from the rescue team?!” “Yeah, or maybe monsters that have taken on human form. You’ve seen how nasty this dungeon can get. There might be creatures that can imitate humans, just like the Bookmaker does.” They backed away a few steps, waiting and listening as the footsteps drew closer. Tak. Tak… Tak. Finally, human forms appeared in the intersection. “This way, Captain Ashlan. They said the voice came from over here!” “All right, but stay sharp! I wouldn’t put it past this shit-ass dungeon to make us hear voices just to lure us into a trap! All right, who’s there?! Give us a name! Are you some kind of monster?” A young man with light brown hair jumped out from the intersection. He was taller than Fay, but slim, with attractive features and an ineffable charm that made it impossible to hate him. “Captain Ashlan?” Fay whispered loudly. “………” The man in front of them stopped short and stared in their direction. “Are my eyes playing tricks on me? I could swear I see my junior apostle right in front of me… Or is it a monster pretending to be him?” “It’s the real me.” “The real you?!” Captain Ashlan Highrols looked shocked. He and Fay knew one another; he ran Team Blaze (motto: The wild fire) for the Ruin branch office. Fay had worked with him a couple of times as a rookie, and knew that although Ashlan could be a bit impetuous, he was loyal and compassionate to a fault. Then, Fay remembered a conversation he’d had with Ashlan shortly after Leshea had first arrived, when he’d been looking for a team they could both join. “I’ll get right to the point: would it be possible to join your team?” “Hell yeah, man, we’d love to have you!” “I’d like to bring a former god named Leoleshea with me.” “Buzz! Your call cannot be completed at this time. Please make sure you have the correct number…” I saw his name on the list of trapped apostles. I could hardly believe the captain would get himself stuck down here. It had surprised Fay, to say the least, that Ashlan was not among the rescuers, but among those needing rescue. “Oh, hell. Oh, hell! Even you’re stuck down here, Fay?!” Ashlan said. “We’re with the rescue team. At least theoretically. We haven’t found a way out yet, so that sort of puts us all in the same boat.” “Rescue? Who ya rescuin’?” “Um… Well, you, for one.” “Huh! Maybe lead with that next time!” Then Ashlan swept Fay up in a hug. “Captain… You’re hurting me…” “Ha-ha-haaa! I was so sure we must both be lost! I should have known the Arcane Court would be more on the ball than that! So. How are things in the human world?” “Frantic. Whatever this is, it’s happening all over the world.” “What’s that mean?” “Oh, right. You wouldn’t know.” Captain Ashlan would know he couldn’t leave the maze until he finished it, but he would probably never dreamed that apostles all over the world were suffering the same fate. “Those girls there are your teammates, right, Fay? Lady Leshea I recognize. So, what the hell are we supposed to do?” Fay counted eleven team members standing behind Ashlan, all of them watching him very suspiciously. Everyone obviously wondered what the situation really was. “Well, Captain, I think you should start out with a quick rest.” Fay pointed at Ashlan, and then, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, he said, “Let’s share what we know with each other. The one thing I’m certain of is that this dungeon is still full of secrets.” Back at the Arcane Court Ruin branch office, Chief Secretary Miranda was flopped across her desk. “………” “Slacking off again?” asked the craggy-faced man on the monitor. She didn’t have to look up to know that it was Chief Secretary Baleggar from the Mal-ra branch office. Between the WGT and working on Nel’s comeback, she’d talked to him enough recently to recognize him by voice. So she didn’t look up. Instead she said, “Urgh.” Then she heaved a sigh. “I really don’t have it in me to talk with some stuffy old guy right now.” “I take it Ruin’s no better off than we are.” “Whazzat mean?” “I mean the rescue teams. Camilla’s Archangel team has gone radio silent. Same with the group from the Ocean City of Fisshara, I’m told.” “Well, damn…” “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Fay?” No, she hadn’t. She still didn’t look up from her desk as she crossed her arms in an X: nope, nuh-uh, nada. The Godeye lens had worked for a little while, but the attack from the Golden Puffball seemed to have destroyed it, and now she had no idea what was happening to him. “They’ve been incommunicado for fifteen hours already. Argh, my stomach hurts! If we lose Fay and Lady Leoleshea, my office is going to catch so much heat…” “Yes, but you knew that going in.” This game was just too dangerous. When they’d sent in the rescue teams to save the trapped apostles, they’d understood that the rescue teams might get trapped themselves and need more rescue teams to help them… The need for help would only snowball. “I reached out to headquarters again. They told me that ‘at the present time,’ they don’t have any plans to send in more rescue groups.” “Cutting their losses. Like a lizard dropping its tail.” This time, finally, she raised her head, heavily. There were deep, dark bags under both eyes. “I just wish I knew what Fay and Lady Leoleshea were doing in that dungeon right now.” In that dungeon right then… Captain Ashlan and his team, Blaze, had been exploring the labyrinth for nearly a hundred hours already. At one point they’d encountered another team and linked up—until the entire party was wiped. “We should’ve agreed on a place to meet each other,” he said with an agonized sigh as they walked down the hallway. “We didn’t realize until afterward that everyone has different respawn points. Once we took that TPK, everyone got scattered everywhere. If we’d decided on somewhere we could meet up, we could’ve kept getting back together no matter how many times we were wiped. You and I need something like that. How about the intersection where we first met each other?” “Sounds good,” Fay said. “Sounds like the rescue team isn’t having any more luck than the rest of us. Guess that shouldn’t be surprising.” Ashlan shrugged. “I think they’ve got the right idea, about making it the priority to find the save items. This maze is crazy big. We’ve been at it for almost a hundred hours, and I guess we’ve only seen a small percentage of the whole thing. To clear the entire labyrinth, we’d be talking weeks or maybe even months down here. Hell, maybe your entire life, if you weren’t careful.” “Captain, have you learned anything about what or where the save items might be?” “Yeah, we did. Didn’t we, guys?” Ashlan turned back to his eleven teammates, who nodded eagerly. “We’re on the second floor, right? On the far end, there’s a locked room. And why do you lock a room? Because there’s treasure in it!” “So you think we need to find a key?” “We’ve already got a key. But we need one more.” Ashlan showed Fay the key he was holding, which had protruding edges like a puzzle piece. It seemed to be half of a whole: put the two halves together to obtain a complete key. Was Fay imagining it—or had he seen something a lot like this? “You’re new in here, so you might not know yet, but there’s a bunch of area bosses wandering around this labyrinth, real nasty customers. Like, there’s this one on the first floor called the Golden Puffball. All I’m saying is, watch out. You can all be dead within about three seconds of the battle starting.” Ashlan sighed. “To beat it, you need to craft an item called the Celestial Nymph’s Fan that can send its God Bless attack right back at it. The catch is, to craft the fan, you need a Heavenly Cloud and Rainbow Silk, and those are both rare items. They hardly ever drop! We’re on the hunt for them right now.” “Uh… The Golden Puffball?” Fay asked. “Yeah. What, you know it?” “Uh-huh. We ran into it earlier.” “Hah! My condolences. The thing’s a beast, right? You’re like, the hell are we supposed to do about this?” “We took it down.” “……………Huh?” “We got past it. I mean, I didn’t do it; it was thanks to Nel.” “You what?!” Captain Ashlan whipped around to look at Nel. With a hint of an embarrassed smile, she reached into her bag and took out the golden key. “It, er, it was nothing. I was able to kick the God Bless attack back at it. Is this the other key you were looking for, Captain Ashlan?” “Holy hell! Yes! Yes, that’s it! Give it here! Uh, please!” Ashlan shoved the two keys together. Craft: Golden Key Fragment + Silver Key Fragment → Execution Grounds Key Execution Grounds? When Fay saw the name of the key that they’d crafted, he swallowed heavily. He had a very bad feeling about this. In a twisted, cruel dungeon like this one, the only thing that was likely to be executed at any execution grounds was— “All riiight! Now we can get going, people!” Ashlan said. “H-hold on, Captain Ashlan! I’m telling you, I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” Fay called to the other team’s captain as he raced down the hallway. Unfortunately, Ashlan didn’t hear him. He’d been wandering in here for nearly a hundred hours, and finally thought he had a way forward. He thought he was going to get to the next stage, the next level. Even if something in his head knew the need to stay cool, his heart was seized by the possibility of moving forward. After traversing several intersections and several flights of stairs, Ashlan announced, “Here, Fay, this is it!” He pointed to an extremely thick iron door. Eerie mist floated around it, and an icy wind blew through the area. “This is definitely, obviously, completely super dangerous!” said Pearl. “Yeah, I don’t like the looks of this,” Nel agreed. Both of their faces were bloodless. It was the Execution Grounds, after all. No doubt with a trap or a monster waiting to execute the players. “I hear you. But don’t worry so much,” Ashlan said as he delicately fit the key into the lock. They all heard the distinct click in the fetid air. “Pearl—it’s Pearl, isn’t it? You’re afraid there’s a big, bad raid boss waiting behind this door, but seriously, it’s fine. I haven’t been down here a hundred hours for nothing. Item-crafting knowledge wins out in a situation like this.” “Wha… What? Wait… Does that mean…?” “Fact: this Pure Bell I’m holding is a rare item that rings whenever there’s a threatening monster nearby. Additional fact: one of my teammates is wearing X-Ray Specs, which reveal any traps. And neither of those items is reacting. Which tells us what?” “No way! The execution-grounds thing is just a bluff to frighten players?!” “Bingo. All right, let’s open this door!” Captain Ashlan gave the door a good kick. It opened with a resounding creak to reveal a circular room some sixty meters in diameter. Along the wall were hundreds of candle holders, the flames of the candles in them flickering and dancing. “I’m not seeing any traps in here, Captain Ashlan,” one of the Blaze team members reported. “And my bell isn’t ringing,” Ashlan said, scanning the room. “See, girls? Nothing to worry about. Just like I said.” He was right—there were no obvious monsters or traps. Yet despite his optimistic pronouncement, he looked increasingly doubtful. “This is weird,” he said after a moment. “There’s no traps or monsters, but there’s also no doors or treasure chests or…anything. It’s just an empty room.” They’d come to a dead end. The door key crafted from the two hard-won halves had brought them to…this? That’s definitely not all there is to this place. There’s a gimmick, something we’re missing. A hidden door, maybe? Fay started feeling along the floors and walls, but didn’t find anything that seemed likely. “Whatcha doing, Fay?” Leshea asked, skipping over to him. “I mean, besides feeling every surface in the room?” “I’m looking for some sort of trick. Like maybe a hidden switch or something. Anything unusual.” “Why are you looking so hard when there’s a major aura right in front of you?” “Sorry?” Leshea pointed at Ashlan, who stood smack in the middle of the room. “Hmm? Something the matter with me, Lady Leoleshea?” he asked. “No, not you. There’s a different aura right where you’re standing.” Then Nel said, “Master Fay?” She had her eyes closed and her hand cupped at one ear. “It’s very, very faint, but I can hear breathing.” “You can?” Fay asked. “It sounds like something…sleeping?” “Eek!” Pearl cried and jumped back. “I j-j-just felt a very wet and slimy breeze on the back of my neck!” “Where, Pearl?” “Over here! Right behind me!” She pointed, like Leshea, at the center of the Execution Grounds. This was a closed room. How could there be a breeze down here? Yeah. It should be still. So what’s making those candles flicker? The candles had already been lit when they entered the room, the flames already fluttering. The flames were dancing. Nel had heard a sound like breathing. Pearl had felt clammy air on her neck. And then there was that aura. All the signs pointed to… “Captain Ashlan, there’s a monster in here!” “Huh? Fay, man, calm down. If there’s a monster in here, why isn’t my bell ringing? It proves there’s no threat!” “What if it were sleeping?” “……Huh?!” “Maybe that breathing sound is an invisible, sleeping monster. That would explain everything!” There was, in fact, a raid boss here. The name of the room, the Execution Grounds, had warned them. “We know for a fact that some of the monsters in this labyrinth sleep. The reason no battle has started is because the boss hasn’t woken up and noticed us yet. So there are two possibilities. Either this enemy is always invisible, or it’s invisible and invincible while it’s asleep.” Most likely the latter, Fay figured. If it were simply invisible, then it almost certainly would have already picked one of the nearly twenty people in its room to smash. It seemed more likely that while it was asleep, this monster was effectively treated as if it didn’t exist. (That is, they could pass through it.) That would also explain why the Pure Bell didn’t ring. “Huh. So we’ve gotta wake this bad boy up before we can fight it?” Ashlan said. “Oh! Oh my gosh! That’s it, Captain!” Pearl said, clapping her hands. “We just have to wake it up!” “Yeah, but how? Do we all shout at the tops of our lungs?” “No—you use an alarm clock!” Fay had crafted just such an item, the otherwise mysterious Alarm Clock. Leshea’s Reveille Horn might also do the trick, although it raised the question of why there were so many different items for waking up monsters. “Might as well give it a try,” Fay said, taking out his alarm clock. “Yeah! And I’ll blow this thing as loud as I can!” Leshea pulled out the trumpet and took a deep breath. “Captain Ashlan, Pearl, Nel? All of you stand back. I don’t think that raid boss is going to be in a good mood when it wakes up,” Fay said. “R-right, good idea. Everyone, stick close to the wall. Here it comes!” Ashlan said, and he and his team dropped back. Only Fay and Leshea stood there, their monster-rousing items at the ready. “Time for a wake-up call, Leshea!” “Let’s do it!” The alarm clock jangled. The trumpet yowled. And a tremendous light enveloped Fay and Leshea. The Sleeping Lion uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heaven and destroys the players. The players are destroyed. Their vision went dark. The next thing they knew, Fay and his three companions were back in the great hall. Almost as one, they said, “What just happened?” 3 A respawn. Apparently, the party had been wiped. That much, they gathered from the “in-game text”—but it hadn’t been much of a battle. “I am so! Sick! Of this difficulty level!” Pearl yelled, red in the face. “We just died in a literal second! Have you ever seen a game not even bother to tell you that you were damaged or attacked or whatever, but just say you were destroyed?!” “Welcome back, all of you!” the meep said. “Ooh, I’ll welcome back you!” Pearl snarled. Setting aside Pearl’s tirade for a moment… “Yep. That was a raid boss, all right,” Fay said. Even he looked a little tired when he smiled. Pearl was right: this was a bit overboard. Given the text’s use of the word “destroy,” it would seem to imply that the attack was impossible to evade or defend against. So they had a raid boss called the Sleeping Lion. Fay had a pretty good grasp on the general idea at this point. As far as he could tell, this thing slept in the Execution Grounds, and as long as it was asleep, it was invisible and invincible. Meaning we can’t do anything to it until we wake it up. Which we did, and I think we were right about that. It was after that that everything went south. They needed some way to deal with its Rage Arts. “Okay. Our progress as such is pretty good. Let’s go again.” “Fay? But that boss is still there,” Pearl said. “Yeah, maybe we can talk to Captain Ashlan about that. He’s been playing a lot longer than we have. Maybe he’ll know how to craft an item that can protect against that attack. I mean, there’s got to be something, right? We had to craft the alarm clock to wake the boss up, so we’ve got to be able to craft something that will take it down.” “Y-you’re right, that’s a good idea!” Take two. Down the hallway, past the horde of puffballs, defeat the Golden Puffball, get the key. By the time Fay and the others reached the meeting point, Captain Ashlan and the other members of Blaze were waiting. “Captain, about that boss…” Fay said, but before he could get another word out Ashlan replied, “The Countermagic Shield.” He sounded awfully sure of himself. “You said you crafted the Wooden Shield, right? Listen, a mirror and mithril can be combined to make Magic Alloy, and you can combine that with the Wooden Shield to craft the Countermagic Shield.” “We have one here,” said one of his teammates, holding up a shield that glimmered a pale silver. “Our analysis is that the Rage Arts used by the Sleeping Lion is some kind of magic—so this shield should be able to reflect it back. We want to equip everyone with one of these.” “Let’s go get some revenge,” Ashlan said, turning smartly on his heel. “I don’t care if it’s a sleeping lion or a sleeping tiger or whatever. We’ll show it that humans are smarter.” First, they would need components. Fay’s team was tasked with gathering fifteen Wooden Shields, while Ashlan and his crew got the Magic Alloy. Then they combined everything to make fifteen Countermagic Shields. “All right, everyone got their shield? Then we’re ready!” Ashlan called, holding up his own shining shield. Thence to the Execution Grounds… They kicked down the door and prepared to once again confront the raid boss. “All right, Fay! Let’s cut this bastard down to size!” “Sure thing, Captain.” Fay started the alarm clock. The monster woke up, and there was a terrible roar… The Sleeping Lion uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heaven and destroys the players. The players are destroyed. Their vision went dark. The next thing they knew, Fay and his three companions were back in the great hall. Almost as one, they said, “What just happened?” Apparently, the party had been wiped. Take three. The third time Fay and his group arrived at the meeting point, they found Captain Ashlan practically tearing his hair out. “The difficulty in this dungeon is broken! How can the Countermagic Shield not work against that thing?!” he was shouting. “We’re back, Captain Ashlan,” Fay said. “Oh, hey, Fay. This is nuts. That thing’s Rage Arts are turning out to be way more dangerous than I realized.” He slumped against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. “Me and my team were just saying that what we really need is a proper strategy conference. So it’s like, this thing is called the Sleeping Lion, right? So maybe it’s weak to sleep attacks. Maybe you can make it go beddy-bye. What do you think?” “It would probably just return to its initial state. Impossible to see, impossible to harm.” “Yeah, it figures!” Ashlan sighed dramatically. “So maybe the thing to do is beat it before it gets to use Rage Arts?” “Maybe, but it does kind of annihilate us within a second of the battle beginning.” “Maybe we could run outside the attack’s area of effect!” “The in-game text says ‘the players are destroyed,’ which makes me think it can’t be avoided.” “Gaaah! What are we supposed to do, then?!” Captain Ashlan was on the verge of tears, and even Fay was having trouble seeing any way through this. After all, they were dealing with a wildly overpowered attack that obliterated entire parties. “Nel, I don’t suppose you could kick this attack back the way you can with the Golden Puffball, could you?” “This particular attack? It’s invisible, so I would have to guess where it was.” She crossed her arms and looked grim. “If we believe the text that says it ‘descends from heaven,’ then maybe it comes out of the ceiling. If I could just figure out the timing…” “That’s it, kid!” Ashlan’s eyes were shining. “You kicked the Golden Puffball’s attack right back in its face! No problem, then! You just do the same thing to this Lion asshole!” “I… I mean, maybe…” “No maybe about it! Come on, everyone! This time, we’re gonna settle this!” So it was that for the third time they took the key and opened the door. Fay had the alarm clock ready to go. They had it down to a science. “Ready, Nel? I’m going to wake it up.” “Y-yes, I’m ready, Master Fay. Any time!” Fay set off the alarm clock. The instant he did so, Nel activated her Arise, Moment Reversal, and kicked her leg high into the air. “Yaaah!” The Sleeping Lion uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heaven and destroys the players. The players are destroyed except for Nel. “Welcome back, everyone!” “I am soooooo sorry!” They were back at the respawn point, the great hall. No sooner had the meep greeted them than Nel burst out with an agonized apology. “My kick worked, but it made me realize—that attack comes down on us like thousands of meteors. At best, I was able to kick away maybe one percent of them.” “Leaving the other ninety-nine percent to destroy us, huh?” said Fay. In this game, they stood or fell together. If even one member of your team died, the entire team would respawn. In most games, a larger group means better chances—but this place turns that convention wisdom against you. More players on your team becomes a liability. Nasty. But they had learned something: their Arises would work, even against a raid boss. The problem was that even if Nel could survive Rage Arts, the rest of them would still be slaughtered. “So what do you think we should do, Captain A—” “That freakin’ does it!” When they saw Captain Ashlan at the meeting point, his eyes were bloodshot and he was chuckling to himself. “If you just stand there, you die. Craft a defensive item, you die. Use your Arise, we die. There’s only one thing we haven’t tried. Kill it before it kills us!” “What? H-hey, um, Captain?!” “The best defense is a good offense! I say we craft the most powerful offensive items we can find and go in swinging! We take that thing out in the zero-point-one seconds after the battle starts!” He was off the deep end. Thus came take four. Door, alarm clock… “Yaaaaaah!” cried Captain Ashlan. “You sick freak! Taste my rage, how about that!” The Sleeping Lion uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heaven and destroys the players. The players are destroyed. Take five. Back at the meeting point. “Captain Ashlan…” “Please, Fay. Not a word.” The man who had dared to take on the raid boss had burnt himself out completely. He didn’t even have the strength left to slump against the wall; he just lay on the floor, spent. “If you just stand there, you die. Try to hit first, you die. Crafting doesn’t help, and an Arise doesn’t help much. What’s wrong with this monster?! That damn attack…” “It does feel like we’ve gone through all our options,” Pearl agreed with a sigh. “Nel described it as being like thousands of meteors, and I don’t think even my Teleportation abilities would allow me to escape the area of effect. Don’t you have any more ideas, Fay?” “I do.” “I should’ve known. Of course even you wouldn’t be able to—wait, you do?!” Pearl spun toward him. “Why didn’t you say so?!” “It just came to me. It took seeing that in-game text four times, every time we were destroyed.” “Yes? What about it?” “It says, ‘The players are destroyed,’ right? That’s pretty specific language.” It almost seemed to be deliberately limited to the players. Which led Fay to a possibility. “I’m thinking, maybe it doesn’t affect anything other than the players.” “You got any proof of that?” “Nel kicked the attack back, but the Sleeping Lion was fine.” “Huh?!” Nel’s eyes widened—now she was interested. “Y-yes! You’re right, Master Fay! In comparison with the Golden Puffball, I can see it. God Bless was able to defeat the Golden Puffball, but this attack doesn’t defeat the Sleeping Lion.” Nel’s Arise had seemingly enabled her to send some of the meteors flying back at their attacker—but it had no effect on the Sleeping Lion. Why? Because Rage Arts only targeted humans; nothing else was damaged by it. “We need something, an item that can absorb those falling meteors for us. The attack only works on humans, so if we could just protect our heads, it couldn’t touch us… Nel, you crafted something like that, didn’t you?” Fay said. “You mean…” “This thing!” Fay held up an item that could be found anywhere in the human world. An ordinary umbrella. The Ordinary Umbrella. All it did was protect you from things that fell from the sky. They’d wondered what use it could possibly be—well, they had just found out. “Ahhhhhhh?!” Pearl cried, pointing at the item in Fay’s hand. “Y-yes! Of course! Captain, that’s it!” “What’s it, kid? You think that umbrella will stop the Lion’s attack?” “Think? I’m sure of it, Captain Ashlan! Everyone get moving! We need to find wood and plastic for everybody as quick as we can!” They set about crafting Ordinary Umbrellas, and when everybody had one, they headed to the Execution Grounds for round five. Sixteen people filled the room where the Sleeping Lion slept. “Going to set off the alarm, Captain,” Fay said. “All right, Fay, go for it! Make that thing blare!” He activated the alarm clock, and the ear-splitting, timekeeping noise awakened the invisible raid boss. The Sleeping Lion uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heaven and destroys the players. The players are…not destroyed. So went the in-game text. The Execution Grounds were filled with the players’ cheers. “Yes!” “Yessssss! We did it! We survived!” Several of the members of Blaze threw their umbrellas into the air. “Hold that thought! This ain’t over yet!” Captain Ashlan shouted. The room shook with the creature’s roar, causing Fay to break out in a cold sweat. The monster was no longer invisible-invincible. A lion appeared before them with jet-black fur and a crimson mane. It stood some three meters tall, so large that a full-grown human would have to crane their neck to look up at it. “Look at the size of it!” Fay choked out. “The rest of you, get back—don’t get hit! Even one of us goes down, we all respawn!” Captain Ashlan bellowed. But he was preempted. “If we can see this thing, that means our attacks should work, right?” Up above, over even the black lion’s head, a former goddess flew, her vermilion hair flapping in the wind. She came down from directly above the monster, square in its blind spot, and drove her fist into its back. A number appeared where Leshea had landed her blow: 1. Leshea landed on the lion’s back. “One damage?” she said, uncharacteristically brought up short. “Oh shoot! I forgot! I’m really weak right now!” “……” The Sleeping Lion raised its head. Then it bucked Leshea into the air, raising one paw and slashing at her with sleek, brown claws. “Whoops!” Leshea twisted in midair, nimble as a cat, and dodged the swipe. The claws got within a hairbreadth of her. “Aww, my ribbon!” she said as the ribbon at her chest drifted away in two pieces. The razor-sharp claws had nearly torn her shirt open. She held it closed with one hand as she landed near the wall. “Our turn, guys! Let’s do it!” Captain Ashlan shouted, and as one, the members of his team prepared to attack the boss. His mages brought every kind of magic to bear. Fire, ice, lightning, and wind assailed the lion’s legs and face with the speed and ferocity of a machine gun. There was so much light that even from a distance, Fay was nearly blinded, and the shockwaves almost took his breath away. And yet… 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. The numbers that came up were all 1. They were doing only the most minimal possible damage. “Aw, what the hell?! How can all our attacks do one?!” Ashlan shouted. “……” Silently, the black lion stretched out its legs, as if the storm of magical attacks was no more irksome than a warm shower. “Fall back!” Fay shouted, and at the exact same second as the apostles began to retreat, the Sleeping Lion raked the floor with its claws. “The damage we do isn’t even scratching this thing!” From their perspective, the lion might as well have been invincible. This was a raid boss—who knew how many hit points it had? And the human attacks were only doing 1 damage. “I—I see it! I’ve got its remaining HP!” said a female apostle in something close to a scream. “And it’s 2,497,301!” She had equipped some sort of binoculars that allowed her to see the boss’s HP. “This will never work, Captain Ashlan! We couldn’t do that much damage in ten years!” someone else called. “Ugh! This stupid, stinking difficulty!” This boss seemed impossible to defeat without cheating. Even Leshea’s punch had only done 1 damage—no matter how weakened she was, that said something. This thing was probably set up so that all external attacks did only a single point of damage. The lion roared, then it raised its front legs high. “Everybody out of the way!” The Sleeping Lion uses Landmine Quake. All objects on the ground are damaged. The floor of the Execution Grounds began to break up. Stone turned to pebbles and then to dust. Anyone who didn’t leap into the air at that exact instant would be swallowed up by the shockwave and vaporized without a trace. “Dammit! Another of these unfair, OP attacks!” “N-no! Wait, Captain Ashlan!” said the girl with the HP-revealing glasses, pointing at the black lion. “It’s working! Its remaining life is down to 1,785,789!” “Huh?! Why the hell would it be—wait! Don’t tell me!” Ashlan sucked in a breath. “That attack said it hits ‘all objects on the ground,’ so it damaged itself!” This wasn’t like Rage Arts, which explicitly targeted the players. Landmine Quake was described as targeting all objects, and that included the raid boss, taking out a big chunk out of its health. That’s how you get through this! The players attacked, and the Sleeping Lion counterattacked, damaging itself in the process. “This is a battle of attrition! We have to make it attack us!” Fay said. “Everyone keep your wits about you—keep dodging its quakes!” Ashlan added. The mages resumed their onslaught, maintaining a distance from the Sleeping Lion. Every hit did minimal damage, but it was all about provoking another counterattack. The lion roared again and reared up onto its hind legs, the posture it took just before it unleashed its seismic smash. “Here it comes! Everybody jump!” The Sleeping Lion uses Landmine Quake. All objects on the ground are damaged. Everybody in the room jumped into the air. The shockwave from the quake raced underneath them, turning more of the floor into a dust cloud. “That’s a success, Captain!” the young woman called, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “The Sleeping Lion is down to 1,493,111 HP! Just another eight…no, seven times!” “You heard her! Just think of it like sixteen-person jump rope!” They were all leaping into the air in time with the attack—Ashlan’s metaphor wasn’t far off. If even one of them got out of sync, all of them would be destroyed. Meanwhile, they would have to dodge the Lion’s attacks and continue piling on the 1-damage magic hits. “This is one hell of a boss,” Ashlan said, sweat pouring down his cheeks. You couldn’t even blink with this creature—the 0.1 seconds your eyes were closed was too much to give away in this fight. The only way to know when the Landmine Quake attack was coming was to watch the Sleeping Lion at every moment. This is a test of endurance that wears away at your nerves. Everyone is under absolute pressure, knowing they can’t be the one to mess up. Fay felt like his eyeballs were starting to dry out. So did everyone else—unwilling even to blink as they focused on their foe. “Everybody jump!” The fourth attack came, then the fifth, then the sixth. The players were taxed to their very limits trying to endure the fight. At the same time, the Sleeping Lion continued to whittle down its own health with Landmine Quake. 1,210,000 HP, then 990,000, then 760,000, 540,000, 310,000, and finally 110,000. They lost track of how long, how many hours, this back-and-forth had been going on. “Remaining HP 5,981! This is it!” shouted the girl with the HP-revealing item. “One more time! If we can dodge one more attack, the Sleeping Lion will be out of HP!” “Everybody stay cool!” said Captain Ashlan, even though he was dripping with sweat. “We’ve only gotta do this one more time! Focus on avoiding its attack!” The black lion moved, rearing up again—the signal that Landmine Quake was about to hit. At the same instant, all sixteen people in the room responded, without even a word among themselves. Incoming! They all stood with their backs pressed against the wall of the Execution Grounds, ready to jump in the air the moment the shockwave approached. Ready to… “Agh!” cried someone from the corner of the room. It was the young woman with the binoculars, who had dropped her item and fallen to the ground. She’d been so focused on keeping track of the boss’s life total that she hadn’t noticed the trap directly under her feet. A large fissure had formed in the floor, which had finally given way under the stress of so many Landmine Quake attacks. She’d caught her foot in the gap. “Saki?!” Captain Ashlan turned, but it was too late. Fay, Leshea, and Pearl were already jumping into the air, and none of the other members of Blaze were close enough to help. Unable to get up, she wouldn’t be able to avoid the attack. When the quake hit her, she would die instantly—and everyone on the team would be forcibly returned to the respawn point. Not when we’ve come this far! They’d found the raid boss, solved the riddle of why it was invisible and invincible, and after much trial and error had even learned to survive Rage Arts. They’d whittled down 99 percent of the boss’s HP—and now they were going to have to do it all again? All this time, and they still wouldn’t beat this thing?! Captain Ashlan was gripped by a burgeoning sense of doom… But it was blown away as another young woman came to the rescue. “Outta my waaaaay!” she cried as she raced across the room, black hair billowing—heading straight for the massive black lion. “Nel?!” “…” She didn’t answer. She didn’t have time. Instead, she ran even faster. The Sleeping Lion roared and reared up on its hind legs, preparing to slam its front paws down and initiate the devastating shockwave known as Landmine Quake. Which meant one thing. “If it never brings those paws down, there’s no attack!” Nel jumped. She kicked her leg up, aiming for the lion’s forelegs as they descended. “Grrrraaaahhhhh!” The lion’s paws fell toward the earth. Nel’s kick rose toward the heavens. A tremendous roar split the air as the two collided. Fay remembered something. He remembered that before he had gone into this game, Dax, who had been Nel’s colleague in Mal-ra, had told him: “Nel is a fine apostle in her own right. I know she’ll be a valuable asset to your team.” Because she never knew when to give up. Even when she had lost three times and had to leave the gods’ games, she refused to be humiliated in defeat; she refused to listen to what other people said. Instead, she asked Fay, an apostle from a completely different city, to help her make a comeback. And now she was bringing that tenacity to bear on the Sleeping Lion. “Go the hell back to sleep!” she roared. Her Moment Reversal Arise could kick anything it was possible to kick, even a god’s power—and now her foot was aimed squarely at the lion’s paws and face. The raid boss yowled and stumbled backward. It was bad enough that 99 percent of its own health had been worn down by the repeated Landmine Quake attacks, but now it had had its attack literally thrown back in its face. “Did that stop it?” Pearl asked hesitantly, looking up at the massive monster as it swayed drunkenly. Every apostle there watched with bated breath. “………” Until, with something like a great sigh, the black lion collapsed to the ground, shaking the room. Nel landed back on the ground, breathing hard. “Huff… Huff…” As they watched, the Sleeping Lion’s body gradually grew transparent, as if becoming part of the background. It’s going back to sleep. When it was gone, the raid boss left behind loot: an item of pure crimson color called the Resurrection Bell. “Phew!” As everyone else stood in stunned silence, Fay wiped the sweat from his brow. “Captain Ashlan?” he said. “Y-yeah?” “Looks like we win. I vote Nel for POG (Player of the Game).” Finally it seemed to hit Captain Ashlan. “We won? I mean… We won! Helllll yeah!” Blaze shouted and jumped for joy. As they celebrated, Pearl grabbed Nel in a hug, overwhelmed with emotion. “Nelllllll!” she wailed. “Ack! P-Pearl?!” “We did it! We won! And it’s all thanks to you! Sending its own attack back at it? I would never have thought of that!” “G-gee, uh, you mean it? I didn’t really think, I just acted. I hardly remember what happened…” “Whether you remember it or not, the proof is right here! Look at this loot!” Pearl held up the crimson bell. “I think you should keep it, Nel!” “Oh… Hey, this bell looks like the one Captain Ashlan has.” She took the bell from Pearl and studied it carefully. “Judging by the name, you think it allows you to revive a dead player?” “What a great item! Try giving it a ring, Nel!” At that instant Fay, who had been listening to the two girls chat, got a very, very bad feeling. “It’s a trap!” he cried. “Nel, don’t ring that bell!” “What?” It was too late. She had already given the bell a shake. Jingle… The clear, sharp sound seemed to fill the Execution Grounds. And with a roar, the huge black lion reappeared. The bell had woken it up again. “N-n-n-no! Whyyy?!” Pearl said. “The bell woke it up!” Fay said. This raid boss could be awoken by any item that made a sound—a bell as well as an alarm clock. In short, the loot was its own trap, inducing players to fight the beast again. “The boss is back at full strength! 2,500,000 HP!” Saki shouted. “This is the worst, meanest, nastiest dungeon I’ve ever heard of!” Pearl exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!” Nel cried. They’d had just about enough of this dungeon. Just as they thought their hearts might break, however, there was a tremendous crash—and the ceiling of the Execution Grounds caved in. “I found you, Tiny Human!” A girl appeared, her silver hair whipping in the air. Her ethereal red eyes seemed to glow as she descended from the hole in the ceiling. “And now, I appear!” She landed, of all places, smack on top of the Sleeping Lion’s head. “Heh-heh-heh! Looks like I win our little game of hide-and-seek. Well, I should—I’m undefeated, after all!” Despite her crowing, sadly, Fay didn’t recognize her. “Um, sorry. Who are you?” She wore a T-shirt with the word UNDEFEATED scrawled across it, and a baggy jacket over that. She even wore a choker and earrings. She was pretty—like, really pretty—but her outfit was so, uh, unique that it was almost too much to take. Fay was sure that if he’d met this girl before, he wouldn’t have forgotten her. I do feel like I remember her voice. Who the heck is she? Yes, the sound of her voice tugged on something in his memories. “Excuse me? You couldn’t have forgotten me, the Undefeated!” “No way…” The sweet and utterly self-confident tone—an image flashed through Fay’s mind of a young woman in black. “Huh. I guess I lost. Let’s play again sometime! I’ll think up an even harder game for next time!” The shimmering silver hair. The large ruby-red eyes. Not to mention that word, “Undefeated,” emblazoned across her shirt as if to rub people’s noses in it. It all made him think of someone feared throughout the Arcane Court, the “undefeated god” whose games were said to be impossible. “Uroboros?!” “Yes! It is I!” the god in a girl’s form exclaimed joyfully. “I said we should play again sometime, but I haven’t seen you once since then. I’ve been sooo bored, so I decided to come play with you! How about you ditch this stupid game and come to my—” The lion roared. Uroboros was, after all, standing on its head. And the raid boss was feeling fit as a fiddle. They knew what was coming next. The fight had started, and that meant Rage Arts was inbound. The Sleeping Lion uses its Rage Arts: A light descends from heav— “Quiet, you.” Uroboros gave the lion a gentle bop.