Chapter 65

Chapter Player.3 Complete Game Gods’ Games We Play 1 Lucemia, the Labyrinth of Death and Rebirth: the Execution Grounds, home of the Sleeping Lion, were set as the current respawn point for the players. There were two kinds of respawn. One was the “do-over” you got when your party was annihilated. The other was the “restart” that occurred when players dove in again from the human world. “Hello, and welcome back. I greet your return with gladness!” “Great… Me, I never wanted to come back here. But I couldn’t live with myself if I let Fay do it all himself.” Ashlan, captain of Team Blaze, heaved a great sigh to be back in this game. No sooner had he respawned in the Execution Grounds, though, than he let out a yelp of surprise. “Whoa!” It was the sheer number of crafted items that shocked him; they all but buried the room. Rare equipment like the Mirage Axe, the False Spirit Sword Vierge, the Crown of Destruction, the King Puffball’s Beard, Angel Pizaprin’s Sacred Garment, and the Final Battle–Use Weapon, the Megalith Rocket. There were rare summon items like the Sleeping Lion 3D Model and the Sphinx 3D Model. Rare consumables like the Cheater’s Dice, the???’s Blood, and the Level III Controlled Substance, Devil Wine. There were rare crafting components like Orihalcon, Scarletite, World-Seed Feathers, and Drakenail. The list went on. “All this stuff is rare as hell! How long did they spend finding it all?!” Ashlan swallowed heavily. Each and every one of the items in this room was way harder than average to obtain—you would have to take down nigh-undefeatable area bosses, going in knowing you might die dozens of times in the attempt, or otherwise work your way through some of the most trap-laden parts of the maze. “All right, where is he? Where’s Fay?” “Over here, Captain Ashlan! Right here!” There he was—Fay had returned to the Execution Grounds clutching a massive violin. “It’s a big help to have you here. Getting one hundred percent clear was going to be tough with just us.” “Yeah, okay. Fay, what the hell is that? You gonna put on a recital?” “It’s a loot item from defeating one of the area bosses deeper in. Defeating area bosses boosts your unlock percentage, so I think we need to try to take down all of them at least once.” “And what percentage are you at now?” “All of us together have gotten up to thirty-four percent.” The unlock percentage: Ashlan had already been briefed on what that number signified. Several hours earlier, Fay had returned to the human world via a save point. He’d called Captain Ashlan, who had been in a conference room in the Arcane Court building, and asked him for help in his plan to completely clear the labyrinth. “A hundred percent, huh?! When you told me, I thought you had to be joking.” Captain Ashlan took a slow look around the room. “But it looks like you meant it.” Along with the piles and piles of rare items, a huge map had been affixed to a wall of the Execution Grounds. Fay had made dozens and dozens of Clay Tablets, one of the craftable items, and put them together like puzzle pieces to form a map inscribed with information about Lucemia’s various zones. Which monsters appeared, what the area boss was, loot items, gimmicks and traps to be found there. All the information a player could ever want. A young man and woman sat carving away at the mural with a knife. “Hey, Ranios. There was a rare monster on the third floor of the northern area, right? What was it called? And what were the characteristics and loot item?” “It was the Dancing Scimitar. It drops the rare item Orihalcon when you beat it.” “Got it.” “Nayuta, about this intersection on the far left of the first underground level on the south side…” “That was a dead end.” “Right.” The guy was hulking and muscled, while the girl had dull red hair. Ranios, from the Steel Wall City, and Nayuta, from the East Asia City. Both the leaders of their cities’ respective rescue teams, and two people who had eagerly volunteered to help Fay in his full-completion attempt. And they weren’t the only ones. “Ezrace, you’re taking forever. Have you really been trying to clear the eastern side?” “I sure have, Nayuta!” The young man with the vibrant golden hair smiled, a bit embarrassed. It was Ezrace, the representative of the Ocean City of Fisshara. “There was this pit trap on the second floor over there. It turned out to be a super-complicated maze that took me eight hours to get through, but it only boosted my unlock percentage by 0.2 percent. Make sure you make a note of it. I have a separate piece of paper with the layout of the maze.” “Second floor, east side. Got it.” Nayuta scratched Ezrace’s info into the clay tablets. Captain Ashlan watched them for a moment, then said, “That is serious cooperation.” He couldn’t keep the note of admiration from his voice. “It’s all-hands-on-deck, is what it is,” Fay said with a wry smile. “I’ve been bringing in every apostle I can find in this maze. I’ve asked Captain Kilhiedge from headquarters for help, too, and he was more than happy to agree. He’s off scouting right now.” “Wow. Headquarters, huh? Hang on… Headquarters! That reminds me!” Captain Ashlan clapped his hands. “You’ve been in the maze all this time, so you wouldn’t know. Headquarters is on the move. Sounds like their guys finally decided to get their asses in gear—what with all the apostles still lost in here, they said.” “Their guys?” “You know—Mind Over Matter! The biggest-name team at headquarters!” “Really? Wow, that’s a relief.” The four people who constituted Mind Over Matter were the strongest team in the world today—many said they were the strongest team in all of history. They had a collective record of 7-1, including gods who, like Uroboros, had been considered unbeatable. The “Three Great Impossibles” used to be the “Five Great Impossibles,” and it was Mind Over Matter’s work that had knocked two Impossibles off that list. Their leader was Saint Heleneia—by all accounts, a girl in her teens, not so different from Fay himself. “If we want to completely clear this labyrinth, then I hope we can link up with them. They’d be about a hundred times more inspiring than I am,” Ashlan said. “I find you inspiring, Captain Ashlan.” “What, really?” “Yeah, so on that note, let’s have a strategy meeting. Anytime you get any rare items, bring them to the Execution Grounds here. I’ll take them for you.” Fay held out a small silver key. This item was the turning point; it was what would allow them to achieve 100 percent clear. “This is called the Treasure Hall Master Key, and it allows you to hold virtually unlimited numbers of items.” “Geez! Talk about OP!” “Plus, even if you get wiped out, you don’t lose your items. It’s serious stuff.” This was the loot item they’d received from Sphinx. It allowed them to tackle even the most dangerous trap zones without fear. “Holy hell! That’s, like, a…super, ultra item! Where the hell did you get it?!” “From a raid boss right near the end of the maze. It was all thanks to Uroboros that we were able to… Oh, right, that reminds me. Did you happen to see Uroboros while you were over there in the human world? She kind of got kicked out of the game, and I’m just hoping she’s all right…” “Yeah, she’s lounging around on your bed. The Chief Secretary saw her herself.” “My bed?!” “Yeah, with a thing of ice cream she got from the fridge. And the air conditioner on full blast.” “I’m glad she’s okay, but wow! I guess she’s making herself right at home…” Turns out Fay hadn’t needed to worry. He heaved a sigh. Just then, a young woman with an intellectual air—glasses and everything—came rushing up, out of breath. “We just made a huge discovery!” she said. This was Camilla, captain of Team Archangel. It had happened only moments ago: Fay and his group had rescued Camilla as she was being attacked by a horde of Zombie Puffballs, and he had recruited her as part of his maze-clearing effort. She’d already told him everything she knew about the rare items she’d crafted and the rare monsters she’d beaten. “It’s that crumbling wall in the north passage. If you break through it, there’s a secret tunnel! It leads to a whole new area. It’s full of a new kind of monster that looks like a dinosaur!” “Thanks, Camilla. We better hurry up and check out—” “We’ve made the biggest, craziest discovery!” Pearl interrupted, racing up. In each hand, she had a puffball, those fuzzy monsters. They should have been zombies, this being Mausoleum Mode—but in fact, they were ordinary puffballs. “Hang on, aren’t those…?” “We brought them back to life! From being zombies!” She hugged the puffballs close. “Remember how after the puffball spat on us, we were able to wash the stink off in the waterfall? So I had this thought…” “You washed a Zombie Puffball in the waterfall?” “Yes! And look! It went back to being a sweet little Puffle!” They’d just gotten another major clue. The maze was definitely designed so even monsters that appeared to be dead could be brought back to life. “That’s not all!” “Sorry to keep you waiting, Master Fay!” Nel and Leshea came up, each holding a puffball. “When we restored all the Zombie Puffballs to regular puffballs, they were so grateful that they showed us to a secret area, Puffball Village!” “Mm! We even received an audience with the King Puffball, and it immediately upped our unlock number by an entire percent,” Nel added. “You’ve already been and gone?!” While Fay had been back in the real world, his three companions still in the labyrinth had been working assiduously at clearing it. “As a sign of his gratitude, the king gave us the Puffball Crest. It means no puffballs will be hostile to us while we explore!” “Man, I wanted to see the Puffball Village… Oh well. Anyway, Captain Ashlan, I think you see what we’re doing.” Fay turned back toward the other team captain, who was eagerly studying the rare items. “We’re exploring this dungeon one piece at a time. I was hoping you could help us.” “Yeah, sure. Don’t mind if I do.” He gave Fay a tired smile. “Just leave it to me. I didn’t spend more than a hundred hours wandering around down here for nothing!” 2 In the divine Lucemia labyrinth, the “unlock percentage” probably corresponded to anything from several hundred to several thousand gimmicks, as could be guessed from the way the number went up by tenths of a percent. There were rare items to discover and craft. Rare monsters (like Angel Pizaprin) with unique events. Area bosses (like the Golden Puffball or Dark Puffball) to defeat. Raid bosses (like the Sleeping Lion and Sphinx) to overcome. Even seemingly ordinary monsters like the Zombie Puffballs could be tied to secret events, like what happened when they were all washed in the waterfall and returned to being regular puffballs. “I think the hidden events are going to be the toughest part,” Leshea observed. Four sets of footsteps could be heard walking down the hallway, and Leshea was bringing up the rear of the group. “The area bosses can be hard to defeat, but if you just keep trying respawn after respawn, you can eventually do it. I think the biggest hurdle to getting a hundred percent unlock is going to be finding all the hidden events.”