Early in the morning, Emily and I were huddled together in the floating cottage, trying to come up with a strategy to tackle the dungeon’s increased difficulty.
“Hmm... I’m still not seeing a pattern in these gate conditions,” I muttered.
We’d recorded every single floor along with their directives, but at this point, there wasn’t a clear pattern. Back when we were overhunting Golden Bunnies in the Sky Fissures, it had become a breeze once we figured out how it worked. Incidentally, the Golden Bunny Festival had apparently been a bug! It was fixed shortly after, but we’d already used it as much as we needed, so I didn’t mourn.
“Me either,” Emily replied. “After B51F, we’ll probably have to switch to Special or Super Special Warp Stones instead of using the normal ones. I guess that’s why they added multiple kinds of stones.”
“Guess so. Special Warp Stones have double the time limit at one hour, so I guess that means we’ll have to go double the floors to match. Ten it is, then.”
“I think you’re right. The number of Special Warp Stones you can have is pretty limited, so the other parties should be slowed down too.”
“Yeah. You gotta either win one in a minigame stall or trade items you get from Aswarth’s.”
“Correct. And in the minigames, you need to pull out a high score, or you won’t get one. Each game can only give you one Special Warp Stone, and each person can only get one per day. They really made them hard to obtain.”
I shrugged. “Better to have just a few than to have none, I guess. Let’s try to get Special Warp Stones from all the stalls, even if we can only get one per day.”
“Okay. I know the two of us can do it!”
“Yeah! Now, that aside, the rest of them will have to be exchanged using items we find in the dungeon.”
“Sounds like people will be using normal Warp Stones to find items to trade in for Special Warp Stones, huh?”
“For those who can’t get high scores in the stalls, I think that’s the only option. They’re a lot more important than I expected.”
“Mmhmm. Dungeoneering just to find Special Warp Stones is a heck of a time loss, so using other sources to cover your costs is way faster.”
“The problem now is: how many floors does the dungeon even have?”
“Yeah... As long as we don’t know that, I guess all we can do is get as many Special Warp Stones as we can, huh?”
“Either that, or we figure out a way to speed things up so we can go ten floors with a single Warp Stone.”
“I think with our current comp and gear, we’re limited to seven or eight at best. And that’s even if we get lucky gate conditions.”
“Akira’s coming back today, so that should raise our firepower a little. Our current sword dancer doesn’t even attack.”
Pacifist vegetarian that he was, he would never attack foes. I had to wonder how the heck he got his level so high; he must’ve leeched EXP off of his parties along the way. Though that just begged the question of how he got a party to let him leech.
“Well, that’s Ryuutarou’s playstyle. Who knows if he’s role-playing, or what? Gamers have fun in their own ways, so.”
“Heh. What kind of role-play would that be, I wonder? Hahahaha...” Clearly he was role-playing an exhibitionist, but I was hesitant to just tell Emily that, so I intentionally gave an evasive reply.
“I could never do it, so I do kinda envy his freedom. Not that I want to be like him, of course.”
“Yeah. As long as you’re getting paid, you’ve gotta put on a respectable performance, right?”
“Yep. I’ve gotta land among the top players, or I’m in deep trouble. It’s also a matter of my reputation.”
“Sounds pretty rough, in its own way.”
“Any job is like that, I’m sure. But when you’re a pro gamer, it does add a new layer of difficulty. That said, I’m the one who chose to do it, and I’m glad I did! Summertide is kinda like a vacation, so it really gives me a chance to let my hair down and have fun.”
Emily lifted her arms up and stretched. Then, she smoothly leaned against my shoulder.
“It’d be so nice if you joined the team, Ren. You should give it some honest thought. I could introduce you to them!”
“Yeah, no way. I can’t speak English for the life of me.”
“It’s okay. I can speak Japanese just fine, anyway.”
The two of us continued chatting away until suddenly, Akira materialized in the cottage.
“Good morniiing!”
Contrary to her smile and sickly sweet tone, she aggressively slammed herself down on the couch, making a loud noise.
That couch sure had some plush cushions. Woohoo...
“Uh, hey. Morning, Akira.”
“Ooh, hey, Akira! It’s been a while!”
“Yes, that it has. Let us be productive today, shall we? I’ve been anticipating this for some time.”
Brr! Dang it, there’s that dark aura emanating from her again!
Emily had some ungodly resistance to the dark aura, so she was perfectly calm. “Hey, Akira? You don’t need to be jealous of me and Ren or anything. We’re just like this because we’ve been friends forever. Besides—”
“What are you talking about? I’m not jealous. It’s cool; don’t worry about it.” Akira smiled, but Emily’s claims were clearly falling on deaf ears.
Urgh. If they don’t get along, that’s gonna be a bit problematic for me. Will we be okay in the dungeon with this much tension?
Feeling a little uneasy, we headed off to Aswarth’s. Today’s party was Akira, Maeda, Yano, Emily, Shizuku, and me. This was Akira’s first time in the dungeon, so we started off with a normal Warp Stone to let her test the waters.
I was partly hoping that switching out Ryuutarou for Akira would have enough of an effect to let us break through the ten-floor barrier, but if all went well, we might even find the item necessary to trade in for a Special Warp Stone.
As far as I could see, the developers intended for Special Warp Stones to be used for runs past B51F. But if we followed their intent, we likely wouldn’t win this race. If we could break through ten floors with normal Warp Stones while everyone else was wasting time farming Special Warp Stones, then we could truly lead the pack. Of course, I didn’t mind using the Special Warp Stones we had so far, but I absolutely wanted to avoid going into the dungeon just to do extra farming.
I had believed that once my best friend returned, we would be able to breach the ten-floor barrier. Alas, things could never be so simple!
“Ultimate move!”
Akira and Emily began their ultimates at the same time.
“Cross Crescent!”
“Crimson Calamity!”
Akira’s slashes and Emily’s flames slammed into the Frozen Lizard at the same time, killing it with ease.
Now that’s what you call overkill!
If you wanted to successfully make it through ten floors in the strict thirty-minute time limit that a normal Warp Stone demanded, you needed some real efficiency. We didn’t have the time to waste any of our precious AP on overkilling, as that would lead to a net time loss.
Akira and Emily knew as much, but they just couldn’t get in sync, leading to a whole lot of unnecessary clashing. Not just in terms of timing their ultimates or arts, but also in terms of timing their healing and which directions they moved in.
“Aah! Sorry, Akira. I messed up.”
“Oh, no. I should apologize.”
Neither of them was doing it on purpose, but we were losing more and more time. At this point, it wasn’t all too different from having Ryuutarou here... for the most part.
It has been 30 minutes since you entered. You will now be booted from the dungeon.
The system message came, signaling the end of our run. At this point, we were at B57F. It had been a pretty rough ride. Even worse, we hadn’t found any items to exchange for Special Warp Stones. In other words, one of our five attempts at Aswarth’s today had ended in failure.
“Aww. It’s already over,” Emily said, disappointed.
Akira was equally bummed. “It feels like thirty minutes isn’t anywhere near enough.”
I had to agree. “Yeah. Though I think we did have bad luck with gate conditions there.”
Shizuku hummed thoughtfully. “Takashiro, I believe thirty minutes is too strict a time limit. Maybe we should use a Special Warp Stone; if anything, perhaps you could even use the Super Special Warp Stone I gave you.”
“Nah, I think using the Super right now is a waste. We’ve got four Special Warp Stones, so how about we use one of those for now?”
Incidentally, we had won a few more from the stalls.
Emily nodded. “Good idea. Let’s do it.”
“Sure,” Akira said. “It’s all you, Ren.”
“Sounds a-okay to me!” Yano chirped.