DAY 119
AFTERNOON
As much as I appreciate my Japanese roots, I’d trade for Western cheerleaders over traditional cheer squads any day.
A KINGDOM DUNGEON
I USED APPRAISAL on the item the level 36 Armored Queen Ant dropped. “Piercing Drill Sword: Speed, Strength +30%. Adds piercing damage to stab attacks (large). Equipment Fracture (large). +ATT.” Yoooo, that’s like frontier-level strong. My sole complaint: We had no drill girls to give a drill sword to.
“I’m surprised how many monsters we’re encountering and how strong they are. Maybe this is a big dungeon after all.”
The average monster strength made me assume this was a small to mid-size dungeon. We’re talking fifty, sixty floors tops. It also lacked the appropriate big dungeon feel—the inviting yet sophisticated big dungeon ambience. Y’know?
The ant’s hidden room’s treasure chest produced another rare find: “Gale Cloak: Speed, Dexterity +30%. Wind Element Multiplier (large). Wind Armor. Wind Blades. Gale Winds.”
“Maybe this is a big dungeon. You’d think the monsters would be stronger and the equipment would have cooler Effects… Still, I should thank my lucky stars it wasn’t a Fail Cloak. Between being a NEET, a Shut-In, a Loner, and jobless, I have it bad enough! The last thing I need is a Failure title to seal the coffin on my social reject status.”
Jiggle jiggle.
At least I confined Entanglement’s deadly self-destructive side-effects into a sliver of a segment of a smidgen of a second! Talk about innovation. Or optimization. Or maybe just downgrading. Because ouch, did that self-destruction hurt.
“Why is the beater-upper becoming the beaten up? It’s inconceivable! Unbelievable! Accounts receivable? It’s so irrational and irreconcilable it makes me downright irritated. I need a good, long rest with my head in someone’s lap to calm down. On second thought—my daily encounters with feminine thighs only contribute to the self-destruction. It’s not exactly ideal to be so beat up I can’t move when luscious thighs dance across my immobile field of vision…”
The moment I buried my face in a girl’s thighs, the real battle began—but I was still too injured to move! But then again, the dungeon emperors only let me rest my head in their laps because I was injured, so there was just no winning.
“Maybe I should have an Injury Orb to complement my Healing Orb. But the mood-lighting chandelier it came bundled with might’ve been a bit much… The Healing Orb is very good at its job, but does it really need a whole chandelier? It’s just too much. Too extra. Not to mention too big!”
Wiggle wiggle.
See, I was talking about the “Mood Lighting Chandelier: Amplifies and spreads the power of up to four orbs” that I’d found on the lowest floors of Sleeping Beauty’s dungeon. I’d slotted the Revival Orb, the Antidote Orb, and the Regeneration Orb into the chandelier’s three corner sconces. Then, for the pièce de résistance, I’d popped the “Curing Orb: Holds dominion over curing” into the central sconce. The chandelier had lit up with a gorgeous, otherworldly ephemeral glow. It’d been…a lot. Not the kind of thing I’d wanted to lug around, so I hung it in the eroticathedral and left it there.
“I wish I could’ve brought it home with me, but it was way too big and bulky. I get building a campfire in a dungeon to take a quick rest, but a friggin’ giant chandelier? No thank you. Leaving it in the eroticathedral was the best choice. We don’t need any mood lighting in our dungeon delving. Too much mood lighting, and the ‘quick’ rest isn’t so quick after all, know what I’m saying?”
Bobble bobble.
Truly, the Mood Lighting Chandelier and the eroticathedral had been made for each other. That luminous liability deserved to be housed in a place of soaring ceilings and swooping buttresses and the eroticathedral, no longer sucking the Theocracy dry of magic power, needed a proper light source.
“If the chandelier’s healing powers don’t bring in foot traffic, then I don’t know what will. That’s where the sexy nun habits come in. There’s nothing like legs to bring people in hand over fist! I’d go down on my knees for costumes like those any day.”
The church needed a steady source of income, right? Otherwise, they’d have to take out loans to pay the renovation fees.
Anyway, I realized my chances of making it back to the frontier by nightfall were very slim. If this was a big dungeon, like I feared, I would be here all night. It wouldn’t matter if I collected enough spellstones to buy the inn itself if I never got to use them. Nor could I turn back now. Any big dungeons had to be destroyed for fear of monster stampedes. And who was more fit for the job than me? No one, that’s who. It took a full troop of frontier soldiers to clear the opening floors, and anything past that was beyond the handling of normal folks.
“I have a hunch this is a big dungeon, but that doesn’t fit the facts.”
“Is old dungeon. Been around, for, seventeen years. But little magi, in soil and air. Hasn’t grown much, yet.”
“Agreed. Not enough magi to grow. But old. Old dungeon.”
“Old, not strong.”
Wobble wobble.
Huh. Were those a thing? Old, slow-growing dungeons? Maybe so. There was that one dungeon in the frontier that grew a ton of floors with zero warning. It wasn’t that old, but the frontier was so thick with magi that that sort of thing could happen. The frontier was worse off than I thought… The frontier army, half the First Division, and the Adventurers’ Guild could do little more in their combined efforts than slow the dungeons’ growth. Small wonder these Kingdom dungeons were neglected and kept growing.
“Big dungeons are spawning in the frontier as we speak. Sounds like a job for us!”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Mm-hmm. Jiggle jiggle!
The bigger issue was the darkness—but I could worry about that later. I had a dungeon to clear first. I could walk again, and as long as I didn’t overextend myself, I wasn’t going to spontaneously combust or anything. My Skills were painful and frightening, but what else was new?
“It’s awfully ironic that going full throttle is easier to control because I can’t moderate or fine-tune my fighting. Maybe my attacks only work for a split second, but my body can only hold itself together for a split second, so it all works out in the end.”
My recovery time was too long. But at least I could use that recovery time to work out the sweet spot of minimum self-destruction, minimum movement, and maximum output.
“Hmm…”
Wiggle wiggle.
I experimented as I walked along. Wuxingquan’s kata were simple. No fancy kicks or jump attacks—just cold speed, raw power, and a focus on taking down opponents as fast as possible. All advancing, minimal dodging. Every move was to be delivered with the speed of a lightning strike. The offense provided its own defense, striking with spiraling force and thus repelling incoming attacks. My staff whirred like a gale wind, wreaking mass destruction and smashing whatever was unlucky enough to be at its receiving end.
“Hiiyah?”
Blub blub.
Wuxingquan was precision incarnate, logic taken to extremes. It was just like M-san always said: “If a single hit leaves you dead, why not leave destruction in your wake?” Yes, wuxingquan was truth itself, offense and defense both, an ancient art distilled from rationalism and the universal laws of combat to deliver certain lethal force.