“Looking at these marks, there should be Vampire Bats around. We have to watch out for those”, White Light declared.
“The Assassin Lizards will be more annoying”, Bloody retorted, pointing at a set of footprints on the ground that were almost completely brushed away.
Haven wasn’t the most original game when it came to creating common monsters, to be honest. Many of the smaller ones were just as generic as they’d be in any RPG. That also meant you pretty much knew what the monster was as long as you knew its name.
“I haven’t fought against an Assassin Lizard before”, Bloody Rabbit muttered to himself, looking around warily.
A futile effort, because Assassin Lizards were translucent and only appeared in larger caves, rather than the tunnels. They needed space to evade.
Ice quietly checked his inventory. One event had given them balloons filled with colour – they were supposed to be for a festival where you threw them at each other for fun, but players had realized they were incredibly useful to make the invisible Assassin Lizards visible. The developer had thought it was fun that the players noticed this and allowed it.
“I still have fifty-one balloons”, he reported calmly, earning a nod from Bloody who had done the same check.
“Thirty-four.”
“I have eleven”, White Light sighed. He had recently been hunting in an area with Assassin Lizards and used most of them. Even when overleveled, hunting blindly was troublesome.
Everyone looked at Dead Rabbit, who shook his head to signify he didn’t have any. In fact, he had never had any – he had used them all up during the event, throwing them at his friends. By the time the trick with the Assassin Lizards was found out, he had already wasted them all.
“Okay, so…” Bloody took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Considering this is a dungeon for a maximum of five people, it can’t be too hard. There should be around three to four common mob types, around two elite monster types, and a boss somewhere. Do Cave Olms still count as common?”
White Light shook his head. “They’re elite, but low-class. I imagine they’ll be in the same area as the Assassin Lizards.”
“Meaning we likely have Vampire Bats plus one or two more melee mob types on the way, and at least one cave area where we should meet the Cave Olms and the Lizards. This tunnel system probably leads to several caves, and the last one should have the boss that we don’t care about.”
Everyone nodded along.
This kind of guessing was pure experience, although there were guides explaining everything.
A dungeon never had an obvious difficulty level, but you could roughly scale them. Minimum levels and party requirements were a pretty good hint as to how hard a dungeon would be, and that difficulty was closely related to the amount of monster types you had to expect.
There were also special dungeons, for example those with a huge number of weaker monsters, or dungeons that were related to storylines with peculiar bosses. You could tell those apart easily enough, however.
A dungeon didn’t mean you had to finish it to leave. In a way, a dungeon only meant that there was a separate area where NPCs would not enter, which had certain restrictions and a wall that wouldn’t allow monsters to enter or leave.
That meant that you could use a dungeon entrance to run away from a wild monster, for example, but it would use up an entrance card. You couldn’t re-enter the same dungeon again before at least five hours of break had passed and could only enter a total of five a day.
Also, anyone entering would be teleported into a separate reality. If you weren’t in a party, you wouldn’t land in the same run, and people from beyond the invisible dungeon wall could not see you.
This dungeon wasn’t related to a special quest, and with its low player number that was allowed, they were all certain it wasn’t going to be too difficult. Even for their little assassin.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“The combination of those Lizards and an elite is a bitch though”, Bloody mumbled to himself. Assassin Lizards weren’t strong – but they were a hassle and elites were elites for a reason.
“P’w cba kbgglfv. Qf tjnf atgff gjcxfgr jcv atlr lr j cbgwji vecufbc”, Qtlaf Oluta mbwwfcafv. “Pa kbeiv yf clmf ab tjnf j tfjifg, yea P vbeya kf klii cffv bcf.”
Ktf fzqfglfcmf bo qijslcu klat jcv klatbea j tfjifg kjr j teuf vloofgfcmf, yea atfs kfgf gjgf. Qts? Dfmjerf tfjifgr kfgf wjufr. Qfjx wjufr. Ktfs mbeiv qgfaas wemt bcis tfji jcv yeoo jcv kbeivc’a regnlnf bc atflg bkc.
Good for them; they were very useful, making guilds go nuts over recruiting them and spoiling them like precious children.
“Yeaaaah. We aren’t going to play with a healer”, Bloody winced, putting a hand on Ice’s shoulder as a silent apology while they walked forward.
Bloody had created his own guild with his friends. It had grown kind of large due to his status as a ranker and the number of people he knew, which meant it also had a healer. One time, Bloody had taken the girl along to accompany him and Ice on a dungeon run.
It had been a disaster.
People that went through the hell of becoming a healer did so in order to get spoiled. And earn money, because there was an actual hidden market about selling their services. Anyway, healers had their own pride, and while Ice had been courteous, Ice was himself. A silent and overpowered mage.
The healer had ended up devastated seeing Ice casually use numerous spells like it was nothing and had ended up not logging into the game for a week, saying she needed some time to think about her skills. For the guild, losing its healer even temporarily was something they didn’t want to repeat.
After that, Ice had refused to play with another of Bloody’s guild members again. He still felt responsible for what had happened, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.
White Light looked curious, but he had an idea of what might have happened and didn’t ask.
About five minutes into the dungeon, the first enemies appeared. The Vampire Bats could heal by injuring their opponent, but otherwise they were only pesky smallfry. Ice stood the farthest behind, even behind Dead Rabbit, watching the three close combat classes deal with it. Dead Rabbit was unexpectedly the most useful due to his speed, even though the way he attacked had absolutely nothing in common with a killer in the shadows.
“You haven’t fought with Assassin Lizards before, so don’t get too much in the way, Dead Rabbit. Stick to the corners of the cave and make sure not to leave your back open”, Bloody declared when the tunnel began to open up to a larger cave. “Better yet, stand here in the entrance and keep enemies away from Ice. There’s no need for him to waste his mana. White Light and I will clear up the enemies.”
The mage nodded in approval and handed over his balloons. Given the size of the cave, there shouldn’t be more than a dozen of them, but Bloody was always going to be the one fighting them directly. Ice couldn’t throw the balloons at them from where he’d be. He might as well hand them over.
“Happy colour festival”, White Light shouted with an eerie smile, taking out the first balloon and dashing into the middle of the room.
There was only so much strategy you needed when you were an overleveled ranker entering a common lower-level dungeon. Usually you’d prepare traps and begin to lure the Lizards in slowly or find other ways to locate them, but in this situation, they might as well put themselves as bait.
The level difference aside, rankers were too used to enemy guilds sending assassins after them. The Lizards were clumsy compared to the players, and rankers honed their senses enough that they could react to the movement of air around them.
Of course this was the game playing a role – in reality, a human wouldn’t be able to react as smoothly. But in here, fantasy was real, and White Light stepped back easily when the first enemy tried to slash at him.
The colourful balloons began to fly, breaking open on the Lizard’s hard scales and scattering paint. Pretty neon colours turned the cave into a re-enactment of Splatoon.
Ice watched it like he’d watch a TV show – enjoying the sight, perfectly relaxed, quite different from the nervous Dead Rabbit whose hair stood on all ends as he tried to work out how to fight an invisible enemy.
Why still invisible?
They hadn’t given him any balloons, of course. Everyone learned like this at the start. You had to hone your senses!
White Light almost danced to escape the attacks of the Lizards that jumped down from the walls or tried to get a hit from within their hiding places. With colour everywhere, the Lizards had begun to become visible, long claws moving through the air like knives.
The first enemies had broken claws from where they hit against White Light’s sword – a personally crafted item with stats everyone would love to hear about.
Bloody was fighting with his own body, evading the sharp nails of the Lizard’s by twisting and turning. Most of his kills looked torn apart.
Scowling, Ice moved back another step. The difference in skill between the rankers and the guy in front of him couldn’t be more obvious. While they killed several enemies with ease, Dead Rabbit struggled against a single one. He had stabbed him countless times already.
“Why am I fighting an enemy like this?”, he howled. “I’m an assassin! I’m supposed to attack sneakily!”
“An assassin should still be able to kill their opponent in a direct fight. Are you going to run every time you’re discovered? What if your enemy is quicker than you? Don’t think this game is that convenient!” Bloody threw a single Lizard’s arm into Dead Rabbit’s direction, hitting the already half-dead monster on the head. It opened its mouth in anger, but no audible sound came out.
“But the Ice Emperor isn’t good at direct fights, either”, Dead Rabbit continued to complain. This time, White Light spoke up.
“You shouldn’t compare yourself to the best mage of the game. If he wants to, he could solo this dungeon. He has enough mana and skill to be able to do that – he can hold a fight on his own.”
The mage in the background didn’t join the discussion, but he gave a tiny nod to himself.
With how long he had fought solo, he had found methods to keep enemies at bay. He knew which skills were the most useful if the fight turned into a close-combat range, and how to turn it back into ranged combat. This only worked moderately well against players, but monsters were manageable. As long as he didn’t go hunt bosses, he could manage on his own. Level differences and items were his friends.
Everyone knew that the Ice Emperor was laughably low in the highscore list ofPvP, which wasn’t only due to being a mage. There were a couple of mages that weren’t bad at PvP, even if they’d never be on the top. He was simply unsuited for it, to the point that people stopped asking him for a fight anymore.
It was considered rude to ask the Ice Emperor for a ranked PvP match. It was like a ranker playing against a noob. It simply wasn’t fair.
Bloodless Sunset and White Light were more all-rounders that could deal well with both PvP and PvE. However, no one could deny that their strength shined the most if they had a suitable party.
White Light could stand in for a tank if necessary, but Bloody was a complete DPS. His race gave him higher agility that allowed him to evade attacks, his actual health and defense weren’t that high.
Ice knew that both of them were eyeing himself as a potential party member. The reason was his magic type.
Each magic type had its own use. There were only three basics, with some rare hybrids.
Water was a buff-type magic that included healing spells. A healer would learn to use it. Because this type of magic gave the water it used a special property, it lost all of its attack power – you couldn’t drown someone, for example, or turn them wet. Although it was called water, it was more a spiritual liquid thing. Many called it healing magic rather than water magic.
Fire magic was purely offensive. It was hard to control and absolutely unsuitable for any sort of crowd control due to its nature. It was a type of conjuring, like water, that created a fire out of nowhere.
On the opposite, earth magic was all about crowd control. If you were intelligent enough, you could use it to cause some damage, but that was more trouble than it was worth. This type used the surroundings – the earth beneath your feet.
Ice magic was a hybrid.
To be specific, a crowd control and damage hybrid. The combination made many mages drool.
The reason why the Ice Emperor had been able to learn that magic in the first place was a complete coincidence, as so many other things.
Once you decided on a type of magic, there was no true switching. If your new type wasn’t compatible, you couldn’t learn it – only a fire mage would be able to learn lightning magic, for example. They called it evolving rather than switching.
Before you decided on a type, you could learn some basic spells that were absolutely useless later on, but which were basically “without a type”. People sometimes called this phase “using wind magic”, because it could do things like lower the sound of your steps or make some items hover a bit.
Ice had been undecided about which direction to take and had spent his time perfecting the “useless” skills for fun, levelling quite slowly. One quest had acquainted him with a Moonlight Elf, who had praised his diligence and called him suitable for ice magic. When he had offered to teach the player, the young man had agreed.
Moonlight Elves were especially suited for learning ice magic, which was a troublesome condition because Moonlight Elves were the type to hide.
That said, humans with no or fire magic type could learn lighting magic – which also was a type of crowd control and damage hybrid and had similar conditions for learning.
Dwarves and beastmen had their own advantages. They couldn’t use magic.
“I think we are done”, Bloody declared some time later, throwing a Vampire Bat into a corner. They weren’t going to dismantle smallfry for loot.
“I don’t think there is anything useful here”, White Light confirmed. “We can continue on.”
Dead Rabbit awkwardly coughed and raised his hands. “Uhm, I’d like to dismantle the Lizards. I can use the material.”
“Oh, right. You’re still level 70”, Bloody groaned. “Fine. I’ll help you so it will be faster.”
In the group, Ice was the most proficient at dismantling the corpses. Haven’s monsters didn’t drop random loot, but only materials that a monster would logically have. That meant you could take smaller weapons and armor parts from the Assassin Lizard, as well as take them apart for their scales or claws.
Whether you were good at this or not depended on your own skills. Even a master wouldn’t get a good result if they were being sloppy, however this was another case where the game enhanced the player’s skill based on experience – the more often you dismantled something, the easier it would get.
Loot boxes were dungeon rewards hidden behind the bosses.
Author’s Note
The whole race-evolution thingy is not too important in this arc so it only gets mentioned at the side. The two (planned) arcs of this story have very different focus areas and also deal with different character groups. Do I… talk too much?
The actual main plot is gonna start soon, don’t worry. I just have to get some basics out of the way first.
Little Theater
White Light: “Your little brother is adorable.”
Bloody: “………….What do you mean by that”
Ice “Hm?”
Dead Rabbit: “Wasn’t it just a compliment?”
White Light: “What would I mean by that?”
Bloody: “…Forget I said anything.”
Bloody, putting his hand on Ice’s shoulder? 😏
The Ice Emperor being a noob in PvP, that contrast is so amusing 😂
ALSO. Are you saying White Light and Dead Rabbit are a potential side ship? 😆
I actually haven’t decided on any fixed side ships yet. I’ve got two in mind, buuuut. I’ll let the chars develop and see how it goes~
That’s smth I couldn’t do. I have to loot -everything- when I’m gaming lolol Even if it’s useless junk, you can still sell it… even if you already have too much money xDD
I’m waiting all the time for an unexpected event to happen :’D
Thx for the ch ٩( >ヮ<)۶
It’s a slow start. There’s just so much world… uh, game building I have to explain xD But! We are almost at the main plot’s start
No problem, I enjoy it :3 World building is important too. I meant it regarding their current dungeon xDD
Thank you for the chapter 💜
Thanks for the chapter! <3
I like the explanations. World building ftw 😊
☀🔸☀♦🔅☀🔅♦☀🔸☀
✨💧✨ Thanks ✨💧✨
☀🔸☀♦🔅☀🔅♦☀🔸☀
───── Foя тнє cнαpтєя
────────── from Jack
Really appreciate all the explanations the writer is putting in, thank you!