Once they'd located their Guild Home, they went inside, scoping out the interior. There
were tatami floors in the private rooms, and the common space had nothing in it but
a sunken hearth and charcoal stove. A good match for the fourth stratum's traditional
Japanese vibe.
As they finished exploring for the moment, Sally noticed the rest of their guild had
logged in.
"Hey, Maple, looks like everyone's online."
"Should we go help? I can't do much but keep them safe with Martyr's Devotion, but…"
"That's more than enough! C'mon."
Deciding that further exploration could wait, they flitted back down to the stratum
below.
With Maple's angel form keeping them safe from harm, Mai and Yui's barrage of
piercing attacks made shockingly short work of the boss fight.
"I… should have known we'd be useless…"
"Do what I do, Chrome," Kasumi said, also idly watching the golems go down. "Tell
yourself you're conserving energy for exploring the new map."
"There'll be new materials to check out. Can't wait," Iz said. "Hopefully the monsters
aren't too tough."
"I could help with that. More than I am here, anyway…," Kanade said, putting his
Rubik's Cube away.
"I'll take you up on that."
The four spectators knew how full-guild boss fights worked by this point. As soon as
the short fight was over, Maple waved them onward, eager to explore, and they all fell
in behind her.
As they set foot on the new stratum, Maple Tree's members went their separate ways,
everyone exploring for themselves.
The plan was to report back later, share information, and learn the lay of the land in
this new town.
Maple was on her own, head swiveling this way and that as all the new sights and
sounds fought for her attention.
One road led her to a red torii gate with a sign on it displaying only a ceremonial kanji
for the number one.
When she tried to pass through it, a voice demanded her access permit.
"Um… I'm allowed in, right?"
She slowly stretched a foot forward and, when nothing happened, hopped across the
threshold.
"Oh! That's right, I do have a permit. How far does it go, again?"
After remembering that ranking in the last event had given her surprisingly farreaching access privileges, Maple continued on her merry way.
This was how the fourth stratum was structured. Approaching the center of town
required access permits for the torii gates.
Players without any permits would have to complete quests before they could
progress further. Exploring right away was a luxury reserved for the champions.
And the farther in you went, the higher the odds of finding good equipment and skills.
For a fee, NPCs would carry you via gondola or rickshaw to preset locations. Maple
decided to board one of the latter shortly after crossing a gate with the ceremonial
kanji for two. She did still have a lot of ground to cover, but mostly, she just wanted to
ride one.
"So fast! And the breeze feels great!"
It was infinitely faster than Maple's walking speed, swiftly hauling her deeper into
town.
When she disembarked, she found herself outside the gate marked SIX.
She tried stepping through, but a wall of pale light suddenly appeared and barred her
path. Maple's access permit had the kanji for five on it, and evidently, she could
progress no further.
"Aw… that tower's still a long way off. I wonder how you raise your access rank?"
Maple gave up on moving forward for the moment and ducked into a nearby shop.
"Hellooo… oh wow, there are so many kimonos!"
Everything inside looked like something Kasumi would wear.
"I guess these clothes are a better fit for this town…"
Maple decided to change her outfit. She could easily change it again if she got in a fight,
so she unequipped her shield and short sword, switching to tourist mode.
She picked a purple kimono—matching her Hydra's poison—and left the shop
wearing it.
"Where to next?" she said, looking very pleased with herself.
"Next" proved to be a shop filled with furniture and home goods.
A male NPC was seated at the back—the shop's owner.
Inside, there were old vases, hanging scrolls, and low tables as far as the eye could see.
Everything here could be used to decorate their Guild Home.
"Are these supposed to be super fancy or something? They're definitely expensive,
but… I don't really know."
Maple looked over the wares, but lacking an eye for antiquities, she soon gave up and
turned to go.
Then the old owner called out to her. "Little lady, won't you have a look at this urn
before you go?"
"Me? Hmm… I dunno…"
Urns didn't exactly get Maple's heart racing, but if he'd gone to the trouble to pick it
out for her… She decided it was safer to take a look. Better than wondering what if
later.
"Over here…"
The owner opened a door in the back, beckoning her into a room with nothing on
display.
Maple followed and spotted an urn with a lid, one small enough to fit on the palm of
her hand.
"Is this it? Hmm… yeah, not really my style."
But then a blue screen appeared in the air in front of her.
"Huh? A quest?!"
That changed everything.
Most quests came with minimum stat requirements, and since Maple had only raised
defense, she didn't get to do many. She wasn't about to blow this rare chance.
She hit the ACCEPT button so fast she didn't even have time to read the screen.
"Good! Try to be the last survivor," the owner said—and removed the lid.
Maple was instantly sucked into the urn.
"Wait, whaaat?!"
Maple tried to recall her brief glimpse of the quest title but drew a blank.
She had no idea it was called The Urn-King.
For a moment, Maple was in the air… then she landed hard on her butt.
"Owww! Wh-where am I?"
She looked around.
It was dark, and the ground was flat. In the distance, she could see tall, curved walls
made of… something inorganic. It was too dark to see the top, so all she could tell was
that it continued way up; there was no sign of an exit.
And the zone itself was so big, she felt reluctant to walk the entire length of it.
"…Something's coming closer?"
Maple put a hand to her brow, squinting. She could make out solid-looking purple
scorpions and centipedes in the distance. There were even some spiders with what
seemed like thick carapaces. And they were all scuttling toward her.
And moving quickly, to boot—they were already looking much bigger than when she'd
first spotted them.
"Aha! So I just have to beat all of them. I get it now!"
She quickly reached for the sword at her hip.
"Eep?! Wh-where is it?!"
She had still been in tourist mode when the battle started, meaning her shield and
weapon were both currently stowed away in her inventory.
"Uh-oh… uh, uh…"
She quickly tapped the air, pulling up the menu.
But she was in such a rush, she accidentally hit the wrong item, and the lost time that
blunder cost her only made her panic harder. The fastest scorpion had Maple trapped
in its pincers before she could hit the EQUIPMENT CHANGE button.
"No, don't! Not yet! Time-out!"
Now involuntarily airborne, she was trapped—but the monster's attacks also didn't
hurt her. The pincers ground against her sides, and the scorpion slammed its poison
stinger into Maple, but to no avail. Regardless, none of this was helping her calm down.
"Stop! Put me down! I dunno what to do!"
Maple herself was fine… but her brand-new kimono was not so lucky.
"You're ripping it! Aw… blegh! Don't drip nasty poison on me!"
A centipede had reared itself up and was hovering above her, dripping purple goo all
over her—which did absolutely nothing to Maple.
But it was definitely messing up her equipment.
She tried again to swap gear, but before she could, her kimono shattered in a shower
of light. It had never been designed to be worn in battle.
"Aw…"
Maple quit struggling, letting her legs dangle limply. Her cheeks puffed up as she
started sulking. There was no longer any need to change gear fast, so she took her
time, letting the noxious gunk drip off her.
Back in her all-black gear, she twisted her shield as far as it would go, tapping it on the
scorpion's claw. At last, she was finally free.
"Wow, there's a lot of them," Maple muttered. Another spurt of purple gunk splattered
on her head.
They'd crowded in while she was trapped. Everywhere she looked, there were
monsters—and most of them were poisonous.
"Argh, I'm gonna exterminate all of you!"
Mourning the loss of her kimono, Maple summoned her Predators, then used Martyr's
Devotion.
"Full Deploy!"
There was a metallic clunk, and Maple bristled with the Machine God's armaments.
"Commence Assault!"
Artillery fire rained down on the monsters… and bounced right off their thick shells.
"Wha—?!… Is magic the only way to hurt them? But I bet poison would be even more
useless against these guys…"
All of these monsters had purple shells. Even things that usually didn't have shells, like
the snakes! Maple looked around and made a face.
"They all look tanky. That's gonna be a pain!"
Maple's attacks—and those of her Predators—mostly landed on the scorpion closest
to her.
That flurry of hits cracked the carapace, exposing the soft flesh underneath.
"Oh, good! That got through faster than I expected. Saturating Chaos!"
Maple unleashed a monstrous maw that turned the scorpion into a spray of light.
The monsters didn't seem to have much HP, but they made up for it in numbers.
And her Predators were coming under constant attack, so this was going to take a
while.
"Oh!" Maple said. "First, let me put the Predators away…"
When they were gone, she aimed all her gun barrels at the ground, rocketing skyward.
"Syrup!"
She summoned her pet in midair and promptly Giganticized it.
Then she had it hover below her and dropped it down onto its back.
"Eh-heh-heh! Thanks, Syrup."
She patted its shell, then gave the next order.
"Um, open wide?"
Obediently, Syrup opened its mouth, and Maple put her feet inside. It wound up
holding her by the knees.
"Good, good."
Syrup had been flying straight and level, but now she had it hover at an angle so that
they were perpendicular to the ground.
With Maple still dangling from Syrup's mouth, all her artillery barrels were now aimed
directly at the ground.
"Commence Assault! First, I've gotta crack their shells."
Lasers and bullets rained down from above.
"I feel like a crane game…"
Maple used her Psychokinesis to move Syrup in circles around the field, carpetbombing everything below.
She had a good view of the ground and could easily tell if the monster shells were
cracked or not; she kept moving and kept firing.
"All righty… Now I just have to drop down and finish them off!"
There was no more need for her to stay floating, so she put Syrup back in her ring,
flipped through the air, and landed feetfirst.
"Time to mop up! Here I come!"
The only response was the sound of monsters screaming as they exploded into
showers of light.
With the shells gone, Maple could easily damage these monsters.
And since none of them could hurt her, she handily wiped the floor with them.
"Okay! Last one!"
When her final bullet struck home, the world instantly went black—and then she
found herself back in the shop.
"The owner's gone? Whoa!"
The Quest Complete panel had just popped up.
It gave her a new skill.
"Bug Urn Curse? What is that?"
Bug Urn Curse
Applies a 10% instant death chance to all poison attacks.
This is unaffected by poison resistance skills.
"Oh… oh? Wait a minute… That means it ignores Poison Nullification, right?"
There had been a noticeable uptick in players and monsters with Poison Resist or
Poison Nullification, which had made Hydra a lot less useful, but this Bug Urn Curse
gave her a chance to one-shot those players. Poison Nullification no longer guaranteed
their safety.
"I'll have to try it out soon. But for now…"
Maple left the deserted shop and dragged her feet over to another.
"Ugh, I gotta buy it again…"
Mourning the death of her kimono, she purchased another identical one.
"Well, I'm just going to enjoy the hell out of this one!"
She decided the sacrifice had been worth the skill she'd learned and headed back out
dressed to the nines once again.