Maple made her way south, only occasionally getting tripped up by skeletal hands
around her ankles. Eventually she found a house every bit as big as the one she and
Sally had visited.
"Hngg, I'd love to check it out, but I can't use Atrocity inside… Should I?"
She waffled a bit, then decided to go in anyway.
"Hello, the house! Gosh, it's huge."
The entrance hall was certainly imposing.
A sweeping staircase led up to the second floor and down to the basement below.
On the far wall was a portrait of a gentleman—worse for wear but still recognizable.
"Hmm. Where should I go first? The basement? Basements seem like the natural place
to stash things."
Without a glance at the first-floor doors, Maple headed down the stairs.
"What'll I find… urp?!"
Her enthusiasm was somewhat dashed by spears that shot out of the wall. One did its
best to impale her head, eliciting a yelp.
"Wh-what the heck? Whew. You startled me!"
The spear's thrust had stopped the instant it made contact with Maple, not even
denting the skin on her brow.
"Oh, the stair is uneven. This must be one of those traps you step on."
Maple wriggled her way past the spears and headed farther in.
At the bottom of the stairs was a long hall with doors on either side.
"Guess I'll just try them all! This could take a while."
Maple took a step forward, headed for the nearest door.
But her foot caught on a taut thread stretched across the hall.
"Mm? Mmm?!"
There was a loud noise overhead, and a guillotine blade dropped—far too fast for her
to dodge.
It landed right on top of her head and shattered.
"...?...??"
Maple rubbed her head, but there was nothing there.
There were bits of broken blade all around, and she bent over, picking one up.
"Was it really fragile? But maybe entering this basement was a mistake. If there's more
traps like this, I'm gonna be a nervous wreck."
Maple looked around suspiciously, trying to spot any more traps, but didn't see
anything odd.
"Maybe I should head back up… huh?"
Maple turned around but discovered the stairs were gone, replaced with a blank wall.
"Wh-why?!"
Maple banged the wall with her shield, hoping she could break through, but Devour
didn't activate. Clearly this wall was indestructible.
"…Oh well! Guess I'll have to explore. Maybe the skills I'm after are down here!"
She put the stairs out of her mind—and forgot to watch her step.
There was a clunk underfoot, and the walls closed in.
"Oh no!"
She broke into a run, but before she made it to the end of the hall, she was trapped,
pinned between the walls.
"They're crushing meee… or not? But I can't move, so… hnggg."
Maple forced her artillery to deploy and cast Hydra, but the walls simply refused to
take damage.
She was stuck with them pressing lightly against her sides for a while, but eventually
they started to reset themselves.
"Now what? The floor and the air both have traps everywhere…"
Maple didn't really feel like moving.
Since none of these traps could hurt her, she didn't really have anything to worry
about, but Maple hadn't worked that out yet.
"I need a solution… hmm…"
She thought for a minute, then had a brilliant idea.
"Hokay… now if I put this one above me… It worked!"
Maple had one of her Helping Hands great shields lowered to waist height and
managed to scramble up, lying down upon it.
Then she had the other shield float on top of her, and she held Night's Facsimile out in
front with her actual hands.
She was pinched between two shields like a clam, and Helping Hands was keeping
them floating above the ground.
"Cool, it actually worked! Now I won't step on any traps!"
Maple had Helping Hands push her along. Pinned between her shields, she wafted off
down the corridor, never touching the ground.
When her eyes caught the gleam of a thread stretched across the hall, it was already
too late.
"Ah?! Wai—!"
Too flustered to control Helping Hands properly, she ran right into it, and Devour
gobbled the thread up.
More spears popped out, doing absolutely no damage, but Maple was dejected since
her clever plan hadn't worked out. Thus—
"Wool Up!"
Wool puffed out all around her and her shields, leaving a giant white ball floating in
the air.
"I don't even care anymore! I can't even hear the traps going off!"
Safe inside her furball, Maple wafted down the hall.
Several more traps were activated, but she didn't see any of them.
Guillotines, poison arrows, and spears springing from the floor and ceiling were all
activated—none of them hurt Maple.
The mansion's traps could no longer even provoke a reaction from her.
"When I hit the wall, I'll make a turn—let's just start from the very back. Good things
are always at the back! That's where people hide the best treasures!"
And thus the floating ball of wool triggered and destroyed every trap in the hall.
A while later…
"Oh, I hit a wall! Left… Can't move. Right it is!… Hngg?"
Bobbing along in her fluffball, Maple had heard far too many traps activate and barely
even noticed the clanking noises anymore.
"What's going on…?"
Finding herself unable to go left, right, or backward, Maple poked her head out of the
wool.
That was when she realized she was trapped inside a cage made of steel bars.
"Break out!"
Maple shoved her shield forward, smacking the bars.
Devour carved a huge hole, and the cage itself turned to light.
"Whew, that was way less sturdy than I thought. I guess not being able to see has its
downsides. I should at least look where I'm going."
Wearing a giant wool mane, Maple started down the hall again.
Sometimes the walls sprayed poison gas, and the floor would open up without
warning, but none of it hurt Maple, and she was doing hunky-dory.
"Oh, a dead end. I've come a long way—this has to be the end!"
A door stood before her.
Since she'd made up her mind to start at the end, she reached a hand out of the wool,
turning the knob.
"Hng… I'm stuck! Rahhh… and I'm in!"
She had to pull pretty hard to squeeze the sphere of wool through the door, but she
managed it eventually.
Maple looked around.
Stubby candles lined the walls, along with several well-used suits of armor.
Each of the latter held weapons, and from here, they looked ready for battle.
At the far end of the room was an especially gaudy set of armor. Maple locked her eyes
on that.
"Is that the boss? I bet it is."
She tried to float closer, but as she neared the center of the room, she noticed a piece
of paper lying on the floor.
"Whoa there… lower me a bit…"
She bobbed low enough to reach down and pick up the page.
"Is this note meant for me? Um, let's see. The more traps I triggered the stronger it
gets…? Uh-oh!"
As she read that far, a bunch of chains rattled down from the ceiling. In the blink of an
eye, Maple was thoroughly bound.
Before she could even react, she found herself and her wool wrapped in chains, unable
to move in any direction.
She tried to move the shields with Helping Hands, but her gear was bound securely,
and all she could do was rattle the chains.
"Wh-what now?"
As Maple hung suspended, the suits of armor clanked to life—easily twenty in all.
And the gaudy suit was moving, too—far more nimbly than the others, as if a real
person was inside.
"T-time out!"
Maple yanked her head back inside the wool, trying to get a grip on things.
"Okay, think… They're attacking, but it's not doing anything. Lemme take another
look."
She pushed her way out of the wool again, peering around.
Just as a sword came flying right at her.
It bounced off the wool, came to a stop in midair, and after a moment came flying back
at her.
"Huh? I assumed someone threw that. Guess not!"
No use waiting for them to run out of things to throw, then. Maple looked around,
wondering what else was going on.
"Hng, where's the fancy armor…?"
She'd kept her eye on it since she walked in the room. It was just standing there, not
attacking directly—but a pale light surrounded it.
And the same halo of light hung around the sword and spear currently flying at her.
"I'd better take out that armor first, then! Full Deploy!"
Black columns emerged from the wool.
They were like countless new appendages, each with a gun or cannon attached.
"Commence Assault!"
When her artillery started firing, the floating weapons moved into the path of fire,
spinning in place and scattering the incoming rounds.
"That's awesome! Or not. Uh, Hydra!"
This time, the Hydra swallowed up the weapons, inexorably pressing onward, almost
making it look like her earlier attacks had been holding.
It hit the gaudy armor head-on and sent it flying, leaving a lake of poison in its wake—
which ravaged the other suits.
The floating weapons fell to the ground. Now nothing was attacking Maple at all.
"Oh, and the chains gave way. Is that it? Awesome, don't need the wool anymore."
Maple pulled out an item and set the wool on fire. It soon burned away.
She straightened herself up and landed on the ground.
"Hokay. Let's see what it got me!"
But as Maple took a step toward Lake Hydra, light rose up from the gaudy armor,
coalescing in the air.
"What's that?" Maple wondered, not really bracing herself.
The light took shape and changed colors.
When the light faded, a little girl was hovering in the air before her.
She had long silver hair, green eyes, and bright green clothes far too nice for this
disheveled room.
The girl looked at Maple and giggled.
Maple quickly put her shield up—and a hand reached out from behind her.
She spun around and found a second girl. She looked identical to the first, but this one
wore red.
"Now, now, put those dangerous toys away."
Maple's shield and armor peeled themselves off her, floating away. Then they vanished
in a puff of purple light.
"Huh?! H-hey!"
"Let's play a game."
The green girl spun in the air. There was a clank, and the gaudy armor stood up again,
glowing and hovering in the air.
"It'll be fun," the red girl said.
The ground rippled and the walls crumbled, the entire shape of the room changing.
New halls stretched in every direction. There were doors on the ceiling and floors—
no trace of the original manor layout was left behind.
""Count to ten, then come find us!""
Both girls giggled. One changed into a blue light while the other became purple, and
then they both vanished through the walls.
Before Maple could even parse what was happening, the two girls were gone.
"Huh? What? Whyyy?"
She looked around and spotted several suits of armor marching toward her in
lockstep.
"Augh! Uh, can't use Hydra or Atrocity… Full Deploy!"
Losing her equipment deprived her of her best weapons, but Maple realized she could
still use Machine God if she paid the penalty.
Her body was soon covered in gears and tubes, weapons sprouting everywhere.
"Cool!"
"Oh no you don't! Those are dangerous toys!"
"Dangerous!"
The girls' voices echoed through the room again.
Blue and purple lights swirled around Maple, and all her weapons crumbled away.
"You're kidding!"
"And naughty girls…"
"…need to be punished!"
Spears and swords wreathed in blue light started coming out of the floors and ceiling.
These weapons shot toward Maple.
"Eep!"
She raised her arms, covering her face, and the swords and spears hit home—
"Urp… oh, good. Nothing happened."
Swords, spears, and blows from the suits of armor were all bouncing off her, even
without her gear's stats.
Each hit stopped the moment it hit her skin, doing absolutely nothing to her.
"Um, did I have any skills I could use without gear? Oh, Heaven's Throne!"
A white throne appeared behind her.
She gingerly took a seat, worried it would vanish, too, but the girls didn't say a word.
"I see. This isn't considered dangerous. Hmm. So I can't use skills with powerful
attacks…"
Pandemonium would probably not work, either. Maple decided to keep that in reserve.
Almost all her big moves were out of commission, and that was the only thing she
could fall back on.
Clutching a faint hope that she'd be able to use it if a proper boss fight started, Maple
decided to move on, knocking the swords and spears out of the way with her bare
hands.
"Urp… way too many doors. And these suits of armor literally won't leave me alone!"
Surrounded by ten suits of armor, their swords slashing away (leaving her unharmed),
Maple made it to a door in the wall.
"Ha! Coming through!"
She yanked the door open and jumped through, quickly closing it behind her, both
hands braced against it.
But the armor didn't try to follow her through. She breathed a sigh of relief and
slumped to the ground.
"Good… but now what? I do have another set of equipment, but I don't want them
stealing that, too."
Even without her gear boosting her defense and HP, she already had more than enough
damage resistance.
The only blows strong enough to penetrate her four-figure VIT would instakill anyone
else, and enemies on that scale weren't found just anywhere.
So Maple didn't need to worry about incoming attacks.
"Okay, first things first! Let's go get my equipment back!"
Fired up, she set out down the hall.
She had no idea where the girls were hiding, so she couldn't just breeze on by this
time.
There was no choice but to open every door she passed.
Well aware the vast majority would activate traps.
"Sigh… hello?"
She took a deep breath and stepped inside, cringing as she looked around.
There was a long table with a cloth on it, chairs neatly lined up, and a single candlestick
at the center.
The walls were warped but decorated with paintings of landscapes.
"Um… okay. Other than the twisty walls, nothing weird here."
Maple carefully checked under the table and behind the paintings, but she found
nothing.
"I think it's safe… Oh."
She turned back from the last painting to find all the chairs and paintings and the
candlestick glowing blue.
"Uh…?! Don't—!"
But her protests were in vain, and the chairs flew at Maple.
"Swords weren't a real problem, but… still! This is too much stuff!"
There was a series of clunks—and Maple was trapped behind a heap of chairs and
paintings.
Just as she started clambering over it, a lit candle flew her way.
"Eep?!"
Before she could run, the entire pile went up like a bonfire, leaving Maple trapped in
the center.
Ten chairs and a dozen paintings made for a pillar of fire that raged higher than Maple
was tall.
When the fire finally burned itself out, Maple was still standing.
"Whew… If you've got nothing else on, your default clothes don't burn! That's nice. But
it's still bad for the heart!"
Maple brushed the soot off herself and headed for the door.
The candle was back on the table, and she gave it a baleful glare in passing.
"I think you're far naughtier than I am," Maple said.
She took some glue out of her inventory, rubbed it on the bottom of the candlestick,
and put it back.
This was a powerful adhesive that had dropped from a monster she'd fought, so Maple
was fairly certain that candle wasn't going anywhere.
"And that's your punishment!"
She slammed the door open far harder than she had on the way in.
A good two hours had passed since Maple was first set on fire.
She was moving down the hall, breathing hard.
There was dust, soot, and other dirt all over her.
"Ugh… please no more pitfalls…"
She couldn't use her floating furball anymore, so she'd spent the last hours getting
caught by every trap in creation. Set on fire multiple times, dropped into pits repeatedly,
assaulted by random suits of armor—she no longer even flinched when guillotine
blades or spears shot her way.
And the pitfalls were definitely the worst.
They were usually lined with spikes, which didn't do anything to Maple—in fact, they
frequently snapped when she fell. But the holes themselves were a huge hassle.
On more than one occasion, she was forced to stab broken spikes into the crumbling
walls, making herself incredibly tenuous footholds that tended to drop her back down
whenever they failed to hold her weight, so climbing back out of them was hard work.
It was so bad it only took two before the light in her eyes went out.
"Sally would probably know exactly how to spot all the traps… but I just can't tell!"
She gingerly took another step… and there was a clunk. The floor sank.
"Eeek!"
She tried to leap away, but something came flying at her.
"...Mm, oh, thank goodness. It's just a poison arrow…"
There was purple liquid slathered on the tip. Maple scooped it up.
No one else would be relieved by poison arrows, but Maple's list of priorities was
currently dominated by pitfalls—nothing else really mattered at the moment.
"Hmm… I'm pretty far in now… At least, I hope I am."
The walls and hallways were very winding, and sometimes there were doors in the
ceiling, so Maple found it hard to judge her progress.
"Let's go this way!"
As always, she let her instincts guide her, opening a door and heading through.
Even without gear, her body repelled all harm, so Maple could move freely through a
hundred traps at once.
Despite her sluggish pace, she was still getting through this labyrinth far faster than
the average player could have managed.
Maybe half an hour later…
"Oh! That door looks promising."
Maple was squinting down the hall at a particularly conspicuous door.
She'd played this game enough to know what boss rooms looked like.
"Awesome! Time to get my gear back."
She broke into a run, barreling down the hall.
This naturally triggered some traps, but Maple had seen more than her fair share of
flying spears and arrows—she didn't even bat an eye.
"I don't care! Just you wait, ghost twins! Heh-heh! I'm gonna make you pay!"
But just as her motivation peaked—the floor beneath her feet split open.
"Urp?! Aughhh!"
The burst of excitement had made her forget all about the danger of pitfalls. She just
barely managed to get her fingers on the far ledge, dangling from them—but they were
already quivering.
She didn't have the strength to pull herself up.
"Urgh… I'm gonna fall in!"
She glanced down and saw the bottom of the pit filled with green glittering goo.
The blood drained from her face.
She wasn't scared of goo. She was scared that without spikes, she'd have no way of
getting out.
"Help! Somebody—aiiiieee!"
Even as she begged for mercy, her fingers gave way, and Maple went plummeting into
the depths.
There was a splash as she landed back-first on the goo, and she stared dismally up at
the ceiling.
"Ugh… what now? This sure looks poisonous, but that's not a problem. Ew, it's all
sticky."
The green goo was a bit chilly but otherwise ineffective.
The problem here was how to get back out.
"I don't wanna log out without getting my stuff back… There's got to be a way out."
Maple closed her eyes, racking her brain.
After she thought very hard, one idea did come to mind.
"Hmm… I know! Full Deploy!"
Weapons bristled… and vanished.
But Maple was not disappointed—she was delighted.
"Great! Come on, punish me! I'm right here!"
But the swords or spears she'd been hoping for did not come flying her way.
"Wh-whyyyyyy?! Please? I need you to punish me!"
Her plan had been to stab the wall with those and climb out. Foiled!
Outside the boss room, the players were expected to avoid traps.
And since she had charged in without thinking, she found herself well and truly stuck.
"What now…? If only I could make a lot of thrones…"
But as Maple slumped, the goo began to move.
Before she knew it, she was covered in green.
"Oh, is this a slime? That chill is nice and refreshing. I think I'm feeling a little better."
The slime was wrapping itself tightly around her, trying to dissolve her flesh.
"…Oh! Thank you, slime!"
Having calmed down enough to think, Maple took a deep breath—and spoke the name
of a skill.
A short while after Maple fell in the pit, the doors of the boss room swung open.
"Oh, she's here! She's here! She found us!"
"She did! She found us!"
The little twins giggled. All manner of twisted things floated in the air around them.
"Whew… I'm here for my equipment!"
Maple stood inside a green, bubbling sphere.
"I can make things float, too!"
Psychokinesis could make monsters float. It had not originally been intended to make
Syrup fly. Maple was now using it to alter the slime's shape, giving herself a sword and
shield to fight the twins with.
""Heh-heh-heh… Let's begin!""
Swords and spears appeared behind the twins, rocketing toward Maple.
She tried to bob away, but she moved far too slowly to dodge them all.
Weapon after weapon stabbed the slime, but the slime's HP didn't change—and soon
the improvised missiles started to dissolve.
"Oh! This slime is amazing! Next…"
Maple used Psychokinesis again, changing its shape. Instead of floating with her inside
it, it now formed armor covering her body and provided her with two big slime arms.
She'd gotten used to flying Syrup around and had practiced enough with Helping
Hands that she could easily pull off this level of telepathic control.
"Mm, this is pretty easy to use! Now…"
The slime arms reached out and grabbed at one of the twins—the green one.
"Aw, they pass right through her. I was hoping a slime would work."
But slime bodies counted as physical attacks, so she couldn't actually hit them.
And their counterattack came from the red girl—in the form of flames.
"Augh! You're weak against fire?!"
The slime's HP had dropped hard, and Maple quickly pulled the arm back.
Once the slime was safely coiled around her again, she looked around the room, trying
to find something she could use.
The boss room was decorated like a nursery.
It was pretty big but had desks, closets, furnishings, stuffed animals, toys—more like
a place to play than a place to fight.
"There's lots of presents here, but are any of them useful?"
She peered down at her slime. It was still dissolving all the swords and spears.
"Whoops, here comes more fire! I'll take that!"
Before the incoming flames hit, Maple sent the slime away, brushing the flames aside
with her bare arm.
The scattered flames lit up a nearby gift box.
"Ack! That's not good."
Maple's slime was weak to fire, and she did not want the whole stage turning into a
conflagration. She patted the flames with her bare hand, putting them out, and
breathed a sigh of relief.
And her hand hit something inside the box—something that hadn't burned.
"Oh! My short sword!"
Maple had discovered her own stolen equipment.
Realizing this, the twin ghosts called out.
"Aw, what now?"
"I don't want it! She can have it."
Sounded like she was free to take it back.
"In that case… Hydra!"
And free to make use of the skill on it.
A three-headed dragon raced off toward the spectral twins.
But they both disappeared, teleporting across the room and neatly dodging the
poison.
""Ah-ha-ha! Too easy!""
"Hngg. Then how about… Full Deploy!"
This was the boss room, and Maple was sure all her skills worked again. She started
opening fire—
But the twins' projectiles came fast enough that none of hers got through the fusillade.
"We already saw that!"
"Yeah!"
They glanced at each other, giggling.
Maple looked rather cross, but she changed up her strategy.
"Well, my other gear must be in these other boxes. I'd better start by finding it. Slime,
you hide in the corner."
With the slime out of harm's way, she let spears and swords alike bounce off her back,
opening present after present. Even without the slime dissolving them, none of these
weapons could hurt Maple.
By the time she finally found all her stuff, the floor was covered in fallen swords, and
the walls were riddled with axes and spears.
"Whew… That was exhausting! But this should make the fight easier."
All her gear was back in place. It was time to punish these naughty ghosts.
While she'd been looking, Maple had come up with a plan.
"When you're fighting foes that like to run away—make sure they've got nowhere to
go!"
Maple mustered her most diabolical smirk and moved to the exact center of the room.
"Martyr's Devotion! Venom Capsule!"
An angel appeared—but her glittering wings were soon buried in a mass of poison.
A purple sphere looming at the heart of the boss room.
"Predators!"
Maple sat back inside her toxic orb, flanked by monsters.
"Slime, you come over here, too!"
It bobbed her way, and the three monsters took care of all incoming projectiles.
While Venom Capsule was still small, there was a chance it might get splattered by
some stray poison—but this strategy kept it safe.
"If fake Sally couldn't get away, I know you can't!"
Maple's goal was to fill the whole room with poison.
These ghosts might be able to teleport all over the shop, but that didn't do much good
if the entire room was a death trap.
"Heh-heh-heh," Maple chuckled, moving her slime around. "It might take a while, but
I am very persistent."
Several hours had passed since Maple started filling the chamber with venom.
Her Predators and slime had kept the capsule safe, and it grew steadily, getting bigger
than ever before. Their task done, she put her monsters away—in that sense,
everything had gone according to Maple's plan.
She was indeed persistent, and nearly the entire room was filled with poison. But the
results were not exactly what she'd hoped for.
"Wait, are they immune to poison…?"
The twins were drenched in it, but they were still flinging weapons and fire around
with the same amount of energy as before.
Maple scowled at them awhile, but the poison didn't even seem to be slowing them
down.
But as time went on, the target of their attacks had shifted from Maple herself to the
slime.
For better or worse, the slime was also immune to poison, and it had stayed alive. It
was still under Maple's control, of course.
And it had destroyed so many of the twins' weapons that their aggro was entirely
focused on the monster now.
Yet none of their attacks could reach it because of all the toxic goo in the way.
And at this size, Venom Capsule's endurance was far higher than their weak attacks
could handle.
Maple once again found herself in a situation where they couldn't beat her, but she
couldn't beat them.
"Uh, what next? They just dodge all my attacks… Maybe I could hit them if I was very
close?"
Figuring it couldn't hurt to try, she foraged through the poison, swimming higher.
Since the entire room was full of goo, she could move freely through it.
"Let's try a few things and see if I can stop them running!"
She started pulling charms out of her inventory, scattering them throughout the
venom.
"Hopefully these exorcism charms will stop them from teleporting… but I'm not
banking on it."
Maple scattered any items she didn't think she would need, filling the venom with
obstacles, and then she had the slime stretch itself as far as it could, wrapping itself
around the twins several times over.
"Okay! Let's try this!"
She had the slime open a hole in the enclosure and reached in.
Maple put the tip of her short sword an inch from one of the girl's bellies.
"Please hit! Hydra!"
Brimming with hope, she unleashed a toxic torrent upon a room that was already
brimming with poison.
Naturally, this caused a whirlpool around her.
When her eyes stopped spinning, she looked around to see if it had worked.
"I think they got away? But where—Oh, there they are!"
Maple found them trapped inside the slime (itself barely clinging to life), covered in
the items she'd scattered—and immobilized.
"Hmm. Hngg?"
Even Maple could tell this was an unusual state of affairs. Clearly not a typical means
of catching them.
"A-are you okay?" she asked, reaching out and poking one of their feet.
"Aw, you caught us!" one said.
"You caught us both!"
""The game's all over!""
Light appeared all around them, concentrating and growing ever brighter.
""Let's play again someday!""
And with that, both twins vanished.
Maple looked around, very confused.
"Oh! They never had HP bars. So I didn't actually beat them?"
Like the snails from an earlier event, the twins had been a foe you had to get past
without fighting.
Maple had been too mad about the traps to work that out.
"Still…"
They'd left a treasure chest behind. She swam down to it.
Then she canceled Venom Capsule. Items and low-ranking materials rained down
around her.
"I feel like that wasn't what was supposed to happen… I-I'd better get out of here."
Maple ditched the items and materials, shoved the chest in her inventory without
looking inside, and promptly ran away.
Behind the scenes…
The devs were frantically trying to fix things.
"It's Maple again! She's basically a walking bug, but we can't have her glitching the
game!"
"They're stuck inside a slime?!"
"This is all that slime's fault! Who put that thing inside a random trap?!"
"Even if they can't be attacked, if they can't pass through it, the twins'll get stuck!"
"If it weren't for that thing, they could have squished the capsule!"
"Deep breaths! First, adjust the twins' warp parameters. The slime itself is fine! It does
its part as a trap, and nobody but Maple could do that with it."
"And she made off with the good stuff again."
This was the gear Maple had taken with her. Naturally, they knew what was in the
chest.
"But at this point, what difference does it make?"
"…No, this one's pretty bad."
A grim silence settled over the room.
"…True."
With the initial uproar fading, it was all too obvious what horrors their greatest threat
would wreak with what she'd just obtained. At the very least, this wouldn't diminish
her.
"I swear I'm getting an ulcer."
"Still! It won't up her DPS! Not… directly…"
"But indirectly?"
"It might."
"Then don't get my hopes up. Sure, fine, the other players are all getting stronger, too.
If we fix the bug here, it's not that bad. Just… double-check for weird synergies and…
pray."
"Only thing we can do."
All heads nodded.
Eventually, there was a short server downtime, and the patch notes mentioned
changes to slime behavior in dungeons and the handling of boss monsters getting
stuck inside other monsters. Since other monsters rarely spawned in boss rooms,
most players had no idea how that would ever be possible.
A while before that happened, Maple came bursting out of the haunted house and
briskly walked away, glancing over her shoulder a few times.
"And they didn't even have the skill I wanted!"
Mii had told her about Iron Body and Heavy Body, so she'd been searching for those,
but they clearly weren't in this building.
"But I did get something! Uh, where'd I put it…? Oh, there it is!"
Maple took out the chest to find out what was inside.
When she opened the lid, she found green clothes, just like those the one girl had worn.
"Ghost Girl Garb? Hmm. Equipment… oh, but it does have a skill."
Maple went ahead and read the skill description, too.
Ghost Girl Garb
[MP+30]
Poltergeist
For 10MP, this spell allows you to move certain objects.
You can control a maximum of ten objects.
Effect lasts five minutes.
But is limited to objects you own.
"My MP's pretty low, so I can't make much use of that skill. But I like the clothes!"
Maple swapped some gear to equip the Ghost Girl Garb.
She was now surrounded by green frills and ribbons.
Maple took one look at it, then summoned Syrup, having it float by her head.
"Eh-heh-heh! We match!"
She smiled at the turtle.
The dress might not be functionally a great match for Maple, but she loved it anyway.
"I can keep one."
Maple decided she was going to keep this—as opposed to giving it to Sally.
"Hmm. Better take my shield off… then… Oh, there it is!"
Maple took Helping Hands off, too, replacing it with a little silver crown.
She'd found this with Pain in the jungle—it gave her a 10 percent MP recovery boost.
"They look good together! If I think of a way to fight like this, my gear can have a Syrup
colorway!"
Maple began thinking about combat applications.
With most of her gear gone, she was just a normal girl—but still way tankier than
anybody else. Her offensive approach might change, but she was otherwise just Maple.
"Hmm. If I'm fighting with Syrup… then… hmm…"
At first, she was at a loss, but eventually she reread the Poltergeist description and
had an idea.
"I wonder if I can control Hydra?"
She gave it a shot, activated Poltergeist—and found herself with a mass of poison
suspended in the air, surrounded by a blue glow.
"Ooo! Then if I want to move it, I can just…"
Maple waved a hand down, and Hydra accelerated, crashing into the pavement and
bursting.
"Wow!" Maple yelped, leaping backward. "This seems pretty tricky to use…"
She thought a few minutes longer, but she only had a few Hydra uses remaining, so she
tried a different weapon instead.
"Lemme practice a bit."
The results of this practice suggested that at the moment, she could only manipulate
two things at once. The description had said the max was ten, but it would be a long
time before she could pull that off.
"It's easy to move things if I'm waving my hands around, but… hmm, I'll just have to
practice more when I have time."
Maple made Syrup giant, climbed up on top, and went back to practicing. With more
ranged manipulation skills, Maple had new things to busy her mind with, and it was
urgent that she get used to it.
Manually controlling the flight path of a single bullet to hit a monster in the distance
did not really do enough damage to justify the cost and effort.
Maple downed an MP potion and kept experimenting, finding ways to improve and
getting better with the skill.
Maple was practicing at the edge of the field but not so far out that no one passed by.
Chrome and Kasumi just happened to be in the area.
Sally, Mai, and Yui were all skipping this floor, so they had limited party options.
"Oh, is that Maple?" Kasumi asked, using her hand as a visor.
"Gotta be. Turtle, weapons sprouting from her back…"
Nobody else in NWO matched that description.
They headed her way, planning to say hi—and two bluish lasers shot out of the
weapons on her back.
This alone they'd seen before—but instead of vanishing, these lasers stayed put.
And started swinging around like swords.
""...""
They stopped dead in their tracks, glancing at each other.
"Should we ask? You coming, Kasumi?"
"I'd better. Lord knows what it means."
They were already resigned to learning yet another shocking revelation. Both took
deep breaths and approached.
As they got closer, Maple saw them coming. She stopped manipulating lasers and
waved.
"Maple, you've got new gear," Chrome said.
"I do! What do you think?!" Maple stood up on Syrup's back and did a little turn.
That alone seemed to make her happy. Before they could even ask, she started
babbling about how her outfit was the same color as Syrup and how she'd figured out
a good use for the skill.
"By skill you mean… those?" Kasumi pointed at the two lasers above them.
"Yup! It's kinda tricky, but if I… Augh!"
Just as she tried to show them off, the lasers ripped skyward. The skill had timed out
after five minutes had passed, and she'd lost control.
"Oof… I've gotta get used to that time limit."
"Well, glad to see you branching out."
"But what'll you do on the equipment front?" Kasumi asked. "You've already got two
sets in regular rotation."
Maple grinned, way ahead of her. "Syrup, wait here."
She hopped off and walked a few steps away.
Kasumi was about to ask why when the number of weapons on Maple's back doubled.
She'd seen this before—this was how Maple brute-forced flight.
An instant later, she rocketed skyward, belching flames that trailed behind her.
Whatever Maple was doing up there was completely obscured by the smoke and fire.
"What now?"
"You're asking me?"
But even as they exchanged looks, there was a boom, and dust billowed everywhere.
"Wha…?!"
"Yo…?"
When the dust cleared, Maple got to her feet—back in her black gear.
Maple's idea? When she didn't have time to change on the ground, she could just
temporarily fly away.
It was safe to say there were no attacks capable of taking Maple out mid-flight. She
could temporarily remove all gear without anything hitting her.
Maple dusted herself off and nodded as if at a job well done.
"I can use that in most fights!"
"Yup. I reckon you can."
"Same."
"I'll have to go show Sally!"
They'd need to account for it in future strategy sessions, so there was a function to her
showing off her new gear.
Maple put Syrup back in her ring, said good-bye, and headed to the fifth stratum.
As they watched her go, Kasumi muttered, "Well, at least she's on our side."
"Yup. And the lasers aren't insanely strong, not like Hydra… but I guess if they stick
around for five whole minutes, they're pretty dang OP."
What she'd revealed about this new skill echoed through their minds awhile, but they
concluded that all Maple's projectiles were ridiculous, and no matter which ones she
used, anyone standing on the receiving end was in for a bad time.
Maple reached the fifth stratum and sent Sally a message. The answer came quickly.
"Oh, she's in the Guild Home! Nice!"
Maple trotted off to meet her. When she stepped inside, Sally looked up in surprise.
"Maple— Oh, I see. You wanted to show that off?"
This explained the urgent meeting request.
"Exactly! Doesn't it look great?"
"It does. You've been stuck in armor here, so this is a nice change of pace. And the
crown really sells the princess look."
"Ah-ha-ha! I don't think anyone would mistake me for a princess."
"Fair. At least, you'd be the type that makes all the ministers fret."
"Oh? I would?"
The next several minutes were frittered away on idle chatter, but eventually Maple
remembered that this gear had function.
"Oh, also this gear is good in combat!" she said, and she explained.
Sally nodded. "Sounds good, yeah. Maybe I should take another run at the sixth
stratum…"
"Oh?"
Vivid memories flooded Maple's mind.
She gave Sally a long, skeptical look.
"I mean… some places might be okay? But, well…"
Sally got very shifty, well aware of how doomed this plan was. She soon abandoned
the idea.
"I'll just have to hit the seventh stratum extra hard!"
"Yep! I wanna play with you again. Can't wait till they add it!"
But they would have to wait a little longer before the promised day came.
For now, they kicked back, talking about all the sights they'd seen.