Maple and Sally arrived at the magic circle in the center of town.
This would take them directly to the event tower.
"We good with the hardest difficulty?"
"Ab-so-lutely! I'm all fired up!" Maple cried.
Sally looked pretty excited herself. "Ha-ha! Then this way. Let's get the first floor
cleared!"
"Woo!"
Sally looked confident, and Maple was just having fun.
They stepped on the circle to the hardest tower and vanished in a puff of white light.
When the light faded, they found themselves before a tower so tall it seemed to pierce
the heavens.
The top was hidden in the clouds, and the size of each floor was considerable.
"This… is gonna take a while."
"You can say that again. If it's as big as they look, each floor is like a quarter the size of
a normal field… but who knows, maybe there are teleport points here and there."
"Rad! Nice and meaty!"
"True. Let's get clearing!"
They headed straight through the doors and into the tower interior.
The hall inside was wide enough for four to walk abreast, and from here they could
already see several forks.
The ceiling was a good thirteen feet above them.
"So…"
"Yup, gonna be a real maze. Gotta watch out for ambushes!"
"Oh, well… Martyr's Devotion!"
This was just Maple's default opening move in situations like this. Her angelic
protection would keep Sally safe if anything went wrong.
Angel wings rose up from the back of her black armor.
Once they were ready, they set off through the dungeon.
"Oh, right, Maple… you aren't using the extra-shields thing?"
"I'm still working on that. Feels like it'll be a while before I can move multiple things
at once. Besides, it would bother you, right?"
"Urp… yeah, a bit. An eensy-teensy bit."
Sally's feelings aside, Maple had a lot of moving-things-with-her-mind skills she
needed to practice. She'd decided to put a pin in all that for now.
If she needed to, she could always just change up her equipment piecemeal.
Maple was getting good at buying herself that kind of time.
Sally, on the other hand, thought Helping Hands was good enough that she should
really try and learn to look directly at it without freaking out.
"Will I ever manage…? Oops! Maple, look out!"
Mid-thought, she spotted something ahead.
"Huh? Oh…"
Maple had been too focused on their conversation and had completely missed the
telltale sign of the floor changing color. She'd stepped right onto it.
The floor yawned open, and Maple fell straight down.
Sally shot her webs at the wall and didn't go anywhere.
"Maple, you okay?"
"Yeah! It's just poison." Maple's voice echoed from the pit below.
Not long after, Maple rose up from the depths, pinned between two shields held by
ghastly hands.
"Ha-ha! If I've got the right gear, pitfalls ain't no thing!"
"…I'm glad you're okay, b-but let's try to watch our step."
Sally was squinting so she wouldn't see the Helping Hands too clearly. She wasn't even
looking in Maple's direction.
"…Oh, I know! Wool Up!"
What had led Maple to transform into a ball of fluff? From which emerged her face and
a pair of angelic wings?!
"Maple…"
"Now I don't have to care about traps! And you won't be scared! The perfect solution!
I ran a whole dungeon like this before."
Maple bobbed over to Sally and helped her inside.
"Forwaaard!"
"O-okay? Does this even count as running a dungeon?"
While Sally pondered the semantics, Maple started them drifting down the hall.
"Um, Maple. Monsters ahead."
A bird came flapping around the corner. It was a yard long, with red wings.
"Mwa-ha-ha! Doesn't matter which way you come! Full Deploy! Commence Assault!"
Black pillars rose up from the sea of wool, deploying guns and cannons.
Maple started pouring fire into them with great confidence, but all the attacks went
right through the bird's body. The bird itself turned into pure fire before immediately
dive-bombing them.
"Maple!"
"Ack! Er, um… anything but that!"
Unfortunately, the floating furball was not exactly mobile, and the bird's swoop burned
all the wool away.
"Hmph!"
"We gotta fight! Back me up!"
"Got it! Then… Taunt!"
Maple hopped off her floating shield and used a skill to keep the firebird on her.
Trying to keep Devour in stock, she let it hit her head-on while Sally slung water spells
from the side.
That magic caused it to spray red damage sparks, and its flames diminished—it was
now just a regular red-winged bird again.
"Yup, I thought fire would be weak to water."
Sally drew her daggers and piled on more damage.
"Maple!" she called.
"It's payback time… Hydra!"
A purple torrent swallowed the bird.
And the Bug Urn Curse instakill kicked in. The bird vanished without a trace.
Both girls took the opportunity to catch their breath.
"Lemme just take Helping Hands off… Whew."
"Hmm, nice work. That was basically a normal mob with a twist on top, but glad we
got through it."
"But now I can't Wool Up…"
"Can't rely on your old exploits. You gotta learn to spot the traps!"
"Yeah, I guess. I'll just have to try harder!"
Maple triggered several more traps, but they made steady progress despite that.
They went right and left. Several fights in, they were definitely seeing why this
dungeon was the highest difficulty.
"These things suck."
"Yeah… they're all bad news."
Neither one of them was fazed by mere strength, but the monsters were all immune
to physical damage, or they were immune to magical damage, or it was only possible
to defeat them if you met a specific condition—every trick in the book.
Sally's Sword Dance had hit max stack in a single fight with a monster that kept
bounding around the walls.
The devs had clearly designed these foes to give top-tier players like Maple a run for
their money.
And yet another new monster appeared before them. Like a cloud that had taken
human form.
"Sally, another weird one!"
"Maybe it's a variant on the fifth-stratum enemies? Careful!"
Maple still had Martyr's Devotion up, and she was also walking in front of Sally, shield
at the ready.
Sally lurked behind her, waiting for her chance to strike.
The cloud monster spotted them and got ready to fight.
There was a momentary pause, then a green glow charged up inside its body, filling
the passages with blades of wind.
"Maple!"
"Mm!"
Their previous battles had left her with seven Devour uses, and she wanted to save
those—so she lowered her shield.
The first of the wind blades struck Maple.
She took no damage, but it still sent her flying backward.
"Yikes!"
"Water Wall!"
Sally quickly threw up a barrier to buy them a few seconds, racing to Maple's side.
The knockback effect had flung Maple so far that Sally was outside the angel's
protection.
And even Sally couldn't dodge her way through a carpet-bombing.
"Maple, Heavy Body!"
"Oh! Right! Heavy Body!"
Maple had almost forgotten her new skill, but she quickly activated it.
Now she couldn't move at all—but the wind blades couldn't knock her back. Sally
quickly slipped into safety behind her.
"Hmm, but now we can't get close?"
"Bad luck meeting this thing in a one-way corridor. We've gotta do something about
this knockback…"
"…How about… Heaven's Throne!"
Her gleaming white throne appeared.
And when Heavy Body ran out, Maple was knocked back—directly into her seat.
"Now it can't fling me anywhere!"
Her field of protection meant that even if a wind slice hit Sally, the knockback would
hit Maple instead.
"I'd better tackle the cause. Maple, hit it once for me?"
"Roger! Deploy Barrels!"
Pillars rose from Maple's arms, aiming a pair of massive cannons at their enemy.
These fired dazzling laser beams, which knocked aside wind blades as they streamed
toward the cloud monster. But the lasers were blocked by a wind barrier, which
dispelled them before they could hit home.
"Hmm, I think I get it. This barrier only covers it from the front."
"Anything we can do about that?"
"I'll pull its focus, so you hit it when I do."
Sally put her daggers away and fired her webs at the wall, ready to climb it.
"Make sure you don't get hit, Sally!"
"Of course. I already figured out how to knock these blades away."
Both girls knew what they had to do.
Sally moved first, using her webs to pull herself up the wall.
"Ice Pillar! Fire Ball! Oboro, Flame Pillar!"
"Commence Assault!"
Sally was making footholds and knocking down wind blades, slipping through them
toward their foe.
Maple was firing lasers, helping thin the incoming barrage.
It had caught them off guard, but if they worked together, they could handle this.
Sally came down the wall right behind the cloud and closed in, daggers swinging,
wreathed in a blue aura.
Her blows were blocked by the wind barrier, but Sally didn't let up.
"Ice Pillar! Right Hand: Web! One Step in the Grave!"
And as the monster turned toward Sally, ready to bombard her—
Her webs shot to the top of a pillar, and the shoes Maple had given her let her step
once on the air, letting her bound away.
"Aww, you should never have looked at me," Sally said.
Down the hall, there was a boom—and a column of flames billowed.
Maple came rocketing through the smoke, right past the monster.
The barrage of wind blades and the wind barrier were aimed to the front—now away
from Maple.
"Commence Assault! How do you like that?!"
Full-bore lasers from point-blank range, and a shield that gobbled up everything it
touched. The monster's HP was gone in the blink of an eye.
"And the finishing touch!"
Maple slammed her shield down one last time, and the monster vanished in a shower
of light.
"Nice work, Maple. Good combo."
"Hmm! Thanks, Sally. Oh, hang on…"
After Maple dismissed her throne and her artillery, she brushed the soot off.
"Ugh, they don't have that much HP, but they're all as strong as your average field boss.
And they're just hanging out in the halls of this place… Is it because we chose the hard
one?"
"…I bet they're thinking the same thing," Sally said, shooting Maple a look.
"...? You've lost me. But let's keep moving! We don't want that thing respawning while
we're still here."
"Good point. Let's bust through the back end."
They moved on. Sally kept on spotting traps and helping them slip past what monsters
they could.
Down a monster, press on. Down another, press on.
And in time, Maple and Sally found themselves at the boss room.
They'd taken no damage, but all those fights meant Maple was out of Devour.
"Not bad for a first floor. Nothing using piercing damage."
"That was a relief! I hope the second floor is the same."
That type of attack alone made all the difference to her build.
Her defense was sky high, but she had very low HP—she would not last long if
anything hit her one weakness.
"Mm. So we'd better hit this boss up and get that second floor open!"
"Yup. We've been playing awhile, so this is probably the last thing we do today?"
"Yeah, that sounds right."
And with that, they opened the doors and stepped inside.
Rough rock walls and a floor covered in a network of cracks.
There were many patches of sand, and the ground where they could easily walk was
incredibly limited.
"...Sally."
"Hmm. Definitely coming from below."
No sooner had the words left Sally's mouth than the sand began swirling, and a dragon
covered in sand-colored scales emerged from the ground below.
Red glowing eyes locked on to them, and an earsplitting roar shook the room.
"Maple!"
"Commence Assault!"
They both knew their roles by now. Sally broke into a run, and Maple started firing.
Bullets and lasers raced toward the dragon, ready to bring the pain.
But the dragon took one look at them and roared—and transparent crystals covered
the surface of its body. All her attacks bounced right off!
"...! Superspeed!"
Sally turned into a blur, batting Maple's stray shots and ricocheting rounds aside with
her daggers, ducking under the lasers before dancing back into range of Martyr's
Devotion.
"Sorry, Sally!"
"Nope, don't sweat it. Maple, we should probably go in closer for a look-see."
"Yeah, roger."
Maple moved in front of Sally, covering her with shield and skill.
Martyr's Devotion couldn't do much against AOE piercing skills, so it was vital to keep
her shield raised, too.
They hunkered down, waiting for the dragon to close. It dived back into the sand.
"Watch the ground, Maple!"
"Gotcha. Deploy Barrels!"
With a clunk, Maple's biggest guns came out. She pulled Sally close and belched smoke,
flying up near the roof.
The dragon popped out where they'd been standing, but it couldn't reach them that
high up. Sand and boulders rained down around it.
"As always, totally nuts… but badass."
"Down we go!"
Maple's flight was basically just blowing herself up, and it wasn't really great for
landings.
So she simply let herself fall back down, with Sally on top. The impact broke all the
weapons that had survived the explosion.
"How do we tackle this…? Hmm?"
Sally saw a black rock rolling on the ground. It was one of the stones that had come
flying out when the dragon attacked from below.
As Sally tried to pull a thread through that thought, Maple yelled, "Sally! Something's
coming! Pierce Guard!"
But her warning was drowned out by the dragon's breath attack—a violent torrent of
sand.
The breath hit Maple's shield and launched them both backward. They went tumbling
across the ground.
Maple's Pierce Guard had kicked in just in time, negating the attack's piercing damage,
and Maple soaked the rest.
"Sorry, got lost in thought."
"No worries."
Another howl echoed—
—and then the black rocks scattered all around them exploded.
"Maple! That's it! We use those rocks to fight back!"
"...?"
"Throw 'em into its mouth when it readies the breath attack! If attacks from outside
bounce off, the inside's its weak point!"
"Yeah? Okay then!"
It may have dominated the fight this far, but now they were ready to turn the tables.
They waited for the dragon to scatter those rocks again and then sprang into action.
"I'll keep it busy! Maple, you handle the rocks!"
"Got it!"
Sally slipped outside Martyr's Devotion, attacking the dragon.
Her blows all bounced off, but they were drawing aggro as intended; the dragon's
talons and tail came after her in a flash.
But Sally could now run in three dimensions, and swings that big would never hit her.
Meanwhile, Maple gathered rocks in back.
"Heads up, breath coming," Sally said.
The dragon didn't make it easy for them. This time the breath attack struck in a
horizontal pattern.
"Whew."
But all Sally needed was focus. She ran right up into the air, avoiding the breath's
swipe.
When the roar of sand died down, she glanced back, searching—and Maple flew past
her.
"Huh?"
Maple had a bunch of rocks wedged in her weaponry and was rocketing straight
through the sandy air—
—right into the dragon's mouth.
"Heh-heh-heh… Now it's our turn! Full Deploy!"
The rocks she'd brought in with her all exploded, but that didn't damage Maple. The
dragon tried to chew her up, but she was much harder than any mere rock. It could
break her artillery guns, but those fangs never reached her HP.
"Hydra! Commence Assault!"
Stuck inside the dragon's mouth, Maple simply deployed her weapons again and
started firing every cannon and laser and poison geyser she could.
The dragon thrashed like a wild thing but could not dislodge her.
Her weapons exploded rather frequently, but Maple was immune to explosions.
On the other hand, the dragon's HP bar was dropping steadily.
"Hngg… stay still! Augh!"
The dragon had tried to dive under the surface with Maple still trapped in its maw, but
as its head went under, Maple shifted to Atrocity form and tore her way out of it.
It was all too easy.
The dragon's body lost shape and returned to the sand from which it had come.
Sally came jogging over the heap, searching for Maple.
Only Maple's head was above the surface. Giving Sally a plaintive look.
"…Need a tug?"
"Please."
Sally's final act on the first floor was to rescue Maple.
While the event was live, the admins had to monitor both the regular zones and the
special-event map.
The room was filled with the sound of constant keystrokes.
"They're making short work of the highest difficulty…," one developer grumbled,
glaring at his screen.
It showed the current floor and the number of people on it—even at the highest
difficulty, there were already players on the third floor.
"Yeah… but we made all those bosses tricky enough that they won't exactly clear it
overnight."
The speaker didn't even stop typing, clearly certain that anyone would get stuck
eventually.
"Still, we could maybe up the difficulty a bit overall. People are making pretty short
work of the second-hardest difficulty, too."
Players were exceeding expectations on all versions of the tower run. But this was
partly because players capable of tackling the highest difficulty had decided to go one
level lower.
"Well, it's only just getting started. What do you think? Should we take a peek at a boss
room?"
"Let's see one on the hardest difficulty, then. Someone's just starting that fight."
"Give me a sec. Ooookay, up on-screen now."
"Hmm…"
The man closed his eyes, clearing his mind. Ready for anything. He shook his head and
slowly opened his eyes.
And saw a girl in black armor and a girl decked out in blue.
Maple and Sally.
"Ah… mm. Welp. Can't hurt."
He'd been hoping to see normal play, but no such luck.
The dragon was going all out, and they seemed helpless against it.
"Tanky as ever. Still, this ain't a boss you can out-DPS."
"It does have piercing attacks, right?"
"With a clear and obvious windup. She can block if she knows it's coming."
Even as they spoke, the dragon's breath swallowed the girls up.
The man looked rather taken aback.
Sally hadn't even tried to dodge.
"She didn't evade? I mean, sure, no damage. But the force is still pretty intense…"
"Nothing new. Sally is under Maple's devotion. Still… hmm."
The man put his hand to his mouth, thinking.
Then his eyes went wide—just as Maple flew into the dragon's mouth.
"Why?"
"Well, the bombs—ack!"
A wave of virulent poison spilled out of the dragon's maw. Lasers gleamed in all
directions, and the explosions were far too powerful to have come from those rocks
alone. As the dragon tried to seek refuge underground, its body split apart, and a
hideous monster clambered out.
"Or… not just them…"
"Inside… She went inside…"
"Where did we go so wrong?"
"The moment we let it open its mouth."
But if it kept its mouth closed, it would be more of a boulder than a dragon.
Then again, the design concept had basically been a moving boulder.
"Why did she just jump right in without even trying to throw the rocks?! I'm pretty
sure we presented an obvious strategy!"
This was a natural question, but one nobody here could answer.
"The next boss doesn't open its mouth! It'll be okay. She can't… do this to it anyway."
"Show this to the others later. Especially whoever designed the dragon."
"Yeah…"
Tragedy was best shared—and the man who had made the proposal spoke from
experience. He'd designed the second-stratum boss that Maple had pulverized.
He was not alone in his grief.
"Well, it won't work next time!"
"We say that every time!"
The two men decided it was time for their break.
And when they showed what had happened to the boss designer, his face crumpled,
and his scream echoed throughout the office.