Kaede Honjou (aka Maple) had been invited to play the VRMMO NewWorld Online by
her friend Risa Shiromine (aka Sally). Together, they explored the vast maps of the
game world.
The newest map—the sixth stratum—was a horror zone. Sally was not good with
anything scary. She'd tried exploring solo once, and it had gone all kinds of wrong, so
she was avoiding the new floor altogether.
But in due time, the seventh event began. This involved climbing a tower dungeon, and
Maple thought this was the perfect chance for them to play together again. She and
Sally joined forces to conquer the ten-story tower together.
Their goal: reach the top floor without taking any damage.
Clearing the tower on the highest difficulty would earn them medals that could be
exchanged for event-exclusive rewards. Combined with the medals they'd received in
the fourth event, they should be able to purchase some nifty new skills. And taking no
damage at all had been their goal ever since they first formed a party. They stepped
into the tower well and truly motivated.
The monsters they found on the first floor were definitely befitting of the difficulty
level. Each monster was tricky enough to slow the girls down—but never stood a
chance of defeating them.
The boss was a sand dragon, with a breath attack as strong as its body blows. They
were supposed to defeat it using exploding rocks, but Maple gathered a bunch of them
and jumped into the monster's mouth, leaving it helpless to defeat her. The dragon's
exterior was hard, but its interior was squishy—that was always intended to be the
point, but Maple's approach did a lot more damage than the designers had expected.
Having cleared the first floor in one shot, they came back ready to do the same on the
second. Where the first floor had been stone-walled corridors, the second was all
towering shelves, stuffed with books—and many of the monsters were shaped like
books, too. These used a lot of binds and proved to be a very different kind of threat.
But trapping players wasn't an effective tactic if the monsters couldn't actually do
damage. Maple's Martyr's Devotion kept Sally safe, and no ordinary monster could get
through that.
The boss, however, was a different story. This giant book was not messing around, and
it kept stealing their skills, forcing them to retreat.
But the skills it stole from Maple were pretty risky. If anyone else was to use them,
there would be a steep penalty—and Sally exploited that to secure their victory.
Each girl had cleverly turned a boss's gimmick against them: Maple on the first floor
and Sally on the second. They still had a solid number of skill uses left, so they headed
straight on up to the third floor.
They hoped to clear this floor in one attempt, too.