Being the fourth time entering the same dungeon, the creepy rise of a light fog covering the insides of the cavern and the walking skeletons aren't as worrying as the first time. The cave is long and narrow in proportion to the big mountain, its peak ceiling being over ten stores tall, where the side walls gradually converge into a single point. The ground, however, is mostly plain, with some changes in altitudes on three different levels, increasing a story in height as it goes nearer each wall as if it was mined and shaped by human hands. Scattered metal poles illuminate the ambient with its torches when the adventurer in the ragged cloak enters, his steps echoing in this ravine-like cave.
"This is a legendary dungeon. I need to be smarter about it… even if the devs are a bunch of idiots, there must be a logic behind placing traps at those corridors."
With quick steps, he silently moves to the higher stone platform by the right side of the cave. Looking below, there are wandering skeletons and standing living stone statues, plus when using Vision it's possible to see spiders buried in some parts of the ground.
"Skeletons, spiders, golems, those are easy enough to kill."
His character teleports in a blink to the parallel stone platform on the other side of the cave, leaving fragments of energy behind as he keeps his pacing.
"I already have all of this annotated." – His character halts and stares at a group of skeletons, keeping his distance, careful not to get too close. Some hold bows while others have rusty double-edged swords. – "But what's bothersome is the multiple tunnel entrances."
The walls on each floor have often caved entrances shaped like an upside U, their paths are dominated by darkness for the lack of torches within. Groups of monsters guarding its fronts.
He waits, looking at his skill bar, a countdown in seconds appears above one of the box buttons. Once it hits zero, the ability shines and he clicks to activate it again, teleporting his character to the cave's right side so he can run without luring any monsters. The number reappears over the skill: '12s'… '11s'…
"That one, that, and that. I tried all three of them," – he points to pathways at different floors. – "All my characters got impaled, smashed, or dropped into a pool of spikes."
He suddenly stops, being able to see the end side of the ravine cave, a smooth wall with no paths to follow.
"Hmm…"
The man looks at a paper map over his table, everything is drawn badly in rough sketches, giving the general idea of where the entrances and the enemies are, with all the three paths he tried crossed with an X.
"This is just the beginning. It's like the devs wanted for the scouts to die right from the start, fucking idiots wanting to change the meta. I bet they don't even play their own game, and even so, they still do these shits."
In realization, he squints his eyes and gazes closer at the map. Then, he holds his mouse and pulls it closer to him, making his character's camera turn downward to where the enemies are.
There are mobs everywhere, but for every pathway, there's a group of them right in front of it.
"Maybe I need to kill the monsters before going in?"
With a press of a button, his character's eyes shine golden, and names appear on top of every creature.
[Spider of the Depths (Level 81)] [Archer of the Abyss order (Level 85)] [Puppet Stone Statue (Level 87)]
Right below him, four skeletons named [Dead of the Abyss Order] walk aimlessly.
"My character is only level seventy-five, plus he is more suited for scouting than combat…"
He sighs, getting a better grip on his mouse. He presses a button and a window opens containing his character sheet. In a second, he clicks a few times, changing a few skills from his usual build, then he closes it.
"But… better try than depend on luck."
With the push of a key, his character jumps forward to the emptiness, hovering in the air for an instant before quickly descending from his floor. One skeleton looks up, seeing the adventurer drawing both of his curved daggers. Ferociously, a combo of keys is pressed on his keyboard, and in an instant, the commands are electrically passed to his in-game character, activating its muscles as if it was his.
Black smoke bursts out from within his cloak while mid-air, blocking the vision of anything but two grey lights of his blades shining from within. One dagger is thrown upwards, flying above the dark cloud and then descending by its dragged-down ribbon. It cuts the smoke until the blade strikes the skull of the first skeleton, making the monster go three steps back as the adventurer falls to the ground safely.
The other three draw their swords and advance. The adventurer walks back, each step of his being propelled by wind, showing that his boots are now wrapped with ghostly blue magic boots with wings near the ankles.
His enemies dart forward, each step out of balance and cracking their bones with the quick pacing. But before the skeletons can reach him the black smoke continues to spread until everything is sunk into darkness.
Within, four quick slashes hit all the skeletons, marking them with a red cross sign above their skulls. The skeletons strike blindly against the smoke in a valley of quick attacks, dispersing it on each swing but relentlessly missing every single one of them.
A dagger comes out from the top of the cloud, swings down, and pierces the rightmost skeleton's head. Red light travels from his hovering mark to the others around, electrifying and damaging all skeletons in a chain reaction. The dagger looses from its skull and suddenly is pulled back inside the smoke violently.
This repeats within a matter of instants, one dagger being thrown after the other, launched from above, the sides, or below; red electric currents sparking all around; slicing them again and again as the dark smoke disperses on each move; gradually showing the adventurer spinning as he swings the daggers with precision and pulls them back by their dark magic-clothed ribbons.
His feet slide on the stone floor and the spin comes to a halt. The red chain disperses in an explosion of electrical energy together with the last visible patch of black smoke. The skeletons shake their heads, and with their soulless eyes, they lock on the adventurer and walk forward erratically. He goes a step back and pushes them away by throwing his daggers sideways while firmly holding onto their ribbons.
After the impact, one skeleton suddenly recovers and strides forth, lifting its rusty sword at the adventurer's head, but one dagger is pulled back and parries the attack midair. However, another skeleton comes from behind the parried sword, slashing a quick attack from below. Without being able to evade, the sword slices the adventurer's shoulder and paints the wall behind him with blood.
He looks at his wound, showing nothing but void from within his body as if he didn't have any flesh or blood, only a black space within him. This is just a game, after all, the developers aren't crazy enough to lose potential players by explicitly showing gore.
And at the top right corner of the screen, a red bar goes down:
[31##/3560]
[28##/3560]
[2617/3560]
"One thousand damage a single hit, huh?" – he says unfazed.
His face goes even closer to the screen, and his hands prepare for another combo. In a second, he taps nine keys, so fast that his character seems to do a single thought move:
The adventurer jumps in the air and quickly launches his daggers, slashing the nearest skeleton and then changing courses in a rapid pull of strings, slicing all in a spin. The first one recovers and erratically tries to attack with two quick slashes, but the daggers magically change courses to parry them. And the skeleton is pushed back with a vertical twirl.
He steps away to keep his distance and throws a dagger bursting in flames with a side curve, hitting and scorching their bones, and soon after, the other dagger follows and freezes the same spots, cracking their arms and legs. One drops its sword and two fall to the floor, dismantling their bones and losing their magic supply to sustain themselves.
The two surviving skeletons advance, his daggers are pulled back and, in a bang, they shoot forward like bullets in an X crossway, so fast that it's only possible to see them when the ribbons limit is reached and come to a rough stop. The skeletons' spines break, and soon after, their bodies also drop to the floor like puzzle pieces.
Hesitating, he looks around, checking if all threats are really dead. And with a tired sigh, he turns and sits on the dungeon floor with his legs crossed in a Zen position. The inventory appears in the middle of the screen, having multiple icons organized in a grid, and he clicks a top tab with the image of a potion to switch the grid to [Consumables].
He double-clicks and his character suddenly takes off a piece of bread from his back and starts eating it.
…
"Never forget to heal."
A faint green aura glows around his character, and for each bite of the brown bread, his red bar rises again. He takes his last bite and the bread was gone. With two more clicks, another bread appears for the eating.
"Luckily, no dying this time."
He looks at the upside U-shaped entrance to a dark pathway that's just in front of him.
Just to be sure, he clicks to activate his Vision, a wave of grey pings around him, spreading towards the floor and walls, showing nothing within the darkness.
Still can't see anything…
He looks at his red bar at the top left corner filling to its maximum capacity, but right below it, there's the end of a number being constantly changed. He moves his camera to center it, focusing on a hovering number above the skeleton's corpses he just defeated.
'10', '9'… '8'-
"Revival time?"
His character stands in a jump.
"Ahm… Okay, no time to overthink it."
He dashes forward and steps into the pathway. Once he is a few steps in, he blinks and teleports forward, everything warps into complete darkness, but even so, he continues to run without any directions.
For a couple of seconds, only his steps on stone can be heard, but suddenly, even that stops to a static silence.
"…"
He taps the W key, then A, D, and S, but nothing works.
"I just died?"
At the bottom right corner, it appears: 'Loading… 99%'
"Oh, it's just a loading screen."
The loading finishes and the screen brightens again, not the same yellow light of the sun as before, but a white with a tint of gold.
The character and his dark cloak contrast with the environment as he enters the scene from below the camera. This entire place has only one pattern: an oversized corridor with golden luminous baseboards and smooth brick stone walls painted in white; with a plain light-grey floor and ceiling; wide enough to be a two-lane road and having its ceiling up ten meters high; any corners being sharp ninety-degrees.
"Things changed pretty quickly."
He opens a grin.
"So, this is the real dungeon?"