12 Revisiting the First Floor

Neve walked back into the first floor of the main dungeon feeling anxious.

She hadn't felt this way in so long. Sure, the act of saving others occasionally made her feel nervous, but looking after herself had long since produced that effect.

Something had changed in the last hour, though.

She had an objective, a goal to reach that went beyond her own personal struggles. And, already, that was doing a number on her heart.

Regardless, she had something she wanted to do, and it was time to get started.

The portal took her back to the battlefield where the initial 100 humans who came into the Final Challenge took on their first opponents. The bodies of the monsters and humans who fell in this fight were still on the ground, soaking up the midnight moonlight.

[Once I'm done with this, I should head back into the second floor's safe zone and get some rest. If Thomas and his group of assholes actually manage to complete the Final Challenge in just one night then, it is what it is. But it probably wouldn't do me any good to keep running around here, feeling so tired.]

The smell coming from the dead bodies made Neve gag. Waving a hand in front of her face, she went to the sides of the battlefields, toward the trees circling the area that the group hadn't bothered to check.

Moving past a sparse collection of trees, Neve looked from one side to another, trying to see if she and the others had missed anything.

She never let her guard down, of course. In the darkness, any minor, inconspicuous noise could be the sign of a creature about to try to devour her. If monsters wanted to take a shot at her, she would make them work for it.

As she walked, she noticed a large rock that looked... strange. It was darker than any other she'd seen, and the moonlight reflected off it somewhat more brightly than it did off anything else.

Neve looked behind the rock and nearly gasped.

[Holy shit.]

There was a chest here. One that had remained completely untouched by the group.

[I actually found something!]

She celebrated as she looked through the chest's contents.

There were three potions, a ruby, and some enchanted gauntlets that Neve couldn't use.

She took the three potions and sold the other two items before walking away, bringing her World Shop token total to 3450.

She meant to keep searching the area but found that she was unable to do.

As she walked ahead, she ran straight into an invisible wall.

"Ack!" Neve bounced off it, falling on her butt. It felt like she'd just been shocked. "What the hell!?"

The healer stood up, looking ahead. Slowly, she stretched out one hand and touched a golden barrier that kept her from venturing deeper into fog-covered woods. The barrier sent chills up her arm, almost as though it was scolding her just for coming into contact with it.

[... Can I really not move past this? I mean... It's not a level requirement type of thing. No, is the first floor really that small?]

Figuring that it might have just been this specific side of the First Floor, she ran in the opposite direction.

Jogging through the field of dead bodies, she made it to the other side. There were no chests here, but that wasn't what Neve was focused on right now. She had a question in her mind that needed answering.

Sure enough, after a while, she ended up running into the same golden barrier and bouncing off it a second time.

She fell on her back, staring up at the night sky, but she did not move to get up just yet. She was too shocked to do so.

Nobody had noticed it, but this battlefield, where the humans and monsters fought to the death, represented almost 80% of the entirety of the First Floor's space.

Confirming that bit of information gave Neve a sudden, demoralizing realization.

They had played directly into the hands of the Forces That Be.

The group was all but funneled into the main dungeon, due to the looming danger of players who didn't gather enough Activity Points killing each other outside of it. Then, they were made to fight here, where they were guaranteed to lose at least a few players due to the cramped nature of the battlefield.

And, all of that was likely to cause tensions to rise amongst the group, which would lead to an inevitable turning point later, as Neve witnessed.

Like Tamira had said before, humans were oddly predictable, sometimes.

She wondered then how similar the other groups' circumstances had been. If the entire point was to get the lower-level players to fight the higher-level players, were there some groups where the higher-level players won out in the end? Or, was the point not necessarily to get them to fight, but to simply cause a rift between them so that they would act on their own and cause their downfall in some other way?

[It doesn't matter,] she thought, standing up and brushing off the dirt. [What's done is done. All I care about now is getting a chance to pay those douchebags back for what they did.]

After inspecting her surroundings, she scoured the edge of the First Floor in its entirety for any chests or items she and the others may have missed.

Eventually, she ended up in front of the portal that led outside the main dungeon, back into the Final Challenge's overworld.

She didn't find anything aside from that one chest. Was that truly all there was here?

[It is a pretty small place...] Neve tapped her chin with her right index finger. [But, that fact might be misleading. Everything they've done so far has been, so, why would that be any different? The point of putting this barrier up, so close to where everything went down, is probably to get me to say 'yep, nothing else here' and move on. So, think.]

Walking from side to side, Neve looked at her surroundings for a while. Her eyes scanned every tree, every minor clearing between them, every rock laid out around them.

[Think about it. To the Forces That Be, this is just a game to them, right? So, If I was a twisted game designer, trying to make my players hate me as much as possible, where would I put a secret in here? Where would I think that my players would be the least likely to check?]

Standing in front of the portal, she received no answers for a while.

The moon even shifted slightly in the sky, as time passed. Then, however, something came to her.

She shook her head, scoffing.

[Nah. There's no way, right?]

Neve turned around, looking at the giant portal behind her.

[I swear...]

Taking a few steps around it, she looked behind the portal.

And, sure enough, there was what looked like a little cabin of some sort, with a metal door at its front.

"You're joking."

This moment added to that realization she had just a moment ago. It meant that, aside from trying to get the group to kill each other, they had also tried to make the group impatient. To inflict a sense of desperation within them.

Because she figured that the only way 100 individual humans would miss something like this was if they were all focused on one thing: finishing the Final Challenge as quickly as possible.

Sighing, Neve walked toward it, leaving behind the dead, rotting bodies.

The door was unlocked, allowing Neve to turn the knob and push it open. She expected a chest, but, instead, she found a set of stairs leading underground.

[Hm... Gotta stay alert.]

Holding her staff a little tighter, she walked down the steps and closed the door behind her. Each individual footstep caused echoes to ring out, letting Neve know in advance that this was a lonely, empty place she was walking into.

Seeing these stairs, she half-expected there to be another full dungeon here. Instead, it was just one room with a door at the other end.

And a golem standing in the center.

Level 13

MP: 10/10

[Ah... Thomas and his followers managed to lower the level of the monsters in the dungeon. So, even though this is a mini-boss, this thing is way below me in strength. On paper, anyway.]

Inhaling sharply, Neve nodded to herself.

[Let's do this.]

She walked forward. A blue orb at the golem's center began glowing, and the collection of stones piled on top of each other to vaguely resemble a humanoid body began moving.

Quickly, Neve began trying to figure out how she was going to fight this.

[You're on your own. You can't just hang back and cast supporting spells all night. You're gonna have to hit it.]

Taking note of her options, she could use only those three beginner-level spells she'd bought.

[Fireball, Waterball, and Iceball. Out of all of them, Iceball is the most useful. Golems aren't resistant to Ice damage, so it deals the same damage as all the other spells, but can also slow it down. That's gonna be my main weapon.]

Soundlessly, the golem began moving toward Neve.

In response, Neve cast Sacred Ground under herself before firing off her first offensive attack.

Both spells came out in quick succession. A white rune was created under Neve's feet, and a sphere of ice crashed into the golem ahead. As the ice landed, the golem's body was covered in a frosty mist, but it kept moving toward her.

It raised one of its stone limbs and moved to bring it down on top of Neve.

Sure, she had Sacred Ground there to mitigate the damage, but she didn't want to see how painful a hit from this thing would be. So, she dodged out of the way, walking out of Sacred Ground's rune.

[... I'm probably going to be moving a lot in fights, now. I need to take that into account.]

She shot another Iceball, bringing her total mana down to 280.

The golem staggered, pulling back from the hit slightly, but it didn't seem like Neve was doing much to damage it.

[Of course,] she thought. [This is just a beginner-level spell. But, it's all I've got. I have to make it work.]

Suddenly, the golem leaped.

In an unnaturally fast move, for something of its size, even with the slowing effect from the {Iceball}, it moved to crush Neve from above.

[Crap.]

Because she hadn't seen it coming, she didn't have time to dodge. So, she cast Sacred Ground and braced herself. She hadn't wanted to, but she was about to find out how much damage she could take anyway.

The golem's foot landed on her shoulder and brought her down.

It pinned her to the stone. The wind was knocked out of Neve's lungs. She coughed and saw both saliva and something darker come out of her mouth and felt it hit her chin.

But, the golem did not crush her completely.

"Agh!"

Slipping out from beneath the golem, she pulled away and quickly cast Healing Ground beneath her feet. Slowly, she felt her insides repairing themselves, as the golem turned toward her again.

Her mana was now down to 255.

Breathing heavily, she cast {Iceball} again. Not once, not twice, but three separate times. Three blocks of ice flew through the air and crashed into the enemy, pushing it back.

The cold mist spread around it. The golem moved to try the same thing again, jumping high into the air.

However, the stacking Iceballs had turned it much, much slower.

She dodged out of the way this time, retaliating with more Iceballs.

220, 210, 200, one spell after another brought her mana down more, and more, but caused more damage to appear on the golem. The stones that made up its body began cracking, and its movements were so sluggish now that Neve barely had to put any effort in to avoid its attacks.

Neve did not let up.

Gritting her teeth, she began walking at the monster in a calm, straight line, holding her staff in front of her as a barrage of ice-based projectiles shot out and struck the golem's stone body.

Biting the insides of her cheeks from pure anger, Neve said:

"I might not be able to hit you that hard, but I'm a healer! I can do something else. I can outlast you!"

Eventually, the golem was virtually frozen. At this point, it was powerless to defend itself from her beginner-level spells. Peppering the creature with these Ice attacks, Neve kept going until, finally, when Neve's mana was at 120, the golem collapsed, falling to pieces.

EXP Gained: 60

EXP: 201/200

Level Up!

Neve did the same, though her limbs didn't break off the same way the golem's did.

Using up mana like this was tiring. Breathing heavily, Neve chuckled.

"I won," she noted. "I actually won a fight on my own!"

Sure, it was against an enemy seven levels beneath her, and she had taken a pretty bad hit in the middle of it, but a win was a win.

Healers weren't meant to fight things on their own. This was a much-needed victory.

And now, Neve wanted to claim her prize.

She stood up and walked over to the door the golem had been protecting. Wiping some sweat off her forehead, and that saliva she'd spat out off her chin, she turned the knob.

The door led to a much smaller room, that had been holding a chest inside.

Neve opened it and found...

A mace.

Steel Mace

{Common}

REQ: Level 15

VAL: 50

"..."

Neve held it in her hands, staring down at it.

[All that... for this!? I can't even use this thing!]

And so, she lifted it up and threw it on the ground.

"FUCK OFF!"

She had a long journey ahead of her.

And now, she worried about just how many items she'd find on that journey would be ones she could even use.

Unlucky.