Chapter 44
Chapter 44
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 44
Chapter Title: Doll Dungeon (2)
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Clang!
The Jester's Sword flashed, sending the wax doll's head flying.
The doll's head staring at me with its expressionless eyes devoid of any light was utterly grotesque.
The monsters in the Doll Dungeon were dolls that had originally existed there, transformed into monsters. Even when defeated, they didn't vanish like usual.
They remained in place as wax dolls drained of demonic energy.
Still, shards dropped properly.
"Should I pick this up now?"
"Nah. Leave anything tier 2 or below. We'll grab them all on the way out."
Click!
"What was that noise?"
After taking down the first doll, the doors to all six rooms visible around us opened simultaneously.
"Look over there at the stairs. Demonic energy is blocking the path."
"Can't we purify it with a core?"
Unlike the linear dungeons up to now, the Doll Dungeon was a gimmick dungeon. You had to meet certain conditions to proceed to the next floor.
"There must be some condition on the first floor. Probably related to those rooms that just opened."
Cecilia grasped the situation right away.
She was right. Among the six rooms, you had to defeat the elite monster in one randomly selected room to ascend to the second floor.
To spot that in one go—truly, a genius is a genius.
"Shall we start checking from here?"
"The moment we enter a room, a monster might lunge out, so stay sharp."
Entering the nearest room, we saw nun dolls everywhere.
"Looks like this is the nuns' room."
From young women to elderly ones, expressionless faces filled the room densely.
"These dolls are all modeled after dead people, right?"
"Probably."
"They were probably made to honor people originally... but now we have to cut them down. Doesn't feel great."
Among the wax dolls, some had turned into monsters, others hadn't.
The monster ones pretended to be ordinary dolls before ambushing players.
The elite monster was no different.
With no way to distinguish them, the best approach was to smash every doll in the room.
"No monsters here? I don't sense any demonic energy. Should we just leave?"
This room definitely had no elite monster. In the original game, it was a doll resembling an old priest.
Just nun dolls here—jackpot avoided.
"Better to smash all the dolls in here."
"What?! Do we have to? I don't want to."
"Bear with it. There might be monsters hiding."
Still, it was best to smash the dolls.
If you encountered the elite without clearing them first, the remaining monsters would swarm you all at once.
Handling them beforehand was far safer.
Taking the lead, I smashed the first doll. Cecilia sighed and started on the ones to either side.
Crunch! Crunch!
When I aimed my sword at the fourth nun doll's head, its eyes—which had been fixed straight ahead—suddenly turned toward me.
At the same time, sharp claws swung out.
'Ah, that startled me.'
Luckily, ambushes didn't work on me.
Right before the attack hit, a blue gem appeared above my head, switching to turn-based combat.
No matter how I thought about it, this one thing was incredibly useful.
I would never get assassinated while spacing out.
As one monster charged, the others swarmed us in unison.
"Cecilia!"
"Leave it to me!"
Cecilia's Radiant Fang felled all the monsters in the room. Shards scattered across the floor alongside grains of light from Lumen's effect.
Cecilia eyed the wounds covering my body and moved to collect the fallen grains.
But I stopped her.
"I'm fine for now."
"Why? You're hurt. If we don't heal right away, the wounds could get infected."
"No problem. We might need them later in a real pinch."
Cecilia's Lumen had a chance to drop recovery grains when attacking enemies.
In other words, it only triggered without monsters around—a fairly limited resource.
'Save them as potion substitutes.'
The more potions, the better.
We smashed every doll in the room before heading to the next.
The second and third rooms were busts too.
Citizen and follower dolls blocked our path in each, and we cleared them just like the first.
Then we entered the fourth room.
"Same as the others, right?"
"Let's circle back."
"Why? Something wrong?"
"Bad feeling."
Old priest dolls.
It was the elite monster's room.
Touching the elite now would bring monsters pouring from the remaining two rooms, so better to clear those first.
"...A hunch, huh?"
I brushed it off vaguely, but Cecilia nodded as if convinced.
After cleanly finishing the last two rooms, we returned to the elite monster's room.
Even knowing what was inside, the eerie aura was on another level compared to the others.
We could fight right away without issue, though.
'Time to test it here.'
"Here, take this. You should equip it for this dungeon."
"This is... a special shard? Why give it to me?"
I handed Cecilia the Black Cloud.
I'd gathered all sorts of info syncing with Cecilia.
For example, passing Black Cloud to her would drop my flow by 8 and raise hers by 8.
Even factoring in the Jester's Sword effect and Shatter Sword's penalty, her turn would come before mine.
With the Jester's Sword, Cecilia surpassing my attack power was tough.
She could barely manage by stacking red shards, but I was building her as a magic tank for now.
To fully utilize Shatter Sword's defense shred, speed control was essential.
Cecilia shreds defense → I deal damage.
That was the way to maximize damage per turn right now.
Confirming Cecilia equipped Black Cloud, I swung at the nearest doll.
Clang!
'Found it.'
The doll staggered from the strike.
Revealing itself with a distinct reaction from the others was the first-floor gatekeeper: the elite priest wax doll.
This one had an expression—a smile.
But the empty eyes and unnaturally torn grin created an unsettling valley that felt even more bizarre.
Immediately after, demonic energy leaked from its arms and shoulders, spreading like mist. The doll's mouth moved.
[...O God, shall we offer these intruders to the abyss!]
Cecilia startled at the voice.
"Di-did it... just speak?!"
"Probably mimicking its living form. Think of it as a recorder."
"First time seeing a talking monster..."
Monsters gained intelligence as the scenario progressed. Later ones even spoke human language.
Of course, that was later. This doll was just a recorder—like an encounter line.
"Cecilia, get ready. Here it comes."
Elite monsters had different attack patterns too.
Instead of charging, the doll assumed a prayer pose, gathering demonic energy at its fingertips to draw a sun emblem in the air.
But it wasn't the empire's symbol—it was a blackened, rotten sun. A corrupted product tainted by demonic energy.
Boom!
A storm of demonic energy raged from the emblem.
[...O God, shall we offer these intruders to the abyss!]
Confirming the line repeat, Cecilia shook off her confusion and raised her sword.
A blue gem floated above her head.
Cecilia's turn.
The priest robes were just appearance; the monster's true form was a lump of wax.
Demonic energy infused the wax, giving it steel-like hardness. None of the dolls we'd faced had exploitable weak points.
Unless you carved one with Corner Slash, extra turns were impossible.
But the elite priest was different.
"Aim for the emblem!"
The elite priest's sun emblem was both its attack and its weakness.
It was parading its heart in plain sight.
At my gesture toward the emblem, Cecilia kicked off without hesitation and leaped toward it.
The result of our synced practice.
She used to ignore my instructions at first, but at some point, she started prioritizing them.
Good job, Cecilia.
Light gathered on Cecilia's blade, and her art, Shatter Light, crashed into the emblem.
Kaboom!!
The emblem's dark blue demonic energy clashed fiercely with white light, bursting with a sonic boom.
'Defense shred trigger?'
After getting the Jester's Sword, I'd tested the slow effect multiple times.
Sensing an opponent's flow drop purely by feel was hard.
But for some reason, debuff applications were intuitively visible.
Swinging the Jester's Sword showed a snail icon crawling over the monster's head.
The defense shred probably looked similar.
No change on the emblem meant it hadn't triggered this time.
But something else did.
[Weak!]
Weak point hit.
The gem above Cecilia's head shrank slightly, granting her an extra turn.
Extra turns weren't exclusive to me.
Party members could get them too by hitting weak points on foes while partied with me.
Cecilia's turn continued seamlessly as she unleashed a graceful dance midair.
White Swallow Sword Dance.
The sword dance that severed Malias's limbs now traced white trails on the sun emblem.
Four slashes disrupted the emblem's demonic energy, and an icon like a shattering shield appeared above it.
Similar to armor break icons in other games.
Defense shred effect.
At that moment, Cecilia's lips curved up slightly.
"Got it! It worked! Feels solid!"
Cecilia seemed to sense the defense shred intuitively.
I couldn't.
It said "certain probability," but in the original, it was only about 25%.
To think it'd trigger in just two attacks.
'As expected of the luck totem.'
"Leave the rest to me!"
I took over the turn as Cecilia retreated with a satisfied look, mission accomplished.
My turn.
That being the weak point, I should target the emblem too—but I'd learned from the Malias fight.
My attack pattern had always been Chronodive → Corner Slash → attack art → Break.
No foe had survived that combo. Even Barhatan went down to two rounds of it.
But not every enemy could be one-combo'd.
There'd be damage sponges, phase-2 bosses, mobs.
My monotonous attacks needed variation.
My mindset hadn't changed, though.
'Stronger attack power.'
So I switched up the combo.
The improvised method from the Malias fight.
Slash!
[Weak!]
Corner Slash carved a weak point into the elite priest.
A second Corner Slash followed immediately, adding two more weak points.
These carved weak points could be detonated all at once with an art—proven fact.
Corner Slash → Corner Slash, in short.
The more turns stacked, the more weak points accumulated until the enemy was covered in them.
Detonating that stockpile would yield astronomical damage unlike anything before.
And this would be the key to defeating the Doll Dungeon boss, Rose & Lilian.
'Carve max weak points before phase shift, end it before revival.'
With that resolve, I raised my sword to block the priest's incoming attack.
'I'll settle this today.'
A beam of demonic light shot from the emblem.
⁎⁎⁎
"Much faster than planned."
A black-clad figure wearing a mask without eye holes stared at the altar leaking red light.
With a wave of his hand, a serene mansion landscape appeared atop the altar.
At its center, two figures battled God's servant.
"It should have taken three months to break, originally."
One was the Ren family's vice sword fairy.
The other, an impurity not in their plans until recently—after eliminating one of their kin: Mourning Sword, Haribal Belder.
"At this rate, the second seal won't last the day."
Just then, the scene showed the impurity stabbing the servant's heart.
"A variable outside the plan has entered."
Another black-clad figure stepped out from beside the altar.
"What shall we do?"
"Planned ones can be left alone, but impurities are another matter."
"...Then?"
The black-clad figure snapped his fingers instead of answering.
Snap.
In that instant, two dolls lying still in the mansion's shadows snapped their eyes open.
"We eliminate it this time. Can't let it disrupt the grand plan any further."