Hidden Stage (2)
I was the first person to announce that Chapter 1 had a hidden stage.
I wouldn't dare call myself the first to discover it — someone out there might have found it and simply kept their mouth shut. But I was absolutely the first to make its existence known.
In my previous life, unlike the players who mashed skip the second a cutscene started, I sat through every last bit of the story. If I ran into an NPC, I talked to them. I read every line they had, even the ones that meant absolutely nothing.
That's how I ended up being the first to upload a discovery-and-walkthrough video of Chapter 1's hidden stage to YouTube.
Players from all over the world who enjoyed Fairy Masters found my walkthrough, and before long, information I hadn't even figured out myself started appearing in the comments.
Starting with that overseas player's comment, users began pouring in to say the hidden stage's difficulty was absurd.
I didn't think that many people would go out of their way to mess with me, so I checked it out myself — and discovered something very interesting.
The hidden stage's difficulty scaled with how far a player had progressed through the story. Roughly one star rank for every two stages cleared.
A player who'd cleared up through Chapter 2, for instance, would face 1-Star monsters inside the hidden stage. A player who'd cleared through Chapter 10 would face 5-Star monsters.
One player tackled the hidden stage after completing the entire Fairy Masters story. The boss that appeared then was a 10-Star monster — no, a human — bearing the title Frustrated King.
A man who wanted to be king but lacked the qualifications to become one. A man who despaired because of it.
That was the Frustrated King.
"Pasical...!"
A man clutched a headless corpse, trembling with grief. The arms wrapped around the body were skeletal, as if he hadn't been eating properly, and his cheeks were hollowed out to nothing.
Five people — no, monsters — stood around him as if standing guard. The corpse in his arms was covered in stitch marks, and the other monsters were the same. Their heads, too, were those of enormous rats. All except one, which wore the head of a large cat instead.
These were the artificial creatures Alan had killed alongside Aquaril during the day — Chimeras.
"Kh-hhk! Who did this to you...!"
The man was genuinely enraged by the Chimera Rat's death. That's how sincere he was about his creations — he'd even given the dead Chimera Rat a name: Pasical.
If the person who'd been turned into this Chimera Rat could have seen this scene, they would have been so furious they'd have hurled every curse imaginable at him. He'd subjected a perfectly ordinary, living human being to every kind of experiment, and then turned them into a monster on top of it.
"It'll hurt, but just bear with it a little longer, Pasical. I'll bring you back soon enough."
The death of the Chimera Rat he'd named Pasical was a shame, but the man could count himself lucky that Alan had only severed the head instead of butchering the body. Stitch on a new head and the Chimera Rat could live again.
"Pick up Pasical."
"Squeak!"
The man with the skeletal arms had no strength left in him. When he stepped back, one of the Chimera Rats standing guard slung the corpse over its shoulder. Rotten blood poured from the severed neck.
"Crush that head."
Crunch!
At the man's command, another Chimera Rat stomped the severed rat head into pulp in a single motion. In no time at all, the enormous rat head had been crushed beyond all recognition.
The body could be reused as many times as he wanted. The head could not.
"Anyway, who the hell killed my Pasical? Don't tell me it was Hwaryongwang?"
The man trembled with unease.
He didn't believe his creations were any weaker than Prince Trilly's or Princess Lily's fairies. But Hwaryongwang himself — and his fairies — were terrifying.
Hwaryongwang was a powerful fire mage who specialized in flame magic. The man was a mage as well, same as Hwaryongwang, but his field wasn't elemental magic. It was necromancy — the magic of corpses.
And corpses were weak to fire. If he fought Hwaryongwang, there was only one possible outcome. He would lose.
"No. That coward Hwaryongwang would never leave his own palace. Then one of his fairies? If so, which one? Aquaril? Ryona?"
The man muttered to himself, then bit his lip. Either one would be bad news. Aquaril was simply strong, and Ryona possessed a mysterious power that could turn even ordinary arrows into fire arrows.
"...I'll need to prepare."
Whichever of the two had come down into this filthy, stinking place and killed his "fairy," they would clearly come back soon enough to hunt him down.
"They left me something, too, as it happens... I'll need to prepare thoroughly."
The man kept muttering to himself as he turned around. Then he spoke to the chimeras waiting for his command.
"Let's go home, my 'fairies'!"
"Let's go."
"Yes, Master."
Once we'd confirmed that night had fallen, we left the inn and headed back to the sewers. We were going to clear the hidden stage.
In terms of the game's story, I haven't even cleared Chapter 1 yet.
The boss monster who'll one day become the Frustrated King scales with story progress. Later on he'll be a powerful monster leading a vast chimera army under that title — but right now, with Chapter 1 still uncleared, he's nothing but a greenhorn.
How much of a greenhorn? Weak enough that Aquaril and I can kill him right now. Even the chimeras he's made are incredibly weak. The stitch marks are their weak point.
And killing chimeras yields a massive amount of experience. The trade-off, I suppose, is that they don't drop Growth Stones.
"Aquaril. Have there been a lot of kidnappings or disappearances in Indigo lately?"
"I couldn't say about kidnappings, but disappearances have risen sharply compared to last month. Um... Master."
"What is it?"
"Does our going to the sewers have something to do with those disappearances?"
"That's right."
I nodded at Aquaril's question. The one hiding in the sewers had been kidnapping people from Indigo and turning them into chimeras.
What was it again? He couldn't summon fairies, so he decided to turn humans into them?
Yeah. That was probably it.
The guy we were about to meet hadn't received Divine Selection — meaning he couldn't see his own status window. And if he couldn't see a status window, he naturally couldn't summon fairies either.
But his desire to become king was enormous, and deeply twisted. If Divine Selection wouldn't choose him, he'd choose himself — and so he'd subjected the people he'd kidnapped to every kind of human experiment, creating chimera monsters like the Chimera Rat we'd seen yesterday.
He called them fairies. The name the game had given them was Chimera.
"I shall take the lead."
"No. From here on, I'll take point. I'm the tank and you're the DPS."
"But..."
"Hey now! A frail little thing like you talking back to her Master? Want me to punish you? Hmm?"
"Kyah?! I-I'm sorry, Master..."
I poked her in the side as I said it, and Aquaril burst out laughing. Her sides must have been a weak spot.
Inside the city, Aquaril had to take the lead to show me the way — but in the sewers, I needed to be up front. There's no such thing as a tank who hides behind his allies.
"Alright. Let's go in."
"Yes, Master."
With a 1-Star iron sword in my right hand and a flashlight in my left, I entered the sewers with Aquaril. The stench of filth piled everywhere stabbed at my nose. Thanks to the cloth covering my nose and mouth, it was at least more bearable than when we'd come in earlier.
We look like a pair of thieves.
It was the perfect look to get us mistaken for burglars. The silver lining was that the only residents of these sewers were Chimera Rats and a Frustrated King who hadn't grown yet.
"...You've got the path memorized, right?"
"Do not worry, Master. I have it all memorized."
After walking for quite a while, I asked Aquaril. She nodded with complete confidence.
The sewers were so labyrinthine that I'd originally planned to use a ball of string to find our way back. But Aquaril had said she could memorize it all and asked me to leave it to her.
Trusting your fairy is part of being a Master, so I'd nodded readily enough, but...
She really has it memorized, right?
Honestly, I couldn't shake the unease that easily. During the day at least some light had filtered in, but now that it was night, I couldn't see an inch in front of my face. Memorizing the path we'd taken under those conditions was no easy feat.
Ah, whatever. It's not like we're going to get trapped down here, right? Worst case, we just hold out until morning.
Spending a night in a sewer reeking of filth would be pretty horrific, but at least we wouldn't die.
Be careful until I can gather 1,000 gems.
The scariest thing for me right now was dying a pointless death without having accomplished anything. I'd already experienced the horror of getting hit by a dump truck in my previous life. I didn't want to die that meaninglessly again.
So until I could use the resurrection skill Molt, I had to be careful. Extraordinarily careful.
Squeak!
"...Master."
"Yeah. I heard it too."
A rat's cry echoed from far ahead. I reflexively switched off the flashlight. Darkness rushed in.
Night combat favored monsters. Unlike humans, who relied heavily on sight, monsters had an extra sense to work with: smell.
The reason we'd come into the sewers this late anyway was to stay off Hwaryongwang's radar. If his fairies or soldiers heard the sounds of combat and came down here, we'd be in trouble.
A real rat? Or a Chimera Rat?
I focused every nerve on my hearing. If I heard footsteps, it was a Chimera Rat. If I didn't, it was just a regular rat.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
Squeeeak — squeak-squeak!
...It's a Chimera Rat.
The footsteps confirmed it. Whatever was out there in the darkness was a Chimera Rat. The steps were regular, like a person walking.
Squelch. Squelch.
The Chimera Rat was coming closer and closer toward us.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch — squeak?
The thing that had been approaching suddenly stopped. It must have caught our scent.
"....."
"....."
Aquaril and I pressed ourselves against the walls on either side of the passage. Me on the right, Aquaril on the left.
There was only one set of footsteps. That meant only one Chimera Rat. We were two. We needed to make full use of our numbers.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
The footsteps started getting closer again. The stench must have been too strong for it to identify us by smell alone.
The Chimera Rat we saw yesterday was the same way.
Come to think of it, the Chimera Rat we'd killed yesterday had also come right up to our ambush spot, twitching its nose the whole way. Which meant its sense of smell wasn't much of a weapon either. Our odds of winning just went up.
Squelch!
The footsteps sounded extremely close. This was... it was walking right past me!
Click!
I flicked the flashlight on without warning.
"Squeak?!"
A sudden flood of bright light from the side sent the Chimera Rat into a panic. It even covered its eyes with its hands, just like a person would.
"Take it down!"
"Yes, Master!"
I had zero intention of letting this opening slip away. The instant I gave Aquaril the order, I charged the monster with a rat's head and a human body.
"Squeak!"
The Chimera Rat swung a bone knife at me. The one we'd killed yesterday had been carrying a bone spear. This one had a bone knife.
"Hup!"
I swung the iron sword and caught the bone knife, then shoved the thing back with raw strength. It tried to hold its ground, but the floor was slick and it slid right back.
"Squeeeak!"
The monster put its weight into shoving back, but my Strength stat, buffs included, sat at a full 19 points — 11 base plus 8 from buffs. Three points higher than Aquaril's.
"Hah!"
Slash!
"Squeeeeeak?!"
In that opening, Aquaril slashed the Chimera Rat from behind. Thud! The arm holding the knife dropped to the ground. Before we'd entered the sewers, I'd already told her that a Chimera Rat's weak point was its stitch marks.
"Hup!"
The monster no longer had a weapon to block my sword. I swung at the neck of the thing shrieking as if it were being torn apart by pain.
"Squeak—!"
The enormous rat head went flying sideways.
"Eeeeeeeasy~!"
The monsters were weak, and I already knew how to beat them. The hidden stage was laughably easy.