Second Semester Final Exams (14)
As I quietly watched Arthur's party work their way through the dungeon, I finally understood why none of them had even considered figuring out the gimmicks.
'Joy!'
'Ugh! I'll hold down their movement with firepower for now!'
'No choice! Better than the whole thing collapsing!'
The reason was simple. They'd realized they could clear the dungeon without ever bothering to think of another way.
When I designed the Floor 5 boss, I had built it so that it could not be defeated through any normal means.
This dungeon studies exam was, above all else, a test of the ability to solve gimmicks. The boss standing at the very end, the one meant to crown the whole experience, naturally had to be an extension of that philosophy.
Like certain dungeons that exist in the world of Soul Academy, this dungeon adopted a structure where challengers had to gather clues scattered across its entirety in order to bring down the boss — a process meant to unfold through one miserable defeat after another, with lessons pried from the wreckage each time.
The problem, as it turned out now, was that I had tuned the boss's difficulty so that every student in the Academy would be able to clear it.
I had reasoned that if the final boss were too strong, the whole gimmick-solving exercise would be smashed to pieces regardless, so I'd kept things within reasonable bounds.
But that line, which looked sensible on paper, was not an impossible wall to Arthur's party — a group whose specs existed on an entirely different plane from your average first-year. To them, it was a boss they could feasibly go toe-to-toe with.
'Frey!'
'I know. Falling back.'
On top of that, the boss itself made use of every gimmick that had existed throughout the dungeon, which only made things worse.
A pattern where attacking actually healed it.
A pattern where you had to focus fire on a single point to disable it.
A pattern where you could only deal damage by striking a specific body part.
The boss was, without exaggeration, a grand synthesis of everything the dungeon studies course had taught — and in that sense, it fulfilled the spirit of the exam perfectly, so long as you solved the gimmicks as intended.
'I'll raise a barrier! Everyone, gather here!'
Under Arthur's command, the four of them carried out their respective roles and steadily ground the boss down. Watching them, I pressed my knuckles hard against my forehead as a dull ache throbbed behind my temples.
If they were going to fail, I wouldn't have cared. Either way — whether they eventually found the proper method, or kept repeating the same blunders until they crashed and burned — both outcomes were welcome ones from where I stood.
If the dungeon got cleared properly, great, I'd be happy. And if it meant the Pathetic Chief God couldn't screw me over with his arbitrary penalties, well, that was hardly a bad deal either.
But you know what? Right now, these brats are out there violating the dungeon I made — with their own homegrown methods!
They're attempting to clear it in a way that must never, under any circumstances, be allowed to work!
Gyaaagh. Is this what the developers felt whenever I tore through their dungeons like a hurricane?! I don't exactly regret all the garbage I spouted back then... no, I don't! Those bastards deserved every word of it!
Muttering every nonsense thought that came to mind at the shocking spectacle unfolding before me, I suddenly realized something.
Hold on. The entire leading group is stuck on the fifth floor right now.
Which meant... don't tell me.
"The young lady's guess is correct. Prince Cecil's party and Young Lord Kurten's party are likewise trying to take their final bosses head-on with brute force rather than solving the gimmicks."
Those exams were for the second and third years respectively, the dungeon studies professor explained with a sigh, and even though they were up against bosses far more powerful than the one Arthur's party faced, neither group showed the slightest intention of backing down.
Noooooo!
Kurten, fine — he's a muscle-brain, that comes with the territory!
But Cecil, what is wrong with you?! I thought you'd actually changed, and it turns out you're the exact same muscle-brained idiot as the rest of them?!
And Jeff! What in the world are you doing over there?!
Why is the supposed brain of the party charging in headfirst without a single thought in his head?
How are you still a perfect man apart from the siscon thing when you act like this?!
My blood had boiled so hot that, ironically, I cooled right back down. I let out a long breath and leaned back into my chair.
At this point, I almost hoped they'd just fail everything.
Then I could get to laugh at the Academy's blockheaded students while teaching them the proper clear routes myself.
'Damn it. Is this another failure?'
Studying the expression of regret on Arthur's face, I heaved out another sigh.
Haaaah.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have just made the first-year boss harder.
Having been thrown out of the dungeon mid-battle with the Floor 5 boss, Joy lay sprawled across the floor, staring silently up at the ceiling.
Nearly a full day had passed since their party reached the fifth floor of the Academy Dungeon, and still the boss showed no sign whatsoever of falling.
"Can we really bring it down?"
There were enough people crowded around her that her graceless behavior shouldn't have even registered as strange. She thought she ought to get up — and instead, without quite meaning to, closed her eyes.
In that instant, the memories of every dungeon they had conquered together rose before her eyes.
The dungeon Lady Arln built really was a magnificent place.
So magnificent that it seemed only natural for her to take such pride in her own creation.
The first time that thought crossed my mind was during our fight with the Floor 1 boss.
At the time, our party was seething with frustration after being confronted with that message: "Floor 0."
Standing before words that rendered every ounce of effort we'd expended utterly meaningless, how furious had we been?
His Highness the Third Prince had grumbled on and on about giving the young lady's head a proper knuckle rap for it, and Phoebe couldn't even bring herself to stop him — I hardly need to describe what the mood was like.
The situation turned around the next day, when we learned how to clear the Floor 1 boss.
The method for defeating the knight guarding the first floor's end was to strike his weak points in sequence, one after another.
The very knight we'd assumed could only be toppled by grinding his guard down and hacking away — defeated through that simple trick.
So the gimmick from the first room had been applied to the whole first floor. So our earlier efforts hadn't been wasted at all. Just as we were reconsidering everything we'd assumed, Lady Kent dropped a single remark.
'This is it. The weak points of the soldiers and the knight we met at the very beginning.'
'What? That can't be... no. Wait. She's right. If you list out the weak points of every enemy we've faced, from first to last, they match perfectly. Kehm. KHAHAHAH! What is this? We knew the clear method from the very start?!'
That gimmick was, in essence, a declaration: I never once ignored your efforts. And the anger we'd been nursing quietly melted away like snow in spring.
With our composure restored, we began encountering little touches like that all over the dungeon.
The tiny wolf that bolted the instant it laid eyes on us at the start of Floor 2.
The shortcut we could only pass through once we recognized an illusion for what it was.
The legion of phantoms that were nearly impossible to tell apart from the real thing.
And the Floor 2 boss, who wove false attacks and true attacks together into a single deadly rhythm.
It was around the time we cleared the second floor that Joy, looking at the staircase leading down to the third, had a thought:
This dungeon feels like it's teaching us how the illusion gimmick can be used.
Like it's saying: here — everything you learned in the second room, use it to your heart's content.
Progressing through Floor 3 followed much the same pattern.
The horde of enemies that looked like an endless downpour but vanished all at once the moment their leader fell.
The countless doors, among which only a single one was ever the correct answer.
The demon that dropped to its knees the moment it saw us, pretending to reveal which path was the true one.
The boss whose magic circles we had to pick through, destroying only the ones that were ordained.
By the time we reached the fourth floor, we had to determine whether the room beyond each door was dream or reality.
Lady Kent grumbled that it was annoying, but honestly, I found it rather fun.
Inside the dreams, I could pour out magic to my heart's content without worrying about exhaustion.
Granted, I mistook a real room for a dream, blasted away until I collapsed from mana depletion, and got a proper scolding from His Highness for it.
And then, at the end of it all, the fifth floor.
Facing the Derelict — the one who had sent us down to Floor 0 — was where we learned what a wall really was.
His raw abilities were absurdly beyond anything reasonable.
He wielded every gimmick that had ever existed in the dungeon, as if proving his claim to be the master of this mansion.
And he was so staggeringly durable that no matter how desperately we hammered him with attacks, I honestly began to wonder if we were even scratching him.
That's how far gone I was — I actually caught myself thinking, is this an enemy that simply cannot be beaten?
With no answer anywhere in sight, we sat frowning in despair — and it was Phoebe who lifted us back to our feet.
As the Saintess of the Church of the Main God, she had stared down despair more times than she could count, and even before an overwhelming enemy, she simply did not know how to surrender to it.
'Everyone. If we give up now, wouldn't all the effort we've poured in so far be wasted?'
'Just look at everything we've come through. You all know it — Lady Arln never gives us a trial we cannot overcome.'
'Put another way, Lady Arln believes that we can defeat this final enemy.'
'We've received so much help from her. How could we betray her faith in us?'
'Let's try again. Get up, and challenge it one more time. All the way to the end.'
The Saintess's voice — blooming hope like a flower in the middle of a hellscape — drove our despair out of us.
And so we refused to surrender to defeat, and threw ourselves at the dungeon again and again.
Again. And again.
'That thing's foundation is all the countless gimmicks this dungeon contains! Which means the way to beat it must follow the same logic!'
Again. And again.
'When a red aura gathers on his sword, he's about to unleash a dangerous attack. Leave this one to me — I'll block it with a barrier.'
Again. And again.
'I think I'm finally starting to read his sword. It's a lot like Professor Carl's.'
Again. And again.
All the way up to this very moment — one step short of bringing that boss down at last.
As far as Joy could tell, they had already succeeded in deciphering the vast majority of the boss.
Only one thing remained.
Breaking through the boss's final, desperate struggle.
Stopping the spell — the one where the Derelict spread his crimson mana across the entire chamber, inscription and all.
What is it?
How do we get past that gimmick?
Lady Arln wouldn't have built a gimmick that can't be solved.
The clue has to be in the gimmick itself. It has to be.
Haaah.
I really don't know.
Let's think it through one more time.
What shape did that magic circle take, again?
As Joy traced the form of the magic circle across her mind's eye, a single idea suddenly surfaced.
...What if.
Just — what if.
What would happen if we stopped the magic circle from forming in the first place?
The instant the circle begins to inscribe itself, if I mixed my own mana into it and choked off its creation entirely—
The moment the thought completed itself, Joy's eyes snapped open and she shot upright as if launched from her seat.
"Joy. Have you risen? The schedule has been grueling — take some time to rest."
"I will, Your Highness!"
"...What?"
"I said I know how to defeat the final enemy! Your Highness, Third Prince!"