Monsters Are Hunted by Humans
Battles in DQ were strictly 1 vs 1.
It was a game labyrinth with no concept of parties at all.
Orochi had been practically itching for a fight, but as an S.E.N, he seemed to have been blocked by 'the restrictions Loki had laid down' and couldn't challenge the Colossus.
Facing the massive Colossus of the Dragon King, Ryu Hwi felt a flicker of doubt.
'The mechanisms in this place would be nearly impossible to see through without Intuition, wouldn't they?'
This was a device that even came equipped with a fake answer.
Ordinarily, a challenger would derive the false solution, receive the false reward, and that would be the end of it.
Without Intuition, uncovering that the mechanism hidden in the statue was a trap would be nearly impossible.
So was it really just coincidence that Orochi, who simply wanted a strong ally, happened to find Ryu Hwi—a bearer of 'Intuition'?
How likely was that, honestly?
Loki would have known Orochi's personality too, and he would have known what method the brute would use to search for a partner.
If all Orochi needed was a strong gamer, then it didn't strictly have to be Ryu Hwi.
'No, wait. There's no ordinary gamer alive who could hold out against that meathead, so... no way. Don't tell me.'
Come to think of it, it had been Loki who steered Ryu Hwi into creating DQ in the first place.
Because he knew Ryu Hwi was an 'Intuition user,' he'd handed over the blueprints.
On top of that, he'd even dropped the hint that 'Mental Tolerance,' the skill needed to complete Intuition, could be found in DQ.
And it was Loki who told Orochi to find a partner in 'DQ' to clear this event with.
The ruins were hidden in a region on the relatively early-to-mid portion of the map. Orochi had tested gamers' mettle on the very bridge where these ruins were hidden.
Among lower-leveled gamers, the ones capable of passing Orochi's trial would be vanishingly few.
Without 'Intuition,' it would be a tall order.
'Was this whole situation scripted by Loki from beginning to end?'
Predicting all of this in advance, and laying out the board so events would unfold exactly as predicted? Was that even possible?
[Master, aren't you supposed to be focusing?]
"Ah. Right."
YggON had a point. There was an enemy standing in front of him that needed to be put down.
'Focus. Beat the enemy first, worry later.'
Intuition Lv4 had read the Colossus's attack before the statue had even finished moving.
Flame — Fiozema
Freeze — Hadeek
Two spells, fired off simultaneously.
Ryu Hwi answered with the optimal counter.
Castling
A Shuffle Gun card that swapped the positions of two targets.
Castling, triggered faster than the spells could resolve, exchanged the locations of Ryu Hwi and the Colossus of the Dragon King.
A swap timed to the exact instant the spells locked onto their cast point.
The Colossus took its own spells head-on, square in the face.
But true to form for a monster guarding a hidden event item, that alone wouldn't bring it down.
The Colossus of the Dragon King blasted straight through the highest-tier flame and ice magic and split its colossal jaws wide open.
[A mere statue, using a dragon's breath. How quaint.]
"So being treated as a dragon despite being a lump of rock, huh."
The dragon's breath was the ultimate special ability in DQ, usable only by dragon-type enemies.
A technique exclusive to dragons that humans could never learn—one graze was enough to kill.
Against it, Ryu Hwi deployed the combo he'd recently discovered.
Warp Gun + Lv 2UP =
⟨ Mode Change: Gate Gun ⟩
Gate Gun fired two bullets at any two points in space, opening a warp gate connecting them.
He pulled the trigger, and the two flying bullets opened gates—one just before the Colossus's gaping maw, and one behind its head.
The gates had been planted with a perfect prediction of the exact moment the breath would erupt, and so the Colossus of the Dragon King got hit by its own attack yet again.
This time the impact was significant enough that part of the statue's surface crumbled away.
'The appropriate level to fight this thing is at least the 50s, then? Not that that means I can't beat it.'
Being a statue, it apparently felt no pain—despite its cracked surface, the Colossus moved on without a care.
⟨ Mode Change: Sniper Rifle ⟩
He aimed for the statue's ankle.
The weak point Intuition had revealed.
"Come to think of it, I never heard the whole story."
He called out to Orochi, who was watching from the sidelines.
"I'd like to hear more about Seth. How he died for love, and all that... I haven't gotten the details yet."
Three gunshots.
A devastating impact slammed into the ankles that held up the enormous body, the Colossus lost its balance, and with a thunderous roar it toppled forward.
The battle flowed as smoothly as water, as if it had all been calculated from the start.
Activating his next card, he walked forward at a leisurely pace.
⟨ Mode Change: Knight's Sword ⟩
The Colossus hurled spell after spell in a frantic last stand, but Ryu Hwi dodged or parried every single one as though he'd seen them coming—because he had.
"Tell me what happened."
"Seth... was my... only friend."
Orochi spoke in halting, clumsy fragments.
"Whatever he did, he gave it, his all... An S.E.N... of that kind. Even among S.E.N... a strange one."
Ryu Hwi's sword cut across the Colossus of the Dragon King's neck.
The Knight's Sword's special ability, Sever, was absurdly powerful, but it couldn't cut through everything.
This was a boss-class entity, after all—the strike couldn't take the head clean off, and instead landed as armor-ignoring damage.
[Armor-ignoring damage applied at approximately 1.3× potency.]
Ryu Hwi sensed the Colossus swinging its tail and planted the Knight's Sword right in its path.
The attacking tail took the damage instead and thrashed about wildly.
"Keep talking."
"One day, Seth met... a human. A woman. Riera. He introduced her... to me too. A woman who didn't care... whether you were S.E.N... or anything else. Seth was... all-in... on love, too."
Giving his all to everything he did.
It might have sounded hedonistic, but Seth had been the type to pour his whole being into each and every one of those pleasures.
And then he'd married, and a child had been born.
"Seth looked... happy. I couldn't... understand it, but... seeing him like that... somehow, I felt... envious."
Envious enough that even an S.E.N—who normally couldn't care less about anything beyond his own amusements—felt the sting of it.
Ryu Hwi kept fighting the Colossus as he listened.
SSR — Sage's Spellbook
Firestorm Lv1 + Ice Lance Lv1 =
⟨ Mythflame Tempest Lv1 ⟩
A colossal storm of mingled ice and flame whipped into a fury and swallowed the Colossus whole.
A holding effect that pinned the enemy in place, plus stacking damage over time.
The Colossus of the Dragon King was driven to the brink of death without ever landing a proper blow.
"That happiness of his—it all came crashing down, just like that. Riera, Seth's daughter... murdered. His second daughter... kidnapped. All that was left at the scene... was a special message... only S.E.N could recognize."
While the Colossus of the Dragon King was bound in the spell, Ryu Hwi drew a new card.
"What did it say?"
"I have... your daughter. Come... alone."
What came after was easy enough to guess.
Seth would have headed to the designated place alone to save his daughter. And there, he'd been murdered.
"I broke... the promise. I rushed... to that place. By the time I arrived... it was all, already over. Seth, screaming... being devoured by something. I couldn't... save Seth."
Orochi ground his teeth together.
"His daughter too... vanished without a trace. There was nothing... I could do. Nothing... at all."
Orochi, howling in despair and fury at the death of his friend and the disappearance of his friend's daughter.
Somehow, the image surfaced in Ryu Hwi's mind unbidden.
"I see..."
It had already been twenty years, but the rage inside Orochi had never gone out.
Ryu Hwi let out a light sigh and tapped a new card.
⟨ Mode Change: Sonic Wave Shooter ⟩
The Shuffle Gun, which had taken the form of the Knight's Sword, now transformed into a handgun-sized weapon. Where the muzzle should have been, its tip carried what looked like a small speaker instead.
A mic-equipped gauntlet materialized over his right hand.
The weapon's usage was simple.
Point the speaker, raise the gauntleted hand to his mouth, and speak.
At the Colossus of the Dragon King—only just clawing free of the vortex of ice and fire—he uttered a single, casual word.
"BANG."
The sound itself became the weapon.
The sonic wave, amplified to an extreme degree, turned into a cannon blast that swept the area dead ahead.
Among all the cards the Shuffle Gun could currently use, this was the weapon with the highest raw damage.
As if to prove it, the shockwave turned everything in the muzzle's line of fire into a churned wasteland, mowing down the Colossus.
HP 0.
The Colossus of the Dragon King shattered into fragments and collapsed.
[By raw stats alone, that enemy surpassed even the bosses of Fall of Saynal difficulty.]
This was the kind of opponent that, in the past, Ryu Hwi could only have taken down by dying to it over and over again.
But now, without taking a single hit, he'd cleared it with room to spare.
"There it is."
A translucent orb rose from the shattered remains of the Colossus.
"The Dragon King's Orb."
He caught the orb and turned to Orochi.
"What's next?"
"Loki said... the orb... will tell us... what comes next."
"This orb's going to talk, huh."
Item:
Key — Dragon King's Orb
+ A hidden treasure of DQ.
⟫ Details
A key item that leads into the next legend.
Among items, there were occasionally ones essential to future event progression.
Those were classified as 'Key' items, and could be carried even within the YggON system.
The Dragon King's Orb had been classified as a 'Key' item as well. No other information was displayed.
Then, the orb began to glow.
"...!"
Light surged up from the Dragon King's Orb and shot toward the temple's ceiling. The light bounced and refracted this way and that, sketching out a singular shape across the ceiling.
A dragon!
A brilliantly radiant dragon took form—fitting, for a place called Dragon Qualia.
"Is this... a map?"
At first glance it looked like nothing more than a simple drawing of a dragon, but look closely and certain spots within the image glittered conspicuously.
Seven places in all.
[Cross-referencing with the map of Dragon Qualia: the marked points match 'temples' and 'ruins' located across multiple regions.]
"Don't tell me you're telling me to hit all of those."
Based on their locations, some of them couldn't be reached until the late game, if at all.
Just then, a voice rang out.
It was Loki's voice.
[That is a recorded audio track embedded in the orb.]
"You don't need to tell me."
[I assumed you would say: 'Master, where are you?! Come out this instant, Loki!']
"What exactly do you take me for...?"
Just then, Orochi stalked forward with a low growl.
"Loki! Where! Show yourself! Now!"
"......"
Ryu Hwi watched him for a moment, then glanced sideways at YggON.
"So what you're saying is, I looked like I was in the same league as that guy."
[I have been reminded, once again, that the variance among S.E.N individuals is considerable.]
The voice rang out again.
A perfect bullseye.
It didn't sound like a recording at all—it felt as if the trickster were watching them at this very moment.
A chill ran down Ryu Hwi's spine.
This meant Loki had predicted, back when he was still assembling the blueprints, that Orochi would arrive here with a partner in tow.
"Ch...oose?"
A flicker of confusion crossed Orochi's face.
There was no telling why he'd built it that way, and Loki apparently had no intention of explaining—he simply pressed on.
A skill that amplified the power of an S.E.N. Terrifying on its face.
"......"
Orochi listened in silence.
...!!
Ryu Hwi's breath caught in his throat.
Just as he'd suspected—Loki had accounted for the possibility that Orochi would choose an owner of the 'Intuition' skill as his partner.
Could the man actually see the future?
5555, upon examining the Dark Robe—constructed from a colossal trove of source data accounting for one-twentieth of the entire blueprint—had predicted it was the Mental Tolerance skill.
If there was a skill that surpassed even that, there was no way 5555 could have missed it... could there?
Loki knew exactly what kind of skill 'Intuition' was.
And he knew what ending waited at the end of that road.
The power of ᚨᛒᛇᛋᛋ would be meaningless?
Before Ryu Hwi could even begin to ponder what he meant, Loki added one final line.
⟪Monsters are hunted by humans. Remain human.⟫