The Dungeon That Never Ends
DQ had no party system.
One might be added someday, but for now, there was nothing of the sort.
Which meant that battles against monsters were, barring the occasional clever workaround, strictly one-on-one affairs.
That didn't mean there was no way around it, however.
Ryu Hwi decided to use the volcano expedition as both an information-gathering operation and a forced-leveling session for Zero.
"The gear I'm lending you is for late-twenties to early-thirties levels."
"Can a Lv1 even wear it?"
"DQ doesn't have weapon level restrictions. Even a Lv1 can deck themselves out in endgame gear. Monsters here might attack you first, so it's best to max out your defense as much as you can."
"Aggressive-type... you mean monsters that attack first?"
In the grasslands, monsters wouldn't fight unless a gamer picked a fight with them first — but the monsters here attacked on sight, no provocation required.
"Exactly. Some of them even come charging out of the sky, like... right now."
"Huh? Waaaah?!"
Ryu Hwi had decided that, first and foremost, Zero needed to learn firsthand just how dangerous aggressive-type monsters were. Ambushed by a monster that had abruptly materialized out of the sky, Zero entered the battle with tears welling in her eyes.
A short while later.
A single coffin lay on the ground.
When a gamer died in DQ, their body transformed into a coffin like this one.
If someone cast a resurrection spell on them, used a revival item, or dragged the coffin to a church, they would come back to life without any penalty at all.
The truly sinister part of the design: if a coffin was left unattended for more than ten minutes, its occupant lost half their money and a portion of their items.
When the resurrection potion was used, the lid creaked open and Zero crawled out, her mouth twitching and trembling at the corners.
"I get that you wanted me to experience the danger of aggressive-type monsters firsthand. But this place has its pain suppression set to medium?"
"Perfect, then. Nothing makes the danger sink in like a little pain."
The battle that should have been a milestone — a monument to her first fight — had turned into this sorry spectacle.
Zero's soaring spirits had been slammed into the gutter in an instant, and her fury was well beyond anything she could have laughed off.
"Do this to me one more time and I'm suing you for violating labor law."
"...?!"
To any outside observer, Jucheongwang was a textbook black-company operation.
Zero's... or rather, 5555's workload, in particular, bordered on criminal.
"Guhs."
Having spent so long driving 5555 to the bone without a shred of guilt, Ryu Hwi had no defense against this particular line of attack.
"It's the kind of thing you have to learn with your body."
He had picked a fight with the very monster that had just knocked out Zero.
Once inside the battlefield, he dealt it just enough damage that it wouldn't die.
Then, leaving it on the verge of breathing its last, he immediately fled.
"...?"
At the sight, Zero looked up at Ryu Hwi with a baffled expression.
"Zero, your turn."
"Wait. Don't tell me..."
"Monsters in DQ don't instantly recover once you leave the battlefield. You can use that for hit-and-run tactics too. See, one more hit and it dies. It's on death's door, so it won't even dodge — you can take your sweet time finishing it off."
"Take my sweet time?! There's a level gap!"
"It's fine, it's fine. Worst case, you'll deal one measly point of damage."
With a light shove from Ryu Hwi, Zero approached the monster and was swept up into a forced battle.
"RYU HWIII~~~!!"
Gritting her teeth, she swung her sword with everything she had.
It really was that close a call — the monster dropped like a stone even against a Lv1's attack.
Ba-ba-ra-bam~!
The familiar level-up jingle rang out.
Some kind of bonus must have kicked in for the near-impossible kill, because her level rocketed up to 5 in an instant.
She picked up new spells and abilities along the way.
"Alright, let's run the volcano with this pattern as our baseline. At this pace you'll hit Lv20 in no time. Took me a good ten days back in the Human Realm standards."
"..."
It was so demoralizing that she couldn't even summon a reply.
Zero trudged wordlessly along in Ryu Hwi's wake.
A 2.0 game labyrinth was supposed to be, above all else, entertainment — and somehow, it had become grunt work.
"I should've just logged out when I had the chance."
Regretting it now changed nothing.
'I am never doing a game labyrinth with Ryu Hwi again.'
Zero vowed this to herself, silently and sincerely.
"Damn it."
The original plan had been to explore briefly, take stock of the situation, then head back.
No — if possible, they were going to hunt down a unique monster before leaving.
But Ryu Hwi now found himself needing to revise that plan.
Having fought a DQ unique monster only once — the Colossus of the Dragon King — he'd never properly understood what phenomena accompanied their appearance.
The monsters getting stronger is merely a bonus. This is, most likely, a special dungeon.
"A special dungeon?"
Yes. Data anomalies differing from a standard dungeon are being detected.
The concept of dungeons existed in DQ as well.
But unlike the days of World of Phantasm, information here was scarce, and dungeon exploration demanded thorough preparation.
"...Shouldn't you give me a warning before we walk into a dungeon, normally?"
"So stepping into the volcano via the emergency spell already counted as dungeon entry, is that it?"
Ryu Hwi had never imagined that arriving at the volcano via the emergency spell would itself constitute 'entering a dungeon'.
Thrown into a dungeon with no preparation whatsoever.
DQ dungeons came with a long list of headaches.
The most notorious of them all was this condition: once you entered, escape was impossible until you died or found an escape point.
The path Ryu Hwi and Zero had traveled had, at some point, sealed itself behind them.
The volcano's space itself had warped, transforming into a lava-filled cave labyrinth.
It wasn't just warm anymore — it was scorching.
Zero wiped the sweat trickling down her forehead with the back of her hand.
"So this is what heat feels like. Since my prosthetic body is calibrated to hold a comfortable temperature year-round, this is a novel sensation. I'd be touched, if I weren't about to die of heatstroke."
She really might die. Zero glanced down at her HP bar.
She hadn't even fought a monster, and it was flashing red.
"Gah — my HP?!"
Ryu Hwi pulled a small potion from his coat.
"Status-ailment-clearing potion. In DQ, prolonged exposure to heat or cold inflicts DoT damage and eventually action paralysis, so watch yourself."
"Thanks. Whew... how many of those do you have?"
"That was the emergency reserve. That's the last one."
Zero let the empty potion fall to the ground.
"So if we can't find the escape point within the next few hours..."
"We die together, hand in hand."
Then it would be back to the church for a restart.
Death in DQ carried heavy penalties, and Ryu Hwi wanted to avoid it at all costs.
Besides, slowly roasting to death in this sweltering hellscape promised suffering beyond imagination.
"So what's the plan?"
"We give up on the unique monster for now. Finding the escape point comes first."
Zero was currently Lv7.
The problem was that Lv7 simply wasn't enough to fight the monsters down here.
Since Zero risked being attacked on sight, Ryu Hwi had no choice but to cut down every monster she spotted before it could close the distance.
"Auto-mapping ON. Autonomous motion control ON. Sensory acceleration ON. Visual field expansion ON. Source analysis ON. Data collection ON. Emotion ON."
Zero activated every MOD she had installed in her SEED.
Each one had been freshly rebuilt to suit the 2.0 environment.
She'd planned to simply enjoy DQ on their first day, but with things having gone sideways, she resolved to focus on data collection instead.
"You've been writing mods recently, haven't you?"
"It's 5555's hobby. I've been tinkering with this and that in my spare time. Lately I've been working on something you'd actually find useful — and I've hit a wall."
"What is it?"
"Probability Manipulation 2.0."
"...!!"
Probability Manipulation.
The mod of the gods — the only thing standing between Ryu Hwi and his garbage-tier luck.
Without it, his skill lineup would be an utter laughingstock by now.
Even the mere mention that it was still in development rang with hope.
"Let's punch through this damn labyrinth, fast."
Ryu Hwi pushed forward, cutting down monsters so that none would target Zero.
"Huh?"
Ryu Hwi, walking ahead, suddenly stopped as if he'd noticed something strange.
"Zero, let me see your map. I want to compare it with mine."
Zero sent him the map data her mod had compiled. Studying it, Ryu Hwi let out a low groan.
"Something's off... I think we've been here before."
"What?"
Zero scanned their surroundings.
At the center of the chamber stood a pillar of somewhat distinctive design, its top meeting the cavern ceiling, carved with the number 0 and what appeared to be a jester's hat.
It was the pillar they'd seen when they first began exploring.
"The place we just passed was 11 — and now we're back at 0? Did we take a wrong turn? There weren't any forks, though... hold on."
Come to think of it, YggON had called this place a 'special dungeon'.
Ryu Hwi pressed hard against his temple, forcing his mind into focus.
His Intuition immediately produced a hypothesis.
"Is it possible this dungeon forces you to loop through the same section forever unless you satisfy some specific condition?"
"We've been walking for hours. And we're starting over?"
Zero could barely breathe.
The potion's effects must have been wearing off, because she could feel the heat again.
Along the sides of the path, lava gurgled and bubbled, belching out a ferocious heat.
Ryu Hwi, surveying their surroundings, clicked his tongue.
"Maintaining this level of focus while moving is a headache, but there's no help for it. Zero, I'm picking up the pace — don't fall behind."
"Haah... fine."
Right now, their only priority was finding a way out of this dungeon, and fast. Slowly boiling to death was not on the menu.
Zero collected dungeon data through her mods as she trailed after Ryu Hwi.
"Um... Ryu Hwi? Doesn't the path up ahead look different from when we passed it earlier?"
The corridor before them didn't match the mapped data at all. Ryu Hwi checked his own map and frowned.
He hoped they were misreading a repeated section — that they were, in fact, still pushing ever forward.
But his Intuition told him plainly: the same section was repeating.
Zero, working from the accumulated data, arrived at an answer.
"It's a pattern where the same section repeats, but the path itself changes every time. The geometry of the space seems to be continuously warping and shifting."
"So the dungeon itself is a kind of trap."
A trap designed to let you wander, lost, until you roasted alive inside it without ever finding the exit.
If they couldn't find a way to break the pattern, game over was a certainty.
"Could I use Delete to punch a hole through the space... no, wait — that's useless too if I can't locate the space that connects back to the entrance, isn't it?"
Which would come first — Intuition finding the dungeon's solution, or the timer killing them both?
At Intuition Lv3, the skill fired on its own without any concentration, which had made everything easier. Intuition Lv4 was unquestionably more powerful, but unlike Lv3, he couldn't wield it freely — and that was exactly how problems like this arose.
"...?!"
Suddenly, Ryu Hwi felt someone's gaze on him.
'It's back.'
That same unsettling sensation from the village.
"What's wrong?"
"S.E.N's surveillance net."
"...!"
Zero's expression changed.
'How on earth did they track us here?'
"I knew you would come here. Master of the UR. And..."
He had spread his surveillance net far and wide.
The guild in the kingdom's capital. The streets around the Royal Capital's temple. And now, this newly born, enigmatic dungeon.
Looking down at the two figures through his monitor, he allowed himself a meaningful smile.
His gaze fixed precisely on 'Zero'.
"Have you returned to be experimented upon by me once more, Freyja?"
The monocle glinted.