Experience Vending Machine
The moment I stepped into the dungeon, hell itself rose up to meet me.
"Cleric! Where's the cleric?!"
"Guh—hrrk—aaagh—Mom…"
"O Elysion… show us mercy…"
The walls of a fortress already draped in the shadow of ruin filled my vision.
The Infinite Dungeon — the Spiroe Kingdom Castle Defense.
My mission was to become the final bastion of a kingdom whose fall was already written, and buy enough time for as many civilians as possible to escape.
Yes. From the very start, this dungeon was a scenario of guaranteed defeat.
Tch.
Of all the Infinite Dungeons, I'd walked into the one that left the bitterest aftertaste.
"The western outer wall is collapsing!!! Fall back to cover!!!"
"Archers! Prepare to fire forward! Fight with your backs to the wall! Harpies incoming!!!"
"Wounded, get out of here! Cleric! Where the hell is the cleric?!"
As I took stock of my surroundings, a soldier appeared carrying a comrade with a shattered leg.
"Sir Knight! Orders to retreat!!! Fall back to the earthen walls the mages raised!"
I nodded at his words — then sprinted forward.
"Sir Knight?! You need to get behind the wall!!!"
I left the soldier's protests behind me and charged on.
Ahead, a desperate bloodbath was underway: soldiers holding the breach with nothing but their bare bodies, buying the wounded time to flee as monsters poured through the shattered wall.
Clank! Clank-clank!
THUD!!!
I smashed the creatures flooding through the ruined wall with a shield bash, sending them flying.
"I'll hold them! Get the wounded out of here!!!"
The core of the Spiroe Kingdom Castle Defense was force preservation. Even the men who looked like broken remnants right now were all soldiers blessed with divine protection. The more of them I kept alive, the longer this defense could last — even if only by a single minute.
"RAAAAAAGH—!!!"
I used Taunt and battered aside everything that charged me head-on. The monsters that had already slipped through the breach wheeled around and locked onto me instead.
Apparently they'd decided finishing me off came first — they ignored the shattered allied line and came straight for me.
"Hup!"
I had neither the leisure nor the need to care. This was a castle defense.
Whiiish!
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!
Support fire from the ranger archers finally arrived — they'd held back until now for fear of friendly fire in the tangled melee. Monsters dropped with arrows through their throats, and a sliver of breathing room opened up.
The soldiers seized that fleeting gap without hesitation, hauling the wounded clear of the front line.
Confirming it, the commander of the western outer wall shouted toward me.
"Your name, sir!!!"
"Edwin!"
"Sir Edwin! Do not overextend!!!"
I had overwhelming defense and the offensive power built on top of it — but compared to dealer-class blessings, a Guardian's raw firepower was clearly lacking. No Warrior skills specialized for chaotic melees. No Knight mounted-charge breakthroughs to lean on.
But—
CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
THUD!
Holding the line? That, I was confident about.
Save the Barrier.
This was the heart of the battlefield. Ownerless weapons littered the ground so thick you tripped over them — no reason to waste a precious resource like Barrier just to protect a disposable shield. The moment Barrier broke, I couldn't use Flesh-Carving Bone-Breaker either. Here, conservation was the only play.
One at a time.
Shove them back with the shield. Crush them with the mace. Use Taunt to drag their eyes onto me.
"Grrrrngh!"
"Keong! Keong!"
"KWEEEEEEK!!!"
Creatures that had been using each other's bodies as stepping stones to scale the wall came hurtling at me instead.
"Hup!"
I took the frontal strikes on my armor and slammed my shield into a monster that had launched itself like an arrow.
Thud-thud-thud!
The one I knocked away collided with five more, and all of them tumbled off the wall.
Screeeech.
An ominous sound came from the unshielded kite shield. Even forged of iron, it was so warped it was a breath away from becoming useless scrap.
Thunk!
I tossed it aside and looked for a replacement — and Paulo, the commander who'd finally caught a breather thanks to me, hurled a shield my way.
A round shield, iron and leather layered thick and tight.
"If I live through this!!! I swear I'll name the son my wife bears after you!!!"
There it is.
Proof that a player's contribution score had crossed a certain threshold — the line the western wall commander delivered if he survived.
"I'm honored!!!"
The wall kept crumbling. Already cracked and broken, it wouldn't hold under the weight of the monsters much longer.
But the wounded had finished their retreat, and the harpy flocks harassing the archers had been thinned out enough. If we were going to fall back, now was the moment.
"Sir Edwin! We must prepare to withdraw!"
Paulo called out as he descended from the wall with several dozen ranger archers.
"The mages' rear support will begin shortly! We must hurry!"
"Cover me from the rear. I'll be your shield."
"…Ah. Leave it to me."
The moment the soldiers pulled off the wall, monsters surged in like a tidal wave.
— UOOOOOOOORGH!!!
Beyond them, a colossal presence came into view, smashing through the wall with its own body.
Right on schedule.
The Infinite Dungeon's experience vending machine.
Finish off the thing after the mages' fire support left it half-dead, and a mountain of experience points would drop into your lap in an instant. A prize you absolutely could not afford to miss — but get too close and you'd be caught in the rear support yourself and take catastrophic damage.
Not too far. Not too close.
I methodically cleared the creatures charging me one by one, calmly calculating the exact point where the beast and the rear support would meet.
Whiiiiing!
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!
Bowstrings thrummed, and hundreds of arrows fell across the battlefield like rain. Monsters pierced through rolled across the ground, snaring the ankles of the ones behind them, and a thin margin of relief opened for those of us grinding through the fighting retreat.
But—
"AAAAAGH!!!"
This was the middle of a battlefield. People started getting swept under the monster tide.
Everyone clenched their teeth and looked away. Stop, and more people die. They all knew it.
THUD!
"Sir Edwin?!"
I charged toward a soldier being dragged away with jaws locked around his ankle — then shield-bashed the monsters greedily tearing into him, blasting them clear.
"This is going to hurt a little!"
Whoooosh!
I grabbed the soldier sprawled on the ground, bleeding out, and hurled him with everything I had toward the retreating line.
"Wha—!"
The ones who caught him grimaced. Paulo's eyes went wide, as if he'd just witnessed something impossible.
You don't need to look so grim, Sir Paulo.
This is a safe point.
The thought had barely formed when—
BOOOOOOM—!!!
The entire world drowned in light.
Sizzle. Crack-sizzle.
From every direction came the rich, faintly nauseating smell of burning protein.
Damn. That's something else…
There was a reason mages got treated like strategic weapons. That single barrage had cleanly wiped out five hundred at the absolute minimum — and that was with the attack aimed at the giant experience vending machine.
Still alive, of course.
I checked my surroundings from a frog-flat crouch, then carefully rose. I glanced at the earthen wall, then surveyed the state of the field.
Playing out exactly like the guide.
Every run, variables cropped up from the gap between game and reality. But this time, the flow was nearly identical to the walkthrough.
Then this should be doable.
Karcadon — a monster renowned for its vitality and sheer bulk. A quadruped easily ten meters long, rhinoceros-like, its entire body wreathed in flame. In places the wounds ran so deep bone showed through, and still it was lumbering forward, step by grinding step.
Thanks to the massive anti-magic horn, the head that should have taken the worst of the damage was relatively intact.
Thanks for staying alive.
Clank! Clank-clank!
Armor undamaged. Round shield undamaged. Barrier at seventy percent.
I sprinted forward. The beast's legs loomed like mountain pillars. I brought my mace — wrapped in Flesh-Carving Bone-Breaker — down on one of its toes.
CRUNCH!
— UOOOOOOORGH!!!
Unable to bear the accumulated damage, its stance buckled.
BOOM!
Its knee hit the ground, and a foothold presented itself. I scrambled up onto its body.
The horn's worth the most contribution points.
I had to beat on this thing as hard as possible before it died and rack up the score. I started running for the highest-value target — the horn.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
It began thrashing its massive bulk left and right, trying to throw me off.
Whiiiiing!
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
But supporting fire from the ranger archers arrived as if to pin it down. The instant its movements slowed—
"Hup!"
I sprinted the length of its body in a blink and swung my Flesh-Carving Bone-Breaker–wrapped mace at the horn.
CLANG!
A noise like striking solid steel rang out. Ridiculous hardness, ridiculous toughness — and anti-magic on top of it. An absurd body part by any measure. But—
Doesn't mean I can't break it.
The hardness was so extreme no edged weapon could cut it, but it wasn't tough enough to shrug off Flesh-Carving Bone-Breaker.
Alright. Experience farming time…!
"RAAAAAAGH—!!!"
I swung the mace like a man possessed.
"Is that… even human?"
A ranger from the archer corps murmured blankly.
Paulo, commander of the western outer wall, had no answer.
Where the mages' magic had detonated, the ground was a sea of fire. Hundreds of monsters had vanished without a trace, and even the survivors were dying with their bodies aflame, shrieking. Through that choking smoke, in the middle of a world turned to fire, a man was swinging a mace.
Edwin.
The man who had single-handedly plugged the shattered wall, who had drawn the monsters with that uncanny shout and bought the wounded their retreat. The man who had displayed near-miraculous martial prowess and held back hundreds — thousands — of monsters.
And now he was facing, alone, the monster that had endured even the mages' bombardment.
"Sir Edwin…"
A ranger who had barely survived thanks to a cleric's healing stared at him. The knight who, in the moment everyone else fled for their lives, had turned alone and charged into certain death. The man who had saved his life was fighting by himself.
The ranger drew his bowstring with exhausted arms. Even a little help was better than none.
"RAAAAAAGH—!!!"
A war cry thick with fighting spirit, audible even at this distance. Inspired by it, others gripped their weapons again, determined to contribute whatever they could.
Seeing them, Edwin swung his mace even more furiously, like a man gone mad.
Contribution points, contribution points, contribution points…!
A desperate thrashing to wring every last scrap of contribution score out of Karcadon before it died — and level up. But to the eyes watching him, the scene could only look like something else entirely.
"It can't be…"
Paulo's eyes went wide.
What was the single greatest reason that colossal monster could weather a concentrated magical barrage? The head that remained intact even under a direct hit. The massive horn sprouting from it.
In the chaos of this battlefield, Edwin had grasped that fact faster than anyone and acted on it.
Which meant they had their own part to play.
"Mages, prepare the next spell!!!"
At Paulo's shout, the rear lines surged back into motion.
"RAAAAAAGH—!!!"
That desperate roar rolled across the battlefield. Paulo found his fists clenched without realizing it. And he remembered the words he had spoken only moments before.
If he lived to return home, he would give his unborn son that man's name.
I have to survive…
To see his son born. And to pass on the legend of this man's mythic valor.
Paulo turned toward the rangers gripping their bows.
"Archers!!!"
Dozens of eyes locked on him.
"Cover Sir Edwin!!!"
Whiiiiish—!
Once more, a rain of arrows blackened the sky.
"RAAAAAAGH—!!!"
Stop shooting already!!!
Edwin's Taunt, loaded with that exact meaning, rang hollowly across the battlefield — and nothing else.