[What!? Why don’t we have training today!? What do you an!?]
As soon as I tell him the news, Ricard sends a ssage asking for explanations.
Is it just , or does it seem like he really liked those horrible and absolutely painful training sessions? I already knew he was crazy, I just didn’t know he was a masochist too.
Just compare his reaction with Clara's and Laura’s. When Marta told us, my little sister gladly accepted and started to pester Marta to spend the day with her anyway. And Laura, when I told her through a similar ssage to the one I sent to Ricard, she just sent an ‘Okay’ like a normal person would.
“Sigh… why is it always who has to deal with Ricard…?”
Clara always runs away, saying, ‘You go and tell your friends’ whenever the situation arises. Smart, but painful. Painful for , I an. But… I’ll forgive her because she’s my cute little sister.
[Who knows? I didn’t ask my sister why she freed us from training today. She just said that sothing popped up and that we were sowhat ready, so it didn’t matter if we missed one day.]
[Don’t lie! We aren’t ready! We haven’t won a single training session yet! We’re just starting to make progress, but if we take an unnecessary break now, we’ll have to start again from scratch… I ask you to beg your sister to reconsider.]
Whoaah, look at that! Almost no ti has passed since I sent the reply, and he has already sent such a long ssage!
So fast…! It’s a sha he’s only fast whenever he feels like it.
[Go ask her yourself. I’ll happily accept a whole day free from obligations.]
There’s no way Ricard will understand even if I told him, so I don’t do it, but the main reason we’ve continued to die in all our dungeon invasions and haven’t completed a single training yet is because Marta has been tuning them up as we've gotten better.
How can you make it even more difficult than an unavoidable instant-death chorus trap, you ask…? You might be curious, but believe : you don’t want to know. You’ll have nightmares worse than those produced by the Abyss’ aberrations, and four people suffering from them are enough. There’s no need to spread them to other people.
I unconsciously shiver and start reading the first ssage, one of the many ones that Ricard has sent while I was thinking to myself.
[But how can I directly question Anthemia on her decisions!? It’s just that her training is very good and I don't want to miss a single session…]
His ssage goes on and on, and while I read the first one, more ssages keep coming, piling up at a very scary rate. So I decide to do what any normal person would do in this situation: stop reading, silence his ssages for two to three hours, and ignore him to focus on sothing else.
I’ll read them all at another ti... Maybe.
“Alright…” I start rubbing my hands together, “What should I do now?”
My eyes unconsciously wander from my computer to the virtual device to play DMA. Usually, after so much forced training, one would refuse to touch the ga for a while and take a break. But… But it just so happens that I’ve spent the past two weeks training all the ti, and almost didn’t have any free ti to do whatever I pleased. Furthermore, I just created the new dungeon area but haven’t had ti to watch the invaders’ replays yet…
Except for that orc player, of course. There’s always ti to watch him suffer. And he only cos once per week and at a set schedule, so it’s easy to find ti for him.
“So… watching replays and ongoing invasions, or playing DMA…?”
The dilemma. The eternal question. Waste ti gaining imdiate pleasure and regret it later, or go get ‘materials’ for more monsters, feel good for working hard, and enjoy the replays even more in the future? What a hard-to-answer question.
As I think, I watch the sun rising from the window. There are no clouds today.
It hurts having to wake up early during the sumr break… But hey, it’s better to wake up early and discover you have free ti, unlike the previous two weeks, than trying to sleep into late morning only to have an angry monster throw you out of bed – and I an it literally – because you’re late, and having to spend the rest of the day suffering in hellish training.
…and no. Going out and enjoying the sunny day isn’t an option. Who in their sane mind would go to the beach on a day like this, after being forced to stay indoors for so long?
It takes a while to decide, but once I do, my decision stands firm.
“I’ll find a dungeon I like and invade it.”
It’s been so long… So, so, soooooooo long since I could last choose a dungeon I fancied and invaded it without any pressure… No ti constraints, no pressure to finish it, nobody to bla for my errors…
Just , Cyam, and my Good Followers, doing whatever we please. “Aah… I miss those tis so much…!”
Oh, by the way. You might have imagined it already, but Marta has dungeons from all factions, so we haven’t been training against angels and celestials all the ti.
She says it’s for investigation and training purposes. She needs to test and experint to know how to fight against them later… which makes sense, if you ask . After all, any pro player should know how the ga works if they want to stay relevant.
Even so, Marta only has one ‘good’ dungeon: ‘Heaven’s Gate’. All the others are just for testing purposes and are thus very basic. If you search for them, they aren’t even related to the nickna ‘Anthemia’, so when the players look for her, they only find her main dungeon.
But this doesn’t an she can’t make us suffer during her training sessions. “Sigh… let’s stop rembering it.”
Alright! So, what dungeon do I fancy today?
If I want to fill the Waste Disposal Unit with more monsters, I should go to a dungeon that contains monsters I can use.
Rats, the most common critter inhabiting sewer-like environnts, as well as the slis, are the first monsters that pop into mind. They’re the two most fantasy-like monsters for such a place.
By the way, there exists a monster called the Giant Cockroach. It’s a rcenary monster, so many factions can create them. But there’s a caveat to using them: most of the dungeons that have them are always very unpopular, especially if there are rats in that dungeon too.
I’m sure you can guess why.
“That’s why Giant Cockroaches are out of the question.” For now, at least. Maybe in the future I can think of a way to use them that makes them less disgusting, but until then… they’re out.
My Champion, the Mad Rat, already has rat features, so for now I’ll avoid using them at all. I don’t want anyone to mistake with them.
I do fancy the slis, though. They’re the first monster I imdiately wanted to add as soon as I created the Waste Disposal Unit, only that I didn’t have any bodies at hand.
“Slis it is, then.”
Haha, I don’t know why I’m doing all this. It was clear from the day I created the Waste Disposal Unit, WDU, abbreviated, that I’d go find so slis as soon as possible. There’s already a perfect place to put them!
“Slis, wait for . I’m going to get you all! Fufufu! Hahaha!”
“What, the, fuck…?”
As soon as the blinding light from the dungeon teleportation disappears, my mouth drops open at the spectacle in front of .
At first glance, it looks like a natural cave, but I quickly realize it isn’t. After all, a cave is ford by rocks, and those rocks, regardless of their kind, aren’t a bright blue, green, or red. Furthermore, they don’t have a glossy finish that reflects light as if they were wet... nor do they let light pass through them.
I’ve never seen translucent rocks before. What about you?
“Gelatin…?” I poke the closest wall with my finger. It easily goes in, and when I pull it out, it’s covered in green sli. “No, more like semi-solid mucus…”
I wipe my finger on the nearest Good Follower’s clothes and continue examining my surroundings, this ti, looking for enemies or traps.
Starting from the dungeon portal at a dead end, the passage extends forward and splits into multiple paths. To the right, a bright red ‘rock’ greets my eyes. Slightly to the left, the color abruptly changes into green, and then to blue.
Red, green, blue. Red, green, blue. The pattern repeats everywhere, creating a world with only three colors.
There are no slis in sight, or at least, none I can see. I say it like this because… Well, if the slis are the sa colors and have a similar consistency and transparency, it’ll be impossible to see them before they get close. Only if they co from a zone with one of the other two colors will they be visible.
“Well, at least it perfectly fits the dungeon’s na: ‘RGB Cave’...” I thought the na was funny, so I decided to invade it, but I never expected it’d be so literal. “Hmmm…”
Having only three colors everywhere makes your eyes spin. Everything looks the sa, and it’s a bit dizzying. I wonder what will happen after being exposed to this for a long ti. Will I grow used to it? Or will my head explode?
…I sure hope it’s the forr.
Since the slis I capture will have the sa colors when I try to use them, I guess all the monsters created from the slis I capture today will be ‘red’, ‘green’, or ‘blue’.
“It doesn’t matter that much. It’s just that there will be a lack of variety.” I shrug my shoulders.
After taking another look around, I realize that the light passing through the ‘rocks’ reveals parts of the dungeon on the other side of the walls. The colors, though, are mixed and blended, which makes it very hard to see properly, because each of the three colors is negated by the color in front.
An idea suddenly cos to mind. “Wait a mont…”
I put my hand against the rock wall, this ti a green patch, and slowly apply force, sinking it into the rock until my whole arm is inside it and my hand pops out into a side passage.
Sure enough, I didn’t feel any wall or obstruction. It should be possible to cross the ‘rocks’ at will, should I wish to do it…
…Which I don’t, because being covered in sli is extrely disgusting.
But this ans the monsters should be able to cross them, too. And since I expect to have the sa colors as the rocks, it’ll be impossible to discover the slis until they’re right next to or my support monsters.
“What a pain in the ass…” I mutter, taking my hand off the wall. The green sli holds onto it, as if not wanting to let go, applying so resistance. It isn’t until my whole arm is out of the wall that I realize there’s another ‘sli’ holding onto my arm and crawling towards my torso.
“Umh… how do I say this?” I say, scratching my cheek with my free hand. “‘Theory confird’...?”
This is going to be way more annoying than I expected. But hey, at least I was allowed to choose!
“Being able to make bad decisions on my own… Oh, how good it feels!”
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