Interlude - An Honest Review (1/2)

Following the Crystal Maiden’s demise, Setre’s disembodied soul lost its anchor to the physical realm and was pulled into the Beyond. It was by no means a painful or uncomfortable process. In fact, it was actually somewhat pleasant in a nostalgic way, as the djinn was quite literally coming home for the first time in decades. And yet, as she passed through the borders of reality, she couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss.

The source of her discomfort became apparent when she finally arrived in the demonic realm, only to find herself standing in a familiar office and staring down a familiar face.

“Yo! Welcome back, Setre! Long time no see!”

Sitting behind the desk opposite her was a female devil. She looked more or less human aside from the typical appearance traits that her kind carried. Things like pink skin, a pair of cute black horns poking out of her forehead and the complete and total lack of eyes. She wore a long-sleeved dark blue blazer with a white undershirt, which completely subdued what little cleavage she might have shown otherwise. Her short brown hair was done in a stylish bob cut that revealed as much of her forehead and horns as possible. She was also wearing a pair of rimless eyeglasses, which served no purpose other than to accentuate her lack of eyes.

“Hey, Nina,” responded Setre, who currently appeared as a floating mote of pale blue light. “What’s the deal with the redirect?”

Typically speaking, demons who were returning from the mortal realm arrived in one of many designated ‘landing zones’ within the Beyond. Frankly speaking, the djinn never understood the need for such places in a realm where space and distance were merely suggestions. However, such was the status quo, and Setre’s soul arriving at her agent’s office in the Demons ‘R’ Us offices was definitely unusual.

“Dunno,” answered the devil with that annoyingly casual tone of hers. “I was told to redirect you, so here you are.”

“Wonderful… My dungeon master gig is still safe though, right?”

“I’ve not been told to terminate it so yeah, probably. Though I gotta say, with the performance you put on I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. The ratings for your boss fight are through the roof! Well, they won’t match the Nagnamor vs Liusolra showdown, but top ten for sure!”

“… What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh. Right. You didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

*Ring-ring*

“Hold on a sec, hun. Gotta take this.”

“Know what?!”

*Click*

“Hey, Carl, how’s it going? … No, I got loads of time.”

Unfortunately for Setre, Nina completely ignored her question and focused her attention on the inbound call. The djinn’s attempts to get Nina’s attention were immediately shut down by series of hand gestures that could only be interpreted as ‘would you shut up already.’

“Uh-huh. … Yeah-huh. … Yeah, he’s one of mine, too. … Oh, no shit? Wow, and I thought that first one was bad! … Alright, I’ll take care of it. Toodles.”

*Click*

“So-”

“Just a sec, hun. I’ll be with you in a minute. And get dressed, will you?”

Nina continued to brush Setre off as she turned her attention towards the console on her desk. Having nothing better to do, the djinn decided she might as well comply with the devil’s request. She focused for a bit and brought out her soul-self, granting her the same slim figure and blue belly dancer attire she would normally have while on the job. Nina glanced at the djinn’s larger than usual bust size, but refrained from commenting on it this time around.

Nina finished whatever she was doing after about a minute, at which point she put her elbows on the desk and leaned forward.

“Okay, Setre, here’s the thing. Goroth wants to have a meeting with you and Khurpath, and the Progenitor will be hosting it.”

“Th-th-the Goddess of Misfortune herself?” asked the djinn in a surprised stutter. “Why? What’s he got to do with this?”

“Well, you know that Warlock you just fought with? That’s Boxxy, the current Hero of Chaos.”

“O-oh. Uhm. Okay. What?”

“Look, it’ll take too long to explain. Khurpath already borrowed a bunch of recordings so you two can go over that later. Right now, you have a meeting to attend. Try not to embarrass yourself out there, m’kay?”

“But I-!”

Setre didn’t even get a chance to collect her thoughts before she was suddenly yanked out of the Beyond and into Julian’s divine space within the Aether. She found herself seated on a red couch, nestled between a human-shaped collection of rocks on her left and a gigantic sock puppet on her right. There was a flash of light overhead and the floating eyeballs of the Gazer demon that worked under her in the same dungeon appeared out of it.

“Alright!” declared Hyjal with a clap of his bees. “Now that we’re all here, I suppose we should get started.”

“Mmmm, aren’t you being a bit hasty?” asked Goroth. “Your… people don’t seem to be aware of what’s going on.”

That was an understatement. Technically speaking, even though they were contracted to him, neither Setre nor Khurpath had ever personally met the God of Earth. Nor the God of Probability, for that matter. Being so suddenly brought out here between them naturally left both of them speechless and frozen with shock. Even if they were Rankers, it was still jarring to meet actual deities face to face like this. Especially when one of them kept changing every time they blinked. That last bit was especially bad on the Gazer, as each of his orbiting ocular orbs was picking up a completely different representation of the God of Fate.

“Yeah alright, fine,” conceded Jeremiah. “Listen up you two, here’s the thing-”

The God of Uncertainty then proceeded to explain that the purpose of this meeting was to analyze the latest attack on the Palace of the Crystal Maiden. The two demons were summarily informed of Boxxy’s assault on the Earth God’s other dungeon about half a year ago. It would appear that shapeshifter was more or less responsible for making the deity reconsider his ‘form before function’ approach. Something about annihilating a meticulously scripted Jade King encounter in a matter of seconds.

This was enlightening for Setre, as it explained why her dungeon received more changes over the past three months than it had gotten over the past three centuries.

“-and now that it’s been properly put through its paces, we’re going to see how it held up and help Goroth here fine-tune the place,” concluded Hubert.

“Hmm, interesting,” said Khurpath. “Is our presence really necessary here for such a thing, though?”

“It is,” confirmed Goroth. “You’ve both faced the invaders in combat, so your perspective will be valuable.”

“That’s how it is,” said Lulu with a nod of her salmon. “So without further ado, let’s start by examining Boxxy’s entrance.”

The mass of purple spaghetti with green meatballs stood off the couch and approached a spot that was a few meters in front of it. He then snapped his breadsticks, and a massive wooden frame popped out of the pure white floor as if it was a letter in an envelope. It hovered next to the deity, and a recording of Boxxy and its entourage entering the dungeon began playing in it for everyone to see.

Setre was naturally quite surprised at first, but seeing the images play out in front of her made her realize what Nina was talking about earlier. If this thing was really the Hero of Chaos, then it would only natural for its patron deity would keep an eye on it. And being the divine being that he was, the God of Toss-ups would share that perspective with the rest of the Beyond. It was something he’d tried to pull several times in the past with limited success. Watching the everyday lives of mortal men and women was a novel distraction, but one that turned boring and tired really fast.

Yet Nina’s earlier words would suggest that this particular Hero was actually quite popular among demonkind.

“As you can see here, Setre’s interference proved to be rather key,” explained Mikhail while gesturing at the floating screen with a puddle. “She forced the invaders to actively ignore her rather than pay attention to their surroundings, leading to them being caught in the teleportation trap. If it wasn’t for this, then the dungeon run would’ve went very differently. Yes, what is it, Blinky?”

Morris pointed at Khurpath, who had been wiggling his floating eye stalks as if he were a child asking permission to speak.

Or rather, that was precisely what the situation was.

“Pardon my interruption, sir, but there should be a dozen more traps like it, at least to my knowledge. And the ones deeper inside should be better concealed than the first. Surely they would’ve been caught and separated by at least one of those.”

“Normally you would be correct. In fact, the Archfiend you faced ran into three of them on her way to the summit. However, this group’s leader is a doppelganger, one that has Ranked Up from being a chest mimic. It always has a Mana Locator Gland somewhere inside its body to look out for traps. If the first tele-trap had failed, then it would be on alert against further trickery and likely have been able to avoid or disarm them.”

“Oh, hoh! So that’s how it was!”

Being the owner of an MLG himself, Khurpath understood quite well how vexing the ambient mana in that dungeon could be. He had learned to filter out the background noise so it doesn’t confuse or bother him, but this doppelganger must not have been able to do that. And since it wasn’t looking out for the trap, it must have failed to spot it in all that ‘white noise.’

“Why couldn’t we just make that a lethal trap?” grumbled Setre. “Just drop the lot into an active volcano or something.”

“Doing that would defeat the purpose of a dungeon,” answered Goroth. “It is a place to test and temper mortals, not an execution ground.”

The group then went over the shapeshifter’s passage through the Glacial Gallows, and the bloodbath left in its wake. Goroth mostly just watched intently while Bogdan narrated. Khurpath butted in from time to time to clarify a few things, though that was mostly to satisfy his own curiosity. As for Setre, she was mostly left speechless at just how efficient a killer this Boxxy T. Morningwood was.

It wasn’t long before the scene of the all-too-brief bout between the Mimic and the Alpha Icescale Naga came up.

“E-excuse me, Goroth?” spoke up Setre.

“Hmm? What is it?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, but how come that thing got a gold-tier item from that encounter? The core’s Item Allocation should have distributed rewards based on challenge rating, right?”

The harder and more harrowing a fight was, the more likely it would be for the victor to claim a powerful item appropriate for their Level. Conversely, those who breeze through a dungeon just because they were overwhelmingly powerful would only get useless junk. Those that were too weak or challenged it unprepared would typically pay for their hubris or arrogance with their lives. Setre couldn’t speak for other deities, but she knew for a fact that that was how the Earth God’s dungeons were set up.

“Considering it instagibbed the guardian, there’s no way it should’ve gotten a top tier reward,” she added.

“You’re right,” said Goroth with a rumbling voice. “Based on the dungeon core’s evaluation of that encounter, it was originally supposed to get just a wooden chest. However, that creature has a considerable amount of Luck as part of its Status.”

The Luck (LCK) Attribute had two distinct effects aside from certain Skill interactions. The first was to ever-so-slightly tip the odds in the holder’s favor. Escaping fatal wounds by a hair’s breath, finding a penny on the street or winning in a game of dice all became that tiny bit more likely with each point of LCK. It was nigh-impossible to measure such vague and subtle differences, though, so it was hard to judge the Attribute’s actual influence on one’s good fortune.

The second and more prominent effect of the LCK Attribute was that it increased the chances of obtaining higher Quality items. There were a handful of scenarios this applied to, but obtaining treasures from dungeon chests was the most common one. Therefore, it was entirely plausible that the Hero of Chaos would have been given a better reward than it deserved purely by virtue of this Attribute.

There was just one problem.

“Sorry, but I’m not buying it,” declared Setre with a dubious look. “Even if Luck comes into play, then the reward tier should only go up by one grade, two at the most. Yet this one skipped over four of them and went all the way from wood to gold? That’s just silly.”

“I should point out,” interjected William, “that Boxxy has 259 Luck.”

“… I’m sorry, could you repeat,” said the djinn after a short pause. “I just thought I heard you say-”

“Two. Hundred. Fifty. Nine,” enunciated the tumorous loaf of bread.

Luck was, statistically speaking, the rarest Attribute. Not only was it difficult to find an adventurer that had it on their Status, but even then they would not have more than 20 or 30 of it. The Priests, Paladins and Monks that followed the God of Unpredictability would be the exception due to the nature of their religion, but they’d be hard pressed to reach more than 70 Luck.

And yet the one who invaded Setre’s dungeon had nearly four times that amount.

“O-oh… I see…” she muttered dumbly.

“If you think that’s impressive, wait till you see Boxxy’s pet,” said Derrick in a joyful tone. “That adorable little thing has over two thousand of it! I didn’t even know such a thing was possible until I saw it for myself! It’s like a walking singularity of chaos and absurdity, and it is bloody brilliant!”

“Ah. Ahah. Hahahaha…”

The only reaction the djinn could offer to that revelation was a dry, humorless laugh. Even that thing’s pet was incomprehensible.

“This is the first I hear of this!” roared the God of Earth. “If such an anomaly is allowed to roam free, then no dungeon is safe!”

“Relax yourself, blockhead,” said Joe dismissively. “The thing I’m talking about is an adorable little critter that’s a total pacifist. It’s so pathetically weak that it’ll just die from mana poisoning if it enters any of the more advanced dungeons. It doesn’t matter how game-breakingly lucky it is if a single breath of air would make it drop dead on the spot.”

“… You’re certain?”

“I am. I’ll talk about that all you want, but later. We should stop getting sidetracked for the time being.”

“Very well. Let’s move onto the next one.”

Next on the list was Xera’s salacious romp through the Torture Chamber. Nobody gathered there was particularly interested in watching her escapades though, so Charlie just fast-forwarded through it for the most part.

“A silver chest?” remarked Khurpath at the end of it. “Did that one also have a lot of Luck?”

“No, that one’s actually an error on the dungeon core’s part,” revealed the Earth God. “It seems to have misjudged the nature of that woman’s - *Ahem!* - actions.”

Simply put, the dungeon core had deemed that ‘surviving a half hour of being raped non-stop in all holes’ was an ordeal worthy of a silver-tier reward. The fact that it recorded over two hundred individual instances of ‘stab wounds’ and ‘blunt force trauma’ was also a contributing factor to this evaluation. Strictly speaking, it was by no means an inaccurate estimate if one were to ignore the succubus-djinn hybrid’s willingness or her true intentions. And since it was an automated magic tool that operated entirely on logic, the dungeon core was wholly incapable of comprehending her deviance.

This seemed to be the only such lapse in judgement, though. Boxxy and its group legitimately struggled to bring down the Crystal Maiden, so they were given a golden chest. The Mimic’s formidable Luck also made itself known when it bumped a wooden chest up to a silver one upon defeating one of the other mid-bosses. As for the final reward upon full-clearing the dungeon, that was simply Goroth acting on his own. All other instances were more or less one-sided stomps and were thus awarded with low-tier items.

All except one.