Chapter 46: Chapter 46: Victory Lap

The rolling mass of nothingness charged through the winding expanse of the frozen fortress, moving faster than it had any right to as it bowled through the swarms of fleeing players.

A familiar Berserker, Vanguard, Brawler, and spiderling all dangled above and behind the gaping abyssal maw out front, a mix of shock, excitement, and confusion between them all, the four of them mostly just stuck and along for the ride as they were carried alongside their horrific guild leader’s revenge-fueled power trip.

Enemy guilds tripped over themselves as they tried to run, some of them popping escape items and teleporting out of the dungeon entirely, their spoils being left behind as Primonilise gladly snatched them up on their way past.

Those that didn’t quite run fast enough to escape Nightmare Monica’s advance were battered aside by clumped tendrils, thrown about like a child discarding their toys.

All the while that warped and distorted laughter echoed out from the rolling orb of anti-light, the Gloom Mage having the time of her life as she rampaged down the long stretch of dungeon standing between them and the way back outside.

“So, uh… where did you get… this, exactly…?”

“Get what?”

“...I-I think she meant the, um… all of t-this?”

Elise gestured to the amorphous shape carrying them, which seemed to presumably still be the kitsune they were familiar with, albeit a bit larger and more eldritch than they remembered her.

“Oh, this? Found it in the boss room inside a creepy statue.”

“Creepy statue… was that the boss reward, then…?”

“...huh, now that you mention it, it’s weird there wasn’t a boss fight back there. Kinda just the room and that statue. I guess there was that whole empty void maze thing before that, but nothing to fight, no.”

“V-Void maze…?”

“It’s… hard to explain? Mostly glad there wasn’t a boss fight there with the shape I was in, the statue thing even commented on me being almost dead when I got there.”

“Wait, you were almost- hells, how long have you been this low?!”

Prim had neglected to actually check their caster’s status, finding them sitting at a comfortable 3 HP total remaining to keep them from falling over dead.

“Relax, it’s fiiine~ Not like any of these chumps can do anything about it while they’re stuck being Feared anyways.”

The towering entity gestured forwards with a pod of tendrils thanks to their lack of hands, pointing out the scattered clumps of enemies running senselessly away from her, none of them making any attempt to fight back against the rampaging kaiju behind them, much more focused on escape than anything else.

“That’s a p-pretty fair point, I guess… it c-certainly seems strong? You could probably just t-trample people as long as you’re like that-”

“Oh, no, not even a little, actually.”

“…e-eh?”

“I’m still just as harmless as ever in here, I just look a lot scarier is all.”

Another group was caught up to, getting caught underneath the stampeding tentacles, quickly disappearing from sight… only for them all to pop out again a moment later, scrambling out from the side as they resumed fleeing, not really reacting at all to the lack of harm that had come to them as they returned to running blindly away from them.

“Wait, so what does it do?”

“I think there’s a whole protection thing? It’s got its own health bar and everything, so it seems pretty nice and safe in here. Otherwise its mostly the whole Fear thing, but you all probably noticed that one by now, ehe~”

A small party turned the corner up ahead, investigating the cause of the commotion sending so many people sprinting out of the dungeon’s deepest depths, weapons readied as they searched nervously. But as prepared and steeled as they seemed to be, the instant they laid eyes on the cascading abomination headed their way, they turned tail, joining the rest in running for their lives.

“Just flat out overrides anything people doing when they see me, and gets them to run away till they can’t anymore. Niiice and simple.”

“Seems… good? No way to really fight with it, though…”

“I can still throw people around or make them run off a ledge or something, I’m not useless. And not everyone is as bloodthirsty as you are, punchbrains.”

“Well… I guess getting our own deployable boss fight is a pretty good reward, even if you do look kinda…”

“Super strong and tough and menacing?”

“I was gonna say disgusting, but that works too- gah-”

The tiny crafter was cut short, her head smacking hard into a torch mounted on the wall as the horror toting her along held her a bit too close to the side of the passage. Wholly on accident, of course.

“I-I think it’s really impressive…! It, uh… s-suits you…? I mean, a-ability wise it does, since looks wise it’s k-kinda- ah!”

In an unfortunate repeat incident, Elise also found herself knocked headfirst into a torch sconce as she was carried along, though her defenses almost entirely shrugged it off.

“Anyone else want to comment?”

“I… guess not…”

“Chkchk!”

The two bonked party members rubbed at their sore foreheads, suddenly keeping much quieter as they rode the Nightmare Express back out of the dungeon once more.

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The trip backwards through the dungeon served as a sort of test run for Monica’s new skill, trying to figure out her own limits after the scroll itself had destroyed itself before she could even finish reading the details.

While the trip in here had left her sprinting nonstop to not be killed, the trip back out was perhaps the least threatened the event had left her feeling thus far.

Stray projectiles bounced harmlessly off of her abyssal form, battering the attackers relentlessly in return as they were thrown like ragdolls, throwing them into walls and off of balconies and out of her way.

By the time they eventually returned to the mansion’s foyer, they were the only remaining players left in the dungeon, silence finally filling the building as the constant fighting had finally ceased, leaving them alone with their thoughts and spoils.

“Aaaaand… hup!”

The void shape quickly braked, slowing their breakneck advance to a halt as they stormed towards the front door, the caster within grunting with effort, tendrils clumped in front of herself to forcibly stop before she crashed directly into the towering door.

And with another grunt, the horror shaped around her faded out, pods of tentacles sloughing off as the unlit mass of her body popped away like it had never been there at all.

Unprepared for her sudden re-transformation, her four passengers fell from the air, falling hard to the floor of the entrance hall below.

“…oh, right, I was… sorry…?”

The embarrassed Gloom Mage ran back to help them to their feet, Elise and Prim having gotten the worst of it as Silk and Glass had landed perfectly fine, dusting themselves off as they looked the mage over.

“Huh… it really was you…”

“Who did you think it was?”

“Oh, more just… you really are… unpredictable, huh…?”

She puffed her chest out proudly, drinking up what she took as unexpected praise from the mostly silent Brawler.

“Heh, no one does it like me, you’re right about that!~”

“Yeah, most people actually try using their brain…”

Prim brushed her coat off as she stood again, sighing to herself as she inspected the mage as well, still a bit taken aback by her once again finding a new toy the moment she’d left their sight.

“Can’t any of you just trying being happy for me for once? Geez, you’re all… you’re… oh, wait, hang on, I’m not feeling so hot here…”

Monica stumbled on her feet a bit, eyelids fluttering as she braced one hand up against the wall, slowly sliding downwards, her legs giving out and her head spinning.

“A-Are you okay, what’s wrong?”

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“Oh, just… forgot how… beaten up I’ve been for a good while now, hehe… lemme catch my breath… real quick…”

“C-Chk! Chkchk chk…!”

She gasped for air, every bruise and scratch and scrape that had been left untreated for the last several hours now reminding her it was still there now that the adrenaline had drained out of her system, Silk rushing over to help ease her to the floor.

“Okay, o-okay, just wait it out a bit, I’ve got, um… a f-few of Prim’s potions around here, l-let’s see…”

Elise dropped into nurse mode immediately, checking on her like a worried mother as she eased a couple health potions up to her mouth one at a time, slowly trying to help her get put back together again. The others crowded around them, equally worried but having no room to help while the towering Vanguard took up all the free space around her, instead shuffling aimlessly about the castle.

“So, uh… you all manage to find anything? I was a little bit- cough -distracted while I was going through the place, didn’t really give it a good searching.”

“Mm… mostly just a few side rooms… nothing exciting, consumables and gold…”

“Yeah, not even any points really, just a lot of filler. And you just got the skill?”

“Mostly yeah. Oh, I got a couple points along with it for clearing the place, I guess, nothing else really worth remembering.”

“Oh? L-Like, as much as we got from t-that other dungeon?”

“Uuuhhh… a little bit more than that, actually.”

“What, this place worth a thousand or something? Maybe two? Gods knows we worked hard enough for it.”

Prim exaggerated the numbers, guessing comically high for how small the point reward values they’d seen so far had been up until now.

“Oh, no, three actually.”

“…three… hundred?”

“No no, thousand.”

“Three… thousand?!”

“Actually, wait, I forgot the first bonus… I think it was five thousand all together? Nothing else though, just those two things.”

The others were stunned silent for a long moment, struggling to process their score ballooning by that absurd of an amount without really having done much anything at all on their end.

“…Why are you all staring like that?”

“I… you know what, maybe sticking together with the lucksack was a smarter move than I thought it was.”

Monica flicked the crafter across her already-bruised forehead, already turning around and leaving them all behind her once again.

“Hmph! Well hopefully you all can do the rest of the event on your own, seeing as some talentless lucky fox is clearly holding you all back.”

“Ow! Hey, that’s not- get back here, you know what I meant…!”

“W-Wait up you both!

“Chhhk…!”

Elise and Silk ran after the other two, Glass quietly sticking close behind them all as the guild made their way back out through the frozen estate’s front entrance.

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They all teleported outside once more, the snow crunching underfoot as they found their footing, taking their time to survey the area around them.

What had previously been a completely packed battlefield before they’d gone in was now a totally empty and barren courtyard, dozens of footprints and trampled plants through the muddy snow leading away from the gate behind them, as the other guilds had presumably still been Feared for a while longer even after leaving the dungeon.

Not a soul had bothered to remain in the area, leaving Primonilise totally alone and unchallenged in the snowfields.

“Mmm… they really got out of here fast, huh…?”

“After seeing some giant elder god-looking monster, they’re probably convinced the place is haunted. Don’t imagine anyone will be back here anytime today, at least.”

“Speaking of t-today, looks like we’re running out of it already.”

Their tank was watching the horizon, the sun already tucking in underneath the mountains in the distance, the day’s light beginning to slowly drain away as the sky went dark above them.

“Huh, I didn’t think we were in there all that long… guess we should find somewhere to spend tonight, and then figure out where we’re going tomorrow.”

“T-There was a pretty thick treeline back the way we came from I think… we could m-maybe find another cave or something to huddle into for the night in the h-hills there.”

“Good enough idea for me. Any objections?”

“None here, sounds good.”

“Mm, no problems.”

“Chk!”

All in agreement, Monica took point, trudging through the heavy snow as they made for the ridge ahead of them, leaving the monolithic fortress they’d cleared out behind them.

“Any ideas on where to go next? I kinda zeroed in on this place, so I’m not really full on ideas…”

“Hmm… we could head northeast.”

“Northeast? What’s that way?”

“Not much I can see, but…”

The Brawler stopped and gestured for the rest of them to do the same, crouching down and gesturing at the trampled earth beneath them all.

“Most all of these footprints here…? As soon as they got out, people started running either south or west, directly away from the door here… which means anything northeast would have less people to compete with…”

“Huh… yeah, you’re right, no one really turned around and went behind this place, huh? You’re a lot more clever than I gave you credit for, Glass.”

He didn’t quite manage a smile, but the crafter could tell he appreciated the compliment all the same.

“Huh, wouldn’t have guessed the bloodthirsty knucklehead would wanna go to the less crowded area.”

“Well… less weak players around should mean more stronger players, right…? I’d… really rather fight just a few people at a time…”

“Y-Yeah, I’d appreciate not having any more d-dogpile fights for a while…”

“Agreed wholeheartedly here.”

“We have a whole new weapon for dealing with swarms now though!”

“Yeah, and I’d rather keep something that big for emergencies rather than rely entirely on it.”

“You’re all no fun… fiiine, we’ll find shelter for the night and head northeast as soon as we wake up.”

Sighing deeply, the kitsune headed off for the hills ahead with the rest of her guild in tow, all of them tired and sore from the drawn-out dungeon adventure and more than ready for a good night’s rest.

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