Chapter 143: Disdain [Bonus]

[Bonus Chapter thanks to castle from Chronotitan <3]

The next Swamp Crocodile came at Jaxir with two Mire Lashes behind it, making the fight much more difficult than the first few Jaxir had come across.

The crocodile disappeared beneath the mud while the vines spread out to cut off both sides of the passage, forcing Jaxir to watch three separate mana patterns instead of reacting to the creatures themselves. He smiled and began firing before any of them finished setting up.

[-39]

[-37]

A Cast struck one Mire Lash through the center while another curved beneath a whipping vine and caught the crocodile as it surfaced. Jaxir kept every shot small and released them almost immediately after formation. He was still trying to avoid accidentally Channeling his Casts and wasting mana, plus he didn’t want Channel to obscure his sense for Cast itself.

Fast was what he wanted anyway.

[-36]

[-58]

[Critical Hit!]

The crocodile’s head snapped sideways when the second Cast struck beneath its jaw, and Jaxir used the opening to move past it before the Mire Lashes could box him in. He had learned his lesson about their toxin, so the moment one of the vines changed in the slightest, he gave it far more room than its physical reach suggested. A clear strand of liquid sliced harmlessly through the space behind him.

"Fool me once." Jaxir flicked both hands outward and sent another series of Casts into the closest Mire Lash. The creature’s health fell slowly under Nightmare defenses, but Jaxir’s casting speed let him make up for the weak individual hits through sheer volume.

[-40]

[-38]

[-37]

...

The dungeon stopped giving him comfortable fights after that. Two creatures became three, then four, with crocodiles bursting through the mud while Mire Lashes filled the narrow root passages with enough vines that avoiding every attack required Jaxir to keep moving. His mana never stopped either, small Casts forming and leaving his control so quickly that the gap between them began disappearing.

He still wasn’t getting the understanding he wanted from Cast, though the fighting gave him plenty of other things to think about. Every creature had a pattern, every attack required mana to move somewhere first, and the more enemies the dungeon stacked together, the easier those little tells became to compare. By the time three crocodiles attacked him in the same chamber, Jaxir was already moving before the first one disappeared into the mud.

His map filled in with him. Passages curled through one another in strange loops, some narrowing until they became almost impossible to squeeze through while others opened into chambers filled with black water and hanging vines.

After half an hour, Jaxir realized the place was less a dungeon and more a maze grown inside an enormous knot of roots.

"Of course it is." Jaxir glanced at the map while choosing the left branch of a fork. He had already wandered farther than expected, but at least the expanding layout gave him enough information to avoid doubling back.

Something shifted beside him.

Jaxir stopped and looked toward the wall. Several roots were moving against one another with a slow twisting motion, thick vines slipping through gaps that hadn’t existed a few seconds earlier. He watched one root settle into place, then looked back toward his map.

The passage behind him wasn’t shaped that way.

Jaxir frowned and walked back several meters, checking the wall against the route he had already uncovered. The map showed a turn where there was now only a solid mass of roots, while a new opening had formed farther to the right. His eyes narrowed.

’No, my map isn’t wrong. The maze changed.’

Jaxir stared for another moment before laughing under his breath. The entire dungeon was rearranging itself in real time, changing old routes even after his map had already recorded them. Apparently Nightmare difficulty had decided that monsters, toxins and inflated defenses weren’t annoying enough on their own.

"If I’d actually read the whole packet, I probably would’ve known that." Jaxir scratched the side of his head and looked down the newly opened passage. He had skimmed until he found the Willow Treant Witch, saw that it was a Magic boss, then more or less stopped caring about everything else.

For some reason, preparing every answer before he arrived had felt unappealing. Jaxir understood the usefulness of information, especially after seeing what the government had collected, but walking into a dungeon already knowing every trick sounded like stealing half the fun from himself. He grinned and stepped into the new passage.

**

Outside the Drowned Willow Dungeon, the black whirlpool had long since returned to its normal murky color. The party that had tried to recruit Jaxir remained nearby, waiting on their fifth member while one of the men kept glancing toward the water. Eventually, he shook his head.

"He’s dead." The man crossed his arms and looked toward his teammates. "There’s no way that guy clears Nightmare alone."

One of the women beside him snorted. "The mobs alone will drown him out eventually, especially with no healer or Tank." She glanced toward the whirlpool and added, "And that’s not even the real problem."

"Exactly." Another member leaned against his spear and sighed. "You can’t clear the Nightmare maze solo."

Their prospective mage looked confused. "Why not?" He hadn’t run the dungeon on Nightmare before.

"The maze changes." The spearman pointed toward the whirlpool. "According to the guides, the only way to break free of the pattern is to split your group into two to trick some of the maze’s senses. That’s the only reliable way through before the layout shifts again."

"So he’s cooked." The first man laughed and shook his head. "Guy was Level 8 anyway, so I have no idea what he thought he was doing."

"What did you just say?"

The voice came from behind them.

Every member of the party stiffened when they noticed the insignia on the newcomer. Several more players wearing the same Golden Fleece emblem stood nearby, and none of them looked casual anymore.

The first man swallowed. "We tried recruiting a mage earlier, but when I scanned him he was only Level 8, so we passed." He gestured toward the dungeon entrance. "Then he went into Nightmare by himself."

The Golden Fleece member’s expression changed. "What was he wearing?"

"White robes." The man thought for a moment. "Had a staff too."

The Golden Fleece players looked at one another.

"It’s him." One of them stepped closer to the whirlpool. "It’s Jaxir Chance."

The name spread through the clearing almost immediately.

Several conversations died at once, then started again in whispers as people turned toward the dungeon entrance. Almost everyone had seen the video, though the footage had been distant enough that Jaxir’s face had never been particularly clear, and reconciling the ridiculous things he had done with someone still sitting at Level 8 had made the detail easy to forget.

Most people hadn’t thought about the tutorial zone in years. Nothing important happened there anymore.

Yet the man from that video had just walked past all of them while none of them were any wiser. He also apparently didn’t know about the weird quirk of this dungeon either. He was either too arrogant or too ignorant. Maybe just both.

One of the Golden Fleece players stared at the whirlpool. "He’s going to die in there. I guess that legend’s not going to last very long."