Chapter 262: Monster Developments

As soon as the battle began, it became immediately clear how much harder it was to fight as a group without Bella around. Because she wasn’t able to offer suppressing fire to cover Diane or pick off any additional enemies, I had to work twice as hard to prevent any enemies from slipping past Diane’s offensive to land a hit on her.

First, she launched herself into the midst of the group of practicing ninjas on the right, her black threads lashing out against the enemies closest to her. For the ninjas themselves, there were a brief few seconds of stunned hesitation before they launched themselves into motion. In that time, Diane had managed to kill only three of the practicing enemies, leaving dozens more around her.

I conjured my various clones, directing them to focus on attacking the group to the left while I focused on conjuring barriers to protect Diane from lightning-infused kicks and punches. For her part, Diane was running wild, her threads slicing at any nearby enemies in a whirlwind of blood and darkness.

The leader of the ground of practicing ninjas was a wizened old man with a long, white beard. When he moved, sparks wrapped around his body. He leapt high into the air, a trail of electricity wrapping around his leg as he brought it down towards Diane in a powerful kick.

I placed a barrier in his path, halting his momentum long enough for Diane to lash upwards with her threads, severing his extended leg. From there, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the group fell.

Once the groups in the courtyard were dealt with, Diane pursed her lips, looking around. “This is definitely less convenient now,” she muttered, before looking at me. “We didn’t used to have this much trouble fighting together before we met up with Bella.”

It took me a moment to process what she meant by that, before I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I guess. You’ve become a lot more aggressive with your fighting style, haven’t you?”

“And you’ve become more defensive, focusing on guarding me,” Diane countered, before letting out a sigh. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and focusing. “Your skills are much better suited to be an attacker with defense as a secondary specialty. Since Bella isn’t here right now, let’s try to slip back into our old roles.”

I thought about how I could do this, since it wasn’t really easy to change my fighting style out of nowhere. “In that case, what about… this?” I focused, generating eight daggers in front of myself. Two of them each were forged of fire, water, darkness, and golden energy. These eight daggers hovered in the air as I began to give them simple instructions. They were to attack anything that moved other than myself or Diane.

Diane looked at the daggers curiously, before seeming to find it suitable. “Alright, you lead the way. You used to be our frontline fighter, so let’s see if you still remember how to do it.”

I accepted the role, heading towards the mansion and sliding open the doors. As soon as I did, the eight daggers launched forward, slicing through the air to stab at a group of ninjas that had been lying in ambush. Their cries echoed out, and Diane silently appeared from stealth to slice the neck of one before returning to her position behind me.

“Can you tell the layout of the dungeon?” she asked, watching the eight daggers pull themselves out of the ninja bodies and return to hovering around me.

“Yeah, it’s not that complicated. The odd part is more that there aren’t as many monsters as I’d expect from an overflowing dungeon. Do you think these monsters are more intelligent than the ones that we usually face?”

“It’s likely,” Diane agreed. “Outside, they didn’t bat an eye at the door to the dungeon being opened, as if expecting people to walk out of it rather than in. More than that, they had regularly stationed patrols and lookouts, meaning that these monsters weren’t purely operating based on instincts. And if they were, their instincts were far too complex.”

Every time I felt as if I was starting to understand more about how this world’s systems worked, there seemed to be new surprises waiting for me. Why were the monsters in this dungeon so intelligent? For that matter, why were the ones in the war dungeon that we went to intelligent? If they were like normal dungeon monsters, they should not have had any individuality to speak of.

Regardless, I mapped out the entirety of the dungeon with True Sight, identifying the locations of five different chests, and began to guide Diane towards them. Soon after we began moving, a loud alarm rang out through the air, a blaring horn and ringing bell that caused every monster within the dungeon to mobilize at once.

“They even have warning alarms?” Diane asked in surprise as groups of ninjas rushed at us from both ends of the hall. We still made short work of the groups, who weren’t able to take advantage of their large numbers properly in such a confined space. However, I could see several more groups throughout the dungeon converging towards our location, including…

“Have you ever seen a case of the boss monster leaving their room?” I asked hesitantly, and Diane looked over with wide eyes.

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, but I shook my head. “Let’s quickly get through this dungeon, and then I’ll go check the forums. If monsters are getting that intelligent now, other people would have definitely mentioned something about it.”

With that goal in mind, I tripled my number of daggers, vastly increasing my killing power as we endured wave after wave of monster attacks. Soon, the hallway itself was filled with lightning as a bald figure rushed down the hall.

The boss monster was a level three hundred and twenty Faded Lightning Ninja. As soon as he appeared, thunder cracked within the hall and he was directly next to me. His speed was akin to teleportation, and he sent a punch to my side that blasted me through the wall and into an adjacent room.

I let out a cough, blood spurting from my lips as I focused on healing myself. The daggers continued to fly through the air, but he dodged them while engaging Diane. Since the daggers refused to attack her, he used her small body as a shield to limit the angles that they could strike from, forcing them to constantly circle around.

Thankfully, this maneuvering also meant that he didn’t have as many chances to unleash his own attacks, but Diane was having a hard time keeping up with him alone. I was about to intervene when I noticed something strange about how her feet were moving. Her left foot danced around to keep up with the boss, while her right foot only moved along a deliberate, circular path.

Once that circle was completed, Diane lifted her arms in front of herself, taking a kick that I knew she could have otherwise dodged. Her body shot back, but there was a smile on her face beneath the mask. The floor where she had been standing previously erupted with a loud explosion.

Though this did not outright kill the boss, it did stun him for several seconds, giving more than enough time for the two dozen daggers to rush in and stab at his vitals. Diane tumbled backwards, grunting as she curled her body to minimize the damage.

With the boss now slain, I rushed over, using my Forest Titan skill to accelerate her natural recovery. “Are you alright?” I asked, and she grunted.

“Fractured wrists,” she reported, slowly rising to her feet. “This boss is definitely not behaving normally. Let’s get the chests and get out of here.”

“Do you think that this is like that war dungeon?” I asked, but Diane shook her head, flexing her fingers.

“No. That was a scripted dungeon. The entire timeline was planned out in advance, and the only variables were those introduced by the players. That’s why they could have complex personalities within that dungeon, because the dungeon itself was meant to tell a story.”

“This is different, though. If this was the same kind of scripted dungeon as the war dungeon, then there wouldn’t be any monsters leaking to the outside. The dungeon would simply reset when the time was up, and there would be no chance for an overflow. No, this is a case of the monsters themselves acting outside of their base parameters.”

Thankfully, my recovery aura helped restore the use of Diane’s hands after just a couple of minutes while we walked through the dungeon to gather the loot. Now that the boss had already been slain, there were hardly any other threats that needed to be dealt with.

As far as the loot from the dungeon itself went, there wasn’t much worth noting. The only skill book that we received was ‘Lightning Infusion’ from the boss chest, which Diane learned on the spot. After we had looted the dungeon’s chests, we teleported back to Fallcry to avoid having to run out into the rain amidst the patrolling ninjas.

“I’ll be back in just a little bit,” she said, her brand going dim. I knew that Diane still had a little bit of time left for the day, so I waited for her return. Her Chosen seemed to have the same idea, just sitting down and idly swaying her legs to wait.

About twenty minutes later, her brand lit up again, her face turning grim. “Is everything alright?” I asked, and she shook her head.

“It’s not just the ninja dungeon,” Diane reported. “I just checked the forums. Apparently, this is a known phenomenon. Every dungeon with certain types of monsters has been showing signs of ‘mutation’, as the Players call it, ever since the recent patch. This was only our second dungeon, with the first one being the undead one, so it makes sense that we hadn’t seen it.”

“Anyways, these ‘mutated’ dungeons have their monsters act outside their known patterns. Even established, low-level dungeons have had their monsters become more intelligent, using their skills more effectively and demonstrating physical abilities similar to martial arts.”

“Is there a response from the GMs?” I asked, my eyes wide. If every dungeon that we encountered in the future was going to be modified like this, it would make matters far more difficult.

“So far, the only response that the officials have given is that this is not a bug, but an intended design feature. As for how it works or why, they haven’t said anything,” Diane let out a sigh, leaning back in her seat.

“In other words, we just have to get used to facing intelligent monsters from now on?” I asked, and she shrugged her shoulders, unable to give me a better answer.

“I’ll see if I can find anything else about it overnight. For now, I’m going to design the types of skills that I want my Chosen to work on while I’m gone. If you’re up for it, we’ll head to the other dungeon tomorrow.” After she said that, she got up from her chair and began to make her way back to her room within the Sunspire Palace.

As for me, there was little that I could do but head to my own room. If this was the case, then I needed to work on refining my own skills as well, so it was time for more simulated training.