Chapter 283: The Seed Bed

Following Diane’s guidance, we were lucky enough to come across a shimmering green portal standing above a sand dune, the water rushing below. Part of me was starting to think that this storm wasn’t going to end until the questline was done, regardless of how much water ended up pouring over the desert.

I landed the car just outside of the portal, creating a barrier above us to act as an umbrella. “Hopefully, there won’t be any kind of restrictions on this dungeon like there were with Stilled Shadows,” I muttered, not keen on having my skills sealed again in an unknown environment.

“Well, let’s find out,” Bella smiled slightly, taking the initiative to step forward into the portal. Diane and I both quickly followed behind her after I habitually placed down the respawn anchor.

Once I stepped past the threshold of the dungeon portal, I transitioned from a storming desert to a giant, dense forest. Trees rose up high to the sky, as if we were in Verdantia, with thick bushes and fines occupying the space between them. I checked my skills, relieved to see that they all still seemed to work fine, before turning to look for Bella and Diane.

Diane had entered the portal only a step ahead of me, and yet she was nowhere to be seen. Even using my True Sight, I could not locate her position, nor Bella’s. Were we teleported to different locations in the dungeon when we entered? I thought to myself, before opening my friends list to send a message to both of them.

Are you two alright? I asked simply, and Bella’s response came back right away.

Yeah, it’s fine in here. Are you going to come in or not? Oh, right, let me step out of the dungeon to register my spawn point, you probably set the stone, didn’t you?

Realizing that she was leaving the dungeon, I quickly backed out through the portal behind me, reappearing atop the dune. A second later, Bella stepped through with a smile. “Sorry, I guess I got a bit ahead of myself,” she said, before looking around. “Where’s Diane? Did she get into stealth to head in?”

“I’m right here,” Diane’s voice spoke up from behind Bella, having noticed the same thing that I had after entering the dungeon. “It looks like this is going to be annoying in a different sense.”

“Why, what happened?” Bella asked, but Diane simply held up a hand to signal for her to wait. Then, she stepped back through the portal, emerging a few seconds later. She swiped her finger at the air, sending us a screenshot of the dungeon’s interior.

“Is this what you saw when you entered the dungeon?” At her words, I studied the image, looking for any inconsistencies with what I had seen.

“It looks like what I saw,” Bella confirmed immediately, and I nodded my head soon after. See this, Diane let out a low sigh.

“It’s a solo instanced dungeon. Usually, instanced dungeons let you bring your party with you, so we would have all ended up in the same instance. However, it looks like this one is set so that each person has to do the dungeon solo.”

“Huh?” Bella’s eyes widened in confusion. “What would be the point of that? I mean, this is a ‘main story’ dungeon, right? Why would they split the person with the story-related skills off from the others?”

Diane crossed her arms, eyes narrowing as she thought the matter through. “There are a few different possibilities, looking at this from a design perspective. First, there might be another story-related skill in the dungeon, and its a race to grab it. Second, the dungeon might require multiple people to clear it, either directed by the one with the appropriate skill or multiple people with the same skill.”

“Third, these instances might not actually be completely identical. There could be discrepancies between them, and part of the puzzle might be identifying those flaws and feeding the information to the one who can use the story skill. In that case, it would encourage Players to team up in order to complete the dungeon’s objective, but we would have no idea how many people are needed to saturate all of the necessary instances.”

Bella listened to Diane’s explanation cautiously. “In other words, it wouldn’t be a good idea to just send Drake in alone, even if this is a solo dungeon.”

“Right,” Diane confirmed. “The odds that the person with the story-related skill is truly supposed to do everything on their own is vanishingly slim. The whole point of a game like this is to encourage cooperation with the community. If you told me that there were a hundred instances that all had to be cleared to finish this dungeon, I would not hesitate to believe you.”

“A-a hundred?!” Bella’s eyes widened in shock. “We might need to get a hundred people involved in this?”

“It’s a possibility,” Diane confirmed. “However, forcing such a large group to move as one is also a flawed approach, so we need to prepare for other possibilities as well. Regardless, once we enter the dungeon, we need to link our actions as much as possible and report anything out of the ordinary. That means regular screenshots sent to each of us and navigating through landmarks.”

After she said that, she turned to face me. “Drake, did you see anything unusual while you were in there? You would have activated your True Sight, right?”

I confirmed her suspicions, but thought about what I had seen. “It was mostly just a forest. I did see traces of what looked like a manmade path under some of the foliage, but I didn’t look far enough to tell where it led before coming back out.’

“Got it.” Diane then turned to face Bella. “You have the best eyes out of all three of us, and can spot discrepancies better than anyone I’ve met in a long time. When we’re in the dungeon, you’ll be largely responsible for reviewing the screenshots we send and comparing them with what you see. If you see even the smallest change between the instances, so much as a single leaf out of place, it’ll be your job to report it to both of us.”

Bella nodded her head seriously as she accepted the role. As for myself, I was in charge of navigation, using my skills to guide us through what I sensed in the dungeon. Meanwhile, Diane’s role was the strategist, trying to figure out the secrets behind the dungeon with any clues that presented themselves.

“Before we go back in, I want to conduct a test,” Diane said once we had discussed our roles. “I am going to go in and leave a cut on the tree directly in front of the dungeon portal. After that, I will exit the dungeon and reenter it to see if I am assigned a single persistent instance, or if I am given a different one each time. Drake, I want you to do the same thing. Just to be safe, you make your cut horizontal, and I’ll make mine vertical.”

With that, we both entered the dungeon portal while Bella waited outside. I waved my finger through the air, causing a thin blade of projected energy to slice horizontally towards the tree. The cut was only just strong enough to slice into the bark, leaving a visible gash without splitting the tree in half.

Once that was done, I left the dungeon and reentered, finding the mark that I left still there. After leaving the dungeon again, I reported my result to the other two, with Diane looking slightly surprised at my answer. “Your mark remained? Mine vanished after I left my instance.”

Bella quickly understood what this meant. “In other words, the one with the story skill is locked to a single instance, while everyone else is either shuffled into different ones or have their instances reset each time?”

Diane considered this, crossing her arms. “I’d like to continue testing, leaving numbered marks on the tree to identify the number of possible instances. If we are randomly shuffled through them, we will be bound to come across an existing mark sooner or later. If we are rotated through sequentially, we’ll end up at the first mark. And if the instance resets entirely, we will never reach another mark.”

However, Bella shot down this idea. “I don’t think we should try that. Even if there are a set number of instances, the dungeon might regenerate and remove the markings before we find them again. There’s too little chance that we’d learn anything, and would just likely end up wasting our time.”

Diane sighed, realizing that Bella was correct. “In that case, the only thing that we can do is try to solve the dungeon from the inside. If we need more backup, I’ll call the Twisted Eye guild. They’d be ecstatic if we brought them along for the main story.”

With that settled, we entered the dungeon once again. The first thing that I did was check once again to confirm that the mark I left earlier was still there. Then, as scheduled, we all exchanged screenshots, only moving once Bella gave the all clear. 

Drake, try using Timeless Traces on that tree in front of the portal. Since the dungeon likely isolated you because of that skill, using it should produce some kind of result. Diane instructed.

I shrugged, using the skill on the tree as requested, seeing the mark that I left before fade away. However, nothing else seemed to happen, so I reported the situation to both of the others. To my surprise, neither of them answered me back for a solid minute, after which Bella typed out a message.

Don’t do that! The tree suddenly turned into a giant plant snake and attacked me. Its bark hide was surprisingly strong!

Diane’s response came a few minutes later, having taken longer to slay her own snake tree. Agreed. Though, that does give me an idea on what we’re supposed to do in this dungeon. I’m not certain yet, so let’s reset mine and Bella’s instances. The battle with the tree monster would have disrupted the environment too much to keep our instances identical. Once we’re back in, guide us towards that path.

I waited for the two of them to signal that they were ready before leading them to the path that I had seen. It was a beaten dirt road covered in weeds and flowers. If not for possessing a detection skill, it would have been hard to notice the difference with a passing glance.

I was about to guide us down the path when a screenshot suddenly came from Diane, showing the path on her end. One of the flowers on the road had suddenly grown larger, its petals turning into fangs as it lunged for Diane. I quickly scanned the area, finding the exact flower on my end and rushed over towards it.

A few seconds later, Diane sent a message. Killed it. Bella, get ready on your end. Drake, can you identify what flower that was and use Timeless Traces on it?

Already standing over it, I responded, the flower just in front of my foot. I had been prepared to stomp on it if Diane didn’t say anything soon. Since she did, I leaned down and activated Timeless Traces on the little flower. Unlike with the tree, the flower this time seemed to dissolve under the light of the skill.

The flower disappeared on my side! This message didn’t come from myself, but rather from Bella.

Got it. This is a type of puzzle. We need to kill any plant monsters on our individual sides, and then have Drake specifically target those plants on his side with Timeless Traces. The total number of monsters we need to defeat, as well as the number per instance, is unknown, so we can only keep going.

That doesn’t sound so hard, Bella posted cheerfully.

The hard part is identifying exactly which plant to target. If a blade of grass became a monster, Drake would need to exclusively target that one blade of grass. If he targets anything else, we’ll end up both having to fight more monsters like that tree again. A lot of these plants are in dense patches or tangles, so we need to be careful to share information as accurately as possible. The moment you see a plant monster, send an immediate picture of where it is. The sooner you do, the more likely Drake will be able to identify the corresponding plant on his end.