"Wait — you're telling me that Master Kent was perfectly fine one moment, got slapped into a painting by a ghostly hand, and came back with dementia?"
Inside the infirmary at Light Eagle Corps headquarters.
Sali stared at the guilt-ridden Aston standing before him, his expression so complicated it could have served as a painter's color palette.
Forty percent confusion. Thirty percent disbelief. Twenty percent helplessness. Ten percent what in the world is actually happening right now.
Word that Kent had suffered serious injuries and was in poor condition had spread quickly, drawing the other captains to the infirmary in short order. Several heavy gazes — Elsa's being the notable exception — had converged on Aston, making him shift uncomfortably under the weight of them.
Before he could even attempt a response, Kent — lying in the nearby bed with his eyes wide open — looked around at everyone with an expression of pure, guileless confusion. His eyes radiated a peculiar, otherworldly wisdom as he offered his thoughts on the situation:
"Wabi babu."
"…"
Every captain in the room went silent.
Aston opened his mouth. A thousand different things ran through his head. What came out was a single long, heavy sigh.
"Ugh…"
When he had first reached out to invite the Master, his state of mind had been something like:
"Mom, life is a vast and open wilderness."
It had since become:
"Mom, life has completely conned me."
And at the rate things were going, it would soon evolve into:
"Damn it all — what a ride."
A physician stepped forward.
"Please don't be too alarmed. The mental damage Master Kent sustained is reversible. With proper rest and recovery, he should be fully restored within a week."
A week.
By then, even lava would have gone cold.
Under ordinary circumstances, a setback like this would have been unfortunate but manageable — not enough to drag the entire room into this particular shade of gloom. But this was a competition. They could already picture exactly how those country adventurers would react once word got out that the legendary Kent had temporarily lost his mind. It didn't matter what the adventurers' actual capabilities were — their exploration progress would push well ahead of the mercenaries while Kent sat in a bed making sounds at people.
"Everyone, settle down." Sali's voice was steady. "I've already reached out to another group of dungeon explorers. They may not be on Master Kent's level, but they're capable enough to keep us moving forward."
He was dependable in moments like this, and people responded to it. Heads nodded around the room.
Sali had joined the corps relatively recently, but he had risen to vice-captain with unusual speed — a product of genuine talent for strategy and an instinct for people that was difficult to ignore. Most of the corps respected it. Some didn't.
He and Geth had made assault squad captain at the same time, after all, and more than a few people had decided he had simply ridden her coattails to get there.
"That won't be enough on its own."
Aston's voice cut through the room.
"As much as it pains me to say it — after looking into those adventurers properly, I've come to realize they actually know what they're doing. They shouldn't be underestimated."
He clenched his fist.
"If we want to guarantee a win, there's one more thing we need to do."
"What is it?" the room asked, almost in unison.
A slow, calculated smile spread across Aston's face.
"Slow down their progress."
Not long afterward, word began to spread that Master Kent had suffered grave injuries inside Sein Dungeon.
People had already sensed something was wrong when the group returned looking as battered as they had. Once the information was deliberately circulated, it traveled fast.
On the surface, this kind of news should have undermined confidence in the Light Eagle Corps and damaged Kent's reputation into the bargain. The obvious question was why anyone would want to release it.
Because Aston believed he understood human nature.
And he believed he understood exactly what Kent's image meant to the public.
Consider the logic:
If a dungeon could reduce the legendary dungeon exploration master — the man who had written The Textbook — to a babbling idiot…
Would ordinary people still dare set foot inside it?
Aston was confident mercenaries wouldn't.
Nor would any adventurer he had encountered around the royal capital.
"By releasing this, we put Luluwo's group on the back foot. While they're hesitating, we push our own exploration forward. Clean, simple, effective."
He crossed his arms with the air of a man who had just solved everything.
Sali said nothing.
Something about the plan felt off to him. He couldn't quite identify what — only that anything connected to Sein had a persistent habit of defying common sense in ways that made careful people nervous.
In the end, he quietly steered the Hero away from the whole mess before it could touch her. Elsa's hard-earned innocence was worth protecting. Schemes and maneuvering could be left to him. All she needed to do was keep playing her friendship-building game.
Several days later.
Luluwo's group had just finished a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-mile journey through the Catacombs of Carthus, discovered a second hidden bonfire, and settled in for a well-earned rest — during which they began discussing the news the Light Eagle Corps had so deliberately let slip.
"So the old man lost his mind, did he."
Luluwo sighed, more than once.
"At his age, going through something like that… wouldn't a quiet retirement have been better for everyone?"
"You don't seem very happy about it, Captain," Mira observed.
"His books taught me a lot, back in the day. Between us, I actually have a fair amount of respect for the old man."
Luluwo shrugged.
"Publicly, of course, I still have to take shots at him. We're competitors."
"Based on recent reports, the Catacombs of Carthus appears to be significantly more dangerous than any previous area." Ais turned through the gathered information. "Should we continue pushing forward, or pull back for now?"
"Aren't you curious about what turned the old man into a vegetable?" Luluwo asked.
Ais smiled.
"Very."
"Then there's nothing to discuss. We keep going. I want to see exactly what makes this place so special — and no matter how dangerous it is, it can't possibly be worse than the Magic Academy."
As it turned out, Luluwo's reaction was a fairly accurate summary of how most adventurers in Bedford City felt about the whole situation.
A dungeon that turned Master Kent into an idiot? I absolutely have to see that for myself.
That was the general consensus.
Any adventurer with a strong instinct for self-preservation had already left when Sein Dungeon first began changing. The ones who remained were a special breed — fearless, slightly unhinged individuals who would cosplay as a Ghrus to pick a fight with the Undead Legion, yank hairs from a Golden Lion's tail for sport, or approach Rotten Kin completely naked on a dare.
The Light Eagle Corps' propaganda campaign produced precisely the opposite of its intended effect.
After "Kent became an idiot" made the rounds, adventurers who had previously shown no interest in the underground area suddenly found themselves very interested. Even some long-term residents of Liurnia of the Lakes made their way into the Catacombs to see what all the fuss was about.
And thanks to Bedford City's public notice board, every discovery these explorers made fed directly into the Skyrim Group's ever-growing pool of information.
"Hold on." Luluwo's expression shifted into something strange. "You're saying the old man ended up like that because he went into the Painted World?"
Berto adjusted his glasses.
"That's correct. Based on our investigation, he entered a painting called Painted World: Carthus Warrior and came out the way he did. Captain… what's that look on your face?"
"Well… how do I put this…"
Luluwo reached into her pack, produced a rolled-up piece of paper, and unfolded it in front of him.
"You already have one!?"
Berto stared at it as though it had personally wronged him.
"Don't tell me you've already gone inside."
"No, no. Nothing like that."
Luluwo shook her head.
Then scratched the back of her neck with a distinctly guilty expression.
"But Tami is."
Berto's glasses slipped off his face and hit the floor.
The intern. Trapped inside the very Painted World that had reduced a living legend to infancy.
"Isn't that worse than if you had gone in yourself!?"
Inside the Painted World.
Yellow sand choked the sky.
Cries of misery echoed from every direction.
Tami looked out at the Abyss Watchers legion massed in the distance, then at the demon-like Carthus warriors standing beside him.
He sank into thought.
Fight?
Out of the question.
The dungeon introduction had already made that abundantly clear — the Overlord's army had been massacred by the Abyss Watchers. There wasn't the faintest sliver of a chance at victory.
So what were his options?
Unfortunately, fighting appeared to be the only one on offer.
When the war horn sounded, something sharpened behind Tami's eyes.
He made his decision.
"I defect!"
He spun around and leveled his weapon at his fellow Carthus warriors.
If you can't beat them, join them.
The moment the thought clicked into place, the world suddenly felt considerably wider.
Spiritually speaking, he had switched sides. Practically speaking, the Abyss Watchers had absolutely no idea — and if they caught him, they would cut him down without a second thought, the same as everyone else.
But that didn't shake him in the slightest.
If anything, it made the whole thing more exciting. He began picturing himself as a masked undercover hero infiltrating enemy lines, and the more he imagined it, the better he felt about the whole arrangement.
What else could he do?
In a place as brutal as Sein Dungeon, everyone needed their own way of coping.
Since he couldn't beat the Abyss Watchers anyway, he might as well enjoy himself.
After dying more times than he could count, he finally managed to survive long enough to watch the Abyss Watchers tear through nearly half the Carthus forces.
He was just about to cheer —
A deep Abyss spell screamed out from the Overlord's palace, aimed directly at him.
"Oh no, I'm dead again—"
Boom.
The world spun.
His body flew backward.
The expected death never arrived.
A ridiculously cool figure had stepped directly in front of him.
An Abyss Watcher.
They saved me! They actually didn't kill me this time!
Tami wanted to throw a victory celebration on the spot.
But before he could witness the legendary clash between the Abyss Watchers and Wolnir, the Painted World shattered like glass around him.
He was forcibly ejected.
As he tumbled out, he caught one last glimpse — a small Hollow standing among the Carthus army, giving him a slow thumbs-up.
Its expression said everything:
Finding a way to play it like that… you've got a gift, kid.
Thud.
Tami hit the ground hard.
He looked around. Complete darkness. This was the exact spot where he had found the ancient book — where the ghostly hand had ambushed him and crammed him into the Painted World in the first place.
Luluwo and the others were nowhere in sight. They had already moved on and found the hidden bonfire.
Strange. People normally came out near the painting itself. Why had he ended up back here?
He filed that mystery away for later, because a more immediate problem had presented itself.
How was he supposed to find anyone in the dark?
There had only been one road initially, but following it revealed three separate forks branching off in different directions. If he were a Kobold, he could have tracked his companions by scent alone.
Unfortunately, he was entirely human. No tracking magic, and finding footprints in this light was essentially impossible.
He stood at the fork, weighing his options — and that was when something glittering in the left passage caught his eye.
He squinted.
A Crystal Lizard.
A weak monster, famously generous with valuable drops.
Tami was already moving before the thought fully formed.
As it turned out, this particular Crystal Lizard was a Porsche among its species — faster than anything that small had any right to be. No matter how hard he pushed, all he could do was watch its rear end pull further away.
What he failed to notice was that the Crystal Lizard was leading him somewhere quite deliberately.
He sprinted through passage after passage, encountering almost no monsters along the way.
Running.
Still running.
Until he reached a suspension bridge.
Crack.
Still clutching hopefully toward the Crystal Lizard, Tami dropped straight through the collapsing bridge and plummeted downward.
A quintessential Souls experience.
Did an intact suspension bridge even exist anywhere in Sein Dungeon?
"Ow — my back!"
Somehow, he didn't die.
He landed in what appeared to be a hidden chamber lit by warm firelight. Skeletons hung from the walls. Ancient books lay scattered across every surface.
Rustle… rustle…
A hunched figure stood with its back to him, occupied with something involving one of the skeletons on the wall.
"Uh… hello?"
Tami offered a cautious greeting.
An eerie, discordant melody immediately filled the room.
The hunched figure spun around.
Tami nearly came out of his skin.
Three heads grew from its chest. Six arms extended outward, each holding a hanging lantern. Every head wore a grotesque mask.
This was no ordinary monster.
[Pinwheel]
By sheer, stumbling accident, Tami had found one of the elite monsters of the Catacombs of Carthus.
And just like that, he became the explorer with the highest progression in the entire region.