The day before Leon and his companions stumbled onto the Road of Sacrifices —
Sein Dungeon — Dungeon Lord's Room
"The narratives of the Undead Settlement, the Road of Sacrifices, and the Cathedral of the Deep are all connected. Splitting them apart weakens the whole story — so how do I actually sequence this release?"
Wade studied the miniature model of the dungeon, his gaze drifting between Farron Keep and the Catacombs of Carthus.
Why did these three areas belong to a single continuous narrative?
Because all three orbited around one figure — the Lord of Cinder, Aldrich, Devourer of Gods.
As anyone familiar with the lore knew, Aldrich carried the formal title Saint of the Deep alongside less flattering nicknames — God Eater, the Drowned Pig. That last one came from a single, simple fact: he never stopped eating people. He had consumed so many humans over time that his body had swollen into a bloated mass of black sludge, barely recognizable as anything that had once been a person.
In the backstory Sein was drawing from, as the First Flame weakened, the standards for who could Link the Fire dropped steadily lower. Once, only gods and legends had qualified. Later, any soul powerful enough to burn for a while would do. Eventually even the Iron Golem — once responsible for screening candidates — had stopped existing to perform that function.
Cannibalism had originally just been Aldrich's disturbing personal habit. Once people discovered that eating human flesh strengthened his soul, however, he'd been caged like livestock and fed continuously, fattened deliberately, so that he could eventually be delivered to the Kiln of the First Flame as fuel.
Among all the Lords of Cinder, Aldrich probably ranked lowest in dignity. Nearly everyone in the story despised him.
Which brought Wade back to dungeon design.
Since Aldrich needed a steady supply of human flesh, somewhere had to produce it. That was the Undead Settlement — the source. The Road of Sacrifices — the transport route. And finally the Cathedral of the Deep, where the flesh was delivered for Aldrich's consumption before he himself was eventually processed into fuel.
That completed Aldrich's arc.
To experience the entire narrative, players would eventually need to connect it to a certain Pontiff waiting in Irithyll — but that was a bridge for later.
The immediate problem Wade was wrestling with: splitting the three connected areas across separate releases weakened the story's coherence. But releasing all three simultaneously introduced an enormous amount of new content at once, risking overwhelming the player base.
Irithyll of the Boreal Valley was already a massive area on its own. Entering it required the Small Doll. The Small Doll came from inside the Cathedral of the Deep. That alone was already two entirely new maps stacked on top of each other. Adding the Undead Settlement and the Road of Sacrifices on top of that pushed the total to four brand-new areas simultaneously.
That was effectively equivalent to another full-scale dungeon evolution event.
Weighing everything, Wade settled on a compromise.
He could have simply placed an elite enemy inside the Catacombs of Carthus that dropped the Small Doll directly. But that would mean skipping the Cathedral of the Deep entirely — a map he had designed with genuine care, and genuine cruelty, in equal measure.
Absolutely not happening.
Back when he'd first played through Dark Souls III himself, the Cathedral had tormented him for what felt like an eternity. Naturally, he wanted to share that particular joy with everyone else.
So — the Undead Settlement and the Road of Sacrifices became the two areas under active consideration.
"Honestly, both of these are basically beginner zones. The original enemy roster isn't especially threatening. The level design holds up as always, but neither map has particularly distinctive mechanics."
"I could boost the monsters and the terrain difficulty…"
"But then it stops feeling like the Undead Settlement at all."
"What kind of genuinely terrifying monster is supposed to live in a settlement populated by the elderly, the sick, and the disabled? The premise doesn't support it."
After further thought, he made his decision.
"I'll add a connecting path from the first half of Farron Keep into the Road of Sacrifices."
"Crossing the Road of Sacrifices delivers players to the Cathedral of the Deep."
"As for the Undead Settlement — I'll temporarily fold it into a Painted World for now. When conditions allow later, I'll open it as its own standalone region."
His primary focus stayed fixed on the Cathedral. The Road of Sacrifices mainly existed to support narrative continuity and make the transition between maps feel earned rather than arbitrary.
Visually, it wasn't drastically different from Farron Keep. Its notable roster included Evangelists, Cage Carriers, Corvians, giant crabs, a Black Knight, the Crystal Sage, and two hostile Farron Exiles wielding the well-loved Exile Greatsword — a favorite starter weapon among newer adventurers.
He decided to frame the Road of Sacrifices as another beginner-friendly zone — somewhere players not yet ready for Farron Keep proper could gain experience first.
He'd briefly also considered building a second route from the Catacombs of Carthus directly to the Cathedral, letting both paths converge at a shared bonfire. On reflection, though — since adventurers near the Royal Capital could already warp to Firelink Shrine and approach the Road of Sacrifices from there — an additional shortcut would only reduce the amount of mana he could harvest from the extra travel time.
The shortcut idea got shelved.
"That settles it."
"Sein Dungeon Version 2.1 — complete."
Back to the present.
Not long after entering the Road of Sacrifices, Leon's group encountered something distinctly unusual.
Chop! Splatter!
The sound of fresh flesh being hacked apart carried through the air in a steady rhythm.
Hidden inside a stretch of bushes, Leon and the others watched the scene unfold in silence.
"…Is that man eating people?"
Maru clapped a hand over her mouth in disgust.
Following her gaze, they took in an enormous man dressed in filthy rags. A foul-smelling iron cage hung from his back, packed with something that reeked badly enough to reach them from a distance. He wielded a heavy weapon somewhere between an iron bar and a butcher's cleaver, working through fallen bodies with the methodical rhythm of someone doing routine labor.
The smaller scraps went to his hunting dogs.
The larger pieces went straight into the cage.
So that explained what the cage was carrying.
Leon's mind went back to something from just after they'd entered the area — only a few steps in, before any of this. Hurried footsteps had echoed ahead of them, and several Hollow Undead had come sprinting toward the group.
His first assumption had been an attack. But sending only a handful of weak Hollows against them would have been an insult more than a threat.
Then, right as he'd braced to cut them down, he'd realized — they weren't attacking at all.
They were fleeing.
Desperately.
Moments later, hunting dogs had run them down. Heavy footsteps had approached from behind. Leon's group had hidden in the bushes and watched the entire thing unfold.
Now Leon understood.
The Cage Carrier wasn't hacking bodies apart out of malice.
He was working.
His job: transporting human flesh.
Curious, Leon exchanged looks with his teammates. Silently, they fell in behind the man, tracking his movement at a distance.
Leon kept his eyes locked on the Cage Carrier. Drew quietly mapped the surrounding terrain as they moved. Maru dealt with any monster along the way that risked exposing their position.
The Cage Carrier walked without urgency.
The scenery wasn't particularly striking — Farron Keep, essentially, minus the poison swamp. Not much worth admiring. Scattered around them, though, were gnawed corpses and broken wagon wreckage, as though caravans had been ambushed here repeatedly over a long stretch of time.
Then something happened.
A group of bandit-styled Hollows rushed out and attacked.
Not the Cage Carrier himself. The flesh he was carrying.
Some of the meat had already been sliced in half by the ambush, and the Hollows shoved torn scraps directly into their mouths with the desperate hunger of starving ghosts.
Watching the Cage Carrier get overwhelmed, Leon's group intervened quietly — enough to tip the fight without letting him realize outside help had been involved. He roughly stuffed the recovered corpses back into his cage and continued forward.
He was ambushed again shortly after.
Leon helped again.
Then a third wave arrived.
"…Is everyone out here mentally unwell?" Maru couldn't hold the complaint back. "None of them care about money. All anyone wants is human meat. The local customs here are — surprisingly straightforward."
That became the group's unified first impression of the Road of Sacrifices: everyone here was obsessed with human flesh.
But why?
Even with Leon's protection running interference, the Cage Carrier's odds gradually deteriorated. The bandit Hollows gave way to considerably stronger Corvians. Then —
Slash!
While Leon's group was tied up fighting off the Corvian wave, a massive cleaver came down and dropped the Cage Carrier in one motion. Someone dragged the cage full of human flesh away and disappeared into a cave around the bend.
"Damn it!"
"He still got robbed!"
Maru drove her foot into the nearest Corvian, furious.
Then — a shrill, ear-splitting shriek erupted behind them.
They turned. Another Corvian crouched behind a rock nearby, the scream still ringing through the air.
The ambush triggered immediately.
Corvians poured out of every gap — bushes, treetops, cliff edges — a full flock of black-feathered enemies descending on the group at once.
Wait. Those locations had been empty a moment ago. Maru had personally checked every one of them.
It had been a while since they'd faced an enemy swarm this coordinated. Sorcerers cast from range. Knife-wielding Corvians pressed in close. Others crawled low along the ground, waiting for a moment of inattention to strike.
Beaks and claws opened bloody wounds with unnerving precision.
Anyone other than Leon's team would have died long before this point.
Was this genuinely supposed to be a beginner-friendly area?
In the end, Terl shifted into his green-skinned beast form and carved a path through the swarm, buying everyone the room needed to survive.
By the time they checked on the Cage Carrier —
He was already dead.
Their plan to trail him quietly had failed. If they'd successfully kept him alive, they could have followed him directly through the entire Road of Sacrifices and straight into the Cathedral of the Deep.
His death left two drops behind. One: Carthus Rouge. The other: a letter.
"The Cathedral needs more human flesh. The Saint's appetite continues to grow. Increase the number of captives."
The letter's condition suggested real age — it might have been sitting there for over a decade. That any of it remained legible was almost impressive.
"…A cathedral."
"…Human flesh."
"How does one connect to the other?"
Who would associate the sacred dignity of a church with something like this? What kind of "Saint" was actually being described here?
Before anyone could work through it further —
Strange laughter drifted in from behind them.
They turned and found a ragged woman gripping a massive cleaver, grinning with an expression that had no business belonging on a human face.
The same person who had killed the Cage Carrier and stolen the flesh.
Maneater Mildred — the Dark Souls III incarnation, sister in spirit to her original counterpart from the first game.
"Watch it!" Maru's fur stood on end.
"That smile—"
"She's got to be genuinely dangerous!"
Everyone snapped to full attention immediately. The rule generally held: the more unhinged the smile, the stronger the fighter behind it.
And this smile had crossed well past ordinary unhinged.
Without hesitation, Leon drew the sword Andre had restored for him and unleashed Quickstep Slash instantly.
A moment later —
"…She's actually really weak."
Maru stared at the pile of ash where the Maneater had disintegrated, unable to keep the comment to herself.
Everyone turned toward her.
"W-what?" she said. "I genuinely expected her to be tougher than that!"
It wasn't that the Maneater was weak. It was that Leon's party had simply gotten far too strong for this stretch of content.
Through the entire brief exchange, the thing that had actually dealt Leon the most damage wasn't the enemy.
It was the cave wall.
After dispatching the Maneater in two clean Quickstep Slashes, his momentum had carried him directly into the rock behind her.
"…Let's check inside."
Entering the cave, they found piles of bleached white bone stacked against the walls.
"…What is actually wrong with people out here?"
"Does everyone genuinely love eating human flesh this much?"
Every single figure they'd encountered along the Road of Sacrifices seemed fixated on human meat in one form or another. The area itself wasn't especially dangerous by combat standards, but the overall atmosphere left everyone with a low, persistent unease that no amount of successful fighting seemed to dispel.
Among the bones, Maru spotted a glowing purple item and picked it up.
[Sellsword Twinblades]
[Paired curved swords used by certain mercenaries. Capable of unleashing rapid slashing attacks with razor-sharp edges, though less effective against heavy armor or hardened scales.]
[Weapon Skill: Spin Slash]
"…This…"
The moment Maru's fingers closed around the twinblades, knowledge flooded into her mind unprompted — instinctive understanding of how the paired weapons were meant to move, how to chain them, how to read their rhythm.
"…These feel incredibly strong."