The Cleric Exile could still run just fine.
Rolling or dodging, though, was completely off the table. He couldn't even bend properly at the waist.
In this one regard, Wade had shown a rare flicker of mercy — he hadn't equipped the Cleric Exile with Havel's Ring or the Great-Jar's Arsenal. Otherwise Maru would currently be facing down a fully armored brute wielding two colossal weapons, sprinting and jumping with the same effortless speed she had, relentlessly hunting her across the field.
Because their specialties diverged so sharply, Leon handled the Exile wielding the Exile Greatsword by himself, and did so with relative ease.
Maru needed Terl's help just to keep the Cleric Exile occupied, and neither of them dared meet him head-on. Two Smelter Hammers, each larger than a full-grown adult, tended to discourage that kind of bravado on their own merits.
Get hit by one of those, and your skull was probably ending up somewhere below your ribcage.
A stat-monster in a beginner zone. A dual-wielding, chicken-drumstick-armed nightmare that seemed genuinely impossible to bring down through conventional means.
Their strategy took shape quickly.
Drew would lean on control magic — Mire, Vines, Lightning Trap — to slow and hinder the Exile's movement. Terl would occupy him directly and work at chipping away his armor with blunt force. Maru would circle the outskirts, waiting for openings — either through the armor's natural gaps, or whatever cracks Terl managed to force open.
Initially, it worked better than expected.
The Cleric Exile's sheer weight — heavy armor plus twin Smelter Hammers — made him unusually susceptible to Drew's control spells. After a series of lure casts, Drew successfully drew him into a patch of active Mire. The ground liquefied into thick mud, and under that much weight, the Exile sank and stuck fast, unable to free his legs for a meaningful stretch of time.
Terl seized the window and switched weapons — hammer traded for Morning Star. With a full-throated roar, he shifted into berserk mode, skin flushing green.
"WAAAAGH!!"
He drove the Morning Star straight into the Cleric Exile's helmet.
The armor forged inside Sein really was exceptional — the impact left only a shallow dent. Even so, enough force transferred through the metal to stagger the Exile visibly.
Maru appeared behind him in that opening, dagger drawn, and drove a poison-coated blade toward the gaps in his armor.
Unexpectedly, the man's actual body underneath was fairly slim — the space between flesh and outer plate was filled with padding and chainmail, and her dagger couldn't reach deep enough to matter.
Fortunately, a proper assassin prepared for exactly this contingency.
Her dagger wasn't ordinary. Channeling mana into it produced an extended edge of pure magical energy — the more mana poured in, the longer and sharper it became.
So after Drew's fourth spell, Terl's berserk transformation fully spent, and a solid quarter of Maru's own mana burned through —
They managed to produce, on the man himself, a single small scratch.
Thud.
The Cleric Exile retaliated with a kick that launched Maru backward before she'd fully withdrawn her blade.
Immediately after, one of the Smelter Hammers came down toward Terl.
"Mire!" Drew shouted, seeing no window for Terl to dodge in time.
The ground softened further into deeper mud directly beneath him. The hammer connected — and drove him entirely underground.
As the Exile prepared a finishing follow-up strike into the mud, the ground abruptly hardened again.
Terl had already been transported elsewhere.
The Exile's head slowly turned. His attention locked on Drew.
He understood exactly who was responsible.
He charged the druid without hesitation.
"This is bad — Drew's in trouble!"
Maru threw knives, trying to redirect his attention. None of them landed with enough force to matter.
Desperate, she glanced toward Leon — then reached over and snatched something off his belt.
"Boss! Borrowing this!"
"Wait—!"
She hurled it at the Cleric Exile.
Crash.
The jar shattered.
An unbearable stench spread outward instantly, foul liquid seeping through every gap in his armor.
The Exile slowly turned around.
He said nothing.
But the murderous intent radiating off him now rivaled a fully enraged tank charging across an open battlefield.
…Why had that made him angrier, not less? Surely a smell couldn't warrant this level of escalation.
Dodging another swing from the Exile Greatsword, Leon sighed with obvious resignation.
"…That was my custom-made Dung Pie Jar."
"I enchanted it with a Provocation spell."
"…Huh?"
Maru froze.
She'd meant to kite the Cleric Exile alongside Drew. Which now meant —
He was going to fixate entirely on her.
Watching Maru sprint for her life while the furious, provoked Exile pursued her without any sign of slowing, Leon could only sigh again and decide it would be faster to finish off the man currently in front of him before going to bail her out.
The Exile Greatsword had genuinely been beloved in Dark Souls III — a weapon favored by beginners, viable from the opening hours all the way through the final boss. Manifested inside Sein Dungeon, though, it was simply a high-quality weapon with excellent handling.
Nothing more.
Against Leon's Backhand Blade, which carried the genuinely absurd Weapon Arts Blind Spot and Swift Slash, it wasn't a contest. Every time Leon activated Swift Slash, the Exile simply couldn't connect. Its own Weapon Art, Spin Slash, was solidly average, and excellent handling meant little if you couldn't land a hit.
Maybe it would find popularity among strength-focused adventurers who liked smashing things directly. But in Sein's current PvP environment — where insane strategies surfaced weekly — relying on the Exile Greatsword alone was mostly a matter of hoping the universe took pity on you.
Violent sword waves erupted, again and again. Leon kept appearing behind the Exile, timing his strikes; even through the thick armor, Swift Slash's shockwaves repeatedly staggered him. The plating grew progressively battered, dented, scored across every surface.
Glancing at his own Backhand Blade, similarly worn down from continuous use, Leon pulled out a packet of Repair Powder and sprinkled it across the metal.
The blade snapped back to pristine condition instantly.
He downed a Stamina Potion, chewed through a Green Blossom, and pushed forward again — repeating the same Weapon Art, over and over.
How to put it — winning through pure repetition felt satisfying at first. After enough repeats, it started to feel less like victory and more like a chore.
The Exile swung his greatsword in vain, again and again, until — right before he finally collapsed — he caught Leon during one careless moment. The blade opened a deep gash across Leon's breastplate.
Then the Exile crumbled to ash.
Left behind: the Exile Greatsword itself. The dungeon's reward, apparently.
"I actually let my guard down mid-fight."
"Have I been getting too comfortable lately?"
Leon felt a genuine flicker of gratitude in the moment — before entering the Road of Sacrifices, he'd deliberately gone back to Farron Keep to retrieve his old armor. Partially melted, but still functional. Without it, that hit would have split his chest open entirely.
"Alright."
"Time to go help Maru."
…
"…Where's Maru?"
He turned around.
Both Maru and the Cleric Exile had vanished.
Drew, mid-treatment on Terl's shattered body, looked up at Leon's tone, equally confused.
It had happened in the span of a single breath.
How did both a person and her enemy simply disappear?
"Let's hope she didn't run into something completely insane…"
Fortunately, the Cleric Exile's massive weight had left obvious tracks in the ground. Following the trail, Leon arrived at —
A huge pit.
No — pit undersold it. A ladder descended into it, indicating another area below.
Maru's lingering mana signature and the Exile's footprints both ended here.
One after the other.
The opening had been buried beneath thick fallen leaves and a shallow layer of standing water. Without the visible tracks nearby, nobody would ever have found it.
The shaft itself was deep. Genuinely deep. Anyone falling into it accidentally would almost certainly not survive the drop.
This wasn't an entrance to a hidden area. This was a trap.
"…Don't tell me—"
"Maru fell in?"
Leon didn't have an immediate response.
Since both trails ended at the same point, the most likely explanation was that both had fallen. If Maru had gone first and the Exile — chasing her — had gone in right after —
Two massive Smelter Hammers and a full suit of heavy armor, dropping from above onto whatever was down there —
The mental image alone was horrifying.
"Drew."
"I'm going down. Keep watch up here."
Drew nodded, already giving up on Terl's healing. That single blow from the giant "chicken drumstick" had nearly killed him outright — even if Drew managed to stabilize him now, he wouldn't be fit to keep fighting. Better to let him revive properly at the bonfire.
"Why are the two guards here suddenly this much stronger than everything else out there?"
As Leon descended the ladder, Drew cast Flight and rose above the structure the two Exiles had been guarding. He activated Hawk Eye.
His vision cut through the fortress ahead — across winding roads, past an open field that had the unmistakable shape of an elite-monster staging area — until finally landing on an enormous cathedral rising in the distance.
Dark clouds hung low above it, pressing down. Simply looking at it triggered something instinctive — a heaviness, a sense that this was somewhere to stay away from.
Even pushing Hawk Eye to its limit, though, he couldn't identify most of the monsters scattered along the route. Only a small handful drifted into view. Another countermeasure against reconnaissance magic, apparently — the dungeon closing off the easy answers.
"I see."
"I understand now."
His eyes had started aching from the strain. He canceled Hawk Eye and rubbed at them, thinking out loud.
"So this is where the Road of Sacrifices and Crucifixion Woods actually end."
"This is the ceiling of the beginner training area."
"Beyond this building — a completely different tier of content."
"Just looking at it makes my whole body uneasy."
"That has to be dangerous. Well beyond what an ordinary adventurer should walk into."
"Which is why two guards, considerably stronger than anything else in this whole region, were stationed right here."
In raw combat terms, he genuinely thought the pair of Exiles together could give the nearby Black Knight a real fight.
Who would win that matchup? He honestly couldn't call it.
By the time he landed, Leon had already climbed back out of the pit.
"Well?"
Leon shook his head without a word.
He opened his mouth as though about to explain —
Then simply held out a blood-soaked pair of Sellsword Twinblades.
Maru's fate needed no further elaboration.
"…What a waste."
"Should we go back for the two of them, or keep moving?"
"Before that."
Leon rested a hand on Drew's shoulder.
"Do me a favor. Cast a temporary memory-suppression spell on me."
"I never want to remember what I just saw down there."
"Huh?"
Even Leon didn't want to hold onto it.
How to even describe it. Imagine a balloon filled with red liquid. Now imagine standing inside a sealed room and stomping on it with everything you had.
That was, approximately, what remained of Maru.
His guess had been correct. Maru had fallen first. The Exile, chasing her, had gone in right after — neither had managed to catch the ladder on the way down.
Poor Maru. She'd been forced to absorb a weight nobody her size should ever have to.
One additional detail: the Cleric Exile had dropped a Smelter Hammer upon death.
Leon and Drew discussed retrieving it. In the end, they gave up. Simple reason: neither of them could actually carry it. Who was supposed to climb a rope ladder out of a deep pit while hauling a Smelter Hammer? Setting aside the physique required for that — could the rope ladder even hold that much weight?
Flight wasn't an option either. The spell's mana cost scaled with weight, and at Drew's current level, the cost would be prohibitive.
Beyond being absurdly large and heavy, they hadn't identified anything particularly notable about the weapon itself. Leaving it behind was the sensible call.
They eventually made their way back and reunited with Maru and Terl, both freshly revived at the bonfire.
Maru's expression had all the life of a wet dishrag. Terl looked equally hollowed out.
Reasonable enough. Getting crushed to death under something well over a thousand kilograms wasn't the sort of experience that left a smile behind.
The detour had eaten a significant chunk of the day. They'd also explored several branch paths they'd initially missed. By the time they finally passed through the building the two Exiles had been guarding, nearly two hours had gone by.
Night had likely already fallen outside.
Pushing deeper, the number of wide-brimmed sorcerers noticeably increased. Compared to armored heavyweights, these lightly dressed mages made for excellent stress relief — nothing was quite as satisfying as a blade sliding cleanly through unarmored flesh.
Noticing the sorcerer density climbing, Leon suspected they were approaching a magic-focused elite enemy.
He was right.
In the large arena before the final ruined structure, a familiar silhouette waited for them.
[Crystal Sage]
"Oh no."
"Please tell me we're not chasing this one across the whole map again."
Maru's face fell instantly.
"We just finish him before he gets the chance to run."
Fortunately, this Crystal Sage wasn't a carbon copy of the one they'd fought at the Academy. His teleport frequency had dropped noticeably, his spells hit softer — though strangely, the magical effects had all shifted to purple, which nobody could immediately explain.
The arena was also considerably smaller than the Academy's version, which limited his room to kite.
The fight resolved far more easily than anyone had braced for. The Academy's Crystal Sage had sat around C++ Rank; this one was a standard C. Made sense, when Leon thought about it — the boss of a fifty-player raid had no business matching the boss of a ten-player raid.
Sein Dungeon's design didn't rigidly track the original game's power curve. Enemies got scaled up or down entirely based on the dungeon's specific needs.
The fight itself didn't drag on long. Teleportation and illusions produced a handful of frustrating moments, but ultimately the Crystal Sage had no choice but to detonate into loot.
Their harvest:
[Soul of the Crystal Sage]
Back at the Abyss Watchers bonfire, Ludleth could transpose it into equipment.
A bonfire appeared just beyond the arena. Right on cue, the distant sound of bells drifted through the dungeon.
Closing time approaching.
"Guess the next area waits for tomorrow," Leon said, stretching his aching arms. "Actually — let's take tomorrow off entirely."
They'd earned a genuinely solid haul today. Tomorrow could be a day to sleep in, organize everything they'd gathered, and resume the day after with fresh legs.
"Boss…" Maru looked up at him, eyes suspiciously watery. "Today was genuinely awful. I want something really good to eat."
"Haha — alright, alright."
Leon smiled.
Before the dungeon closed for the day, they teleported to the Catacombs of Carthus and returned to the Royal Capital. Not long after, they were sitting down to a proper meal at a restaurant.
Leaving afterward to find an inn, a stranger approached them.
"You're Leon, aren't you?"
The newcomer was a handsome blond man roughly Leon's age — though unlike Leon, he carried a far more polished, worldly presence.
"That's me. Can I help you?"
Leon studied him carefully, certain they'd never crossed paths before. And yet the man radiated something unusual — not personality, but strength. Every ounce of power in his frame felt completely restrained, folded down tight beneath the surface. At a glance he could have passed for an ordinary person entirely.
A genuine expert. No question about it.
Against Leon directly, he might even edge out slightly stronger.
"My name is Fingri. Also an adventurer."
"I've heard a great deal about your recent accomplishments. Wanted to meet you in person for a while now."
"You're exactly as impressive as the rumors say."
Leon had a growing suspicion this wasn't a purely social visit.
Sure enough — Fingri produced a letter from inside his coat and held it out.
"Your mother asked me to deliver this. I'd planned to find you through the Adventurers' Guild, but this is more convenient."
My mother?
…My mother is dead.
Ah. My stepmother.
Leon's expression cooled instantly.
"Thank you." A pause. "But — how do you know my family?"
"When I was just starting out, your father supported me financially. We haven't stayed in close contact these past few years, and the arrangement was never public knowledge — so it's understandable you wouldn't recognize me."
Fingri patted him on the shoulder with an easy smile.
"Well then. Delivery complete. See you around."
Just before turning to leave, he added one more line.
"Thanks to your strategy guide, my team and I became the third group to defeat Wolnir."
"Hope we get the chance to work together someday."
"Looking forward to seeing you hit Gold Rank."
Third to defeat Wolnir?
Before Leon could ask anything further, Fingri had already disappeared into the crowd.
Drew walked over.
"As far as I know — we were first. Luluwo's group was second."
His eyes widened.
"Third was the Gold-Rank team, Hasavi."
"That was just now — their captain? 'Flash' Fingri?"
After Leon's strategy guide went public, most assumed the Light Eagle would claim third. Instead, several elite teams from across the continent — drawn in by Sein Dungeon's growing reputation — had leapfrogged them entirely.
Among those teams: Hasavi.
Gold Rank, but famous for keeping an unusually low profile. Three members total. Identities rarely disclosed publicly. Even after major commissions, they almost never sought recognition.
No wonder nobody on the street had recognized Fingri on sight.
"Boss…" Maru's eyes went wide. "Your father actually financed someone at that level?"
Leon waved a dismissive hand. He genuinely couldn't bring himself to care. So what if his father had once sponsored a future Gold-Rank adventurer? At his current strength, Leon was already qualified to apply for Gold Rank himself.
His father certainly wasn't hiring a Gold-Rank team just to come rough him up.
Rip.
Leon tore the letter open.
Ever since publicly humiliating his father and older sister, he'd cut all ties with the family. He'd assumed the feeling was mutual — hatred, mostly, on their end.
And yet here was a letter.
What could it possibly contain? Insults? A request for help? Or — least likely of all — some kind of attempted reconciliation?
The incident had humiliated the family in front of everyone who mattered. Reconciliation seemed almost impossible to imagine.
He read the contents.
Then went quiet for a long stretch.
"Boss?" Maru asked, worry creeping into her voice. "What's wrong?"
Without a word, Leon handed her the letter.
She read it.
Went quiet herself.
It passed to Drew next. His eyes widened.
Finally to Terl, who scratched his head in visible confusion before asking:
"…Boss?"
"What do you mean your father and your sister… ran away from home?"