"Gold-rank adventurers stand at the very pinnacle of the adventurer hierarchy. Few in number, immensely powerful, and every single one carries a specialty entirely their own."
"The promotion from Silver to Gold is brutally strict. Candidates face nineteen separate examinations before the title is granted. Every successful applicant is a genius among geniuses. A Gold-rank party is a force to be reckoned with — wherever they travel, legends grow up around them."
"Getting to learn alongside the legendary Hasavi Party is the single greatest honor our Bone Fang Party has ever received!"
Sein Dungeon, Crucifixion Woods, beside the Cathedral of the Deep bonfire.
A broad-shouldered man with a thick beard bowed respectfully. Judging by how nervously he kept smoothing the hem of his clothes, the tension was genuine.
"Our honor," the seven remaining members of Bone Fang echoed behind him, bowing in unison toward the three figures standing before them.
Legendary Gold-Rank adventurers, all three.
"Haha — most of that reputation is the Guild exaggerating things."
Their leader, "Flash" Fingri, wore the relaxed smile of someone thoroughly accustomed to this kind of reverence.
"There are more Gold Ranks out there than people assume. About a dozen pass the promotion exams every year. The Guild just publicizes a handful of specific parties, which makes the rank feel rarer than it actually is."
"I-I see…"
The bearded man suddenly had the distinct feeling he might have flattered exactly the wrong person, cold sweat beading along his hairline.
Bone Fang had only recently made Silver Rank. Running into Fingri near the teleportation gate had been pure chance — thrilled to meet their idol, they'd praised him effusively, never expecting he'd actually agree to let them tag along with the Hasavi Party for direct guidance.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. How many adventurers ever got personal instruction from a Gold-rank veteran?
"Relax. We're people too — we don't bite."
Fingri glanced back at his two companions.
"You two could smile occasionally. You're scaring them."
Fingri himself was, genuinely, approachable. The actual source of the bearded man's sweat wasn't Fingri at all.
It was the other two.
"Huff…"
A deep, mechanical breathing filled the space beside them.
Standing to Fingri's left was an enormous figure — at least two and a half meters of solid steel armor, plating shimmering faintly with contained magic, radiating a cold aura that discouraged anyone from getting close. The massive helmet, styled after the skull of a wild bull, turned slowly to regard the bearded man.
He averted his gaze immediately, looking to the right instead.
Fingri's other companion was equally strange.
A two-meter scarecrow. Ragged straw decorated with small, oddly cute ornaments, as though someone had made a deliberate effort at friendliness — and somehow only succeeded in making it look like something that stole children in the night. The straw shifted constantly, restless, its stitched smile never quite settling into anything reassuring.
If nobody had introduced them as Gold-rank, most people would have assumed monster on sight.
Compared to those two, Fingri felt almost aggressively normal.
The tastes of the truly powerful, the bearded man decided, were simply beyond ordinary comprehension.
The living suit of armor was known as "Hell March" Matilda. The scarecrow was "Vigorous Vine" Aleya.
Matilda gave everyone a brief nod by way of greeting. From somewhere inside the scarecrow, two pale little hands emerged and formed a small heart shape.
Neither of them spoke a single word — and somehow everyone present felt they already had a fair read on both personalities regardless.
"Alright, enough standing around. We got an early start this morning, let's move."
Fingri turned to face the black stretch of forest path ahead.
"Since you wanted guidance, take the lead. I want to see how your teamwork actually functions."
"Huh?"
The bearded man froze.
He'd assumed they'd simply follow behind the Hasavi Party and watch three Gold-ranks demonstrate technique.
Fingri caught the assumption immediately and smiled.
"You won't learn anything by watching us fight. The gap's simply too wide for that to translate."
Blunt, honestly. And somehow not discouraging at all.
The bearded man turned to his group and called out, "Everyone, sharp eyes! Show them what this party can actually do!"
Facing the dark forest path, Bone Fang settled into a cautious formation. Shield-bearers with spears and short swords took point. Warriors flanked with weapons drawn. The ranger swept the surroundings methodically for hidden traps, finding nothing beyond a scatter of what looked like harmless wooden barrels in the grass.
The mage sent up several floating orbs of light to push back the darkness ahead.
A perfectly standard, textbook formation. Nothing about it looked wrong.
But —
The instant the light orbs launched — before they'd even fully brightened —
A flaming arrow shot from the darkness at an impossibly precise angle.
It struck every single orb in one continuous motion.
Floating Light Orbs, once fully formed, couldn't be destroyed and would only burn out once their mana ran dry. That stability, though, came with a specific weakness: for less than a second before full formation, they remained volatile. Struck during that window, they detonated like flashbangs — no damage, but blinding.
Under normal circumstances, that window was too narrow to exploit meaningfully.
This attack had detonated every orb simultaneously, and the resulting flash forced even the shield-bearer at point to shut his eyes against it.
The next instant —
Countless red points of light bloomed through the forest.
Not lights.
Flaming arrows.
With the mechanical clatter of firing mechanisms cycling in rapid sequence, a volley descended on them with the same terrifying density as the infamous arrow storm at the Ringed City.
Fortunately, even blind, the shield-bearer's instincts held — his enchanted shield expanded automatically into a full magical barrier. Every arrow that landed hit with force enough to threaten armor plating. Without the party mage continuously feeding it mana, the barrier wouldn't have survived the volley.
They counterattacked toward the source. A barrage that dense meant multiple archers.
The mage unleashed Chain Lightning. The ranger switched to explosive arrows. Thunder cracked. Explosions bloomed through the darkness. Somewhere, everyone's soul count ticked up slightly.
Before anyone could confirm whether the threat had actually cleared —
Furious barking tore through the woods.
A pack of pitch-black hunting dogs broke cover, charging.
"Just dogs!"
Conserving mana, the shield-bearer dropped his barrier temporarily and drove his spear straight through one of them. It died instantly.
Then its body exploded.
Black liquid sprayed across the shield and everyone standing nearby — enough to soak the whole area, a pungent chemical stink cutting through everything else.
"…That smell—"
The bearded man's expression collapsed.
"It's oil! Fire protection, NOW—"
Before he finished the sentence, fresh flames ignited ahead. The scale hadn't diminished at all.
This is bad.
To make matters worse, one of the rangers rolled into the underbrush trying to dodge the oil spray and crushed one of the "harmless" wooden barrels underfoot.
Packed to the brim with —
"GUNPOWDER!"
BOOOOOOM!!
A massive explosion lit the dark forest path like daylight. Small mushroom clouds actually rose into the air.
By that light, everyone finally saw them — enemies stationed along both embankments flanking the road. Roughly thirty Hollow Soldiers, draped in black rags, each carrying an Avelyn repeating crossbow.
A count taken after subtracting the ones already lost to Chain Lightning and explosive arrows.
[Avelyn]
A massive, punishing repeating crossbow. Metal bowstring, requiring tremendous physical strength to operate.
Weapon Skill: Shield Bash
In Dark Souls III, this stretch of the game had featured a handful of Hollow Soldiers with a few accompanying dogs.
Inside Sein, the numbers had multiplied several times over. The dogs came pre-soaked in oil. The bushes were seeded with barrels of explosive powder. Every conceivable explosive trap a game had ever thrown at a player, deployed simultaneously.
Surely — surely — no ordinary party survived an inferno on this scale.
"Help—!"
The shield-bearer had already dropped to a crouch, arms over his head, screaming.
"…Huh? I'm alive?"
He looked up. Fingri's calm, smiling face looked back at him.
Fingri raised his right arm. The raging flames converged toward his palm as though pulled by an invisible black hole, every last tongue of fire folding into nothing, and no one was burned.
The explosion, though —
Countless armored plates surged into the air and assembled themselves into an impenetrable wall, absorbing the blast completely.
Matilda. Looking closely, her towering armored frame appeared slightly smaller than it had a minute earlier.
One of the party's mages had fainted outright from shock. Aleya extended several straw tendrils and touched them lightly to a few specific points on his unconscious body. He jerked back to consciousness instantly.
"Mr. Fingri…" The bearded man lowered his head, visibly ashamed. They'd nearly been wiped in the opening minutes.
"Just 'Mister' is fine — no need for titles."
Fingri clenched a fist. The remaining flames vanished on the spot.
He drew a pair of swords from his hip and stood perfectly still. Another wave of flaming arrows descended.
He swung.
A blur of afterimages filled the air. Not one arrow got through.
"Here."
"You can have these back."
His motion paused for the barest instant before he unleashed another flurry — dozens of blazing sword waves radiating outward in every direction, tearing through the Hollow Soldiers positioned along the hillside.
The bearded man was already drawing breath to cheer —
When he noticed several of those sword waves curving straight toward him.
"Eh?"
No time to move.
Matilda's arm came up in a single unhurried motion, dispersing the incoming waves — then followed it with a heavy kick to Fingri's back that put him flat on the ground.
A cool, faintly muffled female voice drifted out from beneath the layered armor.
"There are other people here."
"Try to keep it contained."
"Couldn't help it," Fingri said, shrugging as he got up and personally helped the bearded man back to his feet.
"Sorry about that. You weren't hit, were you?"
"N-no, not at all—"
The bearded man was, frankly, unnerved. Who was he, to receive a personal apology from a Gold-Rank adventurer?
"Let's keep moving. You made a few mistakes back there — I'll walk through them as we go."
With the immediate crisis resolved, the party pushed forward again. Aleya touched each rattled adventurer on the forehead in turn with a soft green glow — Calm magic — and one by one, nerves settled. Matilda's armor gradually reflated back to its original imposing height.
Fingri, meanwhile, walked the bearded man through every mistake his party had made, patient and thorough. The bearded man found the whole thing genuinely moving. It was obvious Fingri actually wanted them to improve — not perform for an audience, but genuinely get better.
How many people in one's life ever offered success that sincerely, expecting nothing back?
A question surfaced in his mind. According to rumor, all three Hasavi members had once belonged to different parties — and all three had been cut loose from those parties, individually, before ending up together.
Fingri. Matilda. Aleya.
Each one abandoned at some point by their former companions.
And now, all three, irreplaceable.
What kind of party discards talent like this?
Unless each of them carried some flaw the others simply couldn't tolerate.
The forest path wasn't especially long. Emerging from it, the Cathedral of the Deep finally came into full view.
Everyone stopped, briefly, to take it in.
Rather than inspiring awe through scale, the cathedral seemed to radiate something closer to concentrated malice. Just looking at it sent a chill down the spine, unprompted.
"This doesn't look like the main entrance," Matilda observed, pushing open a nearby door.
Inside: a small chapel. At full capacity, it might have held a few dozen people. Unremarkable on the surface — but a bonfire burned quietly at its center, and lighting it revealed a pleasant surprise: another warp point straight back to Firelink Shrine.
Only then did they learn its name.
Cleansing Chapel.
"So — which way?"
Two doors, left and right. One of them had to lead deeper into the cathedral.
Matilda pushed the left one.
"Does not open from this side."
"…"
Concise, as always.
She tried the right.
"The door will not budge."
"…"
"Isn't that functionally the same statement?!"
With their collective strength, breaking either door open would have taken seconds. But everyone here understood the unwritten laws of Sein Dungeon — force open something explicitly marked does not open from this side, and every reward waiting beyond it evaporates on principle.
The dungeon always found creative new ways to be annoying about this specific rule.
"Found another way," Aleya called from outside, having located a mountain path leading upward. It appeared to be the only viable route.
Following the uphill trail, clearing a scatter of wandering Hollows along the way, they eventually emerged onto a scene lifted directly from a horror story.
A cemetery.
"Perfect," Fingri said, clapping the bearded man on the shoulder. "Those Hollows look weak. Go practice — use what I just walked you through."
"Yes!"
The bearded man nodded, resolve firming up. This time, he wasn't going to disappoint Fingri again.
Pale Hollows drifted aimlessly through the graveyard. Unlike the Hollows they'd encountered elsewhere in Sein, these were ghost-white — malnourished-looking, faded, wrong somehow.
White meant malnourished. Malnourished meant weak. Simple logic.
Sure, there were a lot of them — enough that the far edge of the horde disappeared into the mist without a visible end.
But everyone knew the formula: large numbers meant weak, expendable cannon fodder.
A perfectly sound conclusion.
"Let's go."
"Clear these trash mobs!"