If Tusk had been a transmigrator, one particular song would have been playing on loop in his head right now:
"Brother… give me a hug…"
The zombie really was hugging him.
Very tightly.
Honestly, the Undead looked like a pretty decent "bro." Under any other circumstances, Tusk wouldn't have minded returning a brotherly embrace.
Provided the corpse wasn't rotting, ideally.
But right now, all he really wanted to say was —
"Brother, hug all you want — could you just stop POURING THINGS INTO MY BODY?!"
His consciousness had already started drifting.
Whether he was dying from the crushing pressure, the poison, or simple accumulated disgust was genuinely impossible to determine.
Right as he felt he'd swallowed a lifetime's worth of filth in one sitting, he caught Fingri charging toward him out of the corner of his eye.
Relief nearly brought him to tears.
Finally. I don't have to keep fighting.
With that comforting thought settling over him, he slipped peacefully into unconsciousness.
He wasn't out for long.
When Tusk opened his eyes again, he found himself back in the Cleansing Chapel — the cemetery, the fight, all of it left behind.
"My body!"
The first thing he did was pat himself down frantically, head to toe.
Fingri chuckled beside him.
"Relax. Every bug's been cleared off. You're fine."
Tusk looked at Fingri as though staring at a lost family member. Dignity entirely abandoned, he wrapped both arms around Fingri's leg and burst into tears.
To him, in that moment, anyone who'd pulled him out of that particular nightmare qualified as an actual angel.
"Don't just thank me."
Fingri pointed toward another figure.
"Aleya's the one who actually picked every maggot off you."
Tusk followed his gaze and found the scarecrow settling a large iron pot over the campfire — rice porridge already bubbling away inside, strips of dried meat roasting nearby over the flames.
What an incredible person. Who thought to use the campfire for actual cooking?
He walked over immediately to thank her.
Aleya nodded, then pointed beside herself.
Only then did Tusk notice: every remaining member of Bone Fang was already holding a bowl of steaming rice porridge — staring, without exception, straight into empty space.
"Oh! Recovering stamina already. Gold-Rank efficiency, as expected."
He praised her repeatedly. Aleya, pleased, ladled him out a bowl of his own.
"Thank you so much!"
The moment his hands closed around the bowl, he noticed every single teammate was staring directly at him.
Their expressions were unreadable.
Almost like they were waiting for something specific.
"What? Why's everyone making such a fuss over a bowl of porri—"
His eyes landed on the steaming white rice.
He went rigid.
The porridge was, objectively, cooked well. Every grain plump and translucent, gently suspended in rich broth. The smell alone was appetite-triggering. Real effort had clearly gone into it.
But in Tusk's eyes, the bowl in front of him had become something else entirely.
"BUGS!!"
Clang!
He screamed and dropped the bowl. Hot porridge splattered across the floor as he scrambled backward on hands and heels, back finding the wall hard enough to jostle a few loose pebbles free of the stonework.
Rattle… rattle…
He stared at the pebbles.
Screamed again.
"Why are there MAGGOTS HERE TOO?!"
Rice. Pebbles. Rope. One after another, everything in his field of vision transformed into maggots — the buttons on his own shirt included. He gave one final scream and went under again.
"Knew he'd end up traumatized."
"Didn't expect the symptoms to show up quite this delayed, though."
"Good thing our mental resilience runs deeper."
"We're totally fine."
Bone Fang's remaining members traded these comments casually, spooning porridge without visible hesitation — apparently unbothered by the resemblance between rice and what they'd all just personally witnessed.
...
A few seconds passed.
Someone quietly set their bowl down.
Then another.
Then a third.
Eventually everyone was making eye contact across the table, glancing back down at their unfinished porridge in near-perfect unison.
Nobody said anything.
Nothing needed saying.
Aleya cleaned up the spill quietly, wearing something like genuine disappointment that the food had gone to waste.
Fingri walked over and sighed.
"I told you not to make porridge. They just spent an hour staring at maggots. How was anyone supposed to eat this?"
Aleya puffed her cheeks out and pointed at the supply bag.
Only then did Fingri remember they'd forgotten to restock provisions. Beyond a little seasoning, rice was genuinely all that remained.
"…Right. My mistake."
He turned to the group.
"So — anyone interested in a temporary memory-erasure spell?"
The answer came back in perfect unison.
"Please."
He worked through each of them in turn.
When it was Tusk's turn, the man abruptly jolted awake.
"I don't need it! I'm not traumatized! There are no psychological scars here whatsoever!"
"Really?"
"Really! I'm just — going outside to use the facilities."
He wiped cold sweat from his pale face and strode out of the chapel with what he clearly hoped read as confidence.
Moments later —
"AAAAAHHHHH!!"
A scream tore in from outside.
Everyone rushed out to find Tusk unconscious on the ground again, belt already undone, trousers not yet lowered.
Any man who'd ever relieved himself standing up understood exactly, instantly, what he'd mistaken for a maggot.
Fingri wore an expression of solidarity that only another man could truly appreciate in that moment.
Tusk received the memory spell after all.
Otherwise, he'd probably faint every single time he needed a bathroom for the rest of his life.
Once everyone's composure had genuinely returned, the expedition resumed. This time, out of genuine respect for the Bone Fang's earnest attitude, the Hasavi Party took point voluntarily.
Before setting off, several mushrooms sprouted from Aleya's scarecrow frame. She handed them out to Bone Fang's members.
"…What are these?"
"Hallucinogenic mushrooms," Fingri explained, matter-of-fact. "Eat one if you genuinely can't handle it anymore."
"…Isn't that just poisoning ourselves on purpose?"
"So," Fingri said, shrugging. "Which would you rather have — poison, or psychological trauma?"
"…"
Nobody had an answer for that.
Having learned their lesson the hard way, no one volunteered for close-quarters undead combat again. The shield-bearers became the protected instead of the front line, and the rangers and mages carried the party's actual damage output.
Only then did they discover something unexpected: keeping distance made the Undead more dangerous, not less. They didn't just stop vomiting maggots — their entire combat capability spiked. They moved faster. Hit harder. A single punch could leave a visible dent in solid armor.
Continuing on, they identified several distinct variants. Some remained ordinary zombies. Some split open on taking damage, revealing the same grotesque maggot-humanoid that had wrapped around Tusk. Others had already fully transformed into that twisted insect-shape, scattering swarms with every attack — one landing on skin was enough for it to burrow in and start feeding, and the wounds it left bled without stopping. Conventional treatment did nothing. Only healing magic or dedicated potions could seal them.
Beyond the Undead, one other monster type deserved careful attention: Grave Wardens. Taller, considerably stronger, and genuinely dangerous — their fast movement and vicious dual-blade technique made them a real threat. Their one weakness was fragility; a single heavy blow could remove half their health, or they'd easily have qualified as full elites on their own.
Two enemy categories populated the entire cemetery. Undead and Grave Wardens. Each dangerous in its own distinct way.
The cemetery's layout, meanwhile, hid its real threat in plain sight — not traps, but repetition. The near-identical scenery reliably erased any sense of direction, and for most ordinary adventurers, getting hopelessly lost here was practically guaranteed.
The Hasavi Party, though, had found the correct route after only a few passes. Whether that came from raw experience or something closer to instinct, nobody could say for certain — but their mapping speed rivaled, or possibly beat, professional exploration teams working with dedicated tools.
The difference: Fingri's team wasn't fixated on loot the way dedicated exploration parties tended to be. Glowing items sat directly in their path, requiring almost zero effort to collect, and they often just walked past.
What actually interested them was the dungeon itself — its monsters, its design logic, the why behind each piece — and that fascination consistently outweighed any pull toward treasure.
Which meant Bone Fang, trailing behind, ended up scooping up most of what got left behind: Grave Warden equipment, the Astora Greatsword, Fire Gems, an assortment of other finds.
Oddly, the single most frequently recovered item was, of all things, unlit torches.
"…That's strange."
"Why are there so many torches scattered around here?"
Nobody had actually considered using fire against the maggot-infested Undead. By this stage of the run, combat responsibilities had been fully outsourced to the Hasavi Party without discussion.
"I can't take it anymore! Where are the mushrooms — I'm eating one!"
One adventurer finally cracked and bit into the offered fungus.
Instantly, his entire field of vision exploded into color. Everything went bright. Everything went beautiful. Nothing registered as frightening anymore.
"Hehehe…"
"There's a Golden Lion flying through the sky…"
Unfortunately, the hallucination also took his eyesight along with the fear. A Crystal Lizard scurried directly past his feet, entirely unnoticed, as he grinned foolishly and continued muttering nonsense to himself.
Roughly an hour later, they reached the far end of the cemetery.
Everyone stopped.
No elite monster stood guard at the exit. No new horror waited for them.
The reason everyone froze was that the scenery ahead simply invited an unreasonable amount of complaint.
A single, ridiculously long wooden plank lay across open air. One end rested where they stood. The other reached, somehow, all the way to the roof of the Cathedral of the Deep — completely out of place, the kind of thing that looked like a construction worker had thrown it down mid-shift and never come back.
Tusk had accumulated an entire mountain of sarcastic commentary. He recognized, though, that the right to speak first here belonged to Fingri.
Sure enough, Fingri stared at it with an expression difficult to categorize.
"…So after crawling through that entire disgusting cemetery, dodging every one of those revolting monsters — our reward is a broken plank of wood leading to the roof?"
A pause.
"…Why didn't we just use Flight from the very beginning?"
Impossible to say. Maybe Sein's design was engaging enough that everyone had unconsciously wanted to savor the whole route on foot.
Crossing the creaking plank carefully, it groaned underfoot as though ready to give way at any moment.
It didn't.
Everyone reached the roof safely.
"…Well. Cathedral of the Deep. Naturally the roof is absurdly spacious too."
Fingri looked around.
"Big enough that even if we ran into a huge pack of monsters—"
Matilda's hand clamped over his mouth before he finished.
Beside him, Tusk's face went white with dread.
He had just spoken — out loud — the forbidden words.
A sharp whistling cut through the air.
Everyone looked up.
Far above, a massive black silhouette was closing in fast.
"Is that… a gargoyle?"
"No—"
"It's humanoid!"
"And it's carrying something!"
"DOWN!"
BOOM!
The figure slammed onto the rooftop, dust and debris flying in every direction.
As it cleared, a towering figure in heavy armor stood revealed. In one hand, an enormous ultra greatsword. In the other, a matching greatshield.
The Pursuer.
A boss from Dark Souls II, notoriously nicknamed "Teacher Pursuer" for the sheer number of first playthroughs it had personally derailed.
"So," Tusk said, fighting spirit returning to his voice, "we finally found an elite—"
"Everyone, get ready—"
He stopped.
Something had reached his ears. Faint. But close — closer than it had any right to be.
And familiar.
He'd heard it recently.
It sounded like a heavy crossbow being drawn back.
Not just one.
Several.