Chương 132: Everyone Else Got Baited

The fifth run through the Forbidden Gaol barely resembled the first two. Meno ignored the Prisoner, launched through the shaft with Desync, and reached the Pale Confessor with the dragging chains still distant below. He knew the shelves, the book calls, the punishment his HP pool could absorb, and the exact point where stacking stopped being worth the timer. Book calls only cost a few seconds now.

Meno went straight to the correct shelf, grabbed the title, used Jet Lag when the jump needed cutting short, then returned and dropped directly back into Pyronucleosis. Once the multiplier was high enough, he fulfilled one final request, jumped into the Confessor's embrace, activated Engulf, and deliberately ate her Cry when his HP started getting low. The interaction worked exactly like the previous run.

Disorient kept Engulf active, Sticky kept him attached, and Reactor refilled him after 3 seconds while contact damage kept ticking. The Pale Confessor went from a 5-minute wall to a solved burst encounter and died with plenty of staircase left between Meno and the Prisoner. Meno was checking the route upward when movement in the camera overlay caught his attention. Someone new stood behind Aurelia. Yellow hair, cut short. Earrings. Familiar face. Honeygrave.

Meno was both surprised and completely unsurprised that he had actually come. Honeygrave looked at Aurelia. Aurelia looked back at him. The silence between them lasted just long enough to become awkward before Honeygrave glanced toward the camera and lifted one hand.

"Hey, by the way. Heard there's proper drama going on here. Not really my thing, but I do want that dungeon loc." rank 10 house call HE ACTUALLY CAME PBG summoned backup IRL where is this hotel I want to go too SAVE HIM HONEYGRAVE Aurelia turned in the chair.

"What? Are you going to try and drag me out of here? Classic top-ten behavior." Honeygrave chuckled.

"This is proper messed. Gonna update me on what's going on? You're in princess mood big time." Meno was already on the staircase gathering the first soldier pack, so he answered while launching over them.

"Thanks for coming! Can you, like, seduce her and take her away?"

"Ayy, can't do that. I do have a girlfriend, you know. Watching as we speak, so my hands are tied even if my charisma is maxed." Aurelia gave him a flat look.

"As if. You're barely on the leaderboards. Should've invested that charisma into something more useful." YIKES that was rude max charisma for sure man CATCHING STRAYS aurelia has friendly fire enabled CHARISMA CHECK FAILED Honeygrave laughed rather than taking the bait. He disappeared from camera for a moment, came back carrying one of the living-room chairs, and placed it beside Aurelia like the hostage situation had officially become a viewing party.

"Very spicy," he said as he sat down.

"You sure your family's gonna appreciate this episode of yours?" Aurelia made a dismissive hmmpf sound and turned back toward the monitor. Meno knew exactly how her father would react. He had only met the man once, but "behavior unfitting of a Sorell" sounded like something he could say without even raising his voice. Aurelia was clearly too tilted right now to care. Meno glanced at his viewer count. More than eight million. He was not entirely sure how many were there for the world-first dungeon anymore.

The soldier packs disappeared under the usual Engulf belly-flop route, and Meno hit the Jailer room without wasting time on a direct attack. He moved in wide arcs immediately, watching the walls for the haunting ghost while keeping the rapier boss chasing behind him. When the ghost appeared, Meno already knew the line he wanted. One Desync jump pulled the Jailer across the center, a short Jet Lag drop put Meno behind him, and the haunting ghost followed straight through the boss. Five-second stun.

Meno was already turning in the air when it landed. He attached with Engulf, turned almost the entire vulnerability window into damage, then disengaged into a self-stun before the Jailer recovered and started the room-wide pulse sequence. The Jailer still demanded more attention than the Confessor. Meno had to track the ghost, boss position, shackles, pulse timing, his own HP, and whether a vulnerability window was worth spending on damage or healing.

But there was no discovery anymore, and once the room stopped surprising him, the boss steadily lost ground. Honeygrave watched the dungeon for a while before speaking again.

"So this is probably that new dungeon setup people were talking about. All the XP and loot dumped at the end so you can't just reset-spam boss one and trash forever." He leaned farther back in the chair.

"I'm kinda into it. Means I can actually play the whole thing without feeling like I'm trolling myself. Glad I took Astral." Meno used Jet Lag to reverse a ghost line and asked, "What's that?"

"Mostly AOE into single-target conversion and more range. Told you before, Rot Savant is all damage over time stuff, right? So if an area DoT only has one target in it, Astral pumps the damage instead of wasting the area." Honeygrave shrugged.

"Casters get better Mana sustain too. Think melee gets HP recovery instead. And my movement skill phases now, which is nice." Aurelia cut in immediately.

"A bit sad. Rot Savant Titan is much better, no doubt. You should start over. Or maybe you can join my Titan Key." Honeygrave looked at her, amused.

"Why am I catching strays here?" Meno almost missed the next ghost positioning.

"Wait, you made it? I thought you would give up after Titan I." The Jailer hit another stun window before Aurelia answered, and Meno used it to finish the boss cleanly. He burned the HP down through the five-second opening, kicked off once it reached 10% HP, and let Titan execute the remaining health. Then he raced into the mixed trash. Aurelia finally answered as priests and soldiers came out of the staircase walls.

"Duh. You would think that since you think everyone else is an idiot and only you can play. I'm Level 42. Done all four Titans. If you had checked my stream once after your idiocy, you would've known. But apparently the moment there's any pushback, you give up." Honeygrave visibly cringed beside her.

"Yikes. Can you chill a bit? I'm cringing here by proxy." OH SHE IS STILL MAD MAD honeygrave entered the hotel dungeon no survivors LEVEL 42 FOUR TITANS THOUGH she actually good? someone call thorn we need a full raid group irl AURELIA BOSS PHASE FIVE The hardest mechanic in the Forbidden Gaol was keeping his brain in dungeon mode while Aurelia tried to drag it somewhere else. Clearly, the Prisoner had nothing on her. Meno emergency-flushed the conversation from his head and focused on the staircase.

Three mixed packs went down with slightly more care than the soldier waves because the priest DoTs kept ticking through False Blink, but the route was already known. Gather, compress, burn, refill, move. He reached the final platform with more time than before. Now the real attempt started. Meno waited while the Prisoner climbed the last section of stairs and stepped into the room.

Its identity shifted into the active encounter, the health display showed the same suspicious 1 HP, and the human-sized red demon appeared beside it as black circles began forming across the floor. The exit door gained its HP bar. Meno knew the basic rules now. Do not touch the Prisoner with damage. Do not kill the demon. Break the door, memorize the symbols, complete the sequence before the Prisoner reached the light. The unknown part was repeating that without bleeding himself dry. His first thought was the door.

It did not actually have much HP. The previous attempt had taken multiple Engulf ticks because Meno entered the final room at the base 100x multiplier and tried to sustain damage. Every second attached to the door cost another 10% maximum HP before counting the demon, black circles, or mistakes. That was backwards. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it False Hero did not want long, mediocre damage windows.

If Meno stacked enough Reactor for one contact tick to erase the entire door, each damage phase would cost only 10% HP. The room became a Reactor farm. Meno watched the Prisoner, the demon, and the black circles spreading across the floor as the route assembled in his head. Four times normal HP. A required 3-second crowd-control window. Large explosions that looked mostly unavoidable. A demon he could manipulate by distance. Everything required to abuse Pyronucleosis was already here.

"Okay. I think this is stupid." Meno baited the demon toward the exit door. Once it committed, he crossed the arena with a huge Desync jump and aimed straight at the Prisoner. He landed on the corrupted priest without Engulf active, so Unstable and Sticky stayed off. Physical contact was harmless. Damage was what triggered the smoke. Then Meno used 0-Lag Pyronucleosis. Control vanished for 3 seconds. Black circles formed underneath him and the Prisoner immediately.

The first detonated and crushed most of Meno's huge health pool. Another went off before the stun ended, leaving him at roughly 17% HP. The demon reached them. Meno's stunned body had slipped partly down the Prisoner's side, putting the corrupted priest between him and the charging add. The demon had to path around the body before it could claw him, buying maybe half a second. That half-second was everything. One claw landed. Meno dropped to roughly 4% HP.

Then the third second completed and his health snapped back to full. [Reactor 1 | Unstable 110x] Meno burst out laughing.

"Oh, that works." It looked awful, felt worse, and was completely repeatable. Demon toward the door. Jump across the room. Land on the Prisoner without Unstable. Self-stun. Eat the black circles on purpose. Use the Prisoner's body to make the demon path around instead of landing several free claws. Any HP remaining when the heal triggered was basically wasted survivability. Aurelia sounded disappointed.

"Not this again. Falling asleep watching you stack, stack, stack. Can't you fight the boss like a real man?" Honeygrave tilted his head while watching.

"Yeah, I dunno. I saw it was meant to be a Challenge Class, but this looks pretty faceroll. Swing Master could at least break Chain. Reactor just stays forever."

"I'm making it look simple," Meno said while dragging the demon into position for another cross.

"If I jump wrong, misjudge the distance, land in the wrong place, then self-stun like an idiot, the whole setup breaks." The next attempt proved the point. Meno landed slightly too far past the Prisoner, leaving the demon a clean path. He had to delay Pyronucleosis and reposition instead of committing, wasting several seconds before it was safe enough to try again. Once he got the spacing consistent, the room settled into a nice rhythm as Meno repeatedly ate catastrophic amounts of damage for stacks.

[Reactor 5 | Unstable 150x] The demon chased him back and forth across the arena while circles exploded under his stunned body. Meno stopped seeing the health loss as danger and started seeing it as efficiency. A Reactor window ending at 50% HP was playing it too safe. Single digits were better, because both bars snapped back to 100% on the same trigger. More stacks followed. [Reactor 12 | Unstable 220x] The Prisoner remained at 1 HP.

The actual encounter looked like it had made almost no progress, yet Meno's damage multiplier kept climbing. [Reactor 20 | Unstable 300x] At around twenty-five stacks, he stopped. [Reactor 25 | Unstable 350x]"That should be enough." He had spent most of the final boss apparently accomplishing nothing, but the whole point was that the next part should become almost free.

"It's kind of lame," Meno admitted.

"But that's how the class works. Big HP pool means you should spend the HP as hard as possible, then only deal damage once the burst is high enough that you barely have to keep Engulf running."

"It is lame," Aurelia said.

"You're in full Legendary III gear cheesing five-player content with four-times HP and a full self-heal that also ramps your damage." Meno paused while baiting the demon away from the door.

"So what? With Swing Master Infernal this fight would be even easier. I'd delete both the demon and the door every single time and take zero damage." He used False Blink while repositioning, but survival was no longer the main purpose. One blink while crossing the demon's attack line. Another through a black-circle detonation near the door. A third just before he committed. [Lag 3] Meno hit the exit door, activated Engulf, and let Sticky anchor him to the surface. One full second passed.

The 350x contact tick landed, and the door's entire HP bar disappeared. Meno used Pyronucleosis the instant the door broke. Three Lag reduced the self-stun from 3 seconds to 0, but the game still counted it as a stun. Engulf shut off, Unstable disappeared, and Meno remained fully mobile. The entire damage phase had cost exactly 10% of his maximum HP.

"That's it." That was the breakthrough. The room filled with brilliant light as the first symbol sequence appeared. Circle. Star. Square. Triangle. Meno did not have Engulf eating his HP anymore. He was not stunned. The demon was still recovering from being kited around, and Meno could give the memory mechanic his full attention. Circle. He launched. Star. A short Jet Lag correction killed the extra height. Square. One more two-legged jump crossed the room. Triangle.

Meno landed on the final sigil just before the Prisoner reached the open doorway. White light erupted across the chamber, the Prisoner convulsed, and its health changed. 20% HP The door slammed shut again.

"Four more." The hard part was already done. Meno entered the second cycle with the same 350x Unstable multiplier. He baited the demon away, crossed the arena, and used False Blink whenever it gave him a clean iframe or another Lag stack. Once he reached 3 Lag, Meno attached to the door and activated Engulf. One second. Door dead. Pyronucleosis. Zero-second shutdown. The next symbol sequence flashed, and Meno cleared it before the Prisoner reached the light. 40% HP Honeygrave leaned forward slightly.

"That's a cool boss. Normally tank probably drags the demon around, DPS burns the door, healer keeps the ground explosions away from everybody, then does the memory puzzle." He shrugged.

"Main thing's probably just not eating too many circles. Healer runs dry, DPS gets clipped, run dies. Pretty standard party pain." Meno was already starting the third cycle. The demon stayed alive, which meant it never upgraded into the huge axe version. Meno used the Prisoner and the room itself to keep the add away from the door long enough for the single contact tick, then False Blinked aggressively enough to guarantee 3 Lag before every shutdown.

The third door vanished, the sequence followed, and the Prisoner's health climbed to 60% HP. The fourth cycle was cleaner: bait, cross, Lag, one Engulf tick, instant Pyronucleosis, symbols. 80% HP The Prisoner was changing now. Black corruption peeled away from the ruined body in thin strips of vapor. The charred heart inside the open chest cavity had started beating with a proper rhythm, and patches of burned skin were returning to normal color. Even the empty black eyes were clearing around the edges.

One cycle remained. The demon happened to be much closer to the door this time, so Meno did not rush it. He dragged the add farther than usual, let it commit to the wrong side of the arena, then launched all the way back with Desync. Meno hit the door and activated Engulf. The final door collapsed and Pyronucleosis gave him the zero-second stun, the fire vanished, and four symbols flashed. Triangle. Circle. Star. Square. Meno repeated the order once in his head and moved.

Triangle first, circle across the center, star near the outer edge, square last. The Prisoner was approaching the light, but Meno landed on the fourth sigil first. The entire chamber detonated in white-gold light. The demon disintegrated as black corruption tore away from the Prisoner in long strips, evaporating before it touched the floor, while the ruined body collapsed at the threshold. Its health surged upward. 100% HP The burned cavity in the priest's chest closed around a living heart.

Color returned to his skin, the blackness faded from his eyes, and the broken chains hanging from his wrists and ankles crumbled into dust. His inspect information finally became readable. [Saint Edras — Pilgrim of the Restored Temple] Saint Edras opened his eyes. He looked at Meno, then bowed his head. Before Meno could ask where the loot was, the entire world interrupted him. [WORLD EVENT] Saint Edras, one of the Four Pilgrims of the Restored Temple, has been freed from the Forbidden Gaol of the Drowned Saint.

Three Pilgrims remain imprisoned. Free all Four Pilgrims to restore the Temple of Veyra and establish a protected foothold upon the surface of ruined Fractera. Warning: The islands imprisoning the remaining Pilgrims are cursed. They cannot be discovered while using a Ship Compass. Those who seek the Pilgrims must sail without guidance.

YEAH OKAY SURE MAKES SENSE PBG WAS RIGHT BY BEING WRONG JUST GO DOWN AND LEFT META fractera city unlock lets gooo EVERYONE WITH COMPASS JUST GOT TROLLED world event world event world event HE FOUND IT BECAUSE HE REFUSED THE QUEST AI REWARDS STUPIDITY AGAIN"Called out-of-the-box thinking. It's not stupid. It's visionary."

"Damn," Honeygrave said.

"Now I want to log back in and start sailing around." Aurelia began clapping far too quickly to be sincere.

"Yay. Classic PBG moment. Rewarded for being an idiot." Meno smiled.

"Yep." Honeygrave laughed beside her.

"True though. Nobody with a ship is just randomly sailing around with the compass turned off." That explained why the top players had been finding nothing. Everyone competent enough to own a ship had probably unlocked basic navigation first, followed proper routes, used the compass, and sailed straight past the cursed islands without ever getting the chance to discover them. Meno had skipped the whole setup because he was lazy, but the quests had turned out to be bait after all. Perfect.

The full dungeon XP arrived before he could enjoy the logic any further. His experience bar filled through the remaining portion of Level 62, triggered the first notification, then kept moving. [Level 63] It did not stop. [Level 64] The entire escape dungeon had pushed him from Level 62 to Level 64 in one clear. Then the faction reward appeared. [World First Dungeon Clear Reward: +50, 000 Reputation]"Nice. Good XP for the first solo clear. Definitely going to go down from here."

Meno looked around the restored chamber, finally ready for the part he actually cared about.

"Now show me the loot. Time to see what rarity drops above Level 60." Before Meno could loot, another prompt pushed itself in front of everything else. [Challenge Complete] Restore Swing Master Infernal? Accepting will restore your sealed equipment and return your active class to Swing Master Infernal. wait wasn't it level 80? AI PANIC MODE TAKE SWING MASTER BACK NOOO KEEP FALSE HERO reactor obviously broken DAMAGE CONTROL PATCH IN REAL TIME DECLINE DECLINE DECLINE"AI's acting strange lately," Honeygrave said.

"Not sure what's going on. Yeah, the class is strong, but I don't think it matters that much. You were going to delete this dungeon anyway. It's trying to manage you, and failing hard."

"This is just sad," Aurelia added.

"It thinks it's managing him, but it's just feeding his ego." The Challenge Class offer had been very specific. Reach Level 80 using False Hero, then decide whether to restore Swing Master Infernal and his sealed gear. Meno was only Level 64, but after one dungeon clear, the AI was suddenly offering to undo the entire punishment early.

Apparently, False Hero stacking Reactor to 350x, healing through lethal-looking damage, flattening trash by lying on top of it, and turning a five-player dungeon into easy-mode solo content had caused instant regret. Meno smiled and selected No.

"Don't think so, buddy. Not yet."