After the Dungeon Invasion ends and I exit DMA, I lay on the bed, exhausted.

“Haah… that was one hell of a dungeon… Haha, hell…” Pun intended. Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. I know it’s lame, but I don’t care. “And there were so many surprises… Maybe too many.”

From the dungeon’s theme, a demonic school that eternally torments sinners; to the worms that ate the students from the inside, any man’s worst nightmare; to the succubus queen, who looked and acted more like an undead than; to Laura’s almost explicit declaration that she likes me.

Way too many surprises.

Oh, by the way, we discovered the rest of the story after we met the Imp, the school’s principal, when we came out of the basement.

It turns out that a famous demon teacher expert in necromancy and several staff members suddenly disappeared one day. Shortly after, the first dead student appeared, and then another… The incident frequency kept growing until we, the ‘investigators’ came to solve the problem for them.

…Yeah, you’re right. I too wonder how incompetent you must be to ignore such a thing and let things get a turn for the worse, doing nothing at all meanwhile.

I knew it! I knew it from the start! I knew that Imp was a useless nuisance!

But this makes me ask one very important question: why didn’t anyone notice the weird room in the basement? Did nobody go and check what was there since the creation of the school, except for the teacher who disappeared?

If the dungeon owner wants me to believe the story, they should fix such big plot holes first!

Alright, alright… I know, I shouldn’t complain too much…

The dungeon had a few holes, so what? Nobody cares. The experience was pretty good, and I certainly didn’t expect a DMA dungeon to have such a complicated storyline, not when the game itself isn’t designed for that kind of stuff. 

I start tossing my pillow up and catching it as it falls while I recall everything that happened.

The students, trapped in that demonic institution for all eternity, accepted their fate and played along with the teacher’s abusive, torture-like classes. They feared more the pain that came from the lessons than their deaths themselves, as they weren’t permanent anyway.

When I say ‘trapped’ I mean it literally, as the school was surrounded by endless cliffs. It turns out we came to the school by using a teleportation spell… or at least, that’s how the story goes.

Then, the teachers, who loved to inflict as much pain on their students as possible. We even saw a few competing for who was a ‘better teacher’, according to their… ‘unusual’ standards. We even found a ‘Worst classes to attend’ ranking, made by the school’s staff instead of the students as you would expect from such a case.

As long as they had a reason to ‘punish’ the students – like failing to answer correctly regardless of how hard, or impossible, the question was –, the teachers were free to inflict any punishment upon them. From torture, to immediate death, to several days of being crucified upside-down in the school’s halls, anything they could come up with, they could do. And when a student died, they were sent to the Resurrection Center to start the cycle once more.

Hell, I even saw one of the teachers enthusiastically roll dice, using a table with more than a thousand rows to determine how to kill one of his students.

Finally, the Imp, the school’s director, called Sir Lootcifer. It turns out he was a demon in disguise. The unassuming Imp, the weakest pest, and most annoying NPC we found in that dungeon… turns out to be a Pit Fiend in disguise, one of the strongest demons in the game.

I didn’t understand why everyone feared him, nor why did he wear such an oversized hat and necktie. It all made sense when I found out the truth.

Of course, such a thing is impossible in DMA, so it’s just part of the ‘roleplay experience’. It’s the same as the worms that sucked the students dry and came out of their butts: an illusion. Still, the Pit Fiend version of Sir Lootcifer wore the same accessories as the Imp and had the same voice, which helped to accept the impossible situation.

“Still, there are a few mysteries that weren’t completely solved…”

Like the reason why the school was built upon the weird succubus crypt. …Or was it the other way around?

What were the missing professor and staff, which we found mummified near Isabella's sarcophagus, trying to achieve? Resurrect her? Use her body for some sinister purpose? Or was she still alive all along?

And what’s up with the worms? What relation did they have with the succubus queen? And why didn’t they suck up the demons, mind-controlling them, unlike the students?

“So many unanswered questions…”

Still, the greatest mystery of them all is Laura.

It all started with her roleplay as a succubus which, at some point, got mixed in her day-to-day actions with me, making me uncomfortable. Did I misread it? Unlike what I thought, was she doing to get attention, and not to see how I’d react?

…or am I reading it all wrong?

“Ugh, I don’t know what to think anymore…” I pull at my hair, trying to make sense of her actions. Tired, I take a look at the clock and realize the time it is. “Let’s think about it some other time. I should go to sleep for now.”

Yeah. When in time of doubt, you forget about it. Let’s leave it for my future me.

To my future me: hang in there, good luck!

 

---

 

I wake up refreshed the next morning, and after eating breakfast and taking a shower, I do what any perfectly normal student would do on a free morning during the holidays: watch people dive into my dungeon and enjoy their suffering.

You say I’m wrong, that that isn’t normal at all? Nah, that can’t be. You must be mistaken.

“Hmm… I still… I still don’t like it.” I mutter, watching the screen in front of me. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s as if it’s missing something.”

What am I talking about? It could be nothing else than my newest, but certainly not proudest, creation: The Sun.

“It’s like it’s missing… missing an oomph.”

While I’m proud of my other two Hunters, The Sun feels incomplete. But I’m not sure why, nor do I know how to fix it.

I keep watching more invaders fight the three hunters. I analyze their fights, to try and identify why I don’t like it.

After a few more videos, I finally come to a realization. All the fights have the same thing in common: The Sun did nothing until the very end of the fight. Regardless of the result, regardless of defeat or victory, my monster didn’t participate in the fight until the very end.

And that’s boring. VERY boring.

“I start to see what’s the real problem here.”

The problem is that, despite my efforts to make The Sun more interesting, it’s still too passive, and passive in DMA means boring. Well, not passive ‘skills’ but passive in general. A monster that does nothing or stays still isn’t interesting, after all.

“But I don’t want to give it more active skills, I want The Sun to nuke any invader it finds with a single strike… What a dilemma.”

I want to give it ways to influence and participate in combat but I don’t want to give it any active skill, which are the ones that fit that requirement. This leaves me with passive and triggered skills, but…

“Triggered skills are a no-go.”

The problem with triggered skills is that they require something to happen beforehand for them to do anything.

Relying on the players to trigger The Sun’s skills would achieve nothing, as I can’t expect them to attack The Sun if it doesn’t attack them first. Furthermore, triggered skills are the easiest to play around once you know they exist, even more so if you can avoid triggering them by ignoring the monster.

If it were any other monster, I might be able to use the terrain or other dungeon elements to trigger them, but… The Hunters can roam and go anywhere within my dungeon. It’d be extremely difficult if not outright impossible to make it work properly. What’s more, the Hunters aren’t guaranteed to stay together all the time, so I can’t rely on The Mountain or The River to trigger them either.

That’s why triggered skills are discarded.

This leaves me with passive skills only. But passive skills are… well, they’re passive. In general, they’re permanent bonuses that reward certain playstiles and builds, or skills that boost stats and similar stuff. In short, they’re the most boring skills.

How am I supposed to I supposed to fix a boring monster with the most boring skills?

“Ah! Aura skills!”

Auras are passive skills because they can’t be deactivated. There must be something similar that I can use, right? Right!?

…please, somebody tell me I’m right.

I quickly open the skill list, show only the passive ones, and start searching for something useful. It doesn’t take long until I find a skill I could use.

“...Wow.”

I have no words to describe what I feel right now. Isn’t this skill… perfect?

Like Auras, the MP-cost-to-damage ratio is absurdly good, but that’s only because of two significant drawbacks: you can’t deactivate it to save MP, and it damages allies and enemies indiscriminately.

But none of those matter. The Hunters are strong individuals, so taking one or two Pulses won’t matter to them, and the MP spent isn’t important because The Sun won’t need to save MP. The advantage of using a single skill empowered to ridiculous levels is that you don’t spend too much to use it.

And the best of all is that Pulse fits the theme perfectly. It can represent the beautiful twinkling of the stars… or the deadlier solar eruptions of our star.

“I believe I’ve found what I was looking for. But, just in case, I’ll keep looking… Maybe I can find an even better skill!”

I’ll have to change The Sun’s AI to make use of any skill I decide to give it. Even with a skill like Pulse, standing high in the air will make it useless anyway. Maybe I can make my monster swoop in, threatening to damage them with the Pulse skill…

*Tiriring!*

Suddenly, my thoughts get interrupted by the message sound. Somebody sent me a message just now.

“What do they want now? I was about to reach enlightenment…”

I open the message and immediately regret I stopped to read that message. It’s a message from Laura.

[Hey! Did you have fun yesterday? I’ve found there’s a continuation to yesterday’s quest dungeon. It’s called Hellschool 2. Want to give it a try?]

Shaking my head, I mutter to myself. “Hell no. I need to take a break from all that stuff…” Just the thought of meeting more of those worms gives me the shivers.

I reply saying that I can’t go today, that I’m busy, but maybe in the future, and return to what I was doing.

*Tiriring!*

“Who is it now– Huh…? A level-up notification? Level nine…? Wait! Wasn’t I level 7? I don’t remember you could skip levels… Ah, right!”

I did level up before the Mystery Event but completely forgot about it, didn’t I? I never looked at the stuff I unlocked, nor did I upgrade my Champion or units…

I don’t know whose fault it was but it’s not mine. Yep, let’s deny any responsibility.

 

“Regardless of the game or the situation, isn’t the music that plays out when you level up the most satisfying one?”

- From an unknown player.