Maria made short work of the dungeon boss with her new twin-sword style technique. She didn’t even have to use any skills and just overwhelmed the monster with her chain of normal attacks that didn’t let the dungeon boss do anything to her.
Trying to retaliate only resulted in a missed attack and a flurry of counterattacks that followed after Maria took advantage of the opening caused by the Mesutri Queen’s failed attempt at attacking her. Maria didn’t show any mercy at all since she had been misled into thinking that she was trapped inside of the dungeon when it was only because of the sneaky way the Mesutri Queen had hidden away her boss's room.
*DING*
You have killed the Mesutri Queen!
*DING*
Congratulations on being the first to complete the Instance Dungeon: Dungeon of the Blind! Would you like to announce this feat to the world and let yourself be known in the hall of fame? Y/N
Maria naturally selected [No] because she didn’t need that kind of attention. However, she might still get it because she would be exiting from the dungeon soon and everyone saw her enter the dungeon a few days ago. The forums were even talking about Maria going into the dungeon but not coming out so people began speculating that she had gotten trapped inside of the dungeon or was on her way to clearing it and since she would be doing that in the dark, she’d take a long time to navigate through the place.
Most people believed the latter because there was no way the current strongest player in the game would die in a dungeon that was intended for level 125 players to complete. It was only undefeated right now because no one was able to cope with the darkness but if anyone could, then it’d be her. Maria also had her powerful subordinates at her disposal so she would definitely be able to clear the dungeon if she used them. No one knew that there was no way Maria would ever ask any of her people to complete a dungeon run for her. It would take all the fun away from the run and that wasn’t what Maria wanted so she would never do that.
Before, when Ash was still weak, she would take him on her hunting trips and dungeon runs but ever since his powers were reawakened, Maria began to rely less on the vampire because it would make the hunts and the dungeon runs boring. Maria had used Alexa’s help this time but it was only to find the entrance to the boss room. Her little vampire sister hadn’t participated in the battle and only stayed to the side and observed.
Once she dismissed the system notifications, Maria began collecting the loot that the Mesutri Queen had dropped.
Will you exit from the Instance Dungeon? Y/N
Maria was about to press [Yes] but something in the corner of the room caught her eye. She walked over and noticed that it was the relic that caused the [Veil of Darkness] effect to the dungeon that blinded her. The relic was in the form of a demonic idol but when Maria looked at it a little closer, the figure was in the shape of some kind of humanoid rat monster. It was probably some kind of deity that the Mesutris worshipped.
You have acquired the relic: Statue of Karni Amat
“Hm?”
Maria didn’t think the relic would be an item that could be brought out of the dungeon since it seemed more like a dungeon prop instead. Since it was loot, Maria took it and stuffed the item into her inventory without even looking at the item’s description.
“Alright, let’s head out.”
“Okay, big sis.”
Alexa walked next to Maria before the latter pressed the [Yes] on the system menu and teleported them out of the instance dungeon. The two appeared at the entrance of the instance dungeon and Maria had to shield her eyes from the light in the cave because it was so bright. She had been staying in an environment where she was forced to be blind for a few days now so her eyes became a little sensitive to the light.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
It was to the point where it actually stung her eyes. Maria closed her eyes and relied on her [Intuition] talent to move away from the dungeon entrance. The players around had taken notice of her sudden appearance and a few people started swarming over to her.
“Excuse me, miss Maria!”
“Hey, I was here first!”
“I just need a bit of your time, did you succeed in your dungeon run?”
“What was it like inside? Did you beat the dungeon or were you killed and tossed out?”
Alexa didn’t like the last question so she quickly pulled out her battle-ax from out of nowhere and raised it to the person who asked that question and coldly said, “You think my big sis will die in such a place? Back off before I cleave your head off.”
A sharp red aura enveloped the edge of Alexa’s battle ax and this showed just how serious she was. She was only level 110 right now and she was threatening a level 130 player but she didn’t care. If someone tried asking such an insulting question to her big sis and even if he was a god, she’d still threaten them and try to cut them down with her ax. The player pulled out his sword and easily flicked away Alexa's ax. He was about to sheath his weapon but Maria had swiftly pulled out her sword and smashed the player away with a sweep of her blade after she pinpointed his location with her [Intuition].
“...don’t point your weapon at my people.”
The person had only done this out of self-defense and didn’t intend to attack Alexa or anything but Maria didn’t care. Pulling out a weapon and using it to strike away her little sister’s weapon was already an act of aggression in her eyes. She was about to tell Alexa to hold it but the player had reacted first and thought he did something cool. It was a mistake though and it resulted in the player being sent flying into the side of the cave’s wall.
“I’ll be uploading a video on my Switch channel once I’ve organized all the data I acquired and edited the raid footage. Now, if you’ll excuse me...my eyes hurt.”
Maria walked past the crowd of players that had surrounded her and they quickly made their way since she still had her weapon drawn. If anyone did something stupid like earlier, they’d be sent flying into a wall. The player from before was more or less 30 levels higher than Maria but she had sent him flying away with a quick draw of her weapon. No one had even seen her make the action and only became aware that she had done something when they saw the player fly away and Calamity-Z was in her hand.
“Alexa, don’t be so impulsive next time, okay?”
“Y-Yes, big sis...I’m sorry if I stepped out of line.”
Maria shook her head and said, “No, that’s okay. Anyway, can you help me out? My eyes hurt from the light so I need to keep them closed.”
“Of course!”
Alexa took her big sister’s hand and guided her out of the cave, leaving the players behind. No one wanted to try and chase after her because although she looked amiable in her streams and in real life, she was pretty trigger-happy when someone showed even a little bit of hostility towards her or her people. Once they were outside, Maria quickly took to the skies with Alexa in tow. She found a safe place to land before sitting down on the ground and sent David an email along with the in-game footage of her dungeon run.
After thinking about it for a while, Maria decided to also open up a thread on the forums to talk about the 'bugged' dungeon. She titled it 'Information on the Bugged Dungeon aka the Dungeon of the Blind! Is it actually bugged?'. She spent around half an hour on this, compiling and organizing all of the information she found before finally posting all of it into the thread. First of all, she exposed that the blindness caused when a player stepped into the dungeon wasn’t a bug but a feature. This caused a lot of players to cry in dismay and it wasn’t long later that the devs put out an official post that discussed the Dungeon of the Blind and other similar dungeons that had yet been discovered.
The post discussed that there would be certain limitations attached to these dungeons that would make them harder to clear but the rewards gained from these particular dungeons were 10 times the amount gained from another dungeon of a similar level. The devs even posted how to disable these limitations when fighting the boss and what kind of drops one could get when they successfully finished one of these so-called Limited Instance Dungeons.
The post confirmed all of the data that Maria had posted in the thread regarding the dungeon and she had even added a few other pieces of information that weren’t posted in the devs’ post. Another thing was that these Limited Instance Dungeons also had a weekly completion limit so players couldn’t repeatedly enter the dungeon to reap the great rewards that came with completing the dungeon. The limit for the Dungeon of the Blind was 5 clears per week for every player so it was best that the players completed these Limited Instance Dungeons before the weekly reset to maximize their rewards.
Maria had already completed her run and wasn’t planning on going back because her goal had been accomplished already. The rewards were good and all but it wasn’t enough to entice Maria into running the dungeon again. There was an equipment set one could get from defeating the Mesutri Queen but Maria already had an armor set that was unique to her. Her Valhalla’s Raiment was something irreplaceable to her because it was upgradeable and evolvable so there was no need for her to look for any new equipment sets.
However, there was one item that Maria wanted to take a look at so before she had to log off, Maria took out the relic she obtained from the dungeon because it was an item that had a Miscellaneous-Key Item tag on it.
“Hmmm, wonder what it does? It’s not an equipable item but I hope it isn’t some kind of decoration...”