Noa lvl 1

The first floor of the dungeon was, appropriately enough, a dark cave. A very specific dark cave, once again under siege. Candress noted quickly that, unlike the last time she’d been here, the portal closed behind her and its glow ceased to illuminate the cavern.

The instructions for their trial appeared in blazing lines of light, arching over the one entrance to their chamber.

Survive for one hour to escape. Survive for two to be rewarded.

“Goblins out front, Silky and Blackpaw behind.” Gil said, “keep to the sides so the archers have a clear line of fire.”

He knelt and summoned a small glowing ball that illuminated the area in front of them, including the long passageway where even now the first of the mole creatures was beginning to crawl towards them. It fell to the ground as a loud crash echoed through the cave, the top of its head shattering with Keilnei’s arcane shot.

“Start with bows.” Gil said thoughtfully. “I think we’ll want to save the magic and bullets for later. Goblins, you take point. Let the enemy come to you, we will hold them off as best we can.”

Though hardly a relaxing experience, the **** was substantially less intimidating with more than twice as many people in the fight, an expendable front line, and far better equipment.

Gil didn’t even bother using his own meager archery skills, as he’d only waste ammo compared to the two trained marksmen. He contented himself with standing by and monitoring the restless goblins, reminding them not to charge into the line of fire. Later he’d put his new healing materia to work, but he decided to reserve his magic initially beyond the light show. Fire and lightning were little more than showing off when normal arrows will do the job just as well.

The **** slowly ramped up, and so did the defense. The girls missed one of the enemies, allowing it to reach the goblin front line; the four men were little more than miniature thugs, but the first mushrin to close into melee with them was hacked to pieces in moments. Gil thought they would be fine so long as they outnumbered the enemy, preferably four to one, and amended the plan.

“Aim carefully,” he said, “These boys can handle the occasional scuffle. If we run out of ammo, we might need to pull out early.”

The goblins were thrilled at the opportunity to put their blades to use, and between their efforts, Gil’s illumination, and the long passage providing a shooting gallery for the girls, there was absolutely no threat to the party for the first hour. The tutorial had claimed that more direct connections would result in easier jobs; Gil shuddered to think what the dungeon would throw at him with a weaker connection. This was easy, but not trivial, and only as easy as it was because he happened to have relevant counters on hand.

He worried about the other shoe dropping for most of the hour, only occasionally stepping in personally. He thought that the extra large blue mole creature that attacked at the 60 minute mark was probably the floor guardian, but he wasn’t actually sure. It only took three shots to take down, and it was basically just a really big version of the red and black ones.

Given the promised bonus and relative ease, Gil was happy to stay put when the escape portal and shop pillar appeared, a bag of mushrooms appeared in his pocket, and a new timer appeared on the wall in glowing letters. He decided to risk checking the shop, trusting his team to handle the threat as things stood.

The Dungeon Shop had 5 more credits and another new item for sale for ten credits.

(10 Dungeon Credits) Randomly Drops: enemies killed in the dungeon can drop random useful or valuable objects appropriate to their nature.

He believed it was different from Looting Rights, which would allow him to steal anything he encountered in the dungeon, in that he’d only be able to take these specific pieces of dedicated loot that the add-on would generate in this dungeon only, perhaps working like Zena’s pick pocket power. On the other hand, as dedicated loot any given item was more likely to be valuable.

Gil did some math in his head as the goblins hacked away at a few large slimes. This was ostensibly the most dangerous dungeon he’d opened thus far, derived from a target that was combat-wise on par with anyone in his retinue except Rose. He’d only finished the first floor, and expected three more, which would probably yield some good loot. More importantly, he was currently in the middle of a floor that was one massive horde mode. The math checked out, so he made the purchase just to see how this thing worked. He winced when the option vanished from the list before the shop closed, worried that it might be gone forever, but credits existed to be spent.

He wasn’t exactly surprised to find that the enemy waves started to step up at that point. Before he’d only seen one or two every couple minutes, but starting on the sixty second minute, they started to appear every sixty seconds on the dot.

Maybe one in five enemies would, upon dying, suddenly manifest a faint golden glow. This was obviously his new upgrade at work, but Gil didn’t really see a safe way to check the loot until everything was dead. They really started to stack up, but he wasn’t going to risk his life casually.

By the seventieth minute, the groups containing only one enemy were unheard of, with nearly every squad containing two or more attacking together.

By the eightieth, he wasn’t surprised by a group of five Gobu Gobu attacking at once. They were weak, very weak, so numbers were the only way they could be a threat to an armed nest of gunners with bodyguards.

By ninetieth minute, the monsters began coming in rudimentary formations, mixing and matching the unit composition instead of sending handfuls of identical troops as a screaming horde.

“The slime on the left, go!” Gil yelled, directing his team to focus fire.

The large green blobs were not overly dangerous offensively, simply ramming into the goblins and inflicting only light bruising; they relied on suffocation to kill, simply sitting on exhausted prey after tying them down. This meant they weren’t particularly dangerous alone, but they quickly became the bane of Gil’s existence when they were used to screen for others.

Their outer membrane could be cut open with blades, but largely shrugged off bullets and completely ignored arrows that didn’t reach their core. Fire cut through them nicely, so the most efficient way to take them down was for Candress, Silky, or Gil to burn one of them with fire magic from the materia or good old fashioned spellcasting, and Keilnei to follow up with an arrow. That meant coordination, and that meant that the other enemies got to the goblins much more often. Often mushrin, who were short enough to hide directly behind the slimes for cover, were especially likely to close into melee with the goblins.

By the hundredth minute, the back line was out of arrows and smaller groups appeared at each half minute mark. They didn’t always manage to finish killing everything before the next wave arrived, and Gil’s role as team healer became far more demanding. Candress and Gil started mana tapping any Seru that happened to appear, both to prevent their elemental attacks and put off exhausting their magic from continuous spellcasting, like Silky had. He could barely keep the goblins alive with spellcasting, and when he had to choose between recalling Silky and saving a goblin impaled on the spiked tail of a gimard, it wasn’t even a question.

At minute one-ten, the smaller groups were replaced with the large blue mole boss monsters. When they weren’t alone, they were a lot harder to kill. Candress switched to her SMG; spraying them down with bullets worked just fine, but Gil shuddered, knowing that each chattering burst cost him two or three armory marks. On the other hand, each and every one of the bosses glowed with the light of loot.

The last wave consisted of four of the big blue creatures, which barreled down the passage all together. One fell under a hail of bullets. One went down with a heavy caliber round from Keilnei in its brain. One died from a point blank shotgun blast, courtesy of Gil. The last, unfortunately, brought a single huge claw down upon a goblin’s head before the rest could turn and kill it.

And then… it was done. The timer pinged, and no more monsters appeared. A radiant golden chest flickered into existence at the end of the passageway: the bonus reward for the floor.

The two remaining goblins slid to the floor, exhausted. Gil followed suit, drinking some water from his belt flask, and took stock of the current situation. There were two questions left to ask. First was whether or not it was safe to move on. Second was whether or not pressing forward was worth the trouble even if so.

He and his girls were all fine, not a scratch on them. Half of the disposable mooks were dead, and the other half were tired. He wasn’t really out of mana, but he was low. They didn’t have any arrows left, but had quite a few bullets. He decided to camp in the cave for a short time while he went over the haul; if his team could restore their mana he’d consider taking one more floor.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d still like to be frugal with the meat.” Gil said, “You boys can eat your fill while I look over our situation.”

The first thing to do was, quite obviously, gather the loot, open the chest, and sell the two dead goblins.

“Candress, examine the glowing bodies while I work.”

He selected amnesia over **** for the goblins, figuring that if he ever ended up in this Naggarond place then two goblins immune to his contractor powers would be the least of his concerns. With a few taps on his tablet, they were sold, though unusually their bodies didn’t vanish. Instead decay seemed to accelerate.

Lesser Gacha result: 3/9 1 credit

Gil smiled. He’d already made back his investment. He’d gotten four pieces of materia for a credit, and traded that materia for the goblins. Now, instead of a credit he could only spend at the Bazaar, he had a normal credit that would be accepted anywhere, bringing his total up to 12. The material assistance of four meatshields and the other three gachas were just gravy at this point.

Lesser Gacha result: 6/7. Lesser Company Asset

Relationship shift, lesser: frequently taking a form similar to a wand or laser pointer. Allows you to alter a relationship that one target has without altering its intensity or whether it is positive/neutral/negative in tone. Most typically this takes the form of altering the level of intimacy or familiarity. The shift will always happen, but the bigger the necessary changes the more likely it will get weird. Best friend to girlfriend will usually work without a hitch, but enemies to lovers will create a toxic relationship at best and an assassin in your bedroom at worst. The two people directly affected may be aware of the shift or not at your preference, but this has no direct perception filter on anyone else. One use.

Gil whistled. It wasn’t bad gravy, at that. Fiddly, but not to the point of being useless. He already had someone embedded deep into the Brockton Bay authorities; he could probably adjust something somewhere to help her mission. Shame he wouldn’t be able to speak to her again for quite some time. Alternatively, it could probably be used to get a new recruit to be a little more receptive to his advances or orders, depending on details.

The treasure chest contained his first duplicate; a Seal of Mercy. It wasn’t exciting the way a more proactive treasure would be, but Gil wasn’t about to complain. Making his own survival fairly likely was never going to go out of style, and this ring would let him **** any one faction to reconsider killing him. It had already saved his life once… or more accurately it had gotten him the platinum card and parasite, given that he’d only agreed to get into that fight because he had the seal on hand.

Candress carried over their haul, and it was pretty large. Many of the creatures had dropped healing leaves or handfuls of the local currency, but Candress also presented him with a tight red bodysuit. It was made of reinforced cloth and leather, and at least according to Candress, sized to fit her perfectly. It was part of a full set of armor, including a thin black tiara that generated a faint forcefield around the head and some sandals that made his toes tingle when he wore them.

He also found a few magic leaves, which might be useful in Brockton, and nearly five thousand “Gs” in the local currency. The big blues had a few more inexplicable pieces of women’s combat gear, an amulet which supposedly warded off poison and disease, and a character card. It was only a card for one of those red mole creatures, the weaker of the two varieties and overall one of the least dangerous things he’d encountered, but the fact that it was present at all was exciting. He hopefully wouldn’t need to slaughter another hundred enemies in the next few levels, but they could, possibly, drop character cards if he did. That probably meant other forms of Company assets were also on the loot table, even if rare.

He couldn’t immediately think what to do with the Red Piura card. If Blackpaw or, worse, Silky happened to die he could always put him back into the fight… as a weaker, slower animal, but alive. He could also pump up their strength a bit; Silky was fast, but Berelaine didn’t seem like she lifted weights very often.

With that said, he decided not to pursue the second floor immediately. It just seemed a little too dangerous to risk and he sure as hell wasn’t going to finish the whole dungeon today. He decided that whatever happened, he was going to leave Brockton Bay with a heavy hitter in his corner so he could come back swinging. In contrast, Gil didn’t have any interest in keeping the goblins around longer than he needed them, so he announced his intent.

“Alright boys, you did your job. Girls, head back home and get Silky looked at.” Gil said, handing Keilnei the Sphere, “I’ll send you home now.”

The two surviving goblins gobbled up chunks of meat from the mole creatures right up until they vanished suddenly.

Lesser Gacha Result 1/4 Random Consumable, lesser

Recast: you may use a character card to place someone into an existing role formerly held by a member of your retinue. The original will be forgotten, and all of their unwanted pre-capture relationships and responsibilities will be taken on by the character depicted on the card. The character on the card will have their personality and tier adjusted if necessary for the role. They will have immunity to lures and bindings, just as if they had been sold. This has no direct effect on the original, but they will no longer be recognized by anyone the user does not want them to maintain a relationship with.

Lesser Gacha Result 13/10 Random Defense/Perk tag

Body Defense Tag

Oh yeah, the trip to the Bazaar was nice and profitable. Shame that he only got one free credit for every ten he spent in the test. Who was he kidding? Cash back was always great.

Body defense was one of the most basic “defense” tags provided by the company. Anyone who had it was heavily resistant to poisons, disease, all that sort of thing. Not completely immune, but there was no disease or poison that could kill someone with body defense. Plenty of things that could knock them on their ass, but those were generally the kind of thing that would instantly kill a normal person.

Full immunity tags were not something Gil assumed to be available in any given test. A lot of GMs thought that a flat no-sell was overkill when the basic version already took the bite out of whole swathes of threats.

Gil applied the tag to himself, not even taking a few seconds to consider it. He was the lynchpin of his team; anyone else was replaceable or at least repairable, but if he died they were all done.

As for the Recast item? He could think of at least three potential uses for it off the top of his head. Pull Rose out of the Wards without upsetting everyone, or kidnap whoever she managed to capture with his new bindings while severing all ties. Even some unusual options, like replacing Terra with a super-powered Symbiote version of Shiho or the Piura while leaving the original intact. If that world really was balanced around a team of two heroes, then adding another would almost certainly place a weight on the scales.

It was almost too perfect. Sometimes the GMs listened in and provided custom-tailored items as mission rewards, but that was a feature intended for pushing certain behaviors. The fact that this was a random drop made Gil suspect that the item was legitimate. Unfathomably lucky, but honest luck. He hoped so.