Unlike the peaceful family politics in Veiled Violet’s dungeon, Zen found himself waddling in Gloomie Shroomie’s dungeon. The theme suited her personality draped in dull colours with everything ruined. Water went everywhere, and nothing was dry.
Drip! Drip!Zen’s boots were soaked, but more importantly, the water wouldn’t stop rising. He received an invitation card to Gloomie Shroomie’s Deathday Party, and there was no option to decline. Seeing someone throwing a party for their death was odd, but Zen preferred that to lonely ghosts who haunted others. The only problem he had was with his role at this pity party.[Welcome to Gloomie’s Deathday Party! Help Gloomie enjoy this party to her fullest so her soul may rest in piece(s). Your first task is clean the room!]Looking around, Zen tried locating all fourteen ribbon strips according to the quest requirement. Gathering the tangled and soggy ribbons, Zen observed theHousekeeping companies charge a lofty fee for their services, and Zen only wished the gold-loving monster would pay them for helping to clean his treasury. Toad S. Tool was incorrigible even in death. Zen did not want to play maid to this gold slave but had little say.As a player, Zen could choose different equipment and methods to sort the items. Real gold was not magnetic, so Zen borrowed the help of a giant electromagnet to differentiate the obvious counterfeits.Zen monitored the progress bar. Sixty percent of the fakes had been eliminated in the first round. It was a good start, but Zen knew it would be tougher as this went on.The next item he used was a metal detector. With it, Zen could identify non-metal products. As it would take a while to complete scanning all the items in the room, Zen peeked at Oritha and Akiko’s screen.“What do you have to do?” Zen asked, curious about Huff N Puff’s mini-game.Oritha looked at the hol
After reading the mini-game rules and message, Zen understood why the girls were struggling. It wasn’t whack-a-mole. It was a simple game of Simon Says.“I think I got it,” Zen smiled and explained Huff N Puff’s mini-game.Throughout his summarised explanation, they looked at him with complete focus. Feeling confident that they understood the rules, Zen asked if they had any questions.A brief pause later, Oritha nodded.“Who’s Simon?”Stunned, Zen’s brain buffered for a long time. He had never considered this before. Wasn’t it common to accept the names of things other people invented?“Uh…” Zen stuttered. “I didn’t invent the game. Simon is probably the person who invented it?”“It was probably named after one of the Godfathers,” Akiko nodded, and Oritha rested the case.Leaving it to their imagination, Zen quickly moved past that subject t
The four lumps of flesh littered the main dungeon, making it a little claustrophobic. Zen wondered why the boss’ bodies did not disappear even after their souls were rested. However, upon closer inspection, he noticed some broken invisible strings.Sasha looked like she had aged three years. Zen felt terrible for taking this long to figure out the mini-game dungeons.“Did you manage to land a hit yet?”The sniper shook her head and pointed at Liu Feng. The blind man was going head-first with the boss, but Mandy’s lute was overpowered. Apart from launching sonic waves, it was a sturdy shield that could not be shattered.Zen looked at the lute in Mandy’s arms and frowned. The zombie musician never moved from her spawn spot. It was strange as all the bosses they had dealt with moved.Unless…With hawk-like eyes, Zen observed his party members fight. Liu Feng, Oritha, and Akiko tried to overpower the boss wit
According to everyone else, fighting Mandy in the final phase was the easiest part of their raid. Zen wisely kept his comments to himself. It was nice everything worked out, even if they failed to clear their first dungeon run in five minutes.Zen shuddered when he recalled how Mandy exploded ten seconds after entering her final stage. Nobody held back, attacking her from all fronts. Zen had never seen a boss’s health bar drop that quickly before. He didn’t get time to blink before she was pulverised. If it weren’t for this mausoleum's puzzle element, they might finish it within a minute.The anticlimactic ending was very befitting of their party. Zen would have it any other way. As terrifying as it was having two of the academy’s most fearsome assassins on his team, there was also reassurance.“What did everyone get?” Sasha asked after receiving her reward for helping to defeat Mandy.Loot drop was random, and most of them rec
There was no need to consider what to do after the lift brought Godly Food back to the mushroom meadow. Nobody stopped to listen to the peaceful lute music or admired the peaceful scenery. In fact, nobody got out of the lift because they were counting on Akiko, who was trying to jam the door shut again. However, after fifteen seconds of trying, they were forced to alight.“They should have an automatic re-run option,” Oritha growled as she stepped out of the magical lift.When everyone got out of the magical lift, it disappeared into thin air.The girls were the fastest to get to Mandy’s statue. Everyone was ready for the next round, but Zen did not accept the mausoleum invitation.“What’s wrong?” Sasha asked. “You don’t want to farm loot?”Zen shook his head hesitantly. Sometimes he wondered if he was pushing his limits too much in front of these assassins. However, communication was of dire import
“Six minutes and thirty-nine seconds,” Sasha sighed after they stepped out of the elevator. “The mausoleum is too big, and Gloomie’s mini-game is too difficult!”Oritha laughed. Unlike Sasha, she cleared the Simon Say game faster, even after messing up the sequence once. That wasn’t her fault. Liu Feng had no idea if “Mike” was a microphone of a man’s name in the context and hesitated too long, resulting in their failure. She did her part perfectly.“It’s ok,” Zen quickly positioned himself between his self-proclaimed big sister and the Amazonian. “We will improve over time. I’m sure we will be speed-running the mausoleum blindfolded by the end of the next run.”Without missing a beat, Liu Feng chimed in about how easy that would be. Why blindfold when being blind is more permanent?Laughing at the dark humour nervously, Zen ushered the party to the next run. They descended
“I think we can break the five-minute record with more puddings and better armour,” Zen panted after their sixtieth run. Even if he wasn’t doing much, keeping up with their pace was already challenging.The girls were getting faster as they became more familiar with the mausoleum. However, it still took five minutes to finish a run, even with the fastest path. They had been doing this for nearly six hours. Zen couldn’t continue. He needed to rest before waking up to prepare breakfast.“We can gather the ingredients,” Liu Feng offered helpfully. “What do you need?”Checking his recipe, Zen told them the basic speed slime pudding required one boss slime eye and five green slime goo. The monsters were relatively easy to find, but it was tedious to fight alone. Not to mention, the slimes came in groups. Zen would spend more time retreating than killing slimes if he did it alone.“We’ll need one hundred boss
Zen woke up.Zen finished making breakfast.Zen ate his breakfast.But nobody was up.Despite the short few hours of sleep after last night’s mental breakdown, Zen felt better. Sleep deprivation was scary, and he wanted to apologise for the outburst. However, none of his party members was awake. They must have spent all night farming for pudding materials. The busy chef did not have time to check his inbox, although he received multiple notifications about gifts from them.“Maybe I should send everyone a message and deliver the food to their rooms,” he decided after checking the time.Zen woke up near noon. That was usually when the kitchen would be bustling with activity and starving folks who had just completed their morning training. However, most people were asleep today from the excitement of last night. Unlike Party Godly Food, the other students were most likely busy preparing for the treasure hunt event and trading