WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Irevi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 44: Doll Dungeon (2)
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Clang!
Clown’s Sword flashed, and the wax doll’s head flew off.
The sight of the doll’s head staring at me with expressionless, lifeless eyes was quite grotesque.
The monsters in the Doll Dungeon were originally dolls that had transformed into monsters, so rather than disappearing when defeated, they remained behind like this doll had.
They simply remained where they fell as wax dolls drained of demonic energy.
Still, they dropped Shards properly.
“Should we collect this now?”
“No. Leave anything Tier 2 or below. We’ll pick it all up at once on our way out.”
Click!
“What was that sound?”
The moment we defeated the first doll, the doors to all six rooms around us opened at once.
“Look at the stairs. Demonic energy is blocking the way.”
“Can’t we purify it with the Core?”
Unlike every dungeon we had entered so far, which had followed a linear structure, the Doll Dungeon was a gimmick dungeon. We had to meet certain conditions to advance to the next floor.
“There must be some condition on the first floor. It’s probably related to the rooms that just opened.”
Cecilia immediately grasped the situation.
She was right. We could only proceed to the second floor after defeating the elite monster hidden in one randomly selected room out of the six.
She really was a genius.
“Then shall we start with this room?”
“A monster might jump out as soon as we enter, so stay alert.”
The closest room was filled with nun dolls.
“This must be the nuns’ room.”
From young women to elderly women, expressionless faces filled the room.
“Do you think all the dolls here were modeled after dead people?”
“Probably.”
“They must have originally been made to honor people... It doesn’t feel good to have to cut them down.”
Among the wax dolls, some had become monsters while others had not.
The monster dolls would pretend to be ordinary dolls before ambushing the player.
The elite monster was no different.
There was no way to tell them apart, so the best option was to destroy every doll in the room.
“Are there no monsters here? I can’t sense any demonic energy. Should we just leave?”
There definitely was no elite monster in this room. In the original, the elite monster was a doll resembling an elderly priest.
This room only had nun dolls, so it was a dud.
“It would be better to destroy all the dolls here.”
“What?! Do we really have to? I don’t want to.”
“Bear with it. There could be monsters hiding among them.”
Even so, it was best to destroy the dolls.
Once we encountered the elite monster, any monsters we had not dealt with beforehand would rush out all at once and swarm us.
It would be much safer to take care of them first.
When I took the lead and smashed the first doll, Cecilia sighed and began destroying the dolls on either side of her.
Crunch! Crunch!
Then, as I aimed my sword at the fourth nun doll’s head, its eyes, which had been staring straight ahead the whole time, suddenly turned toward me.
Sharp claws swung at me at the same time.
‘That startled me.’
Thankfully, ambushes did not work on me.
Just before the attack reached me, a blue gem floated above my head, and the battle shifted into turn-based combat.
The more I thought about it, the more useful this ability seemed.
I’d never be assassinated while spacing out.
As one monster lunged at us, the others swarmed us as if on cue.
“Cecilia!”
“Leave it to me!”
Cecilia’s Radiant Chain Fang brought down every monster in the room. Shards scattered across the floor along with particles of light created by Lumen’s effect.
Seeing the wounds all over my body, Cecilia immediately tried to gather the fallen particles.
I stopped her.
“I’m fine for now.”
“Why? You’re injured. If you don’t recover right away, the wounds could get worse.”
“It’s fine. We might need them later when things actually get dangerous.”
Whenever Cecilia attacked an enemy, Lumen had a chance to drop recovery particles.
In other words, it was a limited resource that could not activate without monsters.
‘We should stockpile them as potion substitutes.’
The more potions, the better.
After destroying every doll in the room, we headed for the next one.
The second and third rooms were duds as well.
Dolls of citizens and worshippers stood in our way, and just as in the first room, we cleared every one of them out.
Then we entered the fourth room.
“We should do the same thing here as in the other rooms, right?”
“Let’s go back for now.”
“Why? Is there a problem?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Elderly priest dolls.
This was the elite monster’s room.
If we disturbed the elite monster now, monsters would pour out from the remaining two rooms, so it was better to completely clear them out first.
“...A feeling, huh?”
I gave a vague excuse, but Cecilia nodded as though she accepted it.
Once we had neatly finished the remaining two rooms, we returned to the room with the elite monster.
Even knowing what was waiting, the sinister atmosphere in this room was on an entirely different level from the others.
We could fight right away without much trouble, but...
‘This is where I should try it.’
“Here, take this. I think you should equip it for this dungeon.”
“This is... a Special Shard. Why are you giving this to me?”
I handed Black Cloud to Cecilia.
I had learned a lot from fighting alongside Cecilia.
For example, if I gave her Black Cloud, my Fluidity decreased by 8 while Cecilia’s increased by 8.
Even considering Clown’s Sword’s effect and the Shattering Sword’s penalty, that would put Cecilia’s turn ahead of mine.
Now that I had Clown’s Sword, it would be difficult for Cecilia to surpass me in Attack Power.
Of course, she could barely manage it if she loaded herself up with Red Shards, but I was raising Cecilia as magic DPS for now.
That was why controlling our speed was essential if we wanted to make proper use of the Shattering Sword’s Defense reduction effect.
Cecilia applies the Defense reduction → I follow up with damage.
That was likely the best way to deal the greatest possible damage in a single turn at this point.
After confirming that Cecilia had equipped Black Cloud, I immediately swung my sword at the closest doll.
Clang!
‘Found it.’
The doll staggered from the slash.
The first-floor gatekeeper, an Elite Priest Wax Doll, revealed itself with a reaction distinct from the others.
This doll had an expression. It was smiling.
Yet its empty eyes and unnaturally stretched mouth corners made it even more unsettling.
Demonic energy leaked from its forearms and shoulders, spreading around it like mist as the doll’s mouth moved.
[...O God, I shall offer these intruders to the Abyss!]
Cecilia jumped at the sound of its voice.
“I-It... just spoke?!”
“It’s probably imitating what it was like when it was alive. Think of it as a recording.”
“I’ve never seen a monster that could talk before...”
Monsters also gained intelligence as the scenario progressed. Later on, there would even be monsters that spoke human language.
Of course, that was a matter for later. This doll really was just a recording. It was basically an encounter line.
“Cecilia, get ready. It’s coming.”
Elite monsters had different attack patterns from ordinary monsters.
Rather than charging at us right away, the doll took a prayerful pose and drew a sun-shaped sigil in the air.
It was not the Empire’s symbol, but a blackened, rotted sun. An unholy symbol corrupted by demonic energy.
Boom!
A storm of demonic energy surged from the sigil.
[...O God, I shall offer these intruders to the Abyss!]
Once she saw that the same line was repeating, Cecilia finally shook off her confusion and raised her sword.
A blue gem floated above her head.
Cecilia’s turn.
The priestly robes were only an outer appearance. The monster itself was a mass of wax.
Demonic energy had seeped into the wax, giving it a hardness like steel, so the doll monsters we had encountered so far had no real weak points.
That meant it was impossible to gain an additional turn unless I carved a weak point with Carving Sword.
But the elite priest was different.
“Aim for the sigil!”
The sun sigil used by the elite priest was both an attack method and its weak point.
It was practically walking around with its heart exposed.
When I pointed at the sigil, Cecilia kicked off the ground and leaped toward it without hesitation.
It was the result of all the time we had spent coordinating our movements.
At first, she had resisted my instructions, but at some point, she had begun prioritizing them.
‘Good, Cecilia.’
Light gathered around Cecilia’s blade, and her Art, Shattering Light, struck the sigil.
Boom!!
The dark-blue demonic energy enveloping the sigil clashed violently with the white flash, producing a sharp, air-splitting crack.
‘Did the Defense reduction trigger?’
After getting Clown’s Sword, I had tested its Slow effect several times.
It would be difficult to tell through sensation alone whether an opponent’s Fluidity had decreased.
Yet for some reason, it was very intuitive to tell whether a debuff had been applied.
When I swung Clown’s Sword, a crawling-snail icon had appeared above the monster’s head.
The Defense reduction would probably look similar.
There was no change in the sigil, so it seemed the Defense reduction had not triggered with that Shattering Light.
Something else did.
[Weak!]
Weak-point attack successful.
The gem over Cecilia’s head shrank slightly, granting her an additional turn.
I was not the only one who could gain additional turns.
When one of my party members struck an opponent’s weak point, that party member could gain an additional turn as well.
Cecilia’s turn continued, and she began a graceful dance in midair.
White Fang Dance.
The sword dance that had severed Maliaas’s limbs now traced white arcs across the sun sigil.
After four slashes, the demonic energy in the sigil scattered, and an icon resembling a shattering shield appeared above the doll’s head.
It looked similar to the armor-break icon I had seen in other games.
Defense reduction.
Cecilia’s lips curled upward.
“Yes! It worked! That felt great!”
It seemed Cecilia herself could intuitively tell whether the Defense reduction had landed.
I could not.
It said the effect had a set chance to trigger, but in the original, the actual chance of Defense reduction was only around 25%.
And it had triggered within just two attacks.
‘She really is a luck totem.’
“I’m counting on you!”
With a satisfied expression after accomplishing her task, Cecilia stepped back as I took over the turn.
My turn.
Since that was the weak point, I should have naturally aimed for the sigil too, but I had learned something from my earlier battle against Maliaas.
My attack pattern until now had always been Chrono Dive → Carving Sword → offensive Art → Break.
There had been no opponent I could not defeat with that combo. I had even sent Varhatan to its grave with two rounds of it.
But I would not always face opponents that could be finished in one combo.
There would be damage sponges, enemies with a second phase, and perhaps even multiple enemies at once.
That meant I needed to make some changes to my monotonous attack style.
My mindset had not changed, though.
‘More Attack Power.’
So I changed the combo to the method I had improvised during the battle with Maliaas.
Slice!
[Weak!]
Carving Sword carved a weak point into the elite priest’s body.
I immediately followed it with a second Carving Sword. Together, the two strikes added two weak points to the priest’s body.
It was already proven that weak points carved this way could all be detonated at once with an Art.
I called it Carving Sword → Carving Sword.
As the turns continued in this state, the weak points would steadily pile up until the opponent’s entire body was covered in them.
If I detonated all those accumulated weak points at once, I could deal astronomical damage unlike anything I had ever seen.
And this would be the key to defeating the Doll Dungeon bosses, Rose and Lilian.
‘Carve as many weak points as possible before the phase changes, then finish them in one blow before they revive.’
With that mindset, I raised my sword to block the priest’s incoming attack.
‘Today, I’ll settle this no matter what.’
A flash of demonic energy shot out from the sigil.
⁎⁎⁎
“The seal is breaking far earlier than expected.”
A figure dressed in black and wearing a mask without even eyeholes stared at an altar leaking red light.
With a wave of his hand, the image of a tranquil estate appeared above the altar.
At its center were two people fighting fiercely against God’s servant.
“It wasn’t supposed to break for another three months.”
One was the Ren House’s next Sword Princess.
The other was an impurity absent from all their plans, one who had recently eliminated one of their compatriots.
The Funeral Sword, Halibal Velder.
“At this rate, the Second Seal will not last past today.”
At that moment, the impurity drove a sword into the servant’s heart.
“Has an unforeseen variable entered the plan?”
Another figure in black stepped out from one side of the altar.
“What should we do?”
“If they were among those expected, we could leave them be, but an impurity is a different matter.”
“...Then?”
Instead of answering, the figure in black lightly snapped his fingers.
Click.
At that moment, two dolls lying motionless in the darkness of the estate opened their eyes.
“We will remove him this time. We cannot allow him to disrupt the grand plan any further.”
Footnotes:
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