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As for Minaga’s version of an in-between room?

“This is nice,” Dina said just as they arrived, and she looked around.

“Certainly a relaxing atmosphere,” the Sword Saint agreed.

What they had walked into looked like the lounge of a five-star hotel. Red carpets covered the floor, a large open bar, a sitting area with lounge chairs, an elevated platform that looked to be made out of wood already with a lockbox on it, and generally, this entire hall was just a big and welcoming space. In Jake’s sphere, he even saw that there were several more rooms, including five bedrooms with attached bathrooms, with each of these bedrooms also having a “crafting room” attached. Based on the void behind those doors, Jake guessed that the room changed based on who entered. Finally, Jake saw a fucking open-air bath. Did they need an open-air bath? They didn’t, but it was there.

“Minaga is truly an evil mastermind,” Jake said with respect. “Trying to make the parties attempting the labyrinth waste time in these in-between rooms and thus have less time doing the actual dungeon.”

“Now that is just mean,”Minaga said in a fake sulking tone.

“Sure, sure,” Jake smiled. Just then, they also got a bunch of system messages making Jake smile even more.

Thirty-first floor completed. 310 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-first floor in less than a day (24 hours). 500 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-first floor without any party member taking damage from any trap. 300 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-first floor without interacting with any friendly creatures. 200 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-first floor while only entering a maximum of four challenge rooms. 500 Nevermore Points earned.

The achievements were just rolling in as they got far more points than on any floor prior. Jake did find it a bit odd there wasn’t a single mention of the fact they had chosen the Archmage difficulty, but it was also entirely possible that the reward would come at a later point.

“Certainly a lot of points,” the Sword Saint said, satisfied.

“We may have taken the top spot if there was a Leaderboard after the thirty-first floor,” Jake said with a smile.

“Ree!” Sylphie screeched as she flew over to the lockbox in the room.

“Yeah, I guess you can open it,” Jake said, hearing Sylphie excited to see what was inside. Many of the rewards they had gotten had turned out to be natural treasures or even raw materials their party could use, and most of it had thus also been consumed by Sylphie. It was only natural she was excited about opening each and every lockbox now.

Poking the box with her talon, it opened, and from within, a small shield-looking item floated out. It was no more than ten centimeters tall and had a heater shield design with a glowing flame symbol carved into it. The entire thing look to be made of gold, except for the orange glowing flame symbol. Jake used Identify and raised an eyebrow at the description.

[Greater Firebane Talisman (Ancient)] – Infuse power into the talisman and grant significantly increased resistance to all fire affinity attacks for one hour (60 minutes) to you and all nearby party members. Has limited charges, and once the charges are used up, the talisman will break. This item cannot be used outside of Nevermore and will cease to exist if brought out for too long. Charges remaining: 3

“Very clearly an item offered for either a later environment or a rematch with the Demon Lord. Perhaps both, considering it has a total of three charges,” the Fallen King voiced his thoughts.

“It would be good against the Demon Lord,” Dina agreed, having been the one to primarily deal with it. “The passive fire aura was quite powerful even for a level 270 Demon Lord, and if the next time we encounter the demon, it is even stronger, then I am not sure I would be able to properly fight it off.”

“Then we will have to simply deal with it ourselves,” the Fallen King said a bit dismissively.

Jake kind of agreed. While having Dina help with it was nice, Jake still had his scales, and if he used Arcane Awakening at full power, the passive shield from that, so he should be fine. The King was also good, leaving her only with Sylphie and the Sword Saint, but they could also take care of themselves.

“In either case, can you carry it, Dina?” Jake asked.

“Me?” she asked, a bit taken aback.

“Well, you are the support, and you seem good at judging when to use it,” Jake smiled encouragingly.

“I find it admirable,” the King said, making Jake nod approvingly before he promptly stopped as the King followed up. “I find it admirable that Jake recognizes he would have forgotten about the item’s existence ten seconds after putting it in his spatial storage, so he gave it to someone else.”

“Hey, that ain’t fair,” Jake fought back.

“There… there was that compass on the twenty-fourth floor…” Dina muttered.

“Ree!” Sylphie valiantly came to Jake’s defense.

“Yeah, Sylphie is right. We didn’t need it, so who cares?” he said, knowing it was a losing battle.

“Chances are we could also proceed without this Firebane Talisman, but not using it strikes me as wasteful, seeing as it cannot even be brought out of Nevermore,” the Sword Saint piled on.

“So I gave it to Dina, case closed,” Jake said as he did the number one strategy to get out of trouble: misdirect.

“Hey, Minaga, I have a question. If you are willing to answer, that is.”

“It is pretty hard to know if I am going to answer before you ask the question,” Minaga answered with a hint of snark.

“Sorry, sorry. I do love the break room, by the way. I wanted to ask about the time-based achievement we got. More accurately, how they work. 500 points seem like a lot, but at the same time, few would have a chance to do it that fast, so is the achievement for doing it within a day the only one?” Jake asked, wanting to fish for some information.

“Well, there is one that gives 100 points for doing it in less than a week, 200 points for less than five days, 350 points for less than three days, and finally, 500 points for less than a day. Congratulations, you got the best one there, but you did miss out on other achievements!”

“I see,” Jake nodded. “Just to ask… was it possible to kill the Demon Lord during our first encounter?”

“Naturally, it was possible… same as you could have attacked me in the opening room if you so desired. Not saying doing either would have done you any good, but it was an option,” Minaga said in his usual cheerful voice. “Now, enjoy the break room and relax! At least try out the free bar.”

Minaga was gone again, and while Jake did want to move on quickly, he kind of got the feeling keeping Minaga happy would do him good. That some eccentric dungeon master was part of Nevermore, a transformed World Wonder, and that you had to keep the weird guy happy to not get fucked over was admittedly a bit weird… but what can you do about it? Seeing as Minaga made the entire thirty-first floor collapse behind them was kind of proof Minaga could actually influence the dungeon if he so wanted, even if the collapse had just been a joke.

In that sense, it was also a bit comforting that he had done nothing to mess with Jake. He could have easily scrambled the hallways, switched the locations of rooms with keys, reassigned which monsters had keys, and a slew of other things, but he had done none of it. So while Jake didn’t think Minaga would outright work against him, it seemed silly to risk it, so he bit the bullet and sat down at the bar.

Looking at all the flasks on display, he extended a string of mana and picked out a few that seemed interesting. Dina and the Sword Saint walked over to join him as Jake began just mixing stuff at random, making different drinks. He had about a ninety-percent failure rate, but he did manage to make some stuff that at least didn’t make him reak. His Sense of the Malefic Viper also allowed him to sense the general level of alcohol within each bottle. This was mainly important to make sure Sylphie didn’t have any, as she was still too young to drink. Dina also didn’t like alcohol, so they went to the section with non-alcoholic drinks.

“Why do you inferior lifeforms even consume these things?” the Fallen King asked, clearly just jealous he was the only one who couldn’t enjoy Jake’s mixing skills.

“Because we can, and some of them are tasty,” Jake smiled. “I could ask you the same about consuming natural treasures. You have eaten literals rocks.”

“They were precious gemstones containing soul-“

“Shiny rocks, then,” Jake grinned.

The five of them stayed in this in-between room longer than they had planned, thoroughly falling for Minaga’s trick. Then again, perhaps it was good for them to have a mental reset, and Jake had a strong feeling that was what these rooms were designed for. The five of them had not even dealt with the oppressive mist for a full day, but being within it just for a few hours was suffocating. Without Jake’s sphere or other things to help you find your way, Jake could see others spend months just walking in a fog.

Yeah, he could see why someone would need a drink and a nice soak in the open-air bath after that.

Jake and company still only stayed for a few hours as they checked out the local amenities before moving on to the thirty-second floor.

Walking through the gateway, they found themselves in a pretty similar room to the one on the thirty-first. A few seconds after they appeared, the description of the floor once more popped up too.

Welcome to the Thirty-second floor of Nevermore: Minaga’s Labyrinth (Part 2)

Main objective: Reach the end of the Labyrinth.

Bonus objectives: N/A

Current progress: End reached (0/1)

Note: More hidden events, achievements, or objectives may be hidden on the floor.

Current Nevermore Points: 16682

The first thing Jake noticed was the name of the floor. To just call it part two was honestly lazy, and he would have expected more of Minaga. Alas, Jake would let it go in an act of benevolence.

As expected, on the central platform of the room, Minaga once more popped into existence, though he didn’t bother with the light show this time around.

“Hello there! Long time no see,” Minaga said in his usual joking tone. “I guess we all know what we are doing here. Are you going to be pathetic disappointments to all of the gods that blessed you and be the saddest excuse for a Unique Lifeform I have ever seen, or are you going to keep going at the Archmage difficulty? You can totally downgrade if you want to act like little-“

“Same difficulty,” Jake waved him off.

“Surprising,” Minaga said in a deadpan tone.

“Say,” the Sword Saint began, “the first time around, you mentioned that one could increase or decrease the difficulty by one at the start of every floor. Does that mean there is a difficulty above Archmage we can increase it to?”

Jake looked at the Sword Saint and gave him a mental thumbs up. He hadn’t even considered that.

“That is a very good question,” Minaga said with a smile. “But no, there is not. I should probably change the wording in the initial briefing, huh? Well, good catch either way!”

Achievement earned: Ask Minaga a good question. 1 Nevermore Points earned.

The system announcement surprised all of them as Jake stared at the Unique Lifeform. “Really?”

“Are you complaining?” Minaga asked teasingly. “Can’t take them back, but I can make sure you won’t get any more.”

“Nope, definitely not complaining, just surprised,” Jake quickly backtracked.

“Oh, then no worries, no worries,” Minaga waved him off. “Now for the second thing we have to deal with…”

Minaga stood on the platform with his usual smile as he seemed to be waiting for something. Jake exchanged a glance with the others, but none had any idea what the hell he wanted them to do. After nearly ten seconds of awkward silence, Minaga scratched his chin.

“Nothing?”

“What did you expect?” Jake asked.

“Well, I just said it was an option to attack me, so… you know,” Minaga shrugged.

“But you also said it wouldn’t necessarily do us any good, and I have a strong feeling it will end badly if we did attack,” Jake pointed out.

“Oh, it definitely would have. But you also didn’t attack because we are becoming friends, and it would feel bad to attack me, right?”

“Oh, definitely that also,” Jake agreed.

“I knew we had built a good rapport,” Minaga smiled. “Now go forth and conquer the second part of my labyrinth! This one will be different; I can promise you that!”

With that, Minaga was gone again. The five of them exchanged glances as the large gate leading into the labyrinth began opening. As it opened, the familiar fog once more came out, and without hesitation, Jake and the others made their way inside. Releasing a Pulse of Perception, Jake scanned what was ahead of them, and on a cursory glance, it looked mostly the same, except he saw humanoid figures actually walking in some of the halls.

Jake also spotted one other thing. Only about a hundred meters into the hallway. A lone humanoid figure was sitting on the ground and leaning against the wall. Jake shared his findings, and they quickly made it to this lone figure.

They couldn’t see if they were human or not, as the person was fully covered in metallic armor that now had red scars all over it and several melted pieces. The moment they got close, the armored person lazily turned their head.

“You… were you the ones who released that monster?” a strained male voice came out. Jake used Identify and was kind of surprised by the level being the same as the Demon Lord.

[Knight of Light’s Dawn – lvl 270]

“He is dying,” Dina shared through their link. Considering she said it with such certainty, Jake saw no reason to doubt her and, thus, no reason to lie.

“If you are talking about the Demon Lord, then yes,” Jake answered. “But accidentally.”

“Curse you… curse all of you!” the Knight man said as he tried to stand up, but he stumbled and fell to the ground instantly as he stopped moving.

“Dead,” the Fallen King said.

“Not entirely,” the Sword Saint frowned as the corpse began leaking dark energy. An energy that was familiar to Jake.

A curse manifested from the corpse of the Knight. It took a vaguely humanoid form as the monster lifted one of its arms and pointed at their party.

“Absolve yourselves!”

The curse exploded outwards from the body and towards them as a bonus objective finally appeared before their eyes.

Bonus objective gained: Slay the Demonic Cultist Prime Summoner to dispel the curse.

Yet just as the curse was about to invade their bodies, Jake took out Eternal Hunger. The curse energy trying to attack instantly stopped as his katar released a pulse of energy, and without even having the slightest chance to resist, every single speck of energy released was absorbed by his weapon.

“Not bad,” Jake said, seeing that Eternal Hunger had quite liked the curse. High-quality curse, but a bit lacking in the energy department. At least none of them had been affected at all, so that was nice.

“Seriously? Again?” the exasperated voice of Minaga echoed. “I am trying to teach you about consequences here.”

Jake shrugged. “Should have had a better curse.”