The climb was a long one, just about as long as the drop into Clochglas had been. Except slower, since I was climbing up instead of dropping down, and much more uneventful.

When I emerged from another manhole disguised as a pile of rocks on the side of the hill, night had fallen. I brought out my Candle Flame again and made the trek up to the peak, hoping that whatever “help” I’d been promised would indeed come my way.

Rounding the crest of the hill, I found, at the very top, an old, crooked hawthorn tree. Its branches were twisted to the side, its jagged leaves all pointing down towards the patch of brambles growing underneath it. Sitting under the tree was a dark figure. A figure that wasn’t supposed to be there. I drew closer cautiously, my summon darting forwards to light up the place.

The figure was a familiar one, tall and thin, with a mop of silver hair that messily fell over bright red eyes. Instead of the moth cloak though, he wore a tattered, swallowtail vest the colour of evergreens over a loose dress shirt, one that ended in a pattern that looked like dragonfly wings near the tail ends.

In the light of my Candle Flame, he looked a lot less skeletal than he had back in the hallway. His face was a gaunt looking one, both old and young at the same time. Sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, but now that the lighting was better, instead of a ghastly scare, he was just a malnourished and moderately depressed looking youth.

“Greetings, Chosen One,” the boy from the start bowed his head and stood up. His voice reminded me of a fox, all sly and nasal like. “I have been waiting. I hope Her Highness delivered my message.”

“You’re the one Rosa told me to wait for?” I asked. The fellow way back at the very beginning? “Back at the Crimson Hall?”

“Yes… My apologies for that. I was held up by something important.” He seemed to be pretty nervous, standing stiffly in front of me. Occasionally, his fingers would do an uncomfortable popping motion where they’d visibly dislocate from their sockets and twist the wrong ways before returning back to normal. “I hope that did not cause you too much trouble?”

“It didn’t,” I assured him, before hesitantly holding out my hand. “My name’s Bad_Luck, but you can call me Luck. You are?”

“Oh… my name is… Rue,” he carefully took hold of my hand and shook it, before all too quickly dropping it back by his side. “My Class is that of a Briar Elf.”

“Kobold. Currently Level 25.” I looked back at the dungeon. “By the way, would you happen to know how to open up the Ruler’s Grave?”

“Oh. I do, in fact,” the ghastly scare waved a hand, and the brambles parted, revealing a grave made out of stones. Between the largest stone and a smaller one was an opening leading deep into the earth, where I could see the roots of the hawthorn tree intermingling with the dirt. “Here.”

“Thank you. I kind of needed that.”

“My pleasure.”

“Why did the Princess ask you to wait for me at these dungeons anyway?”

“Well…she didn’t. It was mostly my idea,” Rue shrugged. “I suppose I merely… wanted to experience what it was like to fight alongside a famed Chosen One such as yourself.”

“I’m famous?” I blinked. “Oh wait… and so you’re coming with me?”

“Yes,” Rue affirmed. “I wish to be your travel companion for as long as you will have me.”

Travel companion? That wasn’t a part of the script either.

But he was endorsed by Rosa. Who had deliberately told me to wait for him.

Suspicious as it was, I decided to risk it. What was the worst he could do to me anyway? Steal my drops? Kill me? Death wasn’t permanent. This was a dream. I’d be okay.

“I don’t mind you following along, but just so you know, I hope to tackle the boss alone,” I replied. “I want the skill offered from the hitless run, you see.”

Rue dipped his head in acknowledgement.

“I understand. I’ll stay outside the boss room, in that case. I merely wish to follow you and aid you in your endeavours.”

“Thanks,” I stared down at the gaping hole beneath my feet and took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll be heading in first then. See you at the bottom.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” came Rue’s voice echoing down the tunnel as I slid feet first into the dungeon.

This drop wasn’t as long as the one into Clochglas had been, only about a few meters down. I ended up landing in a low cavern whose ceiling was only a bit taller than I was, its width about twice my arm span.

There was a light thud behind me as Rue landed as well, his limbs splaying out at unnatural angles.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I mean it. That looked painful.”

“Please don’t worry about it.”

We followed the tunnel downwards into the heart of the Mound, with me leading the way and Rue following behind me. The Ruler’s Grave was a maze of tunnels and underground chambers. While it was linear enough that you wouldn’t exactly get lost, I still occasionally snuck glances back at Rue to make sure he was following along.

“So, are you a…local?” I asked, leading us down a separate tunnel that I knew was on the way to the miniboss. “Or are you a player? I can add you to my friends list if you’re a player.”

“Oh… I’m an NPC,” Rue said, surprisingly nonchalant about it. “I’m afraid that I am not one of Her Highness’s Champions.”

“NPC? How do you know about that term?”

“We all know about it. It’s a term that F— that the Champions use often.”

“I guess we do use that often…” It didn’t really occur to me that the NPCs could pick up on things like that, though in hindsight, it was probably obvious.

He fell silent for a moment. I continued talking, trying to make conversation.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you about this trip?”

“Umm…3 maybe?” Rue answered.

“That’s pretty low… Have you gone dungeon diving before?”

“No… this is my first time venturing into a dungeon with someone else.”

“What about on your own?”

“… Only once or twice,” Rue admitted.

“Hey, that’s not bad!”

“It isn’t?”

“Once or twice is better than none. It means you know what to expect.”

“Oh,” Rue looked down at his hands.

Following that, we lapsed into silence, following the tunnel all the way to the end.

It opened up onto a ledge overlooking a much larger chamber, stalactites hanging down from the ceiling like jagged knives. Below us were a group of sluaghs, their bat-like wings folded behind their backs, long tendrils extending in front of them, feeling the air.

They looked a bit like Slenderman, faceless and featureless. Except without the tux. And dressed in rags. There were about six or seven of them in the pit, all Level 30. I turned to Rue.

“How do you want to approach this?” I asked. “You can stay up here while I draw aggro if you want.”

“Is that alright?” Rue glanced at the sluaghs. “Their reach is quite far. A bit dangerous for a Kobold to go down there alone.”

“I should be fine.”

“Very well then… I’ll stay up here,” With a flourish, a staff appeared in Rue’s hand. It was long and slender, engraved with intricate leaves and vines. I didn’t recognise it as any staff weapon I’d seen before in the game. “I will provide… support.”

“Okay,” I looked down at the pit and calculated my moves. First the straggler on the left, then the closest 2 on the right… got it. “Here I go.”

I jumped down into the pit, angling myself to fall on top of one of the sluaghs. It hadn’t seen me yet, thanks to In the Dead of Night, and it just kinda stood there as I slashed a long line down its face.

“CREEEE!” It shrieked, flailing its tendrils. The recoil from my attack helped propel me back, just barely out of reach. Dashing forwards, I hit it with another two slashes in quick succession, bringing it down to half health before springing away.

The sluagh turned in my direction, its tendrils flailing wildly. As it hobbled towards me, a ball of something began to form in its throat, bloating bigger and bigger until it swelled up like a bullfrog. I counted down each second.

And—now. I leapt sideways and dodged the spray of acid the sluagh spit at me, then dashed forwards again to land another two slashes on its belly. The sluagh shoved at me, which I managed to just barely dodge with a vertical jump.

The other sluaghs were just starting to react, turning around to face me, and the current one I was dealing with was already down to 30% health. So far so good.

Twisting in the air, I prepared to cast Throwing Knives, but—

“Wrath of Ebony!”

A series of obsidian pillars erupted up from the ground and pierced the sluagh through the chest, killing it instantly. From the ledge, I could see Rue raising his staff to cast another spell.

“Viridescent Vines!”

He shouted again, and waved his staff to the right. Following his movement, a trail of emerald thorns leapt up from the ground and coursed towards the sluaghs, snaking up their bodies and anchoring them in place.

“Invisibility.”

I turned Invisible and, thanks to the 300% speed increase, dashed halfway across the room towards the two target sluaghs, who were writhing against their binds.

“Attack. Speed,” I hacked away at both of them, reducing them to a quarter of their health within moments.

“Poison Ivy!”

“Throwing Knives.”

“Brambles!”

We continued on like this, mowing through the remaining sluaghs with a lot more ease than I would have been able to on my own. Rue would anchor them in place with his various binding skills while I hacked away at them one at a time, dealing reasonably good damage with my combination of Gift of the Sun and Gift of the Wind. Occasionally, I would use Invisibility to get a crit off, killing the sluaghs even faster.

Every time Rue raised his staff, I braced myself to dodge out of the way of collateral damage, but the moment never came. He seemed to have a very solid grasp on where to place his spells even with the delayed casting effect, making sure that the skills only ever hit the target enemies and not me. Soon, the entire room was cleared.

“Hey, good job with assisting there,” I called out to Rue as he hopped down from the ledge and into the pit to join me. “Made the job a whole lot easier.”

“My pleasure,” he nodded in acknowledgement. “Where to next?”

“This way,” I resumed my place in the lead and headed towards another tunnel. Unlike the Crimson Hall, there was no reward for fully clearing the Ruler’s Grave, so I intended to take the most direct route to the boss.

We passed through three other similar chambers, all filled with varying numbers of sluaghs. Most of the time I was the one dealing damage while Rue carried out assists, but occasionally Rue would cast an AOE spell that took out all the sluaghs in one go. Those kinds of spells seemed to be MP intensive, so he didn’t cast them often, but when he did, it was highly effective. I’d find myself grappling with the sluaghs one moment, and standing amongst disintegrating corpses the next.

Effective, but almost too effective. I recognised the skills Rue was using as 3 cost skills that could be found in the Briar Elf skill tree, that even I could use if I wanted to pick them. For comparison, let’s say that my Throwing Knives skill (a 3 cost one) was able to take off 10% HP on every hit. Yet every single one of Rue’s spells was able to one shot the Level 30 sluaghs as if they were nothing.

What kind of Level 30 would be able to one shot another Level 30? He seemed to be holding back. Letting me take the glory of killing the enemies while he played support, when it logically should be the other way round. Well, to be fair, he never did answer with his own Level when I gave him mine.

But why though? What was the point of holding back? To make me feel good about myself? Or something else?

Feeling a bit confused, I asked him about it after we’d cleared the final chamber before the miniboss.

“Hey, Rue, quick question,” I called to him as he was finishing off the last sluagh with another Wrath of Ebony.

“What is it?” He turned and glanced questioningly in my direction.

“You could take the lead if you want,” I gestured around at the empty chamber. “You seem to be overleveled for this.“

His eyes widened.

“Me? Overleveled? Surely not…” he mumbled and tugged at his shirt collar.

“Really? So far you’ve managed to one shot everything in this dungeon.”

“That… I am… not overleveled. It was luck. Yes. It was luck,” I raised my eyebrows as he spoke. “Really, it was. I got lucky with some critical hits.”

“Crit on every single hit?”

“… Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Alright then,” I shrugged. Pushing it too much was never a good idea. “We can talk about this later. Miniboss first.”

Rue seemed to heave a sigh of relief.

“Yes. Miniboss first. If you wish, I will participate more actively in our battles,” he resigned. Then, in a more deliberate, resolute manner, “You will see that I truly was getting lucky.”

I nodded doubtfully and headed down another tunnel, one that I knew would lead to the miniboss.

The floor of the tunnel had become steeper as we descended deeper into the Mound, slanting downwards at a nerve wracking 45 degree angle. The mixture of dirt and rocks lining the walls and the floor gave way to solid stone, making it apparent that we were heading down into bedrock territory.

According to Briarwood lore, the Ruler’s Grave was the grave of an old vampire known as the Parched Baron. He kept causing trouble, feasting off of the blood of the innocents, ruling like a tyrant, and all that evil villain stuff. So he was challenged and killed by Rosa, who then buried him in the Mounds.

Yet no one could expect he would come back to life, crawling out of his grave and running around the countryside sucking on people’s blood like a mosquito. Every time he was killed and buried, he would rise again, more bloodthirsty than the last.

Eventually, Rosa lost her temper and buried him upside down to suppress his power, planting a hawthorn tree and a thicket of brambles over him to keep him there permanently. Though…

I glanced back at the twisting turns of the tunnels. It didn’t exactly suppress him all that much. He just ended up going down instead of up.

“It is a long way down, isn’t it?” commented Rue, looking back up where we’d come. The opening we’d dropped down from was no longer visible, lost amongst the twisting turns of the dungeon.

“It is…”

I was about to respond when the tunnel opened up again, this time into a cavern much larger than the previous ones had been. The ceiling towered high above us, while the ground stretched away deep into the earth. Embedded in the craggy stone walls were a number of glowing gemstones, lighting the boss arena in a creepy red light. BR lore mentioned that those gemstones were the coagulated blood droplets of the Parched Baron after he’d been killed in battle by Rosa. They glowed red with his power, and wouldn’t ever be extinguished until he died for good.

Sitting in the centre of the cavern, at the deepest spot in the pit, was a large sluagh. Yet unlike the other sluaghs we’d met before, this one was huge and bloated, and crawled on its many arms and legs. Its tendrils whipped the air more fervently than the others, and occasionally its skin flaps would pulsate with a gruesome air to it.

We perched on the ledge and surveyed the monstrosity.

“So I go first? Like all the other times?” I confirmed with Rue.

“Yes. But I will be right behind you this time,” he said, his nervous attire replaced with what seemed to be determination. “Please do not worry.”

“Right behind me? Make sure you don’t stab me in the back, okay?” I joked.

Rue shook his head incredulously.

“I would never.”

“Kidding,” or at least, half kidding. “Well, here I go.”

I jumped down into the pit, with Rue following swiftly after me.

The sluagh turned at the noise, spotting us running towards it at full speed. It roared, and charged towards us, its tendrils snapping out in front of it like whips.

Rue stopped halfway, just out of reach of the tendrils, and raised his staff. I continued on past him, dashing all the way into the sluagh’s face.

“Wrath of Ebony!”

The boss shrieked as the spikes pierced through it, taking off almost all… 10% of its health. Huh.

No… Surely the “crit on every hit” claim wasn’t real.

Looking back, Rue seemed to smile, his eyes glinting with a satisfied air. An uncharacteristically smug “I told you so”, if you will.

Hmm… suspicious.

Very suspicious.

I was so engrossed in contemplating how suspicious it all was, that I didn’t realise till last second as a tendril came whipping down towards my face.

Whoops.