Many of the locations I visited during my trek across Placeholder wouldn’t have been out of place on Earth. Plains. Forests. Even the desert and the arctic region weren’t that different (residents notwithstanding).

However, there were a few points that definitely reminded me I was in a fantasy world.

The air dungeon was definitely one of those.

---

Even though I didn’t have any further interruptions on my way to the mountains, it was still winter when I finally got there.

Turns out, Placeholder’s kinda big, I thought as I looked back over all the traveling I had done in the past several months. Then I frowned. Actually, wait a second… If earth was in the far south, ice was in the far north, and fire was in the far east… I’ve traveled most of the length and half the breadth of Placeholder in a little less than a year… On foot.

A part of me wondered if that usage of breadth even made sense, but I ignored that and kept thinking about the distances I’d traveled as I finally started my trek up the mountains.

System: Zone entered, Great Central Mountains. Faction - Neutral

Well, I thought about the distances I’d traveled right up until I got that System prompt, of course.

“Oh, hail,” I muttered. “Please, I beg of you, just let it be a low spawn rate one, like fire and ice.”

I didn’t immediately get jumped by a horde of mountain trolls carrying bears on their backs, so the god of irony must have been otherwise occupied.

I did get attacked by some of the budget gargoyles, but that was nothing a few [Elemental Strikes] couldn’t fix.

Eventually, I got to the point where I had to do my own brand of rock climbing, but I was worried that I wasn’t even on the right mountain yet… A fact that was confirmed when I got to the top that night and saw even taller mountains ahead of me.

And it’s at the very top of the tallest mountain, eh? I sighed. At least the party’s going to have a hard time getting there too.

A gust of wind blew and threatened to push me off the side, but I managed to regain my footing.

“That was close,” I muttered and shivered. However, it wasn’t a shiver from the close call, and that was the weirder thing. Fortunately, the System prompt cleared it up.

System: You are chilled, and your movements are slowed

“I’m cold?” I asked incredulously. “I went swimming in freaking arctic ice without a problem, but a bit of wind at night in these mountains, and I get a status effect!?”

I grumbled and shivered as I continued my trek.

When the chill effect got too bad, I hit myself with a [Fire Strike], which cleared it. So, it ended up not being a big deal, even if it was a bit uncomfortable actually being cold for the first time in a while. However, it still slowed my climbing down because that was yet another thing I had to allocate stamina to. Fortunately, when the sun was back up and shining, I was warm enough that chilled didn’t apply.

My travels continued like that for a while. I also continuously wondered if the next mountain had the dungeon at the top because I had no way of easily telling which one was the largest. Unlike the volcanoes in the east, I couldn’t easily wander around and check, and the zone was huge in comparison.

I was worried that I would spend months searching mountain after mountain, never knowing if the next one was the one.

It was a needless concern. When I saw it, it immediately removed all doubt.

“Yup,” I said. “That’s it.”

I looked across at a mountain that stood entirely by itself and whose top wasn’t visible. The fog that indicated the end of render distance made sure of that.

That’s going to be one long climb… I took another look up and down the next giant obstacle in my path and then had a strange thought. I wonder how far away you could see that mountain if it wasn’t for render distance?

I began my climb down my current mountain as I mulled that over.

I bet you could see Everest from a couple hundred miles away on Earth… And if I had to guess, I think that mountain is even taller. Also, Placeholder seems fairly flat … So that might be a sight that you could see from most of the kingdoms.

I felt like I was missing something, but then I finally remembered why Everest wasn’t visible from everywhere.

“Duh,” I said. “The curvature of the Earth. So, it doesn’t matter how big these mountains are if the world is curved enough.” Then I paused. “Wait. Does this world have to have curvature at all?”

I thought back to what I knew about game design since I apparently had a bit of knowledge about that stuffed somewhere in my brain as well.

“No. Please no.”

I tried to convince myself otherwise, but it was impossible to escape the most likely conclusion.

“The flat Earthers are right,” I sighed as I softly hit my head into the wall I was busy climbing down. Then I corrected myself, “Probably. If the System’s advanced enough to have full-blown physics and a contextual chat filter, it can probably work with spherical coordinates[1]… Right?”

I didn’t believe the words coming out of my own mouth, so I decided not to dwell on that any further.

After that, there was the matter of picking which side of the mountain I wanted to try climbing up.

That ended up being pretty easy because there was only one side that didn’t immediately turn into a vertical climb.

Homestretch. I thought as I stood at the base of the mountain. Nothing can stop me now.

-----

As I crouched down with wind and snow howling around me, I couldn’t help but curse my luck… And my past self.

“You had to think it. Didn’t you?” I asked.

The snowstorm reduced visibility to a few scant feet, and I was [Fire Striking] myself every couple of seconds to fend off the cold.

I stayed in that miserable position for a few hours, but I started to get restless.

I know that staying put’s the safest, but there’ve barely been any monsters.

I also had an irrational worry that the snowstorm was putting me behind. The reason that was unfounded? If the party was further up the mountain, the storm would be hitting them just as hard. If the party was behind me, then it didn’t matter anyway because I was already going to win the race.

That didn’t stop it from gnawing at me, though.

When the storm went into its second day, at least as far as I could kinda guess based on light, I gave up.

Fine. I’ll keep moving ahead slowly.

I carefully put one foot after the other and slowly kept up my hike. There weren’t any walls that I had to climb, but I still had to be careful, or the wind would slide me off the mountain.

Despite all that, I continued my trek upward and made decent progress. The storm even died down a bit, and I could see almost 10 feet in front of me. That, combined with the flat ground I found myself on were more than enough to lull me into a false sense of security. I picked up the pace a little bit.

However, I didn’t account for how slippery the ground was.

A huge gust of wind kicked up, and I found myself sliding uncontrollably.

I tried to slam an [Earth Strike] into the ground to stop myself, but I lost my balance even further, and it just glanced off the surface.

Fortunately, I hit something and came to a stop in a tangled heap.

What the heck? I asked.

Another voice joined my confused internal one. “Something hit my tent!”

The voice’s owner and I both freed ourselves at the same time, and we were left staring at each other.

“Titus,” Jake said in disbelief.

I immediately turned and ran away on the unsteady ground.

“Titus! Wait!” Jake called after me. “I just want to talk!”

Yeah. Sure. I rolled my eyes. Based on the fact that Jake kept calling out to me and that he didn’t sound much farther away, I could only assume that he was chasing me.

Fortunately, the flat ground ended soon enough, and I reached a vertical wall. Good luck following me up this, [Hero]. I started [Earth Striking] my way up, but I was only about a dozen feet in the air when Jake reached the wall.

“Titus! Come down, we can talk about this!” he called out.

“It was a good try, [Hero],” I called back. “But it looks like I’m going home after all.”

I barely caught a hint of something that sounded like a censored swear, and Jake started following me up the wall.

Frick. I didn’t realize that I’m leaving him perfect handholds too. Since my climbing also cost 3 SP per handhold, I knew that Jake would run me out sooner rather than later.

However, as I looked down, I noticed that I was still losing him. As he slowly reached for the next handhold, the reason became clear.

Ah. He’s chilled.

All in all, that meant that it ended up being a strangely even race. I had to use SP to make handholds and clear the chilled effect on myself, while Jake had to contend with becoming slower and slower due to the cold.

I’d pull ahead for a while due to the speed advantage, then Jake would make up the ground while I was regaining SP.

“Would you just give up already?” I snarled back at Jake the 5th time he almost caught up to me.

“N-n-nope,” he said through chattering teeth. “D-d-don’t you know? Nnot giving up is kinda the [Hero’s] thing.”

I pulled away from him again and again, but again and again, he would catch up. I wondered how he was even moving with how chilled he was and how he hadn’t run completely out of stamina.

“C-c-can we talk now?” Jake asked as he caught up for the umpteenth time.

“No,” I said flatly as I turned to keep climbing. “Nothing that you can say will change my mind.”

“I-I-I don’t think that’s true. I have something important to-“

“Something important to?”

I waited for him to continue for half a second and then looked back.

Jake was gone.

My mind tried to process what I wasn’t seeing, and I think I went into a bit of shock.

Oh, no. Oh, frick. Ship.

My hands started shaking as I took a calming breath.

It’s okay. He’s the [Hero]. He has plot armor. If he didn’t survive that fall, there’d be a reset. I nodded to myself. Or he’s still falling, and the reset is still-

“I have something important to-“ Jake said.

I tried to process my sudden snapback to the past, and I looked back at Jake just as his hand slipped out of one of the handholds.

I had only a split second to decide on my course of action.

I could have let him fall again. I could have tested if his plot armor would somehow save him another way. I could have decided that his death would be for the best as there would be one fewer obstacle in my way.

… Yeah, right. There wasn’t a choice at all.

“Dang it, [Hero]!” I shouted as I let go of my holds and dove after him.

So, the two of us fell. The wind and snow whistled past us. I reached out my hand and tried to grab Jake’s, all the while trying not to brush against the wall that we were right next to.

“Reach, [Hero]!” I called to him.

His arms remained still.

“I can’t!” he called back. “The status effect changed to Frozen! I can’t move!”

It was no use. He was just a foot out of reach, but it may as well have been a mile. I had no way to cover it.

Then I realized… I did.

“[Flash Step]!” I yelled as I awkwardly kicked off the wall.

Hey, as I’d previously figured out, [Flash Step] works in any direction. So why not down?

My bet paid off, and I collided with Jake. That almost knocked him away, but I managed to keep hold.

Unfortunately, that still left us as two people hurtling towards our deaths.

“Now what?” Jake asked with surprising calm.

“I’m kinda playing this by ear,” I replied.

“Well, you should probably figure that out soon.”

I ignored him and thought over the situation. I need to stop us, or at least slow us down. I looked to the ground that was who knows how far off, and then at the wall that we were passing by in a blur.

“Oh… This is gonna suck,” I said.

I switched to holding Jake only in my left arm. Then I slammed my right fist into the wall with an [Earth Strike] as hard as I could.

I grit my teeth but still gave a muffled scream of pain as my health bar dropped to about a quarter, and my arm was dragged through a couple of feet of solid stone.

Both of my arms felt like they had been yanked out of their sockets, and my right arm felt like I had run it through an industrial-strength cheese grater.

I just stayed there for a second. Right arm stuck in the side of a mountain and left arm holding up the [Hero] of the world.

“You okay, Titus?” Jake finally asked.

I shook my head to try to clear it. “Uhh. Yeah. But, would you mind not following me until the storm’s over? I might not be around to save you again.”

“Well, you’re kinda stuck with me right now,” he replied. “I still can’t move. Remember?”

Oh. Right. What am I supposed to do with him?

“So… Can we talk now?” he asked.

“Sure, [Hero],” I sighed. “What do you want?”

No sooner had I said that than a gust of wind whipped up and almost made me lose my grip on him.

He blanched a bit. “Maybe… We get to somewhere safer first?”

I nodded my agreement, and he, verbally, pointed out a cleft in the rock. I awkwardly put Jake on my back, and we… or I guess I… made our way to it.

It was a bit cramped with the two of us in there, but I was able to put Jake’s frozen body across from me. Then I just stood there looking at him.

We looked at each other in awkward silence for a bit.

“It’s really comin’ down out there, isn’t it?” Jake asked as the storm found its second wind and began blowing even harder.

“You wanted to talk,” I said. “So... Talk.”

“I don’t suppose you could spare some heat?” he asked. “I think I might be losing a bit of HP. Also, it’s kinda weird not being able to look at you and stuff.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, [Hero]. If you pull out your sword, you know as well as I do that it will only take a single [Sunder] to kill me. I can’t take that risk.”

“Alright then.” His sword appeared in his hand, and I jumped back in panic. “Take it.”

I eyed him suspiciously, and I imagine he tried to hand it over to me, but he still couldn’t move.

“If you’re that worried about what I’ll do, take the sword. Put it in your inventory. We both know I can’t take you in a fistfight anyway, right?” Jake said.

“And you trust me with it?” I asked, suspicion still heavy in my voice.

Jake sighed. “Yes. You just saved my life. Again. How many times does that make it?”

“Three,” I said absentmindedly.

“Three?”

“Yes. Mimic in the Faroff Forest dungeon-“

“Okay, we still don’t know that would’ve kill-“

“Dragon in the Dragonlands where I [Disrupted] his fire breath and then covered you for its second one-“

“Yeah. I’ll give you that one,” Jake sighed. “So, with this one, that’s two and half times. But still, my point stands. You obviously don’t want me dead, and you also returned my sword the last time you took it when you didn’t have to. So. Yes. I trust you with it. Take it, and then hit me so we can talk.”

We both took a second as we parsed the last part of his sentence, but I acquiesced. I pulled the Hero’s Sword into my inventory and punched Jake with a [Fire Strike]. I tried to hold back, but I apparently didn’t do as well as I thought since he grimaced in pain.

“Thanks,” he said as he sat up. We sat down across from each other, and it looked like he was trying to find the words to say.

I soon reached my limit for the awkward silence. “If you’re trying to talk me out of completing the quest, it isn’t going to work.”

“Because you have to complete it no matter what?”

I shrugged. “I guess you could put it that way.”

Jake leaned forward. “Then Titus… That isn’t you.”

I leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Think about it! Were you a schemer or a liar back on Earth? Would you have ever been able to pull off what you did with our party?” He gestured wildly with his hands. “Would you have ever had it in you to lie to our faces like that? Or would you have willingly gone along with a plan that could destroy the world?”

Where is he going with this? “No,” I shook my head.

“Exactly!” he nearly shouted. “Titus, your class is messing with your head! Just like mine did!”

I was about to give him a rebuttal for why my class wasn’t influencing me, but the second part of his statement shocked me. “Your class did what?” I asked.

“It messed with my head,” Jake said simply. “After I saw you become the Demon Lord of Wrath, I could hardly focus on anything but killing you. And then even just knowing that you were the [Demon Lord] was enough to...” Jake trailed off and looked forlorn. “Titus… There was a point where I would have straight-up murdered you.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that, and an awkward silence descended once more.

“So… I know Megan’s death hit you hard… And I know you feel responsible… But there wasn’t anything else you could’ve done!” he said. I watched impassively as he continued. “If you hadn’t gone into that second form, we all would have died.” He paused there for a bit and frowned. “It’ll take the party some time to come around, and I don’t know what all the Placeholderlings will think, but you don’t have to go through with this!”

He held out his hand to me. “Give up the quest. Rejoin the party,” he said.

I pointedly ignored the hand for a second. “And what if my class isn’t the reason I won’t give up the quest?” I asked.

He put his hand down with a frown. “No. I get it. You don’t believe me.” He scratched his head. “Agh. How can I prove this?” he muttered. He snapped his fingers. “Tim! You remember how Tim talked when we just got here, right? That’s his class messing with him! Then there’s the memories…” he cut himself off as he winced and shook his head. “But those never go well when I bring them up,” he muttered.

“Memories?” I asked.

“Just… some memories that have been messed with is all,” he said evasively.

Wait… Did he figure out the patching? “Like… the [Sorcerer] class?”

Jake winced but nodded. “So you did notice! I thought I was the only one! But the more I talk about it, the worse my headaches get.” He paused. “Why are you fine?”

I shrugged. “[Memory Protection].”

“Dang. I knew that there had to be more to that perk.” He shivered a bit against the cold but continued. “That means you get my point, right? This world has been messing with all of us! You have to notice it before you can really counteract it, but-“

“I’m not doing this because my head’s been messed with, [Hero]!” I snapped as I rose to my feet.

“Then why?” he asked, as he also stood up. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to go home! I hate this stupid world! I want my old life back!” I turned towards the entrance to our hideout and muttered. “And I’m tired of being a monster.”

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “You aren’t a monster, Titus.”

I knocked it off me as I turned towards him. “Yes. Yes, I am. AltSy- I mean, this world made me one. Whether I wanted to be or not. So, I’m going home where I won’t be one.”

Jake frowned. “But can you even be sure that the quest isn’t lying to you? I mean, I got [Messaged] by someone who was impersonating the System, and I-“

“You what?” I stopped him short.

“I got [Messaged] by someone impersonating the System,” he shrugged. “The format looked off, and the way he talked directly to me made it pretty obvious.”

“Capital S, with an extra space before the colon?”

“I think so… Wait. He [Messaged] you too?”

“Yes. What did that a-hole want?” I had to tamp down on my vitriol a bit after that lest I accidentally activate wrath form.

Jake looked at me in surprise before saying, “He just wanted me to not push the rest of the party too hard when it comes to the memories. He ended up being right, I think. Pushing it just gave us all headaches and didn’t help much.”

I snorted. “Then you might consider ignoring his advice since it was oh so helpful for me.” Jake was a bit puzzled, so I elaborated. “He’s the one who told me to say I was a [Half-Demon]. He’s the one who told me to claim the Faroff Forest Dungeon, which nearly got me killed. And finally, he’s the one who told me to not tell you I’m the [Demon Lord].” I chuckled dryly. “If I hadn’t listened to him, we could still have been friends.” I pulled out Megan’s necklace and stared at it for a second before saying softly. “And Megan would never have had to die.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Jake replied softly. “I don’t know how I would have handled knowing you were the [Demon Lord] before I learned to counteract the changes my class is trying to force on me. It might have been a good thing that-”

“You’re wrong! Everything that has happened here is his fault!” I roared.

Even as the System told me that it was attempting to activate wrath form, I could feel my wrath aura rush out. It met Jake’s aura, which gave way for a split second, but then solidified.

In some ways, that clash felt like a worse storm than the one that was going on outside.

We stared at each other as our auras clashed, but neither of us moved an inch.

However, wrath form would be activated if I didn’t stop it, and I still didn’t want Jake to end up dead, even if it would probably be reset anyway.

I [Disrupted] the transformation and put the necklace back into my inventory.

I mimicked Jake’s breathing technique for a few moments, then finally said, “I have a name for the admin who has an extra space in his name. AltSys. He’s the one who brought us here. He’s the one who made me into this… monster.”

I saw Jake mouth the word “admin,” but I kept going.

“So, [Hero]. You won’t talk me out of this. Completing the quest is the only way I go home, and it’s the only way to ensure AltSys pays for what he’s done.”

“You would go through with this, even if it might mean hurting a bunch of innocent people?”

I shrugged. “That’s what the [Hero’s] for, right? You’ll protect all of them.”

“Titus, we’re talking a portal to Hell. There’s no way that you can be sure I’ll be able to protect everyone from that!”

I paused for a second, then muttered softly. “I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter much either way.”

Jake glared at me. “The heck, you mean it doesn’t matter either way?”

I figured my following statement might cause a reset, but I was done caring for the moment. “Because we don’t even exist, [Hero]!”

He paused at that. “We… what?”

I laughed. “Think, [Hero]. We’re in a world that’s like a video game. There are even people who have admin abilities. Also, we were isekaied. What does every single isekai character have in common?”

“They were taken to another world?”

“They’re characters. They. Don’t. Exist.” I said. “You never hear stories of real people being taken to a new world. It’s a fantasy genre, for crying out loud! Also, you can’t take someone that’s not in a game and put them into a game unless they were already digital in the first place!” I laughed bitterly. “So, that’s the cruel joke. As far as I can tell, we’re just a bunch of bits on a server somewhere.” I turned away from him. “So, yes, [Hero]. In the end, we don’t even exist, so it doesn’t even matter.”

I was mildly surprised that had all gone through without a reset, but I figured that had finally ended the discussion.

I started walking back toward the entrance of our small cove when Jake called after me. “So, what?”

I turned back to him and just raised an eyebrow.

“So, what if we’re just bits on a server?” he said. “That means everyone else is too. And their smiles, their tears, their laughter, and their pain are all just as real as mine.” He looked at me intensely. “And I know you believe that too. Otherwise… Why bother saving me at all?”

He had good points, but I… couldn’t afford to believe them.

“Good luck with the climb, [Hero],” I said as I made my way back into the howling snowstorm outside. “You and the rest of the party should make sure to wait for better weather.”

“Titus!” he called after me. I ignored him and began my climb. He called once or twice more, but I was resolute.

Once I was sure I was far enough away, I also roughly threw his sword back down into the cleft point first and stuck it into the icy rock in front of his feet.

Jake wisely didn’t follow me, so I had an uncontested but quite stormy trip to the top of the mountain. When I finally made it there, visibility was still close to nil. I decided it would be best to camp out and wait for the storm to pass.

The next hours were miserable and cold, but when the storm cleared, I was glad that I’d stayed in place.

The mountain top that I was on was maybe 100 feet across. It would have been far too easy to take a tumble off it. Also, there was another problem…

“Where’s the dungeon?”

Unlike the ice dungeon that was obvious at a distance and the fire dungeon that had giant doors showing the entrance, I only saw a small platform in the middle of the plateau. There was nothing else.

Guess I start there. I wandered over to the platform and took a better look at it. It was about 10 feet across, made of silver, and had a bunch of seemingly random markings on it. I put on my best detective hat, studied it further, and came to a stunning conclusion.

“It seems to run on some sort of magic,” I stated to thin air.

Yeah… that was it. I had no idea what it was doing there or what its purpose could be, but it looked and felt magical.

Fortunately, the designers of that specific platform made it pretty much idiot-proof. As soon as I actually stepped on it, my mana bar started going down.

Oh! I need to charge it! I let it drain all of my mana… And nothing happened.

I looked at the platform and then back at my empty MP bar. “Well. That’s disappointing,” I muttered. “Shouldn’t it have done… Something?”

I assumed it had to be related to the dungeon somehow because otherwise, the prophecy wouldn’t have mentioned that specific spot. Right?

I examined the rest of the platform and finally spotted a tiny inscription.

Telepad to the Air Dungeon - MP Cost - 250

I flipped open my status page and stared at my 247 maximum MP.

“You’ve gotta be frickin kidding me.”

----

As much as Jake wanted to follow Titus, he knew that his stamina wouldn’t hold up for a second chase. Also, while [Grit] allowed him to mitigate the chilled status effect, it apparently didn’t do a thing to help with the frozen one.

Titus probably wouldn’t be able to catch me if I fell again. Jake shook his head. How does he keep doing that anyway? He was looking away from me right up until the moment I fell.

Jake passed a restless and cold night, but fortunately, his inventory did at least have some blankets and other emergency cold gear. He was able to wait for the storm to break and for the party to come and get him with only some discomfort.

As the party began their climb once again, Jake was… preoccupied.

I failed. We lost the race, and I couldn’t get Titus to stop. He hammered yet another piton into the rock as he looked down at the rest of the party. The mages were struggling a bit, and Andrew especially so. They were following the handholds that Titus had left them, but comfortable handholds for a [Demon Lord] who’s over 6 feet tall are a bit far apart for a 4-foot dwarf [Cleric].

He called another break as their stamina bars were getting close to empty, and they all tried to relax in their harnesses.

I’m so stupid. Jake berated himself. I should have left Sam, Andrew, and Tim behind. We could’ve been at the top of the mountain before Titus even got here if we didn’t have to wait for them and their tiny stamina bars.

However, Jake knew that he was mostly just trying to find something to direct his frustrations at. There was no way they would go to an unknown area without their elemental damage or healer.

He also had to confront an uncomfortable question.

Titus is basically guaranteed to claim this dungeon before us… And this is the last one. Is the only way to stop him after that to kill him? He frowned. And if that is the only option… Am I going to be able to do it?

His class immediately answered yes, but he found that influence and set it aside. He… didn’t know. Also, 99% of the time, a portal to Hell’s bad, but can I know for sure?

He didn’t have a reliable source of information.

The prophecy was bunk, except for the parts that had said where the dungeons were. And the part that said who he was and his class. And the part that… Okay, it was mostly accurate, but it also lied and said there was a [Half-Demon]. So he had no clue if the portal was actually a “very bad thing” or not.

His class told him that the portal was a world-ending threat, but could he really trust something that was trying to control his mind?

Finally, there was his own gut. That was the least useful of them all because it was mostly just telling him that he hated the entire situation.

So, Jake was in a foul mood and ended up snapping a bit at his party members. Garrett called him out on it, and he did apologize, but everyone was relieved for more than one reason when they finally managed to finish their climb.

“So… Where’s the dungeon?” Sam asked as they looked out over the tiny plateau.

“I guess… We check out that platform?” Jake half-said, half-asked.

There were no arguments, so they walked over to check it out.

“Telepad to the air dungeon, 250 MP,” Emilia said. When the party gave her some weird looks, she pointed. “It’s written right there.”

“Well, let’s climb on and get this over with,” Jake said as he hopped up there first. It started draining his MP, but that was fine since it wasn’t like he used it for anything.

The rest of the party joined him, but Tim hesitated. “Wait,” he said. “You said it was 250 mana points, Emilia?”

“Yes. Why?” she replied.

Tim’s eyes shot open wide. “Everyone! Get off! Quickly!”

However, he was too late. Something burst out of the snow before vanishing and reappearing on top of the platform.

“Thanks for the lift,” Titus said.

Jake didn’t have time to react, and Tim barely had time to leap onto the platform before they all vanished.

----

After tricking the party into paying the telepad fee for me, we found ourselves in the dungeon. It was nothing like what I expected, so the only reason I knew that for sure was that the System confirmed it for me.

System: Demon Lord perk verified. Performing first-time elemental dungeon setup!

We were on top of another pad, but this one was at the bottom of a set of translucent steps that led up to a castle that looked like it was made out of glass.

I assumed we were in the sky based on all the fluffy white clouds I saw below us instead of the grey fog I usually saw when something was out of render distance.

However, I didn’t spend more than a split second taking that all in. I was on a teleport pad surrounded by potential hostiles, after all.

“[Hell Bl-“ I started casting. Since a bunch of low-level adventurers had been able to survive it, I was sure the party would have no problem. However, my cast got stuck in my throat as I caught sight of the one “party member” that definitely wouldn’t—David Junior the Second, who was still perched on Sam’s shoulder.

Fortunately, fighting the party wasn’t my goal anyway. And I wasn’t about to let them sneak past me and try to claim the dungeon from underneath my nose like the last party had.

I bolted up the steps, and the clattering of feet behind me told me that the party was right on my heels.

It was a little bit nerve-wracking climbing those steps since there was no guardrail or anything else that would keep you from plunging off the side.

Fortunately, we all made it up into the castle without any incidents. From there, it was a straight stretch to the obelisk. As I saw it off in the distance, it felt both close and very, very far away.

However, I wasn’t too worried. I had a lead on the party, and it wasn’t like there was anything they could do to catch up.

“[Sunder]!” came the call from behind me.

I dove before the first syllable was finished coming out of his mouth.

I didn’t think he’d use that on me! I rolled to the side and regained my feet as I noticed that Jake was nowhere near me. He had used the most powerful skill in existence as a way to pass me in a race, and I had panicked and dodged nothing.

That gave Jake the lead, and to make matters worse, Lindsey and Garrett had caught up to me.

I had just regained my feet when Garrett tackled me back down to the floor, and Lindsey also dogpiled me and got me into one of her martial arts holds. I ineffectually hit them with [Air Strikes], but they kept their pin on me even as we got knocked around in different directions.

I had one last card to use, and David Junior was no longer in range. “[Hell Blaze]!” I cast the red and black orb directly into Garrett’s face.

The area exploded into red and black flames that just felt… sinister. Garrett also yelled in pain as it lit him on fire, and Lindsey grunted along with him as she was on fire too.

That gave me my opening as they both let go briefly, and I [Air Striked] them away from me before regaining my feet.

However, Jake had a huge lead to the obelisk. There was no way I could catch him… if the dungeon hadn’t been in setup mode.

I made a lifting motion with my hand, and a wall shot up in front of him. He skidded to a stop and then started going to the right. I continued raising walls to cut off the entire right side as I ran to the left.

The rest of the party wasn’t going to let that go without a fight. Emilia, Tim, and Sam shot at me. Yes, even Sam. However, she was primarily shooting me with [Fire Bolts] that did nothing but throw me slightly off-balance.

Andrew even cast a [Cure] spell at me, but I just clenched my teeth through the pain and kept running.

After making a big enough break between us, I made a huge pit behind me to stop any further pursuit.

From there, it wasn’t even going to be a close race. I raised up more zig-zagging walls behind me to make the path longer, and I had a clear shot to the obelisk.

----

Jake sprinted back to the party as fast as possible as they tried to work their way around the pit.

He was the fastest in the party, but there was no way even he could catch up to Titus… Unless…

He sent the command to Andrew over the party, and Andrew balked slightly. However, Jake just repeated it.

Andrew began casting and finished the spell just as Jake got in range. “[Haste]!”

Jake struggled to control the extra speed but managed it. Then he took a running start… And leaped the pit.

He barely caught the edge at the other side and managed to pull himself up. Then he took off sprinting down the winding halls Titus had made. It took all of his focus and control just to run, but he had to do it. He had to succeed here. Or Titus…

Jake finally came into view of the obelisk. Titus had his hand on it. Jake was too late.

No. The zone hadn’t been claimed yet! He still had time!

He charged at Titus as fast as he could. He just needed to get him off the obelisk so he could claim it before him!

40 feet away, he realized that [Sunder] was off cooldown. He began charging it.

30 feet away, the System message appeared.

System: Zone, The Great Central Mountains, has been claimed by the Demon Lord Faction

25 feet away, a beam of yellow light shot off into the sky, and Jake realized it was too late.

System: The air dungeon has been claimed by the Demon Lord! No elemental dungeons remain, and he can now activate the demonic portal in the west!

20 feet away, and Jake was in range for the [Sunder]. He could end it all right there. He blinked forward with a thunderclap…

And held back. He couldn’t do it. He landed the blow, but he could tell it wasn’t fatal. It was barely stronger than a normal strike.

“Too late, [Hero],” came Titus’ deep rumbling reply before he vanished.

However, Jake didn’t have time to dwell on his failures. A boss health bar filled up as a being made of lightning appeared in the air.

----

Despite Jake holding back, it was still more than enough to push me into wrath form after all the previous damage I’d taken.

… Wrath form may have also influenced my decision to make a “thunder elemental” the boss and give it immunity to lightning damage (AKA [Sunder]).

Either way, I teleported out before I could entirely finish my transformation. That could have been terrible if the “dungeon entrance” had been back on the steps. I would have gone and hunted down the party without the [Hero] there for them to stand any chance.

Instead, I reappeared in my second form on top of the lower platform… Which was too small to hold me. I lost my balance, slid, and then ended up setting the record for fastest descent from the top of the largest mountain as I cratered into the ground far below.

It’s a good thing the Demon Lord of Wrath form has so much HP.

[1] Spherical coordinates – In a traditional coordinate system (AKA Cartesian coordinates) that you see in most games you have X, Y, and Z as your coordinates. You start at the origin (0,0,0), then move a given distance along the X, Y, and Z axis and that tells you where you are.

For games, this is the sane and normal way of doing things, unless you are trying to deal with objects that behave more like a sphere. Then you use spherical coordinates which basically define a sphere and then tell you where you’re at on it.

To give the mathematician’s version (since physicists use different variables) you have (r, θ, φ). Radial distance r (the radius of the sphere you are on), azimuthal angle θ (the amount you rotate clockwise or counterclockwise), and polar angle φ (the amount you rotate up or down).

If that 3 paragraph explanation didn’t completely lose you, congrats because it would have definitely lost me the first time I learned about them. Anyway, long story short, spherical coordinates have their place and it is not as the main coordinate system of a game 95% of the time.