[No Title] [Kaede]

Lv6 HP 100/100 MP 22/22

STR [0 + 7] VIT [115 + 84]

AGI [0] DEX [0]

INT [0] LCK [//:Maple--wKwsD]

[Provoke] [Kicking] [Giant Killing] [Kin] [Poison Immunity] [Shameless] [Tough Skin, Tough Soul] [Absolute Defense] [Meditation] [Red Herring (Attached to Shameless)]

Actual VIT: 1592

Equipment

Head [Greater Slime (Kin)] Vit + 5

Body [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Right hand [N/A]

Left Hand [Horn of the Horned Rabbit] Str + 7

Legs [Dire Wolf (Kin)] Vit + 9

Shoes [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 1 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 4 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 5 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

The world speaks to me.

...

I yell at it back.

To me, the world is but a naughty brat.

Pampered by the gods, selective of its treatment.

...

How dare that brat speak to me.

...

It believes it can control me. It believes it can quiet me.

...

It's condescending. It’s annoying. It deserves punishment.

…

I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.

…

They think that they have claimed me. That I am nothing. That I was crushed.

…

Perhaps.

Yes, I will admit that I fell. I was once overconfident.

But to take the damn credit. What an unsightly world.

…

I was killed by a hero.

A man who knew nothing of who I was, only what I had done.

I do not resent him. I do not blame him.

…

It's not his fault that the world made him, and claimed him once he finished his job.

It’s not his fault he was never given freedom.

...

It’s not his fault his abilities hurt him.

Maimed him.

Shaped him.

Ended him.

…

Cruelty in the eyes of one, is ignored in the eyes of others.

Amusement from the world, is torture for me.

…

I am him.

I am Maou.

The Demon Lord.

The Fallen Hero.

…

If force will not make you submit.

If the constant futile struggles of people amuse thee.

I will find a way.

There will be a way.

…

I will win in the end.

...

Bear my crown.

Bear my horns.

Bear my burden.

...

I could not find the answer to victory.

But history will not repeat itself.

An open mind will find a way.

I leave my will for the future.

For the next to bear my name.

…

It will not stop.

It will always interfere.

It will always toy with us.

…

My next of kin.

…

Reign hell upon the gods.

Carve your name upon the world.

…

Prevent the next victim of the cycle from emerging

Let them live.

In the modern world, blissfully ignorant of the fate you cut them from.

…

With a slight motion, a weak creaking sound and a lot of idle noise from the peanut gallery, the chest opened. Kaede bounced in place as the contents within were revealed, earnestly excited for the loot.

NWO was notorious for being stingy with its loot. It wasn’t quite like the other more annoying and non-VR MMO games of the time period. The developers of other games gave their dungeons and boss monsters stingy and weighted loot tables with large obnoxious gaps in percentiles. But NWO was above that bullshit. There was no 1% chance of ghost rares and elite equipment in NWO. A team of vengeful developers made sure no player would ever have to face the capitalistic and money-draining experiences they faced back when they played video games as children.

They based their ideology and gameplay on the golden age of video games, back when nothing was paid to advance the game unfairly and when cosmetic items were earned through merit, not deep pockets. The developers made sure that real skill would give people what they wanted.

This mindset did result with a game with a lot of bugs and exploitable features, though the ability to actually fix these exploits without monetary concern of nerfing paid content made these shortcomings minor setbacks at best.

In fact, the existence of Maple hinged on those exploits and the end result of all of this development ended up with new players flooding their servers, aiming for fun just like the happy-go-lucky Maple they had seen in the “NWO out of context” videos that went viral on the internet.

This all resulted in a loot system that was both broken and non-broken. On one hand, early players like Payne, Sally and Maple were given amazing, rare and one-of-a-kind equipment, which newer and weaker players could never hope to obtain. On the other hand, most of the common loot, which dropped quite regularly from monsters and bosses, were actually quite useful, unique and gave many options for different playstyles.

Sadly, while building the loot system, they never bothered to add more chests to the game, creating a first and sole generation of “unique loot” in the system. These first-gen items came from the only chests in the game, all designed to be opened by the first player that encountered them and do literally nothing else.

Other chests eventually came into being, but limited to events only. From prior experience, the developers feared that changing the chest system into dropping items for each player would ultimately create exploits that were Maple-level threats. This would include things like visual bugs, toxic PK trapping, social engineering plots and generally reduce the playability of the game.

Much like the legacies of many lost game mechanics, the developers simply decided that their original chest’s were to remain as relics of the past.

Kaede of course, the spastic shield gremlin, loved the feeling of opening chests. Obtaining loot that fell out of a recently murdered corpse just didn’t feel quite as great for her. Her first experience with them in-game was magical, and she would always remember earning her first generation set of Black Rose Armor.

The decision to relegate chests as one-time deals in each floor devastated her back in the day. She had managed to obtain her first armor by pure chance and exploits back in the era when people weren’t aware about first-generation armor.

Of course, after the information was leaked to the public every player wanted a set, whether for bragging rights, status or just because they looked cool. With an AGI of 0, and an unconventional fighting style, Kaede just couldn’t keep up, and no matter how many floors they released and how many secrets they shoved into the maps, she had never single-cleared another dungeon as the first. Well… at least not one of the main dungeons, she had cleared many smaller side-dungeons, proven by her identity crisis disguised as a pile of skills that she had assembled back in NWO, though those dungeons which somehow escaped the grasp of every other player, usually gave skills rather than loot.

With the prospects of actual loot in this world, Kaede was truly happy. Happy and ready to immediately dive into every dungeon she could find.

Kaede looked on with bright and shiny eyes, as she eyed the contents of the chest that revealed themselves to her.

The chest was filled to the brim with copious amounts of air.

…

Oh and also a few miscellaneous items of course. Kaede spotted a few small potions on the top of the small pile of items, which were thankfully labelled but dubious in color.

Beside them was a small scroll that was wrapped tightly in twine. Kaede immediately knew what it probably was, a one-time use magic scroll, much like the ones she used to absolutely cheese her battle with the King of Light as well as the ghosts of the haunted mansion on the 6th floor of NWO.

When Kaede snatched the consumables, she got a better look at what was underneath. Surprisingly, the items that were beneath the consumables were items Kaede was absolutely in no desperate need of.

Equipment.

Afterall, when you can just absorb creatures of death and destruction as armor and bling, who needs regular equipment? Though that was definitely true for Kaede, she decided to check out the statistics of the items inside for herself before dismissing them as useless.

Of the 3 pieces of equipment, the first one was a pair of small, dark horns.

[Horns Of The One True Lord] (Accessory)

+10 VIT +10 HP

Horns have a cosmetic effect which makes them look naturally integrated into the wearer. Gives the user a Demonic Tail, which is a limb that is strong enough to hold equivalent to players arm strength. While equipped, the wearer gains skill [Tail Whip]. Wearer also gains health regeneration equal to 10% of maximum HP every 20 seconds. Indestructible.

“Haa? Isn’t this better than Meditation?” Kaede yelled, shocked at the stats of the item she was holding. Meditation only gave 1% of the users Max HP every 10 seconds and only triggered for a certain amount of time in a certain condition. This was just a flat regeneration bonus topped on with extra stats and extra skills on an invincible item.

Of course, Kaede couldn’t help but put it on immediately. “Sorry Mr Rabbit! You can go join the others!” she said as the rabbit that occupied her primary accessory slot popped out of her head and fell to the ground.

Immediately a black aura began to swirl around Kaede, dark vortexes and horrific waves of power made the surrounding monsters feel a chill on their backs. Then, two dark horns jutted out of Kaede’s head, which despite their background being on dark hair, managed to ignore the laws of light distribution and stand out. As they appeared, Kaede began to feel weird around her butt. Not in a sexual way of course, rather she felt like she could move it. Looking behind her, out of the fluffy tail of the direwolf she was using as underwear, she could see another tail popping out of it. A tail that she could control and swing around.

It was a very weird feeling for Kaede. The tail she grew was far more flexible than an arm, though when she tried to pick up the other items in the chest to inspect them, she realized that a tail doesn’t have opposable digits like thumbs, meaning that carrying objects was different than she expected. In a way it was like having an arm on your butt that controlled like a foot.

Of course, the ditzy, spastic Kaede was not at all skilled in using her feet for anything other than walking, which translated to the whole “extra limb” thing being useless.

It still looked cool though, so Kaede didn’t really complain. As if responding to her compliment the tail wagged and curled into a heart shape. And with Kaede being Kaede, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, Kaede just waved back. At her own tail. On her own butt.

It was a very Kaede moment.

With her test of her ability to use her tail coming out as a failure, Kaede instead moved on to check the other items with her more common limbs, her hands.

The next object of interest was a battle dress, which translated into a very skimpy piece of armor that looked like it was designed for someone far more endowed than Kaede was.

[C Rank Mythril Bikini Armor Piece (Top)]

+15 VIT +40 SPD +50 Attractiveness 500 Durability

…

So apparently attractiveness was a statistic. However, Kaede shuddered thinking about anyone seeing her wearing something like this without Risa beside her. It just didn’t feel right wearing something so revealing without other people wearing revealing clothes around her to share the stares. In fact, the last time she had worn something similar to this, it was during the summer season, when she and Risa learned that the designs of their unique armor sets happened to be sold in real life as swimwear, which immediately prompted them to order them online and then immediately go out to the beach for a day in the sun. (A/N Yes I made a Kadokawa merch reference :L) So she just threw it behind her lazily.

It landed on the Horned Rabbit that just left her noggin. Suddenly, a lot of heads were turned towards that particular rabbit.

With that piece of equipment being a dud in Kaede’s not at all professional opinion, she moved on to the final piece of equipment, which was a necklace.

[Cursed Necklace of Consummation]

-300 DEX -300 STR -300 AGI

Consumes the user's soul. Does literally nothing else.

…

Nope.

As Kaede gathered up the 4 potions which she not at all expertly designated as 3 stale Health Potions and an unknown potion of dubious origin which she was absolutely going to drink because Poison Immunity gives you that mindset, she then took a nice long look at the scroll she was provided with. Unlike the scrolls she was used to spamming at enemies from a distance, this scroll seemed to be inscribed with an expertly powerful amount of teleportation magic which would let her teleport to areas she had fond memories of. At least that was what the status screen was telling her.

With no more problems in her direct surroundings, Kaede turned around and went back onto the path… which was blocked.

“Ah.” she deadpanned. Somehow the tantalizing amount of loot she had obtained had completely deleted the memory of her being trapped in a dungeon room in an alternate dimension.

Though with every problem that occurs, a solution appears, this time in the form of a one-use scroll she had just obtained. Or a potentially dubious potion that may have the possibility of creating a large explosion.

That's what any normal person would have thought.

“Hai! Everyone! Listen up. We are going to begin a long arduous journey of excavation! Rabbits! Move ahead and chip at the rocks with your horns! Direwolves, carry them back to me when they are tired! Slimes, eat the rock pieces that get chipped off! With more surface area, it will be more efficient! LETS GO!!!.” she ordered.

The mosh posh of monsters sent out a wave of sounds of confidence as they followed their master’s orders. And so began the large, arduous duty of excavation.

Rabbit’s with their sharpened horns began battering at the wall that locked them into their situation, chipping small pebbles off and making them bounce behind them. Slimes who were lying in wait, dissolved them quickly, proving the scientific phenomenon of chemical reactions working faster on solid objects with more surface area that happened to be the only thing Kaede could remember from last week’s chemistry class. This also made it so there was no mess involved in the process.

Dungeon etiquette at the finest.

As rabbits fell victim to fatigue and horn damage, the larger direwolves served as living taxis for them to the break area.

What is the break area you ask?

Well.

“Suya….”

It was Kaede of course! Sprawled out naked and on the floor asleep as if she had just finished showering and was too drowsy to bother putting anything on. She was using every goon she had available to her so she had deactivated [Kin]. Wasn’t like anyone was going to see her this time and it wasn’t like anyone could hurt her even without her “armor” on. All over her were tired rabbits snuggling close to her… as well as the other rabbit who was still wearing the armor she had thrown away. A specially designated slime served as a makeshift and cool pillow for the sleeping girl, who ended up asleep in the first place because she had nothing better to do. She had no STR afterall and she took up way more space than the rabbits did which would have impeded their progress.

Eventually, Kaede stirred. Yawning, she sat up from her makeshift bed, the floor, and blinked. In front of her, her monsters had gathered around her and once again formed a gigantic blanket of grass-scented fur with an extra helping of cuddliness. With time, lots of dedication and a tireless workforce of monsters, the wall had crumbled. With no more orders, the monsters returned to their master. Literally.

“Mmm… Good job everyone! Now let’s proceed!” she declared, as monsters were re-absorbed into her. With potions in hand and monsters in tow, Kaede made her way back into the main chamber of the dungeon.

This time, her comprehensively borked direction finding abilities elected for her to go down the left route. As she trekked on, the walls began to grow darker and more mysterious. But more importantly there were a lot of mushrooms with cool symbols on them that were growing everywhere in the dark, damp cave. And by cool symbol, I am of course referencing the eternal reference to poison everywhere, the human skull.

It was a perfect snack for the hungry Kaede. Still, it was an unusually boring trek, no prey had ended up intersecting paths with Kaede and so the mushrooms were basically all she could find to eat. It was really starting to bother her. When she entered this dungeon back in NWO, there were slimes and lizards everywhere. She could accept the possibility that all the slimes were possibly not spawning because she had befriended all of them because she is cute and therefore you can’t get mad at her, but she had still yet to see a single, delicious, delectable, highly venomous, toxic, radioactive, acrid, literally sopping in literal death broth, lizard.

Though, as she was thinking about lizard meat, one of her direwolves cried out. Startled, she looked on ahead where the wolf was and saw something that brought a smile onto her face. A familiar ominous set of large stone doors.

There was no doubt in Kaede’s mind as she witnessed the sight in front of her. Old mechanisms with dust and grime all over them, equally covered in the moist, poisonous soup that blanketed the rest of the cave. Ominous Gothic-style stone brick masonry with fungi and bubbling pools of acrid bile that would send shudders down any normal adventurer’s back. Two large sprawling doors, covered in scratch marks and shredded vines, oozing out metallic, cyan sap. (A/N A real thing actually. Some plants that have the ability to absorb high concentrations of nickel have weird colored sap, search it up.)

The boss chamber had been located.

Without a single delay, Kaede dashed towards the large doors ahead of her. She even ignored the delicious flowers that were blooming in the area, splashing out their terrible toxins willy nilly.

Even though Kaede had literally no AGI, many of her monsters were polite and walked behind her, not electing to run ahead of the literal human turtle. As Kaede approached the door, she tapped it once and like she remembered, fully expecting the door to automatically open up. Without missing a beat, the sound of dried up oil and stone scraping on stone began to surround the area. The doors rumbled and crumbled and slowly opened up, an oozing slime-filled concoction of air-borne toxins passing through the growing distance between the doors.. With not so quick feet, Kaede stepped into the dark, swampy area that made up the boss room.

Kaede was blissfully in glee. She had been quite hungry for a while now, and flowers and mushrooms with odd skulls and sharp teeth on them could only sustain a growing girl for so long. As distasteful as the Hydra was, it’s breath was a very enticing spice. Something exotic like saffron, but similar to the common spices and hot sauces she was used to like siracha. It was enough to make her even eat meat that tastes like green peppers.

The door closed behind her. Ominous sounds reverberating within the closed room. With the pressure difference insulated once again, the poisons in the air swirled around, settling back in place.

Without pause, Kaede turned towards her peanut gallery. Ready to give out instructions to her posse. She had suspected that the lizards were possibly hiding. Monsters in this world may have actual intelligence afterall, so it was possible that the lizards were hiding together, with the boss. With this assumed knowledge, she needed her posse ready so that they could catch as many as possible in the event that her assumption was true.

There was only one problem.

“EH??!”

Her posse was dead.

Kaede stared in silent shock at the lifeless and slowly degrading corpses of the few rabbits and direwolves that she could see. She would have probably begun holding in her breath in an act of life preservation had she not also had the ability to ignore the growing stench of death due to her complete immunity to poison. Thankfully, visually, the few corpses she could see were all dead in a reasonably non-gruesome state as they clearly died from overwhelming poison exposure.

The few corpses. Few?

It was obvious immediately that she had lost several rabbits and direwolves to the room of boss which didn’t even faze her. She was always happy go lucky about her [Poison Immunity] skill, even back in NWO. She was very lucky that Risa was an absolute mad lad at dodging or there would have probably been more friendly fire incidents than she would like to happen aside from that one time she had to fight Risa’s clone by forcing her to drown in a literal room of poison because there was no other way to hit her.

Though to be fair, if she had hit Risa at one point, she probably would have been more self-conscious to the fact that poison is neutral and that It hits both enemies and allies. And when entering a room full to the brim of dark violet liquid that was practically violently spewing deadly gases everywhere, one must consider the fact that lesser creatures would undoubtedly die from that.

Though slimes were not lesser creatures in this context. Afterall, the ones she picked up were kinda poisonous by nature and had the immunity to withstand them. Yet behind her was nothing but corpses. There also was no rabbit with the Mythical Armor which funny enough had enough space inside to completely protect that single rabbit.

To her relief, this meant one thing. She had rushed ahead so quickly that her posse wasn’t able to all follow her before the doors closed on them.

This time, it was a good thing.

Speaking of poison, Kaede frowned. She had been staring at the corpses for a while now and she was in the boss room with the door closed. Wasn’t something supposed to happen right about now?

She turned around.

Nothing but poisonous gases and swamp.

She turned in a different direction.

There was a rock there, which was the only thing of mild interest in that direction because this entire room was just a death broth covered in a slimy film that resembled sunflower oil.

She turned again.

Still nothing, not even Maple-level edible mushrooms and flowers.

And much like every human in the world, as the final and last decision after exercising every single other option, Kaede finally looked up.

“Ah.”

[Skill (Kin II) has been acquired]

Kaede had no time to even acknowledge the message as the cunning monsters of the poisonous caves let their master plan loose.

[No Title] [Kaede]

Lv 8 HP 130/130 MP 26/26

STR [0 + 7] VIT [125 + 94]

AGI [0] DEX [0]

INT [0] LCK [//:Maple--wKwsD]

[Provoke] [Kicking] [Giant Killing] [Kin II] [Poison Immunity] [Shameless] [Tough Skin, Tough Soul] [Absolute Defense] [Meditation] [Red Herring (Attached to Shameless)] [Tail Whip (Equipment)]

Actual VIT: 1752

Equipment

Head [Greater Slime (Kin)] Vit + 5

Body [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Right hand [N/A]

Left Hand [Horn of the Horned Rabbit] Str + 7

Legs [Dire Wolf (Kin)] Vit + 9

Shoes [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories [Horns Of The One True Lord] Vit + 10

Accessories 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 1 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 4 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 5 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7