“Uuu.”

Kaede was confused, hungry and very embarrassed. She also noted that gelatinous hair was really inconvenient when you're trying to get up.

It happened in an instant. Though to be fair, Kaede was sure that her lack of AGI would have made it so she couldn’t react even if she noticed it earlier. Kaede was a gamer above all else, and one behaviour that gamers shared with nearly the rest of the human population was their inability to look up.

There are so many examples you can look at to understand this psychological phenomenon. People walking outside never see bird poop or falling caterpillars aimed for them. Gamers for older games like TF2 would always miss people jumping over them, only to finally notice when they died by being shot in the back. And let's not forget every single person who has ever smashed their head into a cabinet door that was open while searching for something in the lower cabinet.

It was a behaviour built upon the fact that, of all the directions, up was the least important. Humans are not fish or birds. The world that they live in is mostly on the ground and the things they need happen to follow suit. What's in front of them, what's in their peripherals and what is behind or below them was information that was constantly necessary for survival, both in ancient and modern times. You really only looked up for either recreational purposes, or in the rare instance something important was above you, though only if you knew ahead of time it would be above you.

Few people in Kaede’s time had ever really seen the world from the perspective of a person skygazing on a hill, watching the clouds, perceiving the height of the sky in comparison to them. Even people who are reading this now don’t realize the difference people feel as eyes adjust to depth in the sky, as slow movements and fast movements over large distances compare within the human’s ability to perceive depth.

Basically. Looking up is the least important look. Which unfortunately makes any attack from above, very efficient.

Ninjas, assassins and criminals immediately recognized this in the early dark ages of their respective eras. A dainty, spastic schoolgirl with an airheaded personality was not in wide recognition of this particular trait of the human race. So in the end, Kaede was blindsided.

As Kaede took the ever fated decision to look up, lizards poured from the ceiling onto her, initially causing her to panic and fall to the ground. The endless swarm piled onto her, numbers exceeding Kaede’s expectations. With all of these lizards all over her, she began to flail around, but soon she realized she couldn’t flail anymore. The lizards didn’t attack. Instead, as if re-enacting a famous scene from a movie that had nearly Maple-level of sweetness based on a book with insanity almost bordering Maple-level. The lizards, each with their weak claws and small bodies, stepped all over Kaede and lined up beside each other, each holding a small part of Kaede to the floor. Other lizards piled onto her, acting as weights. The result was the 0 STR Kaede being pinned to the floor, completely immobilized. Her arms, legs, tail and even her head was held in place.

“Eh? Why?” Kaede was very surprised. She didn’t expect this level of intelligence from the monsters. No matter how much she struggled, none of her limbs would move. The lizards had gripped her tightly, acting as a rope, tying her to the muddy ground.

Muddy ground that was slowly sinking.

As Kaede’s futile struggles persisted, she noticed something very scary. Having high VIT didn’t mean that Kaede didn’t feel anything ever. She just never felt pain or took damage from the hits she took. However right now, Kaede couldn’t feel anything below her waist.

Shocked at the revelation, Kaede commanded the status panel to appear in her eyes. One of the few things left that she could do. What appeared on the screen shocked her to her very core.

“P- Paralysis?!” Kaede shouted in horror. Noticing that a part of Kaede was moving, several lizards piled onto her face, snapping her mouth shut.

“HM!” Kaede groaned as her speaking ability was forcefully removed. Her situation which initially seemed easygoing had suddenly become very dangerous. Her body was currently under a weak paralysis effect, likely caused by the death soup she was half-submerged in. But that paralysis effect was slowly getting stronger, as exposure to the environment continued.

VIT could do a lot. But suffocation was something it could not protect against. It was part of the reason Kaede almost never played near water back in NWO. Unlike Risa, who had maxed out her swimming skills and had the AGI to use them, Kaede was a poor swimmer, who in her heavy armor, would sink. Her VIT did nothing to prevent drowning, which back in NWO was an exponential damage hazard that ignored her defenses, which over time multiplied the damage, overwhelming her regeneration abilities as well. It was surprising that nobody had ever used this fact against Kaede, back in her early days, though with [Machine God], [Atrocity], [Psychokinesis], [Poltergeist], [Invitation to the Ocean Floor] and surprisingly [Heavy Body] which Kaede thought was a reference to an old Mario game, water was no longer a suitable weakness for her in NWO. Heck, if she had a teammate nearby, she could even use [Cover Move] to escape the water.

Unfortunately, she had none of those skills at her disposal in this world. Worse, [Poison Immunity] seemed to only work on damaging poisons in this world. She had expected it would also work against paralysis like it did in NWO. Of course, she didn’t know that this assumption was created via an oversight in the code of NWO that made it so she would only receive paralysis if she took damage from an attack that dealt paralysis as a side effect. It was an early discovery of hers that led to several misunderstandings about the mechanics of the game, which never got resolved due to [Hydra Eater] providing actual paralysis immunity which made that glitch redundant. This resulted in making Kaede completely oblivious to the fact that the slimes she was killing in NWO were supposed to be capable of inflicting minor paralysis on her and also ultimately ended up with her misinterpreting the effects of [Poison Immunity] in the new world.

Kaede was a lot of things, but uneducated was not one of those things. Part of her charm back in her high school, which garnered her a lot of secret admirers that she had only recently learned of via a tip off from Risa, was that she also had solid grades in addition to her innocent charm, airheadedness and above average genetic beauty.

Biology told her that paralysis was a very bad thing because things that are paralyzed cannot move. If one of her lungs or her heart ever gets paralyzed, oxygen does not get transported. No oxygen means suffocation, hypoxia and death. And you don’t need to be a rocket doctor to understand that in the context of a perfectly and mentally healthy teenager with little to no severe problems in their life, death was a very bad thing.

And to top it all off, even if she could resist the paralysis, she was still stuck under a mountain of surprisingly heavy, moving lizards, all hellbent on literally burying her into the poisonous ground. The final boss hadn’t even shown up and Kaede was already screwed.

“Uuuu..” Kaede squealed, as tears began to bead in her eyes. She could feel the ground sinking beneath her. Mud wasn’t exactly quicksand, but in certain circumstances, it could have similar effects. The pressure of imminent death was beginning to seep in. Kaede had never ever felt such despair and panic in her life. Partly because postmodern Japan was a good place to live with low crime rates, a slowly reemerging population and the emergence of more forgiving laws and institutions, but also because the happy-go-lucky girl literally took the most defensive approaches to everything in life.

She could already feel her hands and forearms were buried. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore, but they were likely also submerged. The paralysis was also moving forwards as she began to lose feeling in her arms, and her control over her face seemed to weaken.

The fear of death was now all over her mind. With the last of her strength, Kaede struggled hard. Desperately activating skills by instinct, sending strength into her remaining muscles in an futile attempt to survive. Sadly, she didn’t really have that many skills on her and none of the offensive ones were capable of working due to paralysis.

“Mmph! GHH! MMHM!” Shallow noises exited from the only orifice it could escape from. Her nose. Two lizards moved onto her face and plunged their claws into her nose, sealing not only the only avenue for sound to escape her, but also her ability to breathe.

Panicking, Kaede didn’t notice that the majority of the lizards had slunk away from her, her already sinking body pushed past a certain threshold of pressure, where the gravitational force of the mud above her would push her down further without need for aid. All that persisted in her slowly dwindling consciousness was panic, the want for breath, the final regrets of Kaede and above all else, hunger.

And silently, Kaede sank.

It was a good plan. A being whose armor could never be penetrated and who could ignore the main defensive weapons of the creatures in the cave, poison, was a threat that could overthrow the population. The only option was unconventional tactics.

The monsters needed to breathe. So they assumed their opponent needed to as well. They had the advantage of knowing the terrain they stood on, as it was their home.

It was practically perfect. With minimal intelligence and weak bodies, a legion of monsters had done something that hundreds of players were unable to do in an alternate universe.

Defeat Kaede.

…

If not for one… tiny miscalculation.

“Ah. Slimes don’t need to breathe.” Kaede thought to herself as the warm mud completely submerged her. She was on the verge of a panic attack as her senses were overwhelmed, but it soon dwindled to an eerie calm.

Suffocation could override VIT, but pressure could not. A normal human body falling deep into mud would eventually fill up with mud, as the air escapes due to pressure. But Kaede’s VIT prevented this.

While a normal girl would be relieved at the prospect of avoiding being filled up with mud, the unequal pressure only highlighted one thing.

Her stomach was full of air. She was hungry.

Though alive, Kaede sighed deep under the mud at her food situation. Hunger was all that was left in her mind, as the warmth of the mud prompted a different response from Kaede. Sleep.

She never realised how warm mud could function as a bed. Probably because she was a human and normal humans need to breathe. Slowly she began to drift off.

[Skill (Diving) has been acquired]

“Annoying.” Kaede thought to herself, as she forced the status screen into her eyes. She swiftly decided that in order to have a good nap, she needed to mute her status. So she did so.

“Suya….”

[Skill (Diving II) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving III) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper II) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving IV) has been acquired]

[Skill (Filth) has been acquired]

[Skill (Paralysis Resistance (Small)) has been acquired]

[Skill (Disgust Ignorance) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving V) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper III) has been acquired]

[Skill (Pressure Chamber) has been acquired]

[Skill (Implosion) has been automatically acquired due to (Pressure Chamber)]

[Skill (Temperature Regulator) has been automatically acquired due to (Pressure Chamber)]

[Skill (Pressure Immunity) has been automatically acquired due to (Pressure Chamber)]

[Skill (Diving IV) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving V) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper IV) has been acquired]

[Skill (Starved) has been acquired]

[Skill (Chaos Eater) has been automatically acquired due to (Starved)]

[Skill (Diving VII) has been acquired]

[Skill (Swamp Girl) has been acquired]

[Skill (Paralysis Resistance (Medium)) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper V) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper VI) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper VII) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper VIII) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper IX) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving VIII) has been acquired]

[Skill (Dangerous Sleeper X) has been acquired]

[Skill (Paralysis Resistance (Large)) has been acquired]

[Skill (Paralysis Immunity) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving IX) has been acquired]

[Skill (Diving X) has been acquired]

[Skill (Careless) has been acquired]

[Greater Skill (Sin Fragment: Vanity) has been unlocked]

[Integrating skill into user…]

[User has muted notifications. Unmuting notifications.]

Kaede woke up with a chill on her back. Something wasn’t right.

Well, considering she had sunk about 40 meters and was now deep underground in poisonous gunk, that should have been obvious but something else was wrong.

The first thing that came into her mind was feeling. She could feel everything around her, which was weird considering she was paralyzed several hours… days?… time ago.

The other new feeling was a warm fuzzy feeling in her chest. A dark feeling lingering near her lungs, swelling up in her heart. She had never drunk alcohol in her life, but if she had, she would easily compare this feeling to that. There was also a sensation in her gut. A sensation that was clearly weakened by her resilience to pain, but was clear as day. Hunger.

[Greater Skill (Sin Fragment: Vanity) has been integrated into user]

“Eh?” Kaede thought. Hadn’t she muted notifications? She thought nothing of the skill’s title, nor its name, either her airheadedness blocking out the significance of the statement or drowsiness clouding her already questionable judgement.

Swiftly, she brought up her status screen and slipped past the towering number of notifications which were properly muted. Slipping into the options menu, Kaede stared at it in confusion.

Somehow, her notifications had become unmuted. Odd.

With that out of the way, Kaede moved onto the towering notifications and her metaphorical jaw dropped.

… No wait, that was her actual jaw. She was moving? Wasn’t she paralyzed? And under like a metric ton of mud?

With all of these mysteries hidden inside of her notification pile, she dived in.

[Diving X]

You are an expert diver who has practiced diving for a long time and can hold their breath very well. You can hold your breath for up to 40 minutes. You gain more maneuverability in fluids.

Skill Requirement: Dive a lot. Already own [Diving IX]

Kaede had that feeling she had back when she first obtained her first skills. She was pretty sure she was not supposed to have this skill but was okay with having it. Unknowingly, she was right. [Diving] was a skill granted to beings that breathe air that practiced diving into liquids. Normally that liquid would be water, but literal death soup she had been forced into, also counted. But that wasn’t the exploit. The exploit was that Kaede had temporarily become a creature that did not need to breathe air and being a being that needed air was a prerequisite to gain the skill. To simplify the code in NWO, the developers gave similar creatures a skill called [No Breathing] which made them not breathe and not require things like [Diving]. Kaede however was still technically human, so she was eligible for [Diving].

Although wasted on a slow turtle like Kaede, [Diving] was a skill that was balanced around the fact that there was a time limit to breathing creatures being underwater. For this, [Diving] at its highest level gave the user far more maneuverability than underwater creatures, while the underwater monsters were capable of attaining a far higher [Swimming] level to become far faster. This game design was revered by the masses of NWO as one of the best game-related decisions the developers ever made, turning underwater combat with monsters into a very interesting game of tactics and aim. Much like a biplane fighting a supersonic jetliner like the Concorde, players at their peak level were much more maneuverable in the water, while the creatures under the sea were faster and unable to be chased.

It promoted trapping, stalking and other forms of nonstandard combat tactics in order to beat the sea creatures, setting a noticeable notch on the game's skill curve. A lot of important things in-game were underwater and the difference between players that were smart enough to fight underwater versus the ones who could not was staggering.

Though Kaede spent most of her time out of the water, she had long since accidentally passed that skill curve just by being herself. She was already very much used to nonstandard tactics that required either literal insanity or great brain power. Afterall, who else would use a defensive cover move as a mobility option?

With those thoughts passing, Kaede realised that [Diving] was one of the reasons she was capable of moving in the mud. It gave both breathing room and physical increases in maneuverability in fluid which let the weak Kaede move pressurised mud as if it were nothing but air.

Eagerly moving down the list, Kaede spotted another skill that cleared up her confusion.

[Paralysis Immunity]

It was a skill that had a very obvious role. She was now immune to paralysis, which meant her body was able to move despite previously being unable. Though, Kaede did have a few minor issues with this information.

For one, how did she gain full immunity after falling asleep once? For that matter, how long had she been sleeping in the underground? It took her quite a while to gain immunity to poison back in NWO, as she was literally hosed down in poisonous fluids for several hours. Not to mention the Hydra was attacking her at a rate faster than any other monster she encountered at the time with poison far more potent than the scum that littered the floor.

She quickly closed the notification she was looking at and checked her peripheral vision. The clock read 12:00, which confused Kaede further. She had only been asleep for 2 hours? That didn’t make sense. It was only when Kaede looked slightly lower that she realised the full implications of what had happened.

Kaede originally had checked the time and date back when she first entered this world, and she knew that day was May 3rd 2XXX. She expected that a few days would have passed since then, as the dungeon was quite long, not to mention the many detours she took while inside.

However, the date was now July 3rd 2XXX.

“EH?” Kaede squealed, which had the unfortunate side effect of allowing mud to enter her mouth, which she quickly spat out. Disgust of the taste of death soup aside, she had been asleep for nearly 2 months?

“Damn it! The mud allured me!” Kaede internally raged. It was quite unconventional to be mad at the mud, but Kaede was mad anyways. Hopefully the mud didn’t have it’s feelings hurt and could at least take pride in being able to express itself to Kaede far more than any of her other admirers.

Pouting, Kaede returned to her status screen and moved on to the next skill.

[Filth]

Look at you! You haven’t showered in months, you hang around dirty areas and smell like death soup! Have a free skill for that you degenerate, I can practically see the stink lines coming off of you! Your sense of smell has been muted, making putrid smells less effective on you. Weapons lose 2x durability when they hit you.

Skill Requirement: Be very bad at hygiene for an extensive period of time while being in an area that can be considered filthy for an extended period of time.

Kaede’s pouted. “It’s not my fault that I fell asleep for 2 months in literal death soup! The mud allured me! Don’t patronize me world, I’ll sue!” she declared in her head, before moving onto the next skill.

[Disgust Ignorance]

Are you really gonna sit there and take that smell? How? How are you like this? Are you enjoying it maybe? Are you a degenerate? I bet you smell your feet! I bet you like the smell of feet! Well too bad, because now you won’t get any thrill from it because your ability to smell bad things has been completely erased! Also, your negative feelings towards the deaths of comrades is forcefully softened.

Skill Requirement: Stay completely still in an area of extremely bad smell for an extended period of time while also being near the corpse of an ally.

Kaede’s pout deepened. Kaede was nearly officially done with this world. She was ready to pull out the long lost but very prominent culture of the past known to her former world as cancelling. She was ready to train one of her still-living rabbits in the art of being the best rabbit lawyer the world has ever seen just to completely decimate the creators of this skill and it’s writers. However, Kaede didn’t do so. Partially because she was in no state to do so, but partially because Kaede is an angel of a person and a beautiful example of friendship and happiness and was perfectly willing to give the world one last chance to-

[Swamp Girl]

Ara ara. Aren’t young girls supposed to be beautiful and cute? At the very least cool or stylish? There's plenty of charm in boyish tomboys or chubby girls but you… you… can you even get married anymore? I bet you're the type of person that would stick their hand into a goddamn spittoon full of oozing, rancid yellow fluid. I bet it so much that I’m letting you cosmetically change yourself into a swamp girl and it comes with the ability to ooze poisonous fluids out of many orifices, while being covered in weeds, dirt and other forms of shame. Also, you can absorb nutrients from the soil while sleeping, but that won’t appease hunger.

Skill Requirement: I don’t get paid enough to write down what it takes to get to this point. Congrats.

(A/N I took inspiration from West of Loathing when writing this segment.)

Kaede smiled.

It was a fake smile.

Kaede never got angry. Her patience and airheadedness made her an angel in her classmates eyes. While exasperation at her antics toiled on her allies in NWO, otherwise they viewed her as a beacon of positivity. But now, Kaede was angry. Very angry.

Her face had morphed into something she never took on. A fake smile. The smile that has the undertones of, “I’m going to decimate you, your friends, your family, you dog and then I’m going to set fire to your house”.

Angry, hungry and still mentally overwhelmed. Kaede didn’t bother reading the rest of the skills.

She had to vent.

I… I survived.

I shouldn’t have survived. But I did.

Oh god. Oh dear lord of…. Why did it happen like this?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

That… that girl… No. That demon.

She was supposed to be dead. We were supposed to win and save our land.

How did it end up like this. How did I end up alone?

I… Mom… Dad… no… I can’t do this. How can I move on?

I… I don’t even have bodies to bury… a boss to follow… a mother to cry into… a friend to laugh with.

They… they're all dead. Butchered. Destroyed. Consumed.

It.. it happened in an instant. I didn’t even have time to react.

I was just chilling behind a wall of dirt, my favorite mushrooms love to grow there, so I frequent that place often. It’s the only place in the terrace that isn’t directly visible from the guardians gate. The elders always wanted to cover up that area, considering it a sin as it wasn’t visible in the “room of the gods” but goddammit, mushrooms are tasty as hell.

One second I’m there behind, eating a delicious poison carabiner tellius. The next moment, the ground exploded. She was there.

The ground shook, fluid sprayed everywhere as she literally walked out of her grave.

I held her at her last breaths, I could see the terror in her fading eyes. I was in front of her in her last moments. Yet she was there. Red eyes, sharp and ominous, full of rage. Her mouth was twisted into a clean smile. A smile that hid so much evil. So much malice. The others didn’t react. They didn’t know how to react.

They panicked.

We knew our claws couldn’t pierce her. We knew she felt nothing of our acid’s and natural weapons. We had watched her since she entered our domain. We knew how much of a threat she was when the god’s blow shattered on her.

Yet they attacked. They knew it was futile but they fought to their last breaths.

She had grown stronger. We couldn’t even touch her. I don’t know how but she was even more poisonous than us! Those near her died the most merciful of deaths, drowned in toxins that overwhelmed them before they could even think. Her ragged hairs and tired eyes scanned across the room as she looked at the others. Those who entered her stare were allured, annoyed, stunned. She had all of our attention.

Looking back, it was nothing but an illusion. We were fooled. We are creatures who don’t dabble in the sins of pride. Yet in the face of pure vanity, we were fooled by that alluring word.

Vanity. The sin of Self-admiration. A sin close to pride, yet so vastly different. The elders never spoke of it, nor did the boss. It was nothing but a small, insignificant sin that was easy to forgive.

But it’s true nature destroyed us. Our belief in our opponent’s weaknesses, in our planning, in our very single victory in battle failed us. It was no battle, it was war. One battle can change the tide of war, but it isn’t the complete finale.

The battle wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre.

I watched as some fell to her hands, crushed and impaled by the horn of one of her wretched followers. They threw themselves at her in a vain attempt to stop her, even after seeing their comrades liquify at her feet. It was painful to see.

Others befell a worse fate. A fate that we creatures of the dungeon know better than anyone else. Consumption.

We are the powerful predators of the dungeon. We do not know the fears of predation.

Of course, as the final remaining one. I know. And if I still have the strength to live, I will spread it. I watched her as she smiled a true genuine smile, looking directly into the eyes of my neighbor. Right before he was torn apart and eaten. Flesh and gore stained her cheeks as she chewed him up and looked back at others. I can’t believe how many shared his fate.

Even the boss fell that way. Bit by bit, piece by piece. Ripped to shreds by the red demon of the swamp. His screams were only heard by me, his final words, cursing his opponent as she bit into his neck, severing his head from his body. His sprays of toxins did nothing to her, in fact she tortured him by forcing his head onto his own body, spraying his own wounds with harmful toxins. I knew for a fact by his screams that it must have hurt. The boss was poisonous, but his defense against the environment was the same as all of us, our thick scales and hide. Once inside, we could fight it off, but that didn’t stop it from causing pain and paralysis.

We should have followed like the rabbits of the West and the slimes we discriminated against. We should have given into her desire and allure. Perhaps we would have been stepping stones for the queen instead of livestock.

I always thought subservience over death was a bad mindset. But after watching everyone I knew, everyone I loved fall to a single demon, I changed my mind.

It is a mistake I will never make again.

[Greater Skill: Sin Fragment: Vanity]

3x All Stats except HP/MP. User’s emotions can be perceived as exaggerated. User’s movement can be perceived as exaggerated. Opponents and allies' perception of user are exaggerated. User can force others to either overestimate or underestimate user. User can sow discomfort or doubt into others when they think about them.

Requirements: Obtain the Sin of Vanity in it’s demonic, pure form. Good job, my child. :).