Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice began to try to decrease the numbers of the group (42) without letting them know he was directly fighting against them. He disguised all of his attempts as traps within the dungeon. He managed to kill off a few people, but only a few. Time is ticking down for the end of the event. There are still 30 people plus EDI and BigBadWolf left to kill.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

Bit of a shorter chapter this time.

Wolf’s POV

We walked into the miniboss room. It was just a large round cavern. In the center of the room stood a giant of a skeleton, with a book hovering close by, and a staff in hand.

The lone skeletal mage, standing at over eight feet, was surrounded by several smaller skeletal warriors. Clad only in loosely fitting, rust covered, iron armor, they only had short swords to fight with. They admirably held themselves in a formation that protected the mage from all angles.

We had been dogged by tricks and traps all the way there. When we arrived at the dungeon we were informed that we needed to obtain all of the miniboss keys in order to fuse them into the boss room key, by a notification box.

“Formation Beta-3!” The formation was to protect one mage, and have a sufficient force to attack. The men quickly got into the position. We had practiced this since I convinced the groups that this would be the best option. Fighting a leading player by themselves was practically suicide.

At least with a larger group the chance of taking him down greatly increased. Even the fact that he ran into this dungeon was clever. Most thought him a coward, but I knew better. As did my partner EDI.

She seemed to know a lot about him. She never volunteered the information, so I didn’t pry. It was helpful to have the extra intel on him, no matter how I got it.

Most of the people thought he was running into this dungeon to hide from us, but I knew better. This dungeon had proven to have an unpredictably high level of difficulty. No one would run into here to get away from a lesser threat.

The very fact that he passed all of these battles and traps proved how powerful he was. He was someone worth fighting. Although, being by himself seemed to help him out on several occasions.

He just had to watch out for himself, not make sure others didn’t fall for the traps. Even the pond seemed to be geared towards a single person, or small party.

The undead mage began casting a spell. The archers sent a volley of arrows into the things boney hands. They might not feel pain, but my mages told me most spells required precise hand movements. The added weight would make the thing overcompensate.

Unfortunately the tactic didn’t seem to work very well. The spell continued, and the room began to fill with summoned zombies.

“Warriors! READY YOURSELVES!”

As the zombies and skeletons shambled towards us, the mage sent a barrage of magical attacks as the miniboss. The archers picked off many of the enemies coming towards us.

It seemed odd that one arrow was enough to take one down. I had them shoot even the downed ones to make sure.

The skeletons were not nearly as easy to take down as the zombies. They continued to make their way towards us even as they were pelted with dozens of arrows.

The skeletons finally made it to the first line of warriors. The world began to sway. For a moment the only light, the glowing crystal, went dark.

“Stand your ground! We. Will. Not. FAIL!”

I began choking on some foul smelling gas. I’d encountered it before. “THE ZOMBIES HAVE MIASMA!” The mage began curing the air by pushing the smoky substance away, while the archers and warriors covered their mouths to help protect from the effects.

I had high poison tolerance, and so didn’t get as effected by the air. Others weren’t so lucky. Coughing fits sounded. Half of the archers seemed to be out of commission for the time.

The skeletons continued to attack the frontline, unhindered by the decaying rot permeating the air. Undead. The worst abomination in this game.

The skeletal mage was casting another spell. Before I even needed to give the order, the unaffected archers began pelting it with more arrows.

The cumulating weight finally started to have a noticeable effect on the thing. Not enough though. The spell completed, and more zombies were summoned.

I looked to the mage. She seemed to be having trouble clearing the air. It shouldn’t have taken that long! Sweat was beading down her head. I scanned the miasma. The outer edges seemed to curl in on themselves and move back towards us.

The skeletons were slow, and not powerful, but with the aid of the miasma they were able to put up an extraordinary fight against my men.

Two were attacking me. I focused on defense until some of the other skeletons had been taken care of. If I made a mistake here it would cost us dearly.

Unfortunately it didn’t seem like help was coming. The poison wasn’t dissipating. If anything it was getting stronger. The more zombies the archers took out, them more miasma that filled the room.

Something caught my foot, causing me to momentarily lose my balance. As if waiting for this, the two skeletons seemed to grow to a moderate speed, and attacked.

I brought my sword up to block both attacks, but a sudden shift in the angle of one of their weapons ended in a heavy wound across my abdomen.

I gritted my teeth through the pain. I wheeled, and regained my balance. Entering an offensive posture I began to go on the offensive.

Voice’s POV

I left the group led by Wolf alone for the most part, until they reached the boss room anyway. I had Kretchof alter it a bit for them. I also recalled all of my fairies except Kretchof.

The skeletal mage, usually one to throw curses and hexes, now summoned zombies. Kretchof had told me of the power of the ‘Miasma Bomb’ of his. It was a good tactic to drain their vitality at the least.

Wolf called everyone into formation, with the warriors in the front and the archers surrounding the mage. It was a good set up over all. It displeased me.

The zombies were downed quickly. He even had the sense to keep the barrage of arrows up until he was sure they wouldn’t get back up. Clever.

My plan didn’t require them to be alive anyway. Although I did want them to attack when the group thought they were dead. They were set to blow with miasma, but on a timer after death. The time delay had to be five seconds.

After they expelled the gas, I had SparrowHawk guide it all towards the group. The skeletons took advantage of the scene before them. They were dealing low damage though.

Wolf called the group back into action. The fact that I couldn’t get anyone down was more than a little bit annoying.

Wolf somehow ended up fighting two skeletons at once. Four more were downed during that time. The miniboss continued to summon his zombies, but they weren’t working as well as I had hoped.

The obvious conclusion was Wolf’s team getting out without a death. I had Eli create a small rock to trip Wolf.

Even as he fell he could perfectly block the swords of the skeletons. Remembering my arrow guiding trick I had used several days ago, I changed the trajectory of their swords.

I couldn’t see the red lines since I was underground, but I remembered he had a small red line across his stomach last time I saw him. I made both swords attack that general area. The one that he couldn’t block in time did a fair bit of damage.

The mage couldn’t heal him since he was in an intense battle with SparrowHawk. The winner would decide where the miasma would gather.

The gas slowly dissipated anyway, but more gathered as the archers killed the zombies. The cycle would continue until either SparrowHawk or the mage girl was out of mana.

The group was slowly gaining ground on the skeletal mage. A few more minutes and they would be close enough for the warriors to attack.

After the first four skeletons were killed, the battle became easier for them. Another had already fallen, and Wolf only needed to contend with one.

With sheer numbers they managed to destroy two more. There was only one skeletal warrior left, along with many exploding zombies.

With that Kretchof gave the order. The skeletal mage tapped his staff on the ground once. I instantly sent a number of buffs to the last skeleton warrior.

Since my Magical Mastery was at 50, the cost to make a spell permanent was only 1.51 times as much. Furthermore, the effect was at 75% total strength.

For being a skeleton, the warrior didn’t have much natural health. Since it was part of a miniboss fight, it gained a bit. Its total HP was 750.

Damage immunity gives a bonus of 50% armor rating, and 25% health bonus. With the spell permanency it would be 18.75%, or 140.625. That would cost me an insane 755 mana. My pure mana was at 1,341; my light and earth mana were at 353.875 each.

I could technically cast it twice, but that wouldn’t be the best option. I chose to do one of those, as well as one Movement Enhancer. That way it took mostly from light and pure mana, but also was spread out with darkness, water, wind, and earth.

Using two of the same large scale spells would leave me with almost no mana, but casting spells from four different buff categories wouldn’t be as strenuous on my mana pool. As soon as the mage hit his staff, I used the buffs.

The skeleton became more heavily armored, and was granted a large amount of health. Its movements suddenly became like water. With speed like wind.

The mage had beaten SparrowHawk. I recalled it before it completely ran out of mana. I also had Eli send earth spears into the mage’s feet. The immense cry from her mouth made me question my humanity. Or not.

With her out of the way, the poor sods had no way of dealing with it. Except for the holy trident held by Wolf. I had Sol take care of that.

When the skeleton showed signs of increasing in power, Wolf instantly used the holy spell. Sol instantly got a bit more full of mana. I had never thought of the light fairy as more useful than at that time. The only thing left of that attack was a sharp blade of wind

Four people broke off of the group to wade through the zombies. Their hope was to kill the mage quickly. It was a great idea, but one Wolf obviously didn’t like.

“NO YOU FOOLS!” His desperate shout failed to get their attention. The reason he didn’t want them to run off alone was to prevent casualties. An obvious strategy when the people working with you are free to betray you at any time.

As soon as they sprang past the battle, the skeletal warrior struck at them. The zombies had new targets instead of only one group. Their putrid smell, and medley of diseases blocked the path to the skeletal mage.

After being stopped by the solid wall of zombies, the warrior skeleton began to aggressively attack them. The zombies threw themselves at the group, trying to claw and grab whatever they could.

Wolf ran to help, but not before the skeleton took out one the hapless adventurers, and wounded another. Wolf tried the holy attack again, but only managed the wind slash. While the wind slash was decent in damage, it could not even get past the enhanced armor of the skeleton.

Wolf cursed as he attacked with just his weapon. I say just his weapon. It was still quite powerful. He focused on diverting the attention of the skeleton away from the fools that tried to attack the miniboss. The zombies still attacked them though.

Seeing their commander in an unfavorable situation, the group behind him ran to help. So much for keeping formation and staying back. Although they broke formation, and looked all-round tacky, they easily pushed the horde of weak zombies back.

The mage girl didn’t have nearly enough mana left to actually push the poison away from the group. As such the group was slowly getting weakened. Even as they were winning the fight, they were dying. It was a tradeoff.

In a matter of minutes the zombies were routed, and the skeletal mage had so many arrows in its hands it couldn’t possibly summon more.

The last skeletal warrior fought nicely, but was beaten by Wolf’s massive amount of obvious training, and tempering that he had put his body through.

When he was done cheers exploded from his subordinates. Hey guys, you still have to kill the boss… I mean they had basically beaten it already, but it was rude to celebrate before they actually won.

If I had the mana I would have done something as punishment, as it happened I didn’t have any mana left after buffing the skeletal warrior. Without mana I only had my fairies. Fairies aren’t really a capable fighting force.

I did have Eli stab a few of the men with stone spikes, but that was about the length of what I could do without them catching on to my interference.

I’m sad to say the skeletal mage was quite quickly dealt with after that. Try as he might, he could not summon anything after becoming so heavily laden with arrows. The fight shouldn’t have been anything to scoff at, but the group was way too strong!

Normally one didn’t enter a dungeon with forty others. Even if someone had a large fighting force, usually they made stupid mistakes in the face of countless traps and onslaught of enemies. These guys were just too weird.

As soon as a number of the zombies had been dealt with, Wolf ordered a full charge at the mage. The swarm killed it almost instantly. Skeletal mages have next to no health after all.

The total number of casualties for Wolf’s group: 2 deaths, 1 heavily wounded, 3 heavily poisoned, 1 mildly poisoned.

The poison wasn’t as strong as some others, but it would last long enough to cause a huge problem for the group.

The two deaths added to my points, and the wounded would hinder them for a while. After all, I wasn’t exactly going to let the mage heal them, now was I?

Just as I thought that Wolf brought out some very familiar bandages. Shit! He actually had those! I forgot all about them.

Since I had sold him the super-healing-bandages, I couldn’t very well negate their power without making my earlier claim when I sold it to him seem false. Even just as Susan’s apprentice, I wanted to seem legit in my dealings at least.

The mage focused on purifying the poisoned, and Wolf healed the physically wounded. I could have taken the light mana out of the area, but I didn’t rust myself enough to make such precise mana absorption.

That’s fine. That’s fine. There are only 30 people left total. I should be able to thin their numbers again before they meet the next miniboss. Actually I should see how EDI is doing.

My thoughts on EDI were complicated at the moment. I appreciated that she helped me in the past, but that was in the past. The damn Sai I had given her more than paid up that debt. I kind of liked her then though.

I had already set the traps across the dungeon so I sat down to think. I obviously had some sort of attraction towards EDI. The question was which kind, and how powerful.

It wasn’t love. That must was for sure. Although I was fairly certain that it wasn’t just lust either. I did view her as someone worth having around. Maybe that was it?

No, the fact that I went out of my way to choose to slow down Wolf instead of her is proof it’s more than just that.

While thinking these thoughts I had a disturbing question pop up in my mind. If EDI is basically the same as the NPCs then wouldn’t she be done for if she died? Would she get replaced with someone that is just very similar?

I recalled the last conversation we had. She freely admitted to gaining all sorts of info on my, and even had a personality change.

Could she even be said to be the same person after that? Well I guess since people’s personalities change all the time. Even several times a day in some cases.

My head began to throb as I thought of all the possibilities and repercussions of trying to use EDI again. For some reason I wanted to team up with her again. I guess even I can get lonely after being around someone for so long. Hm… this is problematic. If I go to her and ask her to team up with me, assuming she says yes, she’d still have leverage over me.

Unknown to me, Kretchof seemed to be able read my mind. “Master, I could make another Contract for you, if you wish. That way she won’t have a way to disobey you.”

Actually that’s not a bad idea. Bonus points to Kretchof for that idea. Nevermind. If I did that EDITOR wo

*Warning*

You are about to make a decision based on outside knowledge. Please refrain. If you make a decision based on this knowledge you will be penalized.

Really EDITOR? I was deciding NOT to use the contract on her you know… If you want me to actually I will just ignore the fact that I know you exist th

*Attention*

An error in warning system has occurred. Please ignore the earlier warning in regards to decisions made about that specific knowledge.

Heh, quite the doting parent aren’t you?

Suddenly my hp dropped by one. HEY! IS THAT ALLOWED!? I’m sure my aunt and mom would LOVE to know you bully people in this game.

*Attention*

Video deleted due to incomprehensible data.

“*Sigh* Now you’re just messing with me.” I shook my head. What use would getting mad be? The damn EDITOR was all powerful in this place. I was sure that my mom would notice something if anything big happened, like torture, but other than that I’d have to be careful.

This just makes things complicated. I pushed myself above the ground, and sat cross legged on the ground. I rested my chin on my fists. I had hurt EDI, but EDITOR hadn’t done anything. When I used her as a weapon EDITOR did nothing.

Either it was developing true intelligence over time, or couldn’t do anything for some reason.

Ah! They said the government could see my thoughts if they wanted to before. Now that they couldn’t, perhaps EDITOR was taking more liberties?

That didn’t mean that EDITOR could get away with things scott free, though.

I logged out of DIVE and was promptly put into my white room. The sudden amount of noise was insane. It looked like everyone in the world was gathered into one place: my mall.

I had an envelope icon so I opened it.

‘Hi there Brenton! It’s Aunty Kelsey! Well basically this message is to tell you that you now have the single working ‘server’ connected to the dive world. I don’t know how you did it (actually I do) but it seems like you made a working replica of a small city market from DIVE. We at DI pride ourselves in rewarding individuals such as yourself. Therefore, we had EDITOR create another program to watch over you complex.

He has been building things requested by the users frequenting you shops. You have gained quite a few DI bills, you know? Anyway, just wanted to let you know your max capacity has been upgraded substantially!

-Love Your Sweet Young Looking Aunty Kelsey~’

…

Whatever. I guess the butler won’t hurt anything. Although she did say EDITOR made it. The letter was dated a while ago so I guess it doesn’t matter.

To be honest, after creating the space, and planning everything about it, I had gotten quite bored with it. I didn’t really care to look around it at that time.

I went into the room with my only working computer and logged on. I purchased a webcam with the massive amount of DI bills I had. Seriously. This much money would make scrooge blush!

I sent a request to my mother for a video chat. After about ten minutes I got a reply.

She came on the screen, and waved. “Hi sweetie! How’s your time in the forest going? I heard you managed to come into contact with a diseased gryphon? And cured it! That’s just like my sweet little baby!”

I coughed slightly. She gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry mom. I have something I’d like to ask you. If it’s ok.”

She nodded her head. “Sure ask anything.”

“Well do you- EDITOR IS CHEATING TO HELP EDI!” Without thinking about it before hand I managed to string the sentence together.

The screen went black, then fuzzy. I decided to wait it out. Either EDITOR would doing something to me or not. Either way there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

This was better than having the constant threat of being messed with by a higher being. If it went on too long I might not even be able to stop it.

Several minutes after the video call, still nothing happened. I was surprised EDITOR didn’t try to get some sort of retribution. After another few minutes Kelsey suddenly appeared beside me.

I gave a start, but quickly tried to regain my calm composure. “Hi, aunt Kelsey. What can I do for you today?” I gave my most innocent smile.

She had a deadpan expression. “It’s come to my attention that something bad happened to you due to EDITOR misusing the power given to it. EDITOR will have quite a few more people, and independent programs, watching over it in the future.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, if you mention anything that has to do with our software it is a breach of your contract and you can get sentenced to prison...”

My impression of my aunt suddenly dropped several points. Besides my mother she was the one I trusted the most, since she had helped us so much.

“… is what I’d like to say, but since it’s technically illegal we won’t be protected by the law. So don’t spread it, please?”

Or not. I guess she’s not that bad. She just doesn’t want to get exposed. Understandable.

“I’ve got to go, but I decided to correct what EDITOR did. The film file was deleted. What exactly happened?”

I could have lied to get a large reward. “Nothing really, I was just warned not to do something just because I knew about EDITOR, when I mentioned it would effect EDI the notice changed. After that EDITOR docked me an health point for being snarky.”

She thought for a moment. “Well, although that’s certainly not acceptable, it’s also not to the degree that we would normally offer reparations…”

I shrugged. “Having EDITOR not breathing down my neck all the time is good enough. There were several updates geared towards just nerfing my character ya know? I didn’t think that was fair.”

Kelsey made a face, and scratched the back of her neck. “Oh, well see, those were done legally. You really were getting too powerful too quickly. We’ve also nerfed quite a few other things, but you keep thinking up ways to become too powerful.

If it was just you we wouldn’t be bothered, but the methods you created could be used by anyone that just lucked into finding them.”

We had a small conversation after that. I found out It’d be ok to be over-powered, as long as it wasn’t in a way that a lot of people could ‘easily’ obtain. For instance, using something I obtained by luck, or an event that is impossible to replicate.

After that we parted. I had a fairly good idea about using enchantments to become overly powerful, and EDITOR could no longer stop me.

*Attention*

An update has occurred.

Enchantments will now be set to a maximum time limit, or number of uses, based on the magic put into them.

Enchantments can be made permanent, at the cost of the required mana being unusable until the enchantment is disbanded.

Currently enchanted gear will begin a timer once all players have completed their contests.

The higher quality the enchantment, and the quality of the gear will determine the duration of the enchantment.

Hey. Didn’t we just go over this?

I went to back into the white room, but receive a message from mom.

‘Dear, EDITOR is right about this one. Even though I want to punch her! She hurt my baby! Your enchantment ability is too easy to get.’

WHAT MOTHERFUCKER!? TOO EASY!? I fumed for several minutes. This class was NOT easy to obtain.

Alright then! You piece of shit! Listen here! You want a war!?

I decided. At that moment. I was going to get back at EDITOR. I didn’t know how, but I would think of something.

Then something strange happened. I thought of using EDI to punish EDITOR, but I caught myself discarding the idea without even judging its worth.

Why would I do that?

I had to accept it at that point. Whatever my feeling for EDI, they at least were such that I didn’t want to hurt her for no reason.

I didn’t usually find it hard to quiet down the voice people called a conscious, unless it came from some young child or small animal that is destitute. However, EDI seemed to be eliciting a similar response.

I decided to find her, and… I didn’t know. But I knew if I saw her I’d end up doing something. At least that way I wouldn’t feel so weird. If something good happened, great, if not, well it’s not like I lost anything.

With that I went to search for EDI. And by search for I meant I had Kretchof tell me exactly where she was by summoning him and having him show me to her.