“NOW, I get it!” John said as he looked at the map. After Sylph had defeated the enemy on her side, the tank had closed again. After about ten seconds, the tank had been refilled with the red liquid and then the empty pipes leading up to the exit had become active. The moment the bloody mixture had reached the door, it had unlocked and allowed the air spirit to continue.

On the side with the rest of the group, John had an encounter with a robot that looked almost exactly like the one Sylph had met. The only noticeable difference was that its little muscle fibre was concentrated around the legs instead. Despite its level being 146, John beat it on his own and in only three punches no less. He didn’t even need to use magic.

Apparently that kind of enemy was called an Adaptor. In keeping with its name, it was supposed to adapt over multiple iterations. At that time, John had been somewhat confused how leg-muscles were an adaptation to getting hit with lightning to the chest. However, as both doors had a 1 on them, the Gamer had an inkling of how this would turn out.

After that enemy’s fall, a secret side entrance opened between the two rooms and the group could advance in the same fashion. Once more, there was a simple split road. A little more exploration and the reaching of a door with a big 2 on it caused John to unravel this thing completely.

The map he was looking at was the beginning of a decision tree. The Adaptors didn’t change with each encounter, but with each wave. A quick clearing of all three rooms of this next row confirmed this. Left and right had been more advanced versions of the legs and arms encounter, while the one in the middle was a combination of both.

The liquid that flowed on was transmitting the new information to the Adaptors still in their tanks further in. Sylph met back up with the group in that middle room once the side paths opened. She had beaten the one enemy on the right side handily on her own yet again. Their power increases were only small.

“In effect, we can pick what is easiest for us as we go on,” John explained to them as he turned a page to make a theoretic drawing of the entire map. Every row had two more rooms at the side, slowly expanding to become quite massive. After having detailed the map quite extensively, he pulled a red pen from his inventory and drew a line that only cleared one room in every row. “I would guess that, at a certain point, we meet an ultimate version of any one path and that is the end boss,” he said, “either that or there is a maximum width and afterward the rooms will flow back together again and the final room is then buffed depending on what was cleared on the way.”

Everyone nodded, Undine raising her melodic voice, “That second one sounds more likely.”

“Yeah… which means we have a somewhat hard decision to make,” John stated. “The side paths only open once every enemy in a row is defeated. So, it is in our best interest to clear as many complete layers deep as possible to avoid backtracking too much.”

Since their mission here was to explore the entire dungeon, once they defeated the boss, they would need to go all the way back to the last available side path to clear the rest of the dungeon. “How is that a hard decision?” Salamander asked. “All we have to do is clear everything up to a few rooms before the boss.” She swiped the pen out of John’s hand. Extending the map with the theoretic narrowing and then crossing through every row to indicate opened up sideways, until she arrived at the last three rows. “There, if we only take one path from there on out, the boss gets way less fucking buffs. Problem solved.”

“In theory, you are right,” John admitted. “Just… we are talking Gaia here. I think she learned to close loopholes like this by now.” Nobody disagreed with that. “If I was a betting boy, either one or both of the following two things are true.” He tapped on the last three, untouched rows, “One: the distance between those is so long that the backtrack is going to be absolutely horrendous.” His fingers moved on and now tapped on the last room, “Or two: there is an extra room that opens only if we beat the strongest version of the boss, so we have to rerun this entire thing if we cheese it.”

‘I refuse to sit here and be bored for a second run,’ Siena informed them.

“Shut it, shadow of more-whore,” Salamander cussed the piece of air the nightmare elemental was occupying. “You aren’t helping, so you don’t get to make the choice.”

Siena played with the thought of making some nasty comments, but ultimately decided that nothing would be more effective than just ignoring the endflame elemental entirely. The amusement at the boiling rage Salamander felt at that reached John. Before the grey and golden flames could be thrown around in a fit of rage, the Gamer decided to wrap this strategy meeting up.

“Anyway, I’d rather have a more difficult bossfight than run either of these risks, so we are doing a full clear from the get-go. He closed the explanatory paper and put the original page back on, fully intending to keep track of the actual map. Just because the layout was predictable, he shouldn’t get lazy. That and they needed to be able to spot irregularities to find the three Special Rooms. ‘Oh, chucklefucks, I don’t have a Revealer of Secrets,’ John realized.

Well, he had to hope that just finding the Secret Room would count or that he somehow was lucky enough to find one on the way. Typical for Floor based dungeons, John had put the loot active. They were bad for EXP farming anyway, so John liked to have some fun that way. The decision to always have it off during Assaults was now biting him in the ass though.

“That’s inconvenient,” he sighed as he got up. For a moment, he contemplated using Escape Rope to go and fix this by grinding on the Maggot Ursas. They were a pretty reliable supply of Symbiotic Riddles and in the current level bracket. It was better to keep that 1-week cooldown for that extra-strong buffed boss though, in his opinion, so he decided that they just had to run with the way it was currently set-up. “We MIGHT need to rerun this, but let’s hope this does it. Anyway, starting strategy: as the enemies are pretty weak right now, we should separate.”

The logic behind that was easy. If even John could beat one of those tin cans, then there was little danger in covering at least a couple of rows by separating. Doing so would save them massive amounts of time, and since they could always communicate through John’s mind, there weren’t any real drawbacks. Whenever the enemies began to get difficult, they could simply meet up again. In this configuration, the only person who wouldn’t go out on her own was Undine. The healer stayed firmly attached to John’s left arm in her item form.

Since he was the person everyone teleported to if that became necessary, as well as the weakest solo fighter and one of three people in this group that could permanently die, that choice wasn’t made because Undine wouldn’t be able to take out at least a few of the weaker Adaptors but just to make sure the Gamer was safe.

It was actually a decision forced on him by Aclysia and the water spirit herself. Since he saw the value pretty clearly, he didn’t put up much of a struggle.

That done, they all got moving. It turned out that John’s hunch about the distance was largely correct, as each new row was further away from the last. At first, he didn’t mind that, since their separation meant that none of them had to backtrack in any way. Their group broke down to its singular, operable members, a total of six. Which became a problem at the fourth row with its total of seven rooms.

One of them would have to backtrack. That first time the choice easily fell on Sylph, since she was by far the fastest, but that problem only intensified as they continued to bigger and bigger numbers. The concept of the dungeon was really neat, since it allowed them to pick their own difficulty, but the way it was implemented majorly annoyed John.

It wasn’t particularly fun to have to walk bigger and bigger distance to fight enemies that only slowly became more challenging. In that monotony, the only slight break John had found was helping Beatrice find the Secret Room. Placed on her path, which was one of the central ones, she located the Secret Room through keen observing. Although her passiveness almost made her uncaringly continue on her path.

The steel mesh that covered the ground had clunked under her step, a sign that it was sitting loosely within its frame. As this was the only time anyone had noticed that noise in the otherwise quiet environment, that had ticked John off, and he ordered some further searching. After some experimenting, Beatrice managed to remove that piece of the floor and then went down a ladder to a locked door. She couldn’t open it, but at least they had found that one. Their luck wasn’t bad enough for that thing to be placed on Sylph’s or Salamander’s path, as the clue would have been impossible to notice for the flying elementals.

They had been in there for three hours already when John, lethargic from the mind-numbing boredom, continued his task of sketching the map. His falling enthusiasm was clearly reflected on the piece of paper, the lines becoming more sluggishly drawn the further they went in. No irregularities at all in the lay-out. They were at a width of 29 now, which meant a ludicrous amount of backtracking as everyone had to clear multiple rooms. The enemies themselves were somewhat challenging by now but still reasonably soloable.

‘I fucking hate this dungeon,’ John thought, wishing for something with a bit less walking and a bit more action. ‘If the environment were interesting at least… I feel like I have been walking through the same corridor for hours now.’ Everything always looked the same, the only difference being the upgrades on the Adaptors, turning this whole thing into a visual slog. Even though he wasn’t the greatest at it, the Gamer would have preferred running some sort of parkour at this point.

‘If we have to rerun this,’ Aclysia reached out to him in agreement, ‘I will need to cook several meals to exile my frustrations.’

Salamander cackled mentally, ‘You do that, I call dibs on getting fucked. WAY better anger management.’

‘Ladies,’ John was thankful for the conversation and partook in it laughingly, ‘I can do both of you at the same time, that won’t be a problem.’ Finally, he saw a door in the distance. Without thinking about it, he pressed his hand on the little terminal, which opened the door upon the input recognition.

A mechanical sound echoed behind John. Designed to shove him into the room, part of the ceiling had lowered and was now presenting its flat side to the Gamer. While Mana Protection prevented the initial effectiveness of this motion, it didn’t just vanish but rather kept pressing against the arcane layer with unrelenting force.

John had no other choice but to step into the room, as the constant grind was taking a toll on his mana, quickly burning through the entire pre-loaded barrier. He was greeted by a room that went against the standard layout by having two tanks inside the right and left walls rather than the usual central one. The door locked behind him, the first time it had done so in this entire dungeon, making it abundantly clear that this was a Trap Room.

The two tanks opened simultaneously, the bloody liquid running red through the mesh. A cloud of darkness, like an aura of ash, exuded from the tiny gaps of both of them. The typical sign that they were enemies buffed-up by the Horror mechanic.

‘Okay, I am going to need some help here!’ John informed everyone, quickly picking two people to help him out here, ‘Aclysia, Salamander, use your teleports.’ They tried, but to everyone’s shock they found that they couldn’t. Something about this Trap Room must have blocked them out. John would have appreciated to know beforehand that this was even possible; this was way more dangerous than a lot of other things he had to cope with. ‘Well, this is going to suck,’ the Gamer thought as he quickly prepared himself.

He assessed the light flooded room and the tools at his disposal and quickly came up with a strategy. As the enemies were still in their spawning-animation, or the real life equivalent, he turned towards one of the tanks and cast Arcane Echo over and over again. The overlapping circles laid themselves on the grated floor in their entire, two-dimensional appearance.

Concentrating on only one side, John hoped he could nuke one of the two Adaptors out of existence right at the start of the fight. He would have used Shardbound for this, but that skill wasn’t guaranteed to hit, while the stacked area damage trap was.

In unison, the two Adaptors stepped out of their lightless confinement. Their mechanical core skeleton was still visible, but now that they were several versions in, biological features were more apparent. Strong muscles wrapped tightly around taut sinews, which were shaped from wire rather than flesh. Generally, these monsters were skinless; only their upper chest and head were covered in something approaching the human exterior, although colour and visible hardness made it seem like the material was closer to nails or teeth than regular skin.

Eyes glowing red as they activated, the black energy of the Horrors gathered inside their empty stomach areas, as these robots had no organs that needed to be placed there.

Just like John had planned, the one located right of him was on the sudden receiving end of a blinding wave of purple and blue light as all of the Arcane Echos unloaded under its feet at once. Not expecting that to finish the robot off, he charged forwards. He needed to throw that Adaptor back into its tank for his plan to work.

The Horror monster, although it took heavy damage, lacked the necessary programming to be bothered by pain. Its muscles and even part of its metal frame had been scorched by the arcane might, but it remained operational and met John’s charge by standing its ground. The Gamer’s attempt to shove the heavy machinery was cut short by the enemy’s refusal to budge even an inch.

Which threw John in quite the pickle, as the punch thrown in retaliation reduced his mana enough that the second Adaptor’s hand broke through the barrier and pulled the Gamer by the collar, throwing him towards the middle of the room. ‘Shit!’ John thought. His initial strategy hadn’t paid off and now both enemies were together and jumping on him in unison.

His mana pool was depleted again and again as he tried desperately to get away from the duo. They were pummelling him with attacks that were vaguely resembling basic martial arts of the non-magic variety. Even without that magical backing, it was effective at reducing John’s HP. At a particularly bad point, the Gamer was nothing more than a playball between two pairs of crushingly strong hands punching him back and forth. It was only good that Gamer’s Body prevented his teeth from being knocked out of his face.

A desperate motion of his hand finally broke that stalemate, when his HP had already been reduced to below 25%. Accompanied by a whip of water, it caused the two Adaptors to jump backwards, and a fireball thrown from Purgatory only widened that gap, allowing John to get some distance between them and recover somewhat. It was Undine’s healing versus the constant crashing of metal against her summoner’s bones that had John kept with as much health as he currently had.

His initial strategy was meant to prevent exactly this situation. While it hadn’t been successful in that, it was wrong to say it had no effect whatsoever. While the undamaged unit was moving with scary smoothness for a mechanical monster, the second Horror limped after its comrade as they begun their slow approach. Stopping and thrusting its middle outwards, the scorched Adaptor emphasized the swirl of dark powers between its ribs and waist.

John read the sign quite clearly and immediately dove to the side. As he rolled over the mesh, an unpleasant experience, a wavering mass of baleful energies flew by. ‘Clearly defined, powerful ranged attack,’ the Gamer mentally took note of the enemy’s attack patterns, as he quickly went back on his feet and danced back as far as the limited space allowed him. The darkness inside the Adaptor’s stomach seemed weaker now. ‘Some sort of cooldown,’ he thus added to his observation.

A second bolt flew his way, thrown by the undamaged unit. John managed to evade that one as well, but both of the robotic adversaries were ever so slowly approaching him. Their steps were methodical, they knew that they just needed to corner their prey and that rushing their charge would only give him more openings to slip through.

John felt his heel hit the wall, and slowly retreated along it. He tried to buy time for his mana to regenerate, as well as to position the two Adaptors advantageously. Eventually, both of his heels hit another wall, and he finally was cornered. The unhurt unit was approaching him from the front, about to pass the very tank it had stepped out off, the other blocking John’s escape into the open room.

With no luxury to wait any longer, John deactivated Mana Protection and went for yet another charge. Towards the absolutely healthy unit. A purely biological being would have been surprised by this decision, but their uncaring circuits caused the Adaptors to react fast.

John’s left handed swing was caught by the Adaptor at the wrist. Taking the arm into both of its hands, the robot clenched down in an attempt to snap the bones underneath the black scales. “I don’t think you are nearly as strong as Nathalia,” the Gamer mocked the unknowing, earless enemy as he extended his right towards the centre of the room. Undine’s glove form became undone and the ocean elemental appeared next to the wrestling duo.

Originally, John wanted to do what Undine was about to do himself, but he was grappled right now, so it would be more effective this way. All of John’s current mana, along with remainders of the water spirit’s own pool, concentrated in a jet of water. Although not immensely threatening from a damage standpoint, the raw kinetic energy forced the Adaptor to step sideways numerous times, dragging John along.

This culminated in the two of them being swept into the tank, after which the water subsided and Undine moved to intercept the second enemy instead. Although this confined space should have been bad news for the physically weaker Gamer, he smirked, a shadow falling over his face. “Check,” he stated, even as the darkness within the Adaptors stomach swirled in the preparation of another blast.

It wasn’t the only darkness that was stirring.

Bladed tendrils extended from the walls and hooked deep into the meaty bits of the alchemic creature as they tore muscle from metallic bone. “Bondage in tight places,” Siena laughed in her overly sexualized voice, “this is exactly the kind of play I am into.” The hands of the Adaptor were forced open by its sinews getting cut, allowing John to quickly leave the tight chamber and the threat of being hit with a point-blank dark magic attack.

He left Siena to that endeavour. A small place with shadows in three quarters of the directions meant that she had basically won already. The Adaptor tried to struggle free, but it only accomplished the creation of ringing sounds as its fists hit the place of its birth. It would also be its grave.

John went over to Undine to help finish off the second one. Even damaged and without the backing of its comrade, the Horror was a strong opponent. Reduced in his HP already and without Mana Protection, John gave the necessary respect to its raw, physical strength and kept his distance as he threw ranged attacks. While only a whittling tactic, it eventually succeeded in killing the weakened Adaptor.

The exit opened, Siena had, as predicted, successfully disposed of the other one, and John straightened his collar. This could have gone way worse if he hadn’t invested as equally in his physical Stats as he did. ‘I guess the argument can be made that Mana Protection would have kept me from all damage if I invested only in Mental Stats, I suppose,’ John thought, ‘No idea how I would have killed them in that case though… that build would need absurd, downright broken mana regeneration.’

Not that it was a particularly important train of thought, John just liked to think how else his powers could have turned out.

‘Maybe if I just spend all points on Intellect…? No, no, that would be stupid,’ he decided and walked back the way he had come, re-equipping Undine as Siena went back into her incorporeal state. He needed to clear the neighbouring room as well. ‘Bogging down in any one Stat only works in badly designed systems.’