When Stella's eyes fluttered open, the first thing she saw was a familiar, whitewashed ceiling.
"Ugh… not again. The resurrection room."
She groaned and sat up—then winced.
"Ow… how did I even die this time?"
The bearded priest at her side gave a patient, almost bored sigh.
"Your companions are waiting outside. Don't forget to pay the resurrection fee."
With that, he turned and walked away, robes swishing faintly in the still air.
Stella swung her legs off the bed, her mind replaying the hazy, disjointed memories of her death.
It had started the moment the Crucible Knight spotted her drinking a potion.
His eyes blazed, and he charged like a maddened bull. The sudden fury had thrown her off balance, and his sword managed to slash deep across her abdomen.
If she hadn't once been a track-and-field star in the Elven Forest—albeit a hundred years ago—she'd have died right there.
They had traded blows for several tense moments before she finally found an opening to retreat. But just as she was about to slip away—
A strange, gelatinous blue creature appeared and… stepped on her shadow.
[Stella is attempting to run!]
[A wild Wobbuffet appeared!]
[The wild Wobbuffet used: Shadow Tag!!]
[Stella failed to run!]
Wobbuffet—the Patient Pokémon. An odd monster with the uncanny ability to trap opponents by pinning their shadow, preventing escape.
[Energy per Unit: 17]
[HP: C | Strength: F- | Intelligence: D | Endurance: E | Speed: E- | Overall Combat Power: E]
The Crucible Knight caught up a heartbeat later, and in one brutal swing, Stella was cut clean in half.
Back in the resurrection room, she clenched her teeth.
"What in the blazes was that thing?!"
In all her years, she had never seen a monster remotely like Wobbuffet—nor heard of any magic capable of freezing someone in place by literally stepping on their shadow.
"And that knight…" she muttered, brow furrowing. "His skills—his magic—none of it matched anything I know. The patterns on his armor… unfamiliar. Where is he from?"
The Elven Forest—her homeland—was famous for its Grand Library, a vast repository of over a millennium of history. Any known magical record could be found there.
She had devoured all of it, including ancient and supposedly lost magic, and considered herself an expert.
Yet the Crucible Knight had unleashed sorcery unlike anything she'd ever read about—turning his mouth into a frog-like throat sac to breathe fire, conjuring a dragon-like golden tail that lashed the air…
None of it belonged to any known school of magic.
If anything, this only made her more determined to uncover the truth.
She pushed open the door and nearly collided with two young women—one tall, one shorter, both radiating the polished air of the well-bred.
The shorter one, her voice sharp with outrage, declared,
"I'm so furious, Phyllis! The moment I get home, I'm putting out a bounty—whoever clears Sein Dungeon first gets ten thousand gold coins!"
Phyllis, the taller of the pair, only chuckled.
"Glad to hear you're going home. Ten thousand gold will bring the best adventurers running."
Another pampered noble playing at being an adventurer, Stella thought. Even under plain clothes, Hainis couldn't hide her noble upbringing. Stella didn't linger, brushing past them without comment.
In the main hall, her own party waved her over from a bench.
There was Gibbs, a hulking silver-ranked Sword & Shield user—upper-tier, with muscle to spare.
Ellie, a sweet, bright-eyed bronze-ranked Elemental Mage fresh from the academy.
And Dany, a bronze-ranked Shadow Walker—master of locks, though occasionally prone to… mistake.
Stella strode up, her hand tightening into a fist.
"Let's go. We're taking another run at that dungeon."
Gibbs raised a hand, stopping her.
"Hold on. The city lord sent a request. You want to see what it's about?"
(***)
In the Dungeon Command Room, Wade was doubled over in laughter.
"Pokémon are just too good," he wheezed, replaying the battle footage for the fifth time—pausing right on Stella's wide-eyed horror as Wobbuffet trapped her in place.
"Absolute cinema!"
"Pika~ pika~," chirped the Pikachu curled in his arms, nuzzling closer before dozing off.
"The Pokémon I can summon right now aren't especially strong," Wade mused, stroking Pikachu's fur, "so I need to use them where their abilities shine. But I'm not limited to Pokémon."
He could summon all manner of monsters—Wobbuffet had just been the right tool for the right moment.
Dong… dong…
The deep toll of a bell rolled across the dungeon. Rest period.
Inside, any remaining adventurers were expelled by an invisible force. Monsters froze mid-step, traps halted, torches guttered out. Silence returned, and Sein Dungeon went still.
Wade pulled out his day's notes and activated a miniature projection of the dungeon.
"Upper layer death rate: 47%. Middle layer: 17%. Lower layer: 36%… Huh. Why's the middle so low?"
He tapped his pen.
"Right—probably because a bunch of people get dumped straight from upper to lower floors via traps. They skip the middle entirely."
Also, truth be told, he hadn't invested much effort into making the middle interesting.
A poison-swamp village in ruins? Memorable.
An underground mine riddled with traps? Also memorable.
A dense forest with monsters hiding in bushes?
Boring.
Clearly, the middle layer needed an upgrade.
[Sein Dungeon – Remaining Energy: 3,655]
[Daily Maintenance Cost: 210]
Ever since summoning the Crucible Knight, upkeep costs had doubled.
Energy went toward things like: Automatically reviving monsters, Repairing buildings, Resetting traps
Reviving a monster cost only a tenth of its original price—cheap in theory. But oddly, even monsters that didn't die drained his energy daily. Why? Wade still didn't know.
"So… if I want max cost-efficiency, I should actually be sending my monsters to die?" He snorted. "Weird."
For now, his focus shifted back to traps.
He opened the Available Buildings menu—names like Blighttown, Farron Keep, The Great Hollow, Sellia Crystal Tunnel floated before him.
He clicked through their miniature models. There were so many options his vision started to blur.
For now, he could only build with ordinary building—sturdy stone fortresses, basic wooden palisades.
The special ones need special materials—like Smithing Stones or rare Elden Ring minerals—were locked behind lord upgrades.
Special materials were anything not native to this world, or inherently magical. Naturally, they cost far more energy.
He could brute-force them into existence… but those maps were designed for undead monsters who couldn't jump or climb.
Adventurers, on the other hand, could jump, fly, and dismantle things with alarming speed.
So Wade decided on a different approach.
"I'll copy."
Copy the concepts.
Copy the layouts.
Copy the enemy placements.
Then change anything that didn't make sense in reality.
The interface made it easy to extract just what he wanted—a torch, a bridge, a cliff, a single hut—and reassemble them however he liked. Done cleverly, this cost less energy than importing an entire map.
"Copy, copy, copy… I'm the number one copier in the world."
His eyes gleamed crimson. The Pikachu in his arms shivered ever so slightly.
(*****)
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