Skills
Weapon Slot Expansion 1: Increases the weapon slot capacity by one.
Martial Arts: A hand-to-hand combat skill. Grants bonuses to unarmed attacks and enables the use of martial arts sword skills.
Footwork: A movement skill. Enhances the speed multiplier based on DEX values and enables the use of footwork sword skills.
Items
Red Spice: A fiery powder that overwhelms the tongue. Made from the seeds of a red fruit cultivated in a foreign land, it was once traded as a costly poison. But perhaps that was a lie spread by rulers to monopolize it.
Nostalgic Pocket Watch: A pocket watch that evokes memories of a cherished homeland. Its unattainable past drives people to endless longing and nostalgia. But where, exactly, is the homeland this watch yearns for?
Black Cat's Key: The key to the hideout of the Black Cats, who met a tragic end. Betrayed by a deceitful swordsman, they gained excessive power and ideals, only to fall into a trap. Upon learning of his comrades' deaths, the Black Cat leader chose death in despair.
The North Dungeon. The first dungeon I'm tackling in DBO, it's a place unlike anything in SAO, exuding a futuristic, mechanical aesthetic.
To be precise, it feels like a world where humanity has perished, leaving only machines behind. Though well-maintained, the weathered atmosphere—steeped in the inevitable "history" of material decay—would be irresistible to those who love such vibes.
But as a dungeon, it's brutally unforgiving. Surrounded by three robotic monsters, I'm racking my brain for a way out of this mess.
"Ku! Hold on, I'll save you! Stay alive for 100—no, 120 seconds!"
"Break, damn it! Just break already!"
The sound of attacks hammering the thick metal shutter behind me echoes. As you might've guessed, I'm thoroughly screwed, isolated from the others by a trap.
The root of the problem was our formation. Diavel, with the highest HP and defense, took the lead. I was in the middle, and Shinon, our ranged support, brought up the rear.
Diavel's skills are Cooking and Codebreaking. The former's self-explanatory, but the latter, according to Shinon, is especially useful in dungeons like this, which is why Diavel prioritized it.
And Codebreaking is indeed powerful. It's been a game-changer, letting us breeze through passwords and unlock untouched treasure chests (or rather, electronically locked safes). It's been a major asset so far.
But the more useful something is, the bigger the catch. Especially when human malice is involved.
We were honestly coasting. Shinon's Sniper skill let us take the initiative, and since robots tend to have low HP despite high defense, they weren't much of a threat. As long as we watched out for the small patrol bots that overwhelm with numbers, ambushes weren't a concern.
So when Diavel used Codebreaking on a password panel to unlock a shutter blocking our path, even Shinon, a beta tester, let her guard down.
The moment the shutter opened, a new one slammed down, separating me from Diavel. I instinctively dashed forward, yanking Diavel by the collar and tossing him toward Shinon. But my reckless move landed me in this predicament.
And, of course, I'm surrounded by three nearly 10-foot-tall, spider-like, eight-legged robots that are clearly a cut above anything I've faced before.
"Come on, can't we settle this peacefully? How about putting down those nasty cannons on your backs… whoa!"
Before I can finish, one of the mechanical spiders fires a thin laser from its mouth—a sweeping attack that doesn't care about hitting its allies.
I duck just in time, but another spider, taking the laser hit like it's nothing, uses three of its eight legs to kick me upward. I block with my war pick, but the impact rattles me.
Their teamwork doesn't stop there. The third spider, having locked onto me as I'm launched, fires its massive cannon. With a deafening roar, I see a blazing fireball of pure heat.
"Look, I'm saying you guys are nuts! That kind of AI teamwork is just unfair!"
I channel the searing discomfort in my left arm into a yell of defiance at their absurd coordination. That last hit blew my left arm clean off—a severed state. My HP is steadily dropping, my stamina recovery is tanked, and the sensation is like my brain's being churned in a blender.
The cannon and leg attacks combined took out 70% of my HP, with the cannon accounting for 90% of the damage.
Shinon warned me about the cannon's speed and its physical and fire attributes, but I didn't expect this. Though, to be fair, I haven't invested much in VIT.
I need to stop the bleeding fast. To halt the constant damage from a severed state, I need a Hemostatic Bandage. It won't fix the stamina recovery penalty, but it'll stop the HP drain.
Thanks to Shinon's advice, we each carry one bandage, but there's no way I can use it in this onslaught.
"…Or so you thought, you damn spiders!"
Who do they think I am? I'm the idiot who survived most of SAO solo! This kind of pinch is just another day for me.
I leap to dodge a simultaneous laser sweep from all three. Their lasers can't change direction mid-fire, so ducking or jumping guarantees evasion.
While airborne, I toss my war pick aside and manipulate my menu without looking—a technique I call Blind Evasion Operation, born from the sad reality of solo play.
The menu follows the player. Memorize the motions, and switching items or equipment isn't hard. But pulling this off in a death game, where one mistake could kill you, is something only a total lunatic would try. Or maybe I'm just that lunatic.
I memorized the bandage's slot beforehand. Dodging the cannon's follow-up shots and taking chip damage from the blasts, I wrap the bandage around my stump, confirming the bandage icon now overlays the severed-state marker.
No more HP loss to worry about. I pop a Phosphorescent Herb into my mouth. It tastes exactly like grass, but it vaguely reminds me of my grandma's grass dumplings. Not that they were bad, mind you—I just couldn't get into them. Yeah, they just weren't my thing!
Counterattacking is tough, though. My left arm's gone, my war pick's fumbled, and my trusty claw hook won't deal enough damage to these metal beasts.
"My HP's nearing the red zone, and all I've got is a weak claw hook. No hero's coming to save me, huh?"
"No convenient hero's showing up, you know!"