So — after surviving a hail of bullets and running the entire length of the cathedral rooftops —
They'd ended up right back at the Chapel.
All of it, just to open a door.
Bone Fang wore expressions that ranged somewhere between exhausted and mildly betrayed.
They understood the logic — this was a shortcut. Understood that once the gate was open, dying again meant respawning straight from the Cleansing Chapel into the cathedral interior, skipping the graveyard and rooftop gauntlet entirely on the next attempt.
Still. It had felt like a genuinely torturous detour.
If they hadn't been worried that forcing the door open early might invalidate their rewards, or trigger some other punishment they couldn't predict, absolutely nobody would have chosen to walk that particular loop voluntarily.
Nobody.
But glancing over at Fingri — grinning ear to ear, eyes actually sparkling — Bone Fang swallowed the complaints they'd been building.
Right. Apparently he genuinely loved this exact flavor of level design.
No wonder he'd made Gold Rank. Finding joy in suffering wasn't something you could imitate through effort alone.
"This is brilliantly built. Genuinely the most intricately assembled area I've explored in a while."
Praising the dungeon warmly, Fingri waved everyone toward the bonfire. Bathed in its warmth, stamina crept back up and the accumulated fatigue slowly loosened its grip.
Thinking it over, this seemed to be the first region in Sein Dungeon actually built around unlocking shortcuts and looping back to a single reused bonfire. Outside the Catacombs of Carthus — which forced a mostly linear path due to terrain constraints — most other regions simply dropped adventurers into sprawling open environments and let them wander.
Especially Liurnia of the Lakes.
After spending that much time crossing open-world sprawl, a compact, densely interconnected level felt genuinely refreshing by comparison.
Looking at another door marked —
[Cannot be opened from this side]
Fingri couldn't help wondering where its own shortcut would eventually connect. The more he turned it over, the more excited he got.
While the Hasavi Party relaxed by the fire, Bone Fang pulled out notebooks and started sketching maps, working to preserve every route they'd covered. Fingri's party had no interest in matching them — they had no intention of publishing a strategy guide of their own.
For Bone Fang, though, accurate maps had genuine value.
The graveyard and rooftop routes had already been fully mapped. Retracing the day mentally, Tusk realized the only unexplored option remaining was the side corridor branching off the staircase that had led down from the rooftops. Almost certainly the route heading deeper into the cathedral.
During the break, Tusk also filled everyone in on Jack Baldo — the Onion Knight, still trapped in the well.
The predictable result: a crowd immediately gathered around the well, enthusiastically offering food and supplies. By the time they let up, the poor knight had been reduced to a single repeating phrase.
"Thank you… but no."
They'd broken him, effectively.
"Alright. We've rested enough. Let's move."
Climbing the stairs and heading into the side passage, the group found themselves in a long, winding corridor — barely wide enough for two people abreast. A mysterious light source somewhere overhead cast everything in faint violet-black, and the color alone put everyone on edge.
Nothing beyond the next bend was visible.
A doorway waited ahead.
Matilda, as usual, took point. The instant her frame crossed the threshold —
A swarm of thin Slaves dropped from the ceiling. Some landed at her feet, hacking at her ankles. Others jumped for her shoulders, clawing at her head.
She crushed each one, unhurried.
Nobody looked especially surprised — everyone had already assumed an ambush was coming from somewhere, whether around the corner, above them, or through the doorway itself.
They'd barely finished bracing for one direction when a Cathedral Knight — armored head to toe like a walking iron can — burst through the doorway. The moment it engaged Matilda, a second Cathedral Knight rushed in from around the corner, bringing several Slaves along for company.
"…Right. So it really was all three directions at once. Consistent with form — the dungeon always picks the option that maximizes 'joy' for everyone involved."
The Cathedral's monster roster was actually fairly straightforward, once mapped out. Slaves and Sludge Monsters formed the bottom tier. Man-grubs and Deacons of the Deep made up the backbone. Cathedral Knights served as the elite tier. Beyond those — a handful of larger monsters, and a small number of genuine surprises.
A Cathedral Knight sat, natively, around D-Rank. No matter how aggressively Balance of Strength scaled it, it couldn't jump into C-Rank territory — D++ was its practical ceiling.
The gap showed immediately in practice. All of Bone Fang together could barely handle one Cathedral Knight. Any single Hasavi member could comfortably engage several at once.
Since reaching the rooftops, Bone Fang had gradually settled into feeling like dead weight. Now, functionally, they'd become the cheering section.
"Go! You've got this, seniors!"
The Cathedral Knights fought with broad, telegraphed swings — miniature echoes of the Pursuer's own style.
Unfortunately for them, Matilda had run entirely out of patience for the day.
She dispatched them one after another with brutal efficiency.
"If I can't put down the Pursuer quickly, I can at least handle you quickly."
Pushing deeper down the corridor, they encountered four Cathedral Knights total. Beyond their equipment, the defeated knights dropped Hero Meat Chunks and Raw Meat Dumplings — an oddly on-brand loot table for the Cathedral's overall aesthetic.
The corridor eventually ended.
Three treasure chests sat waiting, blatantly, right at the terminus.
Fingri tossed a few throwing knives at them without ceremony.
All three were Mimics, confirming his suspicion.
Backtracking and entering through the doorway the second Cathedral Knight had emerged from, they arrived at a considerably larger chamber — layout roughly matching the Cleansing Chapel. Another prayer hall for the church, evidently. Wide rake-shaped candelabras burned quietly, casting only the faintest light through the gloom.
Fingri sat down on one of the pews. Staring toward the distant pulpit, he briefly imagined himself as one of the faithful, listening to a sermon.
The atmosphere was genuinely immersive.
Before he could sink deeper into the fantasy, though —
Several figures crawled out from beneath the pulpit itself.
"…Wait. Those aren't Hollows."
Tall and thin, some of them. Short and heavyset, others. All finely robed in embroidered fabric that clearly signaled status, and carrying weapons closer to ceremonial daggers than functional blades.
Something well beyond ordinary Hollows.
Names appeared above their heads.
[Deacon of the Deep]
The title Deacon implied a certain prestige. In the original game they'd been referencing, though, these things were about as rare as stray dogs — genuinely common enough that Wade had never fully understood why the original designers included quite so many. So he'd simply followed suit and treated them as standard, plentiful trash mobs here as well.
Unlike their in-game counterparts — who mostly threw fireballs and swung wildly — this world's version demonstrated a fuller kit. The Deacons raised their strange ceremonial weapons overhead, and fireballs of varying size arced toward the adventurers.
Not especially threatening at first glance. Low fire rate, easy to dodge. Even Bone Fang felt confident absorbing a few hits if it came to that.
Fingri raised a hand, holding the group back. He wanted to see the full range of what these things could actually do.
The Deacons cooperated cheerfully.
Fire Orb. Flamethrower. Sweeping Flame. Kindle Flame. A blend of basic and advanced pyromancies, several of which triggered a genuine instinctive alarm in Fingri despite his experience.
But the Deacons themselves moved at a crawl — barely faster than an ordinary Hollow. That single flaw undercut most of their theoretical threat level significantly.
Beyond the fire spells, they also cast:
Deep Soul.
That one got Fingri out of his seat immediately, guard raised on reflex. The condensed black mass of pure soul energy tracked its target relentlessly and, unlike its slow-moving casters, moved genuinely fast.
"Hiss — that actually hurts."
Registering that Deep Soul was landing effectively, the Deacons synchronized for a second cast.
They never got the chance.
The adventurers cut through every one of them long before the spell could form.
How to put it — if these things had come equipped with physical ability matching their spellcasting, each individual Deacon could have posed a threat comparable to a Cathedral Knight. Instead, their bodies barely outperformed a base Hollow, which relegated the entire enemy type to the low tier despite the impressive spell list.
"Their magic's genuinely good. It's just them that's the problem," Fingri said, with real regret.
"If there were a lot more of them — if they clustered together properly — this could actually be a dangerous formation. If I were designing this level, I'd stage something spectacular around it. Picture a few hundred of them assembled into one giant choir. That would be genuinely exciting. One-by-one encounters are just underwhelming."
"Would you please stop jinxing us?"
Matilda genuinely considered stuffing a fist directly into his mouth. Every single time he opened it lately, something ominous followed close behind.
Exactly like the Gatling gun incident.
But — surely Sein Dungeon wouldn't actually throw a few hundred Deacons at them simultaneously.
…Right?
The longer she sat with the thought, the less confidence she had in her own reassurance. Which said everything necessary about how much faith she'd developed in this dungeon's capacity for cruelty.
Leaving the prayer hall, they climbed another staircase. Before they'd even reached the top, a Deacon stationed on high ground opened fire with fireballs — and rushing up meant walking straight into a Cathedral Knight waiting around the corner at the summit.
The positioning was, plainly, malicious by design.
Tusk very nearly had his skull driven into his shoulders.
"…At least it wasn't a giant iron ball rolling down at us."
"Points deducted regardless."
"I genuinely feel like we've been wandering through winding corridors this entire session. Are we even still inside the actual cathedral?"
Bone Fang had barely finished the complaint when Fingri pushed open a set of massive doors ahead.
The view opened up entirely.
The cramped corridors were gone. The oppressive prayer rooms were gone. What unfolded instead was —
Something considerably more overwhelming.
The full interior of the Cathedral of the Deep.
Standing on a second-floor balcony, they took in the entire enormous space at once. Only now did vast actually mean something concrete — against a cathedral of this scale, human figures looked almost comically small.
Far across the hall, a brightly lit platform stood on the opposite side, occupied by a substantial gathering of Deacons and Cathedral Knights. The concentration of activity alone made its importance obvious.
At first glance, the route looked simple — walk straight across to reach it.
Nothing in Sein Dungeon was ever that simple.
There was no direct path from the balcony. The right side had collapsed entirely, forcing the only viable route left — down and to the left, finding a way to the ground floor, then circling back toward the far platform.
Two enormous gates blocked the mandatory route below, though, and the cathedral floor itself was coated in a thick, sickly-green sludge — visually a hundred times more revolting than Farron Keep's poison swamp had ever managed.
Near the sludge, close to the distant platform, a giant lay curled on the ground. Dead or asleep, nobody could confirm from this distance. Given Sein Dungeon's established habits, everyone privately assumed it would eventually stand up.
The most infuriating detail: the heaviest concentration of glowing loot sat precisely where the sludge ran deepest — directly beside the giant's enormous feet.
The level designer's intent could not have been more transparent. A deliberate invitation. An open trap begging adventurers to walk straight into it.
The two gates connected across the second floor — lowered, they'd function as bridges, opening the whole cathedral to exploration.
"What if we just used Flight Magic? Fly straight to the far platform," the mage suggested.
Fingri actually considered it seriously.
Based on Sein Dungeon's established design habits, that platform was almost certainly where this area's boss encounter would take place. The gates looked functional, which meant mechanisms existed somewhere to lower them — the intended path was probably scouring both sides of the cathedral to find and trigger them.
But they had Flight Magic available. And honestly, nearly every adventurer standing on this balcony would have the same idea the second they saw the layout.
Which raised an obvious counter-thought: if the adventurers could think of it, wouldn't Sein Dungeon have thought of it first?
There was almost certainly a countermeasure built in for exactly this scenario. The same way the Magic Academy had handled it.
"We should probably explore normally — but I genuinely want to know what's on that platform. Boss fight, or something else? Let's vote."
Fingri turned to the group.
"Left hand up if you want to do this properly. Right hand if you'd rather just fly straight—"
Before he could finish —
The entire cathedral shook.
Tusk's eyes went wide. He pointed behind Fingri, stammering.
"G-G-Giant—"
A massive shadow swallowed them from behind.
Fingri turned.
A colossal figure now stood directly behind him — towering, radiating an almost physical weight of pressure.
It had been curled up below the balcony the entire time. Which explained, precisely, why none of them had noticed it until this exact moment.
"…First time seeing a live giant, personally."
On that day, everyone present received a fresh, personal reminder of exactly what it meant to stand beneath something built on that scale.