━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚔ Dungeon Conquered ⚔ ━━━━━━━━━━━
Congratulations on conquering the 'Last Camp' Dungeon.
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Adrien let out a long, ragged sigh of relief as the system notification finally flashed across his vision. Tense muscles unravelled all at once. Without waiting another second, he started limping toward Vera.
Behind them, FireStarter managed a final, heavy blow, knocking the berserk player out cold.
Adrien reached Vera just as she threw her arms around him, holding him tight.
"You are getting way too reckless, Adrien," she murmured into his shoulder, her voice trembling. "Facing a dungeon boss completely on your own? What were you thinking?"
Adrien gave a weak, tired smile. "Didn't have much of a choice. The situation demanded it." He pulled back slightly, turning his gaze toward FireStarter, "Come on. Let's find a way out of here."
"Of course," FireStarter called back, wiping sweat from his brow. "But let's do a quick sweep of the cavern first. We just cleared the damn place, there's bound to be a boss chest around here somewhere, right?"
The party split up to search. Vera stuck close to Adrien's side as they scanned the rocky walls for an exit.
"You know," Vera muttered, lowering her voice so the others wouldn't hear, "If the other players find the treasure first, they're going to pocket the best loot and leave us the scraps."
"I know," Adrien replied quietly. "It's standard practice, after all, the quest is the only thing keeping this shaky alliance together. Hopefully, we can beat them to the prize."
The cavern was dimly lit by clusters of bioluminescent mushrooms emitting a faint, eerie blue glow. Now that the immediate danger had passed, Adrien didn't care about stealth anymore; he reached back and lit the heavy lanterns hanging from their packs, and brighter, warmer light flooded the stone tunnels.
Vera watched him for a moment, her brow furrowing, "Adrien. How did you solo that boss? The rest of us were barely surviving the normal mobs."
"It's simple math," Adrien said, trying to downplay it with a shrug. "You guys were dealing with a massive horde. I only had a single target to focus on."
Vera stopped walking and glared at him, clearly not buying his modesty, "That 'single target' was stronger than anything we fought, and I don't think I forgot that you had seven of those smaller mobs chasing you down earlier, and you wiped them all out before we could even run over to help. Stop deflecting."
Adrien sighed, his gaze drifting as he tried to find the right words. "It's hard to explain, and when the fight started, everything else just fell away. I was in the zone, and my mind was clearer than it's ever been."
Vera watched him, waiting, "And do you want to know the craziest part?" Adrien turned to look at her, a strange intensity in his eyes. "I actually enjoyed it, and for the first time in years, Vera... I felt alive."
Vera stared at him, caught off guard by the raw passion in his voice, and she fell silent for a long moment, processing his words. "I mean, I get that it's an adrenaline rush," she said softly, her tone hesitant. "But feeling alive? I don't think I'll ever see it the way you do."
Before she could press further, Adrien's eyes narrowed, spotting something in the shadows ahead.
"Hey, look over there. That looks like some kind of stone table. Let's go check it out."
They broke into a quick jog to reach the table, and found that resting on the dusty stone surface was a scattering of broken crockery, an old diary, and a strange, heavy block.
Suddenly, two system notifications popped up in their field of vision:
━━━━━━━━━━━[ ITEM IDENTIFIED ]━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Memoir of Krsto Borisavljević
Type: Utility / Book
Rarity: Unique
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Description: A personal record detailing the life and final moments of the knight, Sir Krsto Borisavljević.
--
[Effect]:
Initiates the quest line for [Locked/Unknown]
--
Durability: 57 / 325
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━━━━━━━━━━━[ ITEM IDENTIFIED ]━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Key for [Locked/Unknown]
Type: Utility / Key
Rarity: Unique (Quest Item)Description: An enigmatic key crafted to unlock a hidden location.Durability: 197 / 925
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Without exchanging a single word, the duo grabbed the items and shoved them deep into their backpacks.
Suddenly, a loud shout echoed through the cavern tunnels. "Hey! Over here! I found the loot room! Get over here quick!"
In the distance, the bright flame of a torch waved frantically in the dark.
Vera hissed a quiet curse under her breath. "Damnit, we should have checked the other side of the cavern first."
Adrien and Vera hurried toward the loot room, but they were a step too late. By the time they arrived, the rest of the raid party had already crowded around the entrance.
Before they could push through, a player blocked the doorway, crossing his arms with a smug sneer, "Hold it. I don't think you two cheaters deserve a single piece of loot."
Adrien's eyes narrowed, his fists clenching tight at his sides. He recognised the guy instantly. When the horde first attacked, this was the exact idiot who had tried to sabotage Adrien's strategy. If the group hadn't ignored him and listened to Adrien instead, all twenty-two of them would have been wiped out long before the Alpha boss even spawned.
Adrien knew his type all too well, men with egos taller than Everest but absolutely zero substance to back it up. They were always desperately trying to prove they were the top dog, only to fail miserably when the second real danger hit.
"Oh?" Adrien said, keeping his voice entirely deadpan. "And how exactly did we cheat?"
"No regular player can fight like that," the man spat, stepping into Adrien's personal space. "You're definitely using exploits, you filthy—"
"Oh, do cease projecting your own staggering ineptitude onto others," Vera interrupted, her voice smooth, icy, and dripping with patrician disdain.
She stepped forward, crossing her arms and looking down her nose at him as if he were an unpleasant stain on the cavern floor.
"Pray, desist from weaponising your own abysmal nescience as an indictment against others," Vera interjected, her cadence velvety yet razor-sharp, absolutely saturated with patrician condescension.
She glided forward, anchoring her gaze upon him with the clinical detachment one might reserve for a microscopic parasite.
"Merely because your own solipsistic cognitive architecture and tactical perspicacity are so fundamentally attenuated, it does not follow that your peers are similarly shackled by such jejune constraints. Your utter inability to comprehend his paragon displays of martial virtuosity does not render Adrien a charlatan; it merely exposes the profound, unadulterated pusillanimity of your own intellect. You are a walking, talking manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect, suffering from a terminal case of hubristic delusion. Now, be a good little supernumerary entity and vacate the premises."
The man froze, his jaw dropping as his brain completely misfired. He blinked rapidly, utterly flummoxed by the verbal onslaught. Words like nescience, perspicacity, and pusillanimity bounced around his head like an ancient, untranslatable dialect. He looked back and forth between Vera and Adrien, his lips twitching as he desperately searched for a comeback he simply didn't possess. Completely bankrupt of vocabulary, he was left entirely speechless.
Adrien snickered, turning to Vera with a look of faux exasperation, "Vera, please, have some mercy. You're going to short-circuit the poor guy's brain with those words. You've got to dumb it down to caveman level for him."
Vera shot Adrien a deadpan glare, "Don't insult cavemen, Adrien. They were highly intelligent compared to this particular specimen standing in front of us."
"You're right, my bad," Adrien chuckled.
He reached out and gave the stunned player a condescending pat on the head, treating him like a misbehaving toddler. "Listen, little boy. Next time, try picking a fight with someone in your own weight class."
The man's face flushed an impressive shade of deep purple. Infuriated, his hand flew to his waist as he began to draw his weapon. "You bastard, how dare—"
The words choked in his throat as he froze instantly as the cold, metallic barrel of Adrien's gun pressed firmly against his forehead.
"My parents raised me to be a gentleman," Adrien said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm, quiet register. "But you are severely testing my limits."
The cavern grew dead silent.
"I tolerated you when you tried to disrupt the raid formation just to soothe your fragile ego," Adrien continued, his eyes turning dead and emotionless, "I tolerated you when you shoved another player into the dirt to save your own skin from the Alpha, which got her killed, but right now? You are polluting my air, you're polluting my ears, and your pathetic, ego-driven tantrums are annoying me thoroughly. So, what's it going to be, you useless waste of space? Want to find out if your draw is faster than my trigger finger?"
The man swallowed hard, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. Sure, this was a game, and he knew he would respawn, but he was a hair's breadth away from reaching level 10. A death penalty right now meant losing hours of level progress, dropping a random piece of his gear, and entirely forfeiting his share of the dungeon loot. More than anything, the raw, sensory phantom pain of dying was something nobody wanted to experience.
Slowly, the man raised both hands in a submissive surrender and took a shaky step back. "Sorry, brother... I messed up. My mistake. I'm sorry."