Chương 59: The Final Touches

The first dungeon introduces itself with a staircase. A long one. Spiraling downward into darkness with all the subtlety of a location that expects me to feel dread. I glare at it for a second, mostly out of principle, before stepping inside. The overused transition fades to reveal— —another staircase. Fantastic.

A low groan echoes through the stone as skeletal figures begin clawing their way out of the walls, their dramatic entrance accompanied by cracking stone and an entirely unnecessary amount of falling debris. Lesser undead. Spearmen. A knight. All very committed to the theme. Blazing Star Dance unfolds without ceremony, my blade tracing clean arcs that split bone faster than the dungeon can finish explaining itself.

Twin Arc doubles each cut, Starfall Sequence fills in the gaps, and anything attempting to exist slightly to the left of my original target is politely removed from the conversation. Then I continue down the staircase. More undead. More stairs. More disappointment. The general emotional experience of waiting in a line that hasn't moved in seventeen entire minutes.

After a few hours of slashing, poking, and occasionally launching skeletons down a flight of stairs in a perfectly dignified display of restraint, the stairs finally end and I arrive at what appears to be the boss room. A larger-than-average skeleton knight waits for me, flanked by a few mages and some foot soldiers who appear to have gotten lost on the way to a more interesting dungeon. It lifts its sword. Then I cut it in half.

A brief application of vine-shaped violence later, and the rest of the group follows it to the afterlife. Notifications are ignored. The treasure chest is opened. It contains disappointment. Runic disappointment, specifically. I stamp my foot once in annoyance, then leave the dungeon. Four out of ten. Points deducted for excessive staircase usage and deeply uninspired loot.

On the bright side, during the several hours I spent aggressively descending, my scars finally finished disappearing, leaving my skin as flawless as it should have been from the beginning. My tail flicks once, radiating smug satisfaction. Then I reach the second dungeon. It's… wetter. And significantly more questionable. The entrance drops into a winding cave system that strongly resembles the large intestine of something that should not be alive.

Everything is coated in an alarming mixture of flesh and unidentified fluids, as if someone attempted to create horror by simply increasing the amount of unpleasant texture on screen. Subtlety has perished. The monsters are, naturally, putrescent slimes. They also perish. Quickly. This dungeon is cleared with extreme prejudice and a very liberal application of Starfire, which turns the entire environment into something marginally more tolerable. The boss is, surprisingly, not a bigger slime.

Instead, it is a Flesh Golem. Creativity has made a brief appearance. It dies in a single hit. Technically four, thanks to my skills, but that is a detail I am choosing to ignore. I say it counts. I do not bother opening the treasure chest. Loot is almost always tied to dungeon theme, and I refuse to engage with anything that could be described as "meat-themed equipment" under any circumstances. Two out of ten. One point awarded for the boss attempting originality. Which means— Onto the third dungeon.

This one is actually interesting. A massive vertical pit opens before me, with a winding stone staircase spiraling downward along the inner wall like a corkscrew. The staircase dungeon's more ambitious cousin. Naturally, I walk straight off the edge. Gravity loosens. I drop. The walls blur past as I fall, the staircase occasionally sweeping close enough for me to catch with a vine when my speed starts becoming… excessive. This story originates from a different website.

Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Then I let go again. Efficient. Five minutes later, I touch down lightly at the bottom. Light? None. Visibility? Weirdly fine. My eyes, apparently, operate on principles that can best be described as "vibes" rather than anything resembling actual biology. Foxes are good at seeing in the dark, but that still requires light. For me, darkness seems to be more of a suggestion.

Something I can perceive, acknowledge, and then politely ignore, like a pop-up informing me that my party members disapprove of my completely reasonable decision to convert an important NPC into experience points to see what would happen. Suspicious. Floating in the center of the cavern is a large eye. Its name appears. Watcher. Not "The Watcher." Just… Watcher. Mildly concerning. More concerning is the fact that my gravity sense picks up absolutely nothing. No presence, no movement, nothing.

Which confirms that stealth skills still function against me. Tragic, but expected. A wave of unease rolls over me. Subtle. Unnatural. It reaches me— —and immediately runs into Pride. The effect collapses without impact, like it forgot how to function halfway through. The eye seems… confused. I stab it. Repeatedly. Just in case. The dungeon ends shortly after. This time, the treasure chest contains something marginally useful.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Watcher's Eye Clip (Rare)] A hair accessory formed around the preserved eye of a Watcher. The iris remains faintly active, tracking movement with unsettling awareness. Runic Patterns: Moderate Mental Effect Amplification (20%) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Useful. Assuming intimidation counts as a mental effect. … Not that I've actually needed intimidation.

Everything here is already scheduled for removal, so there's very little value in frightening something moments before it ceases to exist. Still. The aesthetic is… questionable. But acceptable. Barely. I clip it into my hair and turn toward the exit. Seven out of ten. Highly skippable environment, a unique boss, and a vaguely useful accessory. Praiseworthy.

Dungeons completed, I move on to zone four and begin running grids through the forest, picking off anything that somehow managed to survive the blaze through what I can only assume were deeply questionable and potentially unethical means. A large portion of the dense forest has already been completely immolated, reduced to blackened ground and drifting ash. The remaining sections—roughly twenty percent—are still being actively consumed in the distance, flames spreading with slow, methodical intent.

There aren't many survivors. No conveniently fire-resistant flesh slimes this time. Just a handful of creatures that slipped through the inferno by luck, stubbornness, or a deeply misplaced sense of optimism. They do not remain survivors for long. Hours pass as I continue the cleanup, moving steadily through the zone until I reach roughly the halfway point. And then— I find something interesting. Two starlight blades lie abandoned among the ash. One is mine.

The oversized sword I created and immediately discarded upon entering zone three, because subtlety is optional and carrying it was inconvenient. The other— —is the one I made for the leader of the group I exchanged information with. I slow slightly, my gaze lingering on it. There are no bodies nearby. No bones, no remnants, nothing to suggest what happened here. Either the monsters claimed them, or the fire did its job thoroughly. My starlight, however, remains. Of course it does. So. They made it this far.

All other users, aside from me, were gone by the fifth night. Which means this group pushed all the way into the midpoint of zone four in less than a week. No dragon. No absurdly versatile star abilities. No overwhelming stat advantage, aside from the elf and chimera outliers. And yet— They got this far. I nod once, quiet approval settling in. Incredible. If the dragon and I hadn't been present, they would have cleared the tutorial. Undoubtedly. A result worthy of Pride. My attention returns to the blades.

Curious, I inspect them. My oversized weapon returns exactly what I expect—normal, unchanged, entirely unremarkable. But the one I gave the leader—that one is different. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Starlight Blade (Epic)] [Growth Weapon] A starmetal longsword originally forged by the User Lyn. Through prolonged use, it has absorbed the will of its wielder, reshaping the blade into a vessel of directed intent. Maintains exceptional sharpness and durability. Naturally resistant to astral energy.

The blade grows in strength as its wielder aligns with the imprinted will of the unknown leader. No additional effects. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Very interesting. Both the concept of imprinting will onto a weapon and the label of Growth Weapon are, objectively speaking, excellent design choices. My inner edgelord nods in approval. As do I. Obviously. That said— I cannot use this. Well, I could, but that would be deeply inefficient in several important ways.

I am not a leader, after all, and there is no universe in which I am going to unlock a weapon's full potential by inspiring others instead of simply solving problems myself. A tragic incompatibility. I pick it up, walk a few steps, and stab it cleanly into a nearby boulder. The blade sinks in without resistance, leaving behind an aggressively kaleidoscopic interpretation of the sword in the stone. Appropriate. Then, using my own sword, I carve a few words into the surface.

"Unknown Leader." The lettering is… functional. Not elegant. But readable. Good enough. My storage is still completely full, so carrying it is not an option. Instead, I choose to place a modest amount of faith in the highly theoretical possibility that the System simply leaves the tutorial terrain attached to reality once it is done with it.

Which would mean— At some point in the future, a random orphaned farmer could stumble across this sword, pull it free, and begin a heroic journey wielding a weapon that grows alongside them. Bonus points if they eventually run into me and realize I made it. I nod sagely. A compelling scenario. After reaching the extremely reasonable conclusion that I should begin seeding legends in this exact manner once I reach Asteria, I continue my pursuit of tutorial points.

Zone four is methodically cleared, along with another dungeon that fails to leave a lasting impression. Unfortunately, the fire in the Boundary is still stubbornly consuming the last sections of the zone, so I pass back through the fog wall and continue cleanup in zones three, two, and one. Two more dungeons and approximately three thousand kills later, the lower zones are completely cleared, and the fog walls between zones one and two dissolve entirely. Only two zones remain.

Thankfully, the remaining dungeons are much smaller—Tiny, even—and fall apart with minimal effort. Their loot is, predictably, terrible. A few days pass while the Deepwood finishes burning itself into a more cooperative state. Once it does, I clear the remaining monsters and dungeons, and the fog wall disappears shortly after. Now, only zone four remains. Days pass. Then a few more.

Most of my time is spent in the ruined city, slingshotting myself between structures, chatting with the stars, and occasionally engaging in what I consider to be productive architectural adjustments. Raw destruction is not my primary specialty—unlike a certain dragon—but given enough time, even a city can be reduced to a very well-organized collection of rubble. Aside from the palace. That one is… ambitious.

Even with my latest technique—accelerating the tip of a starlight vine to absurd speeds like a whip—it remains only partially cooperative. The method works well enough on smaller structures, often resulting in the simultaneous destruction of both the vine and whatever I aimed it at. Very satisfying. Ten out of ten. With five days remaining on the tutorial clock, the forest finally finishes burning. A quick sweep removes anything that somehow survived, and the final fog wall fades away. No more orange glow.

No more zone barriers. No dungeons left to clear. From my perch atop the tallest spire of the palace, the horizon stretches out in every direction, covered in ash and smoke. Nothing moves. Nothing grows. Nothing remains. Now— There is truly nothing left to do. Not a single blade of grass survives. My tail swishes, smug and deeply satisfied. I plant my hands firmly on my hips and lean forward slightly.

"How's that for constructive criticism?!" The System does not respond. Rude. I open my status and check my total. Tutorial Points: 1613041 A bit higher than expected. Excellent. Now all that remains is to wait out the final four days. …While finishing the last remaining buildings in the city. I am nothing if not a perfectionist.