Chương 130: Escape Means Up

The moment Meno dropped through the buried doors, iron snapped around his wrists and yanked both arms behind his back. He hit the bottom of a huge circular shaft. Magical torches hung in chains along the stone walls, their pale flames climbing higher and higher until the ceiling disappeared into darkness. A narrow staircase spiraled around the entire shaft, crossing small landings every few turns before continuing upward farther than Meno could see. A bald priest sat chained to the wall a short distance away.

Alive was doing a lot of work. His skin looked dried tight against his skull, both eyes were completely black, and the front of his ruined robe hung open around a chest cavity burned nearly black. Between broken ribs, a charred heart sat exposed to the air. Meno inspected him. [Prisoner —???]"Great name." Before Meno could check the restraints or figure out what else waited at the bottom of the shaft, the entire dungeon started shaking.

Dust rained from above, the hanging torches swung against their chains, and something deep inside the prison groaned loudly enough to vibrate through the floor. Meno's restraints snapped apart at the same moment as the Prisoner's. [Escape] The Prisoner stood slowly, broken chains dragging behind him. He did not roar, sprint, or even look particularly interested in Meno. He simply turned and walked toward him at a calm pace while chat screamed the obvious.

Meno glanced toward the staircase, then back at the Prisoner.

"Probably being dramatic." There was no reason to assume the thing was actually invincible just because the dungeon told him to run. Maybe Escape was the encounter theme, and the intended solution was to kite the opening boss upward until something happened. Or he could spend two seconds testing whether damage worked and delete the guess. Meno activated Engulf, flames wrapping around him as Unstable rooted his normal movement, then launched with both legs and slammed feetfirst into the Prisoner's chest.

Sticky caught instantly, locking him against the ruined torso while the Prisoner kept walking as if the idiot attached to him was not worth acknowledging. One full second of contact completed. Immune.

"Okay, so that's probably—" The charred heart contracted. Black smoke erupted from the open chest cavity. Meno reacted on instinct, using False Blink to vanish for 0. 1 seconds and let the smoke pass through where his body had been, but he reappeared while the cloud still covered the Prisoner. His remaining HP vanished immediately. A moment later, the island returned around him. [Death Penalty: 1, 000g] Meno sat outside the buried entrance while chat showed absolutely no sympathy for the experiment.

IT SAID ESCAPE HE HUGGED THE INVINCIBLE PRISON DEMON probably being dramatic LMAOOOO FALSE HERO FALSE BRAIN do it again maybe immune changed"Somebody had to test whether it was actually invincible." The 1, 000g barely mattered compared with what the death had told him. The Prisoner clearly was not the opening boss. Engulf had done nothing at all, and the smoke behaved more like a failure state than normal damage.

Something farther up the prison had to strip the immunity or change the encounter before fighting it became possible. Vivi had apparently failed to remove the other problem from his suite, because Aurelia's voice came through the capsule comms before Meno could reenter.

"Meno, we need to talk." He muted the stream.

"I'm busy. Make an appointment with Vivi."

"It will only take a few minutes. Can you stop being an ass?" That irritated him more than dying had.

"Me? You're the one who said we shouldn't talk anymore. Now you're here harassing me. Has my content become acceptable now that I'm at the top?" Aurelia went quiet for half a second before answering in a dangerously pleasant tone.

"That's it, Meno. That's exactly why I'm here. I thought we could schedule weekly blocks in your stream where you can confess your love. What do you think about Mondays and Thursdays?"

"VIVI, GET HER OUT OF THE SUITE." Meno killed the external comms before either of them could answer, unmuted the stream, and shoved the entire real-world problem out of his head. He was doing a dungeon now. If they logged him out from the outside, Vivi was getting fired. He dropped through the doors again. The dungeon reset exactly as expected. Chains bound him beside the Prisoner, the shaft shook, and both restraints snapped apart when [Escape] appeared.

This time, Meno turned immediately and launched himself up the spiral staircase. Desync made the climb absurdly fast. Instead of running normally, Meno cleared entire sections with each two-legged jump, cutting from one side of the shaft toward landings several rotations above. The only real problem was that 400% increased jump power did not care about ceilings. His first launch almost carried him facefirst into the underside of the staircase above.

Meno triggered Jet Lag before the collision, canceling the rest of the arc and dropping straight onto the landing below. The ability had felt weird in open terrain, but inside the shaft it became one of the most important parts of the kit. Desync gave him way too much jump power for a confined space, while Jet Lag let him cut the jump short the moment he passed over somewhere useful. Below him, the Prisoner started climbing.

Meno could hear the chains dragging across stone whenever the shaft became quiet enough, but the thing still walked at the same slow pace. After a few jumps, the lead looked enormous, and Meno started treating the climb like a movement test rather than an escape. Launch for height and distance, orient midair, cut the arc with Jet Lag once he crossed above a landing. Repeat until clean. Then the staircase opened into a room and stopped being optional.

Meno landed on a broad circular platform built into the side of the shaft. Tall bookshelves covered the surrounding walls from floor to ceiling, packed with pale books and loose papers that floated through the air without wind. A ghostly woman stood near a writing desk in the center, her white dress almost transparent and her hair drifting around her like she was underwater. The staircase continued behind her, but a wall of pale light blocked the route upward. A boss bar appeared.

[Pale Confessor — Level 65] Meno looked over the edge of the platform before engaging. The Prisoner was far below, still making his way upward one step at a time. That made the dungeon structure pretty obvious. Meno could outrun him easily, but every mandatory boss spent the lead.

"Right. We speedrun the prison while grandpa downstairs slowly comes to kill us." This was Meno's first actual boss with False Hero, so he started a little more conservatively than usual. He jumped onto the Pale Confessor and activated Engulf just before contact, letting Sticky Titan lock his feet against her side as soon as Unstable came online. The boss reacted immediately by embracing him. Cold pressure sank through Meno's body as a thin white stream flowed out of him and into the ghost woman.

His HP started dropping from the life-drain on top of Engulf's normal burn, but the first 100x contact tick hit at the same time and ripped a good chunk from the boss. Part of that damage immediately came back through her healing. Meno stayed attached long enough to price the trade instead of bailing after the first tick.

The second and third hits landed hard, but every second against her also fed health back through the embrace while Meno's own bar dropped much faster than the clean 10% per second he had expected from Engulf alone. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Meno disengaged at 52% HP and shut Engulf down with Pyronucleosis. The Pale Confessor had fallen to roughly 93% HP after damage and healing settled.

"Four-ish clean ticks for seven percent after healing. Call it around sixty ticks to actually kill her." Bad math, good enough. False Hero needed roughly one full minute of actual contact time to kill her at the starting multiplier. Less with False Blinks usage and Reactor. The boss gave him no time to sit there calculating. The moment contact broke, books tore themselves from the shelves and launched across the room.

One struck Meno's shoulder while he was still inside the 3-second self-stun, followed by a spectral ink bottle and a wooden writing board that slammed directly into his chest. The hits hurt, but his enormous health pool barely cared. When the third second completed, Reactor Titan triggered and restored him to 100% HP, giving him the first Reactor stack at the same time.

"There it is. The HP gear isn't for the burn. It's for surviving the refill." His next Unstable cycle would also deal 110x damage instead of 100x. That created a workable loop. Attach for several contact ticks, disengage before Engulf and the life-drain pushed him too low, dump Lag with Jet Lag, accept a full Pyronucleosis, refill through Reactor, then jump back in slightly stronger. The Pale Confessor kept attacking throughout every recovery.

Roughly two spectral objects came at him each second, which meant False Blink could only solve half the problem. Meno vanished through one book, gained 1 Lag, then had to lean or jump around the next before the 1-second cooldown returned. Once he reattached with Engulf, the projectiles stopped and the embrace started again. The next few cycles confirmed that the boss itself was not especially threatening yet.

Meno could survive the contact phase, escape before his own burn killed him, eat the full stun, heal, and restart with another Reactor stack. The real problem was all the time where no contact tick was happening. Three seconds of Pyronucleosis meant zero damage. Leaving the boss and returning cost more. Her life-drain healed back part of every successful contact tick. The theoretical one-minute kill was already turning into something much uglier in practice.

During another burn window, the Pale Confessor suddenly spoke.

"The Mercy of Chains." Five books across the surrounding shelves lit up. Meno saw them, glanced at the boss sitting around 78% HP, and decided he was not giving up a clean damage window just because the dungeon had said something dramatic again.

"Probably book mechanic. We'll see what happens." A few seconds later, the Pale Confessor flashed dark. Meno disengaged when his HP became uncomfortable, and the next spectral object hit roughly three times harder than the ones before it. He jumped back onto her to test the other half of the effect and immediately saw his next Engulf tick deal only around one-third of its previous damage.

"Yep. Mandatory." He jumped off and used Jet Lag to land fast. By the time he reset, the highlighted books had faded from the shelves. Message received, Meno went back to doing damage. When the Pale Confessor called again, she asked for "A Hymn for the Drowned." Meno disengaged immediately and launched toward the nearest highlighted shelf. The boss began throwing the moment contact ended, forcing him to False Blink through one book and dodge the next while scanning titles.

He found A Hymn for the Drowned, grabbed it, and jumped back across the study with another pair of spectral objects chasing him. He handed the book to the Pale Confessor. She accepted it. No enrage.

"Easy mechanic. Annoying mechanic." The problem was obvious. Every requested book pulled him away from the only part of the fight that actually killed the boss. He had to disengage, cross the study, find the correct title, survive the projectile spam, return, and stay attached for another full second before Engulf produced the next tick. Meno tightened the route each time she called for something.

Desync cleared most of the room in one jump, and Jet Lag kept him from overshooting the shelves or slamming into the walls. False Blink erased one projectile every second, while the second throw still needed a real dodge or a cleaner line. The fight was becoming manageable. Then the Pale Confessor started crying. She covered her face and began sobbing, and Meno hesitated just long enough to learn that this was another mechanic. A ghostly wave crossed the room.

[Disorient — 5 seconds] Meno immediately lost clean control. Turning left sent him staggering right. Trying to jump produced a useless forward lurch. Worse, Engulf remained active because Disorient was crowd control but not a stun, so Meno kept burning while he stumbled around without being able to stay attached to the boss. The Pale Confessor kept throwing objects through the whole mess.

A spectral book struck him, then another piece of furniture hit from behind while Engulf kept eating 10% of his maximum HP each second dropping him below 30% HP. At the third second of continuous crowd control, Reactor triggered and restored him to 100% HP, adding another Reactor stack even though the Disorient still had 2 seconds remaining. The Pale Confessor hit him twice more before control returned, lowering him from full while the burn continued, but Meno cared more about what had just happened.

"Oh." The Cry had healed him. Reactor simply did not care whether the crowd control came from Meno or an enemy. More importantly, because Disorient did not count as a stun, it never ended Engulf. That meant the mechanic could eventually become useful. If Meno intentionally took the Cry at the correct point in a burn cycle, he could refill to full and gain another Reactor stack without turning Engulf off, preserving the same activation and avoiding a separate Pyronucleosis reset.

The last 2 seconds of helplessness were still dangerous, and Meno did not know the timing well enough to rebuild the entire strategy around it yet. Covering his ears when the Cry started was safer for now. Still, he filed the interaction away. The next few minutes became a pile of working pieces that refused to turn into a clean kill.

Meno got several Engulf ticks, the Pale Confessor healed through the embrace, he disengaged and refilled, then a book call dragged him across the study before the next burn window could really start. Cry threatened more lost control whenever he failed to cover his ears in time, while False Blink only handled half the projectile spam whenever he was away from the boss. His Reactor stacks kept climbing, and every new Unstable cycle hit harder than the last, but not hard enough to buy back all the downtime.

His original estimate had been around sixty successful contact ticks. Several minutes into the attempt, Meno realized he had nowhere near sixty seconds of actual damage, because most of the encounter had been spent doing everything except touching the boss. That was when chat stopped talking about books and started flooding warnings about the staircase.

STAIRS PBG LOOK DOWN PRISONER CHECK THE STAIRCASE STOP DOING BOOK CLUB Meno looked over the edge while dodging another spectral projectile and heard chains scraping against the last turns of stone below. The Prisoner had nearly reached the study. He had stopped thinking about it because the thing moved so slowly, but the first boss had eaten almost the entire lead. Five minutes had sounded generous at the bottom of the shaft.

After recoveries, book runs, Cry mechanics, repositioning, and all the boss's healing, five minutes was suddenly nothing. The Pale Confessor was still alive, which meant whatever condition changed the Prisoner had not been satisfied.

"Okay. Timer's real." The safe route died immediately. There was no point spending 3 seconds on recovery if playing safely guaranteed that the Prisoner reached him before the boss died. Meno jumped back onto the Pale Confessor and activated Engulf, committing to maximum contact uptime instead of another clean reset. Sticky Titan locked him against her torso while the embrace started draining his HP again, but the accumulated Reactor stacks made each tick much stronger now.

The boss's health finally began moving like Meno expected from a 100x class. He ignored his own bar. The Pale Confessor called for another book, and Meno ignored that too. Her enrage triggered a few seconds later, cutting his contact damage and increasing hers, but disengaging now would cost more time than the penalty. The Prisoner stepped onto the study platform while Meno kept burning.

Meno's HP collapsed under Engulf, the embrace, and the enraged damage, but he stayed attached while the Pale Confessor's health finally dropped in large chunks. For the first time, brute force looked possible. Too late. The Prisoner crossed the room at the same calm walking pace it had used since the bottom of the shaft. Its blackened heart contracted inside the open chest cavity, and Meno saw the first-attempt tell while he remained stuck to the Pale Confessor.

The heart ruptured, black smoke filled the study, and Meno vanished for 0. 1 seconds before reappearing inside the cloud. His remaining HP disappeared instantly. The Pale Confessor was still alive when the island replaced the dungeon around him. [Death Penalty: 1, 000g] His total learning fee had reached 2, 000g: a paid tutorial on the meaning of the word Escape.

ESCAPE LESSON PART TWO PBG DIED TO WALKING SPEED the timer beat him harder than the boss third time surely JUST KILL HER FASTER Meno barely cared about the gold because this death had given him a much cleaner picture of the dungeon. Attempt one proved the Prisoner could not be fought while another encounter was active.

Attempt two proved the Pale Confessor needed roughly sixty starting-strength Engulf ticks after healing, that the huge False Hero HP pool made full Reactor resets survivable, and that the books forced downtime whether he liked them or not. Cry might become a free heal and Reactor stack without ending Engulf, while False Blink, Desync, and Jet Lag could shave seconds from every movement section if he tightened the execution. Most importantly, he knew the actual timer now.

The Prisoner took roughly 5 minutes to reach the first boss room after the chains broke, which probably meant it would wait in the study and give him another 5 for the second boss. Meno's current strategy could survive the Pale Confessor basically forever if time did not matter. Time mattered. He started looking for places to steal seconds. Maybe Cry could replace some Pyronucleosis resets entirely. Maybe later Reactor stacks would let him ignore one of the book enrages.

Maybe he could route the shelves so he never needed more than one jump to reach the requested title and one back. There was time hidden in the movement, and he only needed enough of it to kill the boss before the chains reached the room. Aurelia's voice returned through the capsule comms while Meno was replaying the attempt.

"Meno, if you don't come out, I will sit in front of your computer, turn on the cam, and start commentating your dungeon." Meno ignored her. There was no way she would actually do that with more than seven million viewers watching. The clip would be everywhere on Connect before he finished another attempt, especially with their history. Meno looked back toward the buried doors and addressed chat while checking his abilities for the next run.

"Okay. Five minutes. Now I know the timer. I kill this boss next run, probably die to the second boss, then kill that one too." Meno looked down into the dungeon entrance.

"One step at a time. This world first is mine. By the time we are done here, I'll be close to Level 70 and Kestrel can touch grass."