Watching from the walls-S

"They got to the second floor faster than I thought."

Apparently alarmed at the presence of my hound, the group of protagonists were quick to run away. In the process they found the exit of the first floor in the town hall. If they inspected more throughtly they would have found the major diary but well its not like it matters, the inhabitants of the first floor were oblivious of the menace that was targeting them until it was too late and once they noticed they werent even aware of the entity behind it. Neither the major diary nor any text in there would have given them a better comprehension of the dangers that lay ahead, instead they would have just found the last writings of a man who lost his sanity at the end of his life.

I know they didn't find the diary because i could see them from the window of the major office, sadly i couldn't follow them to the basement or they would just have killed my eye so i sent some Phantom felines to the second floor in advance to check on them once they got to the second floor. I was worried that they would get killed by the first boss but thankfully it wasn't the case.

The first boss is a mutated human called the Gate Guard. This boss is the first real threat the player will encounter and most of the times it means the death of the entire party for a new player. The guard is not a resident of the first floor but of the second. He is a stronger version of an enemy found on the second floor called the Dungeon Guard.

Those guards are infamous among the playerbase. After the first boss these things are the next threat the player will encounter. They are weaker than the gate guard but there are a lot of them. Both types of guard were despised by the community because of the nasty and unholy things they do with the party members if they are defeated. We got a lot of backlash and hate for that when the game was just released.

"For now I'll tail them with the cat."

Once I saw them enter the second floor, I started following them by using the cat's ability to pass through physical objects, essentially making the cat watch them from inside the walls of the dungeon. My control over the feline was bad, really bad. Controlling it was like trying to move a puppet with just one string. The further away they are from my floor the harder it gets to control them. I can't just give it the order to follow them because it doesn't seem to be able to follow complex orders while being so far away so it would probably make its presence known to the protagonists.

The scene of a bunch of fifteen year old teenagers destroying a thick wooden door was a little weird for me, not because it felt unreal since I know that they'll get stronger the more they kill but because their appearance didn't match that kind of strength. Sophia looks like a sheltered young misstress with her large blonde hair and foreign features. Nayuta has offsetting vibes, almost like a pyscho or a sociopath but her face and frame is like that of a porcelain doll. Haruto...well he certainly looks stronger but he is still just a teenager.

"Whatever, let's just hope they get lucky."

In the game there are some floors with multiple probable layouts and some of them are more advantageous than others. The second floor has a total of five possible layouts one of which has an armory with usable weapons and most importantly a ritual circle.

Ritual circles are important in the game because they're used to contact the gods. Using a ritual circle on a floor that is under the domain of a god will put you in contact with said god, initiating quests which once completed will reward the players with items, artifacts or powers. Using ritual circles on floors that aren't under the domain of a god is impossible unless you have an item called a "Ritual Scroll" that has instructions to contact a specific god. These rituals usually require specific items or actions to be performed and aren't always useful because not all gods have quests that can be completed early in the game.

"But that's different if I give them an easy quest"

I can contact them directly once they get to the eighth floor and facilitate their journey but if they die before that I'm fucked. There are rules in the tower. Sending monsters down to the lower floors is possible thanks to my authority but the tower itself denies my attempt to send items the same way. However, if they contact me, then it should be possible to give them rewards after they complete a quest even if it shouldn't be possible to send something so down below. The problem lies in finding a ritual scroll with instructions to contact me.

"...I could make a monster write them and leave it somewhere they can find it"

The scroll itself doesn't matter, only the instructions so doing that should be possible. For that to be possible, I need to improve my control over my monster which right now seems pretty hard. Which leads me to another option, preparing the ritual myself.

The items required for the ritual are nine purified blood vials which can be obtained by combining blood vials and another item called spring water vial. It also requires a human heart and three eyes from any monster. Lastly it requires an "act of love" between two party members. This is because Seerackt is not only the god of blood but also the god of life...which is curious because the ritual can be made between party members that couldn't produce new life, like between two of the same gender or even undeads added to the party through the use of necromancy.

"We really didn't put much thought into it..."

There's a little spring on the sixth floor as well as a ritual circle. Human hearts as well as eyes are easy to get on almost all floors. Controlling some hound to make it put the items in the correct shape and order shouldn't be that hard. The problem would be the act of love...

"How the fuck to i convince them to do that in a situation like this...actually they're minors i don't even want to think about it"

Yeah forget it, I'll think about something later. My sense of moral has become dull after turning into this but it's not like I lost it, at least not yet.

The group entered the first room they found and I was quick to recognise the layout of the floor thanks to it. This is the third possible layout. Sadly it's not the one that contains the armory but they should find some consumables in the storage room and maybe some usable equipment. I saw Nayuta take out a vial containing a green liquid inside of it from inside a wooden box, that's a healing vial, probably the most important consumable of all since the only other reliable way of healing outside of the dark room are healing powers granted by gods.

They got another healing vial and a leather vest. Other than that they only got some food and a bottle of wine. Wine is used as one of many ways to recover sanity. If a party member is too low on sanity it will become weaker, fail its attack more often and if it loses all of it, it will become aggressive against the rest of the party. There isnt a sanity indicator, instead it is displayed through messages or comments of the character in question...however it doesnt seem to me like they have lost any sanity.

"Maybe it is because they're together?"

The four game protagonists have a really strong bond. If one of them dies the sanity of the rest goes down almost to zero immediately. However this bond doesn't reflect positively on their sanity in the game. Interactions between the party don't raise their sanity no matter how happy or wholesome they are which doesn't seem to apply to reality now. They're pretty much normal and my only guess for that is that they find comfort in each other's company.

While I was distracted thinking about this, I failed to notice a prison guard approaching from the other side of the wall until it was too late. The prison guard was huge, being almost two meters tall with massive muscles all over. Only some strands of hair remain on his head but he has a large black beard full of filth.

"It's not as ugly as my monsters but it certainly looks creepy."

If he was just a pale bald man it wouldn't be that bad. The problem is his multiple deformities. A giant tumor is bulging from his neck forcing his head to the right. There are more tumors growing on his back too. The only clothes he has are a ripped leather vest and a pair of leather sandals, leaving his private parts which are also full of tumors exposed.

The guard's hand broke through the wall and grabbed Sophia by the head, pulling her outside the storage room before running away with her. Naturally, I sent the feline behind him, still hidden inside the wall.

They got unlucky, pretty much like the zombie horde on the first floor. This is also a game event, but this one isn't triggered by the player's actions, just by pure coincidence. It can only happen once and any party member can get kidnapped. Once this happens the player will have to find the missing character. If it takes too long to do so, the character will be killed and abused by the guards.

I could order the feline to kill the guard but i don't want them to be aware of its existence, so for now i'll just see what happens and only if she's about to die i will intervene.