Congrats! Your party has slain the Toyreveler Dungeon Master Boss, Rank 2, Level 20! With this dominant victory, the Toyreveler Dungeon has been officially conquered in totality, marking the dungeon core as yours and a host of loot earned as spoils to the victor!

But I must remind you that no dungeon monster can be taken from the dungeon. I know this is a sour note, but trust that we make our rulings for the good of the System and the Multiverse. Be at peace that Kleo’s death would not be in vain at the very least. The memories you've forged here will let her exist in your hearts–

Michael Zhou, or Mike to his friends, waved off the rest of the System Admin’s message. He didn’t care for that sappy, gift-wrapped sentimental nonsense.

Mike wanted to see the unexpected.

As another unlikely victory landed at the party’s feet after some struggle, strife, and stellar performances, Mike readjusted his fake glasses framed in the same style as his late father. He quickly assessed everyone’s reactions, finding amusement in Dennis’s nature to be easily dumbfounded. Frank did an excellent job of holding in his amazement, doing no more than arch an eyebrow slightly. But the all-time champ at expressing himself made it known how thrilled he felt with a shrieking cry of crazed glee.

Mike walked up calmly as his best friend entered a loping run to reach Kleo before everyone else. Jay was so happy he tripped over a toy arm, caught himself, and dropped into a sliding kneel to wrap Kleo into his arms. The degraded toy returned the embrace with her remaining arm. The two were a strange sight to behold in front of the fallen corpse of the dungeon master.

Mike kept his distance to be polite since Jay was closest to Kleo outside Dennis. And Jay deserved to relish the moment for setting up such a climactic ending to the big bad.

The two didn’t let each other go. Instead, Jay got comfortable in his knelt position and let Kleo rest on his lap. Looking past them, Mike noted the knife’s bloody aura getting drained away into the skull of the dead dungeon master. The knife morphed, becoming longer and thicker. A bluish aura sparked into existence. It had a new description compared to the old one, too.

Old:

[Identifying]: Knife of Murderous Malice, Good–A knife filled with the horrid, blood-lusting, derange aura of Murderous Mary. Any crawler wielding this knife would feel the lust for murder and mayhem. This knife is most effective for a big kill. It will use all of its power to enhance all of the user’s Attributes and significantly increase the Chance of instant murder if the victim is worthy of being considered a big kill for the user and is significantly damaged.

New:

[Identifying]: Knife of Slaying Justice, Great–A knife filled with the righteous, stalwart, guiding aura of Marvelous Mary. Any crawler brandishing this knife in a proper fight will greatly boost their Chance. The knife is most effective against evil. This knife can shine in the darkness. This knife can emit a sharp aura that’s effective against undead and dead creatures without physical forms. This knife will reject being used for immoral reasons.

“It’s shaped more like a kukri than a knife,” Frank said.

Mike nodded. There was probably a lot of loot to sort through. Loot they’ve collected throughout their crawl. Loot that would drop from the dungeon master and the monsters they’ve slain here. Then there were the level-ups and rank-ups that the party would undoubtedly receive. Ranking up required a more extensive involvement of the system user, however. It was not a simple affair compared to leveling based on what YoAnna had mentioned.

“Um, can someone explain to me what just happened?” Dennis asked nervously. “I thought Jay had the knife because he was strong enough to use it. Like in an anime.”

“Mike, do you mind explaining to the class?” Jay asked as Kleo lost a leg.

“Not at all,” Mike said, hiding a frown from Kleo’s continued descent into death. He took front and center. “Imagine, would you, that we are not only in a game but a story.”

“Okay, I’m following,” Frank said.

Dennis nodded hurriedly.

“The story begins with a girl from a small town. She’s orphaned, alone, and might suffer the same fate as her former neighbors that the local monsters gobbled. Then to her great fortune and misfortune, four heroes from a distant land arrived at her town. It’s fortunate because these heroes have not only bested the local threat but could use the information on the land. Information she has plenty, of course. It’s misfortunate since she has a duty to her superior, someone she greatly admires and wishes to join in her inner circle. A superior who’d once been in this small town girl’s shoes before moving on to lead a pivotal but terrible role. But that’s a separate story threat that’ll intertwine with our main plot later.”

Mike paced from one side of Jay and Kleo to the other.

“Now, due to her being both guide and betrayer, the girl persists in her double-life openly. She admits that she has a duty to fulfill but quickly becomes friends with these heroes who she must soon betray. If everything goes as planned, she’ll finally achieve the glory she desperately sought in her idol. But things didn’t quite go as planned. The heroes she met were extremely unusual and, dare I say it, advanced for their rank. They beat creatures eight times their level. They fell into the sky, pushing the boundaries of a Skill belonging to a freak among heroes. They used her eventual betrayal to funnel the militia into a grinder for levels and outwitted most challenges. Except for one instance.”

Mike waggled his finger.

“There was a moment where the four heroes bit off more than they could chew. A moment where the small town girl chose to outgrow expectations and become something different, something divergent. She helped the heroes against her former idol, Mary, and started her path to becoming a hero for herself. She gave them helpful context. She awakened a side of her that was long dormant. Lost parts of herself as time waned, but she showed more concern for the outsiders than she did for herself. To save her would be wonderful because that’s what heroes do. But that wouldn’t lead to the most satisfying end.”

Mike waved toward Jay and Kleo.

“One among us, through his whimsical instincts, his strengthening connection with his affinity, and his steady descent into madness, saw something nobody else would see other than an unusual storyteller. Thus, this one hero planted seeds throughout the journey to guide our small-town girl to take hold of her destiny. It was a strange route that required the heroic freak to take on a master-servant role with the small town girl. But in hindsight, it's a decent maneuver to help the small town girl ease into the idea of being free to choose, for she has always thought of herself as one underneath a master, so it wouldn’t be a leap of logic for her to choose a better master than to be entirely free and face the weight of that responsibility. But to further that plot, she must cast aside the old. She must do so with the weapon passed down from her former idol, who was once a victim of the same awful master that had reigned like a tyrant and brought ruin to the land.”

Mike spread his hands.

“Basically, our dear Kleo was the chosen one of a classical hero’s journey. Learning great lessons such as self-sacrifice, friendship, and bravery. Overcoming the fear of the unknown. Growing past her old idol Mary, a broken person who’d been in Kleo’s shoes and was ruined by the tyrant before anyone could help her. Avoiding such a fate, Kleo took the weapon of Mary that was meant for evil and christened it with a good cause, delivering a finishing blow to the tyrant. Such an action followed the power of dramatic irony and avenged Mary and all the toys that had suffered here. All while facing the end of her mortal dungeon monster life.”

Mike waited.

Frank seemed thoughtful and wasn’t troubled.

Dennis hesitated to speak. “So, the dungeon master died because it’s good for the story?”

“No, because it’s good for the wildcard stat called Chance,” Mike said with a smirk.

Jay chuckled but said nothing.

Mike continued, growing more excited.

“There’s still gamer logic involved. And Chance seems to be the capacity for plot armor and deus ex machina. It’s brilliantly hidden by making [Conviction] an attribute most needed by [Medium] and [Discovery] an attribute most needed by the [Crafter]. They have uses for the Chance stat that’s within the expected paradigms. But Jay is a [Freak]. He is outside of the paradigm. Anything he does with any Attribute would have a skewed effect that pushes boundaries to the extreme, I imagine. So, if Chance increases the likelihood of great System-assisted providence, then putting all the necessary pieces together to further your Chance is like increasing the percentile of likeliness that your D20 dice will hit nat 20. Then add a bunch of modifiers on top of that for overkill.”

Mike waited before concluding the main point of his presentation with a flourish.

“In other words, we used the structure of a classical story for a System-mechanic to increase the likelihood of the dungeon killing itself.”

Silence.

It lasted a minute as Mike's explanation sunk in for the [Fighters].

“Wow,” Frank said.

Dennis rubbed his jaw, where a bright blond stubble started growing. The Superjock nodded slowly.

“Holy fuck,” Dennis said. “That was happening this whole time? Is that why Jay was pushing the whole master thing? I thought that was some fetish stuff.”

“No, it’s to cement the idea that Kleo was an extension of Jay’s influence,” Mike said. “It uses his Chance to buoy Kleo’s story, which begs the question: does our party slaying the dungeon master includes Kleo as part of our party officially or not? The System Admins would have you believe it doesn’t make Kleo a crawler. But this entire exercise of turning the dungeon against itself shows a level of autonomy that can’t be faked unless the dungeon core is so sophisticated it could create all of these scenarios and play them out for our dynamic crawl. So, this leads me to ask another critical question.”

Mike turned to Jay.

“Is she truly a person, bud? Or is she a program of the core designed as a kill switch for the dungeon master who lost its way? Is this truly real? Does a Kleo exist? And can we do the impossible and leave with her?”

There wasn’t much of Kleo left. Her degradation was speeding up now.

Heck, when Mike looked up, the entire dungeon was breaking down. It was flaking apart and bursting into motes of mana.

His sense of magic didn’t have a Skill to help it, but his [Perception] was high enough to notice these things. The dungeon’s end had arrived. Whatever remained in the core would belong to YoAnna, and what she intended with it was a mystery.

Mike hypothesized she’d probably eat and consume all that remained of the core. A silly proposition, but Mike wouldn’t disclude anything at this point.

Still, Mike would hate for such a fate to befall Kleo, even if she were mere programming designed to lead to the most stellar ending. Dungeon–assisted suicide framed in the trappings of a classical story. Where the lowly villager knifed the horrid tyrant in his chamber of power. Saving the day for all.

But was that the extent to which this crawl could push the boundaries?

Or was there more?

Mike hoped for more as he observed Jay and Kleo with rapt attention.