Even if they didn’t have to do the bonus objective to dispel the curse, they still wanted to kill this Prime Summoner, as it would no doubt reward extra Nevermore Points. Jake couldn’t really say he felt sorry about breaking whatever scenario Minaga had planned, though he could see what their host had been going for.Had they done the first part without freeing the Demon Lord and instead gotten help to teleport here, they would have met this Knight, who’d been tasked with guarding the gate. He would then have told them about rumors of cultists recently appearing further into the labyrinth, urging them to slay the Prime Summoner he feared was trying to free the Demon Lord.Jake and company had instead freed the Demon Lord themselves, and the Demon Lord had attacked and killed the Knight. Seeing them as intruders, the Knight had tried to use a curse to make Jake and the others kill this Prime Summoner instead of merely asking them to do it. Even then, the curse would only have resulted

For the first time since entering Minaga’s Labyrinth, Jake had truly met his match. Minaga had claimed Jake wouldn’t be able to “cheat” on this floor, and Jake had obviously not believed him. It wasn’t that there was no way to cheat him, just that doing it would fuck over others far too much.Make the labyrinth randomly shuffle around to nullify Jake’s Pulse of Perception? That would make it utterly impossible to find anything and have all exploration just be pure luck—something Jake was certain Minaga didn’t want.Make it so the rooms only revealed their contents after entering? Well, the rooms existed and weren’t generated when they entered, so this would be a huge change in how the entire dungeon worked. It would also mess with people who used more mundane skills. Minaga had even commented on Jake using tracking as a fairly legit way of finding things, so he doubted the dungeon master wanted to stop everything.Increasing the distances to make Jake’s scanning range insufficient wou

" I rate this floor nine out of ten when it comes to combat, but a solid negative one out of ten when it comes to creativity,” Jake admonished Minaga while standing atop a tower identical to four other towers in prior rooms. “You just copy-pasted rooms over and over again. Downright shameful.”“Oh, well, thank you for your expert review of my labyrinth!” With more snark, Minaga added, “Do tell me—for how many years have you been making dungeons, since you are such a master at it?”“I don’t need to be an expert in feces to know when I see a piece of crap,” Jake said, grinning.“See, while you think you like constant diversity in encounters, you actually don’t. This was meant to be a gauntlet of rooms where you would take breaks in between, strategize, and get better and better at dealing with the demons as time went on. So they have to be similar for your experiences in all the prior rooms to matter.”“Didn’t I say I rate it nine out of ten for combat? Combat was good.” Jake smiled as

It may be difficult to believe, but Jake had barely done any proper dating or even gone to any bars in past years. On second thought, it was probably entirely believable, considering he’d just been coasting through life before the system with little care about anything, just taking it one day at a time.Even after the system, he hadn’t really done that much with other people that would be considered “normal.” Due to this, Jake felt far from confident as he entered a bar and looked around the place. It was old and medieval-looking, and was filled with people in black hoods, demons, and women and men who wore less than they probably should. Jake Identified a shirtless man currently chatting up a cultist and saw the general level.[Courtesan – lvl 204 - Innocent]“Gotta admit, I thought Courtesan was reserved for women,” Jake muttered to himself while still at the door.“Gender-neutral, actually,” Minaga spoke.“Really? Huh, I guess you learn something new every day.”“Not gonna lie… I a

The Sword Saint’s absolutely brilliant plan to make Jake try and seduce the Prime Consort through the power of dangling his Bloodline in front of her had just one minor problem: How was he supposed to prove he had one?Only people with Bloodlines could tell if others had one, and Jake had not encountered anyone with a Bloodline there in the labyrinth, so he really wondered how in the hell the old man expected him to sell the lie.This was totally not Jake trying to find a way around the plan by arguing that it was unfeasible to begin with, and that they’d need another way to get to the Prime Consort. Totally not. It was just that the plan was actually really bad and totally impossible to pull off, and⁠—And…Why am I here? Jake questioned himself as he leaned against a wall in the small, fogged-up hallway leading to the Prime Consort’s residence. So, yeah, the old asshole had already planned for this. Sure, the Sword Saint couldn’t exactly go around spreading rumors himself, but they