My name is Luluwo, [Data Deleted] years old.
I live in the villa district north of Bedford City. I'm single, and currently captain of the Skyrim Group.
Every day, I diligently head into the dungeon and back out again, exploring it so everyone else can suffer a little less while I earn some extra income on the side. Occasionally I leave the dungeon around midnight, and I make a habit of pulling all-nighters in Liurnia of the Lakes.
I never sleep a full eight hours.
I carry the fatigue and stress forward into the next day, every day.
Even my medical checkup came back with something a little off.
I don't have any bad habits.
I don't smoke.
Every so often, I'll put on a hood and invade someone a handful of times purely to blow off steam.
I never cause trouble for other people. Not once.
Everyone who knows me says I'm a once-in-a-century good person.
All I want is a peaceful life.
Sure, I care about winning and losing — but these days I absolutely refuse to do anything that would actually earn me enemies.
That's the whole secret to my happiness.
But apparently, recently, this old lady got targeted by somebody genuinely bad.
"Getting invaded by the Blade of the Darkmoon — fine, call that karma coming back around. I can just avoid Irithyll for a while, lay low, and let it pass. But..."
For the first time, people watched tears shimmer in Luluwo's eyes.
She slammed her fist against the nearby tree and shouted:
"WHY does someone want me dead?! I don't remember getting tangled up with any dangerous people!"
"Captain, we couldn't determine their identities."
Belto had already cut open a beastman's stomach, hunting for anything among the swallowed bows and crossbows that might trace back to their origin.
Unfortunately, the beastmen's digestion had done its job too well. Everything swallowed had already been reduced to unusable scraps.
"Tch."
Luluwo gritted her teeth.
There was nothing left to do but ask the nearby Farron Guard whether they'd noticed anything unusual lately. Compared with the possibility that I'm being specifically hunted, she found the idea of an "accidental attack" considerably more palatable.
As for the Farron Guard — every one of them, save Darrick, wore an expression of deep, unmistakable regret.
Their collective sighs carried a peculiar quality to them. Something close to reaching the most satisfying part of a full-service massage and getting yanked away right before the finish.
In short — they hadn't gotten to kill enough people.
Watching the group slowly slide toward full battle-mania, Luluwo swallowed nervously.
She'd heard some of their recent exploits by now. These people were, practically, hardwired to sprint toward the faintest rumor of demon activity. Their giant wolves matched griffins for raw mobility. Which meant they spent their time either actively killing demons, or actively running toward somewhere they could.
At present, not a single demon rumor had surfaced anywhere near Bedford City.
Not even in the entire province Bedford City sat within.
Even when a report did surface, there was roughly a ninety-nine percent chance it amounted to nothing but rumor.
The remaining one percent was usually some genuinely unlucky soul who'd skipped checking his horoscope before leaving home and happened to run headlong into Death itself.
Under the Farron Guard's ongoing demon-hunting campaign, the demons themselves had noticeably grown more cautious. The reason: the Farron Guard had actually captured a few and tortured intelligence out of them, eventually uncovering the pattern behind the demon race's persistent meddling in human kingdoms.
The demon race was undergoing sweeping internal changes. Former generals, even Legion Commanders, were being replaced across the board. Any demon hoping to ride that wave into a promotion had to come cause trouble in human territory to prove themselves — and the bigger the chaos they generated, the faster the advancement.
Naturally, that one factor didn't account for every demon incursion in history. But at least, finally, humanity understood why the demons behaved like dog-skin plaster — stuck, and refusing to peel off.
By this point, the Farron Guard no longer needed the Bedford family to promote them at all. Wherever they went, their presence alone served as advertisement enough. Everywhere they traveled, people were drawn to join their ranks.
Their membership had also broadened — no longer limited to survivors of the Val City incident, now including victims of demon attacks generally. After careful vetting, their current roster of combat-capable members had already broken triple digits. If they loosened their standards and stopped worrying about consequences, reaching four digits wouldn't have been difficult either.
Originally, the Farron Guard had planned to keep training inside Sein Dungeon today. But with the holiday, they'd decided at the last minute to take the day off instead — and, in the process, had happened to rescue Luluwo's group.
"No. Nothing on demons anywhere lately — let alone around Bedford City," Darrick said, wiping down his blade.
His whole bearing carried more weight than it once had. He'd also grown noticeably more talkative.
Even his hair had gone white.
Some side effect of the Wolf Blood?
No.
When someone finally asked, it turned out he'd simply dyed it himself.
"Then what exactly was that? Passing bandits who happened along? Test subjects from some rogue alchemist? Some new abomination cooked up by a necromancer?"
Darrick shook his head. None of those explanations sat right.
Beyond that — while cutting down the shadowed figure earlier, he'd registered something genuinely strange. It had felt good. But also, somehow, not. Like cutting through a demon, yet carrying some quality underneath that didn't quite match.
It left him unsettled.
These days, apart from demons, almost nothing else could stir real excitement in him. He still dreamed, occasionally, of a rematch against Doslepo. Frog Head would even do, in a pinch.
"My suggestion — tell Count Charon about this," Darrick said.
"His information network probably reaches further than ours. Even if he comes up empty, he can push it through the proper channels for you."
"That's certainly the safest option..."
Luluwo agreed with the logic. She was still visibly unsatisfied with it.
"But doing that basically makes me look like a coward, doesn't it? Like someone bullied me and I didn't dare say a word back. They came after me directly — attacked us for no reason, and then died for no reason. I can't just swallow that."
Darrick raised an eyebrow.
"What exactly are you planning, then? Retaliation? That risks pulling an even harder counterstrike from them."
Luluwo had helped the Farron Guard before, so his advice came from genuine concern.
And if the enemy really did escalate — his sword and Wolf Leap wouldn't be entirely useless in the situation either.
"Retaliation? Before I became an adventurer, I fought my way clear of the most dangerous city in this entire country. Plenty of people have wanted me dead. And I'm still the only one who walked away breathing."
Luluwo dragged a hand through her hair.
"If this enemy really turns out to be so powerful I genuinely can't push back — fine. I'll hide inside the dungeon. I'll live out the rest of my life in Liurnia of the Lakes."
Without quite meaning to, she'd already started treating Sein Dungeon as her ultimate fallback position.
"Belto — pick out a few decent-looking corpses. We're filming a video."
At long last, the once-in-a-century meteor shower streaked across the sky. The spectacle was genuinely magnificent, painting the heavens in brilliant color. Nobody who'd made the trip out to watch it walked away disappointed.
Apparently, the shower would continue for seven full days — vanishing by daylight, returning each night with the same dazzling display.
The astronomical events of a magical world really were something else.
The rest of the Skyrim Group and the Farron Guard rebuilt their camp together and threw an enthusiastic celebration for the night's unlikely victory. Meanwhile, Luluwo and Belto used the beastmen's corpses to film a short video — genuinely decapitation-grade footage.
Not special effects.
Actual heads being cut off.
The next morning, Bedford City's returning residents — back from their holiday jaunt to the royal capital — began drifting home. Some, to their surprise, found the Skyrim Group had already released a new video.
Priced absurdly cheap. Barely a loaf of bread.
The video did come with one warning attached, though:
"Those with weak stomachs, watch at your own risk."
No problem, at that price. Even something completely absurd was worth the coin.
Then the buyers discovered exactly how absurd Luluwo had gotten.
She'd desecrated corpses on camera.
Some of the more sensitive viewers started throwing up almost immediately.
The footage showed Luluwo committing acts against the beastmen's remains that could only be described as flat-out insulting. Had this happened a few centuries earlier, back when the Church still held sweeping influence, that video alone would've been more than enough grounds to have her arrested and burned at the stake.
Of course, Luluwo hadn't put out cheap, disturbing footage purely to scramble everyone's brains for fun. She laid her actual purpose out plainly at the start of the recording.
This was a demonstration of strength.
Also, arguably, a provocation.
The Skyrim Group was openly mocking whoever had orchestrated the attack. Making it clear they weren't afraid.
"Whatever else you've got — bring it on."
"...Am I the only one who thinks the Skyrim Group is acting like a bunch of kids arguing right now?"
"Yeah, kind of. It's — missing a certain amount of dignity, isn't it?"
"But honestly — if I were their enemy watching this, I'd be furious."
"Definitely. Luluwo's smug expression alone is basically begging to get punched."
That, roughly, summed up the general audience consensus.
Regardless, once the video was out, Luluwo pulled the entire group and bolted straight for Liurnia of the Lakes. They rented a large house right beside the bonfire in the Academy's gate town.
Ah.
The warm, familiar bonfire.
Only here did she feel genuinely, fully safe. Even if she died, revival was a simple matter of stepping into its light.
Praise Sein Dungeon.
If Sein ever established a formal church with himself as its presiding god, Luluwo swore she'd be counted among its very first, most fanatical devotees.
Ordinary people probably wouldn't have the nerve to imitate her particular brand of grave desecration as provocation. Genuinely low-class stuff. And the consequences of doing it were, frankly, unknown.
But Luluwo had never once counted as ordinary.
Her philosophy had always run something like this:
Treat people kindly.
And if kindness didn't land —
Do everything within reach to disgust the other side into oblivion instead.
With no way to identify the enemy directly, provoking them by desecrating the corpses was the single best play available. Whatever they made of it —
If they were the kind of leader who didn't care about subordinates, they'd probably just laugh it off.
But if they did care —
Even better. Luluwo's entire goal — making them thoroughly, personally sick — would land exactly as intended.
"Anyway. From here on out, we're living in Liurnia of the Lakes."
Surveying the beautiful lake region, Luluwo planted both hands on her hips, radiating something close to a feeling of invincibility.
As it turned out — her little stunt really had gotten under the skin of the people who'd targeted her.
Because while Eliphis wasn't the sort of man to place tremendous value on his companions, he cared enormously about his own pride.
Even with nobody else aware that Luluwo's video was, specifically, mocking him.
"Luluwo..."
Eliphis clenched his fists.
After watching the footage, he genuinely wanted to charge straight into the dungeon and kill her with his own hands.
Unfortunately, there was a problem.
Kill her, and she'd simply resurrect at the bonfire. And there was no way to know how many deaths it would actually take before she got ejected back outside the dungeon entirely, into the revival house.
Too many uncontrolled variables.
If his identity got exposed somewhere in that process, the fallout was something he couldn't afford to accept.
"Damn bonfire. Damn Sein Dungeon..."
Nothing to be done about it. The bonfire's resurrection rules were simply the rules — not something invented specifically to spite him.
And once someone learned to exploit those rules, they could use them to humiliate an opponent well outside of direct combat entirely.
For the entire day, mercenaries throughout the Light Eagle Corps could hear things shattering inside Eliphis's private quarters.
Elsa, notably, never heard any of it.
The moment she'd learned the Skyrim Group had been attacked, she'd sprinted straight there to check on them — faster than anyone else in the Corps.
Once Eliphis registered that his "cabbage" had run off yet again, the sound of breaking objects inside his room finally quieted.
Replaced, instead, by a series of small detonations from unstable magic.
The implication was obvious. His plan to weaponize the Skyrim Group's deaths as a trigger for Elsa's negative emotions had failed outright.
No second opportunity like this one, at least not in the short term.
And he had no interest in artificially forcing her growth along either — far too wasteful a shortcut.
So —
Who else could die, usefully, in a way that would generate the negative emotion he needed from her?
Not long after, Eliphis summoned Sali and issued an order.
"We've prepared for this long enough. Tomorrow — we enter Irithyll."