“W-wait, don’t! That was a slip of the tongue!”

“Heh-heh, I know. I’m just messin’ with you.”

“Whew…you almost gave me a heart attack.”

Chrome looked very relieved.

“You shouldn’t follow suspicious strangers,” the shopkeeper warned.

“Erm…I know…”

“I’m not that suspicious!”

“Heh…well, enough chitchat. What brings you here?”

“She said she wanted a cool great shield, so I figured I should introduce her to you.”

“Oh? Well, my name’s Iz. As you can see, I’m a crafter—specifically, a blacksmith. I can do a little potion making, too.”

“Oh? That’s amazing! Oh, um. My name’s Maple!”

Maple was slightly nervous. This was her first time meeting anyone in-game, and she had to work very hard not to trip over her own name.

“Nice to meet you, Maple. Why’d you pick great shields?”

“Um…I didn’t want to get hurt, so I decided to focus on my defense.”

“Hmm… I see, I see. You’re going for a full VIT build? But…you don’t have much money yet, right?”

Maple checked her funds. She hadn’t bought anything yet, so she still had the starting 3,000 G.

“I-is three thousand G enough?” she asked, figuring it wasn’t.

“Ha-ha…unfortunately not. You’ll need at least a million. But you’ll have that much before you know it.”

This sounded like a dizzying amount of money to Maple.

“Erm…I guess I won’t be fashionable for a while longer…”

“You could always give dungeons a try. They’ve got tons of treasure. That’ll help you earn some money to boot, so why not give it a shot? No guarantees you’ll find any great shields, though.”

After getting some beginner advice, Maple added Chrome and Iz to her friends list so she could contact them whenever she wanted.

Then she bowed her head and left the shop.

Maple now had two goals—earning money and finding a dungeon.

“I hope there’s some cool gear inside!”

241 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

I ran into the great-shield girl and added her as a friend, lol.

242 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Huh?

243 Name: Anonymous Archer

How?

244 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

She logged in, looked around, made eye contact with me, and came running right up.

245 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Super Social Shield Girl

246 Name: Anonymous Mage

What happened after?

247 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Asked me about cool shields.

Told her I’d introduce her to a crafter and she just straight-up followed me.

Her AGI’s so low, she had trouble keeping up and I had to keep stopping to wait for her

248 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

How’s your AGI?

249 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Hang on, lemme lay it all out

OK

Didn’t form a party

Chose great shields ’cause she thought getting hit would hurt and she’d need defense

Super nice, outgoing

In short:

Hella good kid

The type you can’t help but wanna help

Also I figure we’ll need to trade info later so here’s mine:

I’m going by Chrome in-game

My AGI’s 20.

I wanna friend y’all so it’d be nice if we could all meet up by the fountain square at 22:00 tomorrow

250 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Thanks for the intel—also, are you the Chrome?

You’re a top player!

251 Name: Anonymous Mage

Waaay too famous. I’m kinda scared now lol

252 Name: Anonymous Archer

Cool, I can make that time.

But if you’re leaving her in the dust at AGI: 20, she must have really sunk every last point into VIT.

253 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

We’re gonna watch over her from now on too, right?

254 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Totally!

255 Name: Anonymous Archer

Totally!

256 Name: Anonymous Mage

Totally!

257 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Totally!

Naturally, Maple had no idea this forum even existed.

***

Defense Build and Dungeon Crawling

“A dungeon expedition! It’s like I’m finally on a real adventure!”

Maple had spent her meager 3,000 G on potions, just in case.

She only had forty HP, so the most basic potions were plenty.

She also had the ring the bee dropped and Meditation. Still, if she was ever in a situation where she could take real damage, she would definitely be in trouble.

Maple decided she was as ready as she’d ever be and headed toward a dungeon she’d read about on a forum—the Poison Dragon’s Labyrinth.

“I’ve got Poison Resist (M), so I should be fine!”

With that, she set off from town, excited about her first dungeon crawl.

Maple headed in the opposite direction from her usual forest haunt. If this wasn’t a game and she wasn’t carrying a great shield and short sword, a casual observer might have assumed she was on her way to a picnic.

Several monsters accosted her along the way, but since they couldn’t damage her, she didn’t even bother fighting them.

The monsters here seemed to be smarter than the ones in the forest, so once they realized they couldn’t harm her, they all ran away.

Nobody saw any of this, so Maple’s freakish defense went unnoticed.

As she pressed on, the trees she encountered were progressively more withered while the ground was cracked and dry. The landscape felt increasingly desolate.

She even passed by a number of bubbling swamps.

After ten more minutes, she came upon a rise in the land, like the ground had cracked open its maw to swallow her whole.

“Is this it?”

Maple stepped inside and noticed the ceiling was much higher than she’d expected. She would have more than enough room to use her great shield here.

As she ventured deeper, some noxious-colored slimes and lizards came slithering along the ground and walls to swarm her.

“Hah! Take that!”

Maple stabbed a slime, but the core inside the gelatinous mass kept shifting around. Unable to land a clean hit, her attacks did no damage. But no matter how much the slime tackled her, it couldn’t deal any damage, either.

“Hngg…this is getting me nowhere! How about this? Great Shield Smash!”

Maple raised her shield up and promptly fell directly on top of the slime, crushing it beneath her. This wasn’t a real skill or anything, so there wasn’t much power behind the move, and dropping to the ground right in front of her opponent left her badly exposed.

But however exposed she was, none of the monsters had any attacks or poisons that did Maple the slightest harm, so she wasn’t worried.

The shield’s impact didn’t do much damage, but it was enough to crush the slime’s core—exactly what she needed to kill them. Slimes turned out to be the perfect prey.

“Okay! Let’s dive deeper!”

Now that she’d solved her slime problem, Maple tromped onward. She’d given up on the lizards. With Agility as low as hers, they just dodged every attack.

As she flopped on top of her shield again…

“Skill: Shield Attack acquired.”

Maple quickly read the skill description. The name was sort of a dead giveaway, but it never hurt to be sure.

Shield Attack

Attack with a shield. Power derived from STR. Knockback (S).

Condition

Defeat fifteen monsters while landing the finishing blow with a shield.

“Not too useful…but that knockback could come in handy!”

Once she was ready, Maple kept going deeper. Given that it was a poison-themed dungeon, it was only natural for there to be all sorts of poisonous monsters…and traps.

Eventually, Maple reached a wide-open area. She’d been squeezing down narrow passages this whole time, so it immediately felt like she had entered a room. There were some flowers growing in the center—a nice little patch of color in the otherwise monotonous dungeon.

A few small purple flowers swaying side to side caught her attention.

“Those are cute… I wonder if they’re an item?”

She moved closer, knelt down, and poked one with her finger. In response, the purple flower balled up like a bud and released a purple mist. This seemed to cause a chain reaction as all the flowers did the same thing. The mist was clearly poisonous.

“Whoa?!” Maple yelped. The whole room was becoming more purple by the minute. She got up and ran away.

She was quite a ways down the next corridor before she finally let out a sigh of relief.

“Th-that was close… I guess it makes sense that there would be traps.”

Once she’d settled down, Maple started walking again—but the next open room contained a swamp that was clearly bad news. Some sort of gas was bubbling up from its murky depths.

“That’s obviously poisonous. You can’t fool me!”

Maple quickly decided to give it a wide berth as she moved past—when something flew out of the swamp and scored a clean hit on the back of her head!

“Augh! Wh-what was that?!”

After a moment scanning the area, Maple found what looked like a flying fish hopping around her feet.

“I-is this…?”

She glanced back at the poison swamp. This time she spotted a fish hopping out.

“That almost gave me a heart attack…,” she groaned, carefully smashing the fish at her feet with her shield. She left the other fish in peace and continued on her way.

Avoiding monsters and traps while having a good time with all the slimes she encountered, Maple finally reached the end of the dungeon.

The double doors in front of her were three times her height.

She had to put her back into it to pry them open.

The unoiled hinges let out a shrill screech as they parted to reveal the room beyond.

There were patches of poison marsh dotting the ground, and the air itself was tinted purple.

As Maple tentatively stepped inside…

…the doors slammed shut behind her.