Everybody Loves Large Chests

With Strings Cut 2

The Pit of Sin. It was a high-tier dungeon unlike any other, meticulously designed and hand-crafted by an unknown entity whose name may or may not have been Bob. It was cruel and unforgiving to the point of absurdity. Every hallway held deadly, nigh-undetectable traps. Each monster was powerful enough to level a small town by itself. All of the rooms inflicted debilitating effects upon those who entered them. Even the air itself was lethal, though that was mostly because the ambient mana was so thick that it would poison and kill any non-Ranker that dared entered. It truly was the dungeon to end all dungeons.

However, it wasn’t as though defeating it was impossible. It just took a ridiculously powerful team of flawlessly coordinated adventurers who, ideally, had at least two Ultimate Skills per person. In the twelve centuries since its establishment, there had been precisely eighty-seven people who had returned victorious from the Pit of Sin. Those relatively few victors emerged with untold riches and immensely powerful relics. Four of them had even bagged Phantasmal-grade gear, which had previously been considered impossible to obtain outside of the Dragon Festival.

People eventually learned to steer clear of the Pit. One might imagine there were a few greedy, self-delusional fools who challenged it, but that wasn’t the case. Its reputation as the ultimate dungeon had been well earned and meticulously documented. It also helped that one had to achieve a Rank Up to even step foot inside it. Nobody who reached that stage was naive enough to think they stood a chance. At least, not at conquering the whole thing.

The Pit of Sin was one of Terrania’s few tiered dungeons. It held a total of six distinct zones of increasing difficulty. From least to most ridiculously lethal, these were the Hell Wing, Lust Wing, Eye Wing, Arachnid Wing, Rage Wing, and Treasure Wing. Defeating even the lowliest of these usually rewarded one with enough riches to afford them a life of opulent luxury for several lifetimes. However, conquering all of them was how one earned Phantasmal-grade gear, and so far only one legendary four-man team had managed to do so. Not for a lack of trying, of course, but merely hearing about the dungeon’s final guardian was enough to dissuade most sane individuals from even setting foot in the final wing.

As the names of its six areas implied, the Pit of Sin was a demon-infested gauntlet. Each type of familiar that a Warlock could contract was represented in their respective area, starting with the canine hellhounds and ending with the insatiable keepers and hoarders. The latter hadn’t changed much since their creation. The lesser ones still looked like pudgy, especially ugly goblins, while the Rankers among them had towering, ape-like builds. They were primarily magic users, though neither as potent as succubi nor as versatile as beholders. The reason their wing was considered the most dangerous was that it grew stronger with each failed assault.

Keepers, and by extension hoarders, grew more powerful when they either possessed or wielded powerful, expensive equipment. The lesser variant in particular had a special Skill called Item Amplification. Any enchanted equipment they wore suddenly became two to three times more powerful. Which, considering the number and caliber of adventurers that had died in that place, meant the greed demons were all absurdly strong. Combined with their natural cunning and talent for handling traps, the dungeon’s insides gave them a nearly insurmountable home turf advantage. Worse still, each fallen challenger whose gear and money was added to the dungeon made them far more difficult for future invaders to handle.

Then again, that was more or less true for the entirety of the Pit of Sin. Pain and death were peerless teachers, and the demons’ immortal nature allowed them to benefit tremendously from those harsh lessons. Even without invaders to challenge them, the dungeon’s inhabitants would regularly fight each other over the smallest thing, usually to the death. The result was a small army of hardened combatants with centuries’ worth of experience. Their knowledge of violence allowed them to maximize the capabilities of their conjured bodies, which were already bursting with power thanks to the vast quantities of mana that went into their creation.

And the one who stood above all of them as the ultimate dungeon’s top fighter was none other than the Overlord of Greed herself, Koralenteprix Khusuuszun Caonthioxxaa.

The centuries had been kind to Kora. Kinder than the voluptuous slob that had once been her co-contractor, at least. The hoarder’s physical form hadn’t changed all that much from her familiar days. She was still a green-haired, red-skinned, six-armed ball of death and violence, except she was several times taller. Even her armor looked mostly the same. As befitting a demon obsessed with material possessions, it had been her accessories that had shown the most change. She had a menacing helmet that hid the entirety of her face except for two glowing green dots where her eyes were. Each fist boasted a different enchanted gauntlet with its own terrifying ability. Though not visible under her armor, she had a few dozen rings, amulets, and other trinkets to bolster and augment all of her abilities. Lastly, she sat upon a throne of bone and stone, surrounded by a small mountain of priceless treasures, and attended to by no less than three succubus servants that also served as her backup in combat.

Or at least that’s what she did whenever she was ‘on the job.’ One of the perks of being assigned to Pit duty was that all of the demons in the dungeon got to play around day after day. Granted, it wasn’t ideal since mortals were extremely difficult to come by, but it was still a lot better than the infinite drudgery of the Beyond. None exemplified that better than Kora. She spent most of her days counting her coins, reorganizing her relics, appraising her artifacts, and sampling the succubi. She usually reduced herself to a more human-like size in order to fully enjoy those activities, and today was no different.

“Why hello there.”josei

Kora had been in the middle of taking inventory of her hoard for the forty-seventh time that week when she heard an unfamiliar voice from behind her. She turned around fists raised to see a balding twig of a man dressed in, what were unbeknownst to her, a T-shirt and jeans.

“Who the fuck are you?!” she growled. “And how the fuck did you get in here?!”

He clearly wasn’t one of the dungeon’s demons, and the hoarder’s helmet wasn’t picking up any illusions or other magical shenanigans. His Attributes were all in the single digits, too. She had no idea how such a pathetically weak outsider had gotten into her own private sanctum without raising a single alarm. It wasn’t even physically connected to the rest of the dungeon and was spatially locked to prevent teleportation, so the only way in or out should have been through the dungeon core’s Nexus Access.

“Not sure what I expected, but I’m still somehow disappointed,” the man shook his head. “At the very least you could have worked on your vocabulary a bit.”

Kora wasn’t listening in the slightest, which she made clear by lunging at the intruder with a triple left hook. The attack connected simultaneously with his temple, chin, and liver. That should have turned him into red mist, but what happened instead was that her hands stopped dead at the point of contact. This turn of events puzzled the demon greatly. She definitely saw herself landing those hits, yet there had been no recoil in her fist and no damage confirmation from her Status. It was as if the bone-shattering force behind her punches had disappeared without a trace the instant it touched the stranger.

“Ora!”

Of course, that wasn’t about to dissuade her. She punched, kicked, swore, and generally did everything she could to beat down the puny human. She also augmented her unrivaled physical prowess by infusing each strike with one of six elemental properties - fire, cold, lightning, poison, gravity, and light. Her miniaturized form meant she couldn’t put her titanic weight behind her beatdown, but it still should have been more than enough to reduce her unfortunate target to dust.

Or at least it would have, if she had been able to deal even a single point of damage.

“Now that’s more like it,” the man commented amidst the maelstrom of violence. “To think, you used to be so sloppy and haphazard, relying on luck and raw power to pull you through a fight. And just look at you now.”

Focused. Efficient. Precise. These were not words Boxxy would have attributed to Kora before it left, and yet her current self embodied them completely. Though her assault seemed chaotic on the surface, there was definite intent behind each blow. Her concentration was equally impressive. She seemed to be consciously ignoring what was said, lest she get distracted for even a nanosecond. It was a wonder how anyone managed to defeat her in that state, and yet history claimed someone had indeed succeeded. Boxxy would have liked to see that fight, but it didn’t feel like sifting through two millennia of data just to find that recording. For the moment, it just enjoyed the spectacle. It was a good thing that 'god mode’ thing worked as well as it did, otherwise it wouldn’t have been able to watch the calculated beatdown from up close.

At some point it decided it had wasted enough time on frivolities, so it grabbed one of the Overlord’s fists, spun her around itself like a top, and then chucked her into the air.

“What the fuuuuuu-!”

Kora swore reflexively as she hurtled through the spacious chamber, spinning uncontrollably all the while. Her drawn out profanity was cut short when she smashed into the wall, causing a good chunk of the underground dungeon to rumble from the unimaginable force of the impact. She fell down into the sea of gold that covered the floor, landing amidst the coins and gemstones with another thunderous crash. The Overlord, tenacious as ever, quickly scrambled to her wobbling feet, fists at the ready.

Only then did she realize that the stranger had assumed a very specific, far more familiar shape.

“… Boss?” she asked warily.

“Hi,” the abomination waved a toothed tentacle.

“Damn it,” she begrudgingly lowered her arms. “I was really hoping I could throw you for a loop for a change once you came back. Guess it didn’t work out like that.”

“Some things are universal constants. Air is transparent, gold is shiny, and you will always be beneath me,” it stated bluntly.

“Ugh, no need to tell me twice. What the fuck happened to you on your trip to make you fucking untouchable?”

“A lot’s happened. It’s been a busy two weeks for me.”

The two glowing green dots underneath Kora’s helmet flickered in confusion.

“You feeling alright, boss? It’s been like, a million years since we last spoke.”

“Time moves differently on the- Actually, nevermind. That’s not important. I’m here to get you, so let’s get going.”

It had taken Boxxy fifty six years of preparation and planning to reach the very specific Attribute scores required to leave that fictional universe and emerge into the real world. At the time, it hadn’t known what awaited it beyond the fictional reality that had been its home for so long. It had learned a tremendous amount since then, including how to manipulate the fabricated universe to its liking. That included the ability to bring those inside out with it. It had returned to Terrania with the express purpose of doing just that, just as it had planned from the start. Kora, and indeed all of Boxxy’s minions and allies, had been repeatedly made aware of said intentions in the decades leading up to the monster’s departure. It had drilled the idea into their heads to the point where even the eternally meat-headed hoarder wouldn’t have been able to forget.

“Uhm, yeah… About that…”

Which was why she had been able to give the matter an enormous amount of thought.

“I have a good thing going here, Boss,” she spoke reluctantly. “It’s like, I got all this stuff to play around with. I’m the last boss of a massive mega-dungeon, besides being a motherfucking Overlord. Shit, I even got me a steady flow of hot bitches. I just finished breaking in the last batch of succubi, too. I swear, they get freakier with each generation.”

“… So, I take it you don’t want to leave here?” Boxxy asked for confirmation.

“Sorry, Boss, but no,” she said firmly. “I’m staying.”

“There must be something I can do to persuade you otherwise.”

“There really isn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Going places with you has always been a riot, but I can’t just leave all my stuff behind. Especially the bitches. My two favorite ones love to crawl into a dickhole each when I’m supersized. They go in legs first up to their hips, see, so they can caress the heads with their tits and hands while also stimulating the insides with their feet. Then when I cum my jizz sprays out of their mouths like a fountain and they start making out with each other like that. Shit, I’m getting hard just thinking about it.”

“That’s… more than I needed to know.”

Boxxy had never been overly fond of sexual extremes, and that went double for it now that it had essentially transcended its flesh. It tried its best to purge that disgusting mental image from its mind and then steered the conversation back on topic.

“You do realize that you, your stuff, and your bitches will all go poof in about a thousand years or so anyway, right?”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna go poof eventually,” she triple-shrugged. “Think I’d rather enjoy what I have while I can rather than start over from nothing.”

“I can respect that,” the abomination conceded. “Just so we’re clear, this is a one time offer. If I leave you behind now, you stay behind until the end.”

“I kinda figured that already. Answer’s still no.”

“I see.”

Though unfortunate, Boxxy had to accept its former familiar’s wishes. It could have brought her along by force, but that would have been a terrible idea. There was nothing to bind Arms to the monster’s service once they were on the other side, meaning she could rebel, betray, or simply abandon the creature. Not that she couldn’t have done things even if she agreed to leave, but it would have been far less likely if the two of them were on good terms. Thankfully that wasn’t an issue with Snack, as her separation from the creature had made her desperate and obsessed.

“I suppose a thousand years is a damn long time,” Boxxy sighed lightly. “I’m sure you’ll make the most of it.”

“Bet on it, Boss,” she nodded. “And you go expand a few assholes for me, yeah?”

“Uhh… Sure… Just one thing before I go. It’s been millenia since our contract was voided, at least from your perspective. Why do you keep calling me ‘Boss?’”

“Huh. I did do that, now that you mention it,” she momentarily stared off to the side. “Guess it just felt right, y’know. Universal constants and all that.”

“Hm.”

And with that, the abomination abruptly vanished without a trace. There were no flashy lights, no elaborate chant, not even a small pop.

“See ya, Boss.”

As for Kora, she idly waved at the suddenly vacant spot before going back to her routine. Unlike Xera, she had been doing just fine without her former master for millenia. That wasn’t about to change just because it paid her a visit. The Overlord gig was great, and she wouldn’t have given it up for anything. The only thing she regretted was that she didn’t get to go on one last rampage with the gang, for old time’s sake. Unfortunately for her, she was about to learn another of those so-called universal constants.

Namely, that Boxxy was still a spiteful asshole and a sore loser, which it demonstrated by transforming the entirety of Kora’s personal hoard into fresh pig manure.