“Little Mist, watch carefully. This is how you use the power of privileges.”
In the Mist just before sunrise, Truth brought Little Mist on a quick tour, eager to prove she was the true driving force behind the Mist’s rise.
Little Mist was still terrified, wanting nothing more than to burrow back underground, but under Truth’s intimidating presence, he could only obediently lie on her shoulder and observe the Mist.
She’d been tormenting him a moment ago, and now she was proudly showing off the Mist as if he needed an introduction to his own home… Seriously, did she think this place belonged to her?
Yet Little Mist’s thoughts soon began to change. It seemed he really did need to get to know his home all over again.
The Mist he remembered was lifeless, growing weaker by the day. Now, the Mist brimmed with vitality—and was even bustling with activity.
The higher-level monsters had all disappeared due to the Mist’s decline, replaced by a bunch of weak first-tier mobs, but around nearly every campfire in the faded Mist sat groups of Adventurers.
At the entrance to the Deya Underground Labyrinth, Adventurers had even set up little stalls.
Using God’s Perspective, Little Mist realized that this person called Truth didn’t use her privileges to mess with the Mist at random. On the contrary, she managed things rather well?
He’d thought he’d wake to take over a completely withered, monsterless Mist Forest, but Truth had managed to maintain the Mist at around the first tier, and energy was not only abundant—it was still rising!
Then, on the Mist’s western side, Little Mist noticed many strange, chamber-like rooms packed with treasure chests, monsters, and all sorts of traps.
Yet there were no Adventurers in sight. This piqued his curiosity.
Were these all made using the Construction System? How exquisite!
“You’re interested in my Newbie Dungeon? I’m opening that soon, hmph! Just wait, you’ll get to see my masterpiece for yourself!”
“And remember what I told you: without my permission, you are absolutely not allowed to use Construction Privilege at will. If you mess up my dungeon, I’ll toss you in as an Elite Monster for Adventurers to farm!”
Little Mist hurriedly nodded in understanding. Though he held privileges equal to Truth, under her iron fist, his privileges felt nonexistent.
At least Truth didn’t want to kill him, and had given him a chance to grow.
Hundreds of years had passed already; Little Mist needed to quickly catch up on what had changed in this world—what exactly the ‘Divine Authority’ the Adventurers spoke of was, what the other Disasters were up to, and also…
Little Mist glanced at the writing the Adventurers now used, utterly baffled.
Why did it look all squiggly, like earthworms? Was this even Chinese anymore?!
The language had changed, and according to the Mist’s memories over the past hundred years, Adventurers mostly communicated through the Dialogue Box or Advice floating above their heads.
Only when teaming up or in competitions would they use voice chat.
Was that efficient way of communication gone, too?
Had they… regressed?
Apparently, it wasn’t just the Mist that had declined. Even Humans, the strongest race, had lost their edge.
In the Mist’s memory, Humans of the past were everywhere at King level, slaying Demon Lords like they were nothing. Now, all he saw were weaklings.
Though, he was pretty weak himself now…
One percent fusion with Divine Authority equaled one Level.
The lower the Level, the greater the advantage when fusing Authority, so Little Mist always kept his Level under five.
But he’d long since given up waiting for more Authority.
At least now, he no longer had to deliberately suppress his Level.
“Alright, it’s time. Preparations can begin.”
As Public Beta approached, Truth opened the path to the new Newbie Dungeon in the west.
Adventurers could now follow the campfires to the Newbie Dungeon.
Before this, Truth had revised and optimized the Novice Tutorial.
She’d considered stuffing it full of classic soul-crushing content, but even Reg thought that might be too hard.
Better to start gently, saving the fun for later, and then…
Five minutes later, at the main entrance to the Mist, the area was packed with Adventurers thanks to days of advance hype.
Dungeons often came with new opportunities, and everyone wanted to be the first to try their luck.
It wasn’t just Adventurers from Deya City, either; those from nearby cities had come as well:
“Damn, who spread the fake news that Huoyun Island would cross our Dea Plateau? It ended up detouring and flying off to the other side of the Northern Frontier Mountains!”
Most of the newbie Adventurers from Dea Plateau had waited up north for days, gear ready, just waiting for Huoyun Island to rain meteors as it passed.
But after some kind of non-stop booming, Huoyun Island suddenly stopped, then abruptly turned and flew through the night toward the Northern Frontier Mountains, not dropping a single meteor.
Adventurers were furious.
Bad intel. Huoyun Island was never going to cross the Dea Plateau!
What could they do? They’d all spent a fortune on gear and supplies, so someone had to report in quickly.
So, they turned their attention to the “Mist Public Beta” that had been all over the Evening News of Deya lately, and rushed overnight to Deya City to see what was going on.
“This is odd… A dungeon update that even posts an announcement? And it’s so detailed!”
“Well, this Mist used to be a Disaster, after all. It’s normal for it to differ from other dungeons. But even so, it’s only first-tier difficulty now. I’m Level 24, clearing it in one go will be easy!”
“Anyone want to team up? We split the loot 80-20. I take 80.”
“Hey, you just got here? Did you read the announcement? Read the first line.”
“What first line? Let me see… Hm… Hm? Only Level 15 and below can challenge? What? Why’s there a Level limit?!”
At that moment, something changed at the Mist’s entrance.
“Look! The announcement’s gone! The path to the Newbie Dungeon is open!”
“Quick, run! Hey, stop cutting the line, you shameless jerks!”
“Seriously, why is there a Level cap?!”
……
After sunrise, Adventurers swarmed to the Mist’s western side like locusts, making Truth’s scalp tingle.
“Why are there so many people?!”
Truth had only opened one Novice Tutorial and two somewhat challenging underground dungeons, and even then, she’d copied each of those three stages ten times over to help spread out the crowd.
That should have barely sufficed for Deya City’s Adventurers, but she hadn’t expected Adventurers from other cities to join the fun too.
The queue now stretched from the western tutorial entrance all the way past the Mist’s outer entrance.
It felt just like lining up for a roller coaster at an amusement park.
Left with no choice, she hurriedly doubled the number of dungeon instances to handle the outrageous numbers, then watched the Adventurers inside the dungeons with Little Mist using God’s Perspective, ready to hotfix any bugs.
Watching an Adventurer party inside the tutorial learning combat, resting, campfire and other mechanics as instructed, Little Mist found it all so novel.
There was a strange sense of nurturing to it.
After they killed a dozen or so weak mobs that fell in two swings, and a BOSS minion whose only intimidation came from its health bar and BGM, the party cleared the Novice Tutorial.
So… so fun!
Watching the Adventurers as they entered the dungeon to defeat the BOSS and the UI design, Little Mist was amazed.
He hadn’t imagined you could extract the Mist’s needed energy from Adventurers like this. Truth was pretty smart.
If it were up to him, he’d just have randomly spawned monsters in the Mist for Adventurers to hunt. Nowhere near as efficient as Truth’s dungeons.
Though he didn’t think much of Truth, he had to admit her strengths. She really was better at managing the Mist than he was!
And the Novice Tutorial’s difficulty was so low, so the other dungeons should be similar, right?
Adventures full of joy like this really were the best!
He hadn’t expected Truth to like this kind of happy, safe adventure too. She was kind after all.
Adventure was usually fraught with danger—Adventurers struggling against powerful monsters, losing comrades and lovers, losing limbs was nothing special.
If only every dungeon’s difficulty was as gentle as Truth’s settings. Adventurers could gather treasure safely, and the Mist would get energy—a perfect win-win!
Little Mist never wanted to see another scene of an Adventurer sobbing over a brother’s corpse. Bad endings like that had to be avoided!
Watching the smiling party that had just cleared the tutorial head for the next dungeon, Little Mist genuinely hoped they’d return with their packs full.
But the next instant, everything changed.
They’d barely entered the next dungeon when, as the party leader at the front accidentally stepped on a barely noticeable button, a massive iron hammer shot out from the wall and smashed the leader against the stone wall opposite!
The rest hadn’t even reacted yet—just moments ago, they’d been laughing with him—when their party leader became a pile of bloody meat…
Little Mist: “?”