There were a total of four hidden pieces you could get from this dungeon, and more precisely, the item you received changed depending on who the protagonist of the current route was.
If it was Isabella, you got a staff.
If it was Iris, a necklace.
If it was Angelica, a sword.
If it was Dolnesia, if I remembered right, you got some kind of material.
The setting was that it was a byproduct born from an experiment to fuse spirits with objects, and a failed work Dotore had thrown away in the dungeon.
Anyway, that was how the system worked, but now that the number of protagonists had increased from one to four, I had no idea what it was going to do.
Would it give only one at random, or all four?
If it gave all four, then obviously, thank you very much—but it would probably be random too.
If possible, I hoped Dolnesia’s material would come out.
The necklace was, true to its status as a hidden piece, an item with outstanding performance, good enough to use well into the middle and late game, but given Iris’s personality, she probably wouldn’t use it.
As for the sword, its performance was so lousy for a hidden piece that you could understand why Dotore had thrown it away.
The staff, on the other hand, was fairly decent. If you didn’t have a main weapon to use, it was a worthwhile item that could carry you through the midgame.
But the material was different.
Unlike the other items, this one could be used all the way to the ending.
If only one of the four came out at random, then the material was definitely the best outcome.
The hidden-piece room opened the moment Kafka pressed the button.
Inside was some kind of laboratory.
A room lit by flickering green lamps, left unattended for so long that it smelled musty and was draped in cobwebs.
And on the desk sat a flask containing something.
The moment I saw that flask, I cheered inwardly.
I had beaten the one-in-four odds.
[Spirit That Has Lost Its Heart]
A spirit that has lost both body and heart at someone’s hands.
It has fallen into a deathlike trance. To awaken it, it seems you will need what spirits love most, and to raise it, something that can replace its body.
◈ Rank: Unique
A Unique-rank item.
The material item I had most wanted was right in front of me.
"That’s..."
"A spirit."
Kafka answered Dolnesia.
"Judging by the fact that it’s sealed in a flask, it looks like it hasn’t been fused with anything yet."
Kafka answered calmly, as if this was familiar to her.
But—
"This is too..."
"To Dolnesia, this probably won’t look like a very pleasant sight."
Dolnesia was angry. Or rather, that was the best way to put it.
Iris seemed to have noticed too, because she was lightly biting her lip.
And that made sense.
"That thing is practically dead...!"
It would not have been an exaggeration to say the spirit in there was almost dead.
For Dolnesia, a spiritist who communicated directly with spirits, and for Iris, who was so emotionally sensitive you could practically call her a human capybara, this had to be a shocking sight.
Still, rather than dead, it was only in a deathlike trance, and there was a way to make that spirit move again.
Just as the item description said, all it needed was a body made for it.
Of course, I couldn’t exactly say that out loud myself.
'I’m counting on you.'
'Got it.'
I spoke through Kafka’s mouth.
"It’s okay. There’s a way to save it."
At those words, Dolnesia’s and Iris’s faces began to brighten.
Kafka relayed to the group exactly what I had sent her through telepathy.
"Mm. We just need to find something that can replace this little guy’s body."
Dante’s face tightened slightly at Kafka’s words.
"No. We can’t do that. We can’t create more victims just to save a spirit..."
Dante trailed off and looked at Kafka with sorrowful eyes.
He was probably worried about a second Kafka appearing.
But—
"The replacement body I’m talking about is a little different from what you’re imagining, Dante."
"Different how...?"
"I mean there’s no need to use something alive to replace its body."
She looked at Dante.
"Do you happen to know what living armor is?"
"You mean a golem in the shape of armor?"
Kafka nodded at Dante’s words and continued.
"Right. Think of it as the same principle. Like living armor, you use the spirit as the core and replace the body with armor so it can move."
"Just like that?"
"Wait a second. Doesn’t that seem too strange?"
At that moment, Haede suddenly cut in.
"If it were really that simple to make, then why didn’t they make it? Why leave the spirit here instead?"
"That’s what I find strange too. Leaving something behind that could become evidence would be dangerous for their side..."
Dante and Haede had gone straight for the heart of it.
'True. There shouldn’t be any reason to leave this here...'
Hearing them, Kafka must have grown curious too, because she asked me through telepathy.
But—
'Do you know why they threw it away here?'
'No, I don’t know that much.'
I didn’t know either.
It only said he had abandoned it in the dungeon. Neither the art book nor the game ever explained what Dotore had been thinking when he hid this hidden piece here.
'Well, that man was such an eccentric he was impossible to predict. I doubt he left it here for no reason... though it could have been a pointless one.'
Thinking that Dotore was exactly the kind of man who would do that, Kafka continued aloud.
"I don’t know either. The doctor was an outrageous eccentric. Maybe he left it here to show off, or just because it amused him."
"If that’s true, then that doctor is horrible."
Iris looked at the spirit in the flask with sad eyes as she said it.
I handed the flask containing the spirit to Dolnesia.
"For now, since you’re the spiritist, it would be best if you kept this."
"Then this spirit..."
Dolnesia took the flask and looked at me, about to say something—then had no choice but to stop.
Because the spirit inside the flask vanished just like that through Dolnesia’s fingertips.
"It disappeared?"
Iris stared in shock.
Dolnesia, the one holding it, shook her head as if that wasn’t it.
Though her face was still full of bewilderment.
"No, it didn’t disappear. It went into my shadow, like Sancho."
"Can you bring it out, like Sancho?"
"I’ll try..."
Dolnesia, still wearing that dazed expression, circulated her spirit power, and the spirit appeared from her hand. It looked exactly the same as it had inside the flask.
"It woke up..."
Kafka stared at the spirit and spoke in a stunned tone.
Just as she said, the spirit couldn’t move, but it was sparkling with light as though it were reacting.
Only for a moment, though.
"It disappeared."
Wasn’t it being unsummoned almost immediately?
It seemed that if we wanted it to stay out for long, like Sancho or Rocinante, we’d have to make its body just like in the game.
"But why did the spirit..."
Iris looked thoroughly confused.
She seemed to be wondering how the spirit had awakened, and why the awakened spirit had been absorbed by Dolnesia.
No matter that Dolnesia was a spiritist, waking a spirit in a deathlike trance was, by common sense, impossible.
But there was a hidden backstory here.
And that was also why Dolnesia had been able to awaken the spirit.
In truth, what I had told Kafka was a fake story I had made up to put plausible flesh on an empty frame. Dotore had never succeeded in making armor that moved using a spirit.
More accurately, rather than never having made one, it would be better to say he had failed to.
If I remembered right, the descriptions on the other items—not the material—said he had tried to make armor that moved on the same principle as living armor, but failed.
He had succeeded in placing the spirit inside the armor, but to make it move he had needed to awaken the spirit in there, and no matter what he did, it never woke up. So he failed.
That was why creating nothing more than a staff, sword, and necklace had been his limit.
Though I hadn’t expected him to go beyond items and start putting them into demonic beasts, corpses, and even people.
Anyway, the condition Dotore had failed to discover for awakening that spirit was Dolnesia’s exclusive stat, [Spirit Affinity], the thing spirits loved most. More precisely, it was for Dolnesia, after awakening that stat, to obtain the [Spirit That Has Lost Its Heart].
Strictly speaking, she didn’t even need to have [Spirit Affinity] awakened beforehand. In the game, if you awakened [Spirit Affinity] while the item was already in your inventory, it went straight into the event anyway.
"Just like Kafka said, without a body, it looks like it can’t stay out for long the way Sancho and Rocinante can."
"Then we need to make it a body quickly."
The instant Dolnesia finished speaking—
Ding!
[Quest: Craft the Heartless Tin Knight.]
Create a body for the [Spirit That Has Lost Its Heart].
◈ Helmet (0/1)
◈ Armor (0/1)
◈ Boots (0/1)
◈ Gauntlets (0/1)
◈ Reward: ???
A second quest window appeared.
The quest itself was the same as in the game, but unlike the game, where the reward had been a spirit contract, the reward here was marked with question marks.
Since the spirit contract would presumably be with Dolnesia, it looked like the reward had been replaced with something else.
#
Now that we had the hidden piece, there was no reason to stay here any longer.
So we started walking toward the exit.
But every step made my whole body scream.
Apparently eating an apple when all my internal organs were wrecked had been too much, because my stomach felt awful.
My condition seemed to be at rock bottom—I could barely walk even while leaning on Kafka for support.
Still, going to the infirmary was a bit...
The moment I went there, I could already see the penalty points being slapped on me.
With my [Dragon Strength] trait, if I just went back to the dorm and slept, I felt like I’d be fine by morning...
But Dolnesia was glaring at me like she was absolutely determined to throw me into the infirmary, so that didn’t seem likely.
"Are you really going to shove me into the infirmary?"
"I told you. The moment we get out of here, I’m dragging you straight there."
"What about the penalty points?"
"Is that really what matters right now?!"
She looked like she wanted to smack me on the back, but she caught the hand she’d raised with her other hand and barely held her temper in.
Well, somehow or other, I had managed to reach my target of level 30.
For the time being, I’d have to assume going out or staying out overnight was off the table.
We kept walking and walking until we reached the exit.
And when we finally came out—
Clatter!
"Well now. So, did you enjoy your little excursion?"
There stood a pure white skeleton with its arms crossed, blue light glowing in its eye sockets.
Today’s professor on duty: Luke Eaenril.
Yeah. I was fucked.
Of all things, to get caught by a professor right away, without even having the chance to hide Kafka or anything.
Or maybe not? He was kind of a gag character—if I played this right, maybe he’d let it slide?
Then again, that skeleton was level 90, same as that old hen.
The blue lights burning in the professor’s eye sockets were fixed on Kafka.
"It seems you’ve made a new friend, Ian."
"Ha ha, Professor. I can explain everything."
"That sounds even more pointless than making bone broth out of my own shin."
Then the skeleton professor looked me up and down once, sighed, and raised a thin, bony white hand.
"Now then, Ian."
And then he curled those fingers into a fist.
It was a fist made of thin, spindly bones that didn’t look like it would hurt at all, but somehow...
I had a really, really bad feeling about it.
"This may sting for a moment. You’ll be staying in the infirmary for a while, but well, wouldn’t you say you brought this on yourself?"
Excuse me?
I didn’t even have time to react.
The skeleton professor closed a distance that should have taken several steps in a single stride, as if using [Heavenly Demon’s Dominating Step].
And with that fist clenched in his bony fingers, he lightly tapped me on the chest.
That was all he did.
And my vision went completely black.
#
An unfamiliar ceiling.
When I opened my eyes, all I saw was a stark white ceiling.
The curtains were drawn on either side, and judging by the fact that I was lying in a bed, this had to be the infirmary.
I never would have guessed I’d pass out from a single hit of that bone fist.
Apparently that had been the finishing blow.
My whole body still ached, and I was idly wondering whether I should just go back to sleep for a bit longer when something suddenly flashed through my mind.
Kafka. What happened to Kafka?
Wasn’t I trying to explain things about Kafka right before I passed out?
Surely they hadn’t dissected her already?
With that ominous thought, I yanked the curtain open—and froze on the spot.
"My stomach is burning like there’s a hole in it right now, and I’ve already run out of stomach medicine. This is a disaster."
"There shouldn’t be any narcotics in stomach medicine, though."
"Please shut up. Eighty percent of my stomach is currently in your possession."
"If you’re jealous, you should become a skeleton too."
Professor Silves, the elf with a twisted expression, and beside him the snarky skeleton, Professor Luke.
"Ah, you’re awake?"
And seated there peeling an apple was Ash Bell Drayg, the headmaster of Lumea Academy.
Holy shit, this sick-visit lineup is insane.
Couldn’t I just close the curtain and pretend none of this was happening?
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