Wade genuinely trusted the bonds between adventurers.
He trusted their strength just as much.
So he stopped watching from that point on.
The outcome, either way, was already settled.
If the adventurers won, it would be because Sein had chosen to show them mercy.
And if they lost, that shouldn't strike anyone as strange either. That was simply the expected outcome.
If Wade genuinely didn't want them to make progress, they wouldn't have gotten past Farron Keep in the first place.
Sulyvahn's clone was, at its core, a pure stat-check monster. As long as he stood there, there was no path forward. The only real difference between him and a Door That Cannot Be Opened From This Side was mobility.
Beyond that, both served the exact same function — stopping the adventurers from advancing.
Though, thinking it through, why exactly did Wade want to hold the adventurers back at all?
Because the next region — Anor Londo — hadn't been finished yet?
No, no. That had been done for a while now.
Even the Painted World version of Anor Londo was already complete. He'd even finished tuning the stats on Clone Ornstein, Smough, and So— ahem, cough, cough.
The real reason he'd temporarily boosted Sulyvahn's clone's strength traced back to an unexpected development entirely.
Something connected to a meteor shower that supposedly hadn't happened in a century.
Wade lay stretched out across the altar, working through a letter, stroke by careful stroke.
«[To the respected Red Fang Dungeon]
[Sein Dungeon is fully prepared and can begin at any time. Let's give everyone a surprise.]»
"Everyone, hold the line! Just a little longer! We absolutely need the commander to recover!"
Inside Irithyll's Grand Cathedral, the mercenaries had settled into a delaying strategy under Sali's direction. One with healing magic had already rushed to Eliphis's side, working to treat him.
Their whole objective: hold off Sulyvahn's clone long enough to buy their commander time to wake.
Their commander had already passed out entirely — but the mercenaries remained gripped by their manipulated emotional state regardless. All they wanted was to keep fighting until he opened his eyes again.
What use Eliphis could possibly be once conscious, naturally, wasn't a thought anyone dared entertain. Too disrespectful.
Regardless, their overall position wasn't reversible. Committed to fighting down to the very last man, the mercenaries stood ready to tear a branch off Sulyvahn's clone with their bare teeth if that was what it took.
What none of them noticed: though the healing mercenary kept feeding Eliphis constant restorative magic, the flame wreathing his body never once dimmed. His wounds did close — but new ones burned into him almost immediately after.
Eliphis had turned the Light Eagle Corps from people into puppets.
The Light Eagle Corps had, in turn, unwittingly turned Eliphis into the Human Torch.
Not just physically, either. The mental torment layered underneath was practically Gamma-level suffering.
Physical and psychological agony, both at once.
Had Wade been watching directly, he'd almost certainly have called for mercy on Eliphis's behalf. Elsa might have done the same.
Unfortunately, the only two people willing to grant him a swift death — Wade and Elsa — were both absent.
Everyone else remaining was consumed by the dutiful hope that their commander might hang on just a little longer. Nobody among them dared even consider pulling the metaphorical oxygen tube.
Could the mercenaries, then, be described as well-meaning but making the whole situation worse? After all, in Eliphis's current state, every additional second he stayed alive was one more second of genuinely unforgettable suffering.
So — what did Sein Dungeon make of all this?
Sein stayed silent.
It simply kept harvesting mana.
"Watch this!"
The Assault Captain discarded his shield, already split clean in two by the Profaned Greatsword, and threw every ounce of remaining strength into a charge at Sulyvahn's clone.
In that moment, he unleashed something well beyond his usual limits — a strike powerful enough to split mountains and shatter stone.
It connected squarely with the clone.
At a moment like this, if Sulyvahn's clone failed to react at all, it would be a genuine blow to everyone's confidence.
Unfortunately... he really didn't react.
A casual backhanded swing reshaped the Assault Captain into something closely resembling a Potato Mine.
The Cavalry Captain's follow-up charge turned into little more than a delivery service. Sulyvahn's clone sliced through the mounted mercenaries the way one might slice melons and vegetables — almost as though he'd started playing his own private round of Dark Souls Warriors.
The one useful thing the cavalry charge accomplished was giving the Archer Captain a real window to attack. His full-strength arrows genuinely did wound Sulyvahn's clone — not obvious from his stance, but visible enough that his attention noticeably shifted toward the archer afterward.
Was that anger, then? Had the archer actually gotten under his skin?
Then the Archer Captain understood.
Sulyvahn's clone hadn't turned on him because of the damage dealt. He'd turned because the archer was the only combatant still standing on the field.
"Not good!"
Before the Greatsword of Judgment came crashing down, the Archer Captain spun and fired one last magic arrow — desperately aimed at Eliphis instead. The wind-infused shot generated an instant tornado beneath him, lifting his unconscious body high into the air.
All of it, for exactly one purpose.
"Commander — please wake up!"
Everything, sacrificed simply to buy Eliphis a few more minutes of life.
The instant the arrow took effect, the Archer Captain fell to Sulyvahn's blade. The clone advanced, swept his sword, and finished off the last mercenary still healing anyone.
Then he looked up — at Eliphis, suspended midair inside the tornado.
And stopped moving entirely.
Sein Dungeon's baseline logic ran on two axes: harvest mana, eliminate threats. Right now, Eliphis was actively producing mana, but posed absolutely no threat whatsoever.
Which meant, in Sulyvahn's clone's calculus, Eliphis had suddenly become —
"Harmless."
Eventually, after some indeterminate stretch of time, the tornado dissipated. Eliphis dropped from the sky and died on impact.
As always, had the kind-hearted Wade actually witnessed it firsthand, he probably would have slipped something into Eliphis's hand afterward — some small compensation for the mental anguish endured.
But Wade hadn't seen it.
Oh well.
The scene shifted.
The kitchen bonfire.
Mercenaries lay scattered across the floor, barely able to move. The already-cramped kitchen felt nearly unbearable now.
Still, nobody dared step outside. Four Silver Knights occupied the building ahead. The waterway behind them was thick with mutated centipedes. For mercenaries fresh off a crushing defeat, with zero appetite for round two, neither direction offered a genuine option.
So everyone stayed crammed together, miserable.
Someone had even ended up sprawled across the Onion Knight's legs.
Right — the Onion Knight was still asleep here. Entirely unbothered by anything happening around him, snoring away in complete tranquility.
Reviving at a bonfire technically restored stamina — theoretically, everyone here sat at peak condition. And yet, even the captains kept their heads down in silence. Everyone else had even less to say.
Genuine dejection had settled in deep enough that nobody wanted to speak at all.
Sulyvahn's clone had simply been too strong. There was no realistic path to victory against him.
For scale — it was roughly comparable to challenging the Queen of the Full Moon's Mimic Tear with a full party of thirty, entirely without Thops's Barrier.
Absolutely no chance of winning that.
Sali sank into deep thought.
Could any of the currently famous, up-and-coming adventurers actually take Sulyvahn's clone down, if they showed up here?
Probably not.
Deploy the entire Light Eagle Corps, all at once, and maybe — maybe — there'd be a real shot. But that was the fundamentally unfair part of this dungeon: this cursed place kept a hard cap on how many people could enter at once.
So who exactly was Sulyvahn? How could even his clone hit this hard?!
"Ugh..."
A unified sigh rolled through the group.
When Eliphis's figure finally reappeared, the heavy stone weighing on everyone's chest lifted at once. Nobody knew whether to feel relieved or devastated. Either way, their commander was back.
But — why were his eyes still closed?
"The commander's spirit has taken serious damage. He won't be waking up anytime soon," Sali said, examining him, expression grim.
"We need to get him outside and find a priest, as fast as possible."
Outside?
Were they genuinely expected to fight their way through the monster population with this skeleton crew?
Only then did anyone register something missing.
Right.
Where had Elsa gone?
Their strongest fighter?
Someone found footprints leading away from the kitchen into the building's interior — Elsa had left on her own.
The mercenaries cautiously peered out.
The Silver Knights that had occupied the building were gone entirely.
Thank goodness.
Several mercenaries carried Eliphis along the road while the captains escorted from the front, following Elsa's tracks the whole way.
Where they'd entered earlier, they hadn't killed a single monster. Now, exiting, both enemy types had simply vanished.
Elsa's work?
No. Something didn't add up.
No sign of a fight anywhere nearby. Not even footprints from Sulyvahn's Beast. As though the creature had simply evaporated into thin air.
Standing in Irithyll's streets, Sali felt genuinely disoriented. He was starting to realize he understood Sein Dungeon less with every passing day.
Or maybe — he'd never actually understood it to begin with.
How did an elite monster just disappear outright?
He looked up.
Heavy snowflakes drifted downward. Irithyll's scenery always carried that same cool-toned, painted quality to it.
A meteor streaked across the sky.
"A meteor?"
Sali watched it vanish beyond the horizon.
Could Irithyll always see meteors? I don't remember that happening before.
This one wasn't alone, either. A dozen or so seconds later, two more streaked past. Then more followed — arriving at roughly a dozen-second intervals, numbers varying each time.
Sali sensed clearly, instinctively, that something within Sein Dungeon had shifted.
Good, or bad?
The next instant, a meteor came crashing straight for him.
The mercenaries scrambled clear on reflex. Sali only stepped back a few times — the meteor never actually struck him. It stopped, hovering, mid-air.
And it wasn't inert.
It was alive.
[Minior]
The Meteor Pokémon.
"This kind of thing — it feels like something out of the Gourmet Zone. Why's it showing up here?"
Before he could work through the thought further, a flash of white light bloomed.
The Minior vanished.
Replaced by a genuinely cheerful voice.
"Finally caught one! Yay!"
Sali turned around, disbelieving.
He'd never have guessed that a voice that energetic and delighted could belong to Elsa.
At the mouth of a nearby alley, Elsa retrieved a Poké Ball and noticed the mercenaries watching. She froze for a beat.
Her smile vanished instantly, expression snapping back to its usual cold, distant register.
The mercenaries stared, stunned.
Must have imagined it. Captain Guts, that cheerful?
"Captain Guts — what are you doing?"
Elsa pointed skyward and answered flatly.
"An anomaly."
In that same moment, the number of meteors overhead spiked dramatically. Stars of every color streaked across the sky, trailing long, brilliant tails behind them — an even more spectacular sight than any ordinary meteor shower.
And descending alongside the shower: enormous numbers of Miniors.
[A large number of Miniors have appeared!]
"W-what's happening?"
Sali stared up at a sky filled with Miniors, struggling to fully process it.
Elsa shook her head too. She genuinely had no idea why the meteors had started.
"Is this only happening here in Irithyll? What about everywhere else?"
Sali frowned.
Miniors themselves didn't read as remotely dangerous. What exactly was Sein Dungeon doing this time?
Everyone pressed forward cautiously. Miniors kept dropping nearby now and then — but they never actually struck anyone. If anything, they were genuinely cute.
Which only made the whole thing harder to make sense of. Normally, a mutation in Sein signaled tougher monsters arriving to torment adventurers. Why would it be raining tiny, adorable things instead?
Sali desperately wanted to push outside and investigate properly. With Elsa back among them, everyone's confidence held a little steadier.
Miniors kept falling nearby, scattering the instant anyone got close — never willing to approach directly. Everyone stayed tense at first, then gradually relaxed, letting the strange, beautiful scenery quietly soothe some of the day's exhaustion.
Right as they neared the Irithyll Bridge, a considerably larger meteor came crashing down toward them.
What was that?
Some kind of extra-large Minior?
A few of the braver mercenaries moved in to investigate.
"BOOM—!"
The whole of Irithyll shuddered. A massive crater bloomed in front of the bridge. Whoever had gotten too close was reduced instantly to little more than dust and bone.
Purple magical lightning flickered around the impact site. Gravity itself seemed altered within the crater — shattered stone drifted upward, defying weight entirely.
The bizarre scene put everyone on full alert instantly.
Elsa reacted with even sharper instinct. She quietly drifted toward the edge of the group, clearly gearing up for an exit strategy.
Once you start slacking off, there's genuinely no going back. Zero times. Infinity times. Same math.
"What is it this time?"
The Assault Captain advanced cautiously.
No need to inspect the crater, though. Whatever was inside was already climbing out under its own heavy footsteps.
"A... cow?"
Something resembling a cow, maybe, had fallen along with the meteor. Though "cow" was, arguably, far too generous a description. Its massive quadrupedal frame, two hard beetle-like antennae, and jagged, rock-like protrusions across its body made it abundantly clear this thing belonged to no world anyone here recognized.
Its name —
[Fallingstar Beast]
"What the hell IS that?!"
Everyone registered an oppressive presence radiating off the Fallingstar Beast — genuinely on par with Sulyvahn's clone.
They'd only just finished getting crushed by Sulyvahn's clone, and now a Fallingstar Beast had shown up. How was this any different from taking on the Ancient Wyvern right after Wolnir?
"Is Sein Dungeon specifically targeting us?" Sali muttered.
Behind him, Eliphis, in genuine pain, slowly cracked his eyes open. He had absolutely no context for what was happening.
It really wasn't personal.
This phenomenon was unfolding across the entirety of Sein Dungeon simultaneously — every region where sky was visible had flipped to night, meteors streaking overhead throughout.
Similar meteor showers were surfacing across a number of other dungeons at the exact same time. The only real distinction: Sein Dungeon had Miniors and Fallingstar Beasts specifically. The monsters populating other dungeons' skies were different entirely.
This was, evidently, an event orchestrated primarily by the Red Fang Dungeon — with a number of participating dungeons joining in together.