Legend has it that a mermaid's tears turn into pearls, and anyone who finds those pearls will smile at their value.
Hero Elsa was something else entirely.
Her tears hadn't even finished falling, and they had already caused the corners of a certain someone's mouth to curl upward against his will. No matter how hard he pushed them down, they kept rising. Delight wasn't a strong enough word for what he was experiencing.
Inside the Lord's Chamber.
Wade pressed a hand over his mouth, trying to physically force the grin back into submission. It was useless. His lips had apparently developed independent ambitions.
Calm down. Calm down. I cannot laugh at something this cruel.
He could feel Buddha, Jesus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster all watching him from somewhere directly behind his head. His virtue points were ticking down at an alarming rate.
But how was he supposed to not laugh at this?
He glanced at Elsa wiping away tears again and lost all remaining restraint.
A hearty, thoroughly Dark Souls-appropriate laugh tore out of him, reverberating through the chamber and making the already eerie atmosphere distinctly heavier. The miserable expressions of adventurers — it never got old. It was, without question, the greatest ongoing source of joy this dungeon provided.
After an indeterminate amount of time, he wiped the tears from his own eyes and composed himself enough to open his notebook.
He had noticed something recently.
Weapons and equipment obtained from Sein Dungeon were beginning to show damage.
Leon's sword was the first case he caught. After several days of observation, a clear pattern emerged — many adventurers' weapons had accumulated wear, some significantly, with a handful breaking outright. The blacksmiths of this world could repair the appearance of damaged weapons and make them look whole again. The underlying problem, however, remained. Performance dropped noticeably, and using a Weapon Art on a surface-repaired blade caused it to shatter immediately.
Items from Sein Dungeon were fundamentally different from the objects of this world. Honestly, the mere fact that weapons could possess Weapon Arts should have made that obvious from the beginning.
It was time to introduce Sein Dungeon's after-sales service.
Equipment Repair.
Sein's durability model wasn't Dark Souls II — no terrifying attrition eating away at everything in real time. Nor was it Elden Ring, where weapons simply never broke. Frequent Weapon Art use and poor maintenance would shorten equipment lifespan meaningfully, making repair services a genuine need rather than an afterthought.
The plan had two components.
First: Blacksmith Andre in Liurnia of the Lakes would begin offering Equipment Repair. Adventurers could spend souls to restore damaged equipment, with the cost scaling to each item's value.
Second: the consumable item Repair Powder.
He was currently working out the best placement for it throughout the dungeon. A stable farming location was ideal, with Merchant Kale carrying a limited supply as a secondary source.
[Repair Powder]
Metal powder imbued with faint magical power.
Can repair weapons and armor. Equipment whose durability has already reached zero cannot be repaired.
There was also the sorcery Repair, originating from Oolacile — similar in effect to Repair Powder, and genuinely practical.
Wade had no intention of making equipment repair a source of frustration. If anything, accessible repair options would make Sein-series equipment more popular and more widely used. Some adventurers had already grown so attached to their weapons that they refused to actually use them.
Leon was the perfect example. His Straight Sword was collecting dust in his room.
That wasn't fun for anyone.
Speaking of Repair Powder — the item had a quietly absurd underlying premise.
It was, in essence, a product of time magic.
The mechanism by which it repaired equipment was literal temporal reversal — rewinding an object's state to when it was completely undamaged.
If the mages of this world ever discovered the true nature of Repair Powder, they would probably collapse into an existential crisis. Who in any reasonable universe would apply the profound and mysterious power of time magic to fixing swords?
Before committing to adding it to the dungeon, Wade had tested it carefully to make sure its nature wouldn't destabilize anything important.
His conclusions: first, Repair Powder was cheap. Extremely cheap. Cheap enough to mass-produce. Second, it only worked on weapons and armor — he had personally run tests on item after item to confirm the boundaries. Disposable magical tools from this world weren't affected. Magic scrolls, for instance, couldn't be repaired. As long as it was limited to equipment, the time magic angle probably wouldn't cause any meaningful problems.
"I'll release a small batch first and watch how it lands."
"If nothing goes wrong, wider distribution follows."
"Next — word about High Lord Wolnir will spread. In a few days, a massive wave of people is going to flood in."
When was Sein Dungeon at its absolute peak traffic?
New area openings. New boss appearances.
Which raised a natural question:
What was the obvious thing to do when player traffic hit its highest point?
Wade opened the Lord Panel.
The corners of his mouth crept upward again.
Obviously —
Quietly raise the stats of ordinary monsters for a stretch.
Harvest a wave.
Then quietly lower them back.
He had to admit: being a malicious game designer had a particular satisfaction to it. Especially knowing he understood balance well enough not to push adventurers past the point of quitting. A clever housewife can't cook without rice — but with rice in abundance, there would always be someone willing to cook.
Sein Dungeon had rice to spare. It was not suffering from a shortage of cooks.
Light Eagle Mercenary Corps Headquarters.
Mercenaries packed the area outside a certain house, craning their necks with the universal expression of people observing something they hadn't expected to see in their lifetimes.
Despite the crowd, nobody spoke above a murmur.
Because this was Captain Elsa's house.
The rumor had spread fast.
"What do you mean Captain Gut ran out of the dungeon crying?"
Crying.
Gut.
The two concepts simply did not belong in the same sentence. Watching Elsa cut people down without so much as a change in expression, most of the Corps had quietly concluded she was some kind of emotionless force of nature — a cosmic emperor who happened to carry a greatsword. The word cry seemed to belong to a different category of being entirely.
Some had gathered out of morbid curiosity.
Some out of genuine concern.
And some —
"Move along! All of you — what are you standing there gawking at?!"
Logistics Captain Aston rounded on the crowd with the energy of a man who had personally decided this was over.
"Go do your jobs! Have you got nothing better to do than stand around watching other people's business?!"
Members of the Elsa Squad arrived in short order to reinforce the message, directing sharp looks at every lingering spectator.
The crowd dispersed gradually, reluctantly.
Aston waved a dismissive hand at the house and walked away.
A curtain moved slightly.
Elsa watched him leave from behind it.
Then she let it fall closed.
On her bed lay the broken greatsword. The two halves had been bound together with strips of cloth — a crude, hopeful attempt to make it whole again.
It wasn't whole. She knew that.
Something had gone out of it the moment it snapped. It looked the same. The appearance was intact, roughly. But the brilliance was gone — and not just the visible shine. The edge felt diminished. The weight sat differently in her hands.
It felt dead.
She stared at it.
The crying was finished. Now there was the problem of what came next.
How did you repair something like this?
The Light Eagle Corps blacksmith's words surfaced in her memory, clear and unwelcome.
"Captain Gut — with respect, I think you should consider replacing it. This sword can't be restored. If you'd like, I can forge an identical replica. Same dimensions, same weight distribution."
The memory filled her with a dull frustration.
The world was large.
Surely, somewhere in it, a way existed.
She pressed her lips together.
This wasn't anyone else's fault. The only person responsible was herself. She had read her own strength incorrectly and challenged Wolnir directly — and in that moment, the desire to protect her companions had granted her something she had never accessed before. That unprecedented surge of power had felt absolute. Certain.
And yet Wolnir's Holy Sword had ended it.
The question that kept returning was why.
Was it because her emotions still weren't strong enough?
Since the tragedy of her childhood, something in her had gone quiet. Feelings that should have moved freely had become muted, like a door left slightly open that never quite swung wide. That was why she often appeared distant — not absent, just behind something she couldn't name.
Only recently, through the slow accumulation of time spent with her squad and with others, had the fluctuations started returning. Small things. Reactions she didn't have before. And her greatsword had responded to those changes, as though it could feel them.
Perhaps this was what it meant to be a Hero.
If one day she could feel joy and anger and grief and happiness the way an ordinary person did —
Would the full weight of her power finally become available to her?
And if one particular emotion reached its absolute limit — something like overwhelming fury — could she go further than she had gone against Wolnir?
She had no answer. A power tied to emotion couldn't be mapped through logic.
She kept staring at the sword.
The weapon that had been with her for nearly her entire life.
She sat like that from sunrise to sunset. Through the night. Until sunrise again.
Nobody came. That had been her request. She didn't want to be disturbed. The captains and vice-captains were probably deep in discussion about Wolnir right now, planning the next attempt.
At dawn, while most of the camp still slept, she left the house and stepped outside.
She needed air. Something.
The moment she cleared the camp perimeter, she found the opposite of quiet.
Outside Sein Dungeon's portal, adventurers stood shoulder to shoulder in animated clusters, talking over each other about their discoveries and experiences with the energy of people who had been awake all night and didn't regret it. Even at this hour, the area was alive.
Something about the sight settled her slightly.
She had grown fond of seeing other people's smiles recently. They reminded her of Tami.
Then a fragment of conversation reached her.
"Did you hear? Old Man Andre can repair damaged equipment now. Souls, and he'll fix it — doesn't matter what state it's in."
"Seriously? I've been terrified to use my Weapon Arts properly."
Both adventurers felt a sudden, intense gaze on their backs.
They turned.
Elsa was staring at them with the full weight of her attention.
"What… do you need?"
"Tell me everything. Everything you just said."
A short while later, Elsa was sprinting back toward camp.
Unmistakable joy was visible on her face — obvious, unguarded, the kind she rarely wore.
Blacksmith Andre could repair weapons.
Regardless of how badly damaged they were.
She just had to reach Liurnia of the Lakes. She had to find the white-haired old blacksmith. She had to tell Sali immediately and then leave with the greatsword — with or without Sali, if it came to that. She would go alone if she had to.
Nothing was going to delay this.
"…Captain?"
She reached her cabin and stopped.
A straight-backed figure stood waiting outside.
Eliphis.
Sali was beside him.
Seeing her running toward them, Sali's eyebrows rose.
"You're feeling better already?"
Elsa's smile was still there. She was about to tell them —
Eliphis spoke first.
"It's wonderful to see you've recovered, Guts."
He wore a gentle smile. The kind that turned palace maids' heads. The kind that filled mercenaries with quiet, unshakeable confidence and a sense that everything would be handled. The kind that had once inspired Elsa, too.
But this time —
Something reached her before the words did.
Her body took a small, instinctive step backward.
Eliphis didn't acknowledge the movement.
A particular light shifted behind his blue eyes.
"Prepare yourself, Guts."
"Today — we finish High Lord Wolnir."