"Justice from Above!"
Right as Bone Fang was locked in a desperate struggle against the monster horde, a cheerful shout cut through the noise overhead.
Along with it — two swords fell from the sky, impaling and detonating the skulls of two separate monsters.
Tusk looked up immediately, relief flooding his face.
"Mr. Fingri!"
Hope of survival returned to everyone at once.
The mage Fingri had entrusted with the Recording Crystal raised it on reflex, faithfully capturing the Hasavi Party's descent from above like something out of a religious painting.
Fingri. Matilda. Aleya.
Each one now carried a pair of transparent wings sprouting from their backs, and they dove toward the battlefield with powerful, deliberate beats — angels descending on a mission.
"Flash!"
Blinding light erupted across the field. Every monster instinctively threw hands up to shield their eyes.
Matilda hit the ground like a living siege weapon and immediately began mowing through the horde, while the other two swept up members of Bone Fang and carried them to safety on the second floor.
Watching this unfold, the Giant Slave that had been rising back to its feet abruptly went still.
As though it were waiting for the right moment.
"Mr. Fingri! I'm so glad you're all safe!"
Back on the second floor, joy swept through the group. The emotional whiplash of the past few minutes generated a considerable surge of mana on its own.
Tusk immediately scanned for Patches.
The scoundrel had already vanished without a trace.
He genuinely couldn't understand how someone stuffed into the Onion Knight's bulky armor had managed to move that fast. Then again — judging by how effortlessly Patches had handled the Cathedral Knight earlier, if the two of them had actually clashed, Tusk was fairly confident he'd have been the one on his knees.
As Fingri greeted everyone, he explained the reason for the delay. The Cathedral's interior was simply too disorienting. They'd gotten lost.
Then he laid out his plan.
Straightforward, in his estimation. Aleya would cast Flight on everyone. They'd simply fly over the second gate.
Simple. Direct. Elegant.
The first gate had opened thanks to Patches's little scheme, but hunting down the mechanism for the second one would eat up time nobody had. The day was nearly finished. Night had already settled outside. If Fingri didn't at least find out what waited beyond that platform before they were forced out of Sein Dungeon for the day, he was certain he wasn't sleeping tonight.
"But — what about anti-air defenses?" Tusk asked.
Everyone present understood by now that Sein Dungeon carried something close to a personal vendetta against flying. Who knew what it had waiting for adventurers who took to the sky?
What if a hundred Gatling guns suddenly opened up?
Just picturing it made everyone's scalp crawl.
Incidentally, the Old Yharnam Hunter who'd introduced adventurers to the concept of Gatling guns carried this description in the Hunter's Handbook:
"People are drawn to the Land of the Gods, Lordran, for countless reasons. Yet Lordran's distorted flow of time often creates contradictions. Someone you killed yesterday may fight beside you today. Even enemies can temporarily become allies. Hunters may simply be one of those strange anomalies."
Nobody genuinely understood that explanation.
But since an explanation existed, everyone accepted it as reasonable enough and moved on — it conveniently smothered any doubts before they had room to grow.
For adventurers like Tusk, straightforward narratives — the Abyss Watchers, High Lord Wolnir — made sense. Anything more layered than that got filed under entertaining background flavor. Not that they disliked piecing lore together. It was just that their brains stayed occupied with a more pressing question:
How do we make more money?
Leave the archaeology to the scholars.
"It's fine. I only need to clear the gate," Fingri said.
While airborne earlier, he'd gotten a full view of the hall. Beside the platform that had captured his attention stood another Giant Slave, and at its feet a staircase ran directly up to the platform itself. Clear the second gate, and he could sprint across the first floor and take the stairs.
Provided he avoided both the Giant Slave and the overload-status swamp.
"I'll test it first. Everyone wait here."
Operating on the philosophy that the stronger you get, the harder you should tempt fate, Fingri took the lead. His wings beat him forward toward the second gate.
He looked completely relaxed on the surface. Underneath, he was scanning every direction with total focus, ready to dodge the instant anything moved.
Nothing did.
As the gate drew closer, his tension eased.
Maybe this really is an intended shortcut. Like using the gravestones during the Father Gascoigne fight to break line of sight.
"Did I actually find a hidden route?"
The moment his focus slipped —
A deafening roar tore through the air ahead of him. The shockwave surged directly toward him.
Fingri's eyes went wide. He threw his wings into a dodge on pure reflex — and still got caught, spun twice through the air before being thrown backward.
He looked up.
The second Giant Slave, beside the platform, had risen fully upright. The iron plate covering half its face had torn away, exposing a shriveled mouth.
The roar had come from there.
If this were a game, the notification would probably read:
[Anti-Air Mode Activated!]
To specifically counter adventurers capable of flight, Wade had equipped the Giant Slaves with an Ash of War borrowed directly from Elden Ring:
[Ash of War: Troll's Roar]
Lets out a mighty roar toward the distance, creating a shockwave capable of blasting nearby enemies away.
The skill triggered exclusively when someone attempted flight.
"A knockback roar—" Fingri worked out the mechanics instantly.
When the Giant Slave opened its mouth a second time, a visible storm-shaped shockwave rolled toward him.
"If I can see it coming, dodging isn't a problem."
He dove beneath the second roar, avoiding it clean. The turbulent air still knocked him slightly off balance, but he'd roughly mapped the attack's effective range now.
Third time, no mistakes.
Facing the third roar, Fingri smiled with total confidence.
"The same trick never works twice on an adventurer!"
He had no intention of slowing down. Maximum speed, threading the shockwave at the last possible instant — a perfect display of precision flying.
If anything, his instinct for showing off might have exceeded even Leon's, back when Leon first arrived in the dungeon.
"Calculations perfect. Just a small shift to the side."
He beat his wings once.
The roaring shockwave closed in, and confidence blazed behind his eyes.
"ROOOOAR!"
A thunderous roar rolled through the cathedral.
...Wait.
The fire in Fingri's eyes froze mid-blaze.
Why had that come from behind him?
"The giant's back up!"
Tusk's panicked shout carried from the second floor.
Before Fingri could process it, a violent gust slammed into his back — driving him directly into the shockwave rolling toward him from the front.
A perfect pincer.
Double-teamed.
With a sharp crack, the transparent wings on his back snapped clean off. He tumbled from the sky like a bird shot straight out of flight.
"Mr. Fingri!"
Tusk cried out.
Fingri hit the foul mud below with a wet, unmistakable SPLAT, and Tusk immediately turned to Matilda and Aleya for help.
"Sigh. You never stop showing off. Guess you finally learned something."
Matilda rubbed her forehead. The armor across her body contracted and reshaped itself into a pair of metallic wings — considerably more refined than ordinary Flight magic.
She'd already read the Troll's Roar's range simply by watching earlier. Weaving through each incoming shockwave while forcefully suppressing her disgust, she swooped down and hauled Fingri out of the swamp.
"Well? Lesson learned? Still planning to charge in solo next time?"
"Blegh!"
Fingri spat out a full mouthful of foul mud before managing:
"I… learned…"
Beat.
"…Next time, I'd still do it."
Matilda came genuinely close to throwing him straight back into the swamp.
Having come this far, though, she decided she might as well carry him across the gate herself. Her armor-formed wings offered far finer control than any Flight spell. More importantly — unlike Fingri — she wasn't reckless. Even flying slower, she'd rather avoid any damage at all.
Mainly because the idea of falling back into that mud a second time was, on a personal level, deeply unacceptable.
The two Giant Slaves' Troll's Roars had already started to feel insufficient on their own. Two more, and this might have actually become a genuine problem.
Watching Matilda close in on the second gate, the dungeon's anti-air alert climbed to its ceiling. Both Giant Slaves opened their mouths wider than before — winding up for what looked like their strongest roars yet.
Matilda remained entirely unbothered.
However powerful the roar got, she was confident she could handle it. If she weren't carrying Fingri, she might have been able to push the shockwave back outright.
An unprecedented roar erupted.
Matilda's expression read, simply: As expected.
What she'd overlooked was one small detail.
The roar had come from the Giant Slave's mouth — but the giant itself hadn't produced it.
Inside that mouth, a shriveled creature pushed the giant's tongue aside and crawled into view. It resembled a Hollow in silhouette, but it belonged to something else entirely — a world outside Dark Souls altogether.
A Draugr. From The Elder Scrolls.
Wade had chosen it specifically as the dungeon's ultimate anti-air weapon, because Draugr carried the legendary power of the Thu'um.
Among all Dragon Shouts, one fit the role perfectly.
Dragon Shout: Unrelenting Force
A shout capable of blasting away both enemies and terrain. Its weaker forms merely staggered and shoved. Its strongest form hurled a target through the air like a discarded doll, entirely helpless.
Compared to Troll's Roar, it offered a considerably wider range, lower direct damage, and drastically stronger knockback.
Excellent value, in every sense that mattered.
More importantly — the Draugr only appeared once an adventurer attempted to cheese the level. Anyone exploring honestly, on foot, would only ever encounter the Cathedral's native monster roster and experience the content as designed.
Against something airborne, though, Unrelenting Force was devastating — especially woven unpredictably between repeated Troll's Roars, catching its target completely off guard.
The Draugr opened its jaw and bellowed:
"Fus Ro Dah!"
The ancient words rolled through the cathedral like something with physical mass.
This shout surpassed even the Giant Slave's roar in raw force. The instant it landed, Matilda felt as though an actual dragon had roared directly into her face.
An irresistible force slammed into her.
Encased in heavy armor, she was thrown backward like a rag doll, her entire body locked rigid by the Shout — unable to adjust her posture mid-air.
At that exact moment, the Troll's Roar from the Giant Slave behind her landed.
BOOM!
Instead of continuing backward, she was launched forward again — directly toward the Giant Slave beside the platform.
During the Dragon Shout's recovery window, that giant unleashed a second Troll's Roar.
And so Matilda and Fingri were sent flying backward once more.
"ROAR!"
"ROAR!"
A rhythm settled in. One roar after another. Back and forth.
Every direct hit left Matilda's body briefly rigid — and that tiny window of stiffness kept her from steering her wings at all, which guaranteed the next roar would connect too.
It bore an unsettling resemblance to the infamous three-dog stunlock from Dark Souls — each bite chaining seamlessly into the next, the player locked entirely out of input.
"D-damn it!"
Matilda finally clawed her body back under control, right on the edge of breaking the loop —
When the Draugr, its Shout freshly recharged, noticed her slipping free.
Without hesitation —
It roared again.
"Fus Ro Dah!"
And so an unprecedented spectacle was born.
The roars became a rhythm. The gate became a net. Matilda and Fingri became the shuttlecock.
The two Giant Slaves had started playing badminton.
The pair caught in the middle had gone completely numb to the whole ordeal.
"Ah…"
Tusk stared at the scene, blank. He felt his own sanity slipping loose somewhere in the process. For a solid moment, he entirely forgot he was supposed to be helping.
The mage still holding the Recording Crystal was equally frozen — and yet never once stopped recording.
Years later, the footage would find its way across the world. People came to know it as:
The First Sein Dungeon Giant Badminton Tournament.
It would go on to indirectly ignite a genuine resurgence in the sport itself.
Eventually, that particular style of play earned its own name.
Fingri Ball.