Saving Runes – 3

The damage calculation formula for fall attacks was simple.

It dealt a certain amount of damage proportional to the distance fallen, based on the enemy’s maximum health, and then the damage of the equipped weapon was added.

In other words, the higher the character fell from, and the stronger the weapon’s single-hit damage, the more damage could be dealt with a fall attack.

Furthermore, if it was possible to kill the enemy with the fall attack’s damage, one could also negate the fall damage to oneself.

If the enemy could not be killed, since the character landed on the ground and attacked, they would also take damage, and sometimes even die on the spot.

However, if the target died, the character would perform a special animation based on the weapon type, kill the enemy, and land safely on the ground.

Regardless of how high they fell from. In fact, falling from a higher place increased the health-proportional damage, so it could be said to be even better.

The situation I was currently in was also of that kind.

At the bottom of this pit, dozens of trash mobs swarmed, so no matter where the player fell from, they could kill an enemy with a fall attack and land without taking damage.

As a result, I had to witness dozens of human-sized centipedes wriggling together.

‘Good. It’s right below me.’

After confirming that the mid-boss equivalent was in the spot where I would fall, I re-gripped my weapon so the tip of the blade pointed downwards.

A monster, looking as if several centipedes had merged into one and several times larger than the others, heard the roar from above and raised its head.

As soon as that happened, I plummeted onto it.

“-!!!!!!”

Stomping down on both of its shoulders with crushing force, I forcefully plunged my sword into the part I assumed was its head.

As expected, the impact of landing was completely absent. Instead, its shoulder carapace took the full brunt of the impact and crunched down. My foot dug into the inside of its shell.

The blood-stained blade of the sword plunged deep into its face. Grabbing the hilt from the side and below, I pushed it in with all my might. Only the sword’s crossguard remained visible; the entire upper part was buried.

-Crunch! Crackle!

While I was dealing with the mid-boss with a fall attack, rock fragments that fell belatedly mercilessly crushed the centipedes wriggling in the water puddle. The sound of shells shattering could be heard everywhere.

The trash mobs on the side where the player didn’t fall were dealt with by the rocks instead. Thanks to that, I didn’t need to beat them all one by one.

“…….”

The mid-boss met the same fate. It trembled its horrifyingly numerous legs, then drew them all inward. It was a sign that its life had ended.

Its body swayed greatly. I pulled the sword out of its head, spun once in the air, and landed on the ground. Even though it was a move I had never done before, it flowed very naturally.

It flopped down into the water puddle, creating a splash. Around it, a disgusting colored liquid slowly spread. I frowned and turned my head away.

‘This place is done.’

I looked around. The centipedes that had been swarming nearby, without a single exception, were hit by rocks that fell from the ceiling and flattened into paste.

Normally, this was an extremely tricky section where one would have to land with a fall attack on one of the trash mobs scattered nearby and simultaneously face the mid-boss and six or seven trash mobs.

However, users discovered a glimmer of possibility here and eventually found a spot where they could land a fall attack on the mid-boss. Even in Dark Mode, this hadn’t changed.

The falling height was tremendous, so even the mid-boss, whose health was dozens of times higher than regular enemies, was guaranteed to be one-shot, and all other trash mobs were crushed to death by falling rocks.

There was no reason not to use this method.

‘I wonder if any items dropped.’

I lingered near the flattened centipede corpses crushed by rocks. I was hoping there might be some rare drops. But I saw nothing but puddles of blood and dirty chunks of flesh.

Honestly, it was questionable whether I should be disappointed or relieved. After all, I had no inventory and no status window, so even if items dropped, I had no way to carry them.

In the game, if you just pressed the E key to acquire them, items would automatically stack neatly in the inventory by type, and there was no particular limit to their number.

But here, it was different.

If it were the game right now, I could have casually acquired and checked it in my inventory, but even the headless armored cavalryman’s spear, I had to painstakingly carry it on my horse and tie it to the saddle.

Even while I was in the knight order, just in case, I tried picking up items that were treated as such, but nothing particularly happened.

‘At this rate, I don’t know how I’m supposed to farm enhancement materials later.’

Since realism was already thrown out the window anyway, couldn’t they have just included an inventory too?

-Rumble!

From far away, I heard the sound of the cave vibrating. As soon as I felt the vibration, annoyance instinctively surged within me. It was a sign that the time to face this dungeon’s boss was drawing near.

‘Damn Rock Centipede.’

Just thinking about it made my teeth clench. If it weren’t a mandatory boss that absolutely had to be defeated to obtain the rune, I would have skipped it by any means necessary.

To summarize this dungeon’s boss, the ‘Rock Centipede,’ in one sentence, it could simply be called an utterly disgusting boss.

Except for newbies who had just started BrDark 4 and reached this point for the first time, there was absolutely no division of opinion. Because there wasn’t a single person who liked it, only those who disliked it.

Even if you were only slightly experienced, it was a structure where you couldn’t help but curse. In the community, the overwhelming consensus was that the boss itself was poorly designed.

Later, perhaps in about 30 years, if a remake of BrDark 4 were to come out, the sentiment was so strong that people were saying the Rock Centipede should just be deleted.

There were various reasons, but the biggest problems were three.

Boring.

Time-consuming.

Annoying patterns.

‘Actually, the first reason is the most overwhelming.’

Even if it takes a long time to defeat, if it’s fun, people tend to accept it. You could tell this by looking at how BrDark 4’s final boss, despite also having 4 phases just like the Rock Centipede, received praise.

Still, there was no way to just skip it without defeating it. I steeled myself and entered the path that was wide open in one wall of the water puddle.

The path was incredibly wide. I thought at least 6-7 people could stand side-by-side horizontally, and vertically, it was almost twice my height.

But the walls and floor were extremely uneven. If I fell incorrectly, tearing my skin seemed like nothing. A silly thought crossed my mind: ‘Would I even die from that?’

‘This is it.’

After walking for a long time, I stopped when I saw a spot where anyone could tell there were unnatural holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling. This was the place.

Now, if I approached that hole, the first phase would begin. I slowly walked towards it, suppressing the annoyance that was already rising within me.

By the time I had almost reached it, the cave vibrated violently, and a grating, scraping sound of rock being gnawed away could be heard from all directions.

The sound grew louder and louder, and the tremors grew stronger in response. A scraping sound was coming from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

‘Stay calm.’

If I moved carelessly in this situation, if I was unlucky, I would be hit by the Rock Centipede bursting out of the hole and instantly die. It was best to just stay still nearby without moving.

-CRASH!

Not long after, from the nearest hole, destroying the surrounding terrain, a gigantic monster burst out.

Its overall appearance was no different from a regular centipede, but its entire body was made of rock. This didn’t mean its carapace and exoskeleton were as hard as stone, but that its body itself was literally rock.

It was an appearance that perfectly suited the name ‘Rock Centipede.’

And it was monstrously huge.

Each of its seemingly hundreds of legs was as long as my height, and even though only a portion of its front was sticking out of the hole, it was comparable to the height of a typical multi-story house.

If you included the rest of its body that was still hidden inside the hole, its total body length would clearly be the size of an apartment building.

‘Seeing it in person, it’s even more insane.’

A monster with a body of rock, the appearance of a centipede, and a size larger than a building was looking down at me, so the oppressive feeling was much greater than I expected. This was why newbies panicked when they first encountered it.

But that was as far as it went. Thinking about the struggle I would have to endure with this thing, annoyance filled me before fear or anxiety.

-Thud!

The Rock Centipede’s body settled onto the floor. The entire cave rumbled. It clacked its lower jaws together and slowly began to crawl towards me.

Its hundreds of rock-formed legs scraped the floor, endlessly emitting an unpleasant sound. Every single one of its movements grated on my nerves.

I slowly backed away, retreating towards the wall. The Rock Centipede also slowly turned its body and approached me. Then, it gradually began to pick up speed.

The gigantic rock-formed centipede flapped its hundreds of legs and twisted its joints, charging at full speed. It looked as if it would ram into me and crush me against the wall.

The problem was that the speed it considered “full speed” was only slightly faster than the player’s basic walking speed. There was no way I’d fail to time it, and even less chance of being caught and killed.

‘……Now.’

I waited until the distance closed further, then just before its head rammed into me, I rolled sideways and got out of its path. The Rock Centipede couldn’t stop its charge even after I disappeared from its sight.

-Thud!

And then, unable to control its own speed, it violently slammed into the wall. The entire cave vibrated, and rock debris rained down from the ceiling.

The Rock Centipede writhed its entire body, thrashing wildly. I retreated far back so as not to be hit by its thrashing.

Even being hit by the scattered rock fragments near it was enough to die. If newbies asked why they died when they just fell, nine times out of ten, it was because they were hit by rocks and died.

The Rock Centipede, which had been writhing and thrashing, tearing up its surroundings, nervously clacked its lower jaws a few times, then burrowed back into the rock. Since its body was so enormous, it took a long time just for it to disappear.

‘Now I’ll have to wait a long time again.’

I simply plopped down where I was. Anyway, it would take almost a minute for it to go in like that and come out again. According to the developers, its body was so huge that it couldn’t change direction quickly or something.

Now, if I repeated this process 59 more times, it would be Phase 4. In vanilla, it was 29 times, but it doubled because of Dark Mode.

The guys who made Dark Mode received a lot of curses. People wondered why they increased the number of gimmicks instead of reducing them.

While repeating those 59 times, I would have to wait for a minute in between, and in addition to its hundreds of thrashing legs, I would, of course, also have to carefully dodge every single flying rock fragment.

Plopped down in my spot, I began to wait endlessly for the Rock Centipede to burst out again.