Chapter 28 - My SI Stash #28 - Is it wrong to try to avoid girls in dark dungeons? by shadenight123 (DarkSouls/Danmachi) (1/2)

-A SI Dark Souls(f_u_c_k this game) & Danmachi fic, a fun read!

Sypnosis: ???

Rated: M

Words: 120K

Posted on: forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/is-it-wrong-to-try-to-avoid-girls-in-dark-dungeons-dark-souls-danmachi-si.42009/threadmarks/ (shadenight123)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (*´ー｀*)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Prologue(exceptional)

Sometimes life gives you lemons. Sometimes it gives you ashes.

The smell of burning wood filled my nostrils, pushing through my lungs as I breathed it in deeply. This wasn't a barbecue; there was no meat burning on the grill. The crackling of the flames was near enough that I instinctively moved away from it, my finger clutching some sort of dirty stone pavement. My eyes bleakly put into focus my surroundings, an abandoned house made of stone, a leaky and half-broken roof covered in hay, and a precarious chimney. It was, rather than a house, a single room with a broken, creaking door that led outside into a field of uncultivated grass.

I barely managed to push myself up on my two feet, my eyes turning towards the fire, the familiarity of it ricocheting through my befuddled memories as I swallowed nervously. Either I had been kidnapped for a really intensive Larping event, or someone had thrown me in a Candid Camera of sorts.

The crackling fire wasn't just a fire. It was a bonfire. A sword, twisted and broken, stood deeply embedded within it. Skeletal remains bleached white from time and the heat of the flames crackled within, the smell of smoke a faint reminder. I rubbed my eyes, or at least, went for it. I stopped with my left hand raised to my eye level.

I took a deep breath. The Darksign's pitch-black existence twirled surrounded by flames on the back of my left hand. It hissed and whispered words that made no sense, but as I awkwardly neared my right hand towards the edges of it, I knew it wasn't a phony copy. The moment I touched it, ashes surrounded my entire frame, my vision turning dark. My body, once more, was slumped on the ground of the house.

This wasn't a joke.

I stood up, carefully making my way out of the door. The sun nearly blinded me, but past the glares and the lukewarm heat it emitted, I saw fields of green and a dirt road which sn_a_k_e_d across the greenery towards a city near the horizon.

It didn't look like a city I knew of, and it definitely wasn't Lordran or any other settings that belonged to Dark Souls. I glanced down at my clothes before stepping outside, and once I realized I was wearing simple, everyday trousers and a thick wool shirt, I reckoned it could have been worse.

I could have started inside an Asylum with a broken sword.

Thus, I began to walk towards the city.

Had I known where that road would lead me...

...I would have gone the other direction.

Chapter 1

The world of Dark Souls was not unfair. Let us be honest; the game itself was difficult, but not dishonest. Skills would let anyone go through with minimum fuss. You could be a heavily armored knight, a scantily clad hollow with a broken blade, or a lunatic on a speedrun using bananas as controllers, but you would still have a fair chance at beating the game. The knowledge of your enemy would be your strength; the attack patterns would become known, and the correct mixture of courage and cowardice would allow you to strike in the right moment and achieve victory.

Orario wasn't fair like that. I had learned it on my skin, time and time again.

The fickle lights cast upon the dungeon's walls were a product of the dungeon itself. No one would be foolish enough to step down on the fifth floor to place candles for the adventurers to see. The ground was even, the corridors large enough to allow the comfortable passage of a group of four to five adventurers, and yet there I was, alone. My eyes were used to the faint illumination cast off by the candles. Even if I did something as silly as knock them off, new ones would form in their place.

The dungeon liked to properly see its monsters eat adventurers whole, though with me, he had made a terrible investment.

I clutched on to the leather handle of my long two-handed sword with my right hand near the guard, my left firmly gripping the bottom of the handle. Most of the enemies on the fifth floor had poor reach, but terrifyingly sharp claws or attacks. The random minotaur was an exception, but they usually didn't come all the way up from their fifteenth floor unless bothered by an adventurer and in hot pursuit of them.

My swing came down precisely, slicing the neck of a War Shadow as its blood copiously dropped like some sort of shower. The creatures either had the strongest pumping hearts in the world, or Quentin Tarantino had taken over the show somewhere in the middle of production. I took a step back, bringing the blade in a strike from the left to deal with a friend of the War Shadow, before sidestepping the blow from the third monster and closing in, the sharp edge of the sword's handle opening a grievous wound on the c_h_e_s_t of the monster in question.

The monsters fell neatly on the ground, their corpses quickly turning into mush as magic stones and scraps remained behind. I knelt with a sigh, my left hand grabbing hold of the stones and carefully pulling them one by one into the pouch by my side. I could throw them in my inventory, but so close to the surface chances were high I'd encounter adventurers on the way out. It wasn't that I was keeping my ability to use an inventory a secret, but I wasn't inclined to share or make a show of it.