"Have you heard? Leon's Party out of Bedford City and the Hasavi Party are guiding adventurers through Irithyll — for free!"
Lately, the two names on everyone's lips were Leon and Fingri.
Thanks to their combined publicity, practically every adventurer with an interest in Irithyll now knew the story of the "Little Boy of Irithyll." They also knew how both parties had thrown themselves into overturning his grim fate, again and again, only to watch every attempt come to nothing.
To some degree, humans and adventurers share a particular streak of stubbornness.
Tell someone not to do a thing, and they want to do it more. Tell them an outcome is fixed and inevitable, and they become determined to prove there's a second ending nobody's found yet.
Adventurers took this even further.
A boy facing only two possible fates — killed by monsters, or turned into one himself — was practically engineered to provoke that exact rebellious instinct.
"Only mutation or death? I refuse to believe that."
Determined to rewrite the boy's story, adventurers signed up with Leon and Fingri in droves, throwing themselves eagerly into the effort.
It absolutely wasn't because they secretly wanted a private word with a beautiful goddess. And it certainly wasn't because their own strength fell short of clearing Irithyll solo. (Scratch that last part.)
Although the boy — technically neither confirmed dead nor alive, so long as he stayed behind that door — had become the talk of the dungeon, what people were actually most fixated on was the new covenant: the Blades of the Darkmoon, and its founder, the "Dark Sun," Gwyndolin.
As a member of the Gwyn bloodline, Gwyndolin's very appearance in the bonfire visions had drawn enormous attention. That she was also exceptionally beautiful didn't hurt — it gave her an almost effortless ability to gather admirers.
And the fact that she'd remained behind alone in the royal city after Gwyn linked the fire, sustaining the Age of Fire in solitude, naturally won her a wave of sympathy on top of it.
After all, who could resist a beautiful goddess who was both powerful and quietly tragic?
Unfortunately, hard information on the Gwyn family remained scarce.
Adventurers knew Gwyn had departed after linking the fire. They knew the Firstborn of Sunlight had allied himself with dragons and vanished from view. They knew the other gods had gradually left the royal city, leaving Gwyndolin behind alone.
Beyond that — very little.
Digging into the Gwyn family's history made for fascinating conversation, but spiritual wealth didn't keep anyone's stomach full.
Which was why the Blades of the Darkmoon remained the real center of attention.
By now, adventurers understood that joining a covenant offered two main advantages: harvesting souls from other players, and trading covenant items for rewards.
In practice, though, simply spending enough time in the dungeon was often enough on its own to build up plenty of covenant items to exchange.
So the real draw was still invasions — and counter-invasions.
Invading satisfied a particular dark psychological itch. Counter-invading let people play the hero.
Whoever you were, there was a role here that fit you — and generous rewards waiting either way.
That was why covenants stayed so popular.
The Darkwraiths — for pure villainy.
The Warriors of Sunlight — for those who wanted to help others.
The Watchdogs of Farron — bound specifically to the Farron Keep region.
Even with these three already established, people had the persistent sense that something was missing.
Now they understood what it was.
Nothing existed to counter invasions specifically.
In other words — no "police."
The Warriors of Sunlight could certainly help someone. But only once summoned.
It seemed Wade had simply forgotten, until now, to add a proper policing mechanism — something along the lines of the Way of Blue of White Circlet or the Way of White of White Circlet.
The gap left a noticeable hole.
Once he recognized it, Wade scattered rings for both throughout every region of the dungeon. Stronger adventurers tended to turn up the blue ones; weaker adventurers, the white.
[Way of Blue of White Circlet]
Upon receiving a summoning request from another world, you may answer the call and be drawn in as a "Hunter." Your objective: defeat the invader plaguing that world.
[Way of White of White Circlet]
When invaded, this ring automatically sends out a summoning request, calling a "Hunter" in from another world to come to your aid.
And alongside those two rings, the Blades of the Darkmoon — cast squarely in the role of avenger — made its grand debut.
Its signature mechanic — hunting down those who had themselves once played the invader — earned widespread praise the moment Fingri revealed it.
This landed especially well with ordinary, not-particularly-strong adventurers, the ones who often relied on summoned Warriors of Sunlight just to get through a region, and who correspondingly ended up as invasion victims more often than most.
Their praise for the Blades of the Darkmoon ran hotter than anyone's.
"Finally — we get to punish those bastards who spend every day invading innocent people!"
"Woo! Now that I've joined the Blades of the Darkmoon, I'm going to invade people every single day!"
"Why is the covenant item an ear? And why does it look so strangely pretty? I actually want one now."
See? The public reception was, indeed, excellent.
Two requirements stood between an adventurer and Irithyll:
Defeat the Deacons of the Deep and obtain the Small Doll.
Defeat Wolnir and unlock the bridge bonfire outside Irithyll of the Boreal Valley.
By now, the Catacombs of Carthus had been open long enough that everyone had a solid handle on them. The Road of Sacrifices and Crucifixion Woods, serving their role as "beginner maps," had likewise been thoroughly explored, with reliable strategies already in circulation.
But the Cathedral of the Deep remained, without question, the single greatest source of suffering.
No small number of adventurers would rather spend the rest of their lives farming Farron Keep than set foot back in that graveyard and get pulled into another loving embrace by the maggot-infested Undead.
As guides for the Cathedral began circulating, business exploded for the region's psychological counselors — the priests.
Some people swore, with complete sincerity, that they never wanted to eat rice again for the rest of their lives.
"Royal Capital Priest Counseling Room — Rules (Latest Revision)"
No insects, or anything resembling insects, permitted inside the counseling room. And — under no circumstances — cook rice porridge on the premises.
Setting aside the thoroughly disgusting graveyard, the rooftops were the other major source of complaint. Naturally, that came down to the Curse-rotted Greatwood's followers and the Hollow Soldiers wielding bows and crossbows.
The interior of the Cathedral itself was no gentler. The entire time, adventurers had to sprint circuits around the building with two Giant Slaves' full aggro locked onto them, hunting for the mechanisms that would lower the two gates.
Lowering the first gate meant either finding the mechanism through a long, winding detour, or willingly letting Patches con them — just the once.
Lowering the second gate offered no shortcut at all. There was nothing to do but navigate the maze and find it themselves.
Adventurers also filled in a number of details Fingri's group had missed on their first pass. Fluffy, giant-spider-like creatures that hung upside down from the ceiling, waiting to drop onto passersby. Maggot-sorcerers who coordinated with the Cathedral Knights, layering irritating support magic over everything. The genuinely powerful Mimic guarding the coveted Symbol of Avarice. Unnervingly plump "aunties" with absurd poise, and fast, dual-wielding Grave Wardens.
Only then did adventurers finally understand exactly why the Outrider had gone to such lengths trying to keep them out of the Cathedral in the first place.
So this was where the dungeon's malice had really been hiding.
As a result, the overwhelming majority of people showing up to ask Leon and Fingri for help turned out to be adventurers stuck somewhere inside the Cathedral of the Deep, unable to push any further.
Because the requests kept piling up, both parties had no choice but to institute a screening requirement: anyone seeking help had to have already defeated either Wolnir or the Deacons of the Deep first.
Starting people from absolute zero simply wasn't sustainable.
Bedford City's elves smelled the opportunity. Under Melga's leadership, a small group of them slipped away — without Wienma catching wind of it — and started guiding adventurers through the area for a fee.
Thanks to the combined effort, three days later the number of adventurers who'd successfully made it into Irithyll finally topped one hundred. At Fingri's request, those hundred spread out and began helping others in turn.
A week after that, over three hundred adventurers were active inside Irithyll at once.
The "Little Boy Rescue Plan" was in full swing.
People tried everything. Every night, tavern conversation revolved around how to save him, and which approach might actually work fastest. Someone even opened a dedicated donation fund for the cause.
And still — nobody had found a genuine solution.
A single party simply couldn't clear every monster in Irithyll. As long as even one remained active, the boy would die somewhere along the walk to the church.
Nobody could think of a way around that.
The rescue effort had stalled out completely, and Fingri was edging toward genuine despair over it.
Meanwhile, on an entirely different front — the Blades of the Darkmoon had become enormously popular.
Every adventurer entering Irithyll now went in with the covenant on their mind. Joining didn't just let them punish invaders — it let them hear Gwyndolin offer personal encouragement, one-on-one.
The intimacy of that experience was practically unmatched.
Gwyndolin was a god. Various churches had taken to calling the ritual at her altar "receiving the oracle of a god" — traditionally something only archbishops and popes were considered qualified to receive.
"Lady Gwyndolin is so beautiful, and her voice — I love it. I genuinely love her."
"Sure, it's the same handful of lines over and over, but honestly? I could listen to them forever."
"Ears! Where are the ears? I want to collect enough to hear Lady Gwyndolin say something new!"
Gather enough ears and offer them at the Darkmoon Altar, and new lines of encouragement from the Dark Sun unlocked.
People had already worked out that both the image they saw and the voice they heard at the altar were fixed recordings — not fundamentally different from the projections inside a bonfire. Nobody knew where the real Gwyndolin actually was.
None of that mattered. It did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm.
And behind all that enthusiasm, someone, inevitably, was bound to suffer for it.
Namely — anyone with a history of invading other people.
The invasion economy that had thrived ever since the Darkwraith Covenant appeared took a genuine beating once the Blades of the Darkmoon arrived. The more often someone had invaded, and the stronger they were, the more likely the Deep Blue Eye Orb was to single them out. Anyone who'd only invaded once or twice barely registered on its radar.
Everyone knew invaders operated under false names and hid their faces beneath hoods.
But when the Blades of the Darkmoon came for them, there was no time to react — let alone pull a hood up.
Which meant the era of mass unmasking had arrived.
Ever since the Blades of the Darkmoon's influence began spreading, brawls on the surface spiked dramatically, and medical practitioners found themselves buried under a sudden flood of patients — all of them victims, finally catching up to the invaders who'd once wronged them.
The Darkwraith faction took an unprecedented, devastating hit.
While the Darkwraiths cried misery, everyone else raised their cups. Taverns filled with people celebrating the fact that the Darkwraiths — arrogant for so long — had finally been brought down hard.
"Long live Sein Dungeon! Long live the Blades of the Darkmoon! We finally got our revenge!"
Right as the celebration was hitting its peak —
Sein Dungeon. Irithyll.
A figure staggered out of the Irithyll Dungeon Prison.
She pulled the tattered hood back from her face.
Luluwo.
Her hair hung in complete disarray. Her clothes were shredded. Her limbs trembled with exhaustion, and her eyes had gone entirely, glassily blank.
She looked like someone who'd just survived a genuine, sustained torture session.
Her cracked, dried lips parted.
"...Fuck. I got invaded more than twenty times today."