The Regressed Dungeon Master

Adder ran past a rabbit when the glove on his left hand flashed.

The timer in the corner of his vision reached zero.

[You have met the required blood energy.] 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

He paused when suddenly the flesh blob dropped from the back of his neck.

It shivered for a bit. Suddenly, two black chains popped out from the space pocket around the flesh blob.

With no chance to give it, the chains wrapped around the flesh ball and started dragging it back.

The space crack was about to close when, suddenly, black fog slipped past it and was absorbed by his glove.

Ding!

[You have been affected by the vile aura of the forgotten prison.

You gain 1 stack of Desolated Marks.]

Alert, he waited for the consequences, but except for one thick black vein forming on his hand, nothing happened.

He glanced back at the cave and clicked his tongue. "Too late."

Not wanting to get dragged in, he started running back to the village.

...

Finally, Adder moved past the village gate. He was mentally so tired that he just wanted to log out.

Especially after going through all that mental gymnastics during the special task. This had to be the trickiest situation he had ever been part of.

First, he encountered a saintess who had reset her character. That in itself was rare, especially when saintess was a high-end progression-type class.

In Zenaris Online, every base class could be upgraded into a series of progression classes depending on the player’s ability and actions.

The requirement for each successive class became harder and harsher.

Before resetting his character, he had also had the Swordmaster class, which he gained by starting as a Warrior, then upgrading to Swordsman, and finally to Swordmaster.

The big problem, though, was that once you became a Warrior, you could not go back to being a Mage.

Even that simple change would require the player to reset their character, but the opportunity to do so had its own complications.

Saints were an infamous stable elite class for priests.

For her to reset into Saintess was absurd because that meant she had completed a high-level holy quest without even belonging to the priest class type.

There was no way such a person would be a nobody.

Fighting off his fatigue, Adder blended into the crowd while biting into hard bread.

If not for those missing players, he would have rushed straight to the witch’s shop.

While moving away, he glanced in the direction of the cave.

In the distance, he could see a couple of dark clouds, though they did not affect the village.

The scene of the witch mumbling around that guy flashed through his head.

Well, meeting a reset saintess class was crazy, but in terms of rarity, having a saintess class was not that big of a deal.

But the same could not be said about her partner.

The way those witches behaved around him, Adder was sure that guy had to have the Devil Spawn class.

The rarest of the devil-worshipper classes.

What made the situation even crazier was that he knew for a fact that Devil Spawn was also a rare reset class, just like his Dungeon Master class.

These types of classes were extremely random. In his own case, he had gained six golden rune rocks by exploring a random ruin for a random task.

The mind-blowing part was not just that the guy had gained that reset class, but that the two of them, with opposite powers, had reset together.

Even their plan to have the saintess kill corrupted players to gain power, only for the Devil Spawn to sacrifice the stronger her to gain more power, was extreme.

If those two had timed everything perfectly, both of them could have gained massive benefits.

Even now, while he was sure he had spoiled the saintess’s plan, the Devil Spawn still managed to use the devil-corrupted ancient creature.

It was hard to say what kind of gains that guy would get.

He clicked his tongue. Now that he understood those two, he was sure the saintess had been overacting.

She must have sensed the devil’s energy in the flesh parasite. It had to be some kind of signal to call the Devil Spawn.

Adder thought to himself, ’It had to be an act to trick me.’

Well, he did gain the unique subclass, so helping disrupt their plan wasn’t a loss. "Hope those guys leave me with that."

Just thinking about the amount of planning and preparation all of that would have taken made Adder’s head spin.

He knew his limits and just hoped this incident didn’t make their backers target him.

The alley leading to the witch’s shop appeared before him.

Unexpectedly, the queue had doubled. He glanced at the space next to the line, then quietly joined it.

This close, it was better not to take any more risks.

Not long after, a small group of three joined behind him. One of them asked, "Hey dude, is it true that the witch chain quest reset for everyone?"

He didn’t answer, but a few guys ahead of him laughed. "Yup. It happened half an hour ago."

’Half an hour... isn’t that around the time the old witch died?’ Adder thought.

The youngest in the group jumped. "See, I told you guys!"

Those ahead shook their heads as someone explained, "But this reset only happened for those who had done the first chain quest early. I don’t think the new entity is involved."

This killed their excitement, but Adder remained unaffected. At least this wasn’t completely unknown to him. Similar cases had happened in his past life.

Now he just hoped the reward from the special task hadn’t reset.

While standing in line, he kept thinking about those two.

The one thing he still couldn’t wrap his head around was how they both ended up in the same village after resetting.

Did they use some hidden mechanism? He wasn’t sure, though this reminded him of the infamous rumor of elite migration.

That rumor had only started about a year before he died.

It claimed that to hide their talents from rival guilds, some large guilds migrated their players to third-world regions to start in secrecy, only to bring them back later while making them travel through the game world.

But considering his past life, it was strange that he had never heard about those two before.

The power of a Devil Spawn could have triggered a bloodbath among top guilds, yet nothing like that had happened.

Adder sighed. No point thinking so much.

He muttered, "Status."