Chapter 321
An unusually crafted object materialized in Leon's hand without warning.
[Small Doll]
A small silverwork doll depicting a young squire. In the legendary old city of Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, Pontiff Sulyvahn once gave this doll to his valued subjects, allowing them to use it as a key to cross the barrier whenever they returned.
Listen carefully, and you can hear a faint sound: wherever you go, the moon still sets in Irithyll; wherever you may be, Irithyll is still your home.
Leon froze.
Then it clicked.
"We can get into Irithyll now?"
Night. The Royal City. The Palace.
Inside the king's bedchamber, several maids worked in cold sweat, carefully cleaning King Anz III's body. None dared breathe too loud, terrified of what would happen if he woke.
His condition had stabilized somewhat lately. Violent episodes still came, but he was sleeping more, often for stretches long enough that the staff had started to relax around him — cautiously.
Eliphis had examined him recently and pronounced it normal, nothing to worry about.
Whether he meant the king's health or the throne's stability was unclear.
The maids had been ordered to use this window of calm to finish cleaning him. Terrified as they were, obeying wasn't optional.
"Ah!"
A shrill scream.
One maid's arm had been seized suddenly, King Anz III's hand — grown sharp claws overnight — closing around it hard enough to draw blood. Looking closer, wounds ran through his own palm too, blood seeping slowly from the cuts.
The king's blood and the maid's mixed together in the same instant.
Nobody registered the detail as important.
The others clamped a hand over her mouth immediately. The king hadn't woken. Probably just an unconscious twitch. They finished quickly and fled with their buckets.
The injured maid pressed a hand over her arm and went looking for a priest — treatment, and something to steady her nerves.
Inside the church, bathed in holy light, the wound closed completely. The tension in her chest eased along with it. No lasting psychological scarring seemed likely.
Her arm just felt a little itchy afterward.
Discussion of Irithyll of the Boreal Valley had reached a genuine fever pitch. Had trending rankings existed, it would have held a top-ten spot without effort.
"Boss, weren't we supposed to have tomorrow off?"
Maru's voice dragged through the Royal Capital streets, sounding like her soul was actively negotiating an exit from her body.
"Plan's changed. We got first access into Irithyll ahead of everyone else. You don't want to be the first person into the Boreal Valley?"
Leon gripped the Small Doll so tightly he was afraid to even put it in his pocket, worried about somehow losing it.
He hadn't felt excitement like this in a long time.
They'd guessed the Small Doll might live inside the Cathedral of the Deep. They'd never expected it to fall into their hands this easily. Judging by the bonus reward, they'd been the first party to defeat the Deacons of the Deep — which meant, with the dungeon closing for the night, they'd be the only people qualified to enter Irithyll tomorrow.
That kind of honor wasn't something to turn down.
The Deacons were probably one of the weaker bosses currently live. Surely nobody would struggle against them.
Right?
Thinking about it, Leon patted Maru's head.
"When we get back from Irithyll, I'll take you to play with Little Pot. Already bought the Poké Balls."
"Promise!"
Maru perked up instantly.
"Then let's eat huge tonight! We need the energy for the Boreal Valley run tomorrow!"
Laughter spread through the group.
Late as it was, the Royal City stayed brightly lit. They passed a corner where a newspaper boy called out to passersby. The person currently buying a copy looked vaguely familiar to Leon.
Before he could get a proper look, his companions dragged him into a tavern.
"One newspaper, please."
Wade hadn't had much time to slack off lately, buried in work as he was. Tonight he sat on a street bench with a newspaper open in his lap, looking every bit the office worker who'd finally found a legitimate excuse to do nothing.
At first, he'd genuinely wondered whether this world's tech level supported something like newspapers.
Then he remembered magic existed.
That answered that.
The paper he'd bought wasn't from a major publisher — a second-rate tabloid, formerly on the edge of bankruptcy before Sein Dungeon appeared near the capital and the outlet gambled its remaining budget on going all-in on dungeon coverage.
The timing had worked out. They'd caught the nobility's growing obsession right as it started building, and eventually landed funding from Princess Serina herself. The once-irrelevant paper had quietly clawed its way to a modest, respectable reputation.
Wade liked this particular publication mostly for its recurring segment interviewing random adventurers about currently trending dungeon regions. Reading it felt a lot like scrolling old internet forums from his previous life.
Today's topic: Irithyll of the Boreal Valley.
The reporter needed only a handful of formulaic prompts before letting the adventurers run their own mouths.
Adventurer A: "Irithyll? Absolutely love that place — you want to know why? Because I can't get in! Distance makes the heart grow fonder, right? I check every single day for news that Leon's cracked it."
Adventurer B: "That city's obviously a den of rich people. I've already started sharpening my lockpicking skills for the occasion. Curious about my day job? Hehehe."
Adventurer C: "It's beautiful. After the entire slog through the Catacombs and taking down Wolnir, getting rewarded with a view like that made the whole thing feel worth it. Made my life feel worth it, honestly."
Reporter: "But legend has it the Dragon's Sky Garden and the Fairies' Sea of Jewels are supposedly just as gorgeous as Irithyll. Isn't that a hasty conclusion about your whole life?"
Adventurer C: "Legends stay legends. Maybe those places exist somewhere — but they're views that only a handful of people will ever actually see. Hearing someone describe them isn't the same as feeling it myself."
"Inside Sein Dungeon, though, I saw Irithyll with my own eyes. That image is burned into me permanently now. If I want to see it again, I can, any time I choose."
"That's what makes it a sight that genuinely belongs to the rest of us."
Reporter: "Well said — now I want to see it myself. Let's hear from the next one. He looks a little upset."
Adventurer D: "Sein Dungeon! Irithyll! What in the hell is the deal with putting dogs on that bridge?! I—"
Wade laughed out loud at that one.
Just as murderers supposedly return to the scene of the crime, he suspected the game developers from his old life had all secretly loved lurking on forums, watching players lose their minds over specific design choices.
And honestly, keeping an eye on the adventurer community genuinely helped him build Sein Dungeon better. So this wasn't slacking off. This was work.
Case in point — the moment the capital's nobility had started catching Sein fever, he'd noticed the pattern almost immediately and added a flood of items designed to look extremely luxurious while serving zero practical function. The result had been predictable: those glossy, useless little collectibles became wildly popular among the noble class.
Later, he'd introduced ingredients rumored to boost virility to the Gourmet District, and that had successfully worked its way onto dinner tables across the capital as well.
He'd originally assumed getting Sein products popular with the nobility would take significant effort.
Turned out he'd just misjudged how the local population actually operated.
Credit also went to Count Charon and his associates, of course. Compared to his own father, Charon was considerably better at reading which way the wind was blowing and moving accordingly.
Wade flipped further into the paper. The later pages covered follow-up reporting on Sein's freshly revealed Road of Sacrifices and everything beyond it.
"More and more capable adventurers coming through. Clearing new territory faster than before."
Multiple full guides for the Road of Sacrifices and Crucifixion Woods already existed. More significantly, the guide market wasn't monopolized by Leon and Luluwo anymore. New parties kept surfacing, several matching their level directly. Some, arguably, surpassing it.
Luluwo was probably sweating through several outfits a day at this point.
Further along, Wade found a mention of a supposed Cathedral of the Deep guide. Reading closer, it only covered the cemetery section. Nobody publishing it had even reached the roof yet.
"Leon and two other parties already have the Small Doll. Irithyll can technically open now — just a few loose threads left to tie off."
He drew his consciousness back through his physical body, walked to the inn, and let his focus shift fully into Sein Dungeon.
A miniature model of the entire dungeon materialized before him. He slid it over to the Irithyll section.
The full map was substantial — broadly divided into the City proper, the area beneath it, and Irithyll Dungeon itself. In the source material, Irithyll Dungeon connected onward to the Profaned Capital, but that region hadn't been built yet, so it was a non-issue for now.
The City, the underground, and the dungeon each carried their own distinct flavor of torment. And the final boss — Pontiff Sulyvahn — would deliver a genuinely unexpected twist to whoever reached him.
Behind Sulyvahn's arena lay one of Dark Souls III's most iconic locations — the Backyard. Where the original "Soul Five" had once trained against each other, honing both combat skill and personal conviction, competing for the title of Knight. A location with genuine historical weight, both within the story and within the broader legacy of the Souls series.
Wade intended to convert it into a full PvP arena — a place adventurers could throw down against each other without restraint.
He suspected it would end up the single most active region in all of Sein Dungeon.
Additionally, a new covenant would debut alongside Irithyll — the Blade of the Dark Moon.
The Darkmoon lunatics were returning for a limited engagement.
Beyond Irithyll sat one of the most important locations in the entire Dark Souls universe — the city where Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, and his bloodline had once ruled.
Anor Londo.
A location Wade intended to build with real care.
No matter how he approached the design, though, something kept nagging at him. Wrong in a way he couldn't immediately name.
After turning it over for a while, the problem finally surfaced.
The timeline.
Pontiff Sulyvahn had already made his appearance. Which meant this era's Anor Londo already belonged to Aldrich. The once-glorious royal city had already been contaminated by the Drowned Pig, its former splendor gone for good.
Anyone who'd actually witnessed Anor Londo in its Dark Souls I glory would feel a genuine emotional gut-punch seeing it corrupted this way.
His adventurers, though, never would.
They'd never seen the uncorrupted version to begin with. There was nothing there for them to grieve.
Wade found that inadequate. The emotional weight wouldn't land properly.
After weighing it back and forth, he settled on wanting adventurers to see the un-corrupted Anor Londo first, before ever encountering its fallen state.
"Painted World format. Build a few, place them near several Irithyll bonfires."
He scribbled the idea into his notebook, muttering as he wrote.
"Though Anor Londo can't be too brutal, or nobody clears it. Should I hand them some support?"
Without fully thinking it through, his pen sketched a helmet shaped like an iron bucket into the margin.
Looking at the finished doodle, even he started laughing.
"As expected — the best teammate really is still a Sunbro."
On the surface, Irithyll would read as just another map.
In reality, adventurers were about to witness Anor Londo in its full, uncorrupted glory too.