Chapter Seventy-Six Divine Pranks (Patreon)

Aka walked down the hall. Once again her mind drifted to that talk with her mother. The one she got when she brought Tovi home for the first time. She couldn’t help it considering she had just been caring for Tovi. She sighed, that had been a rather long lecture about being careful about gods. She knew now that Tovi was an addition to her life given to her by the Dark Goddess of Mischief, Tina. Honestly, she loved Tovi, the little chicken could be stupid and stubborn, but she was an incredible addition to her life. The new class that came as part of the package? Not so much. She flushed as she thought about it. There was just nothing about it that was normal and she was stuck with it too.

Aka did have to admit that her mother was right. Gods were dangerous and one had to be careful with their gifts. Just Aka hadn’t realized at the time that Tovi was a gift. Perhaps the part where Tina’s name showed up in Tovi’s title section should have been a clue, but her mind had glossed over that entirely. On a different note, she was going to be more careful from now on about where she peed.

Reaching her door, she opened it and slipped inside as she usually did. Without even looking. Next thing she knew her face was planting the floor. Rolling over, she blinked. Why was her door attached to the ceiling? Aka looked around, why was her light stone on the floor? That was supposed to be on the ceiling.

Looking further, her questions mounted, most of her furniture was on the ceiling. Only thing here on the floor was her bed and her nightstand. The empty wardrobe she never used and the old dresser were on the ceiling. Even her mirror and toy chest were up there. “Who rearranged my room?!”

Naturally there was no answer. She sighed and glanced at her door. It was too high to reach. Her gaze turned to her window, which was now upside down and again too high to reach. Should have brought a ladder. Not that she thought she would have needed one, it was her own room. By the gods, she shouldn’t have needed one here.

Aka looked up at the door again and decided that she might as well take a nap. Mom would be home sooner or later and she could escape. Tossing herself onto her bed, she soon discovered yet another surprise.

Alarms rang as the cute voice spoke up. “Solo a dungeon!? That sounds like fun, but I think we can make it more interesting.”

Suddenly the space around them distorted and they were faced with a cute young lady wearing a flower-patterned dress that had seen better days. It was torn in a number of places revealing the skin beneath. She wasn’t even wearing a bra. The girl moved. At least she seemed to be wearing panties, but sadly they were torn as well. The girl in the clothing looked practically divine. Her skin, her face, her features were far too cute. Michael felt an urge to hug her and shower her with affection. A fact that only made the alarms in her brain ring all the louder. She cursed as she realized why. A goddess had graced them with her presence, and she wasn’t one Michael wanted to deal with.

Then she spoke, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you three out of the fun. Let no one say I am not a fun girl. I have a lovely little quest for you three and a penalty game if you fail.”

Michael felt worried and moved closer to Delilah who pulled her into a hug. In the next moment, Mira was hugging them both, speaking in comforting tones. Not that the words registered. Regardless she was starting to feel that Mira cared. A fact that helped more than she cared to admit. Especially when a box popped in her vision.

Congratulations! New Quest!

You have been chosen by the Goddess of Mischief Tina to aid her with a prank. It will be fun!
A ring has been added to your inventory.
The ring must be equipped by Guildmaster Phillip without him knowing your involvement.
Time remaining: 48 Hours Quest Difficulty: A
Note: This is a minor divine quest. Refusal counts as a failure. Good luck!

Reward:

One Minor Wish (Note: Tina may change this if she deems it unfun)

Failure:

Tina’s Curse
Tina’s Penalty Game

She stared at the message. Looking to the side it seemed the other two got it as well. Worry written all over their faces. Michael shrank in her frame. It seemed she was just having another of those days. Only things were getting worse. No normal dungeon runs for her it seems. Instead, she gets this. Michael cursed again. That damn Susan! This is all her fault.

With a smile,  Tina tore her attention away from the box. Gesturing to a few seats. "Care to watch your friend with me? It will be fun and you can start your quest after. Don’t worry about the timer, it won’t start until you leave this room."

Of course at that same moment, Susan was facing a different sort of trial. She didn’t even get to speak to Tina. The quest was already in front of her.

Congratulations! New Quest!

The goddess Tina has heard your bet and accepted it. Complete this dungeon's challenges in the time allotted without aid. To make this more fun, the challenge comes with additional special rules. Along with powerful rewards and penalties. After all, it’s no fun without risk.

Special Rules:
No Physical Attacks allowed
Shield Regeneration has been disabled
Mana Regeneration has been disabled
Beating a boss will recover resources
Suffer a random curse from the goddess Tina every hour. New curses will replace the old one

Time Remaining: 24 hours Quest Difficulty: A+++ Nightmare
Who did you piss off to get this? Good Luck and you will need it!
Sincerely Shadow Goddess Systeria, Goddess of the System

Reward:

+22 Levels
Tina’s Blessing
Free evolution (this quest counts as a Trial of Ascension for the purposes of Evolution)
New Title: Tina’s Trial Survivor
New Trait: Victorious Regeneration

Failure:
Tina’s Curse
Level Reset
Traits and Skills Reset
New Title: Dungeon Pet

Susan stared at it for a moment. This was a mixed bag, the rewards were honestly pretty good. Success meant skipping A rank entirely, if she evolved the damn guilds would have no choice but to give her S rank. Not only that, but 22 levels meant skipping straight to level 110. That was huge, a full ten levels into the realm of the next tier. The trait was a bit of a question mark, as she wasn’t sure what it entailed. It sounded good at least, but who knows since she can’t inspect it. The title was nice and the blessing was questionable. The levels and the evolution were just too good to ignore, the fact that she was effectively betting her levels for that not so much.

Susan really didn’t relish the idea of starting over, she was so close to her dreams. Sure this might get her there, but there was so much more wrong with it. Her mood darkened as she looked it over. The first few special rules were bad, but she had a fair amount of mana and shield. There was the potential to work around that. The rule about Physical attacks was a little annoying but not that bad, she was a mage not a fighter. The rule she was most worried about was the one she had no workaround for. Combined with the fact that she was on a time limit and didn’t know how many floors she had to go? That curse every hour thing could be devastating.

Sadly that also meant she couldn’t tarry. No curse was in place right now, so that meant she needed to get going. With that in mind, she turned left. Susan didn’t get to her level without doing research. Knowing who to ask for what was half the game, so she had some knowledge on this floor. Unfortunately her best source for information had been whisked away by some meddling goddess.

As she pressed down the corridor, she reviewed her own status.

Name: Susan

Gender: Female

Race: Half-Celestial Human

Level: 88

Age: 38

Health: 100% (Perfect Health)

Class: Minor Mage of Heaven’s Wrath

Shields: 70,000/70,000

Subclass:

Mana: 66,000/66,000

Titles:

She didn’t bother reviewing her skills or traits. They were not important to her planning and she knew them by heart anyway. Besides this was a resource game. She needed to plan out which spells to use. She was on the clock and each spell used was mana lost. Each hit taken was shields lost, she wasn’t getting it back. Thankfully the monsters on the floor were insects. Nothing was going to stop her here. As long as she didn’t waste her mana that is.

Reaching the end of the path proved to be easy. It didn’t take much mana to deal with the weak monsters on this floor. Although she had used a bit more than she had wanted to. Took longer than she liked to figure out how much mana she needed to use.  It turned out these insects had more resistance to spells than she thought. That was going to be a pain, but thankfully they were still slow and weak. None of them dealt her any shield damage worth mentioning.

Stepping into the puzzle room, she looked around. A quick glance at the timer and she sighed. Apparently, she took longer than she would have liked as well. She only had four minutes left before the first curse would land. She blamed the insects for being sturdier than she expected. Weak monsters like that should have just folded before her instead of wasting her time and resources.

The puzzle room seemed simple enough. It was dominated by a large stone tablet, gleaming with magical text. Its surface was emblazoned with flowing silvery blue text. It was quite elegant actually. Perfectly fitting for a spell book or something that would suit her. That was nice. Reading it, she soon decided this dungeon was mocking her. What kind of puzzle is that?”

The text read, “At what level does the tier one monster ‘Horned Rabbit’ evolve?”

She laughed, this was too easy. Everyone knew that tier one monsters without exception evolved at level 20. The name was useless extra information. Below she noted the text gave her a few options. Smiling, she gave her answer, and the text changed.

“Correct,” There was a pause as new text flowed over the tablet, “Time remaining 5 minutes. Questions remaining 9. New question: When a Male Imp reaches level 20 what does he typically evolve into?”

She blinked. Okay that one wasn’t so easy. Then she smirked. As she recalled the answer. This dungeon seemed to like trick questions. Susan gave her answer and was soon presented with another one. That one wasn’t too hard either and she moved on.

After several questions, she reached the final question. How much mana does it take to cast the spell Lightning Storm?

That was a tough one actually. The hardest question yet. Like many spells the power could vary, but so could the range of the effect. Thankfully this time she was given a free form text box. With a sigh, she wrote out her answer. After a moment the dungeon tablet responded, “Correct, Congratulations on passing this challenge. Difficulty of the second puzzle trap on this floor has increased. Good luck!”

She noted that down, but didn’t consider that much of a problem. The dungeon liked tricky questions but most of them were easy. She doubted the new ones would be much harder. As she was thinking, the tablet descended into the ground. Then the rear wall rumbled as it split to reveal a new room. Prominently placed in the middle was a massive switch. Susan smiled, this was obviously the key to getting to the boss and if she had to make a guess there was another on the other side of the dungeon. It would fit the theme of the floor. Without delay, she approached and flipped the switch. Nothing seemed to happen, but then a blue box popped in her face.

The Goddess of Mischief has cursed you!
For the next hour, your spell power has been reduced by 75%

Those demons just aren’t lasting long enough, it’s boring. Let's have some more fun!

Susan cursed. That damn goddess was getting in her way. The demons were already taking too much mana to kill and now she would have to spend more? It wasn’t right. Unfortunately it was also another reminder of her time limit. She didn’t have time to waste on this floor. With that in mind she hurried back to the first room.

As it turned out, she was able to get back without incident. Having cleared it already there were no demons to block her path with their pathetic skills. That left her free to take the right hand path and she barely spent any time at all getting to it.

Walking down the hall, she soon came into a small room. Several weak demons were waiting for her. Without any hesitation, she channeled a rapid Celestial Bolt. It was a very simple basic spell with decent power, but most importantly being celestial meant it was more effective against the demons. Less mana spent to take one down, meant mana saved. Something she found weird to think about, but that was the situation she was in.

The bolt of shimmering light slammed into the demon she targeted but rather than punching through her shields it simply splashed against them. Susan blinked and then the group of demons attacked. Before she could even cast a second spell, a bolt of fire washed against her shields. The damage was minimal, but that was shields lost. Then a demon was in her face, claws flashing as they slashed her shields.

Susan moved back on instinct to gain space as she channeled her next spell. This time putting more mana into it. A bolt of a light sailed from her palm and punched through the shield. Flesh was seared but the demon remained standing. Susan cursed that damn goddess! These insects weren’t supposed to be this sturdy!

Regardless this was what she had to deal with. The exchange continued far too long before she finally dropped the last one. With a sigh she checked her resources, she was down over a thousand shields and six thousand mana. Not much, but without regen that was adding up and she didn’t know how much the boss would give her back.

Another curse, she proceeds. The path proved to be much the same as last time. Five rooms in a line with a bend at the halfway mark. The last one being the puzzle room, and each room had a party of demons. Usually five or six and typically at level fifteen. Weak, but thanks to that damn curse it took far too long to get through. She had barely passed the second room, when she got her next curse.

The Goddess of Mischief has cursed you!
For the next hour, you will take 500% increased damage from all spells.

That one was an utter pain. These curses were clearly no joke. No wonder the quest was labeled as Nightmare. It was the fucking curses making things so hard, not the dungeon. With that in mind she continued. Facing another room of demons. This time her spells were hitting as hard as they should, only she found that if they landed a hit, her shields really drained. Several spells struck her shields the moment after she unleashed her first. Each one drained a sizeable number of points from her shield total.

A pattern that continued as she made her way to the puzzle room at a much faster pace. Slipping into the puzzle room at last, she let out a sigh and checked her status again.

Name: Susan

Gender: Female

Race: Half-Celestial Human

Level: 88

Age: 38

Health: 100% (Perfect Health)

Class: Minor Mage of Heaven’s Wrath

Shields: 59,942/70,000

Subclass:

Mana: 56,105/66,000

Titles:

She cursed at the numbers. Susan knew these insects had drained her far more than they should have. Once again she felt a surge of heat as she thought about that goddess. It took her a moment to push the thoughts aside and focus on the room. It seemed much like the last one. With a nice stone tablet and flowing text. Stepping up, she reviewed the text. Idly she rubbed her pussy to relieve an itch as she considered the question.

“How many times can you fold a triangle in half before it ceases to be a triangle?”

Susan didn’t know what to think. That wasn’t a question she had considered before. After a moment she thought of an answer. Only to be told, “Sorry that is not the answer we are looking for. Better luck next time! Enjoy your trip!”

Trip? What trip? Her question was answered soon after when the entire room glowed and then seemed to waver. Just before her very vision became distorted. Next thing she knew, she was no longer in the puzzle room. Instead she was sitting in a cell, with bars blocking her exit. Along with that, she now had a new message.

Floor Transfer Trap Activated!
Welcome to Floor Three, Special Challenge Area: The Harpies’ Nest

New Objective: Escape the Harpies
Time Limit: 24 hours
Special Rules:
Rapid Respawn (Monsters in this area respawn shortly after they are killed)
Increased Strength (Monsters in this area are of a higher level than normal for the floor)
Harpy Guards (Special Guard Monsters are in the area. These monsters are invulnerable. If they catch you, you will be returned to your cell. They may also confiscate your equipment)

Failure:
New status: Dungeon Pet (Expires in ???)

That wasn’t good. With another curse on her breath, she looked around. Already trying to figure out how she would get out of this cell.