NPC into Player: Let's Wreck This Game

As for Bloom, he knew this game was based mainly on choices. Yes the developers interfered to make clearing this dungeon impossible, but if he decided to clear it and succeeded, they wouldn't interfere again.

This wasn't the developers' decision, it was theirs. Based on their choices, they would gain it big or leave with a loss.

"I indeed plan on doing so," he finally said, "this isn't just a calamity, it's also an opportunity," he added, "if you do exactly as I say, we will have a chance to clear it."

Everyone exchanged silent glances between each other. Bloom noticed their hesitation, so he added:

"Either way the worst case scenario would be to die, then why don't we die while trying to aim for something bigger?"

His words made quite sense to them. either way they would die, and from the short dealing with Bloom they were sure he had much more than he showed so far.

He was like a prophet to them, a mere genius who played beta and had strong connections inside the game, or how could he know all these secrets and tactics?

"Ok, we can try this, if failed then we will leave this dungeon and never return here," Gored said, as he expressed everyone else's opinions.

"Great," he smiled as he knew he couldn't do it alone, "now, I want you to stay here, while I go and investigate the monsters up ahead," he said, as he moved towards the front.

"B-But you aren't an assassin," Peri said, with extreme worry on her face.

"Don't worry, the whole dungeon is now lit. we don't need an assassin to do a recon," he said without turning to look at her. She just glanced, silently, at his distancing back, while feeling so dead worried over him.

He moved towards the first hall of this dungeon. Though the dungeon evolved, it didn't change its internal structure. According to the knowledge of his past life, monsters here should gain two hundred and fifty percent boost in their stats.

The meant though they were level five monsters, their stats would be like level ten monsters, or even more.

The main problem here wasn't these monsters, but the boss behind him. He didn't have any data regarding the state of a red evolved dungeon. From the start, the evolved dungeons were rare, extremely rare.

So, he wanted to defeat all these monsters with the least possible losses. Indeed he knew his team would lose players amidst the way, but he was wrecking his mind, trying to put the safest strategy ever.

When he reached the first hall, he was astonished to see the number of monsters there: twenty monsters, not ten!

'So it's not just a simple evolution, this dungeon was set to be a red dungeon from the start,' he thought while cursing those sneaky developers for disguising this dungeon as a normal one.

But he didn't lose focus, as each dungeon had its own secrets. He didn't need to use this sophisticated tactic before, but now his only shot to survive would be through finding the secret mechanics of this dungeon.

The first thing he started to watch was the terrain, as usually some clues might be there. The hall was much wider than the previous dungeon hall, with many small rocks bulging from the ground and the roof.

These were normal finding at any dungeon, but what was strange was the color of some rocks, they were black.

'Black is higher than red, does this mean something?' he thought as he tried to squeeze his eyes, trying to collect any more useful data from here.

Away from the rocks, there were some shallow lines on the ground, like some giant was playing with a tree as if it was a stick, drawing on the floor of this place. He couldn't see the whole drawing from his position, but he could guess its true identity.

'This is a land curse rune!' he shouted in his mind from excitement. Runes in the game were like a spell, but written not spoken. 'So we have black rocks, and a rune on the ground. This is something,' he was feeling he was getting so near from deciphering all this out, so he tried to keep his focus, while looking for the holy grail of this mechanic.

After a few minutes of keen observation, he suddenly found it!

The monsters weren't standing still, as they were roaming, aimlessly in front of his eyes. But after some time of looking at them, monitoring their movements, he noticed some strange pattern in their behavior; every thirty seconds, part of them had to touch these black stones.

He couldn't see what they were exactly doing, but all he could guess they might trigger something, or prevent something from being triggered.

'So, we need to hold them all, without leaving anyone in the back, for a whole thirty seconds… hmm…' his mind started to think while he was heading back to the team. This dungeon difficulty had been raised by folds, but he was sure if they managed to trigger this rune, things would be much different than what it looked like.

Until he reached the team, his mind had already formulated a plan. It was crazy, but it was worth trying.

"Well, any good news?" Gored hurried to ask the moment Bloom appeared in front of them. the first thing he did wasn't to reply to Gored question, but looking towards the summoner of the group while asking:

"San, how many monsters can you summon right now?"

Summoners needed skills to summon, monsters to contract with, plus charisma, Chr, stat and control power, Cp, stat to be high. Bloom already knew that summoners would have a basic set of monsters to be summoned if their Chr or Cp exceeded certain limits.

"Two," San replied, without hesitation.

"Two… hmm…" Bloom muttered as he was calculating something in his mind, "ok, we can live with that," he finally said, releasing a long stressful breath as he finally completed the last part of the plan.

"Have you drawn a plan already?" Peri asked with surprise, as she thought, like everyone else, that he went to do recon and come back to discuss the strategy with them.

She, along with everyone here, never thought he would put up a plan already, alone, in this short span of time!

"Sure, now listen up, and memorize what I will say without interrupting me," he said, while glancing at the eight players standing in front of him, "what we will face right now isn't ten monsters per hall, but twenty monsters."

Once he said that, everyone gasped out of shock, however he totally ignored their reaction while saying, "there is something in each hall that would help us kill these monsters, triggering that thing will determine our success or death in here," he said, while stressing on every word he said.

"This thing is buried under the ground, and needs some rocks to fall on it to be activated," he said, pausing so they would understand and digest what he just said.

"So, our mission is to smash some rocks on the ground?" the wizard said, which made Bloom wonder how someone this dumb be the wizard of his group? He put a note on him, as if he continued to be this idiot, he would be obliged to replace him.

"No," Bloom shook his head, "these monsters had to touch these rocks each thirty seconds, or else these rocks will fall on the ground and activate this hidden weapon," he said.

"Hidden weapon?" Peri exclaimed with surprise.

"Well, let's consider this like that," Bloom said, as explaining irrelevant things was, well, irrelevant! "All we need to do is to hold our line and keep these monsters busy for a whole thirty seconds.

Any failure in drawing the whole monster means failure. If we drew them all and one or two slipped from our grip, we failed. Is that clear?" he asked, while looking into each one's eyes, before adding:

"Now, let's discuss the battle tactic."