Crimson Den of the Arrogant Dragon

Expedition

Elysian warriors and adventurers are summoned to face a myriad of dangers beneath the Masters Dojo. There, they discover new terrors, challenges, and secrets that lead to a final showdown that changes the path of the archipelago forever.

After Jezza Torres' defeat at the hand of several warriors from Apollo City, the doors to a strange underground dungeon opened. When it was revealed just how massive and intricate the scale of the underground labyrinth was, people all across Elysium split up into groups to tackle what was assumed to be a devious gauntlet created by Sinister Maharana. Each group that descended into the underground were met with a single, lit entryway and a shadow being known as Beautiful Darkness that acted as a sort of guardian of the hall.   In the Hall of Smoke, its paths shaped like a marijuana leaf, Team DAD was tasked with dealing with wildlife corrupted by Ken's unique energy. Composed of June Katsos, Connor Tor, Mayank, and Hollow Knight, their first decision was to split up. June and Mayank cleared out the excess spiders in the lobby before investigating the web-covered hole in its center. On the edge of the crevice was a mysterious inscription: "Haphazard shapes, these webs create. Within their pattern hides a key to fate. Step close to death, tear your senses asunder. Only then can you see the truth and meet the hunter." June believed the answer lied in the spiders themselves and utilized a few into a blunt for Mayank to smoke. However, this not only failed in opening the secret path but made Mayank somewhat ill, akin to a severe allergic reaction.   Meanwhile, Connor and Hollow Knight traveled into the den of the Ganja Gorillas, who were primed to beat them to death for entering their territory. Though, instead of fighting against the muscular primates, Connor opted to use his bard skills in order to serenade the beasts with a short concert. This quelled the Ganja Gorillas and put them to sleep. With one path down, Connor and Hollow decided to reunite with June and Mayank before entering a chamber which contained Haze Wolves. Battling against smoke-spewing direwolves, Connor and Mayank were crucial in speaking the pack leader's language. It was there that they learned of Ken's cruelty toward the animals of the island, from bestiality to eating members of their pack to polluting the wildlife with his corrupted energies. Though both sides were vicious in their need to move forward, Team DAD secured a merciful victory by sparing the few Haze Wolves that remained and moved on to the next path.   Unfortunately, this next path was much more violent and unrelenting than those previous. Team DAD stumbled upon a litany of corpses and the very cause of them -- Blazing Mandrills. Unable to soothe them with a bard's song or reason with them about Ken's cruelty, the Mandrills viciously tore through any one and anything, searching for more of their special THC. All the while, they fumed with a hallucinogenic smoke that sent the entire team into a state of confusion. However, despite the mandrill throwing everything, including their own flaming excrement and the leftover gore of the fallen, they were handily defeated by the group's magical efforts.   In the next dungeon, Team DAD found themselves trapped by the Dank Denkimushi, canine-sized versions of their ordinary counterparts. Instead of pain-inducing barbs, they incurred enough concentrated THC to kill anyone who touched them. While the team managed to partially navigate a long stretch of the path, in which the Denkimushi covered the floors, walls, and ceiling, Hollow Knight was stricken by one of their barbs. After the insects started to converge in curiosity on the group, Connor, June, and Mayank worked together to forge a spell that allowed for them to travel through the sky to the end of the dungeon. Unfortunately, it only brought them into the lair of Mary Jane, an aircraft-sized radioactive Suzemebachi. Along with swarms of smaller radioactive hornets, Team DAD found themselves constantly battling against acidic saliva and stingers that could recreate Chernobyl. With the aid of some ice spells, lightning strikes, and riding Mary Jane like a Brahma Bull, Team Dad collectively managed to pierce the large wasp's hardened chitin and end its suffering.   It was then that the team listened back to the tapes they collected in each chamber, which, collectively, told the story of three people who had entered the cavern before them. One of them had also been stung by the Dank Denkimushi and could see the hidden password in the lobby's webbing: Akeru. With Hollow Knight's new vision, Team Dad descended into the subterranean lair of an even larger huntsman spider called the Hemphunter. With superior strength, exoskeleton as strong as steel, and venom that makes its prey docile enough to eat whole, Team DAD was at first literally against the wall. It wasn't until an opening to Masters Garden was discovered in the ceiling that the group worked together to both create an escape path and defeat The Hemphunter once and for all. Through the struggle, they came to understand that The Hemphunter was one of the deadliest creatures on Masters Island, having human and animal skeletons scattered about its lair. In the midst of The Hemphunter trying to beat Team DAD to death with its massive legs, the monster was accosted by the remaining Haze Wolves.   An opening secured, Mayank, June, and Connor empowered Hollow Knight to become a living spear of magic that ripped through the spider's open jowls. As its torn body fell into the void below, Team Dad narrowly escaped to the surface while the Haze Wolves received an honorable death helping their own kind.   ================================================================   In the Hall of Fame, with a massive football field peppered with a handful of stadium chambers, Team Ara Ara was tasked with handling undead musicians. After dodging a dangerous attack by Beautiful Darkness, the team came upon a mysterious, elderly man. In addition for tearing down the loud chambers, he asked the team to bring him honey and liquor to soothe his soul. Though hesitant, the team accepted his request and started their gauntlet.   The first chamber they encountered was that of Lady Gaga, reborn as Mother Monster. It was revealed that Ken had called her in an attempt to get her to feature on an album he was producing. When she refused and insulted him over the phone, he kidnapped her, forcefully inseminated her, and enslaved her beneath the dojo. There, his residual energies transformed the dead diva into a powerhouse, granting her a twisted form of necromancy with her voice alone. The team battled through her Little Monsters while emulating Michael Jackson, both stealing her spotlight and infuriating her enough to transform into the towering Fame Monster. Under the threat of becoming her new Little Monsters, Team Ara Ara smashed through blood diamonds, survived sanguine tsunamis, and used every ounce of will to resist her sinister siren call in order to bring her down. Though defeated in a combination attack, it was Edsel that ensured that her soul would be put to rest.   The second chamber they encountered was that of Snoop Dogg and his anthropomorphic canine force, Tha Dogghouse. Ken had called Snoop to offer him a place on his album but, when Snoop expressed worry about backing someone who leveled half of California with his bare hands, Ken insulted Snoop. Feeling vexed, Snoop challenged Ken to a fight, where he unsurprisingly became his next celebrity prisoner. Reborn as Tha Doggfather, Snoop propositioned Ahri, Lucy, and Trish to become his new “working girls” while Augustus and Edsel were offered to prove their street credit in order to survive being torn apart by his dogs. Faced with a hard relent, Tha Doggfather sicced his dog henchmen on Team Ara Ara. Initially, Ahri’s martial arts skills, Trish’s plant manipulation, and Lucy’s massive ax were able to cleave through the brutish beasts. However, when it was revealed that the Gin N’ Juice fountain afforded them all the blessing of immortality, Tha Dogghouse came back fighting harder than ever, pitting them all in a perpetual back and forth. Augustus got the idea to sever their connection to the fountain, literally in Snoop’s case by slicing the biomechanical wires that hooked up to his body. Trish utilized her botanist skills to poison the infinite well of mystical liquor, dealing a double blow to the immortal dogs. With Snoop enraged and Tha Dogghouse reliving every injury over their lengthened lifetime, Snoop transformed into the aptly named Snoopberus and unleashed the hounds of hell from the old house he had perched himself on before.   With their combined efforts, and Lucy’s powerful ax, Team Ara Ara was able to sever all three heads of the devilish beasts. It cursed the squad with its final words before vanishing in a plume of destructive flame. After the chamber was finished, they stopped to speak with the strange old man, offering him a cup of the untarnished Gin N’ Juice before moving to the next chamber. There, they encountered Beyonce, or Queen Bey as she liked to be called. Faced with a swarm of bee soldiers armed with hydrochloric acid stingers and cognac honey that diluted the senses, Team Ara Ara tried their hand at diplomacy. They discovered that Ken called her to be featured on his album only to be hung up on by her and her husband, Jay-Z. Infuriated, Ken forced Beyonce to watch as he committed unspeakable atrocities to her entire family, ultimately putting her through the worst of the torture. Through tears, Beyonce explained that there was nothing left for her to return to and that her Beyhive was the only family she had, forcing her to embrace the supernatural powers she gained in her death. However, Ahri’s confession of how she was an inspiration for her career and Edsel’s offer to reunite her with her family quelled the entire confrontation. Unfortunately, this also brought about the feelings of negativity in her torment as the alter ego, Sasha Fierce, in the midst of Edsel’s cleansing. Furious that Beyonce would give up so easily, the spirit battled against Team Ara Ara until it was eventually purged, leaving Beyonce to rest in peace.   Exiting the dungeon, Team Ara Ara felt as though they were due answers as to what exactly the old man was keeping from them. Even when they gave him some of the cognac honey from The Beyhive, he refused to answer them, saying that all would be revealed once they completely clear out the evil spirits in the dungeon path. Frustrated, Team Ara Ara nearly refused before arctic winds from the next dungeon threatened to freeze them solid if they did not continue. With that, they entered the chamber and encountered a Canadian wilderness owned by Drake. After a call with Ken went wrong concerning featuring on his album, Drake ended up suffering the martial artist’s wrath before becoming Six God. With his OVO cultists wielding owl-like bodies and hypnotic gazes, Drake pleaded to Team Ara Ara that they shouldn’t listen to the old man and stay down there with him. He transported them to his massive mansion in the middle of the wilderness where he offered them room, board, and individual features on his own album. He also stated that there was nothing good waiting for them on the outside, that remaining within his pocket dimension would be the best thing for them. However, his primary reason for wanting the team to stay was because he wanted to become Ahri’s boyfriend, even going so far as to lavish her with a meat spread fit for a Viking army. But, even with his generous and assumedly amicable behavior, the entire team could feel his psychic pressure slowly trying to manipulate them into joining his OVO cult. Even more malicious was the freezing Canadian weather that slowly wore away all of the useful equipment they had gathered throughout the dungeon so far. With Ahri suspecting danger, she laced a ham slice with Queen Bey’s cognac honey, trying to suffocate him through forcefeeding.   Drake managed to expel the food from his throat and called upon his OVO owl cult to take down the team, making one upset R&B superstar. The OVO cult fought furiously with their blinding speed, destructive talons, and hypnotizing gazes. However, Team Ara Ara was more than prepared, even with their destroyed equipment. Augustus took full advantage of the building snowstorm, manipulating the liquid and creating a storm of his own to collaborate with Trish’s slicing vines. Once Lucy and Ahri smashed the rest of the cultists with their brute force, Drake transitioned from the Six God who empowered his cultists through his voice to the October Owl, a golden kaiju creature that spanned for miles. Even worse, the blizzard turned into multiple snownadoes that ripped through the province and plunged the temperature into levels that would freeze the average mortal solid in seconds. Team Ara Ara dodged torrents of razor sharp golden feathers, battled back against freezing temperatures with Augustus’ cursing creating a painful furnace of Aether in his mouth, and worked together to ultimately behead the October Owl through Lucy’s ax and Ahri’s Spirit Orb combo. Even with Edsel’s collapse from the cold, they were able to quell the storm and watch as Drake silently wept, complaint after whiny complaint spilling out of his mouth as he sipped his last bottle of champagne.   With degraded loot and exhausted spirits, Team Ara Ara ventured into the final chamber where they were welcomed by a boisterous choir. Almost immediately, the singing empowered their bodies and healed their minds. It was only when they discovered that the masked man playing in front of the strange neighborhood house was no other than Kanye West. With every bang of the keyboard and every joyous sound, Team Ara Ara was welcome to join them in a Sunday Service. However, just like with Drake’s domain, the team started to feel a psychic attack that slowly sheared away their personalities in exchange for becoming husks under Mr. West’s “benevolent” control. Again, they tried diplomacy and learned that Mr. West always tried to act on his good intent in creative, sometimes controversial, ways. Throughout the discussion, Mr. West informed them that he and Ken were similar in that both of them were suffering with what to do with immense power, one literally and one creatively. Ultimately, Team Ara Ara helped Mr. West let go of trying to fix everything in the dungeon and be at peace. It was revealed that Mr. West, just like all the other celebrities, had been murdered by Savage Ken. However, Mr. West and Ken actually agreed to collaborate with one another and spoke on a semi-regular basis only for things to go south when Ken kidnapped his Kardashian wife. As he drifted into the ether with his mother, Mr. West was accosted by his dark alter ego, Yeezus. It lambasted him about giving up everything he helped him build, taking the coward’s way out and going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Team Ara Ara fought valiantly against the massive Yeezus Beast and the dark ballerinas, saving the final soul trapped in Ken’s celebrity massacre.   Once the team exited the dungeon, they found the strange old man waiting for them, telling them that the truth lies within the darkness. Unbeknownst to them, the old man was actually Ol’ Dirty Bastard and, within the darkness, was the Wu-Tang Clan in full, including an army of Shaolin children. RZA stepped forward to inform them that they came to Masters Island after they heard how Ken used the Wu-Tang symbol in a horrifying act against the Japanese Prime Minister’s children. However, Ken had died by the time they managed to fly over, leaving them to use their Shaolin Style to contain the various evils beneath the dojo. RZA further states that he believes Allah summoned them to the island, not to confront Ken, but to stop a greater evil from emerging from the island and wreaking havoc on the world. After Team Ara Ara displayed more mercy than destruction, saving various souls in the process, RZA tells them that the chosen ones are finally being called upon to vanquish the darkness and put the tormented souls at rest they have battled against for so long. Leaving them with several sacred Wu Medallions, the Wu-Tang Clan departed back to New York and Team Ara Ara emerged from the underground as another band of heroes.   ================================================================   In the Hall of Dolls, Team Care Bear had to navigate a perilous, mirrored maze filled with hair-trigger tripwires that could tear flesh and bone. Within the mazes were women that Ken dated and wronged, some to the point of murder. Gwen, Sakuya, Claire, and Lucien used their acrobatic skills and long-range attacks to carefully make their way through the steel wire, guided by the haunting nursery rhymes sung by a young woman. In the first chamber, Team Care Bear was introduced to Nanaka, a Yakuza member who dated Ken. She was murdered, along with the rest of the Yakuza, when Ken’s demand to become supreme leader was denied. Team Care Bear faced off against the masked shadows, led by Nanaka, only to discover that the armed silhouettes were close friends and family of Nanaka. Afflicted by a bleeding curse that drained Team Care Bear with every second, the team tried both methods of killing several of the Yakuza shadows and removing their masks. While Sakuya and Gwen indulged in the former, sending the souls to hell, Claire was able to release several others with the latter method. Between the bullets and swordplay, only Nanaka and one of the Yakuza shadows remained, forcing them to retreat to the attic when the team discovered that she was sobbing on the bed she owned as a child. Beside her was the final Yakuza shadow and a woman revealed to be her deceased mother. With Nanaka on the edge, Team Care Bear banded together to release the final shadow, reuniting Nanaka with her deceased father and bringing their family together in death. Nanaka removed her mask and thanked them for their mercy, bringing the team to re-enter the maze with a strange curse.   Sakuya and Gwen found themselves looking at sentient reflections that wore bloody cuts and bruises. Though they didn’t move with their original bodies, they followed them with hardened glares. In the next dungeon, the team encountered Becky, an English teacher in Japan who had a short relationship with Ken only to end up being disrespected and abandoned after he no longer found her entertaining. After a night of drinking and unreturned calls, she hung herself, trapping her vengeful spirit in the bowels of the dojo. Becky’s classroom chamber contained deaf Delinquents who were enhanced with Ken’s ambient energy, turning the fight with Team Care Bear into an all out brawl. With the affliction of vertigo and Becky’s ear-piercing sonic screams that threatened to explode their skulls, Sakuya and Gwen again used lethal tactics to get through the horde of thugs while Claire opened the door to diplomacy. With all within the chamber muted through the affliction, the team took to writing their thoughts on the chalkboard, convincing Becky that she deserved better, just like her Delinquent students did. With every death of a Delinquent, their lives of slumming, handling domestic violence, and supporting their large family between school and meager work, showed that the victims were all being manipulated by the sins of a dead man. Convinced by the team, Becky and her students ended class and ascended into a peaceful afterlife.   Upon a second re-entry into the mirrored maze, Gwen and Sakuya’s reflections were even worse for wear. They bled and they mumbled under their breaths about how awful their original bodies were, stomping their way along from the other side of the mirror. While the team was worried, their reflections didn’t attack them but they did make them feel the damage they saw in the mirror with a potentially lethal affliction. In the third chamber, Team Care Bear came across Sengelese model, Adaeze, who had a public and somewhat successful relationship with Ken after he started to fund her modeling career. However, once she gave him the choice of marrying her or threatening to reveal his hidden crimes to the world, Ken slaughtered her entire family and left her to wallow in extreme depression. Locked in her hotel room hours before a show, Adaeze succumbed to extreme malnutrition and starvation. The team found themselves in an African Savannah with a gorgeous runway in the center, where Adaeze stood covered in a bodysuit made of blades. But it was the Shutter Demons, paparazzi malformed by Ken’s ambient energies, that swarmed them first. Every flash of the cameras that jutted from their gory bodies drained them of stamina while questions and accusations bombarded their train of thought. Sakuya and Claire once more engaged in more lethal strategies to try and destroy the Shutter Demons only to end up receiving a mental affliction of constant questions and slander they couldn’t silence.   Following the previous patterns Claire tried an alternate route, this time smashing the sediment that dirtied Adaeze’s bladed bodysuit, forcing her more and more to look at a reflection she hated. With every bit of progress, Adaeze fought back with impromptu buzzsaws, sentient blade strikes and swarms of knives. But, fortunately, Team Care Bear was able to show that she was worthy of forgiveness and that, unlike the world above and below, they didn’t want to take anything from her. After receiving the first bit of nourishment she tasted in years, Adaeze finally understood what it meant to be loved as a person instead of an object. The Shutter Demons sank into the wild Savannah while Adaeze freed herself of the painful blades, ascending toward her family in the horizon.   With another entry into the mirrored maze came another haunting nursery rhyme and the horrid feeling that Sakuya and Gwen weren’t going to make it to the end. Their reflections were seriously injured and crawling along the floor with them in agony, forcing them to use items from previous chambers just to stay conscious. Unfortunately for them, the fourth chamber was a trap set by Sinister and the cult, revealing the corrupted Eliza Masters aka Oejelle Wahm. Inside a fleshy tomb, she dangled on marionette strings connected to a large baby that was a result of she and Sinister’s sexual escapades. Against a Nether Beast that completely disregarded the trauma of Ken’s rape and her stillbirth with Mel, Team Care Bear faced a grueling challenge. The atmosphere continually grew thick with Nether, not only edging them into corruption but threatening necrosis while Oejelle blitzed them with her nigh-unbreakable claws. With a physicality that mirrored that of Ken’s, Sakuya and Gwen attacked at different angles. Sakuya impaled two of the three eyes of the mutant baby that lumbered behind Oejelle while Gwen started to sever her strings. Claire, on the other hand, was caught between helping Oejelle and defeating her for the sake of Elysium. Oejelle started to produce deadly duplicates that pushed the team to the brink while Sakuya managed to convince Claire to help them survive the dungeon. In a final push against Oejelle’s relentless brutality, the team managed to fell her clones and sever her umbilical strings, destroying the baby and forcing her to retreat from the dungeon entirely.   Exhausted and damaged, the team pushed on to the final chamber of the dungeon where a toybox and several scattered toys welcomed them within a child’s bedroom. The freed spirits of Nanaka, Becky, and Adaeze opened the toybox to reveal Yakiu Hajufime, the lost daughter of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. After living a desolate life with her depressed, drunken mother, she pushed herself not only to succeed but, one day, confront her father. Unfortunately, that meeting brought her across her mangled siblings and Savage Ken, where she suffered a brutal fate. The floor beneath Sakuya and Gwen became a reflection not only of themselves but of their mangled sins that tried to drag them into the mirror world. Yakiu informed them that, if they were unable to break away from the sins they showed during the dungeon, they would be devoured by them and become the new “Dolls” of the maze, trapped under the dojo forever. Initially, they sank without a sense of hope, raging against their fate. But it wasn’t until all three started to encourage one another and recount all the good they did in their lives, despite their evil misfortunes, that the mirrored sins started to release them. Claire explained that Yakiu was holding onto her own sins and that, by trying to trap them down here, she was just as evil. She retorted saying that, if they couldn’t expunge the darkness they held, they could become just as destructive as Ken on the surface. In the end, though, the team managed to unite in their self-reflection and understood that they had the hope that those who belonged to evil didn’t. Through their hope and renewed optimism, Yakiu finally understood that they deserved the chance to set things right and released them.   With all spirits released from their sinful tombs, Yakiu thanked them for finally rescuing the women that had been tortured by Ken’s actions for so long and wished them luck as they were released through one final mirror to the surface.   ================================================================   In the Hall of Enterprise, Team Glacier Guts, composed of Akiyo, Emeric, Snowy, Risfel, were introduced to what remained of Nakajima Robotics, one of the most powerful robotics companies in the world. They were quickly introduced to mechanical savages called Gears and, the object of their torturous obsession, Kikio Mayumi AKA Helpa. Once the team learned that Helpa had a chain bomb lodged deep inside her womb, the team tried to appeal to Helpa’s sense of order, a twisted coping mechanism to distract from the overwhelming pain. After convincing Helpa that they were there to help, the violent Gears were soon lured by the team’s technology, hoping to use them as their newest experiments. Risfel and Akiyo fended off the unsightly creatures, battling back against chainsaw arms, mortar shells, and gun-toting salarymen while Emeric and Snowy performed a dangerous surgery to remove the chain bomb from Helpa’s body. Through explosive shells and a hail of gunfire, the team was able to extract the bomb and defeat the office full of mechanical mutants.   It was in this victory that they came to know that someone was watching them through surveillance cameras, even opening the next door for them to progress through the dungeon. Their next encounter was with the Project Mangler, former project manager Muda Takahashi. Controlling a small army of robotic arms, both merged into his back and scurrying around the room, he launched an assault to rip Team Glacier Guts to pieces while crawling around, blaming them for the failure of the project. Initially, Project Mangler tore into Emeric, placed Risfel on the defensive, and struggled to take out Akiyo. However, with the help of stimulants and a bit of teamwork, Risfel and Emeric managed to grind Project Mangler’s tricky defenses down while Akiyo took advantage of his obsession with technology, using a special grenade to lure him in before an explosive finish.   In the next area, the team came across HR, the Hydraulic Ravager, Sora Domen. With hydraulic limbs and a customized V8 engine grafted into his chest, HR was one of the team’s toughest challenges yet. Risfel and Emeric fought to slice into cables and rip through his massive engine while Akiyo, once again, managed to utilize her explosives expertise to stop the accelerating madness of the Hydraulic Ravager. Although effective, the residual energy of Ken allowed HR to turn his dying body into an explosion Akiyo wasn’t ready to take, knocking the team off their feet and even blowing Akiyo’s arm into a red mess. Nonetheless, Team Glacier Guts pushed forward with another hard-fought victory and entered the final area, an ornate office in which the man on the tapes, Ryoga Watanabe. He congratulates them for clearing out the dungeon, something he wasn’t able to do and speaks ill of the company as he did in the tapes. When the team tells him that Ken has long since been dead, he rejoices and talks about wanting to see his family when they all get out. However, when he then learns of the Far East Destruction event, Ryoga loses faith that his family could have ever survived and sees it as Ken, once again, destroying any semblance of hope in his life. Blaming the heroes for letting Ken have free reign, Ryoga activates the prototype Shattered Gundam Suit, a black and red proto armor exoskeleton that magnetically grafts onto Ryoga’s body.   He clashed with Emeric through his cutting-edge plasma sword while he kept Risfel occupied with volleys of experimental rockets, leaving Akiyo to crack the large safe in the back of the room, a safe where faint breathing could be heard. When the safe was cracked with the keycard codes they gathered along the way, it was revealed that the CEO of Nakajima Robotics, Yugo Kimura, was still alive as “President Smolder”. Severely charred to the skeleton from magma leaking into the safe from the underground, Yugo managed to live through the nanomachines that were implanted into his bone marrow. When confronted, Ryoga reveals the final, hidden tape that sheds light on Nakajima Robotics’ shady business dealings. The team hears that not only has Yugo dealt with criminal contracts for decades but that he is primarily responsible for funding and helping create a technovirus for Psycho Cyber called Revival. When Ryoga and the team turn on Yugo, he incites an underground volcanic eruption, leaving them with few options to fight the skeletal cyborg. Ryoga, deciding that he would rather die with honor and rejoin his family, sacrifices himself to stop Yugo and give the team time to flee the dungeon.   With waves of magma eventually filling the large hallway leading to the chamber’s exit, Snowy utilizes her cryogenic power to momentarily place all of the rushing magma into a deep freeze. Risfel and Emeric break through the steel shutters leading to an emergency exit in the lagoon. In the nick of time, Snowy, Akiyo, Risfel, and Emeric escape the dungeon and the clutches of one of the most corrupt businesses in the world.   ================================================================   In the Hall of Serpents, a team composed of William Reynolds, Trevor Jacobs, Splats the Werewolf, Ban Bell-Free Gore, and Asaka Shiharuyi encountered a dark web serpent cult, called the Hiss, that worshiped the ancient creature Yamata no Orochi. Their journey began with a recording that outlined how the cult ended up in the dojo’s underground. The cult leader, Fujuki Buzushima, formally known by his followers as Lord Buzushima, took great offense to the news of Ken Masters eradicating their snake god and sending Gaia away. He believed he made a mockery of their traditions and their deities. This led to him gathering his cultists together with military weaponry in an attempt to assassinate Ken in his own home. Through the tapes, the team learns that the snake cult snuck into the dojo and tried to kill him while he was having a bad bout of diarrhea. Unfortunately, their conventional weaponry fell flat against his supernatural abilities. In the first chamber, the team ran across the Joyous Fangs, what remained of low level cult members of the Hiss. Their bodies were modified with serpent fangs, split tongues, and altered jaw structures to swallow huge chunks of their prey. However, most were killed and those who remained were bound once the team discovered they were more so victims than adherent cultists.   The second chamber introduced the team to Amir Sayid, also known as Wicked Charm. Manipulating an army of serpents, both inside and outside his body, Amir launched an assault of venomous vipers in an attempt to drown the team in the massive pit that hissed in anticipation for their deaths. The struggle eventually led to Amir merging with his serpent army in order to devour the dungeon team himself in the form of a serpent kaiju. However, with William’s gluttonous shield cutting through the number of snakes and the team’s combined effort to extinguish the torches that fed Amir and his snake's warmth, they were able to cut through his dark devotion and push on to the next chamber.   Before the team could push on to meet Lord Buzushima, they encountered the Room of Demon Scales. In this chamber, the walls were made of rotating serpent flesh that could slice through bone, a floor that pulled the team down like quicksand, and a massive snake eye that watched them from above. Once the team figured out that the eviscerating, spinning wall had a small opening and that the serpent eye’s blinking was the mechanism for it, they worked quickly in tandem. Ban’s indestructible chain kinked the wall while the team worked together to destroy the serpent eye and, finally, move to the final chamber.   Throughout the dungeon, they suffered through the intoxicating effects that gradually weakened them while noticing that the walls of the dungeon themselves were absorbing the blood of fallen enemies. Once they met Lord Buzushima, they discovered that the blood was a sacrifice to him and the “spirits” he merged with to gain immense power. Now a snake “god”, Lord Buzushima spoke of the team as if they were his next sacrifices, blitzing them with his immense speed and strength, slithering through the darkness of the cavern and trying to assassinate them like a hunter in the brush. Unfortunately for Buzushima, he was overwhelmed by the sheer strength and teamwork of William’s squad. This angered the spirit of Yamata no Orochi, who drained the life out of Buzushima to trigger as the final sacrifice for his awakening. This final sacrifice was also used to break the seal of Alicorn Rose Blossom, releasing not only Yamata no Orochi into a massive snake body but also unleashing the Spirit of Gaia.   Under threat of a collapsing dungeon, and trapped between a sealed entrance and demolished exit, the team ran through each tunnel in the hopes of escaping the vengeful jaws of a serpent god. During the chase, they discovered that the intoxicating fog was actually a strong rice wine alcohol, the same thing that was spilling from damaged dungeon walls. With Ban educating the team on the ancient legend, they force feed Orochi alcohol soaked mud and relentlessly assault the wound on his neck that the broken seal revealed, yet another weakness from legend. With mere seconds before they were crushed between a snake and a hard place, they decapitated Orochi and escaped with their lives, leaving seven more instances of Orochi to wander Elysium, searching for revenge.   ================================================================   In the Hall of Justice, an All-Star team of Wiliam, Risfel, Gwen, Ahri, and June faced off against a series of trap rooms. Through tape recordings, the All-Stars discovered that this particular dungeon was created by a secret US task force called the Silent Bells, who infiltrated the dojo’s underground during Operation Dragon’s Den. Initially sent to gather information and take down Ken from the inside, their mission was short-lived when Ken was killed by Sinister. This also led to the Silent Bells and their captain, Peter Hallis, being burned by the US Government. Strongly suspected to be the work of eccentric FBI Agent Kristopher Lennon, Commander Hallis tries to escape the dojo underground with his team only to have all but one massacred by the Beautiful Darkness. The team works together to make it through a room filled with tripwire bombs, a room that doubles as a compactor, a pit of creature-filled water from the Tethys Lagoon, a chamber of white-hot lasers, and a multiple choice room that tests their trust, before hearing the end of the recordings. Although it ends with Captain Hallis speaking to his wife about dying in the dungeon and delivering a mercy killing to one of his soldiers, the final chamber shows a captain revitalized by Ken’s residual energy. Now a hulking mass that can resurrect his men as battle-starved warriors, the All-Star Team has an all-out war against the undead Silent Bells unit. From sniper fire to railgun dueling to magical explosives, both sides gave it everything they had. However, it was the All-Star team’s power and coordination that allowed them to send the soldiers back to their graves and force Captain Hallis to literally self-destruct in an attempt to take them down with him. Luckily, the All-Star team made it out on the tails of a rushing plume of smoke and fire.   ================================================================   With all of the chambers cleared by their respective teams, all that remained was The Arrogant Dragon and the one being who so vehemently protected him: Beautiful Darkness. Sakuya, Snowy, and Edsel volunteered to take on the mystery of Beautiful Darkness and were transported to a massive Japanese garden after entering the dojo underground. It was there that the Beautiful Darkness was revealed to be none other than Sakura Kasugano, the schoolgirl warrior who Ken had killed years prior and buried behind the dojo. However, this incarnation donned the Mark of Theta and was adamant that she could still save Ken, vowing to destroy anyone who tried to kill him. This led to initial conflict between her and the group, trading blows with Snowy and Sakuya with Nether-infused techniques. Edsel attempted to talk her down but his words were rended empty after their confession about her death being inevitable. This led to Edsel trying to cleanse Sakura’s spirit following a flurry of fireballs aimed at destroying the team. But peering into Sakura’s mind only exposed Edsel to glimpses of The Wilderness where entire civilizations were imprisoned within a landscape of abstract flesh.   Sinister spoke through Sakura to tell him that there was no one to purge and that, when one is bonded to him in The Wilderness, they are no longer an individual --- they are a fragment of a growing whole. With this, he also hinted that the feats he has shown previously in the archipelago scratch the surface of what he is truly capable of. With Sakura falling to the ground in tears, Snowy tried to comfort her while Sinister sheared into Edsel’s mind with the psychic torture of The Wilderness. Fortunately, Edsel was able to push through the pain and finish the cleansing. Unfortunately, this only destroyed the entirety of Sakura’s body, leading more credence to the fact that there was no individual person left to save. With the shadow no longer looming over them, and a team distraught from a hollow victory, the final team moved in to face the Arrogant Dragon.   Mayor Kat, Ivory, Akiyo, Claire the cultist, Connor, and Auggy made their way along an underground bridge and over a cavernous lake in their final quest. As they pushed through each of the five doors that led to the final chamber, they were afflicted by memories of Ken’s past from when he was a child in Japan to the horrific day when his plan to rescue Ryu from interdimensional invaders led to his reckoning and even to the day where Sinister killed Eliza. Through these memories, the team discovered that the child that Eliza believed to have lost, Mel, had been pulled from the Earth by Sinister and absorbed into The Wilderness. When the team entered the final chamber, they were shocked to find out that it was Mel Masters who awaited them in the form of Ken’s doppelganger. Tortured by the psychic traumas of The Wilderness for years and stitched together with remnants of his father, who was also imprisoned in The Wilderness, he quickly engaged the squad with techniques reminiscent of the infamous martial artist. Ivory’s attempts to shoot him were quickly rebutted and, while Connor, Kat, and Akiyo tried to take Mel on all at once, Auggy and Claire stopped Ivory from using his emergency stash of Stars to murder Mel outright. Ivory reasoned that none of those who have the Masters blood should live, that this was the only chance they all had to wipe them off the face of the Earth so that the Far East Destruction never happens again. But Auggy and Claire countered with the humanity that Kat gained and that the others can also gain, informing him of Sinister’s manipulation having an integral part of the destruction that took place. Unconvinced, Ivory was knocked out just moments before he could take the capsules.   After several skirmishes between team members, Connor decided to sink his teeth into Mel’s spirit and body only to suffer a crippling backlash. With blood that forced him into a psychotic berserker state and Sinister encouraging him through the Nether that flooded Mel’s shackled spirit, Connor ripped Mel’s leg apart and nearly chewed through his body. With a combination of the team lobbing shots at the furious werewolf, and Mel’s own superhuman headbutt, Connor returned to his senses. Heavily injured and outnumbered, the team surrounded Mel with pleas for him to be released from Sinister’s hold. Even with Sinister’s manipulative pressure weighing on Mel, the son of Ken started to break his control. Mirroring how his father used their family’s willpower to break the restraints of others, the entire team lended their energy to help Mel push through. Although, Ivory’s revival became an issue. He snorted his emergency Stars and pulled the old, blood-crusted kitchen knife, the same knife that ended his mother’s life, from his sheath. He lamented over his past, how Ken’s blood was the reason he was hated and abused by his mother, why he had to do horrific acts into his adulthood just to survive, and why he held onto his hatred for so long --- just to drive it into the heart of the one responsible for the life he never asked for.   In the Thetaspace, Sinister becomes furious with Mel’s ability to resist his control only to discover that Ken’s will had influenced Mel’s ability to resist. At his side, Eliza mentions that Ken has always been meddling with Sinister’s plots in minute ways, from edging his Schemata to the surface to revealing the Arrogant Dragon’s identity through his own memories so that they would save his son rather than murder him thinking he was Ken. Sinister mentions that even after years of subjecting Ken’s psyche to immense torture and lambasting his senses with otherworldly horrors, buried beneath decades of fleshbound horrors, he still has such immense willpower and influence.   But with Ivory’s presence, and the team’s assistance, came Ken himself. Through the body of Mel, Ken talked down Ivory’s vengeful rant as him being “soft”. Ken tells Ivory that killing him, or his siblings, would never solve any of his problems and that the past has already formed him, despite his hatred of how it happened. Refusing to apologize, Ken goes on to insult Ivory’s appearance, sense of fashion, and ridicule his short stints as an escort. He then tells him to bring respect back to the Masters name and to never let anyone wield such control over his future, not him and not Sinister. With Mel’s body breaking down into necrotic dust from the destruction of the Theta Mark, Ken gives his last goodbyes to the team from sexually explicit offers to Akiyo and Claire, to thanking Auggy for his Jesus Juice cleansing, to lamenting the fact he didn’t have Connor as a guard dog in the dojo days. He then tells Kat to watch over her brother, Ivory, using his last breaths to tell them to tell Sinister he will forever be a “ho-ass bitch”. Before Mel faded away completely, he thanked the team for helping him and that he and Ken would continue fighting against Sinister in The Wilderness. With Sinister’s plan to weaponize the Masters Family a failure, the bloodline of the world’s most dangerous martial artist may finally be the villain’s undoing. But with Ken’s chapter ending, a new plot for Sinister waits for the Elysians on the horizon.