Chapter 172 First Trial [3]
A beacon of light was going into the sky.
The white pillar was bright enough that you could see it in broad daylight from anywhere on this floor.
"Is that Henry?"
The security guards told us there would be no one other than us on the first 10 floors. We should be careful and not expect any reinforcements.
The pillar must be why Henry was so confident we could find him from anywhere on the floor.
Modern technology doesn"t work inside dungeons and Ruins. Only magic technology works and even that may stop at any time. Due to this, explorers have to use work around issues that arise in dungeons, like preparing signals to meet up before going into dungeons.
"He must have gotten the floor clear notification, too. I"ll wait here for him. Besides...."
Crash-
A tree broke down, and an alligator appeared.
Though this one had a single head and was a lot smaller.
"...I"m still attracting monsters."
Phzzzt-
*
"F...hufff...ucking hufff...h.e.l.l"
I laid on the ground spread out like a sack of potatoes.
"Are you alright?"
"D...huff..o I hufff...look alrig...hufff..ght?"
It took Henry 2 hours to reach my location. During that time, I engaged in a bitter struggle against monsters.
Monsters are generally stronger than beasts. Also, although all of them were Lvl.1 so was I. By the time Henry came I was fighting monsters in close combat to save ether and stamina.
"I need ether potions"
"We should rest for an hour then."
Henry sat beside me and entered meditation to refill his aura core faster.
One hour later, both of us were standing in front of the stairway leading to Floor 2.
"Let"s move."
We descended.
Inside the stairway, we couldn"t see anything except a few steps ahead of us. The stairs behind us kept vanishing as we moved ahead.
"Did you take down the boss yourself?"
"Yeah, I was transported to the boss" lair while it was sleeping. Although I could"ve ran, I decided to use the opportunity and killed it in one attack."
"The boss was sleeping?... I need that luck."
Henry"s voice sounded shocked.
"I think so too."
I bitterly nodded.
Floor 1 entrance is not set like other floors. Thus, one can be teleported to any place depending on one their luck.
Like certain someone who met the boss under 1 minute after entering the Floor.
Dare I say, today I made the record of encountering the boss fastest.
[You have reached Floor 2]
[Restrictions will be lifted]
[You have reached Lvl.2]
[You have 5Sp/Lvl Talent. Extra stats have been given]
Thick damp air hit us and we found ourselves inside a swamp forest.
"So we"re finally here."
Floors 1 to 5 were Swamp forest setting inhabited by monsters with abilities similar to swamp creatures.
We wouldn"t get any noticeable amount of exp till we reached Floor 11, however, the drops were a different matter.
Unlike beasts that are born in nature, monsters are made by System. They are like monsters inside games where you gain exp from killing them and there is a certain chance that they might drop skills, artifacts, or other precious commodities upon death.
The stronger the monsters, the higher the chance of drops. However, when a monster drops something, the corpse disintegrates into blue light and vanishes.
"The more I see the stranger it becomes. Please don"t tell me the System creator was a gamer? No, in my case, wouldn"t it be the author who was too lazy to think of something unique?"
The one difference about monsters inside Dungeon of Trials was, their corpse will vanish regardless of whether you gain something from them. Nonetheless, the drop rate inside the Dungeon of Trials is much higher than in other dungeons.
"We should make a straight beeline to the boss."
Henry nodded at my suggestion.
Both of us moved ahead according to the map.
Dungeon of Trials has already been mapped up to Floor 60, from there it is an unknown territory.
Schwing-
Swosh-
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Horned mash rabbit. You have gained 30 exp.]
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Earth Fish. You have gained 30 exp.]
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Black water snakel. You have gained 30 exp.]
We moved in a straight path to the boss" room.
Henry was the one killing most of the monsters while I killed only the ones who got past his defense.
"I"m sorry I can"t help much."
"You"re doing plenty by killing those fishes. If not for you, I would have a hard time closing into their location."
Fwosh- Fwosh-
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Earth Fish. You have gained 30 exp.]
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Earth Fish. You have gained 30 exp.]
Two swords pierced through the fish"s skulls.
These fishes were 1 meter long and 1.5 meters tall. They had two human legs growing on their body and shot water b.a.l.l.s through their mouths.
Henry was having a hard time dealing with them, as he was a close-range fighter. But with my "stigma," I was able to reduce his burden somewhat.
"There are too many monsters."
Or you could say, our monster encounter rate was too high.
We were engaging against monsters every 10-15 minutes.f????e??o??Ɩ.c??
"Should I reduce my support further?"
These monsters were coming here after sensing ether. Normally it would"ve been a good thing, but we couldn"t level up here and we were tight on time.
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Horned mash rabbit. You have gained 30 exp.]
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Nutcracker Nutria. You have gained 30 exp.]
The monsters were increasing.
I materialized a sword and decided to engage in close combat while continuing long-range support. However, Henry stopped me.
"No, don"t do that."
"Let me help. You won"t be able to fight for longer and tire yourself before long."
"It won"t come to that. I am a stamina-const.i.tution-focused fighter. It will take a while before I begin to tire myself out."
Sigh
And I was being nice too.
Agreeing with him I solely focused on support.
This was only Floor 2. The size of floors increases with the floor number and so do the monsters in it.
Our troubles were just beginning.
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.2 Diving Spider. You have gained 30 exp.]
Before long, we reached the area of Floor 2 boss.
Both of us were tired, however, it wasn"t anything bad. We were able to fight our way through without gaining injuries and were not behind the schedule by much.
We decided to move to Floor 3 before resting.
Although we were tired, we also had to hurry to Katrina. As an alchemist, her combat ability depended on potions and artifacts.
Besides, we were attracting monsters even at this moment. Reaching Floor 3 will give us more stat points and we could use them to refill our stamina.
Krieeee-
A 4-meter stork appeared in our vision.
It was a large bird with its wings wide open. Its body was covered in yellow feathers.
Its beak was sharp, and it had two black beads in place of eyes.
However, the most terrifying part about the monster was its talons.
They were each as big as your hand and filled with poison.
Krieee-
The bird dived at us.
Henry immediately broke into a dash to parry the bird"s attack.
Clang-!
He narrowly manages to change the bird"s direction, and it crashed into the swamp water.
Splash-
The bird came out of the water with a shrill cry. It was looking at Henry with a threatening gaze.
"Give me those eyes, stretched beak."
Puchi-! Puchi-!
Two daggers suddenly stabbed into the bird"s eyes.
For the past two days, I have been carrying daggers in my hand. I had now 4 dagger constellations.
"That was a horrible joke!"
Henry bolted to the bird.
The bird tried to fly into the sky to avoid us, however, he skillfully killed it before that.
[Congratulations, you have killed Lv.6 Talont Stork. You have gained 200 exp.]
[The Floor 2 boss has been defeated]
[Pa.s.sageway to Floor 3 will be opened for 6 hours]
With both of us fighting together for over 16 hours, we were able to have decent coordination. We were able to defeat the Floor 2 boss relatively easily.
We rested for an hour before moving.
Normal monsters couldn"t enter the boss zone. We didn"t need to worry about constantly watching our backs in there.
"Haaah... we didn"t get even one drop. I thought you were supposed to be lucky."
"Haha, me too"
We grew comfortable with each other after a day of struggling together.
I knew Henry was only trying to monitor me, but since he wasn"t going to betray me; I had no problem opening up to him.
[You have reached Floor 3]
[Restrictions will be lifted]
[You have reached Lvl.3]
[You have 5Sp/Lvl Talent. Extra stats have been given]
"Fuuu... I hope the situation won"t repeat itself or we might get into trouble."
I agreed with Henry.
If our monster encounter rate doesn"t decrease, falling behind schedule would be the last of our troubles.
What"s worse was we weren"t getting any drops nor was the exp lucrative enough to make us go on a killing spree.
"Don"t worry, I"m lucky"