Level 1 Fallen

As soon as I felt the spear piercing the dragon's heart, I shouted again. "Now!"

With that, Diane leapt from the dragon's body as it began to go slack, becoming visible in midair once her Ghost-X expired. At the same time, I collected the dragon's body into my inventory. I debated between simply looting it, but the boss monster's corpse was too valuable. More importantly, we still had the final chest at the end to collect, which typically has the same loot list as the boss.

However, we weren't quite done yet. There were still almost a dozen dragons surviving, though they were clearly injured now. Furthermore, they were demoralized from the death of their boss, and a few seemed to be on the verge of retreat. I couldn't let my precious materials retreat like that, though!

Creating another platform beneath my feet, I began rushing towards the dragons, making giant projected fists to punch in the spears sticking out of their bodies. As before, whenever a dragon died, the extra spears automatically launched out to attack other targets, increasing the effectiveness of the attack the more of the original targets died.

Thanks to this, it only took another three minutes to clear up the rest of the dragons, collecting each one as they started to fall before making my way back to the platform with Diane. Unsurprisingly, she had gone straight for the boss chest, though seemed to be looking at it in confusion.

"Is everything alright?" I asked, walking over. She actually received quite a bit of loot from the chest. There were four dragon bones, a fang, and two different skill books. One was identical to the Mana Breathing books we had gotten before. "Was there another important skill in this dungeon?"

"Not that I knew of before…" She shook her head, holding the unfamiliar book up for me. "Can you appraise it?"

I gave a small nod, activating my appraisal skill. Thankfully, after killing so many dragons, I would have plenty of experience to use on appraisal for the foreseeable future. "It's for a skill called Dragon Form. The appraisal says that it's a Martial skill to allow the user to manifest draconic traits."

Diane's eyes widened, and she nodded her head as I went to open the chest myself. Like Diane, I had seven items waiting for me, though the distribution was a bit different. Aside from a dragonscale chestpiece that matched one I acquired in the third region's chest, there was a bone, and five skill books. Four of these books were for Mana Breathing, bringing our total from this haul to a staggering seven, not counting the one Diane already used. The final book was a second Dragon Form skill book.

Since we had a spare, I naturally decided to learn one of the skills myself, while looking at Diane holding the other. "What are you going to do with it? If you want to learn the skill, I can teach it to you via a quest. That book is worth three gold, if you want to sell it, though."

Diane seemed surprised at the value of the book, looking down at it. "I'll see if there's anyone willing to offer a better price, along with the other skill books we got. Though, I don't suppose we still have enough time to wait for the dragon to respawn…?" She asked in a hopeful tone, to which I shook my head.

"It took us too long to get through the final region. By the time it spawns again, our timeslot would probably already be up." I informed her. "We'll need to head back now. We've got some other matters to attend to, first."

Diane's eyes widened briefly, and she nodded, pulling the bike out of her inventory and letting me mount it first. "Don't just throw the bike to me next time, though." She huffed, looking to the side. "Nearly scared me out of my skin."

I chuckled, revving the bike up and rushing back through the dungeon, towards the entrance. Outside, the guard nodded politely to us. "Given the time, I assume you're done for now?" He asked, and I gave a nod in response.

"We are, but I'd suggest having an official team enter the dungeon to clean some things up before the next team goes in." I said, eyes narrowed.

The guard hesitated, looking towards the dungeon entrance. "If you're referring to corpse dismantling, that's not one of our offered services."

"No." I shook my head. "The bridge on the other side was cut when we got in, and the floor was littered with items enchanted with a taunt effect. We had to deal with every monster from the first three regions right on the first platform." To show how we made it, I caused the bike beneath me to lift up on a projected platform.

This time, the guard's eyes widened in shock, and understandably so. This was tantamount to completely sabotaging the dungeon. Although the bridge could gradually restore itself, that would require a long period of inactivity in the dungeon, during which time multiple monsters might break out. "I'll have a team investigate right away." He said in an urgent tone.

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"There is still some time." I spoke calmly, gesturing for him to slow down. "We cleared to the fifth region, so monsters won't be spawning in the first ones for a little while. I just wanted to report about it before someone walked in and fell to their death."

The guard quickly accepted my claim of clearing the dungeon, since we had already shown the ability to fly. Although clearing this dungeon seemed incredibly rare, we had displayed the most necessary skill to do so. Still, the guard quickly ran off, no doubt intending to notify the city's Dungeon Management Office about the dungeon sabotage.

"What now?" Diane asked, still sitting sidesaddle on the bike behind me.

"We'll stick around town for a little bit. They'll probably have questions for us during the investigation. And, it'll give you some time to find some buyers." I said, dismounting the bike with her and storing it in my inventory. "For now, let's see what our haul was."

In the distance, I could make out the elven man from Grog's party watching us, an annoyed expression on his face. I glanced away, not paying any mind to their presence. It was obvious that they had arranged for the sabotage, though I wasn't sure what price they had to pay for it. That hardly mattered to us at this point.

Instead, I focused on the forty-five corpses in my inventory. Aside from the Lesser Red Dragons, I made sure to collect one of every type of monster from the dungeon, and now it was time to dismantle them. Slowly, methodically, I went through and fully dismantled every component from each monster, starting with the other mobs I picked up in the dungeon.

Out of the four non-boss monster corpses I collected, two showed no signs of being enhanced at all, and could only be sold at their normal value. The other two, while their value was increased, maintained their normal status. It wasn't the same as the Sand Viper that turned into a Boulder Cobra after dismantling.

Next were the forty Lesser Red Dragons, which I had the highest hope for. Not only were they more likely to evolve through sheer numbers, but even their base price was a full platinum when fully dismantled.

I didn't bother counting them one by one as I worked, my hands simply trembling whenever I saw the enhancement. It wasn't until the end when I finally tallied the results. Of the forty Lesser Red Dragons, twelve maintained their normal forms. Ten of them were enhanced, giving an increase in value of about twenty-five gold. Finally, the remaining eighteen… all turned into normal Red Dragon corpses, with each corpse having a base value of around five platinum.

As for the final boss, its body had a normal enhancement, increasing the total value to around six platinum. I couldn't help myself but wonder what would have happened if I managed to evolve the corpse of the boss monster. Would it turn into an even more powerful dragon worth tens of platinum?

I quickly ran through some calculations, adding up the value of my inventory. If I were to sell all of the monster parts acquired in this dungeon, I would earn over seventy platinum. And that's just using the normal stores. Players might pay even more for rare dragon materials.

Seeing the expression on my face, Diane reached out, and lightly tugged on my hand. Is everything okay? She asked through private chat, quickly typing the message out.

I nodded my head, sending her the details. At the same time, I sent her the complete materials of an enhanced Lesser Red Dragon, and a normal Red Dragon. These should be plenty for your experiments, right? I responded, and this time it was Diane's turn to be shocked. How much do you think that you could see the rest of the materials for?

It took a moment for Diane to recover, quickly doing some mental calculations. I don't know… dragon materials are even more popular among players than their normal quality would suggest. I don't think I'll be able to convert it into this game's currency. But, if I sold it for player's currency… it would probably be enough to buy two or three more bikes, at least. Maybe more if a rich craftsman player buys it.

I nodded my head, transferring the rest of the dismantled materials to Diane, who looked at me in surprise. Go ahead. Whether you get it in my currency or yours, this is what I got that skill for. We're not desperate for money right now, anyways. We got a few Dragon Scales as loot in the dungeon, so I could almost get us a platinum with just those.

Diane hesitated, before giving a firm nod of her head. Sure. I'll set up the transactions as soon as we get back to the inn. But, just so you know, I won't sell the skill books or anything else to that party, no matter how much they offer.

I let out a soft chuckle, reaching over to pat her on the head. I'm sure. Let's get back, anyways. It's way past your bedtime, little girl.

Diane pulled her face mask down, sticking her tongue out playfully before turning to lead the way. I could easily tell that she was in a good mood after our dungeon run. And why wouldn't she be? Some parties have to farm the miniboss of this dungeon repeatedly to try to get the Mana Breathing skill, but we got eight of those books in one run.

Of course, this luck couldn't be repeated. If we were to go back to the dungeon, the only chests that we would be able to open would be the boss chests. And for most parties, they could only fight the first boss before turning back. That meant that, for us at least, this dungeon had lost all value, aside from simply farming corpses.

Admittedly, those corpses had a lot of value. I had actually felt nervous keeping so many valuable draconic materials on my person at once. And now, all of those materials were filling Diane's inventory, waiting to be sold to other players.

Shaking my head, I followed Diane back to my inn room, wanting to turn in for the night. I was certain that the local authorities would have a lot of questions for me once they finished their own investigation.