NOVEL NEXT Chapter 21 – A quick stop
Everyone in my party had finally reached level 100 and received our ascension quests, once we had completed the quest we would move on to the next tier of our jobs letting our power grow again even faster than before. The quest objectives were all far away from where we had been adventuring so we would have to travel for a month to get there. It was pretty common for us to travel long distances for quests but this was even further than normal.
By this point we had been travelling for a couple of weeks and I was bored out of my mind when we came across a dungeon. ‘Finally, something to do.’ I said, once we had entered the forest about a week ago we stopped seeing any monsters above level 60 so our innate mana scared all the monsters away, leaving me with nothing to fight. I was in the back of the carriage and couldn’t see out so I asked ‘Hey, Ed how many floors does it have?’
‘We know Arthur, you have been complaining about having nothing to fight constantly since the moment we got into this forest.’ Ed, our leader, replied. It was true that I had been complaining but I didn’t see why it was necessary for me to censor myself so I just said what was on my mind, if they got upset about it then that was their fault. ‘Unfortunately I don’t think this is going to help with your boredom, it is only three floors deep.’
‘Ugh, only 3?’ Alexa, our archer, said. She was clearly annoyed, as she tended to be, ‘It won’t even be a good exercise, we might as well keep on going. Don’t give me false hope unless you know it is at least ten floors deep.’ She wasn’t exactly wrong; someone half our level could have probably soloed this dungeon if given enough time. Even knowing this I didn’t really care as I was so bored that I would turn feral if I didn’t get to fight something soon.
‘Ugh, I was hoping it would be at least six floors deep.’ I said, sharing in Alexa’s annoyance at how weak this stupid dungeon was, before jumping out the back of the carriage and walking towards the dungeon, ‘Oh well, I really wasn’t joking when I said that I was bored out of my mind’ I walked a bit further before turning around and shouting ‘I will just go in and out real quick, it’ll just be a quick stop to rest the horses then we can get back on the road.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Alexa shouted at the back of my head, not that I was paying attention at this point. ‘This is a complete waste of our time.’ I knew this was true but I didn’t care at all, I just kept on walking towards the portal, it must be pretty new as it didn’t even have a line of adventurers waiting to start their dive. Not that it would have mattered to me as I would have just ignored them and gone straight in anyway.
Something that I could do because when you go from a bunch of nobodies to level 100 elite adventurers in just two years, half the time it usually takes other adventurers and a quarter of the time it takes non-combat classes, you were talked about quite frequently, even becoming celebrities. And why shouldn’t they talk about us? We were amazing, we had saved countless villages and towns from hordes of monsters without any other parties helping. Not to mention one time we even took out a rampaging dragon.
Sure some people said that we were lucky, that we were just in the right place at the right time and any other party at our level could have done the same if they were around. This was a stupid way of thinking though as these hypothetical parties weren’t around, we were, which made us the heroes. Anyone who thought differently was delusional, even if it was luck that we were in those situations, which it wasn’t, we would have never gotten past them if we weren’t strong enough.
My train of thought was interrupted when I finally reached the portal into the dungeon, inspecting it before I entered as it could tell you a lot about the dungeon if you knew what to look for. It was the standard size for a portal but instead of just having one section it had three which pleasantly surprised me. These types of dungeons tended to be more difficult as the variety made it harder to just counter everything you came across, not that that meant much to me.
Each section wasn’t particularly hard to figure out if you had as much experience as I did. The first one had a dark brown colouration to it, reminiscent of bark, with light green leaves growing out of it, this indicated that it would be some sort of temperate forest. These sorts of dungeons could have a wide variety of monsters that made it hard to guess what was in them but they tended to be quite weak, especially on the first floor, so it didn’t matter what monsters it used.
The second section made me smile a bit, this was a dark red, almost black and cracked with lava flowing through it. This was definitely a fire level of some kind and, since it had lava running through it, it would almost definitely have lava as part of the theme. Fire dungeons were one of the more powerful dungeons for two reasons, firstly they were rare so few people would truly be ready for the challenges it presented.
Secondly fire levels would be forced to at least use fire resistant monsters and anything that had that would, by necessity, be stronger. As I looked at the last section an annoyed expression returned to my face, the arch turned a stony grey with small spikes dotting it, a cave floor. These were my least favourite floor as they were overdone and just got boring really fast, hopefully the dungeon wouldn’t disappoint me.
With everything gleaned out of the portal I walked through the portal and into the dungeon party to leave the dungeon. I was immediately surrounded by trees as I had suspected but I was more interested in a fight than looking around so I started walking ahead. After about a minute of walking I came across the first encounter of a few slime ‘weak’ I thought as I activated [Flame Aura] and the area around me grew 30 degrees hotter.
Unless they were in a safe zone monsters were forced to attack the divers otherwise they would have surely run away. This meant the slimes had to throw themselves at me, killing themselves as they were literally boiled alive leaving only the core of the slime which was worthless to me so I just ignored them. I doubted any loot on this floor would even scratch the amount of money I owned even after spending a whole platinum coin to have it both made and enchanted.
The floor also had some air and water slimes that shot magic at me but they were so weak that they just bounced off of my armour, not damaging me, these slimes also evaporated once I got close enough to affect them. Over the next ten minutes I cleared out the floor and opened a couple of chests, none of them containing anything of interest, before finally reaching the boss room.
The boss turned out to be a cockatrice, I had fought some a while ago so I knew how bad the petrification could be. I wouldn’t have to worry about that for this fight as my constitution has gotten to the point that no matter how much this boss attacked me it wouldn’t be able to petrify me, not that it would get the chance to hit me even once.
As I was charging at the Cockatrice my [Danger Sense] activated telling me that some slimes were hiding in and around the trees. Before I reached the cockatrice I used my [Fire Magic] skill to send out three flares at the slimes, killing all three of them instantly. The next second I finished my charge and punched the Cockatrice, which was enduring my [Flame Aura] somehow. My punch landed exactly where I imagined the gut would be sending it flying through the air before slamming into a tree.
I started to charge at it again but I quickly realised it was already dead. The boss fight turned out to be more interesting than I expected, the boss by itself was strong but when you added the three hidden slimes it brought the difficulty to the next level. This made me excited to see what the future floors would entail as I walked through the portal and into the next floor.
I saw that I was right when I said that it would involve lava as I was now surrounded by the stuff. The monsters here would be resistant to my aura even though I was such a higher level so I turned it off before starting the floor. I had only been walking for a minute before my [danger sense] flared and three fire elementals leapt out of the lava and at me.
I had never seen them before so I wasn’t sure what they did but, due to the path I had taken with my job, I was also highly resistant to fire attacks so I just punched the closest elemental. My fist ended up going straight through it and it crumpled to the ground in a pile of ash in front of me.
My fist didn’t feel even a degree hotter so I just punched the other two in quick succession, ending the fight a couple seconds after it had started. I continued through the floor with my [Danger Sense] neutralising any threat of ambush before it could even trigger. I once again made it to the boss on this floor, this time taking 15 minutes, the boss was another one of the elementals just bigger and had eight slimes plus two slightly strengthened elementals between it and me.
I wasn’t sure how strong it was and I wanted to get this over with as fast as possible so I activated [Aura of strength], which increased the strength of me and any nearby allies by 15%, before charging at all of them. With the increase to my strength all of the monsters only took one hit to take down except for the boss that still took two. This fight was oddly easier than the one before it which left me a bit disappointed.
As I suspected the third floor was a cave system unfortunately, I wasn’t annoyed at it for long as I saw something that made me worried for the first time today. This dungeon had evolved its slimes into fucking Oozes, I had fought these fuckers once before and I knew that they would dissolve anything they touch. They even managed to destroy my favourite sword that cost my share of the quest rewards just to replace.
After that I made sure to get all my gear enchanted so that none of it would get destroyed. The only problem was that the enchantment wasn’t perfect so they could still leave scratches on my new equipment which I couldn’t allow. Luckily they couldn’t dissolve anything that wasn’t made out of physical matter so I used [Summon Celestial] and a humanoid creature with four wings coming out of its back and donning a set of golden armour appeared before me.
Once it was finished being summoned I silently commanded it keep the Oozes away from me. Following my orders The Celestial cut down every Ooze we came across with a single swing for each one as I focused on killing the slimes. My skill would only last about ten minutes and I didn’t want to waste mana on recasting it so I ended up rushing through the floor.
I passed through a safe zone that had a few places to rest or get supplies but I knew that the dungeon wouldn’t have anything that I didn’t already have and I was barely warmed up so I just kept on walking through the room without stopping. Quickly reaching the boss only eight minutes after I had entered the floor.
The Boss on this floor was another Ooze except this one was ten times the mass of any of the other Oozes I had fought on this floor. It was surrounded by slimes that were also enlarged, seeing this I commanded my summon to take care of the Boss before charging the nearest slime, cleaving it in two in a single swing. The Ooze had quite a big HP pool so my summon struggled with it, only managing to take it down as I took down the last slime.
Even if I ignored the threat to my gear this was the hardest battle so far, any party that wasn’t on average at least three or four levels higher than the recommended level would probably struggle to not lose anyone while taking this boss down. With the fight, and dungeon, finished I was teleported out and made my way to my comrades. ‘Hey, I am back’ I said as I walked up. ‘It is time to get going.’
They said something back to me but I wasn’t paying attention, instead thinking about the dungeon. A part of me was impressed, not that I would ever admit it, I wasn’t expecting to be forced into using so many of my skills. It was probably one of the top five dungeons I had ever been in if I only considered the first three floors. I am definitely going to return in five years to see how well it progresses.
