Chapter 22: Chapter 21 – A quick stop

My party had finally all reached level 100 and received our ascension quests, which would let us start progressing our jobs again. The quest objectives were all far away from where we had been adventuring so we would have to travel for at least a month weeks to get there. 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 I have been bored for the past week’ I said, that was when we had entered this huge forest where the highest level monster was probably around 60 so nothing would dare attack us as they could sense how strong we were and would be sent running. 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 ever since we got into this forest.’ Ed, the party 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 giving enough time, we could solo it with our eyes closed. 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, past the line of people waiting to get in. A few people grumbled a bit about me skipping the line and saying some BS about how I needed to wait my turn but I just quickly glared at them and they would shut up immediately either recognising me and my badge or too scared to keep on talking.

When you went from a bunch of nobodies to level 100 elite in just ten years, half the time it usually takes other adventurers and a quarter of the it takes non-combat classes to reach their first ascension, you were talked about quite frequently, even becoming celebrities. And why shouldn’t they talk about us? We were amazing, when a whole country was being ravaged by a plague of zombies that no-one could fight who came and defeated all of them, we did. When two nations had been threatening to go to war with each other who managed to stop both sides with their mere presence, we were.

And that was only naming two of our many exploits, 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 were delusional.

By this point I had made it to the front of the line only to find out that all the instances were filled and I couldn’t go in. I stood there waiting for five minutes tapping my foot when I got bored and decided to investigate the portal, I might as well use this time to figure out as much as I can about this dungeon. I looked at the arch around the portal, this could tell you a lot about the dungeon as it would reflect what kind of dungeon it was. What I saw made me pleasantly surprised as it had three different sections on the portal, this indicated that the dungeon must have a subtype that let it change the floors in some major way. 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 green colouration to it with vines wrapping around 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 so it didn’t matter what monsters it used.

The second section made me smile a bit, this was a light red and cracked with lava flowing through it. This was definitely a fire level of some kind and since it had lava running through it then it would almost definitely have lava as part of the theme. Fire levels were one of the more powerful floor types for two reasons, firstly it was rare so few people would truly be ready for the challenges it prevented. 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 went back to waiting for a party to leave the dungeon, I soon got bored again but I had nothing else to do so I just started to polish my chest plate that was part of my heavy armour set. I had spent almost a thousand gold on the whole set so I wanted everyone that looked at it to see how good it was. Luckily I only had to wait about half an hour before a party appeared in front of me, having just left the dungeon.

They might have been killed in it or they might have managed to clear the dungeon but I didn’t care enough to give them a thorough look, instead I just walked through the portal as soon as they appeared. 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.

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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. 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 these a while ago so I knew how bad the petrification could be. I wouldn’t have to worry about this as my vitality had 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 to charging the Cockatrice my [Danger Sense] activated telling me that some slimes were hiding in and around the trees so before I had reached the cockatrice I used [fire manipulation] to send out three flares at the slimes, killing all three of them instantly.

The next second I reached the Cockatrice, which was enduring my [Flame Aura] somehow, before I punched it in where I imagined the gut would be. It went flying through most of the room before slamming into a tree 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 as I was now surrounded by lava, the monsters here would be resistant to my aura even though I was such a higher level so I turned the off before starting the floor. I had only been walking for a minutes before my [danger sense] flared and three fire elementals that I had never seen before leapt out of the lava and onto the stone infront of 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 elemental in the front.

My fist ended up going straight through it before 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 I had started it. I continued through the floor with my [Danger Sense] neutralizing 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, it was surrounded by strengthened elementals and some fire slimes.

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 gave me and anyone near me +5 strength, due to my level this was equal to + 500 strength increasing my strength by about 15%, before charging at all of them. With the increase to my strength all of the monsters only took one hit to take down all of the monsters except for the boss that still took two. This fight was oddly easier than the one before it even though it was a floor level, this was due to the fact that as long as you took down the monsters one by one the fight would attrition into your favour.  

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. Sure they couldn’t destroy any of my current equipment but they may permanently scratch it which I couldn’t allow.

The only thing I had that I was sure would stop them before they got to me without me having to attack them was [Summon Celestial]. As I cast this skill a humanoid creature with four wings coming out of its back and a set of golden armour appeared before me and 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 each as I also used my sword to kill the slimes. Because I was overkilling it by using one of my more powerful skills I ended up rushing through the floor, ending up in the boss room only 5 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 ooze I had seen up to this point and it was surrounded by slimes that were also enlarged, seeing this I commanded my summon 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, anybody that wasn’t atleast three or four times the recommended level would probably struggle to not lose anything while taking this boss down.

With the fight, and dungeon, finished I 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 replied to me but I didn’t hear them as I was thinking about the dungeon. A part of me was impressed, not that I would ever admit that 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 into and I was going to return in five years to see how well it progresses.