Quintessence of Arcana

Venturing The Dungeon (2)

Erald continued to delve deeper into the maze-liked dungeon.

He descended down floor after floor, until he had gone another ten floors past the one that had the tar lake. He had lost all sense of time down in the dungeon, and had no way of guessing how many days had passed. Though it still took time, it was clear he was progressing through the labyrinth at a ridiculously fast pace.

While progressing, he had countless brushes with death and had to fight all sorts of unbelievably powerful monsters.

Among them were a huge multi-colored toad that could spit poison and a giant moth that, oddly enough, looked a lot like a lot like a bird.

The toad he had encountered on a floor that had a faint poisonous mist spread throughout it, and the moth had the ability to spread its scales through the air. Scales that paralyzed anything they touched. Had it not been for his unusual physique, Erald would have died countless times searching through the labyrinth.

He had, of course, eaten both the moth and the frog. There had been some reservation to eating the moth, but he reminded himself that it can make him stronger. Erald had remembered feeling somewhat vexed when he’d discovered that the frog actually tasted better than all the other monsters he'd eaten so far in the dungeon.

Though he was deep underground, he had even gone through a floor that resembled a jungle. It had been incredibly humid and the air hung thick around him. That had been by far the worst floor he had traversed. The monsters he had faced on that floor had been giant centipedes and living trees.

Hardened as he was to most things, even Erald had been completely creeped out when a giant centipede had come crashing down from up a tree branch. It was the most disgusting sight he’d ever laid his eyes on. The centipede had the ability to split itself into various segments to attack him, like an army of critters coming out from a particularly disgusting kitchen.

Erald had swung Shardslicer as fast he could to destroy them, but sadly, there had been too many. After thinking for a moment, he resigned himself to butchering them with his 'Gale s***h', a skill he got from the Clawed Bear creature he had eaten. But even that wasn’t enough to take them all out, so he had to resort to kicking, which was not his forte at all. When that battle had finally finished, Erald was bathed in the centipede’s purple, disgusting blood.

The tree monsters of that floor basically assumed a slightly humanoid form with longer limbs and head. They used their roots to attack from underground, while also flinging their branches around like whips. When they were in trouble, they would start shaking their heads wildly, flinging crimson fruit at their enemies.

The fruit they threw didn’t hurt, and just to test it, Erald had tried eating one. When he had, he stayed rooted to his spot for almost an hour. The fruit had contained no poison. In fact, it tasted delicious. It was sweet and refreshing, like watermelon.

The fact that the floor was the most unpleasant one he had encountered completely flew out of Erald’s head. Even his resolve to conquer the labyrinth temporarily left his mind. It was the first time he had eaten anything aside from monster meat in months. His eyes became that of a hunter, and he spent a great deal of time hunting down the tree-like monsters. By the time his craving for their fruit had finally been sated, the tree-like monsters had been hunted to near extinction.

And so, he continued progressing through the floors until he had passed forty-nine of them before he knew it. And still, the labyrinth continued downward.

Once he entered the stairs leading to the next floor, he felt that the topography around is distinctly different from all the floors he'd previously been. An ominous atmosphere seemed to pervade the space around it.

At the very end of one of the side passages was a room which contained a set of majestic double doors, each three meters tall. On each side of the door was a statue of a one-eyed humanoid giant that sunk deep into the recesses of the wall.

When he had tried to step into the room, Erald had felt chills run down his spine, and had beat a hasty retreat, deciding that room was dangerous. Of course, the retreat was only temporary. He was going back to prepare, and had no intention of skipping past that room. After all, it was the first thing he had run into these past forty-nine floors that was 'different'. There was no way he wasn’t going to check it out.

He was filled with both expectation and trepidation as he thought about the door. However, once he opened it, he knew that some kind of disaster awaited him. Still, it was also an opportunity to call forth the winds of change in this never-ending hell.

“Now then, I wonder what kind of hope awaits me when I open it?”

He mentally ran through his abilities, his weapons, and his skills. He checked over each one of them, making sure he was in peak condition.

When all of his preparations were complete, Erald gently pulled his pendant out from his collar, then slowly pressed it against his forehead as he closed his eyes. He had already steeled his resolve long ago, but there was no harm in spending a few minutes to steel it some more. Erald searched deep within himself, giving voice to his dearest desire once more.

“I want to survive and make it back alive... Anything getting in the way of that goal is my enemy. And enemies are to be... killed!”

He opened his eyes, and with his ever-present fearless smile, set off toward the unknown.

Erald’s footsteps grew steadily more wary as he attempted to enter the room with the double doors. He made it all the way to the door without encountering anyone.

Upon taking a closer look at it, he realized that the craftsmanship of the doors was even more impressive than he had initially thought. And that there was a magic inscriptions carved into a tiny hollow on each of the two.

“Huh? That’s odd. This inscriptions... they seemed familiar...”

Back at the wilderness when Erald and Croen ventured the ice cavern, Erald noticed the magical inscriptions engraved on the cave's wall. Now that he thought about it, it is quite similar to the inscriptions engraved at the door in front of him.

“Does it mean that this place... is related to that cavern?”

Erald pondered over the magic inscriptions as he investigated the doors, but he was unable to discover anything of note. His instincts screamed that it was a 'trap', but he didn’t have enough knowledge to derive any hints or proof from his analysis.

“I guess my only option is to channel my mana into it.”

He had already tried pushing and pulling on the doors, but they hadn’t budged. He had no choice but to turned to his mana manipulation skill. He placed his right hand on the door’s surface and began to channel his mana into it.

But the moment he started pouring mana from his hand...

Zap! A bolt of red lightning ran down the door, blasting Erald’s hand away. Tendrils of smoke rose up from his hand. A second later, he heard a deep roar.

“UOOOOOOOOH!!!” It reverberated throughout the entire room.

Erald backpedaled away from the door and positioned himself in a battle stance. He put his hand on his waist, ready to draw his blade at a moment’s notice. While waiting, he heard the sounds of something moving mixed in with the roar.

“As I thought....”

Erald smiled sardonically as he watched the two one-eyed giant statues suddenly spring to life and start destroying the wall that held them. Their petrified skin rapidly regained its color, going from gray to dark green.

They each wielded swords nearly four meters long that they had pulled from who-knows-where. Currently, they were struggling to free their still–entombed lower halves, determined to eliminate the unwelcome intruder.

Erald then threw a palm-sized object at one of the giant's head. With a ferocious bang, the object blew up like a grenade after it made contact to the giant's flesh. It blasted the giant's entire head off into mincemeat, and it's blood sprayed like rain.

The grenade-like object Erald threw is none other than the Blastite, an ore that he discovered previously that is quite similar to gunpowder. Using his lightning skill as a trigger, it will immediately burst the moment it made contact to sparks.

The other giant stared blankly at it's now deceased companion. On the other hand, the dead one twitched for a few seconds before collapsing forward, which made the entire room shake as its huge frame crashed into the ground, raising a massive cloud of dust.

“Sorry, but I’m not a nice enough guy to wait for you to break free.”

The dead giant hadn’t seen that coming, in more ways than one. For Erald, who had survived through countless life and death struggles, it was merely a natural course of action to take. Yet... he still felt a twinge of pity for the giant. It probably wasn’t anything more than a humble guardian that had been sealed and tasked with protecting the doors. It must have spent an eternity waiting for someone, or anyone, to pass by.

The remaining giant had a bloodcurdling expression on its face as it turned to look at Erald. Though it didn’t speak, its face was clearly screaming, “how dare you, you bastard!”

Erald stared at the remaining one-eyed giant, completely unmoving as he met its gaze. It was acting cautious due to his unfamiliar weapon and crouched low to the ground, ready to dodge in any direction, as it glared at him. Ten seconds passed, then twenty... Eventually, it grew tired of the staring contest and with a deafening roar, the remaining giant charged towards him.

But before it even made five paces, it faceplanted into the ground.

The moment it had rushed forward, all the strength had drained from its limbs, and it careened to the ground. Confused, the giant tried to struggle back to its feet, but it was able to do little more than flail helplessly on the ground.

It had been thanks to the power of the scales he’d harvested from the giant moth. By utilizing his mana, he could spread the scales throughout a small area, paralyzing everything in it. The instant the giant had been distracted by the death of its companion, Erald had thrown the scales into the air.

It roared, unable to comprehend what had just happened. On the other hand, Erald slowly walked over to it. His echoing footsteps were like a countdown to the giant's demise. He stopped inches from its face, and pulled out his blade. Without any hesitation, he swung the blade towards it's neck.

Swoosh!

However, something unexpected just happened...

The giant's body glowed briefly, which repelled the blade the moment it made contact with it's skin.

“Hmm?”

Erald guessed that it was because of its special ability. From what he could tell, it temporarily gave the one-eyed giant a massive defense boost. Though it was still face-down on the ground, the giant smirked contemptuously at him.

Unfazed, Erald retracted his blade and aimed a kick at the giant's head. Thanks to his leg skills, Erald’s kicks were as powerful as the Kickmaster Rabbit’s had been. His foot traced a neat arc through the air before slamming into the giant and turning it over on its stomach. He then pointed his blade to its eye.

Though he couldn’t be sure, it looked as though the giant was panicking. Still, Erald paid it no mind and mercilessly stabbed the blade forward. As he expected, the body hardening didn’t extend to its eye. The blade then electrocuted the giant's brain, frying it from the inside.