Chapter 57: Vermins (1/2)
The second floor was at least twice as big as the first and the color of the lighting had also changed from a warm hue to a colder one. When Rakna stepped down the last stair with Pronos around his neck, the path behind him was closed off instantly by a descending stone wall.
He glanced over his shoulder and hummed. He scrutinized the second floor with Fabled Sight, down to the very last detail, and everything was the same as above except for the size. He stood in place for at least a minute and nothing happened, no walls breaking down or spiders crawling in.
He then started to walk down the corridor with Sonata at the ready and his senses reinforced with mana to the bare minimum. When he reached the halfway point, he heard a distinct clicking sound. It was followed by a grinding noise.
Several squarish breaches appeared on the walls and shot out long metal spikes. Rakna casually stepped aside from one, caught one in midair, and deflected two others with it and Sonata.
He had made it look so considerably easy that it could have taken the attention away from the fact that the spikes had been fast and strong enough to pierce the walls of the Dungeon for at least half a meter.
”So, traps are a thing too, huh?” Rakna muttered and dropped the spike in his hand. He quietly took another step forward and immediately crouched when a spike whizzed above him. ”Hold tight, little guy,” he said and Pronos nodded.
While he was still in that position, he gathered his strength in his lower body and started running at full speed. Several spikes sprung up from all sides but he weaved in between them as if he knew where they were coming from.
He only needed to listen to the sounds coming from the mechanisms inside the walls and the subsequent opening of the wall. But he had to admit, he couldn't tell how the traps were triggered.
He wasn't stepping on any sort of pressure plates or anything of the sort. 'Perhaps a more sophisticated kind of weight sensor? Or magic?' He thought nonchalantly as he jumped over ten arrows meant to hit his legs.
And as he was in the air, the ground below him opened up to reveal a pit. There weren't spikes at the bottom, mind you. No, it wasn't anything as nice as that. It was a bubbling green liquid that would probably painfully dissolve his entire body in a matter of seconds.
Rakna watched it with a curious eye before opening his mouth, ”Artzpul.” He then moved as if he was stepping on thin air and directly zoomed to the other side of the pit.
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❮◈❯ Artzpul has leveled up! ❮◈❯
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He nodded pleasantly at that notification. This skill had a lot more potential than just being a way to take off or land if used correctly. This just continued to prove it.
”Now,” he squinted his eyes at the dead-end that was a mere five meters away from him. He mused and pulled out a small silver disc. He pressed on the button and calmly threw it before unfurling his wings and covering himself with them.
The disc exploded on impact and Rakna made sure to not be blown away by the shockwave as he heard various dying screeches, followed by a System prompt informing him of his kills. When it was over, he unwrapped his wings and took a look at his handiwork.
The walls to the sides were broken and amidst the debris, several cockroaches-like monsters lied dead on the ground. Rakna noted that the wall he suspected to be blocking the path to the next staircase was undamaged; not even a scratch.
'As expected,' Rakna thought then looked at the holes in the walls. He could see more of those large insects coming out. The explosion had only killed the closest ones. He sighed and deployed his wings.
The feathers making up the upper layers began to vibrate before suddenly detaching themselves as if they could break the laws of physics. A dozen of them were shot at the cockroaches every second; leaving them no chance to escape.
After twenty seconds, Rakna stopped and retracted his wings. The walls and ground and in front of him had been littered with black and silver feathers and the insects were all dead. The exit then slid open to reveal the staircase to the next floor and the same System message as before appeared before him.
He picked no again and went down the stairs, repeating the same process with the loot that had been dropped around him. The third floor followed the same pattern. Once again, it was bigger; twice the size of the second floor. At this point, it was as wide as a highway back on Earth.
”I was wondering,” Rakna muttered as the wall closed behind him again. The walls also proceeded to collapse like they had on the first floor but that didn't stop him from voicing his thoughts. ”How many floors does this Dungeon have? Is it infinite?” He asked both to himself and obviously Alexa as he slammed a spider coming at him with the shaft of Sonata.
[It is not. However, there exist Dungeons that have never been completely conquered, making it impossible to know how many floors there are. The most popular one would be the Grail Road on the 500th Plateau. To this day, 126 floors have been explored and even the highest-ranked Hosts haven't managed to get farther.]
”I see,” Rakna blankly said and back-fisted one cockroach while dodging an arrow shot from a trap while Pronos breathed out a purple poison fog that killed the monsters in seconds.
All in all, this floor was a sort of combination of the two others. The two of them went through it like a breeze and soon enough, all the traps had been both engaged and evaded while the monsters were all dead.
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❮ ◈ ❯
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You have completed a Quest! Return to Gaelius Klein to receive your rewards.
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You have completed the Third Floor. Would you like to exit?
Yes/No
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