Chapter 68 (1/2)
Here was an item that he treated like a headache ever since he failed to find a way to hatch the damn thing until now.
One would only find out whether an egg was useful or not once it hatched, but it didn’t want to show any signs of doing that. But now, for the first time ever, the egg began showing some reaction and that reaction came about because of the light leaking out from the Silk Mermen’s remains.
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No, it’d be difficult to link the two.
This was the egg of a “Divine Beast.” He had no idea whether the Silk Mermen were hatched from eggs or not, but these monsters definitely didn’t fall into the noble-sounding category of Divine Beast.
Which could only mean…
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The condition for this egg’s hatching could be related to the floor number.
The egg began showing a reaction right after he climbed past the 20th floor and entered the 21st. It seemed that the egg’s hatching was set to advance little by little whenever monsters appearing in the trials of the 21st floor and higher were killed off.
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Whatever the case might be, Su-hyeun had been anticipating the hatching of the Divine Beast for quite a while now. If the 21st floor’s stage could hasten the egg’s hatching, then he no longer had a reason to quickly exit this place.
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At first, he was planning to pass this place as soon as possible, but now, he had changed his mind.
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After finishing off the Silk Mermen, Su-hyeun thought about the Divine Beast’s Egg and smirked meaningfully. But, quite unlike him smiling in happiness, the other three members of the group were swimming in the pit of confusion.
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Keshunirn had been accompanying Su-hyeun longer than anyone here. They had attacked a total of five dungeons together, and as they seemed to get along on pretty well, they decided to work together. More correctly, it was not Su-hyeun but Warrick he was working with — however, Keshunirn wasn’t aware of that.
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Keshunirn’s own skills weren’t good enough to accurately analyze Su-hyeun’s actual level. It was the same story for both Aile and Howal.
After sensing the high-density magical energy from Su-hyeun, Aile adopted a wait-and-see attitude, but now that she got to confirm his abilities for real, she grew a little more relaxed.
“That was amazing. Were you hiding your true abilities?”
Su-hyeun turned around to face her and replied to her question. “It’s just that we didn’t encounter a situation requiring me to use my power.”
What a textbook-like answer that was. The reply ended up sounding as if he was boasting a little, but there was no helping it, really. They wouldn’t have believed him if he told them the truth, and more importantly, Su-hyeun being excellent was an undeniable fact, anyway.
“Rather than that, let’s hurry. We don’t know how large this dungeon is. Let me take the lead,” said Su-hyeun. He sounded a lot more excited than earlier.
Was she mistaken? Aile was flustered by how he could still speak in such a bright voice even after they found themselves in the current situation, but she somehow managed to reply to him.
“O-of course. Let us.”
Whatever the case might have been, they still felt relieved by the fact that they got to confirm Su-hyeun’s abilities as the real deal.
Although the uneasy atmosphere still lingered, they definitely needed Su-hyeun’s strength if they were to conquer a yellow-colored dungeon.
* * *
Bang, boooom—
[Warmth has been added to the Divine Beast’s Egg.]
[The Divine Beast’s Egg has….]
Every time Su-hyeun’s hands moved, monsters’ bodies were set alight and disintegrated. Aile took care of the stray monsters that broke through the waves of flames every now and then.
Piik, pipipipik—
Kiiieeeehk—!
A lizard-type monster with long chin screamed out. The creature, pierced by an invisible spear, soon breathed its last breath.
“Nice work.”
“I only killed a handful, though.” Aile waved her hand at Su-hyeun’s praise.
During the last few hours they leisurely attacked the dungeon, only Aile proved to be any sort of assistance to him.
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The three present in this place were all rank B Awakeners.
Aile, however, was an awakener with grade 5 magical energy, and as such, the other two men couldn’t even come close to her abilities.
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In more ways than one, this trial made it a bit cumbersome to return home for a short while. Of course, he didn’t feel that the difficulty was too high or anything like that.
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Su-hyeun’s gaze was directed at Keshunirn and Howal following him from behind. He was certain of Aile’s role here. She was essentially the real leader of the group, and also, she was supposed to play the supporting role in conquering this dungeon, too.
In that case, what about the other two?
* * *
As expected, the unfortunate part was the achievement points situation.
Besides the completion rate bonus received at the end of the trial, earning these achievement points was not easy because they were handed out in relation to the awakener’s current skill level, meaning when a high-leveled awakener participated in a trial with a comparatively low difficulty for his skill set, hunting down monsters wouldn’t earn him that many achievement points.
And even if some points were awarded, it’d be only a tiny amount. That’s why Su-hyeun only managed to scrape together a small number of achievement points through the trials up until now.
And…
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As he went in deeper, monsters that were slightly stronger than the ones before began showing up, but unsurprisingly, not a single achievement point was awarded to him.
The only silver lining about this whole thing was the Divine Beast’s Egg showing some reactions. If hunting monsters down acted as a catalyst in hastening the hatching of the egg, then there should be no better-suited stage than this one.
Ten days.
During these past ten days, Su-hyeun led the rest of the group and roamed every nook and cranny of the dungeon. The paths branched like a maze several times, but he deliberately went in the wrong directions every time.
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But now, there was no other path to go around. The result of moving around without a break for ten days was the death of every single monster hiding in every corner of the dungeon.
Although it took a while, he almost could taste the definite result matching his hard work, which was the incubation rate of the Divine Beast Egg.
[Incubation rate: 67%.]
The number of monsters hunted down during the past ten days was easily over a few thousand. Only after he killed that many monsters did the rate reach that high.
It sure was hard labor, but as long as he could hatch the Divine Beast’s Egg, he couldn’t label it as a waste of his time at all.