Waking up refreshed, he was more than ready to tackle the dungeons again, no breakfast for him since he had no money now. All of it was used to rent a day here and unless he could get more than a dozen cores, he would be sleeping on the streets tonight.
He also need to buy a whetting stone to maintain his blade, a staff eventually for his class since he was going the path of magic. The guards at the dungeon gate had changed from yesterday’s group which was normal. After letting them scan his status he was allowed passage into the dungeon.
Today’s course being slimes and more slimes or he could leave now and wait out the 4 hour reset timer. He didn’t have a single spell in his skill list which wasn’t the end of the world but got pretty close.
His only option was to cover his blade with a sheet of mana and try to aim for the slime cores. Well it wasn’t like he never saw how to manual skill before, his father was too poor to buy a lot of the skill crystals he needed.
So the only option was to copy the effects of a skill using your own body and inspiration and not with the help of the system. It was going to be hard as hell to copy the skill Mana Skin and even harder to maintain throughout battle.
But he did learn Magic Circuits so the additional 10% control was really going to help him out here. Slimes had 2 attack patterns only which was to shoot a tentacle at you or try to digest you inside its body.
It was only of the worst ways to die because slime bodies were just acidic enough to kill you but very slowly and painfully. Which was why he had to cover his sword with a mana coating otherwise it would be corroded by the acid and become useless.
Well that was it for the planning, worse comes to worst, he would just leave the dungeon and wait out the 4 hour reset timer. The only benefit going for him was that slimes don’t fight back unless they were hungry or being attacked.
So if he could land a nice first hit on their core, it would be a instant kill for him. A good thing they also spawned in large numbers, meaning he would have a lot more cash if he did it right.
The first group of slimes already in sight as he left the safety of the dungeon portal, and with a glowing blue sword, he set out to kill some slimes.
His high DEX just making the job easier for him as he was able to follow the erratic movements of the slime cores easily. Within an hour, he had gotten over 30 cores which was already more than his first day.
He didn’t have to take as many breaks as he needed like yesterday since all he had to do here was to intercept the path of the moving slime core. Also due the ease of cutting down these slimes, he found it really easy to focus on the constant image of a mana coating around his sword.
A nice little benefit was that he had already gained 2 spirit for manual skilling, and he didn’t need to keep wasting mana to recast it. Which was the benefits of Manual skilling, it had all of the skill effects and not all of the costs needed.
Mana skin requires a upkeep of 30 max mana to keep up but here, he just needed to spend 30 mana for the same constant effect. The reason why there wasn’t lot more people use manual skilling was because the skill effects depended on how much you knew about the skill.
The stronger a skill, the more complicated the activation process usually is which means it was much harder to master manually. The short break over, time to get back to working for a living.
He didn’t know how long he had been here or how many slimes since he had already stopped counting. The cores in his bag was rising steadily so he was definitely killing a lot of slimes for the effort he had to put in.
Of course, it wasn’t like he was a machine or anything, he still needed to take a rest every now and then to check if he could still go on.
Name: Aiden Smith (17)
Level: 2 (94 / 100)
Hp: 74/120 (0.39/hr)
Mp: 103/160 (8.2/hr)
Well he could definitely use a health potion just in case, but he would just have to make do. The stairs up the second floor was just right around the corner, if it was still a slime biome then he wouldn’t mind going further.
If not he could check the place out before leaving if he couldn’t deal with the monsters, he did earn quite a lot in the few hours he was here. Making up his mind, he quickly ascended the flight of stairs to a bigger corridor that opened up to a brightly lit cavern.
It was still a slime biome with lots of slimes laying limp all over the place. They were probably stronger than the slimes in the first floor but until the 3rd floor, slimes were still passive monsters.
Of course it only applied for normal slimes, elite slimes were much different as they were just like any other monsters. With a little bit of luck though, he wouldn’t meet once since the were still very rare on the second floor.
Raising his sword, he resumed swinging it across the bodies of the slimes around him. It was a really boring experience despite being easy money. He was still at the age where he had those unrealistic dreams and goals after all, dungeoning should at least be more exciting than playing whack a mole.
A blistering heat suddenly flushed the entire cavern causing Ad to raise his head in terror. A blazing inferno roaring towards him and he knew he would definitely die he was hit by that. Rolling to the side, the inferno went straight through where he was previously standing at but otherwise he was safe.
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Well mostly, the back of his shirt had been completely burned through leaving a massive charred hole. He lost 20 hp just from being grazed by that spell which did confirm his previous doubt that it was a insta kill.
But in front of him was a fire slime, probably a maxed level elite fire slime. They had 2 attacks, spitting out a large fireball at him or the inferno just now. Both were capable of killing hi in 1 hit, the fireball had a 10 second cooldown while the inferno had 15.
It’s body was also way too hot for a flimsy mana coating to protect his sword without melting into a pile of scrap. But he couldn’t run away because his escape was blown up by the previous attack.
The other exit was right behind the fire slime which by the way was starting up another inferno or maybe it was a fireball. Either one was just as deadly, but there was no way out except to fight. But if he destroyed it’s core, the slime would die just like any other slime, he just had to not get hit once.
He would need to use a shadow strike every time he attack otherwise the blade would melt, which was not what the skill was meant to do in the first place. But beggars can’t be choosers, he would have to attack the moment it spat out it’s next spell.
Luckily he didn’t need to wait long as the fire slime burped out a fireball almost half a meter lage. Charging towards the blob of red liquid, he wanted to attack the core but the slime jumped into the air causing him to miss.
He had to roll out of the way just as the slime slammed back onto the ground. Glowing crimson red, fire exploded from its body, aimed right at him.
“Mana construct!” he screamed instinctively.
The worker lasted a single second before melting away but it was just enough time for him to escape the spell range. Then before his very eyes, the slime started contorting and bubbling rapidly before splitting into 2 smaller pieces.
“Fuck,, body double?” Ad screamed in frustration.
Body double on a slime was so broken, now it had 2 lives instead of one. Why did he have such a shitty luck, and curse his damn mouth for asking for something more adventurous.
Each body would inherit half of its strength which means one slime could use fireball and the other one could use firestorm. Their physical strength didn't matter since it was a fire slime.
It was really the worst situation for him, he had to deal with 2 different directions of attack and try not to get digested. He also had 1 more core he needed to destroy before he would win.
All he had was a shortsword and about a 100 over mana, against 2 elite monster. Wonderful odds he had and while he was busy trying to come up with a plan, the 2 slimes weren’t idlying away.
Jumping and spewing flames at him in sync with each other, it made his job way harder than it already was. So much so that he had to expend another worker to dodge a otherwise deadly attack.
However not all was bad since even monsters had a limit to their mana pool, he just needed to keep this up for another hour and they would dry up. But Ad was already tired from his previous exodus, he could only keep this up for so much longer.
And with the exhaustion catching up to him, he was already being grazed by more attacks that he would’ve liked. So he came up with a very reckless plan, one that would probably kill him if he failed.
As the next slime jumped at him after another fireball instead of running away, he stood there with his sword pointed up. That’s right, he was going to let slime ram itself into his sword and pray he had enough mana to keep up a full body coat.
Why you ask? That’s because he was just a tiny bit off from the next level and levelling up meant he would be fully recovered. And as the slimed dropped onto him, he entered a world of pain where everything around him was just lava.
He couldn’t open his eyes or mouth even to scream out in pain because if he did, he would die even faster. All he could do was swing his sword as fast as possible, randomly trying to hit the core.
He could feel his mana rapidly draining away, soon to be his health if he didn't kill this fucker fast enough. But it seemed that Lady luck had finally chosen to smile on him as his blade found purchase.
His level up came, fully recovering him and finally giving him some breather. There was still one blob but that one was squirming in pain currently, good for him.
“Put all points into spirit.” Because he had another dumb plan in mind.
Spirit dealt with control, willpower and mental resistance, actually the last 2 was pretty similar. Anyway, he was going to dump as much mana as he could in his sword and then throw it all out.
His sword wasn’t mana conductive meaning he had to mana coat it to prevent the sword from breaking. He also had to coat himself in mana because the slime was sure as hell wasn’t going to let him charge up his dumb attack.
So while the slime was still down, he had to infuse his sword with as much mana as possible. Raising the sword into the air with both hands, he directed all his mana into the blade.
One half into the sword itself and a quarter into the mana coat, forming a extremely delicate balance between exploding on him or on the slime. About half way there, the slime finally noticed the human acting extremely weird, but it felt a dangerous aura from it.
So as both fighters charged their own attacks, ironically they both finished casting at the same time. A torrent of flames blasting out from the slime, twice as big as the previous iterations.
“Exx-CALIBURST!” Ad screamed out in righteous fury, subconsciously stealing a iconic attack name from his world.
The cavern shook heavily as both energies collided for a single moment before the shining blade of light broke through. But Ad was not left unscathed, as the firestorm had continued forward even after being split into half.
He could only call up another mana construct with the last dregs of mana he had in him before passing out cold.
The elite slimes was dead and he had won, but he was already unconscious and left at the mercy of the slimes around him. Slimes who survived the explosion and were now seeking revenge, at him.
“Lightning Chain.” A soft voice said from the shadows, causing lightning to arc from her fingers.
The slimes were killed instantly leaving behind a puddle of goo and magic cores.
“He’s definitely cute right Elin?” She called out to the walls.
“Uhuh, you have good eyes as always Mia. Looks like the evo-crystal actually found someone decent for once.”
“We still can’t show ourselves to him until he reaches the 20th floor. We’ll have to wait a bit longer, before we can meet him officially.”
“Ahh, damn rules I already can’t wait to make him ours.” Elin moaned.
“He might turn out to be a failure too.”
“Oh duh, we’ll just kill him and reset if he’s so useless. It's not like we’ve never done this before.”
“I don’t think we need to do that this time. He definitely the real deal.” she sad, pointing at Ad who had streams of green light covering him.
“OH! Now I just can’t bear to wait, can’t we just mark him nowww?”
“You know what happens if we do that. Stop whining will you, he’d probably reach the 20th floor faster than most people.”
“Buut it’s not fast enough.” Elin knew that Mia was right but it was so long since they found a decent candidate.
“You’re not the only impatient one, now help me carry him back to the hub.”
“Ohh, now that's rare.” She cried in glee.
They 2 females picked up everything on the floor along with Ad before disappearing from the dungeon.