Hello everyone here is chapter 8! And can you guys believe it? It has been a whole week since I started! And in just a week I have manage to reach a 1k average views =D I'm very happy that people are reading and enjoying my book. I feel like I hit a milestone and should do something. Sadly I can't draw at all so can't post any pictures so I'll give short story of how I started this coz I love to ramble =X Feel free to skip the next paragraph as it's nothing important.
P.S.: Anyone got tips on formatting? coz I copy and pasting directly from google drive always end up with too many space between the lines. Like on google drive its only 1 line of space but copy and paste into here it becomes 2-3.
I have had an idea for a novel for a very long time. I want to say had the idea near the start of high school so its been 8 years XD I have the start, and end of book 1, 2, and 3 all planned out but nothing on you know what happens in them just the ending XD I thought about writing it many times but never did it. So finally I decide to give it a crack and realize I don't have the writing experience to write a story good enough to make it play out like I want it to play out. So the question came where to start? I have been reading a lot of XianXia in the past year and thought about that but honestly after reading a lot of them (I mean a lot like translated and untranslated ones) I realized my story isn't honestly that different from the hundreds of existing ones and just be any copypasta standard XianXia story. So I thought about a cross over between XianXia and fantasy, it sounded good in my head but after a while it was like would kinda end up like a lot of other reincarnated story with the reason for OPness changed. So the whole idea of writing a story was tossed aside for a while. Then I saw some dungeon novels and remember the ones I read before and how much I enjoyed them and that's when it hit me! Lets have a cultivator become a dungeon! And so from there this story came. I'll be honest that I started writing this story literally the day after I thought it up and I posted it here. But I'm just so interested in it myself that I'm excited to write each chapter ^_^ Well hope you enjoy my rumbling or thought I was really annoying but enjoy chapter 8!
----------------------------------------
Alice’s shout completely jolted Sage out of his enlightened state causing him to completely forget the last hour of his meditation. Sage wanted to lash out but quickly calmed himself down.
“It’s not her fault… For now dealing with adventurers is more important. I would love go into closed door cultivation right now but that it’s just too dangerous right now.” Sage thought to himself as he slowly calmed himself down.
His turned his attention to the entrance of the dungeon where he found two people.
One was a young man who looked like he was in his early 20s, short black hair and was about 6 feet tall. A notable difference that separate him from others was his face. His face showed a maturity far beyond his age. His choice of weapon seemed to be a 1 handed sword and shield combo. Sage scanned him.
Status
Name: Jake
Race: Human
Rank: C
The other was a rather tall young woman. She was very beautiful but beside just beauty she had a certain grace and elegance to her. She had long green hair, which was something Sage had never seen before, but what attracted Sage’s attention the most was her two long pointy ears. Curious, Sage scanned her as well.
Status
Name: Ardryll
Race: Elf
Rank: C
“Elf?” Sage said out in surprise.
“Ooooo it looks like a front line warrior and an elf mage duo, they seem very skilled.” Alice replied.
“I mean what is an elf?” Sage clarified his question.
“What?” Alice was startled for moment then continued, “Oh right, you and your lack of common knowledge. I really worry about you sometimes Sage, you’re so talented and come up with all these neat things but you don’t seem to have shred of common sense.”
“There are three other races that live in peace with the humans. The elves, as you see before you, are one of them. Elves look very much like humans only they are much more graceful and elegant. They also live much longer than humans do but the key distinctive feature is their pointy ears. They’re also more in tune with nature, making them highly sensitive to mana.” Alice explained.
“The other two races are the dwarves and beastmen. I won’t go into too much detail right now but the dwarves are great craftsman and live in mountainous areas while beastmen are humanoid beasts, as their name would suggest.” Alice continued “For now let’s focus on the duo at hand. I wonder how strong they are.”
“When I scanned them it said their rank was C” Sage said.
“I see rank C… Wait Rank C!?” Alice shouted.
*POV Jake and Ardryll*
Jake and Ardryll also heard about the news of some rookie discovering a brand new dungeon. They were as excited as everyone else was about the new dungeon but didn’t think much of it. A new dungeon would need some time to grow before they could offer rank C adventurers like themselves anything. But, to their surprise, shortly after they heard the news Penny, the receptionist from the Adventurer’s Guild, came to them with an job for scouting the dungeon.
Both of them were honestly shocked by the request. Not only was the guild requesting a pair of rank C adventurers to scout a new dungeon but the rewards were far better than what it normally would be and the guild was supplying them with supplies so they could head out as soon as possible. Jake and Ardryll finally realized how serious this was to the guild and immediately agreed.
The next day they set out before dawn and headed towards the location of the dungeon. The reason that the guild master picked them specifically was because both of them were very reliable for their age. Jake was a big brother to four younger siblings so he grew up being the responsible one. Ardryll was an elf and she was taught since she was a child to give it her all during a mission and to never lose focus or slack off no matter how easy the job might be. This made them the perfect candidates to explore an unknown dungeon because, even though it is a newly born dungeon that should hold no threat to them, they would still take it seriously.
After about half a day of travel they arrived outside the dungeon a bit before noon.
“Let’s set up camp here and have lunch. After that we’ll go inside and explore for the afternoon. We’ll pull back out when night comes and then continue tomorrow morning. Given the average size of newly born dungeons we should be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.” Jake said to Ardryll.
“Sounds good.” Ardryll replied as they began to set up their base camp “What do you think we’ll find inside?”
“I’m not sure. From what we know so far the dungeon has goblins and minor herbs. Going from that we’ll most likely only meet goblins inside the cave but since the discoverer didn’t go in any further than one room we have no idea what type of traps there might be.” Jake said while setting up his tent.
“Then we can expect an elite goblin as the final dungeon boss then?” Ardryll said.
“Maybe, why are you thinking of the dungeon boss? Our mission is only to scout the dungeon and to pull out if we encounter anything we aren’t 100% sure we can take care of.” Jake said sternly.
“I know the mission Jake.” Ardryll replied seriously “But it’s still a newly born dungeon. Even if we were to play it 100% safe there is still a high chance of us just clearing the dungeon. Afterall most full dungeon evaluation runs for the first floor are lead by a low rank C adventurers with a group of rank D adventurers. Yet here we are two upper tiered rank C adventurers sent to only do a scouting mission.”
Jake let out a sigh and said “You’re not wrong, we do seem overly qualified even if this was a evaluation run. But since the guild master requested us to do it he must have his reason so we should still be on guard.”
Ardryll pondered a bit and replied “True, the guild master was a legend back in the day so if he requested two rank C adventurer then he must have his reasons. I always wondered how he ended up being just a guild master of a branch Adventurer’s Guild all the way out here.”
Hearing that Jake slowly said “Everyone has their own troubles.”
Soon they finished setting up their base camp and Jake cooked a hot meal for themselves. Once they finished eating they decided to take a short break to let the food digest and to rest up from their travel.
Finally after their camp was set up, they had eaten, and well rested they headed toward the dungeon. The moment they entered the dungeon they felt like someone was watching them.
“This is a dungeon alright, can never get used to the feeling of something watching you at all times.” Jake said.
Ardryll felt her surrounding and slowly said “The mana density of this dungeon is very high and this is merely the entrance. I can see how those minor herbs were so high quality despite being from the first floor.”
They carefully proceeded into the first room where they found the minor herbs along with three goblins. Of course because they were well trained rank C adventurers it took them almost no time to kill all three goblins and harvest the herbs.
After they completely explored the first room they drew a rough map of the dungeon with the entrance and the first room. This was part of their mission to map out as much of the dungeon as they felt safe doing. Then they continued onto the second room where they were met with five goblins scattered around.
However after mapping out the second room they found themselves with two tunnels going deeper into the dungeon.
“A split path already? Now that is rare, most first floors are pretty linear at the start and only split off into side rooms near the end.” Jake said after seeing the two tunnels.
“I guess we will need to check them both.” Ardryll paused for a bit and continued “Do you want to split up or check them one at a time together?”
Jake immediately replied “We will check them together. This dungeon seems a bit out of the norm and I don’t want anything unexpected to catch us off guard.”
Ardryll nodded and the two of them ended up going down the tunnel to the left. Shortly after they entered the tunnel they encountered their very first trap in the dungeon. It was a simple pitfall trap with a slime at the bottom.
“Jake there’s a pitfall trap ahead and there seems to be a slime at the bottom.” Ardryll said.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Ardryll was a very gifted mage who’s very good at detecting mana. This mana dense dungeon seemed to have brought out the best in her. Normally she always had to touch with detection magic but here it just felt so natural connecting with the mana in the dungeon to detect traps and monsters.
“So there are slimes as well. To have already two types of monsters is certainly rare.” Jake replied.
Like that they avoided two more traps before arriving in the next room. They carefully navigated through the the first room. When they were half way through a shadow suddenly jumped at them from the side.
Jake quickly reacted as he moved his shield to block the attacker. The attacker wasn’t too strong and was easily pushed away by Jake. Once he got a closer look he couldn’t help but exclaim “Kobolds!”
Just as he shouted two more shadows charged towards him from his side. However he didn’t even bother with them as he charged forward and slayed the first kobold that attacked him. Just as the other two came close to his back two balls of fire zoomed past Jake and slammed into the two Kobolds. The two Kobolds were instantly killed by Ardryll’s magic.
“That was dangerous. If it were a weaker team that ambush, combined with the traps in this room, could have easily killed rank F and careless rank G adventures. Kobolds huh… this dungeon is indeed strange to have three types of monsters already. I can understand why the old man sent us.” Jake slowly said.
“That was too strange, my detection magic couldn’t see them at all!” Ardryll said with a hint of worry.
Jake pondered for a bit and said “It looks like this room is clear, once we map this room we will head back up. While we can press forward I don’t feel it is safe enough if you can’t detect the Kobolds ahead of time.”
The two of them mapped the room and returned back to the second room. Now they stood before the right side tunnel.
“I wonder what this side of the dungeon will have. Still can’t believe that two rank C adventurers were forced to turn back so early by a brand new dungeon.” Ardryll said with a sigh.
“No matter what’s down there we should be on guard.” Jake replied.
The two of them made it down to another room where they found five goblins. However, unlike the second room where they goblins were spread out, these five goblins were together as a group. The goblins immediately noticed the duo and got into battle formation. This startled both Jake and Ardryll as they’d never seen goblins working together like this before. Normally only large packs with an elite goblin or stronger would have any sort of teamwork and even then it hardly went beyond charge at the enemy.
However the goblins were closing in on them so they quickly threw all those thoughts out of the way and focused on the fight. The goblin’s teamwork and fighting abilities really shocked Jake after exchanging a few rounds with them.
“Are these really still goblins?” Jake couldn’t help but mutter.
Granted they were strong for goblins but in the end they were still very weak. After purposely testing them out for a bit Jake got a good grasp of the goblin’s fighting capabilities and decided to end it.
“Ardryll, now!” Jake shouted.
With that Jake instantly bashed one of the goblins with his shield and the goblin flew back knocking two that were coming up to help him. A giant ball of fire quickly followed and incinerated the three goblins on the ground. As that happened Jake quickly moved to the remaining two goblins and slaughtered them.
“These goblin almost seem trained somehow but there was no goblin elites or goblin lords here to train them.” Jake muttered to himself as he thought of that battle.
As he was thinking he suddenly heard Ardryll shout “Hey Jake look, there are some Light Herbs growing here. These are used for making various antidotes. The kingdom will be happy to have a dungeon that can provide this kind of resource. Just like the minor herbs they’re much higher quality than normal first floor herbs.”
“This cave just keeps getting weirder and weirder.” Jake finally let out a sigh.
They finished mapping the room and continued to the next room. When they reached the next room they were once again startled. This time there was a group of ten goblins together and now there are even three goblins with bows. Once again this group showed coordination never seen before from goblins.
Still in the end goblins are still goblins and after twenty minutes of fighting Jake and Ardryll wiped them out. They could have finished it much sooner but due to the extremely unusual circumstances Jake dragged the battle out to test the goblin’s fighting capabilities. He noticed that the goblins were slightly stronger than normal goblins but not by enough to make a big difference. What was most surprising about them was that their skill with their weapons was far beyond what a normal goblin should have and their teamwork was something that shouldn’t be pulled off without at least an elite monster to lead them.
Jake took a break this time because he used more energy than normal testing out the goblins so Ardryll went around to map the room and collect the herbs. Once that was all done they set off for the next room.
However before they entered the third room Ardryll suddenly stopped Jake.
“Hold on I feel like something is off.” Ardryll whispered to Jake.
“What is it?” Jake asked. He trusted Ardryll’s senses so if she feel something is off then it is most likely true.
“I used detect again and could feel 10 goblins inside that room but in addition to that there are also some traps. However they are not nearly as bad as the other side. What’s bugging me is that I feel like there should be something else in the room but I can’t detect them.” Ardryll slowly replied.
Jake pondered for a bit and said “Those Kobolds…”
“Yes, I believe there are Kobolds that can hide themselves for my detection in there ready to ambush us while we fight those ten goblins.” Ardryll replied.
This startled Jake, goblins and kobolds working together? That is very unlikely but Ardryll’s senses are hardly ever wrong and he isn’t willing to take the risk. While they were still rank C adventurers and getting ambushed by Kobolds while fighting goblins wasn’t a big deal he didn’t want to take this risk. With everything that had happened so far he wasn’t sure if something else unexpected won’t happen during their fight.
In the end Jake and Ardryll decided that this was the end of their scouting mission and headed back out. They reached their base camp around late afternoon, having finished far earlier than their original plan. They had dinner and gathered their thoughts on what they found inside the dungeon and took down notes to turn into the guild.
Only after organizing their trip did both of them finally understand why the guild master sent the two of them as the scouts. The dungeon had far too many thing that were off with it but they aren’t easily noticeable unless one was careful. If another rank C adventurer had come instead, they would have powered through the room and completely ignored the fact that the goblins were trained and the kobolds could hide from detection. They would have suffered injuries but played it off as bad luck and pushed forward, refusing to be beaten by a new dungeon. Then when they were weakened and had their guards down they would been ambushed and maybe even have lost their lives.
After realizing all this Jake couldn’t help but let out a wry smile and said, “That old man knew this kind of thing would happen which is why he specifically asked for us. Damn it, if he knew he should have told us in the request.”
“He was probably testing us again like he always does.” Ardryll too let out a sigh, “But still, I can’t wait for when this dungeon grows.”
“This will definitely be the place to be in a few years.” Jake replied.
The two went to sleep and headed back toward the city at dawn. After they returned to the city they went to finish their request at the Adventurer’s Guild. Penny was shocked by their early return but the guild master seemed to have been expecting them.
“So from how early you two returned I take it that I was right to send the two of you.” The guild master said to them with a smirk on his face.
“If you knew something was up you should have told us old man!” Jake said “And yes, you were right to have sent the two of us. Had you sent anyone else, unless they are rank B or higher, they would have most likely died.”
Penny was in complete shock when she heard this while the guild master just laughed.
Jake and Ardryll quickly recounted the events in the dungeon and handed over the notes and map they had made while exploring. Even the guild master was shocked at the turn of events. After all was said and done the guild master let out a laugh and said, “Looks like things will be getting pretty busy around here soon. That dungeon is making me think of coming out of retirement. Hahahah!”
“Please don’t joke old man or else you’re going to scare the dungeon to death. A retired SS adventurer going to raid the first floor of a newly born dungeon? All you need to do is wave your sword and you would cause it to collapse.” Jake couldn’t help but sigh, this old man was just too strong.
“Hahahaha! Well at least life will be more interesting now. Good work you two! With the completion of this mission I officially recommend you two for the rank B exam!” The guild master paused and continued, “The two of you are pretty skilled and level headed for your age. This mission really proved that. You didn’t let your own power go to your heads. The rank B exam should be a piece of cake for you two. I have high hopes for the future!”
Jake and Ardryll were both stunned, they’d been waiting for this for a long time. After regaining their senses they both shouted, “Thank you guild master!”
Soon the report of the scout mission was posted and caused another shockwave throughout the kingdom. Two upper tier rank C adventurer were sent out for a scout mission for the new dungeon and not only did they not clear the dungeon but were forced back. However the resources they found excited many people as the kingdom sorely lacked light herbs. Armed with the new information more brave adventures headed out towards the new dungeon.
*Back at the dungeon.*
After watching all that has happened Sage couldn’t help but mutter, “I think there is a big problem with our dungeon…”
----------------------------------------
Edited by: mossclaw64
Edited by: The super secret and mysterious masked editor... from space!