Right after the worm’s death, small pieces of glowing, pure white rocks hovered above its corpse. Roughly the size of a small rock, it wasn’t anything impressive. The mana it held inside was so little one would wonder how it was even possible.
Nonetheless, Conall hid the three rune fragments inside his inventory before cutting up the worm. Its meat was tough, but he cared little for it at the moment. He took out his leather flask, which was completely full. Yet, as soon as the blazing sun hit the surface of the dark leather, the insides dissipated, without a breath of steam.
From the corpse of the monster, he filled the flask with the bright green blood. Although it was poisonous, he had to stay hydrated somehow. After filling up another two flasks and storing some of the dark, purple meat, he went on his way ahead.
Unlike other dungeons, this one didn’t have a ‘path’ one could follow on which the enemies became stronger and stronger. Luckily, it still had an order to it. Conall just had to be more careful.
He was in a hidden, unique dungeon, after all. They were known for their absurd requirements and difficulties, but also ridiculous rewards. This one, specifically, was even more ludicrous and rare. On the day when the eighth full moon of the year shone brightly through the dark sky, it was accessible, though only under extreme requirements.
There usually weren’t many Grade Cs that were carrying around even a thousand beast crystals unless they were a merchant. Needing to spend ten thousand crystals was incredulous. However, this dungeon was meant to be shared by ten people, each spending a thousand crystals on their own.
When the people paid their price equally, the portal would wait for them until everyone went inside. Unless there was only one person, then, the portal would simply close down immediately.
After hundreds of tries with different groups, be it either twenty or just four people, he quickly came up with his answer. If he wanted to gain the most out of here, he needed to be alone.
It was also when he was the only one conquering it that allowed him to acquire the ways to get rid of a curse.
After a minute of walking, he already encountered two new enemies. They were the same brown worms as before, however, instead of immediately jumping out of the ground, purple acid was spurted out instead.
Only then did the worms crawl out of the sand and spat out another round of acid. One of them did, at least. The other stood up with its long body before rocks appeared around it, quickly flying at the potential dinner in front of them.
Tightening his jaw slightly, Conall evaded the bullet-like rocks by running to the side, avoiding the acid at the same time. Dust rose up around them, creating somewhat of a cloud, which he used for an advantage.
The worms, not knowing where he went exactly, released more of the rocks to scatter away the dust, only to miss the shadow that moved right behind them. Gripping his longsword tightly, he swung it with both hands, the excessively sharp blade going right through the tough scales and meat of the worm.
Startled, the remaining worm began to hysterically spit acid. However, where the liquid landed, the boy was already gone, closer to the monster. Similar to the first worm, he stabbed right through it, easily cutting through the tough material.
A second corpse fell on the fine sand, five rune shards appearing right above it. He didn’t bother cutting up the bodies. He had plenty of resources for now, and the worms didn’t have any beast crystals inside them. Taking away the rune fragments, five from each worm, he went on his way after storing the bodies inside his ring.
However, the worms wouldn’t make it easy for him. In no more than a hundred steps, three spots around him spat out acid, all aiming directly at him.
‘You won’t let go, huh?’
He dodged the corrosive purple gunk right before running as quickly as he could to the side. Though, he probably should have taken it slower.
As if stepping on a mine, four spots of sand crumbled while the first three monsters had still yet to reveal themselves from the ground.
The only thing that gave them away was the sand mimicking their frames. When they sensed their brethren, all of the worms crawled out of the ground immediately. Since they were dominating him in numbers, they quickly summoned their rocks.
It was a literal rockstorm, Conall thought to himself as he calmly dodged the incoming seemingly unending rocks. To make matters worse, three of the worms began to spit acid in the areas where he might have gone in the dust cloud that arose.
He quickly ran out, before the dust could impede his sight and movement any further. He couldn’t really use it to his advantage anymore, simply because there were too many attacks being fired at him.
Also, the worms had already learned, so there was no point anyway. Leaving the cloud, he charged directly at the worms from their sides.
The direction of the rocks and acid changed immediately, but his speed went right past them.
Still, this intensity wasn’t that bad, Conall wondered while weighing up the situation. The rocks were fast, but not so incredible to the point of flashing past him. The acid, on the other hand, would have hurt a bit, but he would still heal up, along with his self-healing uniform that was pretty resistant itself.
Looking up at the worm in front of him, he witnessed a rock flying straight at him. Nonetheless, he didn’t fret, no, he unsheathed his sword in valor, slashing at the rock created with mana. He had a lot more strength and speed right now than when he sparred Richard, and the mana inside it was almost flatlining.
The spell in front of him was cut in two, flying to the side. He never stopped running, even with the incoming strike. Using the position of the worms, he waited until one of the worms spat acid at him or conjured a rock.
In less than a second, his wish had been granted, killing the worm that was near him consequently.
And it wasn’t just this one, from the rear, two hit another one with acid, killing it. Just like that, five worms were left, their numbers quickly dwindling to three as Conall cut them apart.
Just like that, he was back to the original number, though they also didn’t last long. With much more space to outmaneuver the monsters, he easily dodged the attacks before they fell to the sharp blade.
“You will have to try harder than that.”
He muttered while going around and gathering the rune fragments left by the monsters. This time, there were six fragments for each corpse.
Stretching his body lightly, he looked at the large, black rock in the distance that protruded high up into the orange sky.
‘I need to be more perceptive from now on.’
Even though he didn’t have a core to sense the mana around him, nor a core to feel the aura, he could still somewhat tell from the nudging feeling in the back of his head if he tried hard enough. Conall couldn’t just let the worms pile up from now on, not until he got the rune he wanted first.
The way forward would elongate, with him taking back uncertain steps, but the reward would pay off in the end.
After an hour, he stopped to rest. He needed to fight another four worms during his journey. Coupled with the prior fights in the blazing sun, the thirst finally hit him. Taking out the flask full of poisonous, green blood, he downed it in one go.
Sitting firmly on the ground, he clenched his fists as he started to feel the poison inherit his body. The veins rapidly turned green all around him, going all the way to his eyes.
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A strong pain radiated from the inside of his body. He could feel the blood trying to assault his inner organs, with the intent to turn them into mush, however, before anything could happen, his heart started beating harder.
Sweat quickly accumulated on his body as it tried to repel the poison, which was further enhanced by his curse.
After five minutes of agonizing pain of having his bones and organs on the brink of melting, he could finally move around, his heart having purified the poison. However, now, he was more dehydrated than before. Battling the poison took a lot out of him.
Downing a second flask, he endured the pain once again. Thankfully, it wasn’t as severe as before. The blood in his body had already learned of the substance, creating a slight resistance against it, but it was still somewhat effective.
Only after the third flask was his thirst somewhat quenched. He was also quickly building up resistance to the poison. His new heart would save him countless hours trying to fight the damn toxin.
Finally, after some fifteen minutes, he moved on, the rock being ever so closer.
The sun slowly drifted away, draping the desert with shadows that stretched far away, painting the sky almost clear red.
However, Conall didn’t care. He was finally here, standing beside the base of the giant rock hailing to the sun. He walked around the boulder, settling himself beneath the high curve, under the great shadow.
Not only was the rock extremely tall, but its circumference was ridiculously long. Looking at the rock from his side, it was almost as though he stood in front of a great wall, no resemblance of it being a circle at the bottom.
Nonetheless, he took out his sword while lowering his body, a strong force tightening around fang’s handle. With two arms and a full body ready, he awaited the opportunity to strike at the dark boulder.
The wind whispered in his ears, swooshing across him along with its fine dust. As nature's lullaby ended, he moved with the quickest, strongest force he could muster.
The blade’s tip garnered all of his might, releasing its energy while slashing at the wall. Despite being seemingly the sturdiest material in the whole world, it easily crumbled under pressure, all of its structure cracking into millions of pieces.
Before long, the countless rocks dissipated into a state similar to dark mana, eventually falling into the red sand. Like returning to its original state, the dark rock was swallowed wholly by the desert below.
Already gone, the shadow was illuminated with a setting sun, revealing something to Conall. Stuck in the middle of the rock’s previous base, a short, white structure uncovered itself.
Running quickly towards it, he saw it clearly after a minute. With a circular white base at the bottom and roughly one meter in width, it was riddled with golden markings that made no sense to him.
Of course, he knew that it was the runic language, but holding little regard for their true meanings, he glanced towards the structure’s center.
On a little pillar, there was a large, but shallow bowl at the top. Made with nothing but gold, it seemed to have awaited something.
Walking towards it, Conall prepared his rune fragments. During the hours-long walk, he had fought another two rounds of worms. Altogether, he battled eleven more monsters, each giving him seven fragments. In total, there currently was one hundred and fifty-six of them in his ring.
In increments of ten, he filled the bowl fully after exactly one hundred rune shards. Immediately, as soon as the bowl was full, the gold started beaming with light, transferring the metallic, golden glow onto the fragments.
When they turned completely metallic, the shards liquified into a pool of gold while a yellow barrier was erected to protect it from being stolen. Then, as if that wasn’t simply enough, the ground around him shook ceaselessly.
Looking around, the boy could see that in every direction, on the perimeter of the previous boulder, its smaller counterparts appeared.
Even though there were gaps around this huge arena-like area, it was stupid to try and leave it. He simply waited for the opponents to come. And they came, with quite the show.
All around the arena, mainly near the protected rune shrine, countless purple spots appeared. Conall started moving immediately after looking at them.
With fang already in his right hand, he started running at the spots. There were going to be one hundred of these worm bastards, so he needed to alleviate the acid spits that would cover the whole arena, even if just a little. He didn’t want to be swimming in acid while fighting a horde of worms.
Despite dodging under the flying acid, there were still monsters that had yet to spit it out. Changing his direction, he swiftly dodged the attacks, before dodging again. He had to think three steps in advance if he didn’t want to feel pain today.
As soon as some of the monsters stopped spitting the acid, though, they went back underground, crawling their way through the sand towards the human.
The number of these crawlers wasn’t big since the worms were aware their rocks and acid could potentially harm them. Still, that didn’t deter them from sending out further rocks alongside the purple saliva.
Slashing at the rocks coming at him, he finally met himself with his first worm. Yet, as his blade was about to meet the brown scales of the sandworm, the worm looked down, spraying the acid in what was a combination of liquid and gas.
Suddenly halting his steps, he quickly jumped back before slashing upwards, destroying the rock that was about to flatten him.
“That damn hive mind of yours.”
Conall cursed while burying his right foot in the sand. Creating a wall of dust around him, he tried to confuse the worm.
Yet, all of a sudden, a veiled worm came out of the ground, right where the dust rose up. However, to its surprise, there was no human in the vicinity. Well, at least in front of it.
Conall gathered his strength and thrust at the monster, standing behind it. The metal came out the other side immediately, crushing through the scales and thick skin. Leaving the worm dead, he moved onto the next targets.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t fast enough to outrun the forming of the dust. With all of the rocks being thrown one after another, there was little space left where he could actually see.
At that moment, he sat behind the corpse of the worm, with his eyes closed. There was no way he could see through the red cloud that was hiding rocks and acid with normal sight.
Unlike earlier, where he used his enhanced senses as a fighter to tell apart danger, the scale of this battle was too big to use that. His mind would simply clutter up from all of the signals coming his way.
Instead, he ventured into the depths of his soul. Or rather, where his soul was at. Using the aura that filled up his vast spiritual vessel, he felt the pain scatter throughout every corner of his soul and body. Despite that, he simply clenched his fist as he saw the new world in front of him.
He watched as everything interacted together with the spiritual realm through his soul sense.
Watching through the vivid, white outlines of the world, he could understand incomparably more than with his battle sense in this situation. In a joust against few enemies, his senses were superior, however, right now, this was the best call.
Running around the clouds like a madman ready to die to normal people, he easily dodged the acid, both incoming ones and the holes that had remaining puddles inside. Slashing through the rocks with his sword, he had already gone back to the worm that sprayed acid at him.
The worm, sensing that the human had come back, started spraying the acid yet again. Unfortunately for the beast, Conall came prepared. Already moving before it could begin its attack, his sword severed the monster in two halves.
After looking at his left arm, which was caught by the edge of the acid gas, he simply ignored the pain before rushing towards the wall of worms in front of him.
Though, just as he was about to reach them, Conall sensed something beneath. Readying his feet, he jumped away at the perfect moment, a tall column unable to devour him. With a simple step forward and harsh slash, the body was cut apart as though it was a slime.
After getting rid of the sudden threat, another few were already rushing in the form of spells and bodily fluids. More than a challenge, it was a test of stamina for the boy.
For almost an hour, it was a repeat of four actions. Dodge, jump, attack, and drink the poisonous blood. The only rest he was allowed was at the end of the battle, where the spells eased off from the lack of enemies.
Using his aura, even though in the slightest amounts, still caused some problems. In crucial moments, when he couldn’t control how much aura was being used, mishaps allowed gaps to form.
A large part of his uniform and robe was missing alongside some parts of his body, blood dripping from them as the acid ate away at it.
Broken bones and bruises littered his body when unfortunate rock fragments broke off and hit him.
Even though he knew of the attacks the worms could perform, at the same time, he couldn’t really. They were always learning. Dying to him, the rest learned to avoid such ways, creating tougher and tougher enemies as time went on.
Despite this dungeon being seemingly easy because there seemed to be no time limit, it was the same feature that made it almost impossible.
At a certain point, he would have to keep fighting against hordes like this constantly, but he was aware of that. Yet, it was also the fact that he would need to constantly fight at his peak that made him enter this dungeon in the real world.
If he wanted to save Juliette, Silvana, and the others, this was required to be done. It was a small necessity he didn’t mind doing.
Soon, he stopped using his aura. The sun was already set, but he felt a different darkness surrounding him, not feeling the rough grains hug his body.