Chapter 8 Dungeon
The Den was dark, but glowing balls of water were floating around the party, dimly lighting the place without blinding them. There was also a strong odor, but that much should be expected when dealing with goblins.
Now entering the dungeon, their formation changed. Alex and Bai Hu were in first line and Percival and Bob took the rear guard. Kordur was still acting as a scout and opened a path, coming back from time to time to give a report. He soon came with the awaited information:
- 3 goblins. Right before us. How do we do?
- One for Alex and Bai Hu, one for me, one for Percy, told Bob. You look after the young ones with Julia, answered Bob.
They went quietly to the group of goblins, and Bob launched the charge. With a war cry, he jumped on one and his battle axe cut it cleanly in two parts. Percival gave a shield bash to his one and the goblin just got crushed against a wall. It took a little time for the last one, but the teamwork between the tiger and the martial artist was good, so they manage to finish it without taking a single hit.
Without taking a break, they want to a bigger group. There were 8 goblins. Percival went in first and just poked 7 of them on the head. They began to attack him, but he just calmly raised his shield, their strikes being less dangerous than mosquitoes’ bites for him. The last one was for Alex. With his tiger companion, he attacked this one and killed him, then went on to take one from Percival’s stock and continued.
After the end of the fight saw two windows appearing before him:
New Skill: Unarmed Mastery (Passive)
Novice lvl 1 03%
Increase the attack power when unarmed by 1%
Increase the attack speed when unarmed by 1%
New Skill: Acupression Mastery (Passive)
Novice lvl 1 01%
Allow the user to distinguish weak spots of enemies
Hitting those spot will result in Critical Hit
Increase the critical hit power by 3%
When he talked to the others about those skills, they explained most people obtained them thanks to their classes. Without, it needed a lot of training, and that’s why despite the tests and earlier battle, he could only obtain them now. And as classless skills, they would grow slower. What was truly impressive in the other hand was for the two skills to appear at the same time, as the amount of hits needed to unlock the first one was the same than the amount of critical hits for the second. It was proof that Alex always knowingly struck the weak spot of his enemies.
It took them a little time to take the loots, and they went on their hunt. Anna soon managed to make her “FengShui Summoning” skill grow to Acolyte, unlocking the “Xuan Wu Summoning”, and the “Water Summoning Buff”. Xuan Wu appeared to be a small black turtle, slow but with a great defense.
At the same time, her skill “Bai Hu Summoning” also grew to Acolyte, and the tiger grew, going from a cat-like height to a panther’s one. His stats also grew greatly, easing the next fights. Four hours after coming to the dungeons, they had managed to kill hundreds of goblins; therefore Alex and Anna had gained levels and skills proficiencies.
Alex had also modified his fighting style a little. He was activating his Inner control buff when possible and used the Tsuuhaiken once after. He did not have mana for more. Following that he was fighting and dodging, using rolls to evade some attacks. During a long time his first soul’s skill had stay at level 1 and he decided to not let it that way.
During the fight, Percival was blocking enemies so there would never be too many of them, Kordur was acting as a scout and sometimes releasing a well-aimed arrow if needed and Julia was healing and buffing the fighters. So, as Alex and Anna were busy leveling up, only Bob was left with almost nothing to do. He decided to collect the loots and went to sell it quickly to the city before coming back.
At first, Alex thought it was too much, but he learned from the others that the elf had gained in his early days the soul’s skills “Mad Runner” and “Heavy Charger”. At his current level, Acolyte level 3 and Acolyte level 5, he could run with a 36% bonus compared to others peoples without using his stamina and he could carry 55% more weight than what his strength should allow him. Those skills also had some effects in battle when he rushed in, but Alex did not hear the exact details of this part.
After fighting and training for a few hours, a normal party would have gone out in search of a safe spot in order to sleep or log out. But they just went in a nook and Percival used one of his own soul’s skills:
- Safe Spot!
A golden light flowed around them, creating a 5 meters wide circle. Percival had managed to grow it to Expert level 1, which was an incredible feat knowing that even players of above level 200 rarely had a skill in the expert stage. He could create a safe spot anywhere he wanted, as long as no monster was in the zone at the invocation time. It used all was left from his mana and stamina, but for this width, he could create a safe zone lasting for nearly 7 hours already.
They quickly set up a camp and went to sleep, not wasting a single moment. Alex did the same, but he was used to really short nights after long tiring days, and woke up only four hours later. During the three next hours, he simply trained his inner control skill, managing to bring it to Novice level 9, as the Seikuken which had grown a lot the day before. He was also at level 18 and had earned a few points of fighting spirit, perseverance and willpower.
When the others woke up they went back to fighting. They all decided to keep cleaning the first floor of the den for today. So they fought and fought again, taking break when Anna’s stamina was low. Usually, the frontline fighter would have weakened first, but with the bonus of his Inner Control and his perseverance stat, Alex almost always kept a good margin of stamina.
At the end of the second day, Alex saw a new message:
Skill Test: Seikuken
Kill fifty enemy using only deflected blows’ power. 0/50
Reward: Seikuken step Acolyte
- Something called a Skill test appeared, told Alex to his companions…
- Already, asked Julia?
- I remembered Anna went in the Acolyte level without any test for her skill yesterday…
- It’s true, answered Bob. Class related skills do not need test to grow. But you don’t have any class, and soul’s skills do not belong to any class. Almost everybody can make it to Acolyte, but it becomes increasingly harder later on. Will you be able to manage?
- No problem! It will take a little time, but there is no problem.
- Fine. Then we shall go.
Percival used once more “Safe Spot” and they all logged out easily. Except of course for Alex. He took this chance to take off his mask and went hunting. He had been under a lot of stress during the last days, following the antics of Julia and doing his all to avoid making more trouble for Percival. They had not talked much during the last two days, but he could sense the knight being calmer in his presence. But now he had a lot to take out.
The level 30 goblins were hard to kill for him, especially alone and using only the deflected blow from his Seikuken skill which was now:
Seikuken (Passive)
Novice lvl 10
You are aware of every movement 50cm around your body.
When deflecting an attack, you can send 20% of its power in the direction of your choice
But Alex was skilled enough to not take any blow during the fights. It took him a long time to do enough damages, but the enemies could not manage to harm him. It took him 6 hours, but he finished the test.
Seikuken (Passive)
Acolyte lvl 1 00%
You are aware of every movement 110cm around your body.
When deflecting an attack, you can send 32% of its power in the direction of your choice
He quickly went back to the safe spot and logged out before he converted back to a normal zone.
***
During 21 days, or 3 and half real life days, they continued to fight. When the group logged out, Alex continued to fight a little before going to his sessions with the doctor Nathalie Vercoss. Here he talked about a lot of things, about the game, but never truly about himself. But it was just a week since he had been send inside Edge of Magic, so the doctor wasn’t really bothered.
After logging back in, he had nearly two days to go on without anyone coming in. He decided to clean each of the floors completely, and was so thorough in it the party had to go down a floor each time they connected back.
The four strongest did not really leveled up, but Anna managed to attain level 37 thanks to the hunt. Even if he had been the weaker one, with all the hunting he had done overtime Alex was now at level 42. Still weak for this dungeon, but his bonus stats for the three trials and his experience in fighting gave him the edge against numerous enemies.
He had also, thanks to one of the few advices from Percival, let some enemies’ attacks in, in order to obtain the endurance stats which could lower the damages taken from attacks. He had also, with a whopping 3 hours of meditation, managed to obtain the Acolyte for his Inner Control.
During his fights, he had to deal with archers and mages, and so he learned to use his Seikuken to deflect those attacks. It was hard to hit someone with it, but he could at least avoid almost all damages from those attacks.
And now, they were getting ready for the last room, the boss room. So Alex looked at all of his stats one last time before the fight:
NameAlex SandersRaceNephilimLevel42TitleØHealth (HP)1839/1839Stamina (SP)920/920Mana (MP)797/797Fame100Infamy0
Class 1ØNovice lvl 0Class 2ØNovice lvl 0Class 3ØNovice lvl 0
Profession 1ØNovice lvl 0Profession 2ØNovice lvl 0
Primary AttributesStrength (STR)66Agility (AGI)76Dexterity (DEX)77Vitality (VIT)76Intellect (INT)66Wisdom (WIS)66
Secondary AttributesReading (REA)28Focus (FOC)81Willpower (WIL)76Asceticism (ASC)58Perseverance (PER)84Fighting Spirit (FS)76Endurance (END)32
Magic Affinity/ResistanceEarth0Wind0Fire0Water0Light10Dark-10Nature0Lightning0Gravity0
Soul's SkillsUkemi Mastery (Passive)Novice lvl 5 46%Inner Control (Passive&Active)Acolyte lvl 1 15%Seikuken (Passive)Acolyte lvl 1 77%Seeker of Truth (Active)Novice lvl 3 97%Tsuuhaiken (Active)Novice lvl 7 48%
SkillsUnarmed Mastery (Passive)Novice lvl 5 31%Acupression Mastery (Passive)Novice lvl 4 86%