Chapter 124
“The Tower.” Part 3
“You’d better not drink that unless you want to lose the potion. It hasn’t even been ten minutes since you drank the last one," Kalysto warned as she saw that Rita had pulled out a revitalizing potion and was about to drink it. The blonde immediately looked at her watch.
“Does water count as a potion, too?” She asked, noticing that barely a minute had passed.
Kalysto shrugged and shot Oscar a look, indicating that she couldn’t answer her in front of him. Instead, she withdrew three theles from her inventory.
“Koden, Rita, get it!” Kalysto shouted, tossing a thel to the tank and then another to Rita. “This will help reduce your fatigue," she then turned to Oscar. I’d give you one, but you’d have to sign a magic contract with me before that.
Oscar just watched her silently and approached Rita, ignoring Kalysto completely. Who simply bit the thel in her hand and kept looking for more mana crystals to add to her new collection.
“We need to talk," whispered Oscar to the blonde, who avoided him and went to the opposite side where Koden and Kalysto were.
“I thought you had already said everything you had to say when you finished with me a while ago” Rita crossed her arms in annoyance with him when she saw him approach her again after she finished eating the strange fruit, while everyone else waited for the rest of the group to arrive.
“Rita... look... I think there are some things we should clear up first," the brunette let out a long sigh and ruffled his hair. “You can’t finish something that hasn’t officially started yet... and even if...” he tried to explain, but that only made the situation worse.
“What?” she shouted, drawing the attention of the other two.
“Hey, man, even I know there are things you can’t say to a woman when she’s mad at you!” Koden interjected as Rita growled.
“In that case, my apologies for mistakenly thinking that I wasn’t single anymore for a few weeks! But obviously I still am!” With that, she walked away from him. Oscar held her by the arm, trying to stop her from leaving so they could finish talking and sort things out, but at that instant the rest of the group came through the portal and she took advantage of their distraction to leave with Kalysto and Koden.
“Alright, now that we’re all here, we’ll move on!” Kalysto announced and the rest of the heroes followed her until they reached the end of the corridor, where a double door was waiting for them. “Since Rita took care of most of the monsters before, this one is Koden’s. Ready?” She asked the tank, who nodded his head in agreement.
Kalysto opened the doors and as soon as she took a step inside, a sign appeared before her.
[Warning! The user has entered the boss’ room on the second floor of the dungeon!]
A fat, semi-transparent, blue-colored, semi-transparent slime, six feet tall with mouse ears appeared before them in the middle of a simple dome-shaped cave. In the center of its chest, Kalysto could see a core about thirty centimeters wide and brown.
A strange pressure vibrated in the atmosphere. The same she had felt before when she was in the presence of a monster that was different from the others.
Inspect! She thought. And a pair of notifications opened to her left.
[Name: N/A
Race: Slime (Elite)
Level: 5
HP: 14,420/17,000
MP: 500/500]
Weren’t elite type monsters the ones with cores that give a full skill? At that very moment, Kalysto immediately regretted her words, wishing she had said that she would be the one to exterminate him.
And as soon as the group finished entering, four blue whips sprouted from the slime’s body and launched themselves directly at high speed towards Koden, Kalysto, Oscar and Rita. But the four heroes closest to the boss dodged their continuous attacks while Koden did his best to get close.
“Ice creation!” Kalysto conjured, freezing the ground and half of the fat slime’s body, who, seeing that his whips didn’t work, began to shoot powerful jets of water left and right.
Koden immediately protected Kalysto’s body with his huge shield, while Oscar saved Rita from being hit by another water jet and a pair of agile tentacles while Kalysto continued to freeze the slime, leaving his ears and eyes or the space between them unfrozen, but covering the rest of his body and head.
“Koden, I’m going to approach it and force it to raise its core, so make sure you defeat it without destroying it completely! Okay?”
“Do you plan to collect his core?” he asked, surprised at her strange hobby. Kalysto simply shrugged her shoulders before announcing:
“The rest of the bosses in this tower will be mine, you can fight the rest!” -She then ran to the slime’s left side and touched the ice as the slime’s eyes turned to her and a thin tentacle began to sprout from the space between its eyes. Ice manipulation! -She conjured, creating multiple stakes with the thick layer of ice that surrounded it and burying them inside its gelatinous body, forcing it to move up the core that was in the middle of its chest as she created many more stakes, until the core was at the top of its head, where Koden who had already been cutting the tentacles coming out of the slime’s forehead, was ready and with one leap attacked the monster, burying his sword in its head, creating a thick fissure in the core.
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Immediately, a pair of signs appeared before her.
[You have gained 0 experience points!]
“Yes! I’m already level 15!” Koden shouted excitedly before descending from the huge head and handing the core to Kalysto who immediately put it in her inventory.
At the same instant, a notification appeared in front of all of them and a huge blue portal opened behind the boss’ body.
[The boss of the second floor of the dungeon has been defeated!]
Two other windows appeared, this time only for Kalysto and Koden.
[User has gained 100 experience points for participating in the boss defeat!]
[The user has acquired ‘Water Dagger’ as a reward and it has been added to her inventory!]
“Huh? What is this? But I don’t use daggers," commented Koden with surprise at the sight of the dagger that suddenly appeared in his free hand.
“You’d better keep it," Kalysto warned him. “As soon as we get out of here, you can sell it in a nearby village and then you will have money to eat and get a place to sleep for a few days.”
Koden nodded and put the dagger in the enchanted leather pouch full of potions Milo had given them earlier.
“All right, it’s time to move up to the next level!” Kalysto announced.
As soon as they all stepped through the next portal, a new notification appeared before them.
[Warning! The user has entered the second floor of the dungeon!]
A group of horned rabbits welcomed them into a well-lit cavern with mana stones.
“Alright guys, they’re all yours! You have fifteen minutes to finish them off, or I’ll do it for you!” Kalysto informed them as she busied herself collecting crystals.
And while everyone was too busy killing rabbits to pay attention to what she was doing, she pulled out the core from her inventory.
Absorb! She thought.
[Does the user wish to absorb the remnants of this slime core?]
[YES/NO]
Yes!
[Congratulations! The user has acquired a new skill: Water Resistance. Level 1!]
...I thought it would be something more useful. She was disappointed.
“All right guys, time out! Ice daggers! Ice manipulation!” And without giving them time to react, she eliminated the four remaining rabbits, advanced to the huge double doors at the back and opened them.
[Warning! The user has entered the boss’ room on the second floor of the dungeon!]
I’ve already lost half a day between the camp and the fight outside the tower... And while it’s good to help them level up, I can’t waste much more time. She worried. I must conquer this tower before the deadline the boss gave me is up... And if it’s true that whoever is posing as the demon king is destroying the capital of Bhallys, then I need to go there and find Alice as soon as possible.
The problem was that she was worried about leaving them alone with the low level they still had.
If Rita or Koden reach level 20, it will be more than enough for them to be able to defend themselves on their own. She concluded.
Kalysto didn’t even bother to inspect the ten-foot rabbit that appeared before them, whose head rolled on the ground less than three seconds later.
[The boss of the second floor of the dungeon has been defeated!]
[You’ve gained 0 experience points!]
Another set of windows appeared before her.
[User has gained 100 experience points for participating in defeating the boss!]
[The user has acquired ‘Rabbit Horn’ as a reward and it has been added to her inventory!]
[User has acquired 3 kilos of ‘Rabbit Fur’ as a reward and it has been added to her inventory!]]
[The user has acquired ‘Rabbit Claw’ as a reward and it has been added to her inventory!]]
Ignoring the rewards she had just received, Kalysto advanced to the blue portal that opened behind the corpse of the second floor boss and advanced to the third floor.
Something similar happened with the next seven levels which she conquered in less than an hour, freezing all the monsters as soon as they reached a new floor so that the rest of them could kill them quickly and then decapitating the boss as soon as they entered their room.
I thought it would be much harder. Kalysto thought with disappointment.
Or at least it was until they reached the tenth floor.
[Warning! User has entered the tenth floor of the dungeon!]
And there they found the remains of the court mages, along with the knights of the duchy of Brincy and the kingdom of Bhallys. The blood-drenched blue and red cloaks of their respective kingdoms decorated the stone floor of the spacious cavern. While what was left of their bodies was mutilated by dozens of human skeletons armed with swords and helmets.
But that was not all.
The surrounding air changed and a powerful pressure slammed into their lungs, making it difficult for them to breathe normally as a dark energy permeated the air.
[Warning! The user has entered the room of the boss on the tenth floor of the dungeon!]
But I haven’t even moved! Kalysto was surprised.
A couple of meters further to the left of the wide torch-lit hall, facing a mountain of bones and turning his back to them in the middle of two huge stone columns, stood the dungeon boss.
A humanoid figure three and a half meters tall, broad shoulders covered by thick black armor, a helmet adorned with two horns covered his face, but his glowing red eyes met them on the spot. Four muscular arms were also well protected by armor and in each of them, he carried a powerful sword.
His glowing ruby-colored gaze rested on them and he immediately turned to face the new intruders who had dared to enter his territory.
Kalysto didn’t even need to inspect it to know that this monster was unlike any she had encountered before.
“What the hell is that thing?” She heard one of the boys ask. But she didn’t bother to answer him.
Inspect!
[Name: Alhunga
Race: Chimera (Elite)
Class: Death Knight
Level: 29
HP: 370.000/370.000
MP: 1,500/1,500
DMP: 1,000/1,000]
****
Kingdom of Desmond, south of the continent of Tanish
Tens of thousands of level one hundred twenty sea monsters, level one hundred and fifty, and level one hundred eighty approached the shore. It was their mating season, and like every year during that time, they would come to conquer that beach just at the end of the continent, lay their eggs, and use the blood of their prey to feed their hatchlings.
But they were not alone.
An army of more than a hundred thousand armed demons were waiting on a cliff, near the seashore, to subjugate them and level up.
In command of that army and seated on a beautiful black steed whose mane was made of blue fire, was Aegir Donovhar, the king of the demons and ruler of the kingdom of Desmond, the largest and most powerful of the four demonic kingdoms.