Thanks to her domain’s range, she was able to see what she thought was the end of the dungeon. As far as she could tell, the dungeon was only 6 floors deep and there was some sort of larger creature at the end. Something that looked like a dungeon boss. Unless the 'boss' gave her more trouble than she was expecting, she thought she could be finished with the dungeon within a week.
No matter how quickly she finished a floor, she decided that she would only do one floor per day maximum. There was no benefit in overextending herself. She was leveling quickly, and she was going to need time for her body and mind to adjust to her new attributes each day. She knew that the first day would be the worst, she had gained 16 levels in one day, and that resulted in some pretty drastic changes since 16 levels was over 50 percent of her original level.
Waking up the next morning Kelsey packed up her camp and unraveled the telekinetic wall she made in order to let Owen enter the room. “Come on in. I’m just finishing up the packing right now.”
“Thanks. Hey, there is going to be a change of plans. This dungeon isn’t going to last you a month and a half, so we needed to figure out what we were going to do afterwards.” Owen said seriously.
“Yeah, I realized that last night... I decided I would take it one floor per day to not overextend myself.”
“Good idea.” Owen agreed. He paused for several seconds, looking at Kelsey thoughtfully. "So, listen, there's something that I need to ask you.
Kelsey could tell that whatever he was about to say was extremely important to him.
“What’s going on, Owen?” she asked, starting to feel nervous.
Owen cleared his throat. "How would you feel about a long-term partnership after you are finished clearing the dungeon?"
Kelsey's eyes opened wide in surprise, “What do you mean partnership? As in, forming a party?”
“Yes, exactly. Do you remember when Lisa told you that we had slowed down in our advancement after one of our friends were killed?” He asked.
Kelsey nodded. "I didn't want to ask about it at the time, but yes, I remember."
"Well, the truth is that we stopped leveling and advancing completely after that happened. Lisa and I have stalled... We want to change that, and we can think of no one we'd rather journey beside than you." Owen said seriously. "We stopped fighting out of fear of losing one another, but we both know that if we don't get back to it soon, we'll eventually die from old age and lose each other anyway. You have a passion for fighting and advancing that both of us used to have; we want that passion back."
Kelsey considered his offer carefully for several seconds. On one hand, she was incredibly flattered. On the other, she wasn't all too interested in fighting with a group, at least not for the purposes of leveling. She had come to love the joy and accomplishment she felt when fighting, and killing, a strong monster by herself. She wasn't sure she wanted to lose that.
There was also the fact that Owen and Lisa knew an absolute ton about monsters and the world itself. They were both excellent teachers. There would be no better people for her to travel with during this stage of her life... But no... She simply couldn't give up on her desire to fight alone. She wouldn't mind fighting with people occasionally, but she would lose her mind if she had to do it all the time.
Kelsey didn't want to, but she answered him apologetically. “I have to say no, I'm sorry... I would love to go out traveling and adventuring with the two of you, but I'm going to be focused entirely on leveling up for a while, and I really like fighting monsters alone... I really am sorry."
She had expected Owen to be a bit more disappointed by her rejection, but he looked at her and smiled, only a bit of disappointment in his eyes.
"It's fine. Being in a party doesn't necessarily mean we will always fight together. What it means is that we'll support one another, be there to watch each other's backs, and spend our nights eating and drinking together after a long day of fighting. Lisa and I are more... dependent on one another than most, but our... previous party member fought a lot like you." Owen said before pausing briefly, working up the nerve to talk about his lost companion.
Once he was ready, he continued. "We would enter a dungeon, set up a base camp, and then go our separate ways for the day. We traveled together, took contracts together, but we very infrequently leveled together. The only times we would really even fight together were when it was for a contract, or against a particularly difficult monster. We never actually told you how he died, but it wasn't in a dungeon, or even to a monster. The truth is, we were attacked by a group of bandits near the southern border while we were on our way to a new dungeon... He was killed in his sleep; a knife to the throat... he never had a chance to defend himself."
Owen closed his eyes and breathed in deeply for a few seconds. Kelsey wanted to comfort him, but she had no idea what to say, so she simply stayed quiet.
He opened his eyes and nodded. "A lot of parties across Anoura do their advancement and training separately from one another. Leveling takes significantly longer in a group, and if you're fighting monsters around your level, it's possible to fight them alone pretty easily and level much more quickly than teaming up and fighting against monsters slightly higher leveled. In short... We want you to join our party exactly the way our previous member did. You can go out and level alone, but at the end of the day, we're a team, and we'll always have each other's backs." Owen finished confidently.
Kelsey's eyes smiled excitedly. That sounded perfect.
“That sounds great... When I was stuck out in the Mageblood forest, I loved my days spent hunting monsters, practicing magic, and cooking, but there was nothing worse than finishing all of that and then being forced to spend a few hours sitting silently in a tree with nothing to do but think. I'd love to have some people to relax with after a day like that.” She said honestly. "I would love to join your party."
Owen grinned happily. “Good. Well, in that case, we'll need to make a stop at Whitebranch before heading out. I think you said you wanted to go to The Trial. Is that still your plan?
Kelsey smiled. "Yeah, Thadius' wife, Claire, told me about it, and I really want to see it for myself."
Owen nodded. "It is one of the best places to advance in the entirety of Anoura, or at least I've heard. I've never been there myself, but I'm also quite excited to see it."
"Sweet. So, what's your party's name?" Kelsey asked.
Owen's face flushed with red hot embarrassment as Kelsey asked the question. "I will tell you, but remember, we were younger when we came up with the name. We were all up and coming Classers who were expected to reach Platinum in just a few years. Our name is... 'Shock and Awe'... I was the shock." he said, a small bolt of lightning jumping between his fingers. "Lisa and Isaac were the awe..."
Kelsey giggled softly at his embarrassment. "Yeah... that's not the best name, but it'll do." she said, smiling widely.
"We'll figure out a different name now that you're joining us, it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep it. Brainstorm on some ideas, maybe you can think of something catchy." he said before turning around and walking towards the door.
"We’re going to wait outside for you to get to the boss. Once you do, come get us, we both want to see you fight it. I checked it out last night, it should be a fun one.” he said.
“Oh, you aren’t going to come with me?” Kelsey asked, feeling a bit dejected.
“You don’t need my guidance, so Lisa and I will just take this time to get some rest and relaxation. Also, it would be good to get used to camping inside of a dungeon, but honestly, if you just want to set up camp with us outside, that would be fine. Thanks to your creation stuff, camping in the dungeon isn’t even really a challenge for you.”
“Great, I’ll do that. See you in a few hours after I finish clearing the second floor.”
Owen barked out a sharp laugh. “Yeah, a few hours to clear the entire second floor of The Bunker. That sounds about right.”
He noticed that Kelsey was looking a bit embarrassed at his laugh, so he tried to smooth things over. “No. Sorry. I’m not laughing at you. You will definitely clear in a few hours. I just can’t believe that I’m talking with someone in their mid-level 40s that can say something like that and be right about it.”
Kelsey simply gave him a short nod and made her way down to the second floor.
I hate getting all this praise... it's not like I'm more talented than them. I just got lucky... I bet if they had a Mageblood body they'd blow past me in no time. They have more experience and are probably significantly more talented too. I feel... guilty that I'm passing them with such little effort. It just isn't fair...
Pushing those thoughts out of her mind, Kelsey got to work clearing The Bunker.
The next six days were an interesting adventure for Kelsey. True to her word; she cleared one floor per day until she made it to the boss on the final floor. Each floor had its own challenges, but unlike dungeons for most people, The Bunker just got progressively easier for her as she descended. The difference in level between creatures on the first floor, and the sixth floor was only about 15 levels, which meant that her hardest floor was the first one. But they were different monsters on each floor which at least kept things interesting.
The second floor was home to a strange species of Lizardmen who used acidic spit and spears to attack. They were problematic when she first began fighting them as any acid that landed on her and burned through her Telekinetic Armory would be stuck inside her armor when it automatically regenerated a few moments later. She wasn’t able to mentally exclude the acid all together, because then the Lizardmen would be able to hurt her with it every time. No, she had to learn to exclude the acid on just one part of her armor in order to let it be siphoned away from her skin by her Telekinesis. Once she figured out that trick, completing the rest of the floor was relatively simple. She spent most of the time using telekinetic spears at range, and her saber in melee distance.
The third floor was home to a species of Ratfolk that had access to light magic. Besides their magic, they used their claws and teeth to attack like normal rats. They were able to use their light magic to create something akin to a flash bomb which disoriented and stunned Kelsey for several seconds. Before regaining control, the rats were able to do quite a lot of damage. She was still able to see with her domain, but the light caused her to feel disoriented and dizzy, which made fighting them, even with her domain nearly impossible. The first fight against the rats was the closest she came to dying. She had about 35 percent of her health left, and she hadn’t needed to activate her regeneration, but it was certainly a wakeup call for her to start being more careful. That was also the fight where she learned that Mageblood Regeneration had the ability to regrow appendages. She lost her left thumb to one of the rats when she was stunned by the light. Thankfully it grew back, nail and all, before the fight was over.
The fourth floor was perhaps the least straightforward. The monsters that inhabited it were sets of reanimated armor and weapons. They didn’t have any special tricks, nor were they particularly dangerous. What they were, was hard to kill. It took her over 15 minutes to secure her first kill against a single one of the reanimated armors. In order to properly kill one she had to dismantle it and remove the core from the breastplate before it could reform itself. After figuring out the method, clearing the rest of floor four still took over six hours. Thankfully, she didn’t even have to go around to each corpse to loot the cores after finishing the floor since she had already done it in order to kill them, which was a nice change of pace.
Floor five almost made her give up and head back to Whitebranch. It was the floor she had been dreading since she scouted it with her domain 4 days before. The monsters that inhabited the fifth floor were spiders. Giant spiders. The entire floor was covered, floor to ceiling, in thick sticky webs. Thankfully though, the actual process of clearing the fifth floor was simple. She simply dumped as much mana into her attacks as possible. By the time she reached the fifth floor, Kelsey had leveled up several more times and decided to see just how far she could push her magic. Instead of making daggers, spears, or blades, she created giant flat walls and dumped thousands of mana into crushing the spiders with them. This worked surprisingly well, and she cleared the fifth floor in under 3 hours. It took slightly longer due to the ridiculous mana consumption of her attacks. She had to spend over half of that time in Meditation. It also had a serious drawback of leaving her with a terrible migraine after finishing her spider extermination. The concentration required to maintain the integrity of the massive walls was straining to say the least.
Floor six was simply the easiest floor for Kelsey to complete. The floor was filled with Minotaurs that controlled the fire element and wielded axes. They were slow and dumb humanoids. Killing monsters like them was her speciality. Killing each one was as simple as creating four bladed rings around each Minotaur and compressing them. None of them even saw their murderer. Clearing the sixth floor and making it to the boss’s room took less than half an hour and she wasn’t even tired.
After gathering the cores from the Minotaurs on floor six, Kelsey sat down and looked through some of the important notifications from the last few days, distributed her points, and then checked her skill levels.
*ding* You have defeated a [Acidic Lizardfolk - lvl 62].
*ding* You have defeated a [Acidic Lizardfolk - lvl 63].
*ding* You have defeated a [Acidic Lizardfolk - lvl 59].
....
*ding* You have defeated a [Flame Minotaur - lvl 68].
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*ding* You have defeated a [Flame Minotaur - lvl 71].
*ding* You have learned the general skill Acid Resistance - lvl 1
*ding* Acid Resistance has reached lvl 1 -> 5
*ding* Mageblood Arcanist has reached level 44 -> 56 - 120 free stat points have been awarded!
Kelsey now had over 7,000 health and stamina and a staggering 13,500 mana to use. Her Intelligence and Wisdom attributes had both passed 1,300. She was now more than twice as fast, and strong as she was just 6 short days ago.
After checking her status screen, she looked through her domain, which had now grown large enough for her to see Lisa and Owen sitting around the campsite from all the way down on the sixth floor. Activating Teleport, she appeared just inside the entrance to The Bunker and walked out into the morning sun. “Hey guys, I’m back.” she said sitting down on a log across from Lisa.
“Wow, that was quick. You already finished the Minotaur floor?” Owen asked exasperatedly.
“I was their perfect counter. Took me less than half an hour. Honestly it was quite disappointing. I did get 112 Flame Minotaur cores for my trouble though.” she said as she tossed one towards Owen.
“You wanna fight the boss today, or wait till tomorrow? I know your leveling has slowed down. You don’t need to adjust today do you?” He asked as he caught the core.
“Today ideally. I’d like to move on to something a bit more challenging.”
“Okay that's fine. Be warned. The boss may be harder than you think. A dungeon boss spawns at the lowest point in a dungeon after all the other monsters have been populated. They usually start out the same as whatever the default enemy of the floor is, but there's a catch. The mana for the dungeon has to go somewhere when the rest of the floors are full. A dungeon boss is the solution for that problem, that means that all the excess mana has been pouring into that creature since the last time someone cleared the dungeon.” Owen said seriously
“We don’t know when the last time The Bunker was cleared, so that boss could be past level 100 if it’s been long enough.” Lisa added. “You are still technically under our mentorship, so we will stay back while you engage with it. If we feel that the boss is too strong, we will not hesitate to pull you out.”
“Understood. I’ll play it safe.” She lied. Not a chance in hell. They better not pull me out.
Not wasting any time, the trio made their way down the six floors of the dungeon until they were standing in front of a large pair of stone doors. The bottom floor of The Bunker seemed to be a hideout for the King of whatever nation used this bunker during the War. Behind the large stone doors was the throne room. The minotaurs were the dungeon representations of the guards that were stationed in the command center room in front of the Throne room.
“Okay, go whenever, Owen and I are going to wait on the other side of the room. Good luck Kel.”
Steeling herself for what she knew was on the other side of the door, Kelsey used her Telekinesis to push the stone doors open. The hinges on the door had worn over time and the stone scrapped the ground beneath creating a horrible screeching noise as the doors opened.
The room she entered was very clearly some kind of throne room. There were six pillars, three on each side that lined a path that led to an ornate gilded throne sitting atop a small pedestal. The walls were covered in giant faded murals that depicted historical battle scenes of some sort.
Standing in the middle of the room was a Minotaur that stood at least four and a half meters tall. The Flame Minotaurs that she had killed just a few minutes ago had all been less than three meters tall.
Compared to this thing, those minotaurs may as well have been children.
Sitting atop the Minotaur's head was an ornate golden crown adorned with precious gemstones. In its hands was a large silver greataxe with blades larger than Kelsey’s chest. It was also wearing an ornate bracer on its right arm that covered all the way past its elbow.
She quickly identified the boss and was floored by what she saw.
[Crowned Minotaur - lvl XXX]
Three ticks... It's over level 100… that's a Gold ranked monster.
She confirmed while on her way to the dungeon that the number of ticks after a monster’s level indicated tier, not digits in a level. Theoretically, a level 250 monster would have four ticks. Similarly to humans, monsters have large power spikes at levels 25, 100, and 250.
Well, I have got to see what this thing is made of. Owen and Lisa may not even be safe pulling me out of this fight if things go badly.
Kelsey knew it was probably a bad idea to engage this monster, but she couldn’t help herself, she was excited. The past week had been so disappointing to Kelsey. Her first dungeon amounted to a few hours of interesting fighting and five days of reading and waiting impatiently for the next day. This boss had the opportunity to change that.
Activating her buffs, Kelsey started slow, testing the Minotaur to see how it reacted. Seeing that the Minotaur was standing in the direct center of the room, the first thing she did was teleport behind it to the opposite side of the room. Unfortunately for her, it whipped its head around instantly and locked eyes with her before letting out a deafening roar.
Okay, so it can follow my teleports pretty easily, good to know.
Creating a few dozen telekinetic spears, she launched them at the minotaur in waves, testing its durability and reaction time. Things were not ideal on this front either. It was able to use the flat of the blades on the greataxe to block a truly staggering number of the spears, as it moved the axe faster than Kelsey felt should be possible for something its size. The topic of durability was even worse for Kelsey, as the very few spears that did slam into the Minotaur only sank a few centimeters in, not even getting all the way through its hide before they dispersed back into mana.
She continued to launch projectiles at the Minotaur, baiting it to do anything except stand there and block or absorb her attacks. She had a plan to make this fight stand on more even footing, but it was too risky to attempt without knowing what the Crowned Minotaur was capable of.
So, to that end, she stopped moving, and stopped creating and launching projectiles and did what she did best. Throw mana at the problem. Using her domain, she began creating a giant telekinetic blade behind the minotaur that she planned to launch into the back of its neck. Unfortunately, the moment she began creating the blade, the minotaur reacted and whipped the greataxe directly at Kelsey.
She almost didn’t react in time to the 4 meter tall greataxe made of solid steel flying through the air on a collision course with her head, but thankfully she was able to dodge out of the way just in time. Thinking she found her opportunity, she used her Telekinesis to launch herself towards the greataxe, but as she approached it, the axe vanished.
It took her a moment to comprehend what had just happened. As she looked back at the Minotaur, she saw the axe resting in its hands once again. That axe has a spatial enchantment on it. She spent a few moments studying the Minotaur’s clothing and gear more closely and she realized what was happening. The bracer. It is linked to the axe. If I want to get the axe away from it, I’ll have to get the bracer away first.
She had an idea, but it was risky. I don’t think I have any other options. I have to take a risk if I want any chance at winning this fight.
Putting her plan into action she began creating a barrage of projectiles while teleporting around the room. She never stood still for more than a few moments. Then, just like in the fight against the Dhampirs, she fell into a cycle. Once she felt that she might have an opportunity she would stop creating small projectiles and pour mana into a larger attack in the hopes of piercing the Minotaur's thick hide. Then once it threw the axe she would dodge and attempt to store it in her Vault. All the while she was paying very close attention to what the Minotaur did after the axe was thrown. She continued following this cycle for what felt like hours until she felt comfortable enough to attempt to steal her true target, the bracer itself.
By this point in the fight she could tell she was getting incredibly low on stamina as she had to move constantly in order to not become a target for the greataxe. She knew that if she wanted this plan to work, she would need to act now.
Feeling as ready as she thought she could be, she began the cycle one more time. She started with a barrage of smaller spears and daggers in order to maintain pressure. Then a few minutes later, once she was in the right position, she stopped moving, stopped her barrage, and began pouring mana into a larger attack. Then, at the moment she saw the axe leave the minotaurs hand, she used her Teleport to appear on the right side of the minotaur and reached out her hand to touch the bracer. The bracer vanished off the Minotaurs arm as Kelsey spent several thousand mana to store the enchanted item.
Unfortunately, the Minotaur reacted more quickly than Kelsey expected and it rotated at its waist and slammed its left hand fist into her chest. She immediately felt every single one of her ribs break as well as her spine. Even with her Pain Tolerance skill at level 15, the pain was blinding. She instinctively activated Mageblood Regeneration and dumped as much mana into the skill as possible.
Then, she hit a wall.
During her very brief flight she managed to regenerate a few hundred health. That quick thinking may have saved her life because when she slammed into the wall a crater roughly 20 meters in diameter was created and the whole room shook from the force of the impact. Nearly every bone in her body was broken from her head down to her feet. She could feel that she had at least a few punctured organs. She didn’t have time to check her status, but she knew she must be very close to death.
Thankfully, she was still alive and importantly, conscious. She could see in her domain that the Minotaur was ignoring her for the moment and was making its way towards the discarded greataxe. That gave her an opportunity to heal.
She also saw Owen and Lisa begin to make their move to pull her out. Not going to happen. She briefly stopped her regeneration to create a small wall in front of them, a message that said she wasn’t ready to give up yet. She could tell by their reactions that they clearly didn’t like her choice, but they accepted it and didn’t move any closer.
She reactivated her regeneration and funneled the healing towards her spine, legs, and chest so she would be able to move when the Minotaur finally retrieved its axe. The room was quite large and Minotaur was very slow, so she knew that she had time to heal herself. Hopefully it was enough to pull herself out of the crater in the wall too.
The next 25 seconds of Kelsey’s life were pure agony. As her regeneration worked, she could feel the vertebrae in her spine realigning and snapping into place. She could feel every nerve ending reconnect as the pain from her entire body registered in her brain all at once. She gritted her teeth focusing all her energy on just staying conscious and keeping her regeneration active. Eventually her spine was completely healed and she refocused her regeneration into her legs which were barely more than mangled slabs of meat by this point. A few seconds, and a several barely contained screams later, she was able to move on to the worst part of her body; her chest.
She knew that with how hard she was hit by that Minotaur, and how hard she impacted the wall, the bones in her chest were likely no more than shards and splinters.
The moment she began focusing her regeneration on her chest area, she couldn’t stop herself, she screamed at the top of her lungs and blacked out for just a moment. The pain was so intense that it eclipsed every other feeling of fear, excitement, or anticipation she felt about fighting the minotaur. Seven agonizing seconds later, her chest was repaired and she would be able to walk if needed. But thankfully, she didn’t have to. The Minotaur had just retrieved its greataxe and was moving towards Kelsey at a full sprint, which for the Minotaur meant that Kelsey had another ten seconds of risk-free healing to complete.
She used that time to send undirected healing into her body. This extra time was crucial because it meant that she was mostly healed by the time the Minotaur arrived in front of her axe at the ready.
Now, it's time for phase two.
Pulling herself from the person-shaped crater in the wall, she teleported across the room to where the Minotaur had just come from and waited. The Minotaur immediately saw her and began charging again. Kelsey just smirked. Now it's my turn.
Now that the Minotaur couldn’t throw the axe without losing it, she lured the Minotaur back into the middle of the room and began the cycle anew. Once she was in position once again, she stopped moving and poured mana into the giant blade that she felt was becoming something of a signature move for her. Except this time, the Minotaur didn’t throw its axe. Instead, it attempted to dodge.
That was a mistake.
The Minotaur was so physically large, that when it moved, it had several tons of momentum and was unable to stop that momentum quickly or easily. That made it trivial for Kelsey to predict, and abuse.
The instant the Minotaur began dodging out of the way of her first created blade, she stopped funneling mana into it, letting it disappear, and instead created a horizontal blade in the path of the Minotaur at waist level. There was no way it could dodge, nor could it stop its own momentum. So, it did the next best thing. It used the greataxe to try to block the spatial blade.
Sadly, for the Minotaur, Kelsey had poured over 7,000 mana into that blade and it cut clean through the shaft of the greataxe before losing enough energy to dissipate against the Minotaur’s hide. Kelsey smiled. How are you going to defend now?
Kelsey was incredibly low on mana, so she did the only thing she could do, stall. The Minotaur still technically had the axe in hand, it was just now a much shorter handaxe that was much too top heavy to wield with any kind of precision. She was still worried about the Minotaur throwing it at her however, so she continued moving around the room to avoid that potential outcome.
A couple minutes later, Kelsey’s mana was back nearly at full and she was ready to go on the offensive.
The Minotaur was currently locked in the center of the room thanks to Kelsey’s ability to teleport around and force it to continuously try to approach her. That's exactly where she needed it to be. Dropping all pretenses of defense or self preservation, she began creating 3 massive crescent blades around the Minotaur. She positioned them in a horizontal triangle around it so that the only option the Minotaur would have was to throw the broken axe at Kelsey to make her stop channeling mana into her creations. Thankfully it worked, after a brief moment of indecision it threw its arm back and launched the axe at her as fast as it could. But, she was prepared. Without stopping her blade creation she took one small step to the left and let the axe soar past her head, the wind from its passing pushing her hair away.
The same moment the sound from the axe crashing into the wall behind her reached her ears, she squeezed her fist tight, causing the newly created blades to sink into the Minotaurs hide. Having spent over 6,000 mana between the three blades, she had expected the blades to leave moderate wounds in its flesh. She was wrong. Once the blades dispersed, she inspected the minotaur's wounds with her domain and saw that its arms were barely hanging on. They had been cut so deeply that the muscles in the arms were no longer connected to the shoulders and its arms were hanging uselessly by its side.
It was at this moment Kelsey knew that she had won. Deciding to end the fight with a flourish, she poured the rest of her 7,500 mana into one final attack. Four telekinetic bladed rings surrounded the Minotaur and with a wave of her hand they all compressed at once, slicing the Minotaur into pieces.
*ding* You have defeated a [Crowned Minotaur - lvl 117].