The 16th floor had been one that was clearly geared towards equipping an archer for the floor 20 boss. It had given a good mobility item and a bow that increased the power of each shot dramatically. I had been hoping that floor 17 would be more geared towards a mage, but sadly that had not been the case. The boss of the floor had dropped some shiny metal armor that was good enough on it’s own, and the weapon it had dropped had been a sword that was made of an ultra light material.

Viridium Armor Set (Epic)

A full set of armor made from viridium alloy. This armor increases strength by 10% when worn, and reduces knockback from all sources.

I had put on the metal armor since the stats it granted far outweighed the benefit of the robe I typically wore. Honestly, it had stopped being useful around level 30, as the amount of mana it could store wasn’t very high. Being able to store mana in my aura made me much less worried about how much mana I could have access to at once, making most mage robes pretty useless.

The sword I had gotten was stashed away in my aura, likely never to see the light of day again. Don’t get me wrong, it was a damn good weapon. I just didn’t see myself using it too much, as my own mana swords were already pretty damn light. Thankfully the armor I’d gotten was not the only thing I had to show for my time on this floor.

You are now level 52

You are now level 53

You are now level 54

The boss on this floor had been level 50, and the hidden boss was level 55. They had each been great for experience, and the main source of my levels. The level 50 monsters scattered across the floor had definitely been helpful, but the experience they granted just didn’t compare to that of an equally leveled boss.

The next floor was a bit different than the previous two. It was filled with far, far more traps than either of the others, and the monsters were even fewer and further between than before. My boots did well to protect me against any pressure plate activated traps, but the ones with magical sensors or trip wires still managed to catch me off guard more than once.

The boss of the floor had been a jester-like creature. It wore a typical jester like outfit, with none of its body visible under the odd attire. The boss room had been stuffed with dozens of traps, each made with the full intention of killing. I had gotten hit by a few of them, and it was pretty damn frustrating to see the jester simply dance around all the triggers like they were barely an inconvenience. The thing had finally died after I held it in the path of a flame thrower I’d intentionally triggered. The item it had left after its death made it pretty clear how it had danced around the traps.

Tricksters amulet (Epic)

Grants the wearer danger sight, making it easier to spot passive dangers in the environment.

Once more a good item, but not one that I saw helping too much against whatever I would need to be fighting on floor 20. The hidden boss gave an even more useless item. It had been level 60, so I had been hoping for something great. Sadly, it was just a worse version of what I already used.

Jesters Staff (Special)

Store up to two empowered spells for instantaneous casting. Discharging both charges at once results in a far more powerful cast of the spell. All spells channeled through this weapon are slightly cheaper to cast and slightly more powerful.

It was the discount version of my Kings staff. If I hadn’t received my current weapon, I would definitely have loved to use the jesters staff, but it was outclassed by a weapon I had a feeling most would never get the chance to obtain.

This just left floor 19 for me to deal with. The previous floors had covered almost all the basic class types one would encounter, so my best guess was that this last one would be focused on the healer class. Sure enough, when I reached the boss of the 19th floor, it was being constantly healed by a figure way, way up in the sky. The dungeon room was as tall as a skyscraper, and up at the very top was the hidden boss of the floor. It was a witch who constantly casted healing spells upon the zombie that acted as the floor’s main boss.

It had been annoying to deal with a constantly regenerating zombie. It had been extremely annoying to deal with a witch several hundred feet in the air. I had figured out that I could make a few platforms of mana stuck to the wall to climb higher, but it was costly to do. By the time I reached the witch, I was fed up with the spells that had been exploding against my mana barrier for the past several minutes. I had practically ripped the boss monster from the sky, taking it to the ground in a Hail Mary attempt to end the monster quickly.

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I had used a concussive arcane blast to counteract most of my momentum before hitting the ground, preventing me from breaking something against the hard stone floor. The witch didn’t have that luck, and had crashed against the floor at great speed, dying to an empowered cast of arcane blast. The death of this monster also finally allowed me to reach a milestone I had been waiting for.

You are now level 60

You innate skill Dimensional Duel has reached its second threshold

Dimensional Duel (2/5)

Effect 2: +5% to all stats for each opponent you fight simultaneously, up to +25%.

Well, that hadn’t been exactly what I was expecting. I had been thinking I would get a skill selection at this level, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. My innate skill had gained a new effect, though it mostly seemed related to the “duel” part of my class. Having an extra 25% to each stat would be nice, but if I was in a situation where I was fighting 5 opponents and that extra boost truly mattered, then I was already in quite deep shit.

I finally decided to check the items dropped by the monsters. The first item was a healing focus, another item to throw into my aura and forget about, but the second item made my eyes widen in excitement.

Cloak of Flight (Special)

Allows the wearer to fly through the air at the cost of their mana. Mana drained by the cloak depends on both travel speed and overall force applied.

“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” I shout. It was the dream of everybody to experience flight, and I had just been handed that chance on a silver platter. All I had to do was throw this cloak on.

Equipping the item, I immediately shot up into the air as I willed myself to move up. Mana was drained from my aura instead of my body, which was a nice bonus. Moving quickly was expensive and not particularly worth doing, but gliding around using momentum gained from my mana conversion skill was far more efficient and practical.

The next several hours were spent with me practicing gliding through the dungeon, getting used to what the feeling was like. I didn’t want to screw up against this boss and end up getting killed by accidentally impaling myself on some poor, unsuspecting spike.

After a bit of time had passed and I felt like I had a good enough grasp of what I was doing, I headed back up to the first floor to get a few things done. I wanted to be as prepared as I possibly could be, and I already had a few things in mind for how I could do that. The first was upgrading my arcane blast skill.

I had only upgraded it a few days ago, which would normally make upgrading it again look like a pipe dream. That had been quite an easy upgrade though, and I already had an idea for how I could do it again in mind. I was drawing a bit of inspiration from the bow I had picked up back on floor 16. It had an effect to split up the projectile it fired, while increasing the total power. I wanted something like that, and I had a feeling it would be extremely useful against large targets such as the raid boss.

Upon leaving the chain floors, all the items I had acquired in them vanished into thin air. It had briefly given me a heart attack, but when I went down to the 19th floor again, they reappeared within my aura. It was a bit sad that I couldn’t take them outside the floors, but I couldn’t complain too much. Having them for even a few floors was a great boon.

I spent quite a while working on my spell upgrade. The first few hours had been spent with me firing mana arrows out of the triple shot bow and watching them split. Each time I felt like I could grasp how it worked a bit better, but it was a slow learning process.

My first minor success had been after I managed to split a mana bolt into two. Each individual projectile had been reduced to less than half of the originals strength, but it was a proof of concept more than anything.

After a bit longer, I was able to split a mana bolt in two with each half being half as strong as the original. That was where I had hit a bit of a road block. How was I supposed to make the two halves stronger without adding any mana?

The answer was actually a lot simpler than I had expected. Put simply, I couldn’t. Making a spell stronger without extra mana was pretty damn difficult. Instead, as long as the two bolts of my mana were still within my aura, I could infuse extra mana into them and increase their individual power. This resulted in me being able to fire off several mana bolts at a time, splitting each of them into several weaker versions. Dozens of mana bolts, each about half as strong as a standard one flew across the landscape, leaving craters almost a meter in diameter everywhere they hit.

It was amazing how much stronger the spell was than when I had first obtained it. At level one, each cast of the spell could make a small crater in a tree when it impacted. At level 30, I could topple a tree with a single cast of the spell. Now, I could bring down a small forest with just a few casts of the spell.

I had been expecting a direct upgrade to the spell, and I had in fact gotten one. What I had also gotten was a skill entirely dedicated to duplicating a spell.

Arcane Blast (Epic) has been upgraded to Arcane Flash (Special)

Fire a bolt, blast, wall, or any other projectile of mana to strike down a foe. Attacks with this spell can be converted into a concussive blast upon impact, dealing little damage but imparting a great amount of force upon the target. Attacks with this spell can be charged for a short time to increase damage output without increasing the mana cost.

You have unlocked the skill Spell Split (Epic)

Duplicate a spell shortly after casting, dividing it into two or more parts and splitting the power of the original spell equally between its children. If the split spells are still within your aura, you can empower them with an extra infusion of mana.

You are now level 61

You are now level 62

Arcane Blast had improved quite a bit. I no longer needed to use a bolt or a blast of mana. Now just about any projectile would do. The fact that it mentioned making a wall of mana reminded me about how the King had thrown me across his throne room with his own wall of mana. According to him that had been made entirely of free form mana and had not been backed by a spell.

I was briefly reminded of the King thinking about that. I was no one level away from matching him. I still wasn’t sure if I’d win if we fought, mainly because I still didn’t really know how strong he was. At level 38, it was hard to judge the strength of anybody past level 50. They could be 20 or 50 levels higher than me, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if they simply crushed my skull before I could do anything. I did feel a bit confident in holding my own though, as I was leaps and bounds more powerful than I’d been then.

That leap in power is what made me confident enough to enter floor 20 on my own. With my new skill and spell upgrade complete, and every item possible obtained from the chain floors bosses, it was time for me to finally take on my first raid boss.