Sam was not super keen on climbing, though he could still use his Psyhands to protect himself, he couldn’t exactly see through his back so he was quite exposed regardless. But he did have a surprisingly simple backup solution for this place.

The guide stated that the exit cave ledge and the entry cave ledge he was currently on, were at the same height. That made this much easier.

[ Telekinetic Boost active; 46 / 46 seconds remaining. ]

Now that this was active, time was of the essence, he couldn’t wait a single second. Grabbing himself with all his Psyhands, deactivating his Invisibility for all his hands to be manifestable, he lifted himself forward. It felt almost like troll logic that he could, using ‘his own hands’, move himself forward in space like this but he had tested it before and for some reason, it worked. Just hinting that the Psyhands weren’t attached to him in any way.

Not knowing how long it would take to cross the distance, he moved himself as fast as he could. The only reason he could even barely see anything was the ski goggles as part of the cold-weather attire.

Suddenly jerking himself a little to the side, he managed to avoid slamming into a lithe, pale blue drake-looking creature. He didn’t get, nor take the time, to appraise it. Just moved enough to not crash into it and moved himself forward at surprisingly great speed!

His flying hadn’t gone unnoticed, the drake he barely missed let out an angry roar and started flying after him, this attention spread across to others in the area, others that Sam hadn’t even seen yet. Parts of him wished that he had yelled for them when he was on solid ground as he didn’t have the time for this now.

[ Telekinetic Boost active; 36 / 46 seconds remaining. ]

Ten seconds had already passed. Due to the blizzard, he couldn’t see any walls, ceiling or floor, he was just speed-floating in ‘that’ direction as fast as he could. He was glad that he was lifting himself faster than he could sprint. Though he was outpacing the drakes, there was a second creature in this chasm.

On the way to his, hopefully soon reached, goal, he saw something else. A series of small floating orbs of blue and white energy, surrounded by swirling snow, came into view. They weren’t easy to see in the already existing blizzard but he could barely make them out.

One of them, one he again barely managed to avoid crashing into, pulsed with pale white energy which in turn had the same energy pulse around Sam. There was no message of any Defence rating doing anything, he just got hit with whatever this was.

[ HP: 200 / 250 █████████░ ]

50 damage disappeared in a blink without any warning or chance to defend. Sam knew he had the Psyhands to retaliate, but he didn’t want to risk it at the moment, he was on a timer, after all.

Zooming ahead he did his best to avoid getting hit, and in a stroke of genius, or delayed idiocy, he realised that... With the expanded weight limit of his Psyhands during the Boost, he didn’t need to use all of them to lift him... His fully boosted capacity allowed him to lift himself six times over.

Dismissing 20 of his hands, returning 10 energy he activated his Invisibility again. This still let him lift himself about five times over, so he was more than fine. The sudden Invisibility helped a lot, it seemed that the floating orb lost track of him as he disappeared into the blizzard towards his goal.

He felt kind of dumb that he thought that he needed all his hands for this, but that’s what lack of experience gets you.

[ Telekinetic Boost active; 26 / 46 seconds remaining. ]

As the remaining time was getting shorter and shorter, his heart rate only rose. He should make it in good time but he didn’t know for a fact. Was this a dumb idea? Should he turn around and hope to land somewhere? Perhaps he should go to the sides and use his ice picks or something to at least give him a... wall... To land on?

The range of uncertainty rushed through his mind, this was a dumb idea without further testing, it felt so smart at first but now it was feeling dumber by the second. Heading seemingly straight was a good idea but with the turns to avoid enemies he wasn’t sure anymore. Had he gotten turned around?

Just as his panic was reaching its peak, he saw what looked like a proper ledge through the snow. Aiming towards it he managed to land and stop himself from sliding too much with 12 seconds remaining on his timer.

Once he was properly standing and the Boost was deactivated, he felt an immense weight lifting off his shoulders. It was a good idea, but perhaps he should have planned it better next time, this was pretty dumb as far as survival went.

Perhaps he shouldn’t mention that to Janik, or perhaps it would make a fun story to trigger his safety thoughts.

The chasm was brimming with activity, the two creatures that saw him were trying to find him again. He also wanted to get the secondary completion of the Clear objective, so he should get the enemies in range.

“HELLO!” He shouted out into the chasm. “I’m over here!” He added afterwards, making sure to move some distance to the side, into the cave behind him to be safer. As he waited for something to arrive.

He didn’t need to wait long, a drake came in and landed on the ledge, starting to sniff around for him. Now that he got a better, less stressed-for-time, look, he got the details of it better. It was small and lithe, still large enough to probably take Sam as a rider, it had pale blue scales and icicles hanging from its wings, and its eyes were glowing a cold steely blue. It looked like a tiny dragon but since its front arms were its wings, that made it a drake... right? Sam didn’t have that insight but the Appraisal listed it as a Drake at least.

[ Ice Drake

Level: 35

STR: 13

DEX: 26

VIT: 20

SPT: 0

HP: 550/550

Damage: Claw 124, Bite 186, Wing Buffet 100, Ice Breath 50.

Defence: 50

Abilities: HP Boon, Dex dmg boon, Ice Breath, Wing Buffet. ]

[ Ice Breath: Breathes out a conical area of ice and cold damage. ]

[ Wing Buffet: A powerful flap of the wings creates a strong pulse of wind that can knock a target back or down. ]

Sam winced at the thought of fighting these while climbing. The damage was pretty bad considering that you would be somewhat helpless on the wall. It didn’t have any elemental resistance, few things besides bosses did, so Sam was seeing the extreme value that mage classes and elemental damage could have.

In the current case, the Drake wasn’t in a good position. It didn’t know where Sam was and it didn’t have any Elemental Resistance going on. Sam had dedicated 10 Energy to his Invisibility, but he still had enough Energy for his 13 best weapons to be used.

He manifested the hands, called out the weapons and swung at the helpless creature. Even after calculating its Defence rating, the total damage was in the low 900s, it didn’t have a chance at all and died instantly.

The sudden metaphorical explosion of blood and gore from this creature brought interest and uncertainty to the others. On one hand, they seemed cannibalistic as two more landed and just dug in. A few of the flying orbs also came over to investigate. But on the other hand, others seemed to realize there was something afoot and kept their distance.

[ Blizzard Wisp

Level: 30

STR: 3

DEX: 5

VIT: 16

SPT: 19

HP: 255 / 255

Damage: Blizzard Surge 50, Mana Drain 0

Defence: 0

Abilities: HP Boon, Blizzard Surge, Mana Drain. ]

[ Blizzard Surge: A burst of freezing winds damages and disorients targets. ]

[ Mana Drain: Absorb mana from nearby magic users. ]

Blizzard surge was bad, but Mana Drain was useless against Sam, he didn’t have any mana by class design so he was good. They also didn’t have any defences, physical or elemental.

Targeting the ones further away, though they were in the air over the chasm, meaning getting their cores wouldn’t be possible, Sam was more interested in getting them ticked off the Completion List.

Splitting up his weapons into two groups was more than enough to take care of the Wisps, and the overlapping damage from the Static Charge handled the remaining damage for the Drakes.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

As the flying targets fell one after another, trying to leave before they became the new targets Sam’s weapons were faster than them and all targets within range were handled soon enough. The ones on the ledge started flying off as electrical pulses spread across the nearby area, but they became the next targets instead.

Also being close enough for overlapping of Static Charge the entire group fell fast enough, a few volleys spread out across the lot handled everything in only a few seconds. He felt almost sympathetic for the total one-sidedness of it all, but they were just Dungeon monsters, and they’d do the same to him.

[ Dungeon clear conditions:

Kill the Glacial Leviathan: 0/1

Optional: Kill all monsters

Monsters: 26/50 ]

He didn’t get all the cores, as several of them went into the chasm, but he got a total of five cores between the 9 Drakes and Wisps. The Wisps were almost all core after their energies faded when they died.

Feeling surprisingly good about this, though he used two-thirds of his Boost, he couldn’t say that he would have done so well if he had climbed normally, so it was worth it.

Before leaving, he wanted to get his health back up. Standing still with his legs shoulder-length apart, he focused on his breathing and relaxed.

[ Vital Recovery activated, regenerating health. ]

A skill he got in the red-dotted room he spent so much time in. It had a very low use chance in combat as it needed him to be relaxed and focus on his breathing, it trickled slowly as well so it wasn’t as good as a potion. Even though it was a B-rank skill, it only healed a health a second when he hit the breathing properly, if he lost focus it was slower. Though taking a few minutes let him fill that pool back up, lifting his HP back to full.

Once that was done, he stopped focusing on his breathing and relaxed, deactivating the skill, before turning around and leaving into the cave opening properly, following its hallway he headed into the next zone.

Having already read through the guide for this Dungeon on the helicopter, he knew what lay in store for him. Having well-written and tested guides made things like these surprisingly trivial. The coming area was defined as The Ascent. He was to go up a spiralling path with a few rooms on the way. Within the rooms he had to move some mirrors to bend the light the correct way, bringing a light source from below to the top.

Angling these correctly could become a problem, especially when attacked, but the guide material explained where to aim the beam of light for it to work out in the end even if it looked weird at first, removing the need to backtrack. The main issue in aiming these is that the ice is surprisingly clear and mirrored at the same time, making it somewhat disorienting when aiming. But like any gamer who has farmed a dungeon to death, they had perfect descriptions with pictures and everything... It almost took the fun out of it.

The only main issue was the guardians, the Chillbound Sentinels, animated constructs of ice and stone which would get in the way. But, he would have to handle that when he got in there, all in all, it shouldn’t be a massive problem as his invisible tactic was still working fine.

Coming into a massive circular hall, he was at the bottom of what looked like a tower. Looking up he could see the height disappear in the mist within the room. The blizzard wasn’t as present in here but it wasn’t entirely free from it either. A path along the walls corkscrewed upwards leaving the massive opening within. The whole thing was easily a football field in diameter, making the path up there quite... problematic.

This was also the final area before the boss, and the boss was a solo monster without any extras, this meant that the spiralling path upwards would have up to 24 Golems. Not counting any possible missed targets on the way here.

Sam sighed, he had gotten here in record time, he had the Guide and some cheating to thank for that. According to the time on his phone, he had still been at this for two hours, and going up this without stopping would take... a bit...

Walking towards the start of the winding path he saw a few Golems on the way, they were almost part of the walls, but they were spaced far between so hopefully would only be one at a time. And as expected, once he got close enough the Golem pulled itself out of the wall in a dramatic scene with ice shattering and snow falling off. It was towering in height, easily three times Sam’s height. They were wide and roughly humanoid in make, constructed out of ice and stone. Glowing sigils or runes were carved across the surface of their bodies.

[ Chillbound Sentinel

Level: 40

STR: 30

DEX: 4

VIT: 30

SPT: 0

HP: 1600 / 1600

Damage: Frozen Slam 350, Sentinel’s Gaze 54

Defence: 100

Abilities: HP Boon, STR boon, Frozen Slam, Sentinel’s Gaze. ]

[ Frozen Slam: Slam the ground with frost shockwaves. ]

[ Sentinel’s Gaze: Fire a concentrated frost-beam at range. ]

Sam was the most uncertain about the beam. It didn’t do that much damage but if it was an elemental thing he didn’t have a defence against it either. But, he was invisible so he should be fine.

Just as he thought this, considering his Invisibility a haven, the Golem’s face snapped towards him and a bright white beam shot out from his eyes, gathering into a single beam a step or so away from its face. The beam hit Sam before he could react.

The ice chill crept through his body like someone poured ice water across it in mid-winter.

[ HP: 196 / 250 █████████░ ]

Sam did his best to avoid getting hit again, deactivating Invisibility he called on all his Psyhands and weapons. His 33 weapons were sent forward and all landed true, Static Charge pulsed, and though no weapon triggers were activated everything else did its thing. A total of 1192 damage was dealt, but 100 was Defended against.

It was still standing.

Sam pulled his weapons around for another volley as the Golem slammed into the ground. There was considerable distance between them, so the slam didn’t hit... Something Sam was very glad for, as even with his Defence he would have had no chance against this. However, it did lift enough ice and debris to pepper him with chunks of ice. Luckily heer as well his Defence could handle that.

The second volley handled the rest of the Golem’s health, having it stop moving and just fall over like an articulated statue. A heavy thud sent an echo through the whole place for several seconds before it died down. Considering the snow which normally pad echoes surprisingly well, there was plenty of ice and bare stone walls to carry it.

This seemed to wake up other golems further up the path, having Sam curse internally. Taking a moment to focus on his breathing he got his health back up to full again before he took a moment to analyse the situation as he dug into the golem’s body for its core.

The golem saw him, it aimed straight at him even when Invisible. But there was no such skill on its list, did it just have a massively good perception? Did it smell or sense it through something like a natural skill? Dia’s sense of hearing and smell was listed as improved perception so... shouldn’t that be the case here as well?

Deciding to do some tests for the next Golem, he needed to find out how this worked. Like with the others, he could confuse it with fake steps, using some of his hands to simulate walking around. He could already see another golem in front of the first side room, so he might as well use that as a test.

Reactivating Invisibility, he stored his weapons and continued onwards. He used several hand pairs to simulate steps in the snow, making sure they were far ahead of where he was going so the ‘fake people’ would arrive before him. The Golem, like the one before, suddenly snapped to the side and looked at the incoming invisible people, picked one of them and attacked his hands with the ice beam.

Sam had to hold in his little triumphant noise, it seemed that he realised the trick... Footsteps in the snow, it was that simple. And it felt almost moronic that he didn’t consider it properly before. The only reason this worked fine outside was that he kept a longer distance to the targets, and the targets were somewhat the same in height, as far as perception went. They didn’t get the massive top-down look as the Golems, so they couldn’t see footsteps as easily.

On the Glacier, there was so much wind that there wasn’t that much snow to even have footsteps in, and in the chasm, he was floating, once he landed it was the same thing with winds, snow storms and chaos to hide his footsteps.

In here, though snow and moving air, it’s much calmer comparably. So the snow had settled, letting the Golem spot where the footsteps were and guestimate a target. It was almost too simple...

Stepping closer the Golem delivered a massive slam, hitting all the fake people at the same time. It was a good tactic and would have murdered Sam entirely. Even with his armour, he’d take around 300 damage, more than he had to go on... So this was a horrifying enemy in that way.

However, the Golem didn’t know where Sam was, but Sam knew where it was. This was going to be an easier fight.