The zones weren't concentric like other open Dungeon layouts such as Rafflesia's. Nero still didn't understand what kind of sorcery made that Dungeon have all paths lead to the boss area without being spherical. He wasn't sure whether it was spherical or not but he wouldn't argue with his sister about Dungeon geometry. Maybe some scholar at the lyceum knew. Maybe Holmes knew if he wasn't too bush being a conspiracy asshole. And dying. It was the dying part that sucked the most.
The first area was a donut, but it reached the edge of the Dungeon. The next zone had a crescent shape and the other three after that were the same. There was the lake at the edge with a small peninsula where Tyre waited for challengers.
Nero stuck to the division between the sea of grass and the acacia glade, sniping both lionesses and leopards alike. For the lightning bastards, he would make sure he had ample room to retreat into the grass and then sniped it. They usually didn't die on the first shot and rampaged, throwing bolts of lightning everywhere. Fortunately it discharged too fast and the grass catching on fire wasn't much of a concern. Two days later, he put a good enough dent on the Lightning Leopards and moved into the next zone.
Rocks and boulders dotted the landscape, with patches and stretches of grass between them. The rocks felt warm and the monsters for this zone lazed around, basking in the heat. Nero switched back to [Archer] as this monster was one compatible with his abilities. Following the silly naming pattern, he dubbed it the "Lazy Lava Lynx". Fire-aligned monsters, the lazy lava lynx could spit balls of hot magma that exploded on contact, sending a hail of sharp shrapnel shredding everything. He might be alliterating too much. But they were weak to cold, Nero reckoned with a grin. He aimed at the nearest cat and charged [Piercing Shot] with fifteen stacks of [Empower Attack].
The lynx popped with a burst of magma and its innards petrified as the cold neutralized the heat. Then it dissolved into white motes of light, leaving a crystal to roll down the boulder and fall on the grass along with a card that didn't roll because it wasn't meant to.
It was expensive but compared to the other fights in this Dungeon, it was a walk in the park. These guys really deserved the moniker. Lazy lava lynxes didn't even bother when another of their kind died right next to them. Nero's growing Perception also meant a huge range for his rifle. He was sure he could hit a target a mile away if he tried.
And why not try it? He had the materials for a tower right there, and he intended to break this Dungeon, farming Tyre until he was a sore gray-grade boss. It would be slow but the rewards were great. Nero shaped stone, faster than ever and made a tower out of the boulders in the lynx zone. Forty feet high before he ran out of material within easy reach. He climbed the stone ladder he grafted outside and surveyed.
He could see the few lynxes remaining, the leopards, and the lionesses. On the other side, the crystal-clear waters of the crescent lake could very well hide some sort of catfish monster. Nero snorted out a chuckle. if it was a fish, it had to be a catfish, didn't it?
He contained his mirth and searched for his target. There he was. Prince shame, the Dungeon boss. Nero was doing the former man a favor and wiping out his name from memory. He would be forever dubbed "Lame Shame Lion" now. Nero shifted some stone into a brace for his rifle and took aim. Would fifty stages of [Empower Attack] be enough?
Only one way to find.
A Dungeon boss had to follow some rules. The lame lion couldn't leave his zone, and while Nero was sure he held some of his consciousness, he wasn't aware of the stone tower right in front of him. It led him to believe the Dungeon played with the boss's mind, clouding his perceptions, or maybe doing some kind of illusion only the boss could see. It would break once Nero pulled the trigger, but he hoped it would be enough.
He waited patiently for the best moment. The lion monster was about five hundred yards away and Nero couldn't afford to miss. The boss moved around and exposed his weak spot. Nero took the shot. A burst of ice followed by the usual lightning discharge blew the monster's groin and he fell to the ground shouting his indignation.
"Why the balls!"
Nero snickered and showered him with summoned metal. He shot even while the body twitched and dissolved. He cleared the other monsters in the zone and went down to collect his prizes. Another [Egress] card, three purple Skills plus some trash from the lynxes. As if Essence crystals worth more than twenty thousand were trash. The boss' level dropped from eighty-five to seventy-eight. Nero used the [Egress] card and kept on farming.
> [King of the Pride] - purple Skill. Requires level 70. Charisma +200.
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> +10 Vigor
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> +8 Perception
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> +10 Charisma
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> "Lead from the front."
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> Effect: You gain 1 point of Strength, Reason, and Charisma for every person that is willing to follow you to their deaths with true devotion and free of any compulsion. Each such creature gains +4 points of Vigor. The effects of this Skill only work while the targets are no further than Charisma inches from you.
> [Glorious Roar] - purple Skill. Requires level 65. Endurance +100. Willpower +100. Charisma +50
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> +13 Endurance
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> +13 Willpower
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> +4 Charisma
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> "Let all fear the might of my war cry. - King Asad Alexander I of Bast"
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> Effect: Spend 20 points of Stamina and Mana to shout for five seconds. You cannot take other actions or move. For every second shouting, you inflict fear on hostile creatures fifty feet from you, expanding another fifty feet every second, forcing all targets that resisted the previous waves to test again. Effects based on Endurance and Charisma, resisted by Willpower
> [Lion's Shame Claw] - purple equipment - main hand or off-hand. Requires level 61. Strength +80. Dexterity +80.
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> The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
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> +5 All physical Attributes.
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> "Searing heat, burning light. All cower before the lion's blight."
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> Special: This weapon (and not the wearer) is immune to heat and corrosion.
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> Special: If you have two of these weapons equipped, you gain a 50% bonus to the [Lion's Shame Claw]'s attack speed.
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> Effect: All attacks with this weapon inflict bonus to fire and acid damage based on Endurance. Upon drawing blood, poison your enemy for periodic damage based on your Vigor, lasting for [ square.root(Endurance) ] seconds. The poison doesn't stack. Further doses restart the timer.
Nero wanted to stop farming because the drops were too good. They would become crap soon enough as the Dungeon ran out of extra energy to make them. But he didn't, because he got an idea. His knowledge of history was crap but he recognized the king's name "Alexander". Asad was probably the first king of Bast, and if he was right, these cards would be regarded as treasures by the leonals. Maybe enough to appease the royal family's wrath for imprisoning the prince. With renewed determination, Nero kept on farming and resetting the Dungeon.
The pattern was like that. The lionesses lost two or three levels with each forced reset. The leopards between two and four, the lynxes dropped an average of four, while the shameful prince lost at least five levels each reset. Nero kept farming and resetting the Dungeon for three weeks of relative time. He had no idea how long he was gone from the outside world, but he felt that the other temporary shelters were holding on just fine.
The shameful prince lost his mind entirely. Nero was sure he remembered the pain of each death but he lost a piece of his already failing sentience with each death. Or maybe it was a thing with the Dungeon's grade and how long the boss was able to stay alive without a respawn. The goblin spoke to him when he first killed it, but not so much on the latter kills. The same applied to Rafflesia. That settled it. High-grade bosses regained intelligence.
Nero hunted in the Dungeon for another week, completing a month. His pattern now that the monsters were weaker became easy. He would sneak up the tower he made and snipe the whole Dungeon from up there. He had some trouble with shooting the lightning leopards through the trees, but careful aiming and distance helped a lot. He had more range than their lightning bolts.
He also learned that he got Accolades from this Dungeon boss easier than it should be possible. Nero gained five points of Perception, and four each of Endurance, Agility, and Dexterity. The last kill netted him two points of Willpower and the message he wanted all along.
> Compatible Boss Anima detected. Grade gray. Energy absorbed above the threshold. Processing upgrade. Weighing Attribute strain.
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> For defeating a foe fifty-two times your level, you gained +2 Willpower
Gray. Nero picked up the crystal and the [Egress] card and spat. He felt vindicated for him and all the women the shameful prince raped. Now he only needed to do two things. The first was to tame a lioness. The other monsters he couldn't safely wrangle without some elemental protection which he didn't have. But he was taking a lioness with him. They were just too beautiful. Nero used [Dungeon Breaker] and sucked the last dregs of energy from the Dungeon to force it to respawn everything.
He got a lot of scratches for his troubles as he wrestled a cat as big as he was. But Attributes and levels to an extent were king and Nero had a clear edge against the weakened gray-grade monster. He used [Essence Manipulation] to better force his lifeforce to overwrite the monster's Essence and found his suspicion was correct. It did help a lot with the taming process. The lioness relaxed in his grip and he felt the mental connection between tamer and monster form.
"I'll name you Kefira," Nero said.
Kefira yawned and stretched.
"Stay behind me and do not engage any enemies."
Kefira yawned and followed Nero, her tail swiping at the grass behind her.
Nero killed the shameful prince one last time, but from up close and not the tower. He wanted to do one thing before he left. He took a card that was forgotten ever since he delved to kill a boss on a dare by his father-in-law and summoned a [Monster Bag]. Nero walked up to the Dungeon boss and shot the usual weak spot at point-blank range, killing the monster instantly. The magic of the bag sucked the body in before it could dissolve but not without making it drop two crystals and a card. Nero pocketed the grade IX Anima crystal - the boss' level had dropped below the Dungeon's rank and used the [Egress] card to return to where he entered the Dungeon.
Which was the other Dungeon, he recalled. Which was in the middle of an overflow.
Nero and Kefira got a first-hand account of how a Dungeon overflows. A huge portal opened in the middle of the "safe" entrance clearing and monsters were spawning in all zones, rushing into the open passage to the surface. instead of the shimmering and mysterious portal, he was used to, this one was awfully like the ones to his shelters, where one could see through.
He had little time to admire how much his shelters looked like Dungeons. Nero and Kefira were forced to fight for their lives as the ravenous horde of monsters wished nothing more than snack on them. One could believe Kefira would be safe since she too was a monster but she was infused with sentient lifeforce and to the bona fide Dungeon monsters seemed as tasty as any.
"Kefira, guard my back!" Nero shouted and started to reap the horde with his bayonet. Each swing would cleave through three or four monsters as his Strength score of eight-nine did its job of shredding wolves, bears, and deers alike.
He got a fair share of attacks as the teeth, claws, or antlers of the monsters reached him. Nero outleveled the rank-III Dungeon in all aspects. Except, you know, levels. He was bathing in chilled blood and gore. Every time his wounds got too much for him, he'd trigger his [Ring of Health +2] and erase the wounds. Once the ring's charges ran out, he resorted to chewing the neck off of potions and spitting the glass. He was too tough for the glass to dig deeper than just a scratch on his lips and the potion took care of that extra nibble. Fighting for his life, he lost count of how many monsters he killed. His bayonet finally sputtered and died. It meant he was fighting for two hours straight since the last recharge. Nero dodged a wolf, kicked a bear, and grasped at the myriad of crystals on the ground, pressing them to his Arbitrium and releasing the bunch when the device finished charging.
His body burnt. Why did he have to escape one predicament to fall on the other? He couldn't falter. The monsters would trample over him if he didn't keep on fighting. Or would they? Nero killed more monsters and found some respite as a huge deer rammed his shield and stayed there, pressing against him. He dropped his rifle to hang on the shoulder sling and scooped more crystals, using some of them to open a portal Rodther's shelter, the only one big enough to help and without people inside. The quartermaster was in the one he made for the nereids and everyone else at the house-tree one.
The flood of monsters just saw the new portal as another venue for escape and rushed inside. Divided, they were easier to conquer and Nero focused on killing the ones going for the real world exit. He used his last healing potion on Kefira. The lioness gained the Attribute bonus from his Class by then and even though she had roughly three times the levels of the Dungeon monsters, she was a single monster against a stampede.
Nero recast the shelter's portal to a strategic place, at an angle with the exit portal, creating a wedge where he and his combat pet needed to defend against a single front. The portals weren't two-way, they had a front and a back. the back was opaque and impenetrable, two spatial shields protecting him from the vicious stampede.
Standing his ground, he fought. It was manageable now, fewer monsters coming his way because they only focused on him as he entered their sight. Accolades piled up as Nero and Kefira strained their bodies to the limit of exhaustion. He finally had enough and switched Classes. He made a standalone portal to one of the transition boxes and closed the other side, presenting the back of the third portal to the monsters. He collected the crystals and cards he could, using [Card Trick] to recover mana he sorely needed to keep the other normal portal open.
Finally, Nero walked into the transition box to rest. He shut the portals behind him, sealing he and the lioness in the featureless box dimension and closing the access to the shelter. He would have to deal with those monsters later but now he could sleep and recover.