Popping out of the Dragon’s hoard at the top of the bare hill, I promptly used all of my minds to complete the concealment spell as quickly as possible. I could hear the Dragon’s powerful roar echo out from the cave entrance, and I could feel the ground slightly tremble. This motivated me to complete the spell and I finished it quicker than I had before.

With that finished I ran off into the forest with a fast beating heart, trying to get as far away from the angry Dragon as possible. I knew that the Dragon would probably not leave its treasure anymore if it couldn’t find any traces of me, but I still didn’t want to be anywhere near it, and even if I did want the rest of its hoard, I was content with what I had already gotten.

After putting a distance of a few kilometers between myself and the Dragon I slowed down and breathed out a breath of relief. Man that felt amazing! As always taking things others don’t want you to have is exhilarating!

In the past, after I had escaped from the government, I had had to resort to stealing to survive. I mean, with the entirety of Tallen looking for me, there wasn’t much I could do to earn an honest living without being caught. And during my time looting and stealing I came to realize that I quite enjoyed the thrill of it all. At first I had a guilty conscience about stealing from others, but with my survival on the line I didn’t have much of a choice. Of course I never stole from people who weren’t at least a little bit wealthy, I wasn’t a monster, I thought of myself as a little bit of a Robin Hood-esque person, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (me).

As I walked through the quiet white forest towards a nearby ice spire, I pondered how different I had become from who I had been on Earth. Back before my untimely death I was just an average guy, going to work and resting when I got home. I never felt much of a challenge going through life, but at the same time I was perfectly fine with that, and I never had any thoughts about breaking the law. Back then I had thought of myself as a completely normal person, but after coming to Epidas and experiencing so many different things, I realized that the ‘rules’ and ‘purpose’ of Epidas and Earth were what determined what ‘normal’ was for me.

On Earth my ‘purpose’ was to live a long good life before I eventually died, but on Epidas my ‘purpose’ was to achieve my dreams and be free. Of course some would say that achieving my dreams was also my ‘purpose’ on Earth, but the ‘rules’ of Earth prevented most of my dreams from even being possible. For example one of my dreams was to live forever, but that just wasn’t going to happen on Earth. As for being free, that required power, and on Earth the strongest someone could get was the power to launch a nuclear missile, but in Epidas someone could eventually grow to be able to launch attacks on a similar scale with their own power. In terms of limits, Epidas had almost none, even a snail could become a god with enough time and luck.

In essence, the ‘rules’ of Earth limited the dreams I could have, but the ‘rules’ of Epidas made my dreams possible. Having come to Epidas I was able to finally realize that I was only normal on Earth because there was no reason for me to be anything but normal. However here in Epidas it was like I had opened Pandora’s box rife with pain and challenge, but at the end there was still hope.

Reaching an ice spire, I began to slowly carve my way into it by heating up my hands and carving out a tunnel. After reaching the center I carved out around the ice vein that was the size of my fist. Then I stored the ice vein in my Internal World before I started to enlarge the center into a room where I could take out and inspect the treasure I had plundered while I waited for my mana to regenerate.

The first thing I pulled out was the coat with Underrich’s symbol on it. It was a very nice coat made out of some kind of leather that was dyed black, with fancy buttons and designs all over it. Feeling around inside of the pockets I felt something metallic in the left breast pocket. Pulling it out, it looked like a pocket watch. Flipping it open, it had an old-fashioned picture of a family on it.

The quality of the picture would be low quality in modern times, but it must’ve been of the highest quality back when it was taken based on the contents of the picture. It was a family of 6, with 1 young girl and 3 older boys, all with very expensive looking clothes in front of a large mansion. This family was definitely very important generations back.

Digging into the other pockets I found a journal in one of the inner pockets. Flipping through it, I could quickly read all of it with my accelerated mind and perfect memory, and I summarized some things I had read. First of all, the person who had written this journal was alive over 100 years ago, during the time of the Tallen civil war, and they were the 3rd son of the Underrich family.

His name was Silgol and he was 16 years old when the war had started. He had been impatient and overconfident when he had taken on his first Tribulation and had taken on 6 challenges, one of which was also Wider Difficulty Range just like me. Unfortunately for him and his companions he had gotten unlucky, when he had gone to his 6th level he had ended up here in a level 12 environment. He hadn’t lasted long against the relentless pursuit of the Dragon, and had died sometime after his 2nd day on this level.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Haah, even if you’re a prince of a Dukedom, it’s not so easy is it?”

By the time Silgol had reached 17 the war had already been ongoing for almost a year, and it seemed like he had entered the Dungeon of Tribulation early in hopes of being able to join the war, but unfortunately it hadn’t ended well for him and presumably his companions.

His journal actually depicted quite the moving story before his entrance into the Dungeon of Tribulation, with intrigue, betrayal, love, and ambition. Though he hadn’t made it back, it might give him a little solace, in death, to know that the side he supported in the civil war had won in the end, but maybe not.

I could understand his desire to improve himself before going to war. With the war between Tallen and Ugrayen coming up in about 3 years, I was also preparing the strength I needed to withstand the trials ahead, but I did it to get the most out of the war, not to win it. I already knew that Tallen would be on the losing side in this war, so I just wanted to profit off of this war as much as possible while staying on the sidelines. Even if I wanted to help Tallen out with my future knowledge, what I knew mostly came from things I had read while I had prepared to come back to the past; with my memories during the time I was mind controlled being fuzzy at best, and non-existent at worst.

Seeing as how this coat was towards the bottom of the pile of treasure, nobody had succeeded in fully plundering the Dragon’s hoard for over a century. Before that maybe someone had succeeded, or maybe this particular layout of the Dungeon had only been created not long before Silgol’s attempt.

In any case, the fact that I had actually entered the same level layout as someone from Tallen was remarkable, even if it was over a century later. The Dungeon of Tribulation didn’t just have a few layouts, it had more than trillions- no quadrillions of different layouts for each different level. Although compared to the size of Epidas, and its population, quadrillions wasn’t as big of a number as one would think.

The size of the continent of Waroth that Tallen was on was larger than the size of Earth’s solar system out to the Oort Cloud. And Waroth was only just a minor continent, compared to some of the supercontinents scattered throughout Epidas the number of things entering the Dungeon of Tribulation could be imagined.

I shook my head, I sometimes lost myself in my own head, but it was understandable after basically being stuck in there for over 40 years in the past. Old habits die hard.

Rummaging through the pockets, I couldn’t find anything else, so I used my Skill to analyze the coat and see if there was anything special about it, and a description flowed into my mind.

[Luxury Temperature Regulation Coat](Rare, Fine-Silver)

No Equipment Requirements

Heat Resistance +10

Cold Resistance +10

Passive Skill 1 -

Temperature Regulation: Everything covered by the coat will be the perfect temperature.

Passive Skill 2 -

Automatic Repair: Slowly repairs itself using the mana in the air.

“Well I guess that explains why it looks as good as new. I was wondering how the dragon could’ve killed him and still left the coat in this condition.” I put the coat on and immediately felt the parts it covered start to burn with heat making me have to turn off the heating spell I was running through my body, “Nice, this is definitely staying on.”

Now I wouldn’t have to spend as much mana on heating my body. Taking inventory of the other items I had plundered, I learned my lesson with the branch and kept everything at the same temperature it was when I got it, not risking damage to the items with fast shifts in temperature. Most of the items were metal, but there were quite a few items of clothing that were in perfect condition, and would be perfect to wear if they weren’t so brittle from the cold. I would have to warm them up slowly before I could wear them, but it was nice to know that I had something besides prison clothes to wear when I got out of here.

There were also a few storage bags that were still functioning, but the perishable supplies in them had long since perished. However there was a plethora of dungeoneering and survival gear within them that would definitely be very useful once they weren’t so brittle from the cold.

There were some other artifacts with great effects as well, but none of them were resistant to the cold like my new coat was, so I would have to let them slowly warm up along with everything else. All in all, I had made a huge profit from this level; I would just have to wait a week or so before I could utilize my bountiful harvest.

“Well in the meantime, while I’m waiting for everything to warm up, I’ll go around collecting ice veins before I move on to the third level. Not having to use my mana to keep myself warm will definitely make things move faster.”

By the time I completed sorting through everything, I had regenerated all of my mana and was ready to leave. Seeing as how I would be keeping my concealment on the rest of this level, I probably wouldn’t be seeing much action the rest of this level. That was fine by me though, just one pack of ice wolves had used up almost all of my mana just to take down.

“It’s looking like I’ll be able to relax a little bit.”

I left my ice spire with it still being nighttime, with dark skies and the luminous clouds having long since lost their light by this point. I fired off a divination spell looking to see where the Dragon was currently at, but it seemed to still be at its hoard. Seeing as I still had energy and that the Dragon wasn’t coming after me, I decided to keep going around collecting ice veins while I could. Firing off another divination spell crystal and located the nearest ice spire with an ice vein.

I would never get tired of treasure hunting, even if it was just simple resource hunting.