I was lying down against one of the tree's snow filled branches looking up at the luminous clouds. If I could fly I would definitely go up there and get a sample of those clouds. I’ve never seen anything like those anywhere I’ve been before.

I condensed another mana crystal inside of my Internal World, adding it to the ever growing pile I already had in there. I was currently just lazing around waiting for the last of my time on the level to pass while using my mana whenever I reached almost full to make mana crystals so I didn’t waste my mana regeneration. With my characteristic [Enhanced Mana Cells] I had 800% more mana and mana regeneration and capacity from my mana cells, I was definitely a powerhouse when it came to throwing mana at my problems. Though I did still try to use my mana the best I could.

Currently I was only maintaining a spell that hid my infrared and visible light, I was currently only hiding myself from the wolf packs that roamed around the forest, and not the Dragon. A few days ago I had stopped hiding myself and tested to see if the Dragon would come after me again (I wanted to go back and collect the rest of its treasure). Unfortunately the Dragon wasn’t moving an inch away from its pile even though it could definitely sense me.

It was sad, but at least now I didn’t have to waste a bunch of mana on the all encompassing hiding spell and could instead use it to gather the ice veins faster. After switching to a much lighter concealment spell I was able to collect the ice veins faster, and I collected 48 ice veins in total; they were all stored together and had already created quite a bit of ice, though with the size of my Internal World I wouldn’t have to worry about overcrowding the space for a long long time.

In another corner of my Internal World the frozen treasure had warmed up to normal temperatures after almost 5 days of slowly warming them up, and I had gone through and categorized everything in case I needed it later. There was quite a lot of equipment that I thought might prove quite useful, things like cooking equipment, weapons, a few artifacts (Though the artifacts weren’t that great, otherwise the people using them wouldn’t have died), and various types of clothes.

Speaking of clothes, I had put on some light clothing that looked similar to something one would wear on a tropical island, with shorts and a T-shirt. I also put on some nice boots that didn’t fit with the clothes at all, but I needed them to walk in the snow otherwise my heated feet would just melt right through. The outfit I wore didn’t really matter with the temperature regulating coat I had on, so I just decided to wear what I thought was comfortable and convenient.

I had rested in preparation to move on to the next level, and now I was just waiting for the 130 hours to be up. I just hoped that the next level wouldn’t be on the extreme end of the Wider Difficulty Range like this one had. What I wanted was something that was higher difficulty, which meant higher level resources, but I also didn’t want to face another Dragon level threat that hunted me down wherever I was on the level. In any case I should be fine regardless, I had everything under control.

While I was thinking this the System message showed up.

[Level 2 complete. All challenges have been met.]

[Would you like to enter level 3 of the Dungeon of Tribulation, or leave the dungeon?]

I stood up and brushed off the snow on my new coat, getting ready to enter the next stage.

“Enter the next level please.” Bring it on, I’m ready to go.

[Affirmative. Now entering level 3.]

-Break-

My feet met hard ground and I tried to take a look at my surroundings, but unlike the last level I couldn’t see anything, but I could make out the quiet sound of water nearby. The temperature wasn’t high or low as far as my uncovered body parts could tell, but that meant that there was some other kind of environmental hazard that I wouldn’t be as adept at handling. The gravity seemed normal, and I couldn’t sense anything different about the mana in my immediate vicinity either. Weird, what is wrong with the environment then?

Just as I was thinking that I tried to breathe in. That’s right I ‘tried’ to breathe in, but when my lungs expanded, instead of filling with oxygen it felt like I was suffocating, I breathed out quickly and my minds went into overdrive. This is bad! I immediately sent a simple light spell through my skin to light up my surroundings. This is no time to worry about revealing my location, I need information and fast.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Gray walls lit up around me, revealing that I was in a small cave-like room with water in one corner. I must be in some kind of underwater cave. The air in here probably isn’t breathable, in fact it’s probably dangerous to breathe.

Catching my attention on the ground were corpses of various different races littering the floor. Yeah, definitely dangerous to breathe. What do I do to deal with this problem? I have some scuba gear that I found inside one of the spatial bags, but I don’t even know if it’s still usable.

A water breathing spell? It could work. No, it wouldn’t be sustainable.

I could fill up this place with the air from my Internal World. No, that would only be a temporary solution. C’mon think Radiant!

I have as much breathable air inside of me as I could ever want, but I can’t breathe any of it! Wait, that's it, if I could just… Thinking up to this point, I opened a small portal inside of my throat that connected to my Internal World.

I breathed in once again and was relieved to find breathable air filling my lungs, though it was weird breathing in and not feeling air run through my nose. Not being able to breathe is definitely a hostile environment… for sure. Luckily I have plenty of breathable air inside of my Internal World, otherwise I might’ve died. I don’t have nearly enough mana to sustain my body in an environment where I can’t breathe, especially not for almost six days. This portal is inside of my body so its mana cost is greatly reduced, it should be no problem keeping it going indefinitely.

Using my precise mental control I sealed off my nose so it wasn’t open even though I was breathing. With the immediate concerns taken care of I could move on to taking a better look at my surroundings.

With my situation stabilized the System popped up its usual short message.

[Time Requirement: Survive for 140 hours]

[Forced Task: Collect some Colossal Medousa Lumingel and crystalize it with sunlight]

Why! Why me! This Dungeon of Tribulation definitely has something against me! First the Champion Shadow Parasite on the first floor, and now I have to collect some Lumingel from a giant jellyfish with all of its tentacles… ugh! Well at least they aren’t hostile, I don’t know if I could actually force myself to fight something with tentacles for at least another month.

The Colossal Medousa was something I knew about because some of its parts were used when making certain artifacts. It was basically a giant glowing jellyfish that could grow forever, with the biggest recorded one being larger than a large island, at least 130 kilometers in diameter if I recall correctly. Though most of them were smaller than a house.

Thinking about having to collect Lumingel from one of them sent a wave of disgust through me, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. A harmless massive jellyfish didn’t disgust me as much as other tentacley things did, kind of like how a daddy long leg spider isn’t as bad as other spiders. In any case it was something I didn’t have to think about right now, I had other more important things to think about, this cave room full of dead people with potential valuables on them for example.

Shifting my focus away from the System message, I took a closer look at the corpses around me. There were a couple Humans, a beautiful Fox-kin, a few different insectoids, many different animals, and even a Demon that had some spider characteristics. None of the corpses showed much signs of decay, which was probably because there was no oxygen or anything in here. One could see how dangerous the Hostile Environment Challenge was from this chilling display of helplessness and death, most didn’t seem to have any chance of surviving, and those that did didn’t seem to stay in this cave room long enough to do anything to all of these corpses.

Well, I should probably see if I can gain anything valuable from these corpses. It’s not like they’re using it anymore.

I started moving around the small cave storing valuable items like jewelry and other metallic things. I refrained from some of the things like clothes, I wasn’t going to take the clothes on dead bodies. I also didn’t collect any of the body materials that might’ve been useful, but by this point they had probably lost all of their magical value, and I wasn’t about to go dissecting long dead corpses.

While walking around, there was nothing particularly interesting about the cramped space besides a pool of water. The pool took up one corner of the room, and it was connected to some sort of underwater tunnel that descended a bit before bending out of sight, giving me no ability to see what could be further down the watery tunnel. The opening was a bit wider than my outstretched arms, and the tunnel seemed to widen the farther it went.

Already knowing about the Colossal Medousa, I knew that most of this level would probably be underwater in some form. So it was obvious to me that I would need to prepare for a long excursion underwater.

Taking stock of myself, I was a little hesitant to explore an underwater cave with my current outfit, so I went through all of the things I had gathered and found a diving suit to put on. The diving suit wasn’t skin tight, but it was a good enough fit, and it came with goggles, flippers and even webbed gloves too. I stored my new favorite coat and my tropical outfit before I stretched and looked down into the clear water a little warily. After the Kraken incident the sea and tentacley things have never been the same. I just hope there aren’t any squids or many tentacley things in here besides the Colossal Medousa, but knowing my luck there will be. Haaahh, maybe I should invest in a Luck stat or something…

With one last grimace, I looked at the clear water and dived into the dark tunnel. There was no telling how long it would be before light once again lit up that silent graveyard, but I had more important things to do than keep the corpses company. There was profit to be had and opportunities waiting to be seized, and nothing was going to stop me… for long, the tentacles were only a minor roadblock.