Alexia

My nap lasts for about three or four hours before I quickly head back to the dungeon, which takes me another couple hours to find. Leaving Luna behind again to act as protector in my absence. And when I enter the dungeon again, I find myself back at the start of the dungeon. So I begin trekking through the endless wasteland once more, bored out of my mind as I slaughter undead without reservation or difficulty, seeing as it’s just the lowest level undead in the dungeon.

After who knows how long, I manage to find a key to the next floor. Then I repeat the process on the second floor until I find a key to the third floor, at which point I’ve already leveled up again about a dozen or so times.

It’s just too bad you can only enter and benefit from a hidden area once for each area in a dungeon. So I can’t go back to the hidden areas I entered.

A major pity.

I frown at the first temple I find as I remember fighting the Chaos Monsters.

Now it should be a lot easier since I’m level 212. They’ll only out-level me by a little bit.

My Class S advantage over a Class B should be enough to make me stronger than them again with that level gap.

I stare for a few more seconds before approaching the building, quickly dealing with all of the undead gathered around outside of it. Then I focus on the puzzle. A different puzzle from the last one I had tried.

This puzzle has a bunch of statues situated in front of the temple. And each of the statues seems to be some sort of undead monster.

I consider the statues for a few seconds before finding that all of them are the same as the engravings on the slates. Just that they’re, well, statues.

Which means the puzzle is probably similar to the other one.

The statues are all facing varying directions and look like they can be turned, meanwhile there is a slab engraved into the ice at the center of all of the statues with text on it.

For thou who wilt enter, turn the statues to follow order.

Uh… what does that mean? Aside from turning the statues, of course.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I stare at the slab for a second, then the statues, and then the slab again.

Okay then…

After a few seconds pass in silence, I walk up to one of the statues of a rather weak undead monster and inspect the thing. And what I find are tiny little numbers engraved on the bottom of the statue. Numbers going up from one to ten, with a little arrow pointing downwards at the number on a single one of them. Number one.

Oh. So that’s it.

It’s literally the same puzzle but in a different form.

With that in mind, I look through the statues for the weakest undead amongst them before walking up to it and turning the statue to the number one. Then I proceed to do the same thing for the other statues, turning them so that they’re in order of weakest to strongest undead.

But even after I finish doing that, nothing happens.

Some sort of button I have to press then?

I look around the slab, but there isn’t anything there to mark it as complete. So I move to one of the statues and inspect it instead, eventually realizing that the downwards arrow itself is a button.

And buttons want to be pressed.

Without hesitation, I press the button, making the statue sink into the ground before a green light shines from beneath it.

Guessing green means good.

I proceed to go to each and every statue, pressing the arrow on them. But after the sixth statue, the arrow pops right back out and a red light shines from beneath the statue instead of a green one. Then the statue itself crumbles and some sort of large skeletal crocodile appears from within the statue. The same monster it was depicting.

And to my utter surprise, the crocodile is a higher level than the undead at the other temple I was at in my last attempt.

{Fallen Aquarian – Level 238}

Uh, should that thing’s level be so high?

The crocodile doesn’t seem to care about my question as it jerks forwards, snapping its jaws straight in front of my face, only barely missing me thanks to my teleporting back.

I swear this monster is on par with a boss monster. So why is it just a monster placed inside of a trap?

A rather… dark… possibility comes to mind as I continue teleporting away, the crocodile repeatedly moving forwards and trying to chomp me in half with some rather impressive speed. And after a brief hesitation driven by that possibility, I teleport around the crocodile, only for its head to jerk around towards where I end up. Most likely following me with life sense or something that detects my life signature.

But that isn’t a problem as I quickly decide to let the thing chomp down on my arm, making me just grimace ever so slightly as its fangs sink into my armor and barely draw blood from my skin. Then I pull my other fist back and shove it into its mouth before blasting a Quantum Bolt directly inside of the monster. And I quickly follow that up with a few more until the thing lets go, collapsing dead to the ground.

I frown at my arm before smiling slightly.

Yeah, I really should get more used to using my Quantum Body racial skill to my advantage.

Anyways, I glance at the monster again as I return my attention to that possibility.

The System Reset took away planets, made giant walls to box people in, made dungeons harder, tried to kill off a bunch of the former ascendants at the start of the System Reset, added in Class B, A, and S monsters, and now seems to have them filling the dungeons a lot more than I feel would fit.

It’s almost like the System is culling the users.

And that’s not considering the Title it gave me.

The Reaper.

Is the System… really trying to cull the users?