Sofia fell deeper and deeper into the hole, while the unending swarm of Veik made their way to the outside.
Just how deep does this hole go…
Sofia was falling straight down, but she could not look too far under herself, as tilting her head to look would cancel the [Master Thief] title’s invisibility.
At the very least, the hive of these things will be considerably emptier by the time I land there. They’re really going all out, just like a trail of ants.
I wonder what they eat to sustain such a huge population. There were harvesters among the kills but it’s not clear what they could be harvesting here besides rocks. Looking at them closer… It’s really like big land crabs, I suppose. Many different kinds of weird crabs…
Seeing them, I have to wonder how it can be possible to have such a high level if they don’t have mana.
Say a human trained without mana, where are the limits of their possible strength? Like around level 10? 15? And yet the bigger ones of these Veiks can naturally be over level 250 without even having a mana core? How strong could their physical body possibly be without mana?
Wait… What about the Phageid? Hmm… They never used magic except for the Alphageid against the angel, but that was while it was absorbing tons of mana from our world…
Despite this, even the Phageid larvae were rather tough.
Most monsters still do use mana, but if there are exceptions…
Sofia’s train of thought was interrupted by her entrance inside of the actual Veik hive’s chambers.
[You have discovered the filter dungeon : Fenrir’s Trial of Ragnarok]
[Dungeon Objective : Leave the dungeon through the Veik King’s secret exit]
[Chance at reward will be permanently lost if you leave through a wrong exit]
[Reward : Large Heart Catalyser choice box * 1]
Even this entire hive is an intended part of the trial?!
It’s a dungeon but it’s not about defeating the boss. Interesting.
Sofia quickly observed the Hive’s chamber she was falling inside of, it was without a doubt the largest underground cavern she had ever seen, looking to be about two hundred meters from bottom to top, extending in all directions as far as the eye could see, with a huge web of pillars holding the place together.
The flow of Veik leaving the hive in response to Sofia’s attack looked like it was slowing down, but by and large, the millions of gray-shelled creatures within these underground halls still flowed in her general direction.
I can’t just let myself hit the ground, it has to be swarming under me right now.
What to do…
With her very limited time and resources, Sofia had a sudden burst of creativity, at that time, she swore in her heart to really never let go of the scepter she was holding in her right hand until this moment. With only about three seconds until impact with the swarm of crawling Veik underneath, the weapon’s property of halving channeling time became crucial.
I am the solid ground!
I AM THE GRAVEYARD!
Right as Sofia was about to collide with the swarm, invisible skeletal hands burst out of her armor, they grabbed and clutched at the bone armor with all their might, dragging it and its owner into the spirit realm.
A ghostly Sofia phased through the swarm of skittering Veik and dove into the ground beneath.
The experience was surprisingly painful. The Veik’s spiritual bodies were brimming with energy and scraped against Sofia’s soul as she fell through them. The [Mark of Aphenoreth] seemed to negate the actual soul damage like it did when Sofia was the subject of teleportations, but it was somehow still painful. As for the gray creatures, they seemed entirely unaware of what had just happened.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The graveyard skeletons quickly stabilized and stopped her momentum, but Sofia was worried about her mana, she still only had a meager three thousand to freely use, it wouldn’t be enough to sustain the graveyard, she thought.
A quick look at her actual mana, however, quickly dispelled that misconception.
It was actually going up. Despite being in a manaless environment with no sunlight, despite the sustained cost of the graveyard, it was going up.
That’s right! I usually use so much extra mana to manage it myself! The graveyard is only fifty mana per second!
My regen right now… 94. I can keep the graveyard up forever and still regenerate 44 mana per second.
I’m so used to it being unusable for some reason or another, but right now… It feels perfectly safe?
The Veik swarm was still actively moving, just a few meters above her, but as far as she could tell, she had managed to infiltrate the hive completely unnoticed.
Master Thief makes it hard to detect me with senses other than sight. It also makes me invisible if I don’t move. But am I also invisible in the spiritual realm?
And if it’s the graveyard skeletons dragging me around, am I really moving? Can I just go around like this forever?!
Wait… What about the range limit of the graveyard? The skeletons can only appear inside me, but.
I am the reference point now. I cast it on myself. Does that mean the graveyard is moving with me? If so…
Sofia tried to pull on the skill’s mana circuits to see if she could find the usual range’s boundaries. She felt nothing.
Heheheh…
AHAHAHAH!
This dungeon is going to be a piece of cake!
[A new title has been unlocked!]
The system notification actually sobered Sofia up a little.
Since when am I so lucky?
And after a bit of reflection, she had to admit, Actually, nevermind, I’ve had a lot of good luck for the last few years, I think… Not a single major loss ever since…
Sofia remembered the silent orphanage.
I should have just been happy with my good fortune and stopped there…
Having ruined her own mood, Sofia glanced over the new title before dismissing it with a frown.
[Spirit Seeker]: You found a way to explore the spirit realm at your leisure, a rare luxury for one with a physical body. Beware, spending too much time in such a foreign state of being will eventually lead to irreversible changes.
Effect: Diminishes spiritual drag.
Thank you for the warning…
Alright, whatever. I just need to be fast and find that secret exit.
Sofia looked around. As usual, her vision from the spiritual realm was blurry at best. Supposedly Alith could see a bit more clearly when in her ghost form, but no matter what, it always felt like being lost in a sea of fuzzy white clouds.
She could, however, clearly see the delimitations of the Veik’s Hive caverns, seeing as said creatures had very strong spiritual bodies and were moving around a lot, they contrasted clearly with the empty space that was the interior of the moon’s rocks in which Sofia was hidden.
It makes a lot more sense than the Thrombber hive, structurally. Tunnels tend to be straight vertical or horizontal shafts linking the different caverns in a way that’s easy to navigate…
Sofia slowly moved around within the walls. She noticed that the entrance of some tunnels were glowing, so she carefully moved underground to check it out. The result was that the glowing things were the spiritual bodies of relatively small Veik creatures. They were waiting in groups of two or three at the entrance of certain tunnels, and did not move at all unlike the millions of other creatures coming and going.
Guards?
The quest did mention them having a king. Is it far fetched to think they would have some kind of established society with rankings and guards?
From my kills there were Veik Harvesters, Crawlers, and Hive cleaners…
Maybe following the tunnels with the most guards will lead me to the king eventually?
The supposed guards in question moved while Sofia thought things through. The three she was observing had all gathered close to a wall. The wall Sofia was inside of.
Panicking, she had the graveyard skeletons carry her away from this tunnel entrance. She observed the bright spiritual bodies from afar, and after a minute or two they eventually returned to their original positions.
So they can still somewhat feel me, even within the walls. I think it’s clear this is not a combat quest. If simple harvesters are already over level 250 then it’s not a wild guess to think the guard might very well be over 300. And that would mean the King could be even stronger. It’s no wonder the goal is something as ‘simple’ as just finding the secret exit.
To anyone without some serious stealth abilities even that would seem almost impossible.
But my tools are so varied I can probably deal with it. Let’s just follow my instinct for now.
Sofia went ahead with her plan of following the tunnels with the most guards. She roamed under the main chamber for a while, until she found a tunnel with four guards, and she decided to go with it.
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