By the time they arrived, Sam was filled with annoyance at having to curtail his cultivation. With his level of connection to the Dao, it felt like he was holding his breath when he cut its power short. However, it was simply the price of power. The ship touched down on a windswept mountain peak, dusted with snow. As the ramp opened, Lao took a deep breath, savoring the air of his homeland.
“My land is just as unspoiled as before,” the man exclaimed. “The pure expanse of untouched mountains and icy wilderness. Now that the System is here, it will never be tainted.”
Lao stepped out into the cold, not even shivering like he would have before the System had arrived. With his stats he could fully appreciate his previous residence. The others followed him out, gazing in wonder at the vista before them. The mountains had all grown with the planet, and the peaks soared for miles upon miles into the sky. Many of them were more than a dozen miles in height, piercing the clouds like daggers of rock and ice. On a neighboring peak, a pillar of light stabbed into the sky, emanating from a dark hole in the peak that led down into the depths of the mountain. The hole took up the entirety of the peak, which was why the ship had been unable to land. Splashes of fiery light could be seen every now and again, indicating that the dungeon was in a volcano.
There was nothing more to do but to head towards it. Sam led the way, spotting a causeway of rock that linked the two mountains a few thousand feet down. He decided to go ahead to scout it out, and he teleported down towards the causeway. He arrived a few seconds later, and spotted a few roaming monsters. All of them were high F Rank beasts, and they looked vicious. A trio of car sized arctic foxes prowled the bridge, with cones of snow whipping around them. Icicles adorned their fur, and Sam could feel the cold from where he stood. He would be able to deal with them easily enough, but the others would struggle to fight them without being pushed off. Out of everyone, he had the closest thing to a flight skill.
Sam teleported next to the nearest fox, and blasted it point blank with a fully imbued hammer strike. The swirling ice condensed into a shield as the attack came in. It shattered in a single blow, but the hammer strike was weakened, most of the elemental energy dissipating into the air. It still slammed home however, cracking a bone. Normally it would have obliterated the entire monster.
The fox growled low in its throat and sent a barrage of icicles towards Sam’s throat, each of which glinted in the sunlight. They were sharpened to a molecular level, and would do serious damage if they hit him. However, even if he had been without his armor, he could simply move out of the way. He teleported behind the fox and blasted it into the ground with a powerful strike, flipping backwards as another one came hurtling towards him, baring fangs of transparent ice. These monsters appeared to be half beast, half elemental.
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Sam hammered the monster as he flipped, but it juked out of the way, avoiding the strike. Instead, he used it to eat up his momentum. Meanwhile, the third monster lurked in the background, gathering its energy to strike. It howled a moment later, projecting a blizzard filled with shards of ice. Each shard was like a razor, and a few hit Sam, even after he teleported. They seemed to slide through his armor without damaging it, striking his skin. However, the fox hadn’t realized that at this point, the armor was just a fashion statement more than anything else. Sam’s skin had long since transcended the limits of his armor.
The shards of ice simply shattered, and melted into nothingness. Sam laughed and charged the monster, whipping its head back with a thunderous uppercut of his hammer. As it flew upwards, he battered it to the side, taking advantage of its inability to dodge. It crumpled around the strike, and was sent flying off the bridge and into the hungry abyss below.
Sam made quick work of his remaining enemies, clearing the path for his allies. They were slowly making their way down the mountain in pursuit. Well, slowly was hardly the right word. They were only slow compared to Sam’s teleportation skill.
They were already almost three quarters of the way there within less than a minute. Sam waited for them to arrive, and then started across the bridge, leading the way. The rocky ledge was stable enough, but it narrowed at parts, making Sam rely on his Dexterity more than before. It was still trivially easy though. He refrained from teleporting because he wanted to have a discussion with his allies before they entered the dungeon.
By the time that they had reached the entrance to the dungeon, all of them could feel the concentrated power coming from the hole in the mountain. Sam looked down into the hole, and spotted a set of stairs leading down into the abyss. It was miles deep, and at the very bottom, he could see a drop into a massive cavern, filled with lava and monsters.
“Right. We’re here. What now?” Jeffery asked.
“Well, I had some of the satellite operators create a map of the dungeon from what they could tell. With the System enhancements, we were able to gain a limited degree of X ray vision on the satellites, allowing us to see into the depths of the dungeon.”
Talnor pulled out a piece of paper as he said this, showing it to everyone else. It showed a large cavern, with a massive lake of lava in the very center. The entrance that they were standing in front of was in the northern half of the cavern.
“As you can see, the hole here deposits us quite far away from the center of the dungeon, where we suspect the boss is. The monster will likely be near E Rank in strength, but it is still a monster. Between all of us, we should be able to survive.”
“What other information did they gather?” Eduardo asked.
“The monsters range from level 125 to 149. Luckily, the dungeon specifically states to any System scan that it does not have any E Rank monsters. More importantly, the monsters are all fire adjacent in nature, made from lava. There are a lot of elementals in there.”
“Let’s get going then,” Sam said, eager to fight.