Cade was sitting on a seat inside the train and on his way to the big tongue toad dungeon. He was frowning while looking at the view outside the train.
The reason for that was because of Cynthia who was currently sleeping on a seat beside him. A few hours ago, Cynthia told him the reason she told him about her identity.
It was to gain trust from Cade. Why would she need Cade’s trust? She wanted to recruit him to join her party.
Cynthia had been planning to find people to form a party with her when she was told to go to Dineon. Having a party will surely help her a lot in doing her important mission or role that the fortune teller had predicted.
When the guild she joined before invited her, she thought it would be a good opportunity to form a party.
However, she dislikes all of them. They did not blatantly do anything bad to her and she did not hate them but Cynthia felt no synergy with them. Other than that, they were flaunting their grade every time but unable to give the result of someone at that grade.
They were not explorers that Cynthia wanted as her party member. Later, she also found out that after she joined the guild, the guild had somehow used her name to make some kind of shady deals here and there.
Those deals made her decision to leave the guild. They tried to persuade her to stay but they failed. Cynthia was not a girl that they can use as they want and she hated it when someone used her name for something without her knowledge.
After she left the guild, she decided to recruit people by herself. Her first target area in searching for her party member was her college. She had been observing many explorers there and finally, she found someone and that person was Cade.
There was nothing special about him but Cynthia felt like he was a great choice. Her mind tried to be rational but her heart tells her that he was the right choice.
She did not know if she should follow her mind or her heart but she decided to follow her heart when she saw Cade was attacked by Sera.
Something about Cade’s action drew her in but she did not know what. In the end, there she was by Cade’s side trying to persuade him to join her party.
When Cynthia made her offer to Cade, to her surprise, Cade immediately said no without much thought. Cynthia was shocked by Cade’s answer.
She thought that Cade would agree after he listened to her and knew about her real identity but he did not even care about that.
To Cade, getting involved with someone that high in the society like royalty was a hassle. They had a lot of problems hovering around them and he did not want to get involved in any of them and thus his quick rejection towards Cynthia’s offer.
Other than that, Cade did not want to get involved in the important matter that Cynthia will face in the future.
Cynthia, however, did not want to give up and decided to cling on Cade for the rest of the journey to the big tongue toad dungeon.
There was also a reason why Cynthia’s chosen dungeon this time was the same as Cade. She spied on him and decided to go to the same dungeon as him.
At the time when she chose the dungeon, she assumed that he would agree and for convenience, it was easier for them to go to the same dungeon. Unfortunately, not everything happened as she wanted.
Luckily, she chose the same dungeon. She can cling on to him until he agrees. Even if she was unsuccessful in roping him in after they finished exploring the dungeon, they were classmates and she could try again there and maybe follow him again to another dungeon.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“I should quickly run away from her after the train arrives,” thought Cade while he was intently watching the night view through the train’s window.
As time passed by, Cade felt sleepier and ended up falling asleep. A few hours later, the train arrived and Cade woke up from his sleep and to his surprise, Cynthia was sleeping while hugging his arm.
Cade massaged his head as he suddenly felt like he would get an extreme headache during his exploration this time.
Cade tried to silently remove his arm from Cynthia and after hard work, he succeeded without her waking up. Cade immediately left his seat and got out of the train.
The train then left the station… with Cynthia still sleeping inside. Cade felt a bit guilty doing this but he needed his peacetime.
Cade then bought some breakfast at the train station before he took a cab to the big tongue toad dungeon.
Upon reaching the dungeon, to Cade's surprise, it was bustling with explorers. There were tents everywhere from tents for resting to tents selling things like food, equipment, potions and many more.
The happening was common on every dungeon but this was the first time Cade saw this with his own eyes. His first dungeon was super unpopular and thus there were no people there.
Cade did not go straight inside the dungeon but sightseeing around the shops available there. There was nothing that interested him and thus he did not buy anything.
Cade then took out all his linked equipment and equipped them. He wore his white t-shirt inside and black hoodie outside and also his black jeans. All of them had magic defense stats.
Since there were variations among the big tongue toad, it was possible that some of them can use magic skills. Having equipment with magic defense will be helpful to him.
At the moment, all his linked equipment had reached their limit level until Cade leveled up more and at their level, they were all equivalent to a D grade equipment.
Cade’s equipment had the possibility of going beyond that if he did not need to increase their durability. With two stats needed to be increased and only 10 stat points per magic crystal, that was as far as his equipment can go.
Cade had a theory that he did not yet test and he hoped it worked. The last time he leveled up his equipment, he had been using E grade magic crystal. What if he used D grade magic crystal? Will he get more stat points to increase his equipment stats?
He wanted to try that and that was why he came to the toad dungeon. This dungeon had a yellow portal and that meant it was D grade. Yes, Cade chose a D grade dungeon for his second explorations.
Even if the dungeon’s grade was D, not all of them were D grade. There will be many E grade monsters too that can be found. So, Cade can still farm for E grade magic crystal to increase his physical resistance skill.
His potential growth grade was currently at D grade. Cade had upgraded it before from E grade but the magic crystal it needed now was a whopping 10 000 Level 1 D grade magic crystal.
The amount almost made him vomited blood. He needed to kill thousands of D grade monsters to upgrade his growth potential to C. Cade wondered how much magic crystals he would need when he reached C grade.
Thinking about that made him sighed and had a slight headache.
“You can’t enter?” Suddenly Cade overheard some explorers talking nearby.
“No, my level passes the limit,” said the explorers while sighing. He was disappointed that he couldn't enter the dungeon.
“Level passes the limit?” Cade wondered what they were talking about. The toad dungeon was low level but everyone regardless of level can enter but that explorers said that he passed the level limit?
The toad dungeon was not a time limit dungeon where it also limited the level range.
“Sigh, I will head back home and ask for a refund from the government and find some other dungeon within my level,” said that explorer who cannot enter the dungeon. He looked disappointed.
“All these changes happened because of the time limit dungeon. Since the tragedy of Planet Snowball, everything is changing,” said another explorer with a worried face.
“Even we who live in this peaceful star sector do not feel the peace anymore. We can all die if the time limit dungeon appears on this planet. Now, everyone is rushing to become stronger to protect ourselves and our family,” that explorer continues.
“Changes? The dungeon is changing?” Cade was shocked by what he had heard. He immediately took out his genius phone from his storage and went online.
Cade searched about the changing that was happening to the dungeon and to his surprise, many changes were happening to the dungeon after the appearance of the time limit dungeon.
It did not get much attention because of what was happening to the planets where the time limit dungeon appeared but the changes were huge.