The scramble to the door had led to much pushing, shoving, and if Peter had sensed correctly, a lot of skills being activated – but in the end, everyone who had intended to enter the dungeon – unfortunately including Peter – had reached the door in time.
Elizabeth then smacked her hand against the door, and as every member of the massive party was zipped from their spot outside the dungeon to its huge exterior – a system prompt appeared in all of their vision, warning them of what was to come.
Dungeon:
Name: Hell’s Porch
Rank: [Copper+]
Type: [Apocalypse] [RAID]
Difficulty: [C+]
Would you like to enter?
* Party Leader has selected Yes (Entering dungeon…)
When the world stabilised once again, Peter and the rest of the hundred and a half or so adventurers were all standing in a black sand desert – a crimson sun overheard whose heat was as intense as a flame on everyone’s exposed skin.
Peter almost yelped in pain as it felt like his exposed skin was being seared by the sun, but then, suddenly, a wave of magic washed over his body, and it were as though he were standing under a regular sun.
He looked around for the caster, but no one around him seemed to be paying him any notice – that was, except Katie who simply smirked in his direction a hundred or so metres away at the other end of the group.
“We need to find shelter!” Elizabeth called out in a loud shout.
However, before she could organise anyone into scouting parties and other types of smaller groups, a loud shrill was heard from off in the distance. Then, only 30 seconds later, a ginormous feathered giant appeared on the horizon, it’s metallic beak and claws glimmering beautifully in the crimson sun’s cindering light.
Elizabeth began trying to give out orders, but before she had the chance, a group of about 10 idiotic adventurers had already began running towards the beast at their top speed which was pretty fast as they were at the peak of the [Copper] rank. It seemed they were betting that this monster was the [Bronze] ranked one, and thus the one they needed to focus on killing to get the all-important reward.
However, these adventurers were soon stopped straight in their tracks when the rest of the horde of monsters appeared over the horizon. There had to have been at least a thousand of them running straight towards the large group of adventurers, and Peter felt his heart begin to pound loudly in his chest as he realised, he was about to die.
Yet, in a strange twist of fate, Sadi snapped him out of his impending doom spiral.
“Don’t go getting weak in the knees now rat. After all, this is only the first wave and I’m bound to need your assistance in collecting all the loot from the monsters I’m going to kill in just a second. You got that?”
Peter simply nodded genuinely, somewhat stupefied that he was getting comfort from the man’s words. However, that feeling quickly faded away as he watched the cruel but powerful man begin walking away from him, with a look in his eye that was almost unreadable.
Then, Sadi’s body began to visibly glow with power, and he shot off from his leg in the direction of the monster wave, and in only a few seconds, he had closed the distance between him, and the wave of monsters and a downright slaughter began.
The ten idiotic adventurers managed to gather themselves once they’d seen Sadi surge pass them, probably more out of a fear that the man would take the all-important prize from them than any newfound bravery surging within them, but whatever the case, they then charged and joined the battle – killing the birdlike monsters one by one as a team.
Peter saw Elizabeth shake her head and sigh. Momentarily Peter felt bad for the women as the situation had very quickly gotten out of her control, but upon recalling that she had not so long ago insulted him, he realised he didn’t really care that much about her suffering this once.
With monsters now having appeared, and the order that had once existed already having been broken, the remainder of the adventurers present including, it must be said, Katie decided to charge towards the oncoming wave of bird monsters.
Peter remained solitary - standing right where he had been this whole time, watching as powerful magic flew and exploded in the distance and impressive looking swords cut into monster flesh – all the while thinking that everyone who had entered this dungeon with him were complete idiots.
“I know what you’re thinking kid and you’re right, they’re all morons.” Elizabeth said simply – causing the boy to suddenly realise that she was now standing right beside him.
Peter looked up at the woman, a knowing look in his eye, and she laughed hysterically.
“You really do got quite the head on your little shoulders, huh?”
Peter didn’t respond, at least not verbally – though he did feel a slight smile form on his face from the woman’s praise. His opinion of her was very quickly changing as he couldn’t deny that being praised – after spending his entire life being insulted everyday – led to a very, very pleasant feeling indeed.
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“Since you’re a smart kid, you probably already figured this out by yourself, but you should do your best to get out from Jared’s thumb as best you can kid. That man will be the death of you if you don’t.”
Peter nodded in response, a gesture that the woman reciprocated before muttering under her breath, “Heck, he might even be the death of this whole raid group if a battle ensues over the right to fight the [Bronze] rank.”
Peter was about to respond, but a system prompt appearing in his vision forestalled him.
Your assigned bot has completed its task!
Perk: [Genius]’s rank is now [F+]!
Updated Information:
Genius | Type: Mental | Rank: [F+] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/3 | Description: Far from simple minded, you possess a mind suitably capable of comprehending even the most obscure, inaccessible aspects of reality.
Upon dismissing the system prompt, Peter felt a strange new depth of reality open up to him as the upgrade took effect. His mind seemed to be somewhat faster, and each thought he had seemed less fuzzy somehow, but what really astounded him was the connections he was starting to form between seemingly unrelated data that he had stored in his head.
‘Note to self’, Peter thought – astounded, ‘Remember to upgrade your other personal perks and not just your stats and the idle progression perk.’
With that bit of advice to himself in mind, he struggled to decide what he should assign his now unassigned bot to do. Sure, he had just realised the full importance of what he had already known prior to receiving his system – that personal perks were important, but on the other hand, so were the other parts of his status screen.
For example, he was currently level 5, and if the system followed the pattern, it had thus far seemed to follow for him, if he chose to assign the bot to increase his level to the next level, 6, he’d possibly receive his second class skill – something he might need to survive in the dungeon he suddenly now found himself in.
However, equally important to his survival were his [Detect Objects] skill, to not to piss off his current master; the class skills that he already possessed, to grow better at controlling time; as well as the more general mana manipulation and utilisation skills that he also knew he needed to keep raising the level of if he wished to learn magic skills outside of the ones the system all but gave him for free every other level up.
That final thought set off a chain reaction that led to Peter trembling in excitement as he lambasted himself internally for not having thought of doing something like what he was thinking of doing sooner. Eventually, the ridiculousness of the idea pushed him over the edge, all but forcing his hand, and so with a thought, he assigned his bot – causing a system prompt to appear in his vision confirming his mad idea would work.
You have assigned 1 system bot to increase [Epic] Affinity: [Space], to [F+] rank!
Time remaining until assignment completion: 13 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes!
Peter almost let out a squeal of excitement but noticed that Elizabeth was looking at him with a curious glare and quickly did his best to suppress his excitement at the ridiculous development that he could upgrade his affinities just as easily as he upgraded anything else. Though, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to manage to wipe the childish, knowing smile from his lips as he returned his focus to watching the battle going on far off in the distance.
----------------------------------------
To say that his joy was short-lived was to understate the case quite considerably.
Mere minutes after Peter had assigned his bot to increase his affinity for Space magic, the large group of adventurers – minus a few who had somehow managed to die – came running back towards the position where both Peter and Elizabeth were standing.
Both had a pretty ominous feeling about what had caused them to flee from the battle with the oncoming wave – a feeling that was soon confirmed as Sadi yelled at Elizabeth, “A WHOLE 3 MORE WAVES OF THE FUCKERS INCOMING! RUN YOU MOTHER FUCKING STUPID BITCH!”
Elizabeth’s face paled a bit, but she quickly recovered from the shock, and she too began running in the same direction that the group of adventurers was running in.
Peter did his best to keep up with the group, but the group ended up running at top speed for what felt like hours in an attempt to escape the clutches of the bird-like monsters whose numbers only seemed to multiply as time passed.
Peter’s lungs, as well as the rest of his body, were burning with exhaustion by the time the group finally encountered some form of shelter in which they could bunker down.
The speed at which every adventurer moved so as to fortify this new location was downright impressive, and just about fast enough that by the time the waves of bird monsters had caught up to them, they had already established a defensible perimeter.
The dungeon was now going to be a test of endurance and a war of attrition between the small group of elite humans and the seemingly endless monstrous hordes.
However, thanks to the newly erected defences, combined with the shelter they had found – a pretty rundown sandstone castle atop a massive sand dune – that was located on an extremely defensible cliffside, the birds having endless numbers didn’t matter as much and the expected casualties from any future battle diminished dramatically.
Yet, nothing could ever be truly that easy in a Raid dungeon, and a new problem quickly emerged. Well, it wasn’t as much a new problem as it was an old problem displaying a newly discovered problematic aspect – the problem being at the root – the heat of the sun that hung above.
Though at this point the mages in the group had been assigned to constantly apply their magic to prevent everyone present from burning alive due to the sun’s heat, the sun’s heat was so great that the water that had been brought along as a part of the supplies almost instantly began to boil if exposed to even an inkling of direct sunlight.
Yet not even the shelter provided by the castle provided sufficient shade and dark and cool spaces to stop this heat from impacting most of the water supply, and so the water supply of the raid party was very quickly diminishing as the days passed, and this water insecurity was making people extremely jittery and irritable.
And, naturally, this irritability made some in the party start to look at other members in the group as nothing more than leeches who were effectively in their eyes a waste of water. And being the lowest level participant in the raid, as well as someone who had been exempted from needing to defend the fort due to his perceived weakness, Peter knew he would bear the majority of the brunt of the murderous sentiment.
As a result, Peter felt as though if he wasn’t careful, he might end up as one of those unfortunate people who were going to be killed by ‘accident’ at the hands of one of his fellow raid party members.
Despite this seemingly inevitable fact, whatever amount of suffering he had to endure to survive he would do it as at the end of the day all he needed was time and then he’d conquer the whole world.