The Crypts, City Dungeon

Granite City

Isabelle swung her staff into another Monster that was eerily similar to a human. Closer to a zombie in her opinion, but her staff still made fast work of the creature, splitting it in half easily.

"Jut was right. Being Stone rank makes dealing damage so much easier." She said, more to herself than Cody, but Cody still responded.

Well, from my initial calculations, you are doing nearly 2.5 to 3.5 times more damage to the lower-ranked enemies. It also appears the actual damage to their bodies is also multiplied by the same amount, while the damage they do to you only leaves behind a glowing red mark. So, it makes sense. Rank disparity seems to be incredible.

"That is true. I just hope to not run into an injury caused by a higher-ranked Monster anytime soon." Isabelle responded as she pulled up the notification she had received around half an hour before to review it once more. She shuddered as she read.

You have entered the Granite City Dungeon: The Crypts You meet the requirements to run this Dungeon: Stone Rank All Skill Slots Equipped Okay

The following message was also skimmed over again.

The Crypts are a [City Dungeon]. [City Dungeons] grow through being cleared by Ascendant Beings. As such, Death is not an outcome in [City Dungeons], unlike [Lairs] or [Wild Dungeons]. Should a Being's health reach 0, they will be ejected from the dungeon in the condition in which they entered. 50% of the gained experience and items will be forfeited to ensure their survival. Skills cannot be equipped during a Dungeon Run, but gear can be. City Dungeons have their own unique run options, limitations, and treasures. The very first time a Being clears a City Dungeon will include a bonus. Good Luck!

Isabelle looked around. The entire hallway was littered with dead Human Monsters. Not one to usually pray, she fumbled over the words a bit, but still sent a prayer out to the Goddess Jut said he had met. She bowed her head and spoke the prayer aloud.

"Dear Goddess Ophelia, please watch out for the departed souls of those who died down here before the Dungeon was formed. I don't know if you have a hand in what happens to them, but it was not their fault they died. Amen?"

Isabelle nodded. She did not receive a response, as she expected. That is when a glimmering caught her eye from one of the walls right above the caskets that one of the Monsters had crawled out of. When she approached the oddity, she noticed it was a moss or some other kind of plant growing on the wall that was glowing. It had a golden outline around it. In fact, the entire wall seemed to be glowing now that she noticed. When she focused on the small amount right at eye level a little harder, a small window appeared in her vision.

Item: Cyrpt Moss Description: Moss that grows in the ambient Mana surrounding the dead. Can be used in many alchemical potions and elixirs for various effects.

Intrigued, Isabelle reached out to the moss. She felt an impulse to be very gentle and pull the moss from the edges and bottom instead of scooping it up. The impulse felt like it was coming from her memory and she knew it was her Herbalism Skill kicking in. The dark green, almost black, plant matter came away easily as she gathered it.

"Well, that was interesting. Do all gathering skills light things up like that?" She asked Cody. She doubted Cody knew more than she did, seeing as they had the same amount of Lore.

While I have no Lore on any other Gathering Skills, I do have conversational Lore from Mr. Diggy and Mr. Almight where they described the sight they see when gathering Ore and it does appear to be the same, yes.

"Wait. When did you hear them say that?" Isabelle asked. She was genuinely confused because she did not recall them saying anything of the sort.

During the meeting yesterday. Just because you did not focus on or register the words does not mean you did not hear them.

Isabelle's eyes widened. She continued to gather the other moss patches from the wall in front of her, thinking over the implications of that. Could she walk through a crowded room and not listen to a single word and later look up the information in her Lore? Was this a skill or capability of all Stone Ranked beings? Or was this something only she could do? As she placed the last bit of Moss from the section of wall in front of her into her inventory, Cody answered.

Seeing as this kind of conversational Lore has been available to you since you were Normal Rank, I think it is safe to assume all Beings can do this. At least, those with a Lore Book.

Isabelle nodded as she began to make a Monster Harvest Ritual ring with chalk she had found on their way to the Safe Zone. That made sense to her. People did hear everything around them, it was whether or not they focused on what was being said or not that determined what was remembered. Then she began the laborious task of dragging the bodies to the ring and performing the ritual to loot to loot them.

It was while she was performing her fifteenth ritual that she discovered why Jut's Monster Harvest Ritual Skill had more benefits than she realized.

A small padding sounded from behind her made her turn. She raised her staff just in time to impale the Human Monster on it. It had been trying to sneak up on her, but the silent Cyrpts made the sounds it made ring louder than the Monster had expected. The beast was inches from her face, the grotesque fingers with chipped and dirty fingernails reaching out to claw her.

Isabelle pulled her wand out of her inventory and held it up so the tip pointed at the Monster's face. She focused, feeling the Mana within her charge the small stick before it fired a bolt of blue magic that destroyed the creature's head in one shot. It reminded her of smashing a pumpkin and made her gag. She stepped out of the way after pulling her staff free as the corpse fell directly into the circle on top of her loot already sitting there.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Gah, I hope that thing didn't bleed on my loot." She said aloud as she bent and activated the circle again, looting the newly dead Monster. "I wish I didn't have to sit over dead bodies like this while looting." She added as she swiped up the now larger pile of loot.

Once the hallway was clear of loot and bodies, she left and entered the main room. It was exactly as Jut and Brick had described, with alcoves all around and the largest coffin in the middle. A circle of light surrounded the huge box that cascaded down from above. She carefully inched her way around the light to the nearest hallway and walked down it. There was no way she was going risk being flooded by zombies.

The second hallway was identical to the first, only lacking the swirling magical portal at the end that lead her into this dank place. Having watched the Monsters crawl out from the coffins the first time had her ready to react. It also helped that being in a narrow corridor made them all line up.

Isabelle held her wand up, aimed, gathered her mana into the wand and began firing.

Unlike before, when she had fired at point blank range into the Monster, now she could see her bolts. As magic wands synced with the user's affinity, hers was firing icy bolts. When they hit, the projectile would rip a hole through the Normal Ranked Monsters, leaving an icy fringe around the wound. Some of the Monsters could survive a single bolt to the chest, but she could fire rapidly if they didn't die right away.

The Wand also had the benefit of consuming less Mana than her actual Magic Bolt Spell. However, nothing in here so far had survived a blast from one of those yet.

After the last body hit the floor, Isabelle waited. She listened carefully for the sound of scraping stone or the patter of feet. When nearly a full minute had passed, she began her work again. She harvested any moss she could see then looted all the bodies.

By the end of the third hallway, she was tired, her mana and stamina were low, and she was sick of dragging dead bodies to a single location and performing the harvest ritual over and over again. So, she decided to leave this awful place. Jut never said they had to complete the Dungeon. He had only said they needed to run it and she had.

At least, Isabelle tried to leave. On her way across the center room, she didn't notice her foot graze the light as she passed by. When she entered the starting hallway, it was blocked off about a quarter of the way down.

"Damn it. It was hoping this passage being blocked off was a side effect of touching the center coffin." She cursed, pounding on the newly appeared wall.

It was absolutely silent as well. You heard nothing. However, you do hear footsteps now. Watch out behind us.

Cody's window disappeared quickly. Isabelle spun and noticed they had been correct. There was a stream of human monsters coming at her.

Isabelle readied her staff and began firing her wand as quickly as she could manage. It wasn't quiet a machine gun in its firing speed, more like a handgun. One with a huge magazine, namely, her mana pool.

Despite the damage the wand could out put, it wasn't enough to handle multiple hallways worth of monsters before they closed in on her. So, she fired up her Skill.

A dense ball of mana accumulated in Isabelle's palm and despite not needing to, she called out the name of her Skill, just like from an anime.

"Magical Bolt!"

The ball shot forward, elongating into a spike of energy. It rocketed into the leading Monster, tearing it into pieces. The residual energy proceeded to tear through monster after monster, clearing the first few layers of the beasts before dissipating. The remaining horde had been knocked back or halted for a brief moment.

Isabelle used that moment to stow her wand away and take up a defensive stance. The shoulder height rod stretched across her body. Then, they were on her.

Swinging her staff awkwardly, Isabelle did her best to use it's length to keep her foes at bay. However, there was just too many of them. That was her consequence of choosing the wand weapon skill instead of the staff one. Before long, her health was running low, many red streaks of normal ranked damage covering her front.

While keeping her staff moving, Isabelle fired up her new healing skill, Regenerative Touch. When she slapped her glowing white palm onto her leg, she felt the warmth of the spell spread through her and her HP started to tick up in her vision, but it wasn't enough. So, without removing her hand from her leg, she channeled her Healing Touch skill into herself too. She channeled as much mana as she could into the spell while leaving herself at least thirty-five percent. Her HP shot up to over seventy-five percent and she returned to swinging her staff.

When Isabelle was finally finished striking down every opponent that had decided to charge at her, she felt worse for wear. Her resources were very low and her clothing was torn in many places. She couldn't catch her breath as her stamina was not climbing as fast as it normally did. She just hoped what the boys had said was true and when she left, she would be fine and not be exposed as she was now with her top in tatters.

Before Isabelle could even consider starting to loot the bodies, which was low on her priority list just then, three bodies dropped down from the alcoves in the main hallway.

Unlike the oversimplified version of the Human Monsters whom she had been fighting for what felt like hours, the new foes before her were more complex. Their hair didn't feel like it was painted on, they carried weapons, and worst of all, they had expressions. She caught one grinning wickedly at her as it passed through the light on it's way over to her.

Isabelle managed to pull her wand out and fire it at the closest Monster. He mana was not yet high enough to perform a Magical Bolt. The bastard side stepped the attack and never slowed down.

From what Jut and Brick had said, these were Stone Ranked enemies. Sure enough, the tags over their heads spelled it out for her.

Human - Monster Stone Rank

These beasts would do real damage to her body and it would take a lot more to bring them down. With her health so low, Isabelle was not confident she could survive a single attack. Yet, she didn't want to give up and just die, so she decided now was a good time to give her trump card a shot.

Jut had given her a healing Skill Orb that granted her an amazing skill. She hadn't put it on her bar because of it's limitations.

Skill: From the Brink Rank: Normal Type: Spell Cost: All of the user's MP. Must be at 10% or higher. Cast Time: 3 seconds Cool Down: 1 day Duration: 1 use Range: Touch Effect: Completely restore the HP, MP, and Stamina of a Normal Ranked being. This spell will heal all Normal Ranked damage to the body and restore a Normal Ranked being completely. For every Rank the being is above this Skill's rank, the effect is reduced by 50%.

Just then, Isabelle ran into one of the reasons why Skills needed to be equipped. For From the Brink did not instantly activate. She had to concentrate hard and force the skill to work, adding two full seconds to her cast. Her hand glowed a brighter white than it ever had before and she reached down to touch her leg again.

However, before she could, a blade passed through her neck and another pierced her chest. She was surprised at how little pain she felt as the last of her HP slipped away. Her vision went black before she even hit the ground. The next thing she knew, she was tumbling head over ass as she skidded across the floor of the Safe Zone she had traversed to enter the Dungeon.

She instantly felt her neck and chest in a panic to find that she was not bleeding from wounds, her clothes were indeed repaired and she felt fine.

Four faces bent over her, peering at her. Jut, Brick, Joy, and Diggy were all smiling but it was Joy who was reaching down to help her up.

"Well? You didn't clear it, but how did it go?"

Isabelle clasped the other woman's hand and let herself be helped up. She also couldn't help the smile that crossed her face as she answered the question happily.

"That was so much fun. It was just like playing Prime, only so much more! How long until I can try it again?"