-The Three Quests-
After ending his call, Kenshin armed himself with his extra gear that he saved for situations like this. Although it's called spare gear; all it contained was a longsword in a scabbard and a small piece of armor to cover his shoulder, commonly known as shoulder plates. Moreover, it's not even metallic, rather leather shoulder plates.
His target was the level 2 dungeon nearest to his home. Even though he had gained new powers, after a few minutes of careful deliberation, he refrained himself from challenging a level 3 dungeon anytime soon. He wanted to battle and test his system, not to seek death... again. Besides, if he could accumulate enough materials from a level 2 dungeon, getting at least a few hundred gold coins wouldn’t be a problem for him.
Sector 3 Dungeon, Mito
Mito, this city all total had three dungeons. Two of them are level 2 ones and one level 3 dungeon. Today, he was going to one of the level 2 dungeons closest to his place. The one with a bad reputation for its random monster spawning frequency.
Everyone knows that after every successful clear, a dungeon needs at least three days to reset. But only this Sector 3 dungeon was exempted from such rule. There were cases where it took months to reset while at other times it would take a few hours.
Due to this irregularity of reset frequency, the government has kept a constant watch over it. Going as far as setting up a DCB branch near the dungeon entrance.
The government didn’t charge the hunters an entrance fee, as clearing the dungeon was more essential to the survival of thousands of people as well as the stability of the town. Or else, in case of an overflow, many people would die.
Overflow is a situation, where, due to monsters being not kept in check inside the dungeon and cleared regularly, comes out of their confinement wreaking havoc everywhere.
Kenshin entered the dungeon without any difficulty, of course after submitting his phone and other electric gadgets on the reception. They don't work inside anyway.
Interestingly enough, the gate to this dungeon happens to be inside a ladies toilet room. This place was used to be a shopping mall before dungeons appeared. For some reason, the government decided to maintain the whole place as it was. It’s a surreal sight to see so many people going inside a female toilet room in an abandoned shopping mall. If not for the current state of the world, people would have called them perverts or something similar and reported them to the police.
After verifying his hunter id and other relevant documents, Kenshin entered the ‘ladies’ room’ as it was the dungeon’s unofficial name.
The Sector 3 dungeon had three layers in total.
Zombies made up the first layer. They were easy to kill but very dangerous if approached directly without exercising enough caution. These zombies held no value to the hunters, not only they were dirty and smelly, they were fine carriers of various diseases related to corpses and of course some strange mutations. There's even a chance of turning into a zombie yourself after being bitten by them. Although they were unpopular, there's a thing that attracted hunters. This was the place where Black Steel regularly appears. It’s a dungeon only material with a very high drop rate near these undead type monsters.
This steel was mainly used for military-grade gadgets and materials as they have very high conductivity and melting point. Aside from that, it was also used to make low-grade hunter equipment. It could also be used to make bullets and guns to kill the monsters by human armies, unfortunately, no country could bear to waste that much amount of materials for one-time use weapons.
The sword he was holding right now was made from dark steel as well. The market price of this dark steel was 20 G/kg. Kenshin had planned to mine this material until half of his inventory slots are filled.
Taking a deep breath and then loudly exhaling, he entered the first floor of the dungeon. Suddenly a notification appeared on his interface.
[You have entered Beginner level 2 dungeon, Ekla’s garden!]
[You have triggered three quests]
‘What!?’ Kenshin became a little distracted at the sudden appearance of the notification. Opening the ‘Quest’ menu, he found there were indeed three new quests flashing in golden glowing letters.
Those were as such;
[Quest 1]
- Kill 10 Zombies within five minutes
- Rewards: 2000 Exp
[Quest 2]
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- Kill 100 Zombies within five minutes
- Reward: 20000 EXP & 2 skill points
[Quest 3]
- Kill 1000 Zombies within five minutes
- Reward: 1 life
Kenshin gulped loudly at the quests given to him. He was not even sure if he could achieve all these, especially the last one. Killing 1000 zombies within five minutes? Is that something a low-level hunter could accomplish?
If it was someone like Aoi, they might be able to do it in a flash. But, him? Not a single chance in hell, at least for now. With a sigh, Kenshin stopped thinking about it. Although the rewards of the third quest were great, still the danger within was too much for him to handle, not to mention he recently came back from the grasp of death.
‘This time there would be no Aoi to save me, I should be careful to not become greedy and overestimate myself.’ Kenshin patted his chest and caressed his abdomen, the place where he got stabbed, to remind himself to not take unnecessary risks.
Still, the reward of the third quest had struck Kenshin hard. An extra life! who wouldn’t want one? In this world, everyone’s afraid of death. And he was no exception. For something like this that would allow him to cheat death, how can he say no to that?
Now, Kenshin had become a little afraid of this system’s power.
‘Whatever, this reward is still too far from me now. I should concentrate on the first quest, first!’ Kenshin thought with a sigh.
Brandishing his long sword, he quietly moved into the zombie-infested floor.
[Zombie Lv 2]
[HP 50/50]
The system notified him of the zombies’ statuses.
‘Okay, here goes nothing!’
Kenshin quietly walked behind a zombie and cleanly beheaded it with a single strike.
‘-100’ floated above the zombie as it died immediately.
[You have killed a zombie and gained 15 EXP]
‘So each zombie gives me 15 EXP on its death!’
Concluding this Kenshin realized the advantage of completing a quest. Killing 10 zombies would only give him a measly 150 experience points while finishing the quest would give him 2000 EXPs.
‘Continue!’ Kenshin excitedly yelled in his heart.
Repeating the same strategy, he sneaked at another zombie and beheaded it. These zombies can't see anything but were highly sensitive to sounds. The best way to kill them was to sneak behind them and kill it by stabbing or attacking their heads. Like this, he continuously killed many zombies while amassing EXPs at the same time. It didn’t last long, though.
During his seventh kill, he made a mistake and alerted all the zombies nearby.
As the zombies slowly walked towards him, Kenshin didn't back away; instead, an excited gleam appeared on his face. His eyes shone with incomparable fighting spirit as he clutched his sword tightly.
Kenshin had joined a dojo during his early hunting days. He learned all the skills necessary from the instructor. As a result, his fighting skills were not too shabby. Combined with his rich fighting experience in these low leveled dungeons; it was not hard for him to keep up with a group of zombies. Then there was his [Passive Regeneration] that continually regenerating his stamina, it was no problem for him to fight for a long time.
…Hack…slash…poke…evade…hack…slash…
[-100]
[-100]
[-100]
[-100]
Kenshin followed a rhythm and started laying waste to the zombies left and right.
[Congratulations** you have completed Quest 1]
[You have gained 2165 EXP]
[Your level has increased]
[You have become level 6]
‘Finally!!’ Kenshin broke his rhythm and jumped back to a safe location. After completing the quest, he wanted to see the results for himself.
He opened his status;
[Muto Kenhin][Human]
[Level 6][3735 Exps for next level up]
[HP 170/170][MP 19/19]
[ATK: 25; DEF: 21; AGI: 31; PHY: 17; LUK: 9]
[Unassigned Attribute Points: 4]
[Lives: 0]
[Skills]
[1. Replication Lv 1][997 Exp to next level up]
[2. Passive Regeneration Lv 5][3340 Exp to next level up]
Out of four attribute points, he gained due to level up, Kenshin allotted 3 points to PHY, increasing it to 20. Then he allotted one point to DEF.
After the allocation, his new stats become like this;
[Muto Kenhin][Human]
[Level 6][3735 Exps for next level up]
[HP 200/200][MP 21/21]
[ATK: 25; DEF: 22; AGI: 31; PHY: 20; LUK: 9]
[Unassigned Attribute Points: 0]
[Lives: 0]
[Skills]
[1. Replication Lv 1][997 Exp to next level up]
[2. Passive Regeneration Lv 5][3340 Exp to next level up]
An increased physique will give a high amount of HP and lower the stamina consumption during a fight. It was vital for any player in an RPG game, not to mention this was the real world. He also observed that for some reason, increasing PHY also increased his MP. He deduced that, since he had not yet gained an MP related stat, it increases randomly according to PHY.
Kenshin had decided to first give priority to DEF, PHY, and AGI. A high defense will allow him to endure more attacks, while agility will ensure his safety. As for PHY, a powerful body will allow him to exhibit more power and better survivability, namely high HP. This time he didn’t increase AGI because it was already 33. Any more and his stats would be unbalanced. Hence, he decided to leave that alone until he raises his PHY to a satisfactory level.
A base ATK of 25 was enough for now.
With this upgrade, Kenshin prepared to challenge his second quest. Amidst this excitement, he had already forgotten the real reason for him to be here.
Well, it can’t be helped.