Adama dashed through the Dungeon’s Upper and Middle floors at epic speeds, jumping down two separate vertical caverns on the Middle floors to reach the 18th floor in record time. He didn’t stop there, however, and he continued to run through the entirety of the Under Resort, skirting Rivira as he did. Tim only stopped when he reached the cave on the opposite side of the floor, scrutinizing the passageway with a critical eye. A high-pitched buzzing and a few strange monster cries could be heard from the other end, assuring Adama that he was in the right place. He set down his pack and rifled through it, extracting some paperwork to review:
Quests
1. Priority! 24th Floor Rescue! Done? NO Reward: 300,000 val
2. Need, Bugbear’s Nail x1. Own x0. Reward: 105,000 val
3. Need, Lizardman’s Nail x3. Own x0. Reward: 220,000 val
4. Need, Firebird’s Feather x1. Own x0. Reward: 135,000 val
5. Need, Lizardman’s Scale x2. Own x0. Reward: 150,000 val
6. Need, Battle Boar Tusk x1. Own x0. Reward: 115,000 val
7. Need, Sword Stag’s Antler x1. Own x0. Reward: 130,000 val
8. Need, Teasanare’s Flower x3. Own x0 Reward: 245,000 val
Reward at full completion: 1,400,000 val
The final reward was more than twice that of the first time he had done this. But that was to be expected, considering that there were eight quests instead of six this time, and he was exploring deeper floors. Adama hadn’t tried an endeavor of that magnitude since he had nearly failed to complete that Minotaur’s Horn quest. The penalties for failing a single quest weren’t that steep. The Guild wanted people to take quests, after all, and penalizing failure too much would discourage that, especially since one could fail a quest simply from a run of bad luck. Things would be different for Adama, however. If he failed a quest and was seen to have taken multiple quests at once, the Guild would likely penalize him. At minimum, they would probably add an additional restriction for him specifically, preventing him from taking out more than one quest at a time. He had stuck with three or four quests at a time as a result, a quantity that was still shocking for the poor Guild employees before they got used to it. It was a frustrating limitation, but a necessary one in order to avoid attracting negative attention. Until he found a loophole.
Apparently, you could file a request with the Guild to extend the deadline for a quest. So long as the quest issuer agreed, there was no strict upper limit on the time limit for any given quest. The penalties for failure would get much steeper, of course, but these types of arrangements were more common the deeper the floors got. Not all quests had a Guild set deadline of 24 hours, of course, but sometimes even a week or two might be seen as insufficient time for the more difficult quests.
Adama had, of course, decided to abuse this legal structure to it’s limit. He had filed requests for a large number of quests, targeting this new segment of the Dungeon as the upper limit for Level 2 adventurers, as the Guild saw it. This wasn’t exactly a new strategy, and it would normally be shut down instantly. But Adama had a woman on the inside.
Eina Tulle was broadly seen in the Guild as having honor above reproach and an understanding beyond her years. She smoothed the road for his requests’ approvals, reassuring Guild administrators and quest requestors alike that Adama was a man of high skill and character. The fact that he had earned himself a bit of minor celebrity by breaking the Level 2 level up record bolstered his chances as well. All the approvals had come in today, and he had been given the green light, on one condition. The Guild had ordered him to take a quest from their Priority list, a list where they placed some of their most dangerous and important jobs. Adama had promised to give this task his full priority, as a final prerequisite to getting all his quest deadlines expanded to 96 hours, or four days.
The Priority list quest, of course, was the topmost one. It had a high reward, but it came with a catch, and a wide array of caveats. He was searching for three Level 2 adventurers who had bit off more than they could chew and ventured into the 24th floor of the Dungeon. Level 2s operating on that level wasn’t unheard of, exactly, but the Guild strongly recommended that they be accompanied by Level 3s if they were going to do so. These three hadn’t listened, telling their divinity that they would be back in a day and running off to uncharted territory. The irony of sending a single Level 2 to rescue other Level 2s wasn’t lost on anyone, but Adama had plucked it off and rushed away before anyone could say anything. The reality was that he could punch well above his weight, Level wise, meaning that this quest was feasible for him. While it may have been doable, however, it would most certainly be annoying.
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Most adventurers didn’t take these kinds of quests, since most adventurers were built for combat, not search and rescue. Adama was obviously no exception to that. Furthermore, there were some restrictions on the payout. One only earned the full 300K vals payment if they brought back all three alive. For every person you lost, you lost 90K of the reward. If you only found their corpses and brought back their bodies, you would get only 30K. It was possible that they were all dead already, making this entire exercise meaningless. The requestor had likely paid to get it on the list, incentivizing the Guild to promote it. Adama had accepted the task philosophically. Even if it was out of his wheelhouse, it paid good money if he ultimately succeeded. Given the operations' time sensitive character, he had dashed down to this point as quickly as possible, stopping only to refresh his memory on all the tasks on hand.
Most of them were slayer quests, focused on getting monster drops by killing lots of monsters. But most of the quests available for these floors were harvester quests, aimed at gathering medicinal materials, due to the characteristics of these floors of the Dungeon. Even extremely combat oriented adventurers usually couldn’t resist/avoid these types of quests, Adama included, so he had grabbed the most lucrative medicinal harvesting quest he could find once he had run out of slayer quests. He re-familiarized himself with the description of Teasanare’s flower, checked over everything else one last time, before placing his paperwork back into his bag and heading down the tunnel.
The walls shifted from the greys and whites of the Under Resort to a deep mahogany brown as he sprinted down the passage. The rock hadn't changed color, however, as Adama knew from his research, but rather the Dungeon itself had changed the material of its structure entirely. The 19th-24th floors were known as the Underground Tree Labyrinth, because the walls of Dungeon began to shift from rock to wood within. This made it seem as though any adventurers were running through the inside of a massive tree.
The wood was still harder than the stone of the floors above, but it provided for a much more cozy Dungeon exploring experience. Rather than being lit by crystals, the Underground Tree Labyrinth was illuminated by glowing blue moss that grew from the walls. This azure lighting, in combination with the aesthetically pleasing wood, gave this area of the Dungeon a more comforting feeling than any of the others besides the Under Resort. Such a feeling could only lead the unsuspecting and foolish astray, and Adama brushed it off without even thinking. These floors contained his most deadly adversaries yet.
The first room he emerged into was carpeted with lush greenery and populated with a sporadic smattering of healthy coniferous trees. This “forest within the Tree” was pleasant to look at, but eerily silent. No birds chirped and no small furry animals ran through the grass. An oppressive aura hung over the pretty grove, and Adama looked around cautiously, making sure he wasn’t about to be ambushed. But before he could continue advancing, heavy footsteps echoed from somewhere within the gloom just out of eyeshot. Tim glared at the unknown source of sound as it made its way towards him. A large lumbering silhouette, highlighted in electric blue, slowly came into focus. Its livid red eyes glared right back at Adama as it grew closer to the intruder. Its open mouth exposed a slavering maw and wicked sharp ivory chompers.
Suddenly and without warning, this figure shot forward, its shaggy bulk rushing forward to dismember the intruder. It loped forward on four legs, claws digging into the earth and propelling it at lightning speeds, but as it grew closer it transitioned to two legs. Sprinting bipedally now, it raised a great paw and struck down diagonally at the interloper. The monster’s momentum and physical power gave this blow crippling force as it whistled towards Adama, the mighty strike sure to leave the puny human a smear on the opposite wall.
Two things happened at once. A great BOOM rang out in the underground chamber as the smaller human’s sword flickered upwards to meet the monster’s attack. Almost simultaneously, the beast felt a thrill of danger and twisted away. It threw its shaggy body to the side and backpedaled a few steps from the source of the danger. Pain bloomed inexplicably from its right side, and it scowled in rage and confusion at the smaller figure that had somehow damaged it.
Adama had smoothly deflected the monster’s strike, its attack more primal rage than skill, and ducked inside its guard with the same motion. His counterstroke should have bit into the monster’s torso and cut through its vitals, but at the last moment the creature had dodged away. His blade scraped the creature’s rib instead, enough to hurt it badly but nowhere near sufficient to take the fight out of his adversary. He scrutinized the Bugbear more closely, turning his head casually to where the creature had leaped and saying:
“You’re fast and strong, I’ll give you that much.”
The Bugbear was a large bear creature near the peak of Level 2, capable of swift quadrupedal and bipedal movement. They had all the physical strength of a Minotaur, which they combined with their naturally high speed and agility to become a high-powered Level 2 hunter that put the bull men to shame. Unfortunately for this monster, however, it had encountered a superior predator:
“But that’s about it.”
Adama was much stronger physically and, more importantly, he possessed skill and grace that the Bugbear couldn’t hope to match. Had he been in less of a hurry, he might have allowed this fight to drag out as he tested the limits of this new adversary’s abilities. But he had people to save and money to make, so he took off at full speed at his enemy, letting out a rapid set of three Rippling Swords in the space of a heartbeat. The Bugbear was placed on the defensive, destroying two of the spells on its razor-sharp claws. Those had been decoys, and the third spell landed home, shearing into the muscle on the creature’s right thigh, drawing a roar of pain from the beleaguered creature. With its agility neutralized, Adama closed the gap and parried another swing before ending the fight with a stab to the chest and a slash to the throat.