It was getting dark by the time my energy was back in full. I even prepared a use of Air Burst and regenerated my energy just in case. Perhaps my timing on this entire trip had been a bit off. I should have waited at the edge of the level 2 zone and set off in the morning, rather than leaving from Purgatory.

The temptation of warm bread and butter got to me. Well, I wasn’t worried, I had more than enough energy. While the darkness was creepy, my Perception had enough stat points invested into it to let me see enough and danger sense would alert me to trouble.

I made my way towards the large tree. Brown spiders leapt at me. Black spiders spat some kind of gunk at me. Green spiders unleashed gas at me. A few white spiders hid in the back and hit me with mental attacks.

Acid Shot x3. Acid Shot x3. Acid Shot x3.

The vast majority of spiders perished. Crystals and acid rained down into the swamp muck. The large tree was curved like a spiral, giving a very steep way to ascend. I began to make my way up. Acid Shot. Another spider melted.

At least I was out of the gunk. Danger! I kicked off the ground, retreating the way I had gone up the tree. Thin strands of webbing swung down and sliced into the tree trunk, like scythes. They were incredibly hard to make out in the darkness.

I couldn’t see the monster above me and kept retreating back down to the swamp and the muck. I leapt to get some distance from the large tree. Water sprayed upwards where I had been as web strands fell downwards, slicing anything in their path. I had to keep moving and even trying to evaluate the angles, I couldn’t work out where the attacks were coming from.

I couldn’t see their source or the level 3 monsters that were attacking me. This wasn’t good. Fine, let’s change the fight completely. I knelt down into the muck and leapt up. Air Burst! “Air Burst!”

The first use of the skill set me at an angle avoiding the web strands. The second use set me up to higher up portion of the large tree. Acid Shot x2. I killed two level 2 spiders.

I raced up the tree. A massive greenish spider leapt at me. Acid Shot. I killed it and leapt over its corpse to race up the spiral tree. Web strands continued to fall, slicing into the tree. I still couldn’t make out what monster was doing this. The darkness wasn’t helping.

I was closing in on the top of the tree. More small spiders. They were the size of large dogs, but small compared to the truck sized green one. Acid Shot x3. More acid and crystals rained down into the muck below.

I reached the top of the tree. There was a layer of light mist obscuring things. Strands of webbing shot out from the mist. I kicked off to the side. Acid Shot x5. The strands melted from my skill as acid splattered about. Two large light blue spiders suddenly began to appear out of the mist, wounded from my unaimed attack.

Acid Shot x2. Both of the spiders went down and turned to dust. A skill crystal appeared floating in the air at the top of the tree. I looked around and everything had been killed.

I took a moment to catch my breath. That had been a fight. It had gotten a little bit worrying there at the end, but I managed to pull through. Screw spiders, screw swamps. This had been a nightmare. I checked my surroundings again, confirming nothing was sneaking up on me.

I then went over and poked the skill crystal. The two skills were Mist Cloak and Poison Touch. Mist Cloak would create a mist that would conceal the user inside of. More energy probably meant more and longer lasting mist. It would suffer out in the sunlight but would be incredibly powerful in the level 3 zone mistlands.

But in combat, you just had to aim for where the attacks were coming from and the mist. It was an ambush skill, possibly an assassination type skill depending on how much it impacted the user. It wasn’t a combat skill.

Poison Touch was much less exciting but it was also probably very strong. Just a tap and then a target would take damage over time. Since it was limited to melee range it most likely made up for that limitation in terms of strength or length the skill would last on a target.

I wasn’t going to pick either skill. It was time to upgrade Air Burst with the fourth upgrade. My choices were nullification, persistence, and minor effect. Minor effect would let me uncover more of the type chart for crafting crystals. But I didn’t need Air Burst to have some weird effect.

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I had gotten nullification twice for Acid Shot for the fourth and ninth upgrade, which to me meant it countered energy defenses. Air Burst wasn’t an attack skill. I had no need to nullify defenses. That just left persistence, which I had no clue what it would even do with a skill like Air Burst. For Acid Shot I could see having the acid linger around longer.

After a bit of thinking it over I picked persistence. I didn’t want to mess up the core function of the skill, which was allowing me to escape and move quickly. “Air Burst.”

I tested my newly upgraded skill. Instead of a second, it lasted a second and a half. Not a huge surprise. Another minor upgrade and I would have to retrain my timing with the skill. I looked out over the dark swamp debating my next move.

I could leave now and try to retrace my path, with the hope to avoid monsters. Or I could wait until morning. Yeah, I was waiting until morning. With how things were going, I would end up heading the wrong way and end up in another zone. No matter how much I wanted to get back, it wasn’t worth the risk.

I laid down at the top of the tree and looked up at the night sky. All the pinpricks of light were still there. I remembered when I had been trying to work out a pattern or clue from those pin pricks of light. I smiled a bit thinking even further back when I had thought they were stars.

If the sun wasn’t a sun and a light source, those weren’t stars up there. If someone didn’t know better, they might say it was a real night sky, but it wasn’t. Fake like everything else in this place. More exploration would be in order, not grinding.

I would have to check with Naran, but I was inclined to explore more. Either to keep going on our current path, which would take us one zone to the East of the one I was currently in and Southeast of Purgatory. It was next to the void zone and where there were mimics.

Or we could go North of Heaven. It was all swamp, but there might be a way around through the summoner monsters and following the edge of the swamp. Or the swamp could just keep going North and be a pain in my rear like this swamp.

Maybe a boat of some kind to go in the cart. It might be worth seriously considering. Or a boat cart combination. Without anything in it, a cart could float. This had already been tested. The main issues were the fact that the water would get into the main area, and it was impossible to easily clean or clean in any reasonable manner.

What needed to be done was a camp to be set up and ferry people across a swamp with boats and supplies. A cart on the other side to use. Or I could just use backs and have someone with a high Body stat carry said pack.

I frowned as I tried to work out the logistics. Any way I looked at it, it would be a huge hassle. Well, there was no reason to get excited about the issue for now. I would wait until the next store upgrade and then we would hopefully have airships. That would nicely solve the problem. Just fly right over the swamps.

Anything beyond a level 2 zone was probably going to be a nightmare. There was no reason to build a huge tower like I had seen and then being allowed to cheese it with an airship to reach the top. The same for level 4 zones.

Either there would be some kind of limitation, like cost or energy density in the air. Or there would be monsters. That would make sense, airships could be monster magnets. That was why no one flew around in them, and we hadn’t seen any.

It would be like exploring but much more high risk, high reward. The explanation made sense, but I was sure there would be some horrible twist along the way. Airships seemed way too convenient. The fact that the port showed up before the airships themselves, was not encouraging.

Still, they would have made this dungeon so much easier. Skip the swamp, go right to the end. That was some planning I could get behind. I got up and checked the sky. There was a sliver of light in the distance.

That was more than enough to get going. Well the one good thing about all the water, it could cushion me. Time to see how far I could fly. I went to the South side of the tree. I then ran for the North side of the tree. No dead looking branches in my way.

I leapt off the tree. “Air Burst.” I kept my momentum as horizontal as possible, so I didn’t build up speed heading downwards until the end. I angled the skill slightly to keep me flying forward faster and faster. “Air Burst.” I kept flying over the tops of the trees and the swamp to the North. “Air Burst.”

Now this was traveling with style. “Air Burst.” My speed was dangerously high as I rocketed forwards. “Air Burst.” The trees and ground were zooming underneath me. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea. I began to descend.

“Air Burst.” I saved this one. I was coming down fast. Air Burst. “Air Burst.” I rapidly slowed down and rotated my body to put my feet in front of me. I impacted the top of a tree. I was lucky the swamp trees were tall and thick. They had leaves, but the amount was clustered mostly at the top, not all around.

The tree began to bend slightly. Then there was a cracking sound. I balanced on the tree as it fell into the swamp with a massive crash. Brown spiders leapt at me even as waves of swamp water rushed outwards from the impact. Acid Shot x3.

That was officially the coolest thing I had ever done. I needed a lot more energy so I could go sky surfing. Who needs air ships? I just need to jump off of tall structures and go hurtling forwards.

While I had been traveling fast, I hadn’t been traveling that long. I still had a long way to go to get out of the swamp. I let out a sigh as I made my way through the murky swamp water. I couldn’t wait to get a shower and never see another spider again.