THE SNOW FOREST Rank: C

The pop-up screen notified our entrance.

Beautiful!

That was the first word that popped into my mind when I came out of Dungeon Gate.

The cave I had walked into, opened up on another mountain, covered in snow. The mountain faced a beautiful forest, its branches, blanketed with snow, glistened in the sunlight, like a silver veil. I focused my eyes but I still wasn’t able to see the end of the woodland.

After appreciating the beauty for a while, Deus asked me. “Shouldn’t you be worried about what the mercenary group told us? We could be attacked any time.”

“Don’t worry about it. We have the Map at our disposal.” I reassured him. “Even the best stealth skills are useless in front of it.”

I took out a Mana Potion and gulped it down. My mana pool had been a bit empty since I used the Map to find the Dungeon’s location, but I could feel it slowly filling up.

I focused the mana in my eyes.

‘Appraisal.’

Immediately the map of the Dungeon began materialising in front of me. Unfortunately, my mana pool received another hit. I had to down another Potion since this Appraisal took more mana than I expected. This Dungeon must be bigger than I thought.

Deus and I began analysing the map. The woods seemed to be teeming with monsters. Snow wolves, Ice Falcons, Yetis, and many other manners of dangerous creatures lurked in it.

Whoever said, ‘Beauty Can Kill.’ was certainly not wrong.

“I have looked up this entire mountain's monster population, but none of the creatures here seem to have the strength to be able to injure that group. Whatever attacked them, must be in the forest below us.” Deus informed me.

“Well then, I guess we'll wait for them to come to us.”

“Just to be safe, we should split up. That way we call for help, if one of us gets attacked.”

“Sure.”

Stating the plan, Deus transformed into a Falcon and flew away. I started to leisurely make my way down the mountain. The hike down was quite serene. Despite the map's warnings, no monsters attacked me.

The wolves and bears that I encountered just stared at me from a distance. There were mostly E+ Ranks with a few D Ranks.

After half an hour of hiking, I finally arrived at the foot of the mountain.

‘Deus, did you find anything yet?’

‘Nothing. Except for a few Ice Falcons giving me a stinky eye, nothing suspicious.’

I wanted to ask what kind of expressions did falcons make to give stinky eyes, but I reined in my curiosity.

‘Well, keep a lookout. I am entering the forest now.’

I stretched my leg muscles a bit and then began my dash through the forest. My C+ Rank’s speed was nothing to scoff at, especially after all that Spartan training I had to do under Misa. I could reach high speeds as easily as walking even without a Speed Potion.

The forest looked even more beautiful from the ground. Fir trees, covered up in snow, lined my path. Trails of frozen droplets hung from their branches like vines. When I struck them lightly, they rang out like a beautiful orchestra presenting its piece.

As I darted between the trees, the monsters ran away upon sensing my Aura.

“Woosh”

Suddenly a huge alert notification screen popped up in front of me.

I quickly opened up my Map to check the danger Map was warning me about.

Three bright dots were moving on the map. Their positions were changing so rapidly on the map that I wouldn't doubt if someone told me they were teleporting.

I pinched the Map and zoomed in on them. As the dots turned into figures, a clearer image began to appear. Three pale-toned humanoids with long hair, silver like the moonlight, were sprinting on the trees, jumping from branch to branch like ninjas. But what surprised me the most was the fact that all three of them had long pointy ears and had stunningly beautiful faces.

‘Deus, I got a pinpoint on our assailants. They seem to be elves.’

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

‘Elves? What are elves doing in some Dungeon, scaring humans?’

‘Not sure, but we should meet up to think up our next plan.’

The dots on the Map suddenly stopped. This time they were moving toward me.

Looks like they noticed me.

I increased my speed and began to run away.

‘Deus, quickly come to my location. The elves are following me.’

‘On it. I am arriving at your location now.’

Since the elves were ambushing Heroes in the dungeon, they are probably not gonna want to have a friendly talk. And I am not a big fan of getting injured. So, the only thing I can do is divert their attention. I took out a special potion that I created the day before the midterms began, at my lab.

It was a tiny vial with a peach colour liquid. It looked quite cute in my opinion. But this particular potion can cause a small disaster inside a Dungeon.

Monster Love: A perfume that attracts all the monsters in a 100-metre radius. It has the side effect of stimulating the monsters who smell it.

This perfume was the polar opposite of the poison purple Monster Repellant Potion.

As soon as the dots came in my vicinity, I dropped the potion.

‘Crack’ The vial shattered with a loud noise. Immediately, a sweet fruity smell started wafting through the air. Light tremors started to shake the ground. Even the three elves stopped in their tracks, checking out the cause of the unnatural earthquake. Soon a horde of agitated monsters appeared in the periphery, like ants attracted to candy.

‘I am here.’

A falcon flew in front of me.

‘Quick, use Fade.’

Deus perched on my shoulder and quickly turned into his snake form, wrapping himself around my neck. Soon a dark layer of mana emitted from his body covering the two of us. The monsters that were heading towards us looked around in confusion, their prey long gone. The rest of the monsters began heading toward the elves' party. I could see them fighting the monster wave on the Appraisal Map.

Seeing how oblivious to my presence the monsters were, reminded me again how lucky it was that I picked up Deus. Fade may be an A Rank skill, capable of erasing the entire presence of its user if practiced well. But it does have a major flaw in that it can't be used on others aside from the user. But getting Deus has saved me the trouble of searching for the Skill.

A few days ago, after Deus broke through to the D Rank, he informed me that now that his Rank had increased, I could use some of his skills with a few restrictions on them. The restrictions would slowly be lifted as he Ranked up, but for now, the restriction was maintaining physical contact with the Spirit, otherwise there would be a huge decrease in mana efficiency. I had been really curious to try his skills since it felt unfair that he was using my Appraisal skill without any problems, and even now I had to suffer ridiculous restrictions.

But once I used the skill, all my negative thoughts disappeared.

Fade was incredible. As I casually strolled among the monster herds, they didn’t even glance at me. I had a brief idea of making faces at the monsters, but I decided against my thoughts.

Appraisal was magnificent as well, being EX Rank, but since it was more of a passive skill for information gathering, it wasn't as cool as the abilities that you usually use in games

Soon, we were walking away from the fight and Deus lifted the skill once we got to a safe distance. It wasn’t A Rank for nothing. The mana expenditure was high. But it was still low compared to what the Appraisal Map needed.

‘Let’s watch what’s going on there.’ Deus spoke up.

I opened up the Map in front of us and zoomed in on their location. The elves were completely surrounded by monsters. Despite it seeming like an impossible fight, they seemed to be facing the horde quite effortlessly. One of the elves, who seemed to be the leader, was a B Rank while the other two were the same Rank as me.

“Hmm. Interesting. What are Moon Elves doing so far from the Elf Forest.” Deus commented next to me.

“Moon Elves?” I couldn’t remember much about elves in the novel. Elves were mostly background characters and only a few were important enough for me to still remember them, and as far as I can remember they weren’t classified.

“Well, Elves are the creatures most close to nature, and so they worship it like fanatics. More specifically, the three most oldest and powerful creations of nature, the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. When Elves come of age, they choose one of the three as their primary object of worship and devotion.” Deus explained.

“Is there a difference in choosing one?” I asked.

“Of course. An elf’s entire magic structure can change depending on who they choose to worship. Moon Elves in particular are great Assassins and have a particularly high affinity towards the Darkness and Water elements. You should be careful of them. They can easily kill you, if they want to. Despite being assassins, who mainly deal in stealth and surprise attacks, Moon Elves are quite strong physically as well.”

As Deus was explaining to me about Moon Elves, he went into thought. “Hmm. Wait, they are amazing fighters. So why are they just injuring Heroes rather than killing them? Won’t it be much easier for them?”

“It's probably because of the Peace Treaty that was agreed upon by all species. The extraterrestrial residents will officially be the owners of the landmasses they are occupying, and in return, they will not harm humankind without any valid reason.” I told him about the research I had done about the 1960 Catastrophe that Earth witnessed. It was clearly unfair for the human race, but since at the time humans were too weak to defend themselves, they had to agree to such unfair conditions.

“Just the fact that they are here on human land, illegally raiding their Dungeons and resources, the Elves would be in a lot of trouble for breaking the Treaty. They are probably avoiding human casualties since the Hero League won’t extensively investigate otherwise. I am pretty sure, what the League are thinking is that one of the mercenary parties got too greedy about the rewards and is stopping the others from getting to it first. This way the League will only send a small party at first, giving the Elves time to get rid of evidence.”

“But is the reward here important enough for the Elves to break the Treaty?”

“Well, now that the Elves are occupied by the monster wave, how about we use the opportunity to find out?”

“Sure. The boss monster is usually in possession of the important rewards or at least is near its location. We should start by searching for it.”

Deus and I quickly began to scan the map.

“Hmm. Looks like there are three different boss monsters. Two are in the forest and one’s sleeping in the mountain caves. Wait, are multiple boss monsters even possible?”

“Of course. Larger and High-Ranking Dungeons can have as many as 10 boss monsters existing simultaneously, each in charge of its own territory within the Dungeon.” Deus explained. “It's common Hero knowledge. How do you not know that? ”

“Uh, well I was more interested in making potions than raiding Dungeons.” I quickly made up an excuse. And, it wasn’t even a life, since Ray did live a secluded life.

“Well, considering the fact that you made all those weirdly powerful potions, I wouldn't be surprised that you were stuck in your lab and don’t have common sense about Dungeons.” Deus lightly insulted my intellect.

My ears turned red due to lack of comeback. While it's true that I don’t have much common sense of this world, it was because I was studying about mana and sword art, so that I can survive in this war-driven world. How can you expect someone to know everything about a world they just came to a few months ago.

I did have the memories of Ray, but they were more like a search bar. Unless I actively looked for a particular memory, it won’t tell me anything. That’s why I needed to engrain the fighting mindset into my own mind so that I can developer a relief and wouldn’t have to actively search for the memory everytime I fought a monster.

“Well, your common sense aside, we should start with the ones in the forest. It would be hard to fight in the caves, so we should attack it later when the boss comes out to hunt for prey.” Deus advised.

“Okay, let's go with that. And it seems like the Elves are doing well with their battle too.”

True enough, the Elves were true to Deus' expectations. Half of the monsters that had been surrounding them were on the ground lifeless. The B Ranker especially was slicing down monsters like a piece of tofu.

Seeing his strength finally made me realise that going up by a Rank is a much tougher process than going up by a sub-Rank as I had done earlier. I would have to train a lot more to be able to go from C+ to B Rank.