Chapter 40 - Now This Is a Real Dungeon

 

Space warped as Jae traversed the portal, and the same sickly feeling of weightlessness washed over him before he soon opened his eyes.

“Ugh, at least it ain’t as bad as last time... Woah. This is different...”

Examining the room in which he found himself, the first thought to come to mind was that it was completely different to the Pride Dungeon.

“Let’s see...”

A tight, claustrophobic room made entirely of dull stone brick and lit up only by the odd, dim magic crystals embedded in the walls. In this small chamber, there was only one exit right in front, bearing an unsettling atmosphere that seemed to welcome him.

I don’t know why I thought they would all be similar to Pride, but maybe it’s just because I was there for so long... Well, this place definitely gives off the vibe of a ‘classic dungeon’ more than there, anyway... Oh, wait, it’s gone?

Belatedly, Jae realised the entrance portal had disappeared upon entry.

“Trapped, eh...”

Though, I guess it was the same before, too. I’ll just have to clear it, then. As long as there isn’t anything on the level of a dragon, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to clear it quickly. Aphy mentioned that all of the Dungeons should have inherent time distortion, so if this one is anything like Pride, then it won’t take that long in reality.

“I still need to find her parents, after all...”

But, ultimately, this was a matter that took priority, no matter how much sympathy he felt for the girl. After muttering as such, Jae expanded the range of his mana detection before frowning.

“Hm, the walls are blocking my senses... Can I break them?”

Approaching one of the chamber’s walls, Jae raised his fist.

Bang-!

With an action Jae expected to shake the room violently, although the sound of the impact reverberated ceaselessly throughout, not even the brick he punched seemed to budge.

“...Huh. I guess I’ll just have to play along, then. Oh, wait, can any of you talk in here?”

Hearing no response from any of the others even after he prompted them, Jae could only assume there was some kind of barrier similar to the one in the Pride Dungeon.

“I see... Well, some peace and quiet isn’t so bad.”

Walking out of the starting chamber and down the dim-lit, seemingly empty hallway, Jae progressed on full alert. Not to mention being a place with unknown threats, something he had to keep in mind was that this was a Dungeon. Just as how the Pride Dungeon had things like dragons, there was little room to doubt that this Sloth Dungeon would have dangers of its own.

Even if he had grown considerably since he first entered the Pride Dungeon, he couldn’t get conceited.

Once I figure out what kind of place this is, then I can relax a little...

Somehow, though, Jae felt that even if he didn’t relax, something would inevitably go wrong.

 

---

 

Approximately one hour into adventuring the Sloth Dungeon.

“Kueeeghh--!”

“Okay, I think I’ve more or less figured this place out.”

Tearing off the arm of the stray Kobold Jae caught, he lightly seared it with Wrath before sinking his teeth in.

Gulp.

Swiping the notifications away after a single glance, Jae looked over the mental map he had made of the Dungeon so far with Charting.

Just like the impression I got earlier, this place functions exactly like a typical RPG dungeon.

A seemingly endless, maze-like structure containing monsters, traps, and treasure chests―so far, this had been Jae’s experience.

If there’s one odd thing, it’s that it seems way too easy. If it follows the tradition, maybe that’s because this is only the first floor? Regardless, the only monsters I’ve come across so far are weak guys like this and some giant bats, so I hope I get some more diversity soon. The chests are also lame... I need a boss fight or something. Well, it's a Dungeon, so it should have a boss anyway, right?

“I should’ve brought a bag with me, too...”

Jae never expected to require more space to carry things than just his pockets. Because of that lack of free inventory, he ended up having no choice but to leave behind nearly all of the loot he had come across, which consisted mostly of unusual gold coins and mana crystals.

“I guess it isn’t a big deal since I don’t really need any of it, but what do I do if I come across a special item...?”

In the end, he summed it up as being something he could deal with when it came to it and continued on.

Soon enough, Jae found a third treasure chest, and within it was exactly what he was dreading having to forego.

“It really is an item... Damn it.”

Picking up the pair of black leather gloves from the chest, he examined the garment that seemed to bear a subtle glow.

Is there any way I can see item stats or details? Envy... No, that doesn’t work...

“Well, at least I can wear them... Oh, are they enchanted...? They are, right?”

As well as the glow that only became more obvious the more he looked at it, the gloves also seemed to radiate special magic energy, giving the impression they had been imbued with something.

“This is the first time...”

Aphy never taught Jae about enchanting, including how to enchant, but upon donning the gloves, he found it possible to determine its effect thereafter by examining the magical attribute imbued within the item.

“Is this... Ice-attribute? So, it’s probably along the lines of Cold Resistance. Kinda useless when I have my magic shield, but I guess I’ll keep ‘em.”

I wonder how many of these chests there are... Heh.

Perhaps it was just his nature as a former gamer, but confirming that there were indeed unknown items to be looted, Jae suddenly found himself one hundred times more motivated to clear the Dungeon.

“Well. Let’s keep going, then.”

Without reservation, he increased his clear speed.

 

---

 

―4th chest: Fire-attribute scarf; equipped.

Jae continued through the Dungeon for a long time.

―7th chest: Light-attribute ring; equipped.

He disabled every trap, butchered every monster, and looted every chest.

―13th chest: Wind-attribute anklet; equipped.

At some point, he realised the Sloth Dungeon was way bigger than he first thought. Every passage was narrow, but like a never-ending labyrinth, there were countless winding paths and seemingly infinite routes one could take.

―18th chest: Water-attribute pendant; equipped.

―21st chest: Earth-attribute sash; equipped.

―27th chest: Poison-attribute ring; equipped.

“How long has it been? I feel like I’ve found every chest, and this is the only path remaining...”

So far, Jae has found a total of 31 chests. Of these, only 7 contained enchanted items. Some contained ordinary items like steel armour or restorative potions, but none were noteworthy enough to be mentioned.

Looking down at himself, covered head-to-toe with various enchanted artefacts, he sighed.

“I look like a total clown.”

Well, none of it really impeded his movement, and some of it seemed to have useful effects, so there was nothing to lose by keeping them equipped. Since he was practically finished with it now, he thought it would make sense for there to be 32 chests in total, with the final one being down this last passage.

“Maybe it’ll be a boss reward? I hope so.”

There was no way to confirm, so he simply carried onwards until he found what he could only assume to be it.

“Ooh, what’s this...?”

When the path widened up into a slightly bigger room than the rest of the maze, the only thought in Jae’s mind was that it was the area just before the boss room. Why? Because it was a dead-end, with the wall directly ahead having a suspicious button on it. Examining the wall a little closer under the dim lighting, he could make out what seemed like engraved murals.

“Oh. It’s lore, huh...”

A bizarre picture of what appeared to be an ordinary treasure chest, just like any of the 31 chests he had come across so far; suspiciously, it was surrounded by a pile of human corpses and gold coins.

“Hm... Well, that's cool I guess. No idea what it's supposed to mean, though.”

It doesn’t really matter. It’s probably not important when it comes to clearing the Dungeon, anyway. I'll keep it in mind, though.

Since entering the Dungeon, Jae had already gotten far more complacent than he had ever planned to, but in his defence, he couldn’t help it; the Dungeon thus far has been mind-numbingly easy to beat in terms of enemies and traps, not at all like the Pride Dungeon. Some part of him felt that it was all intentional, to make him negligent to the possible dangers ahead, but that part was by far in the minority.

So, with great expectations and little to no wariness, Jae pressed a stone button on the wall, raising it with an ear-splitting, unpleasant sound of grating stone.

Aah, that was loud... Now, then, let’s see what you’ve got in store.

Crossing the boundary of the room into a chamber about the size of a standard school gymnasium, Jae immediately came to face with what could be presumed to be the ‘boss monster’.

“Grhaaaaaooohh...!!!”

Letting out a menacing war cry, the opponent was a creature Jae had never seen before―a towering beast with bull features and wielding a huge battleaxe.

“Oh, wow...”

The presence of the monster was unlike anything Jae had experienced since exiting the Pride Dungeon, which, granted, wasn’t saying much, but he thought it could even be compared to some high-level drakes or wyverns.

It doesn’t have a lot of magic energy, though... It’s probably weaker than it looks. Envy.

“!!”

Upon seeing the Minotaur’s stats, Jae froze. Compared to anything Jae had ever fought alone, this was by far the strongest.

In terms of raw strength, it was unparalleled, and even its Defence was greater than any Wyvern Jae had ever slain.

What is this...!?

Jae couldn’t believe there was something this strong to follow all the small fry that preceded it, but there was no time to stand still and gawk as he quickly roused his Fighting Spirit and activated Power Burst.

“Graaaaoooohhh...!”

With a second cry, the Minotaur charged.

“Woah!”

Boom-!

Narrowly dodging the top-down swing, Jae rolled to the side before jumping to his feet.

This fucker’s fast!

In a split-second, he decided to discard the dragon tooth greatsword to lighten himself up. He was never going to win in a contest of strength or raw power, and he needed to be as light as he could.

Then, keeping his eyes pinned on the beast, he went full-out.

Envy!

Tsk, useless! Whatever, just go!

Forgetting Envy, Jae moved to his main weapon―magic. Deciding to slow down the monster, he cast ice magic.

Crackle...!

In an instant, the coldest and most durable ice he could muster formed around the legs of the Minotaur and froze it in place, quickly travelling upwards and encasing its entire body.

However, before it could even reach the monster’s torso, it screamed―

“Graaaah...!!”

Smash-!

―and broke free of the ice in one go.

“What--”

Then, the beast disappeared from where it stood.

“...!?”

All of a sudden, its face was inches away, snorting out hot steam from its nostrils.

Slam, shatter...!

“Ka-haghk...!?”

Before he knew it, Jae had crashed into the wall of the chamber. His body on the brink of death after just one punch from the Minotaur, it seemed to have even shattered his magic shield with a single hit. At the very least, the shield managed to prevent a one-hit knockout, but it was frighteningly close.

“Guh... Cough, cough-!”

Spluttering blood, he barely lifted himself from the hole in the wall. Glancing at where he had landed, Jae couldn’t help but let out a chuckle.

“Cough, hah... Wasn’t it supposed to be indestructible...?”

A Power of over fifty thousand was way too overpowered, even if it was the result of some kind of ‘Berserk’ buff. Staring at the beast on the other side of the room, which only stood there, glaring back at him with its glowing red eyes, Jae could feel something burning within him rise up―and it wasn’t a consequence of internal bleeding.

“Cow bastard...”

He broke the ice so effortlessly... Normal methods aren’t gonna work.

Roughly wiping the blood from his mouth, Jae studied the hall around him to come up with a plan. Decorative waterfalls descended from the ceiling into pools in each corner of the room; if he could use those somehow...

...Wait. If I combine...

For Jae, or any non-dragon, non-Spirit person for that matter, the method of using magic taught to him by Aphy was both incredibly convenient and inconvenient at the same time.

For normal magic, one only needed to cast the desired spell and be done with it, be it by incantation or otherwise. Once you had learnt the spell, it didn’t take any additional effort at all to cast it again other than consuming some mana.

However, if Jae wanted to cast a spell, although it did not consume mana and he needed no incantation or magic circle, one could argue that it was far tougher as he was required to, more or less, ‘craft’ the spell from scratch with every cast.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same as casting a spell, as it required to form entire magic sequences with nothing but the particles themselves, but to anyone unfamiliar with the method, it might as well be the same thing. Ordinarily, this means it would take a lot longer to cast the same spell as someone who simply chanted the incantation and supplied the mana themselves, but because the process itself was entirely different, it also meant the end result could be altered in any way.

So, although it was inconvenient for a “mortal” person such as Jae to learn and use, it was without a doubt the most flexible and purest form of magic there was.

For example...

Crackle--bzzt...!

Freezing the Minotaur’s body over once more to momentarily halt its movement, the attack was followed up with a surge of electricity that targeted the beast’s muscles and a layer of dark magic over its eyes to render its sense of sight useless.

“Gra--ga--aoh--gaohh...!”

The Minotaur, stunned and convulsing like someone struck with a taser might, didn’t have the energy to break free of the expanding ice covering more inches of its tough body by the second.

Still, Jae knew something like this would never be enough.

Wrath!

Summoning dozens of chunks of rock in the air, shaped like bullets and adding a rotational force with wind magic, he shrouded them in the Malignant Flames of Wrath and fired them one after the other.

Thud- thud- thud- thud--!

Without giving the enemy a single instant to respond or recover, Jae continued.

Encasing the Minotaur’s head in a dense bubble of water, jamming that water with countless volts of electricity and raising the temperature to a boil, all the whilst syphoning its source of magic energy via Wrath and sapping away its persistent stamina with the biting cold.

The Minotaur’s hide was far too durable to slice with wind magic, scorch with fire, or zap with lightning, but by using all kinds of magic in tandem like this, its power was amplified.

“Gur--gle...!”

Is this enough...?

Watching the Minotaur’s upper body squirm less and less as it froze over, drowning, burning, and frying helplessly, with no sense of what was happening to it, Jae heaved a sigh.

“...Gah. It hurts...”

What the hell is wrong with me... It shouldn't have taken me this much effort to deal with something like that.

It was only thanks to Aphy’s teaching of magic that Jae could use multiple elements simultaneously, even maintaining them long after the ‘spell’ was originally cast. Still, he couldn’t deny that the low level of raw power was disappointing.

“If only I could use higher level spells... Haa, Aphy... It’s just too hard...”

Jae lamented the fact he couldn’t use magic even half the scale that he witnessed somewhat occasionally in the Pride Dungeon.

Rising tsunamis of hellfire, gigantic moons falling down into the earth... He wished for the day to come that he could cast the kinds of cataclysmic spells he dreamt of when he first came to this world, but alas, he doubted whether such days would ever come.

To Jae, it was simply a matter of lacking talent.

See, putting together a collection of magic energy particles in a particular way in order to manifest a spark or a flame was something he was convinced anyone could do with the right tools and a bit of effort. Casting major spells, on the other hand, was a different beast entirely.

After all, just as there was a distinction between being able to cast a simple ‘Ignite’ spell and a more advanced ‘Hellflame’, there was likewise bound to be a difference between manifesting the kinds of magic he can currently use, and the magic he watched Aphy use.

From his perspective, it simply was not feasible to reach that level―at least not for his current self.

At the end of the day, there was a reason only dragons and Spirits used that method of magic, and it was only in times like these that Jae truly realised that.

“It makes sense, but it just sucks, you know...”

In any case, as Aphy said, practising magic was something he had to do every day if he wanted to get better at it, even if he already learnt everything he felt he needed to learn.

Despite knowing in the back of his mind that he would never attain the heights he dreams of, he would nevertheless continue to train for that goal, as otherwise, that would mean giving up.

Slam-!

Crashing onto the floor with a thud after a long period of useless struggle, the Minotaur had perished.

“Finally...”

Barely managing to stand on his feet, Jae stood up from the hole in the wall, dizzy. His sight momentarily blacked out as if he was anaemic, and he briefly stumbled.

“Woah... Tsk, that guy did more damage than I thought... If I didn’t have my shield, I'd have died for sure. Crazy...”

A short while passed as he slowly made his way over to the Minotaur’s body to take a bite.

“More garbage. So, I basically got nothing from this guy? What kind of trash is this...”

Haa, whatever. Let’s just-- wait... This guy was the boss, right? So, why is there no notification...?

“......”

Jae stood in silence for a minute. This Minotaur was definitely the boss, no doubt about that. But, there was no System notification, and nothing like an exit portal either.

“Does that mean... He wasn’t the real boss?”

A strange feeling overcame Jae’s body at the realisation. There was something even stronger than that guy? Perhaps twice, or even thrice as powerful.

Turning his head to the end of the room, he belatedly noticed a wall had opened up, revealing a secret passageway that wasn’t there before.

“...I see now.”

If this were like a videogame dungeon, there surely would be multiple floors, right?

Then, this Minotaur was merely the boss of the first floor.

Following the hidden path, he found a room filled with loot―piles upon piles of reflective gold coins, expensive jewellery, accessories, and even pieces of equipment like armour and weapons.

“Wow...”

In the centre of it all was a shining, gold chest atop a slight pedestal and encrusted with bright gemstones. It was like it was asking to be opened.

“Holy shi--... Did I hit the motherload? It’s a shame I can’t take all this with me...”

This treasure chest in particular was far more dazzling than any of the boring old wooden ones he had come across until now. Being the final, 32nd chest, as well as the loot locked behind the boss room, Jae knew it had to be something phenomenal.

It’s basically a law that that is how it goes.

Recalling the mural on the wall from before, he could tell that treasure chests seem to be a recurring theme in the Sloth Dungeon, and most likely, have something to do with the identity of Sloth itself. And, although Sloth hadn’t joined the party yet, Jae could only imagine what things would be like once it did.

I can only hope he lives up to his name and stays out of it. I won’t be able to stand it if things get even more chaotic than they already are.

Approaching the unique chest, Jae opened it.

“...Oh. What, it’s only gold coins?”

Immediately, his expectations were thrashed.

“What kind of bs is this? Where’s my special item? ...No, wait. Hold on a second.”

With a double take, Jae glanced between the surrounding piles of gold coins and the gold coins within the chest, and he noticed something.

“Are these ones higher quality or something? They look... Richer.”

He didn’t know if that was the correct term to use, but it was what came to mind. In any case, he was sure that the coins themselves were somehow different, so he thought to take at least one with him.

But it was when Jae reached his hand to grab one of those coins that it struck.

“Hu--”

All of a sudden, a red blur shot out from within the chest and wrapped around Jae’s arm, yanking him forward before he could even react.

His vision turned dark; his feeling numb.

“Kyehehehehe...!”

The last thing he heard was an ominous laughter, and then―

―His Resurrection counter ticked up by one.