“SHould I text her? It's past the time we agreed to meet?” I say to myself outside of the gate for the skeleton catacombs. I was waiting for Nyx, since we agreed last night to hunt together today, but she is currently late.
I don’t really know how to act in this type of situation.
Like, would it be rude to text her to see where she is.
But my answer is given pretty quickly when I get a call from her.
“Um, Hello?” I say into my phone.
“Um, Hi, this is Nyx” she says. “I’m sorry but it's going to take me a little to get to the dungeon today”
“Oh, what's up?” I asked her, concerned about what was going on.
“Nothing important, just I need to do something before meeting up today, but it's taking longer than I expected.” she tells me.
“Oh, well, I can still wait for you, but is it a more, we should meet up tomorrow thing?” I ask her.
“NO, I will get there today, but you shouldn’t waste time waiting for me. You should just start hunting on your own today” she tells me.
“Oh, ok. I hope you can finish whatever you need to do this morning” I say. “I am looking forward to hunting together later”
She is silent on the phone for a little after this.
“Hello?” I say.
“Yeah, I am looking forward to that as well” she says eventually. “See you later”
And she hangs up on me.
“Huh, I wonder what she has going on?” I say to myself before moving towards the entrance to the dungeon.
Like any other dungeon, outside of it, there is a check in area for the hunters. I scan my ID, and it verifies that I am a D rank hunter now.
The attendant tells me to have a good hunt, and I move into the skeleton catacombs.
The inside is different from anything I had seen yet. It wasn’t a cave like the E rank dungeons I had been in, but it was also different from the hidden dungeon.
The walls were made of stone bricks and I could see small puddles on the ground. And in the walls were things like bones and skulls.
Based on the name, this place is home to a bunch of undead, and from what I learned online, the boss was a skeleton mage of some sorts.
My equipment was what I normally wore, to the best of the amount of mana I had. This is the mythril sword and gauntlets, the masterwork speed cloak, and in my item box, I had a mythril staff, just in case I needed to do a lot of magic damage.
As I move into the dungeon, I start to think about my plan for growth. I have been having problems with the skill books for multi-cast and weapon enhancement, I decided to look online for people who have used the skill books before, and I got lucky.
From some forums, I learned there was a skill I could get from the skill store that apparently helps with both, and is a must have for magic users of any kind.
Magic Sense - detect magic around and within the user - Sp:5000 - requirements:None
This will help with a decent bit of magic control as well as learning these skills.
And I only need around 4000 more Sp.
And this dungeon normally gives around 100, and with SP multiplier, I get 200. Spending a few days here, and I will level up enough to move on to a new dungeon, and hopefully get this skill.
And moving in the dungeon, it isn’t long before I find my first monsters.
A group of 3 skeletons, all in old armor with rusted weapons.
And moving quickly, I cut all three of them down.
Lv.50 Skelton Scout Has died!
500 EXP Gained
Lv.50 Skelton Scout Has died!
500 EXP Gained
Lv.50 Skelton Scout Has died!
500 EXP Gained
And when the three of them die, they leave behind a single magic stone. This was my first D rank stone.
And with this first fight done, I move deeper into the dungeon.
✾
While Zenith was in the dungeon, Nyx was ranking up to D rank.
She was telling the truth when she told him that she was at the right level, but she had yet to actually rank up.
“He did that so quickly, I was hoping to have some time where I was stronger than him” she said, waiting in line at the association.
She had planned for him to still be low level when they started to hunt together, and be all close when he was still a little weak.
She knew this wasn’t going to last, she saw what even the level 1 him could do, and now he was actually leveling up.
She knew she could be strong. She currently had around 15 summon slots now, and each of them was a strong level 40ish knight. And with all of them fighting together, they could deal with pretty strong enemies.
She knew that eventually she would need to work on her own strength, but she could wait on that.
Eventually, she made it to the front of the line at the association.
“Yes, how may I help you today?” the receptionist asked her.
“Yes, I would like to rank up as a hunter” Nyx said, handing over her id.
“Ah, yes of course. Just place your hand on this and I will confirm your level”
And a few seconds and a check of the level later, the receptionist spoke up again.
“You are all set, Ms Nyx. You have a great day” they say. “Congratulations on reaching D rank”
And then, moving quickly out of the association building, Nyx headed to the skeleton catacombs where Zenith should be.
✾
As I reach the end of the fourth floor of the catacombs, I find the stairs to the boss room.
“Well, this place was a lot easier then I expected” I say. I had completely explored the upper floors, which took me around 2 hours. I had completed my mental map of the dungeon and was ready to kill the boss.
I ran into a decent bit of the skeletons, but they all died in a single hit from my sword, so nothing too bad. I ran into around 6 groups per floor and each had three skeletons, so that totaled 72 total skeletons, and each group dropped one stone. I gained a total of 3,600 experience while I was at it.
Based on my best guess, taking the best path would cut that down a decent bit, but only to about half of that amount.
And now it was time for the dungeon boss.
I move into the room, only to find a strange ritual room, with the walls lined with skulls. And in the center was the skeleton mage, with some skull staff. From what I learned online, this thing used dark magic, as well as summoned more skeletons to fight.
Annoyingly, these summons didn’t give EXP so there was no point in stalling this fight out.
When the skeleton noticed me, it raised its staff in preparation to attack, only for it to die, just as quickly as the others.
IN truth, I had always had a plan for this.
Light magic is very good against skeletons, and I was quite strong with it, so one direct blast killed it instantly.
Skeleton Mage Lv.65 Has Died!
750 Exp Gained!
200 Sp Gained!
You Leveled up!
And I quickly collected the dungeon rewards and left to start my next run.
It was a few hours to finish the dungeon, so I decided to see how long it would take for Nyx to get here. At this point I should be getting better at speed running the dungeon, but since I agreed to hunt with her today, maybe I should wait on that.
When I get out of the dungeon, I pull out my phone and place a call to her.
And within a few rings, she answers.
“Hello, Zenith?” she says. I can here her running on the other side of the phone.
“Um, HI. I was just wondering how close you are to the dungeon, or if you were done with your things this morning?” I ask her.
“Oh, yeah. About that” she said, only to then hang up on me.
“What the heck?” I said. “Was this some type of prank?”
But in a few seconds, I hear a gasp from the receptionist at the entrance to the dungeon.
“OH MY GOD! You're the singer, Nyx!” the receptionist squealed. “I'm a huge fan”.
Hearing this, I quickly run over, only to find Nyx trying to enter the dungeon.
“Yeah, but could you please just keep it down” Nyx said to them.
“Oh crap, of course. Please come in and have a great day” they said and let Nyx through.
She was wearing completely normal clothes, not super unusual for a hunter. But when they usually get to higher ranks, they start to move into better equipment.
“Good morning Zenith” she said, walking over to me.
“Good morning Nyx” I said back. “You could have just said that you were about here instead of hanging up on me”
“Yeah, but how cute would it have been if after that, I just suddenly appeared behind you” she said. “BUt, well, I sometimes forget people are my fans and stop me when I go places without a disguise”
“I mean, I get that. It's not super common but Aria and Anthem get stopped every few months. For a famous singer it must be super annoying.”
“Not really, I normally love meeting my fans. It's just, today I have plans with you” she said. “Now, let's get started on our hunting”.
With that, the two of us headed into the dungeon.
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Good to see you again. Thanks for another great chapter as well. I was missing you a lot, and had thought you wouldn't be writing anymore. Lucky, or unluckily, another story in my reading list hasn't been updated since Dec, so I added it to my "Author MIA" list. And seeing as I just added something to it, I decided to check the MIA list for updates, and here you were posting again, so I'll move you back to "Reading".
Good luck, and see you next chapter.
TFTC