Once the bright light finally fades I find myself in a strange place. It seems to be some kind of forest or jungle but the usual 'greens' are orange.

growl

(That sounded like a wolf.)

(That was a wolf! Get running!)

I start moving just as Elly suggested, (uh, where to?)

(Mostly forward and a bit to the left to the stairs! Now move, move, move!)

Wait, there are stairs? Is this another dungeon?

I was a bit distracted from that discovery but shaken out of it by a sudden sense of pain.

Shit, that almost killed me. If the bleed had triggered I would be 100% deader than I already am.

I somehow manage to shake my pursuer off and make it to the stairs. I get the same sensation from it as I did from all the safe zones from previous dungeon visits.

(Did I really end up in another dungeon, Elly?)

(I don't know about 'another' but it certainly looks and feels like one. Uhm, you might want to look at the floor markers... we seem to be in deep shit if we want to get out of here.)

(How deep are...), I see it. The arrow pointing to the floor I was just on reads 92, (we... wait, stop. Ninety-two?! We're this far in?)

(And the other direction is... unreadable. Whatever 9̸̧͐3̶̮̈ is supposed to be it should be either 91 or 93.)

(I guess we can officially cross off 'dungeon' on the glitch bingo card.)

(Speaking of, if we are that far in how did that bite not instantly kill us?)

(Huh, level 9. So far it was always the same level as the floor, so it should've been much higher and there's no way I can survive a level 92 monster.)

(We should take every single victory we can get.)

(Yeah.)

While we were talking several more wolves are approaching the safe zone wall.

(Their levels aren't uniform like in our old dungeon, so I guess it is a different one? They range from level 3 to 27, Jared.)

(How many are there? That looks like about a hundred.)

(Pretty much. So... get blasting?)

(Yup.)

I throw as many ice status spells as my MP pool allows but it isn't enough to inflict cold status to all of them.

(Ok, Elly, time for another master plan. Should we head down or up? If it is like what was said about the previous dungeon it should allegedly end on floor 120 but no one said that there would be an exit there.)

(I think we should head for floor 1, Jared. There's no guarantee that it is only 120 floors. For all we know it could go down to two or three hundred floors. Maybe even a thousand.)

(I honestly hope this isn't 'our' dungeon. If it is we would exit exactly where we were just a moment ago and run into Darius' arms again. And from what I saw that was the last use of that item left. So next time... he'll probably resort to proper violence. Damn, I screwed that up with him, didn't I?)

(Very much.)

(I was actually hoping for some encouragement, Elly.)

(Sorry, flat out sold out, J.)

(Sure, hand me my trusty whip, El.)

Now, which direction is the right one?

(Shit, if the floor marker is glitched out I don't even know which direction is towards floor 1...)

(So since you always went 'down' on the previous trips to get to the next floor I guess that we should take the stairs up this time.)

(Oh, right, sorry. On the one trip where I had you in timeout it was up instead of down.)

(Huh, so we're right back to blind guessing.)

(Correct, Elly.)

(I'd say we take the 92 direction then. If the other marker is glitched out it is more likely that the entire floor is a giant glitch as well. At a minimum I'd want some more free space where we can retreat to before tackling that possibility.)

(Sounds fine by me.)

So I have to conquer 92 floors at least and just pray I don't get hard blocked like with the hyper regenerative troll or slimes, or the unfavorable terrain of the sea walkers, or anything else the dungeon can throw at me. Something like the snail boss would cost me a ton of my limited blood packs but I would at least be able to get past it eventually. Speaking of, how many packs do I have left?

(Elly, how long can I last with my 632 blood packs?)

(I think about nine to ten years maybe? Possibly eleven if you're taking the bare minimum to survive. Though I wouldn't recommend that.)

(Yeah, I'd probably always be on the verge of going frenzy and then cause a bloodbath the moment I hit civilization, right? I can pass on that.
But at least nine years sounds good enough for now, at least the time limit for my escape isn't that tight. I can work with that.)

What I need most right now is more power. The safe zone barrier won't get me through everything as the golem boss and glitch wolf have shown.

(Elly, are there any classes or titles I can take right now that would give me a bigger chance to get through all of this?)

(I don't see any new ones. Besides the 'Demon Lord Candidate' I don't even see any old ones that would change anything major either and you said you weren't willing to take it yet.)

(...but do I have a choice now?)

(What, are you really up to taking the risk now?)

(I probably should. I've already lost any other option I could've had when I antagonized Darius. As long as the granted class behaves even remotely like regular classes I should at a minimum get some HP and defense stats. If the acquired skill is crap I can just not use it.)

(Jared, how about putting your exp to a level in the title category and also taking 'Daywalker' while you're at it? I want to at least compare if the exp cost really increases when you go past five titles.)

(Sure, why not. Were there any other titles we considered?)

('Enduring Soul', 'Iron Heart' and 'Regenerator' but you don't qualify for either of them yet.)

I think about it for a moment but eventually I give up, (ok, fine, I'll increase the title level to 2. So for now level 3 would cost 1250 exp.)

(Good, now add 'Daywalker'.)

(Done. Still 1250 exp cost to title level 3.)

(And now the candidate.)

An unlife-changing decision. But if I want to get through this I need every shred of extra power I can get. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

(Done as well... and... nothing happened? Exp cost jumped to 1375 though.)

(I, uh, expected something to happen at least.)

(Ah, there is your something.)

(...urgh, who didn't see that coming.)

(Elly, any idea what that was?)

(Not really, and I just have a guess. Time is stopped outside, right? So it can't get a response until we're outside again.)

(That would make too much sense and I'm not sure if that is a good or bad realization.)

(How so?)

(It is bad because it denies me an extra class. It is good because we're not losing time on the doomsday scenario while being stuck in here.
So overall I just condemned myself to eventual demon lordship for potentially nothing.)

This whole thing doesn't really add up, (ok, but seriously, Elly, why can I take regular classes while inside here but not the special one? Wouldn't it need in both cases to 'connect to the master system' to verify requirements and availability or something?)

(I've just as many answers to that as you, Jared. None. I can only guess that it is different because these divine classes are unique, meaning only one can have them at the same time.)

(Ok, whatever. Guessing won't get us out of here. Any other thing I can do at the moment to up my chances?)

(Give me a moment. In the meantime could you have a look at all the loot we got earlier? Maybe something vaguely useful is in there.)

I check my inventory, (just food, materials and some weapons, shields and clothes that I either can't use or are worse than what I already have. The materials might be useful if I had some crafting skills but as it is I don't.)

(I got nothing here as well.)

(Perfect. So, assuming the boss every ten floors rule still holds true I have to clear floors 93 to - let's say 99 to be safe - anyway. There's no chance I'll face a boss head-on and win, not even a level 1 version, let alone what I should face here if the previous pattern kicks in again.)

(Sounds about right, well, let's get to it. A miracle won't happen, we're absolutely cut off in here.)

After some more time the pack of wolves on floor 92 is no more and I don't find any other threats hidden among the greenery orangery. Beyond it lies the safe zone towards floor 91 so the garbled floor marker is indeed 93.

Floor 91 is patrolled by a quartet of elite orcs, nothing to worry about. And floor 90 looks like a boss floor as expected so I turn back to clear 93 and up. Though something is weird about the boss room, I saw no boss only a big tree? Oh god, please no stealth boss shit...

Floor 93 looks like it was ripped out of a bad 90s hacker movie. Several patches of the ground look like how Hollywood displays hacker screens, green flickering shapes on black background and nonsensical 'code' characters.

In comparison the monsters are normal, relatively speaking. Several glowing balls of various elements. Each of the elements is present with about 5 to 8 representatives.

They are the first monster type so far to keep their distance and just shoot their magic at me. Luckily they give advance warning because they have to gather mana before casting a spell just like me. At least this firing range is good target practice for the... next Ruth that comes my way...

I wanna say I've learned my lesson with glitches by now so I make extra sure not to step on the hacker squares on the way to floor 94.

Floors 94 through 99 are just more high-level brute types similar to what I had usually before: various forms of wolves, zombies, ghouls 'n' ghasts, bears, elemental golems and... literal trees, them being 'normal' colored instead of the off-putting orange-blue mix gave them away. The latter enemy type moved as much as their name does not imply, which is to say they unrooted themselves and then even outsped the wolves.

And of course they exploded on death.

Luckily none of that got through the safe zone wall, I do not have a rolling HP meter...

One highlight was a glitched zombie on floor 97 that immediately dropped dead once I saw it because it had 0 max HP. I like easy victories like that.

With all floors between the two boss rooms cleared it is time to tackle the floor 90 boss.

I look into the boss room but still don't see any boss. Wait, it is the big tree, isn't it?

Yes, that is the boss... and I can't see anything that helps me. Maybe it is like the story said about that Gyev guy, you can't see stats with [Appraise] when the target massively out levels you.

Considering I could see the stats of Darius and some other level 30 monsters so far that can only bode well...

After making sure that my HP, MP and SP are full I take a shot at it but it just dissipates once the shot crosses the open boss door. I have a bad feeling about this...

I wait the short time it takes to get my MP back then enter the boss room proper. And of course the door closes behind me, crap.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of quizzes!", addresses me the... tree,  "I assume you are here to take my challenge?"

"What if I said no?"

"The rules are as follows:"

"I said no, I just wanna leave!"

"I'll ask you several questions and you have to answer one hundred correctly. You have one hour."

(Great, it just ignores me.)

"Any questions before we start?"

"Yes, several in fact."

"Great, then let's begin the quiz!"

"Wait, I said wait, goddamnit!!"

Several symbols appear in the air in front of the tree, "What is five plus three?", the symbols form into the asked equation.

"Uh, eight."

"Correct. Six times nine?"

"Forty-two Fifty-four."

"Infinite sum over 1/x?"

"Your mom."

"Not a valid number."

This goes on a bit more. It also includes questions about stuff like imaginary numbers, vectors, matrices - not that I could answer any of them even if my life depended on it - which it DOES - and some other things I've never even heard of. Pseudoperfects? Literal weird numbers? Gnah!!

Seriously, who can beat this shit legit?

At the end of the hour I have... 13 correct answers. Great, now what?

"No, that's not good enough. Want to try again?"

"Urgh, what if I said no?"

"Good, here's the next round of questions."

At least it didn't kill me? Not that a math marathon is any better, "F.M.L."

This repeats for three more hours... (I give up. Even with you as a back seating cheat calculator I can't keep up. We have what? 30 seconds on average per answer? Minus a bit for it presenting the problem... And some vector crap and beyond? Screw this shit...)

(Wrong answers don't count against us and I noticed that all answers so far were whole numbers... so maybe just spam answer '0' or '1' on anything that looks like it'd take more than 2 seconds so we can cycle through the hard stuff and maybe get a point or two by accident on the way back to the doable equations?)

(That sounds better than any other plan I could come up with for this shit...)

Round one with the new strategy yields 84 correct answers. I feel like if we repeat this a few more times we'll get lucky enough.

Round two... 71 points. Round three - victory!

"Congratulations!"

boom

(What an asshole...)

(Finally that nightmare is over... can we please go and blow something up, Jared? I need to relieve some pent-up anger!)

(Likewise.)

The wannabe werewolves on floor 89 don't know what hit them. Or at least can't do anything about it. Despite their massive furs they'll freeze to death in a bit. Serves you right for following that damn nerd tree!

(Ok, that feels better... say what is that book about?)

(...it is a massive 7000 page door stopper. Even the thickest dictionary in the library was still shy of 300 pages.)

(I guess since it is very topical right now that puts the Gzeph stuff further on the back burner.)

(Depends - how far are you with the restoration of the title file? I think there might be a useful title or two in there. I just need to know what kind of crazy-ass achievement I need to perform.)

(Well, about that...)

(Elly, do you have something to confess?)

(I do indeed. My restoration process is stopped. For a reason I don't know, my usual tricks just stop working while in a dungeon. I'm sorry for keeping silent about this.)

(I should've expected something like that. Anything noteworthy from the stuff you've restored so far?)

(Not too much, really. I got a minor one that might work decently with intimidation.)

(Really minor. But might just get us over the edge after intimidating a defensive or regenerative wall. What would I need to get that?)

(That part is still under construction.)

(Alright. Sorry for asking, I admit that would've been too easy. Got anything else?)

(Just some that are utterly useless for us.)

(So if I could cast cure magic I could choose to use it to harm even living targets. Yeah, I've already proper damage spells. What else?)

(Only one more.)

(Yep, that's not for me. Well, back to work.)

At least I'm somewhat on track to getting the level 5 Blood Mage skill. Whatever it is.