Ebony's Fable

“What do we consider as clearing?” Ning Xin tilted her neck left and right.

They entered a blue-coloured portal that was shorter but wider than Ordina’s portal. Usually, it directly translated to the size of the dungeon within but it wasn’t a reliable measure.

There were 5 Rare dungeons within the Capital and 2 Epic ones. The Rare dungeon closest to their home was called the Ruins of Verdant Decay. Coincidentally it was one of the two dungeons that didn’t require people to go in in a group.

There were a bunch of plant-type monsters. They consisted of a wide variety, a scant few had powers of rot. Most were a mixture of plants with an additional element, stone and earth being the most common. But the most common were still animal-like monsters with some kind of plant growth or parasite growing on them.

The most redeeming feature had to be that one could spot an Elf a lot more easily. Their numbers were small and meeting one wasn’t a daily occurrence. A plant and earth-type dungeon was quite an attractive spot for the Elves even if it was just a research spot.

Ebony had seen a forest in central Tidal where he currently resided. It must be the Elven home within the Capital. In fact, the forest was mostly kept empty with sparse wooden tree houses within. The forest looked unguarded but no one went near it.

“Let’s see. The Ruins have eight floors in total. How about this, we have to hunt at least one of every species of monster here and be the first to reach the last floor. Like Ordina, this dungeon also has a Guardian for the last room before the exit.”

“So, the first to reach the guardian. Then we take the Guardian together. Sounds good but how would we know how many species there are?”

“We ask. This dungeon is regularly cleared just like every dungeon in the Capital. It probably doesn’t have any secrets.”

They entered the exact same building that was built around dungeon portals making one feel like they’ve never entered or exited a portal. Inside the dungeon was a bustling town, further removing the likelihood that they were in a dungeon.

‘That’s a lot of people. In the millions…’ His mana sense spread out as far as it could the moment he stepped out of the portal-holding building. He couldn’t sense the full scale of the town but he could estimate from the noise and the population density.

“Let’s go back in.” Ebony pulled Ning Xin back in for some quietness. It was not hard to find a city employee to ask about the dungeon but they were silently redirected to scan the information board themselves.

It held more information than just every floor’s mana density, gravity and time difference. There was even detailed information like what monsters, materials or ingredients could be found on what floor.

Outside the dungeon, the gravity had been roughly 1.6 times that of Earth. Noticeable difference but nothing drastic for superhuman strength. For the Unclassed children, they were all physically stronger than the human he used to be. If those were the kids his mother was comparing his physical ability to, he was indeed weaker.

In the Ruins of Verdant Decay, gravity was only 2 times stronger than outside the dungeon. Most warriors could adapt within a day or two, maybe a few battles could speed it up.

As for time, this was the first dungeon that he had been to that had a noticeable time difference. Despite going dungeon hunting after they evolved from Journeyman to Master and entering dozens of dungeons they all had little to no time difference with the outside world. One second passing in the Ruins of Verdant Decay was said to be 0.8 seconds outside.

A ratio of 1:0.8 was huge. And the Empire and Imperials took full advantage of it. 1 day outside was equal to 1.25 days within the Ruins. Crafters and all who wanted more time to meet deadlines lived here.

Ebony didn’t think it was ideal. It wasn’t as if one would age slower here. The body still aged at the same rate. One could get older than people outside if they stayed long enough. He didn’t like that, age calculation was already troublesome enough.

‘I bet there are a lot of pubs and taverns, more importantly, wine brewers.’ Ebony just had to exit the building to find out that he was right.

The only other interesting piece of information was that the Ruins didn’t have stairs to connect its floors. On every floor was another portal that led to a different floor. The problem was that there was no guarantee which floor they would be transported to.

Only when an individual goes past a portal for their seventh time would they be guaranteed to be transported to the eighth floor. It made the dungeon’s danger levels extremely high as parties depended on luck to stay together. In the past that was.

Now that there was a similar town on every floor right where every portal was, there was no immediate danger. However, getting materials was still difficult. Hence, most freelancers here either worked solo or were very good at teaming up with strangers. The laws for dungeon entry were iffy with the Ruins.

There were a few parties who were either lucky enough to operate on the same floor for a long term or were determined enough to go through the whole dungeon multiple times to reach the floor they wanted together. Of course, the people who arrived at the designated floor first just had to wait for the rest of his or her party.

The problem was that leaving the dungeon was impossible unless the individual went through seven portals to reach the eighth floor, and then go through the actual exit.

“There’s no pattern at all?” Ning Xin was also surprised by this piece of information.

A random passing employee shook her head as a reply. “No one has developed any methods to reach the same floor by choice. Physical contact or even chaining yourself to another doesn’t work either. It is said to be completely random, if you’re lucky you can meet each other at some point other than the first and eighth floors. If you’re even luckier you might just go to the same floor multiple times in a row.”

“Look at that central board at the main square outside, the current record holders for consecutively reaching the same floor are written there. It’s just for fun and I have no idea why there are people amused by it.” She continued.

Curious, he managed to get Ning Xin to take a look with him.

The record was twelve people consecutively going up to the same floor four times in a row. The score was simply done by multiplying the number of people with the consecutive floor in a row. Second place had 30 points with 6 people with 5 consecutive floors together. It seemed like a full party with an escortee who hired a party to protect them.

That was almost the whole dungeon so the chances didn’t seem that bad until Ebony saw the date of the occurrence to be more than 40 years ago. Since the dungeon was already fully under control back then, there was no danger at all for passing through portals. They would just go from one town to another. Hence, the escortee had no fear of losing his or her bodyguards just by passing through a portal.

“Alright, I’m done amusing myself. I have a class to get to.” It was barely daybreak in the Ruins but there were plenty of people that started their day early.

“Time passes faster here, you have over an hour extra.”

“Or we could go back earlier so we can have breakfast.”

His words woke her right up. The faster they finish, the more time they would have for breakfast.

“I’m gonna work up an appetite!”

❅❅❅

“AAAH!” A Master Warrior with a muddied face screamed in horror at the Steelthorn Warden situated at the corner of his sight.

“What happened!?” His impromptu party members who teamed up with him on this floor quickly went into alert and looked towards where his eyes were on.

“He-head!” The warrior pointed to the humanoid construct of metal held by vines at the edge of their archer’s shooting range.

As a popular dungeon with a terrain of mostly stone and metal ruins within forests, there were plenty of parties around. Parties had to consciously stay out of each other’s hunting grounds for both materials and monsters.

It took a few moments for the nearby parties to notice similar events in their surroundings.

Monsters that were sitting in dead zones between the parties operating here had their heads lopped off. Without anyone present.

From the left, the Verdant Sentinel’s body exploded into bits the size of meatballs.

From the right, a Floraforge’s many heads slipped down from its neck.

The hunting grounds facing north had Blossomsteel Warden’s metal flower head dented before it cracked and littered the floor in metallic dust.

From behind them were the Leaf Stone Behemoths with no takers for the hunting ground at the moment. They weren’t spared from the unnatural incident. At least, one of them wasn't. Floating into the skies with fumbling limbs, punching at nothing before its giant head disconnected from the rest of its body.

A strong gust of wind along with a shockwave passed them by half a second after another monster’s head flew into the air.

“CAAWW!”

Everybody within the range of the cawing scrambled to hide under shelter be it a ruin or a tree the moment they heard the caw of the Onyx Mossquill Macaw. The only predator that has free reign to roam all floors of the Ruins of Verdant Decay always caws to alert the prey of its presence before deciding whether to attack or not.

Despite being smaller than a human head, the Macaws were one of the most terrifying opponents in the Ruins of Verdant Decay. However they had weak eyesight and non-existent mana sense, simply hiding under cover was enough to escape their notice. The Ruins of Verdant Decay had plenty of monsters but they don’t act as eyes for each other.

Every freelancer started to tremble when a tiny bump thudded on a stone roof. Multiple eyes glanced over and watched as a tiny bird's head rolled down the slanted roof.

“So-something just flashed by the Macaw…” An archer whispered to her party members.

The present parties gathered in a hurry and rushed back to the town where the floor portal was in fear.

❅❅❅

Ebony had no remorse or hesitation in killing dungeon monsters. There was no life in these monsters. They were just a lump of essence that was injected with artificial intelligence. Although, he was a little intrigued by the fact that the dungeon had such a hands-off approach.

It did absolutely nothing. As if it was asleep, the dungeon ran itself. It grew naturally without any conscious control like Na from Ordina. There were no unnatural, controlled spawn rates or hunting down specific parties. All monsters acted as they wished, as per their built-in programming.

He came to the conclusion that there was simply no one in control like how sapient Ordina appears to be or that entity was simply letting itself grow naturally.

The moment he left the town with Ning Xin, they burst off starting their race.

They knew their destination, it was another town surrounding the portal to the next floor. It would lead to another town and they would be able to learn what floor they would step into.

On the first floor’s portal building, all floors' layout, maps and town or portal locations was already displayed so both of them should know where to go. There were a total of 15 towns in this dungeon alone. The exit on the last floor didn’t have a town around it and was defended by the dungeon itself.

Ning Xin might not have Mental Mapping but her memory shouldn’t be that bad.

Interestingly enough, leaving the dungeon usually had entire expeditions fighting for exit and extremely few parties leave by themselves. That little nugget of information was enough to rouse both of their interest.

On the first floor, they chased each other around. Counting down how many species of monsters they’ve taken. She was better at sniffing out new monsters and he followed her to kill one of the monsters she tracked down.

She left a trail of heatwaves in her wake which he had to warn about before they separated. A total of forty species on the first floor took over half an hour to hunt down.

As for the distance to cover, going from the entrance town to the exit town on the first floor was only the distance of going around Earth once. It was the smallest floor in terms of land area. It was easy to traverse because the dungeon walls were only a hundred or so kilometres apart. Causing every floor of the dungeon to be like a straight tunnel.

The landscape was rather boring. Old, tattered stone buildings surrounded by vegetation. It had brownie points for the variety of plantations and trees. Each ruin had a party camping out and larger ruins had a full research crew with their escorts.

It was a race, and he had no time to deal with people so he tried his best not to disturb other parties hunting but they had no choice when every specific monster's habitat or spawn points had parties calling dibs. The method he came up with was just to do it fast and stealthily enough.

On his second floor which was actually the sixth he no longer had the sense of smell of a beast to follow and had to hunt down all twenty-eight species of monsters by himself. He was lucky the monster densities here were higher and the hunting ground for every species was already common knowledge.

The larger land area was a boon for him compared to Ning Xin. When it came to traversing, he had the upper hand. She was fast at the cost of massive stamina and mana consumption.

The plant, rock, earth and wood mixture of monsters was very fresh but they couldn’t even give the Hoarfrost Kobolds a run for their money. They ranged from level 420 to 450 and he needed to stop to clash with all of them for a second or two.

Another one of his advantages over the faster, stronger swordswoman was that he could enter a town without slowing himself down. She would be forced to slow down so that her speed and fire enhancement didn’t kill people. Cooling herself down only to reheat herself was going to waste quite a lot of her time.

On his third floor which was the dungeon’s second, he breezed through it. Amid a single Flicker and a single swing of Icicle, he decapitated three types of moving plants before he fully swung his arm. He was pretty sure most people didn’t see him at the speeds he was moving at and the light refractions he manipulated with ice should have kept him relatively hidden.

‘I wonder who decided the floor numbers if they always ended up on a random floor until the eighth.’ Ebony had a random question but wasn’t interested enough to stop and ask a random person.

The second floor’s monsters only ranged from level 330 to 360 but one species was more durable than some on the sixth’s floor. It was a monster with a metallic head in the shape of a large blossoming flower.

A single kick didn’t kill it and it took a second kick with a full-powered Sonic Intrusion to turn it to dust. Even then, the metallic dust didn’t scatter explosively, strongly held together by the vestiges of mana. Ebony’s feet kicked out a second time before he managed to Appraise it so he didn’t get the monster’s name or title.

By a stroke of luck, he spotted the most mysterious monster that he was most worried about finding. The Onyx Mossquill Macaw could be found on any floor but they were much rarer. Their levels also depended on the floor they resided so their strength varied the most in the Ruins of Verdant Decay.

‘As expected, it noticed me.’ Ebony watched the Macaw, a small parrot-like bird flap its wings to brake its flight and caw.

The Macaw sensed his lousy invisibility and was about to turn around after its surprised caw but he wasn’t about to let it escape.

He Flickered towards it and Icicle was already half swung but the Macaw still slid its neck away in time. The jerk and speedy change in direction allowed it to escape the grasp of death.

And into the grasp of a conjured ice hand before the exact same greatsword, in the same swing rotated to separate its head.

‘I’ll keep the body as proof.’ Ebony didn’t bother burying dungeon monsters. He had no respect for monsters without life that simply gets reabsorbed by its creator.