Ebony's Fable

Ebony waltz into his sixth floor and coincidently came across Ning Xin who walked out of the portal behind him. With a glance at the signboard at the side, he was on the fourth floor of the dungeon.

He was stunned at the patches of green slime stuck to her mantle and hair.

“What got you?”

“...I fell into a gooey swamp while fighting. Fire made it stickier and now I stink. How many floors is this for you?” She ran her fingers through her hair only for the slime to stick to her gloves.

“This is my sixth. Look I got the Macaw” He pulled out a frozen headless bird from his robe pocket.

“Huh? So lucky and fast! I’m only on my fifth. The seventh floor took too much time.” Ning Xin dashed away to her next portal without saying goodbye.

'She sprained her ankle and her mantle got nicked. Looks like she’s having fun. The seventh floor must be quite intense.' Ebony looked forward to the seventh floor since there was something able to land a hit or ‘fight’ with her.

Having killed one of every species of monsters on the fifth and sixth floor when their average strength and levels rose accordingly, the fourth wasn’t an issue. It was likely how they classified each floor number.

Ebony only had issues with monsters that could only be found inside the Ruins. Finding an empty ruin was harder than wild monsters prowling about the forest. He had already secretly joined in on other parties and interrupted them on multiple attempts. He had a feeling that was why Ning Xin took so much more time.

Interestingly enough, he wasn’t capable of putting a scratch on the ruins. The stone and metal structures weren’t just stone and metal. He couldn’t sense it but he had a strong feeling the ruins were directly powered by the dungeon itself. The ruins were as tough as the dungeon walls. Unlike Ordina where he could dig through the earthen walls with some effort, the dungeon walls here were pretty much impenetrable.

‘This dungeon adapted naturally and it did it well. Random teleports challenges proper teamwork, keeping people within or dead. A wide variety of monsters, plants and materials to keep people interested. Energy directed into making walls as indestructible as possible and extremely powerful guardian gate guards.’ Ebony was impressed by how different dungeons could be depending on the immediate vicinity.

It was questionable whether the Empire was milking the dungeon or if it was the other way around. Symbiotic was the best way to describe it at the moment.

‘There’s no moon or sun, just light. We’re over four hours in, guess travelling takes a lot of time.’ Ebony cleaned up after Ning Xin who left ashes in her wake. The ashes didn’t matter with plants regrowing almost instantly but the heat was deadly.

‘Clean cut as usual. No burns?’ Ebony slapped aside the tree vine that shot at his face while checking on Ning Xin’s victims. The monsters were relatively strong as their bodies were mostly in one piece without turning to mush.

The next vine grabbed his wrist, and with a twist of his wrist he grabbed the vine and tugged.

‘Slack?’ Ebony’s feet sank and he felt no feedback from the tug. Sending a pulse of ice mana through, he got into a tug-of-war with the vine. The vine got taut and snapped after most of it tore up the ground.

The attacker’s main body was further away than he imagined and he hadn’t pinpointed where the vine was connected to before it snapped. Thankfully, the monster was considerate and sent another half a dozen vines at him. It bounced off his robe before deciding to wrap around his limbs instead of stabbing through his flesh.

‘Was there supposed to be such a monster? Maybe a new, unknown or unreported species. Oh well.’ Ebony grabbed onto all the vines in one hand and waited for his mana to follow along the vines to the main body underground. It was a sphere of vines with a heart protected within.

He stomped his feet on the ground and sent the liquid mana trailing down. It slammed into the unsuspecting vine monster and burst on impact.

It didn’t get through the protection of vines. The liquid mana that burst apart flowed back onto the vine protection and settled themselves before turning to ice mana and burrowing themselves.

Ebony got dragged deeper and was knee-deep in the earth during the monster’s sudden desperate struggle. None of the vines within his grasp managed to break themselves free. It took two minutes before the intense struggle stopped and there was no longer a pull from the vines. He ripped it out from the ground to take a closer look at the monster.

‘I’ll just toss it to the town guards to record. It’s the most durable one yet. Oh, I should hurry.’ Ebony didn’t waste any more time and Flickered across the dungeon, only slowing down when he spotted a new monster.

“Woah?! Isn’t that a Vitalis Heartvine?”

Ebony listened to the voices around him as he neared the town.

“Can I buy that off you?” It didn’t take long before someone walked up to him. A human non-combatant from his gear and gait.

“What is this good for, I didn’t see this on the list of recorded monsters on this floor.” Ebony didn’t stop to talk and continued following the line to enter the town.

“That…I’m going to make juice out of it.”

‘He’s not willing to share its use. It’s probably good stuff, good enough that it’s not public knowledge. Guess I’ll keep it and find out.’

“I’m not selling.” Ebony’s mana sense caught a hint of Ning Xin, telling him that she already passed by and moved onto her next floor.

‘It got crowded. Oh well, I’ll just flicker in.’ He cocked his head at the sudden encirclement of strangers. The queue for entering the town was shortened as part of them surrounded him.

He Flickered into town since there was no entrance fee or anything like that. The gate and guards were just there to make sure no monsters or dungeon dangers passed through. There were many instances where rich or powerful researchers tried to smuggle out live monsters without permission.

In the Ruins of Verdant Decay, smuggling monsters out into the Capital was close to impossible for any monster from the first to the seventh floor but the eighth didn’t have a town at the exit. So the smuggling was limited to bringing monsters into the towns within the dungeon itself.

The guards were Imperial Knights and most of them would notice him so he was sure he wasn’t doing anything illegal when no one chased him.

Upon stepping into the portal, he immediately sensed the difference in the ambient mana densities and the general vibe of the room.

A quick look at the map made him nod in understanding. It was not only larger than all the other floors. It had cliffs, rivers, and waterfalls and the land was mostly swamps and pits. Unlike the other floors, there were far fewer ruins, only three main ones that were the size of the Royal Palace itself.

All of them were situated near opposite ends of the map like a triangle and each had unique monsters within. Hence, Ning Xin was forced to travel to all of them to hunt down one of each species.

With the knowledge that there were monsters not publicly reported, their race’s rules were a little wonky but just getting all those publicly reported should meet their requirement.

‘I’m going to be late for class.’ Ebony thought, they either picked the wrong dungeon or they underestimated the sheer size and variety that Rare dungeons had.

❅❅❅

Ebony walked out of his third ruin with a limp.

‘That was one deadly trap.’ He shook his head at the sheer deviousness of the ruin’s trap.

The ruins were similarly made of indestructible dungeon material, the moving walls that smashed at him were just diabolical. He dodged all but one and got his kneecap crushed.

Alright, maybe he could have dodged them all but he decided to take on one of the moving indestructible slapsticks by kneeing it. The whole trap came to a stop with sounds of creaking echoing through the entire dungeon.

‘At least I proved that it doesn’t matter if it's made of something incredibly hard if it doesn’t have the strength to push me off balance. That was a good warm-up. Huh, maybe I can use this ruin material as a training dummy. Nah, I can’t move the dungeon stone out and it might not retain the same durability even if I can move part of it out.’

There were quite a few more memorable monsters here. In every palace-sized ruin were at least 2 types of monsters that had a fighting chance. A tree made of metal that could cast acid rain and metallic dust storms was his favourite. He spent over fifteen minutes just dodging and observing the creature for inspiration for his own magical tree.

However, he remembered he was in a race and snapped out of his observation. There was no doubt he was going to come back just for that tree. It took another eight minutes to kill it making it the most time that he stopped in one spot throughout the entire race.

It was extremely resistant to ice and gravity, it wasn’t as if it moved its body. Physical speed was redundant for the stationary opponent and kicking the metal tree only rattled Ebony’s legs. As for trying to punch in mana to build it up within the tree to blow up in one go, it didn’t work well against a magic tree whose main abilities were in mana manipulation.

Surprisingly, it was lightning magic that helped him kill the tree faster. It conducted lightning and Ebony didn’t even need to aim. Its walking treant minions weren’t an issue since they were a little too slow but they were durable.

‘Killing a tree is difficult, no heart, no brains. Tearing its roots doesn’t kill them immediately either. I chose the right vessel if survival is the focus. Seems like trees are also the closest creature as to what a mana being is, maybe spirits and elementals too but I don’t have any references to go off on.’ Ebony had stayed to watch the tree dissolve back to dungeon energy but didn’t gain much information from that experience.

‘The boxing mushroom was pretty cute though, I almost felt bad killing it.’ His feet shuffled as he Flickered at full speed with every enhancement and augmentation pushing him to the next town as fast as he could.

‘It’s been six and a half hours since we entered, with the time dilation we still have about one and a half hours before my class starts but then I can’t have breakfast together…skip class?’ Ebony pondered on his current perfect attendance.

Finally, he stepped into the portal for the eighth floor.

A masked lady stood at the corner of the hall with her arms crossed and chin raised slightly. Smug about getting here first despite Ebony’s earlier lead.

“Did you forget, the race includes this floor’s monsters.” Ebony used his advantage of movement in a packed settlement to fade away from the town while the masked lady had to bumble about within a mass of people.

His head start helped but Ning Xin ultimately reached the destination a step ahead of him.

‘This floor’s not bad, there’s training value.’ Ebony dusted the goo and dust off his robe.

There were about fifteen species of monsters that roamed the eighth floor. At the level range of 430 to 460, they were similar to those on the seventh floor. There were no ruins, only rubble everywhere. Ebony didn’t take on any rot magic to his body since he had a class to go after this but most of his shields and defences were torn down by it.

He just didn’t understand how ice rotted. It was probably a mixture of elements and other magic at play but he wouldn’t know till he got hit. He was finally forced to use his flames on this floor and it was a good workout.

It was hard to find anyone above level 400 outside but the eighth floor was filled with these Grandmasters. Although, their numbers were still relatively low.

There were no exit towns but there were large camps about twenty kilometres away from ten sky-high towers. Perhaps ‘ruins’ that were in good condition.

The Ruins of Verdant Decay played nice on the first seven floors by leaving towns alone but not on this floor. Structures were taken down and camps were regularly attacked. There were far fewer researchers who risked their lives to be here.

“So what have you learned, how do we get out?”

“Those ten towers, all of them have an exit portal.”

“All of them?”

“When one guardian is killed, it takes time for it to recover and the tower would shut its doors until it recovers a guardian at full strength.” From the looks of it, she was also incapable of destroying or harming what the dungeon considers as walls.

“So, like a game’s lobby. What happens when all ten guardians are dead, no exit?” Ebony didn’t play many games but he was kept up to date by some of his classmates when he was on earth. There were always one or two kids who were also the quiet kids in the class who were forced into groups with Ebony.

“I asked the same question, a King once tried but the dungeon seems incapable of shutting off all exits so one of them would be open for everyone to leave freely. The dungeon might panic and cause a mana storm but that’s about it.”

“Mana storm…wouldn't that kill everyone present.” The strength of a mana storm varied from dungeon to dungeon but from what he knew, a rare dungeon’s mana storm was strong enough to kill them.

“Pretty much. People are actively planning and scheduling entries so all guardians defeated at the same time don't occur again. Anyway~ I won.” She changed the subject, put her arms behind her back and bumped his shoulders with her own coyly.

“Yes. You did.” Ebony wasn’t going to make excuses like spending too much time observing a magical tree. He had the advantage in both getting through a town and stamina in crossing distances.

“So what’s my prize?”

“Prize?” He didn’t expect her to ask for something.

“It’s a race and I won, don’t I get a prize?” She hopped from rubble to rubble to avoid the moist floor. There were pools of rotting corpses that did not treat their noses well.

“I’ll get you something.” Ebony started coming up with ideas. It had been quite a long time since he gave gifts.

‘I think we should make it a habit to celebrate the little things. Like birthdays and festivals…I should’ve thought of that long ago.’

“Can we get this over quickly? We’re already taking more time than I’d like and I already emptied my food energy reserves.” He could almost see her pout under her mask.

“Let’s check which tower’s schedule’s open. Hand.” Ebony raised his hand with his palms facing up.

“Is this really the time?” Annoyed, she stared at his gesture.

“To make an explosive, yes. It’ll speed up any hunt. And we haven’t tested our new explosive powers.”

“Let me drink my soup.” Ning Xin took out a bottle of her special brew of soup that was stuffed full of nutrients. It was supposed to give her quite a lot of sustenance to convert to stamina.

‘Could she convert stamina or lifeforce back to mana? I don’t think so…I guess she’s just thirsty and recovering some of her stockpile for the battle.’ He didn’t confront her about her inability to get mana from drinking some soup.

“Pahh! Too salty!” She licked her lips clean despite her complaints.

There were seven towers with open double doors while the rest were shut. The towers were all the same in design and material. It was a completely dull yellow metal. He would describe it as a cathedral without windows and only consisting of a single square tower that rounded off as it ascended.

He estimated from outside that the towers weren’t more than two hundred metres in diameter. As long as there weren’t many rooms, there should be plenty of space for combat.

Five of the free towers had hundreds of people preparing their supplies, getting some tactic planning and preparing bodyguards for researchers who paid for protection. It was not a student-friendly dungeon as exiting the dungeon was rather difficult.

“Look for another tower, our schedule is fully booked till next year.” The administration table with an Imperial Knight shooed them off.