My Dungeon Life – Chapter 1584-1586

Chapter 1584

As I entered the mist, my visibility was quickly reduced to almost nothing. The fog was extremely thick, and even when I attempted to use some wind magic to clear it, it wasn’t enough to increase my visibility by much. Perhaps Celeste could have dealt with it better, but none of my skills gave me the ability to deal with it. The only reason I even knew I was landing on the island and not the middle of the ocean was that I pulled my map up.

I realized that the fog blocked my mana, but thankfully I had already seen a map and copied the islands to my map. If it just came to my relative position within the islands, I could figure that out. That said, the map wasn’t so thorough that I could identify every tree and bush. As a result, I ended up landing in a group of trees and had a pretty rough landing. I managed to heal myself up pretty quickly though.

At that point, I spread out my mana, trying to cut through the fog. Since it was smaller than the main island, I was hoping to at least get more than my relative position. However, I couldn’t see any dots that indicated life on the map. Sense life didn’t have nearly the distance of mapping, but I still hoped I could see at least some monsters. We were in a dungeon, after all, so there had to be a ton of them.

“This fog is even worse than miasma,” I muttered to myself.

I could feel the mana flowing through this fog. It was working exactly like a very thick amount of miasma. Enough miasma would interfere with any mana. If you sent out a spell, it would quickly lose strength the farther it got. If you tried to use mana sense at a distance, it was like trying to hear through soup. The only difference here was that miasma typically ate light, which gave dungeons their oppressive atmosphere, while this fog was somewhat bright, nearly to the point of being blinding. Also, I had an affinity for miasma, so my mana could reach through it a bit better than a typical person. When it came to this fog though, it must feel like what an adventurer feels like.

That’s why I barely had time to jump as a red dot appeared literally behind me, leaping in my direction. A massive creature that looked like a cross between a bear and a wolf had attempted to ambush me. I pulled Alysium out and then charged the monster before I lost sight of it in the fog. After locking onto it with my mana, even if it left the range of my limited sense life, I’d still be able to follow it.

“You’re still alive?” I was a bit surprised, as I was used to beasts falling after I cut them.

However, even Alysium who could cut through seemingly anything met significant resistance when she struck the creature. It let out a cry, only a little bit of blood dripping from the side.

“This is an S-class level in a dungeon, Master,” Alysia explained. “Its rare master goes against enemies this strong.”

She was right. It had been some time since I had pitted my ability up against the mobs of a dungeon alone. This dungeon wasn’t just old, but it had been designed specifically to put the participants through a gauntlet of increasingly more powerful enemies. I had estimated this once before, and I suspected I was at a level of around SS, although Aberis’s adventuring guild did not have the SS rank. As for the final island, SSS, I only had that ability when I pulled on the strength of my dungeon. Unless I was going to go to war with this dungeon, it wasn’t one I could defeat on my own.

Chapter 1585

It only took a few minutes to defeat the S-class monster. It couldn’t heal like me, and so after getting a few dozen wounds, it finally was too slow and I was able to give it a good wake, sending it onto its deal. It dropped a fur hide. It had felt like forever since I had done something so innocent as farm for materials in a dungeon. I casually picked them up and tossed them into my soul world. I didn’t even know if it was useful yet, but if I processed the fur in my dungeon, then I could extract the lore and be able to make it an award for my dungeon. I also learned the species it came from was known as a ursidis canine, although if I wanted to create one of them in my dungeon, I’d need to capture a live one and let my dungeon digest it.

“If Master has any questions, I am familiar with this island. The closest we ever made to the center was the 8th ring. Even Master might come to some difficulty if we have to get that close.”

“Rings?” I blinked and then thought about it for a moment. “So, let me guess, each island consists of twenty distinct enemy species. As you enter closer to the center of the island, you run into more and more of the most difficult species. I’d say I landed in about the 2nd ring, so this was probably one of the easier S-class monsters.”

“Oh? Has Master been here before?” She asked in surprise.

I shook my head. “No, but dungeons usually have a pattern. Each island seems to be the equivalent of about ten levels. I’m betting that every island has a free-roaming miniboss, and ten rings, right?”

“Ah… that’s like the vertical dungeons!” Alysia realized it immediately.

As varied as dungeons appeared, they did follow a few rules. The 5/10 rule, as I had started to call it, basically meant that dungeon levels were divided into groups of five or ten. Every tenth level denoted a boss and an increase in difficulty, while the 5th level was a free-roaming abnormally difficult mob. When it came to typical dungeons, they stacked down with each level being a level deeper underground. Other dungeons spread out horizontal, and their levels were a little less definitive and more like rings of a tree.

It appeared that the Tearfall island took after the horizontal model, except that every ten levels ended with a new island or tier of the island. This also meant that the dungeon was 70 floors in all. It wasn’t large enough to declare itself a great dungeon like Dirage or the Mirror Labyrinth, but it was still a larger dungeon than I had ever handled before. In a perfect world, it would have been around 70 years old, as dungeons typically grew at one level a year. However, I had come to learn that this was optional. Just as some trees grew taller than others, there were more factors at play than purely age.

“We’ll stay around the edge first before making our way to the center,” I responded. “I don’t think whoever set up that trap would want to do so while fighting off mobs.”

Chapter 1586

I had hoped that I’d be able to quickly run into Carmine and rescue her from the battle, but an hour had passed since I had reached the island and I was still walking through the misty soup. I had encountered various enemies, but they were merely S-class monsters that decided a single person was worth chomping down. I eventually started using sneak, but that still meant I stumbled upon several enemies since I couldn’t see them until I was nearly on top of them.

I had finished the outer two rings of the western side and started to move to the third ring. That was when I started hearing something big moving through the forest. The soup also seemed to reduce noise as well, but the sound I was hearing was the noise of trees crashing down. I started moving toward the noise, hoping it was indicative of the battle I was searching for. However, that’s when I came into a clearing, and a massive red dot appeared on my map.

Being large didn’t necessarily mean it was a big creature. Sense life did as the name suggested, so the things that appeared the largest and brightest were the things that contained the most life. That meant that this thing was assured a powerful creature, and it was hostile.

“Crap!” I tried to back away, especially since I saw no indication that this would lead me to the fight with Carmine.

While chasing the noises, I had inadvertently passed out of the 3rd ring, and I supposed I was close enough to the 5th ring that I’d encounter the miniboss. Where was my luck? It was completely absent because a moment later a beast came charging at me full tilt. It was about 8 feet tall and covered in hair.

“Rampaging Sasquatch.” I used Monster Identify to quickly figure out what I was dealing with.

I realized as soon as I saw it that this was going to be a troublesome fight. Besides having a ton of vitality, it was also an intelligent creature. It had picked up a stone and thrown it at me. As I dodged to get out of the way, a second stone I hadn’t even seen slammed me in the back, knocking me down and forcing me to roll back to my feet. It reached down and picked up a massive stick holding it like a bat as it closed the distance.

If I was dealing with a dumb enemy, I could take it out with Monster Tamer. If it was a ghost, I could handle it with White Mage. I had a variety of tricks to deal with monsters, but if there was any type I was weakest against, it was a pure battle type. They were strong, fast, and didn’t leave me time to work out a strategy. It had only been seconds since the battle began, and he had already reached me and was swinging the stick which, I now realized was the trunk to a smaller tree.

I just wanted to find Carmine! Why could this stuff never be easy?