#38 Lava Volcano (4)
#38 Lava Volcano (4)
It was hard to keep track of time inside a dungeon where neither sun nor moon rose, but by feel, I figured about half a day had passed.
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.18 → Lv.19]
[EXP 3214 / 300000]
Level 19. Three hundred thousand EXP to Level 20. Back when I was a slime, EXP hadn't even cracked ten thousand. The numbers had swelled to absurd proportions.
'Which just means I've grown that much.'
The Level 20 achievement condition hadn't appeared yet, but I intended to grind out the full EXP requirement while I was already inside this dungeon. And on top of that, my skills had been growing steadily.
[Thorn Tentacle (D): Launches tentacles sharp as thorns.]
The real highlight: Tentacle Bundle, which I'd been using for ages, had finally hit D-rank.
'Though honestly, it'd been a long time coming.'
Even that was only because becoming a Shadow Wolf gave it synergy with Shadow Domination and drove up my usage frequency. Before evolving, I'd leaned far more on Ghost Flame (C) and Gust than on tentacles. But except for Predation, this was the very first skill I'd ever acquired—I had some attachment to it.
'Thorn Tentacle.'
Unlike before, the tips were now spear-sharp, and thorns jutted along the length like the stem of a rose. I could still form them as ordinary tentacles if I wanted. But the biggest change?
'I can launch them.'
The projectile ripped through the air at a speed hard for the eye to follow.
'Impact's a little higher than a Mana Bullet.'
That was without infusing mana, though. Since the tentacles were a part of my body, I could channel mana into them and push the force even higher. Effectively, I'd just acquired an excellent ranged weapon.
"———!"
The centipede I'd struck whipped its head around, hissing. It seemed seriously pissed, twisting its body as countless legs writhed and skittered forward—the sight would've been grotesque if the thing weren't half-submerged in lava.
Right. Lava. The only reason these creatures had been threatening was that I couldn't touch them.
'That's different now.'
I dropped my stance and fired. Dozens of mana-soaked thorns found their mark in an instant. The centipede was fast, and its movements were bizarre, but my skills matched up well against it.
'Intuition and Perception.'
Plus the predictive reading Baekrok had taught me. Unless the target could see the projectiles coming and dodge based on raw speed, these things were essentially guaranteed to land. The embedded thorns punched clean through the Lava Centipede and into the rock beneath it, quivering.
"Kiiiieeeek—!"
Lava sloughed down over the centipede's wounds, but the tentacles didn't melt easily. Their durability and resilience had climbed right alongside the rank increase.
'......'
Satisfying growth. As if mounting the thing like a taxidermy specimen, I'd pinned it to the rock. Then I fired a massive Mana Bullet into the immobilized target.
"———!"
Lava burst open. In the gap, my shadow wormed through and tore the creature apart. It stopped breathing soon after.
'I'm getting the hang of this now.'
The lava monsters had felt hopeless at first, but now I understood how to fight them. And another skill had changed.
[Lava Centipede consumed. Experience Points and Satiety increase.]
Devouring the centipede gave me a slight, temporary boost to my stats.
'Would've been nice if it were permanent.'
But asking for that from a C-rank skill would be shameless. The evolved skill looked like this.
[Gluttony: Temporarily strengthens the user upon consumption.]
The boost felt like about 20 points across my stats, excluding Magic Power. Appetite had grown to C-rank and transformed into this skill. The stat increase was a little underwhelming, but for someone like me who'd chronically suffered from weak base stats, it couldn't be better.
'Just one real downside.'
True to the name Gluttony, I had to eat quite a lot. Contact Intake worked fine, but I needed to actively devour at least a quarter of my own body weight.
'Still, it's enough.'
Far beyond me, the Volcanic Horned Dragon still slumbered. Including the Lava Centipede I'd just eaten, roughly 240,000 EXP remained. The Volcanic Horned Dragon had emerged barely a day ago, and the surface monsters had been virtually wiped out in the aftermath. Corpses were almost impossible to find now. Getting into the dungeon as fast as I could had been the right call.
'Which means I have to hunt now.'
Until now, I'd mostly just hidden and devoured. The hunting itself wasn't hard—the problem was that every last creature had burrowed away. Now that I'd eaten everything topside, they had no reason to poke their heads out of the lava again.
'I need to bait them.'
I turned my head and looked toward the distance. The only real concern was this zone's ruler, the Volcanic Horned Dragon. Baiting the prey meant dropping Stealth, which would also draw monsters up from the lava.
'No way around it.'
As quietly as possible. I'd fill out my EXP before it woke, then get out of the dungeon. Strike while the iron's hot, as they said. The moment I released Stealth, presences began stirring underfoot.
'After all that eating.'
Apparently still not sated, they closed the distance. Monsters flooded in, and magma sloshed and spilled from the holes in the volcanic rock.
'Here they come.'
I tensed and threw myself aside. A pillar of lava erupted where I'd just been standing.
'Magma Shark.'
I sensed four presences in the immediate area, including the shark, but more would swarm in any second. The main thing to watch was the ground. The Magma Shark—the first to smash up through the floor—launched itself high into the air and was now falling straight down on me.
'Good.'
I'd lured it into targeting me. Its jaws stretched to their limit. Just before it could swallow me, I felt a presence rising from below.
'That'll do it.'
I kicked off with Elasticity. A Prominence Crocodile burst from the ground and collided with the Magma Shark mid-air. Their gaping jaws locked, horizontal and vertical, biting deep into each other, and they couldn't withstand the drop force—both crashed down and sank under the surface.
While they were tangled up, I fired thorns at a Lava Centipede that had crawled onto the rock. I brought it down the same way as before. The two monsters that had plunged into the lava finally came to their senses, but they hadn't managed to regenerate their injuries quickly. I launched thorns at the shark as it leaped, and stretched shadows toward the crocodile as it surged up.
Then—
'...?!'
A massive tremor shook the ground. My shadow nearly scattered. The impact sent a shudder through the ground as if the earth's axis had been rattled, and I whipped my head toward the Origin.
'Already?!'
Far sooner than I'd expected, the Volcanic Horned Dragon was lifting its enormous, hunched body.
'Damn it.'
It felt like a countdown had started. If there was any silver lining, it was that the swarming monsters sensed the Volcanic Horned Dragon stirring and immediately fled.
'I have to finish this fast.'
I yanked out every drop of mana I had and poured it into the crocodile. Its lava shell stripped away, revealing the vapor body beneath. In that instant, my shadow butchered it. And then the darkness at my feet began to deepen.
'That's not my Spiritual Field.'
This shadow wasn't mine. I looked up. A massive set of jaws was closing in from above.
I'd known. A centipede, a crocodile, a shark—three bodies. But from the start, I'd sensed four presences. There had been two Magma Sharks from the beginning. One launched from below, and the second was dropping from above. I slipped out of the kill zone with Elasticity, but the falling shark twisted its body in mid-air.
'...!'
A movement only possible because its body was made of lava, not flesh and bone. I'd just used Elasticity—I couldn't fire it again right away. And there was nothing within reach to snag with a tentacle and pull myself to.
'In that case—'
I visualized the image. Mana rapidly coalesced. Deceptively simple-looking, but this was on an entirely different level from firing a Mana Bullet.
'I have to give it substance.'
Enough to step on and spring off. A platform that could bear my weight. And Baekrok had already shown me exactly how.
'What I'm missing...!'
Great Magic Power would fill the gaps. A B-rank skill that assisted every act of mana manipulation—with that correction, I managed to form a clumsy foothold. The shape was warped and awkward, but I kicked off it. The Magma Shark bit down on nothing but shattered mana-platform, and before it could recover, I launched mana-infused thorns.
They pierced through and slammed the creature down. The impact sent lava surging upward. A Gust scattered the heat that rose even to this height, and I stuck a precarious landing on solid ground.
'...One more.'
My eyes met the surviving Magma Shark. The earth-shaking was drawing steadily nearer. —End this in a flash. I gathered mana, and the creature swiftly submerged itself into the lava and retreated.
'......'
Whether it was deferring to the Volcanic Horned Dragon or concluding it couldn't beat me, I'd think about it later. No time.
[Magma Shark...]
[Prominence Crocodile...]
[Lava Centipede consumed. Experience Points and Satiety increase.]
[EXP 267234 / 300000]
When I'd eaten all three, the EXP bar was nearly maxed. The Volcanic Horned Dragon was closing in. I slipped behind a rock outcrop and activated Stealth—
"———!"
The Volcanic Horned Dragon roared and charged. A different magnitude of impact entirely. The maddened tremor was a high-magnitude earthquake in itself. The ground, utterly incapable of bearing the thing's weight, shattered and collapsed, and the dragon sank into the lava. The displaced magma surged over the land, but the Volcanic Horned Dragon ran without the slightest care.
'Fast!'
People say the heavy are slow, but when something is that colossal, the equation changes. A monster covering dozens of meters per stride, with 400 Agility—pure nightmare.
'...!'
Faster than me at full sprint. And it was doing it while plowing through lava and shattering the floor beneath it. The Earth Serpent had taught me that sheer mass was a weapon in itself. The lava, impossibly deep, kept erupting endlessly, staining the entire volcanic zone.
'Even if I make it out...!'
A spike of anxiety—what if it chased me out? But the creature suddenly stopped.
'Why?'
The place where it halted. That was exactly where I'd been hiding and had activated Stealth earlier. The Volcanic Horned Dragon did not move an inch further.
'...Did it not detect the Stealth?'
C-rank Stealth shouldn't be so easily exposed. But I'd assumed a monster on the level of the Volcanic Horned Dragon might sense it anyway. Apparently, it had only chased me as far as my last known location.
'What's clear is...'
It prioritizes chasing intruders. The fact that it had come all the way to the spot where I'd vanished and stopped dead was proof. Looking around, I saw the aftermath of its charge: the collapsed floor had formed an enormous lava lake. I watched as the Volcanic Horned Dragon turned back and retreated past the boundary.
'Yeah, taking it down right now is out of the question.'
If I wanted to kill the Volcanic Horned Dragon, I'd need to grow far stronger than this. And the remaining EXP was only 30,000. No need to take a risk for that much—I could make that up just by heading out into the sea. The volcanic dungeon ended here, for now. Not yet. But someday, I would absolutely bring that thing down.
'For the moment.'
Objective achieved. Time to leave the dungeon.
The moment I stepped forward, the landscape warped—and as if it had been waiting, a System message floated up.
[Lv.20 Achievement Condition: Root out the hidden Turncoat.]