The first to land were two gigantic Demon Revenants, their towering forms radiating an intense heat. Their blazing eyes locked onto me, and I felt a shiver of anticipation.
"Alright, let's dance," I muttered, already used to this sight. I immediately conjured a large stalagmite of solid ice and hurtled it at full speed toward one of the revenants, a revenant that spawned from a kind of demon known as a Blightfire Colossus. The icicle, as large as a man, hit the mark, slamming into the 18-foot revenant, causing it to stagger and ultimately fall heavily back. Its fall caused the ground to shake once again, and the echo reverberated through the pass.
The second Colossus wasn’t idle. Seeing its companion suddenly assaulted, it cocked its head and opened its mouth, unleashing a torrent of flames. The notification flashed in my vision just in time. I adjusted the magic circle I had summoned to conjure a wall of ice that shielded me from the fiery onslaught.
Still behind the wall, I heard the creature's steps closing in.
Understanding what was about to happen, I hurriedly backed off. I was barely ten meters away when the wall and ground shattered where I had been standing moments before, sending shockwaves along with ice splinters in all directions, one of which grazed my left cheek.
I quickly cast Hexed Frost Lance and hurled the lances one after another at the creature. The first struck its arm as it attempted to shield its head, the second hit the other shoulder, incapacitating its other arm, and the third struck its left knee, bringing it down. Ice began to spread, slowing its movements and extinguishing the flames on its body. I was about to unleash the last lance at its head when the creature roared, likely in anger rather than pain.
I activated one of the ice balls I had preemptively summoned through [Frostburst Detonation], unleashing an explosive effect. The explosion of cold mist met the fire head-on. Steam hissed as the two elements clashed. With my finger pointing at the creature, I unleashed the last Hexed Frost Lance and sent it flying at full throttle toward the creature. It embedded itself in its head, bringing the creature to a stop, both knees down, a blow that should conventionally be fatal but not here. I cast both [Winter Clutch] and [Inflict Frostbite], followed by [Debilitating Surge] to leave my Hexed frost to finish it off.
Shifting my focus from the fallen Colossus to the first one, which was in the process of getting back to its feet, I conjured a Glacial Eclipse. The ice from within me and the surroundings gathered and began enveloping the Colossus, trying to engulf it. The creature was in the process of being fully encased in a spherical prison when I caught sight of a creature high above, diving toward me: an Abysswing Revenant.
At the sight of the screeching Abysswing Revenant swooping down, I sighed as the creature's skill’s effect dawned on me. Used to the debilitating effect of the screech, I wasn’t stopped from summoning [Frost Shards] and letting them rain on it, striking mid-air. It let out a pained hiss, its movements faltering, eventually leading to a crash against the hard mountainous ground several meters away from me.
Momentarily ignoring it, I decided to first completely seal the Colossus with [Glacial Eclipse], which I did after a few seconds. By the time I was done, the other Colossus, debilitated by my Hexed Lances, Winter Clutch, and Inflict Frostbite, had fully turned into an ice sculpture, thus dying a Dungeon spawn death. Its body disintegrated, causing the ice statue it turned into to shatter on the ground as dark particles lingered for a brief second before completely disappearing.
[Level Up Interface]
Experience requirement met.
Congratulations! You've Leveled Up!
『Expand』
A smile appeared at the sight of the little notification on the corner of my eye, but very well aware that now was not the time to be distracted, I shifted my focus toward the Abysswing Revenant, which after its crash was now back on its feet and preparing to take to the sky again.
"Where do you think you’re going?" I snarled, pointing at the revenant and activating my skill Hexed Frost Sword Conjuration. I hurled one of the summoned swords at the Revenant. It dodged a blow that should’ve beheaded it, but the sword cut through its wing, sending it spiraling to the ground before crashing once again.
Still pointing, I intended to finish this fight quickly as I had a feeling—no, I knew for a fact that more were coming. As if on cue, something caught my attention. In the distance, the ground shook, allowing my seven remaining Hexed Frost swords to rain onto the revenant, effectively killing it. I turned toward the source of the commotion. The silhouette responsible for the disturbance came into view, and the closer it got, the bigger it looked.
Standing at an imposing height, the creature’s form was composed of twisted, gnarled wood and decayed flesh, giving it the appearance of a moving, sentient tree fused with remnants of its demonic origin. Its body was covered in thick, bark-like armor, adorned with eerie, glowing runes that pulsed with malevolent energy. The Colossus's head was crowned with massive, curved horns jutting out like twisted branches, casting a shadow of dread over its surroundings. Its eyes were hollow, dark pits, emanating a chilling, otherworldly glow that pierced the soul of anyone who dared to look into them.
Sighing, I summoned more ice balls through [Frostburst Detonation], though I wasn’t very sure the skill would do much against a creature this size. "Here we go again."
***
---
[ Arianna’s Interface ]Name: Arianna
Level: 16
Race: Highbreed
Class: Hexcaster
Title: Frostbinder Adept, Blessed of Sorcery, Dread Seer
Experience: 208 / 23230
[Status]- H.P: 57 / 61
- M.P: 1137 / 1720 (+511)
- S.P: 62 / 68
- Fatigue: 32%
- Defense: 39
- Offense: 519
[Attributes]- Strength: 3
- Agility: 6
- Constitution: 12
- Intelligence: 22
- Wisdom: 31
- Charisma: 21
- Faith: 19
- Luck: 20
[Skills]- Hydroblast: Level 4
- Identification: Level 7
- Ice Magic: Level 5
- Frost Shards: Level 6
- Frost Burst detonation: Level 4
- Eagle Eye: Level 4
- Glacial Eclipse: Level 4
- Frostbound Stride: Level 5
- Lowered Temperature: Level 6
- Mana Reservoir: Level 4
- Winter Clutch: Level 7
- Frost Glide: Level 7
- Amplified Frostbite: Level 7
- Inflict Frostbite: Level 7
- Cryognize: Level 5
- Hexed Frost Lance Conjuration: Level 5
- Hexed Frost Sword Conjuration: Level 5
- Hexed Frost Dagger Conjuration: Level 4
[Abilities]- Elemental Affinity (Ice): Unlocked
- Debilitating Surge: Unlocked
- Negative Resonance: Locked
- Legacy of Agony: Unlocked
- Ice lesser Immunity: Unlocked
- Ice Milder Immunity: Unlocked
- Ice Greater Immunity: Locked
- Mana Storage (Impotence)
- Hexcaster Weaponry: Unlocked
- Magic Amplification (Impotence)
- Elemental Affinity (Ice-Water-Wind, Impotence)
---
After the giant snake's passage, I promptly attributed my Attribute Points. As per my prior arrangement on what to do with my two latest high-order attributes, upon becoming an Hexcaster I invested most of my points into Faith and Luck, just as I had with the attribute points I acquired from my last level up. This brought Faith and Luck attributes respectively to 19 and 20. After dedicating exactly 37 attribute points into the two Hexcaster's primary scaling attributes, they finally caught up to my other attributes, so from my next level up, I could finally level the two normally along with the others.
It was a relief. Not that the process was particularly annoying; in fact, it was quite the opposite, it felt rewarding.
Being primary scaling attributes, leveling Luck and Faith tangibly manifested onto my status base offense. In the span of a mere three levels, my current base offense was now almost double what it was when I was level 12.
Quite the improvement, I'd say. Not only did it show on my offense status, but it also felt like it, allowing me to deal even more damage. So yes, the 37 attribute point investment was well worth it.
However, if I were to have a complaint, it would be how despite leveling my Faith by 18 points, I still haven't unlocked a single Holy or Healing-related skill, both of which would be quite helpful in the current predicament I was stuck in.
Undead are naturally very weak against holy damage, and demons were no better. Since they too were both vulnerable to holy damage, one can easily imagine how vulnerable a creature that is partly undead and partly demon would be.
With just one skill with holy damage on par with my ice spells, I would have literally massacred my way out of this place. But well, that's just a "what if." A mere "I wish it were," in fact.
Stolen story; please report.
I'm fine with not getting a holy-related skill since, as a Hexcaster, I dabbled with something that can be interpreted as the opposite of "holy." But I was at least hoping to unlock a self-healing skill. As I currently stand, especially as a sorcerer, my biggest fear is having the slightest attack land on me, because I know I wouldn't be able to recover from it like a knight or a paladin would, making me vulnerable to a follow-up attack. That is, of course, if I didn't outright die from that initial attack.
Even if I were able to recover from that initial attack and manage to defeat my opponent, I would be left with a wound, one that I would have to recover from like a peon. If I were close to a city, I could always head to the closest city’s temple, but the place I'm most likely to sustain such injuries is in the middle of nowhere. So yeah, I was really disappointed not to get such a skill.
To quell that disappointment, I just told myself that it couldn't be helped and that instead, when I arrive at my next town, I should focus my efforts on finding an artifact with infused or even imprinted healing properties.
With my mind set on that secondary goal, I stood up from the rock I rested atop, stretching in the middle of a battlefield that should have been surrounded by the corpses of the undead I defeated. But the creatures, being what they were, Dungeon spawns, they just disappeared upon defeat.
Having been in the pass for a little over two days, yes, two fucking days that initially should have been the time it would have taken to make it through the pass entirely and be on the other side, I was still there in the middle of it, not even halfway through.
Sigh.
That being said, I was more or less convinced I was not so far away from the other side anymore.
I glanced at the numerous holes on the side of the mountain that I have to admit was tempted to call caves, but since they were barely large enough for someone to crawl into, "holes" fit quite well. From what Tom told me, these were entrances to large underground galeries home to the creatures that first elected these mountains as their home: Frostfang serpents.
To tell the truth, from what I’ve gleaned of Tom, I expected to deal with more Frostfangs during this journey rather than I did ice specters. And yet, so far, I've not met a single one. One possible explanation for their absence is that perhaps the presence of the spawns leads the serpent-like creatures to hole themselves into their underground large gallery of thousands of tunnels. But even then, it's a surprise that in these two days here, I haven't stumbled upon a single one of them.
Well, that's not quite right. I did stumble upon one of them the other day, and quite a large specimen at that, hinting at what level it could possibly be. A good thing it didn't notice me back then because, with how exhausted I was, I would've been toast.
If I were to encounter it now, in a time when I'm not exhausted, then I would be confident in defeating it. But that heavily depended on whether my assumption of its level was right or not. Right now, I only used its size and Tom's last description of the strongest Frostfang to make a guess about its level. But I wasn't able to confirm anything visually due to the ice's translucency back then.
Anyway, with the spawns, I had already plenty on my hands, so I really hoped to get out of here without having to deal with more than the spawns. Because dealing with the spawns is something I'm bound to do.
From the way I keep encountering more and more spawn, it was clear that the Dungeon spawning them was in the direction they were coming from, ahead. Meaning that to make it to the other side, I'd have to literally clear the pass of all the Dungeon's spawns, for clearly, they weren't going to let me pass without trying to tear me apart.
And that's fine. While it was a struggle at first, the moment I leveled up, fighting the spawn progressively got easier. Besides, the Dungeon seemed to have a limited catalog of monsters, fancying only four kinds of revenants: Blightfire Colossus, Abysswings, Maleborne, and Dreadwood Colossus. Hehe, that Dungeon Core, sentient or not, is really new at this. Its spawn personnel are too homogenic.
If it wishes to just remain a revenant-focusing Dungeon, it's fine. Undead is a good choice for spawn type, but the fact that most of the revenants look too much like one another, so much so that once you fought one, you knew how to fight the other, well, I suppose it's already a good thing that it had airborne spawns. But still...it's clearly the job of an amateur Dungeon Core.
I knew I was being too judgmental of the Dungeon Core since the spawns I was judging it by were spawns it had no control over. But that only made me more curious about what the Domain of the Dungeon looked like. With that thought, I recovered my backpack, my fatigue percentage level had descended to an acceptable level, so I resumed my advance. Despite getting used to it, I was really eager to be done with this place.
I walked for several hours, stumbling upon spawns that I promptly defeated. At some point, it was getting jarring, boring with the same monsters again and the same environment, so much so that I began wishing not for a different kind of spawn but for a change of scenery. And I got exactly that as I reached a turn in the pass.
The air was cold and crisp, like almost everywhere in this god-forsaken place, with a thin mist clinging to the ground, swirling around my ankles like ghostly tendrils. Nothing particularly special about it, really, but upon closer inspection, past the mist clearly, there was. The first thing I noticed was how the passage widened. The pass was already wide, but here it was easily twice the usual width. The second thing I noticed was the winged revenants in the distance, the AbyssWings. They flew in dozens, like seagulls above a beach. The third to catch my attention was what locked it for the longest time, so much so that I felt like rushing to it out of pure curiosity, a childish smile spreading across my face. In the heart of the pass, the ground abruptly gave way to a massive hole, as if the earth itself had been torn open by some malevolent force. I approached cautiously, the edges of the hole rough and crumbled, making it look like a gaping maw ready to swallow anything that ventured too close.
Peering into the hole, I could barely make out the swirling fog below. A shimmering membrane hovered at the edge of the fog, obscuring my vision. I prompted my Eagle Eyes skill, hoping for a clearer view, but the membrane seemed to negate its effects, turning my enhanced vision into a blurred haze. It was as if the hole itself resisted my attempt to peer into its depths.
A shiver ran down my spine as I realized what I was looking at. "This has to be the—" my thoughts were lost in contemplation when I was rudely interrupted by a familiar, and simultaneously very annoying, screech.
"Can't catch a freaking break, can I?" I screeched, aiming Impotence, my staff, at the swooping revenant.
***
After taking down all the AbyssWing revenants flying overhead, I considered my options, well, option, there was only one. The hole in the ground completely divided the pass into two sides: the one I was on and the other one. To get out of this place, I had to make it across. Jumping was an unrealistic option, the gap being easily several hundred meters in diameter, just like flying over, since I didn't have any flight capabilities in the first place. The only viable route was along the side of the mountainous wall.
I guess it was a blessing in disguise that upon noticing me, the AbyssWings came to their deaths by charging at me. To cross as I planned, I would've had to eliminate the AbyssWings above, otherwise they’d tear me apart mid-climb.
Very obviously, I didn't plan on climbing using my bare hands. I was good at many things, but I had no confidence in my climbing skills. What I had confidence in was my ice magic, which I used to create steps along the rugged surface. I began my ascent, each step carefully placed, my movements deliberate.
As I climbed higher, directly above the hole, the view below grew more expansive, allowing me to see the gaping maw with an even better view. From this vantage point, I was able to see something that earlier I was not able to see. The fog, now clearly visible as a thick layer of cloud, for it were, concealed an eerie sight. Creatures identical to the AbyssWings I had just fought were inside the hole, but unlike what one might expect such a creature to fly, they were flying upside down, as if gravity had no hold on them. Or to be exact as if the world itself was upside down inside the hole.
No doubt, this upside-down world had to be the Dungeon's domain, and that gaping maw was its entrance.
For a moment, I was mesmerized, the strange sight drawing me in. I had been expecting something unexpected, but this was beyond these unexpected expectations.
I had heard of dungeons with ancient ruin-like entrances, cave-mouth entrances, and some others that were just simple portals. Our dungeon had a cave-like entrance at the base of the mountain separating the land of man and the underworld. But never had I heard of a dungeon like this one, with an entrance that was just a gaping hole in the middle of nowhere.
I glanced around at the place where the dungeon was located, then chuckled and corrected myself. "I see... so it's not just in the middle of nowhere." The more I looked at the dungeon's entrance, the more mesmerized I became. There was something profoundly intriguing about it.
"Now you make me regret calling you a rookie dungeon core," I muttered to myself, retracting my gaze from the dungeon below. The sight was fascinating, but I still had a journey to finish. As captivating as the view was, and as much as the entrance called for me to visit the dungeon domain, now was not the time for dungeon diving, especially since I now realized that no authority was involved.
I decided to leave the dungeon behind, making an internal memo to visit it later once I had completed my goal of reaching the city of Miriandelle. There was no hurry to visit the dungeon now, especially considering the risks it still entailed despite not involving an authority. Besides, it wasn't like the dungeon was going anywhere.
While they very much spontaneously appear with no warning, dungeons, once they appear, can't disappear anymore
After a strenuous but steady climb, I finally reached the other side of the chasm. I took a moment to catch my breath, my eyes scanning the landscape ahead. From here on out, opposite to the impression it gave from the other side, the pass seemed to narrow down to a much tighter but much more normal passage.
As the hours passed by, monotony began to set in. Unlike earlier, when it was the fault of stumbling upon the same monsters in the same rocky environment, this time it was less due to encountering the same monsters and more due to the unchanging surroundings. Having put quite the distance between myself and the dungeon spawning the monsters, there were fewer and fewer of them. The hole on the side of the wall however, seemed to thrive much more, leaving me with just my footsteps echoing in the pass. The far-from-unique environment left me bored. As I walked, my eyes darted around, not only on the lookout for possible monsters but also for something to keep my mind entertained.
At some point, I found solace in counting the caves on the side of the walls. This time, the holes were big enough to be called caves, unlike the ones on the other side, being large enough for someone as tall as I was to fit in without ducking.
It was during this activity that I heard a familiar sound. My ears pricked up, recognizing the noise from a previous encounter. The rumbling was low and almost imperceptible at first, but it grew steadily louder, reverberating through the pass. My heart rate quickened as I scanned the area for the source without making a move.
Emerging from one of the larger caves in the wall, I saw it: the immense, sinuous shape of the white snake-like creature. The creature slithered out of the cave with eerie grace, its movements fluid and deliberate. My muscles tensed as I watched it, remembering our last encounter when it had drunk from the melting ice.
I remained perfectly still, hoping it wouldn't notice me. The serpent's tongue flicked out, tasting the air. I readied myself, Impotence already in hand, muscles coiled and ready to spring into action. But as before, I prayed it wouldn't come to that. This time, however, unlike last time, it wasn't because I was in a vulnerable state, but instead because this battle was simply one that I did not want to fight.
Much like most monsters that fall under the category of "Animalistic Monsters," Frostfang Serpents, the creatures that are said to have elected the Yealling Peaks mountain range as their home, what level-ups bring is a size increase. It's not always the case, but more often than not, a level equals a size increase. Usually, upon hitting a certain threshold, monsters undergo something called evolution, which brings not just a size increase but a qualitative change, granting access to a whole array of skills and abilities that had been thus far unavailable.
Frostfang Serpents can level up to level 20. At that level, they undergo an evolution that turns them into creatures known as Frostfang One-eyed Serpents, a monster that scales at base level the same as a level 25 Verdenkind. And that was exactly what the creature whose white sinuous form stood before me was.