They did not waste anymore ti and reached for Sulthar. On the other side of the waygate, the glowing blue sphere was present.
Preparing themselves to face incredible heat or powerful monsters, they used the key point and arrived at level 82. Which turned out to be the sa, dark ash ridges and lightless sky.
A few steps forward and another damned distortion wall appeared. Sulthar crossed it and confird it was the sa as the last level.
"Again, we have to wait?" Mindseer voiced.
"I think all the way till level 90, it’s going to be the sa," Veltrax added.
"Each floor will take at least 20 to 25 minutes if Sulthar alone finds the key point, that’s assuming the monsters don’t change much." Lucian calculated. "Which, let’s be honest, won’t be the case. It would take hours just to reach level 90. You will miss your deadline."
The last part was directed at him. The whole purpose of this dungeon run was to et the pign Sun God before pledging his alliance to Astraea. He can’t be late; the Sun God priests were reported holding a temple eting to decide what steps to take for either of his choices. The eting of the highest officials even involved the Dragon Emperor.
The emperor will not start a fight he can’t win. But the guy was also a soldier and a warrior before a king. His strategic mind will not let him live alone on the faith of people, no matter how big a favor Sanctuary and Damian himself had done for him and his empire. Especially with his single-minded wife and the empire’s reliance on religious faith for the social order.
"Unless.. the search for the key point is done by more than one person," Sam suggested.
Damian rubbed his forehead. No ti to play safe if he wanted his confirmation of the limit of a god’s power.
"We need more sacrium," he said. "I can use blazur and steel, but the amount needed to hold the waygate spell will reduce the speed. Only the ones fast enough and tough enough to survive serious hits will search."
"I want to help, but I probably shouldn’t.." Mindseer admitted.
She was powerful and experienced, but often acted as support. Her transcendent strength and reflexes were not in the top-tier category, being an esper.
"You and the others should act as a communication constant between all of us; the ssages will get relayed through you, and you will share others’ status periodically with everyone." Damian placed a hand on her shoulder.
Recognizing one’s own limits was sothing only the brave could do. Looking at the other, Damian added,
"Speed, reflexes, and wormhole activation. Rember, fighting is not the aim; the goal is to get through as fast as possible. Right now, Sulthar and I will search the key point. One of you goes back outside and gets sacrium from sanctum reserves. I will inscribe the small waygate spell on a giant blazur runic square. Use it to inform when the person returns from outside with more sacrium. Then we will have Veltrax, Sam, and Lucian help us in finding key points as well."
Everyone agreed without a word. Damian continued when no one said anything,
"Hopefully, it will be quick, and we will reach the end in a couple of hours."
"Just wait for us, father, we will be there soon," Veltrax murmured, clenching his fist.
Damian and Sulthar exchanged looks. He had already explained to them that the Sun God that was here might not even recognize them or even attack them on sight. It was just a copy the dungeon had made from mory. But the monsters believed against all beliefs that they would be accepted.
Everyone returned to earlier levels after Damian made the large blazur cube that could hold the small waygate spell and a few detachable blazur rods that held the communication spell. One was not enough, so Damian created five cubes. The waygate spell of which connected Damian, Sulthar, Sam, Lucian, and Veltrax respectively.
Damian and Sulthar did not need anything more to get to work, but the other three needed a runic tool that could open the waygate from their side while searching before going on their own.
Sam decided to leave the dungeon and get the sacrium. Since he was the fastest, it won’t take long for him to cross the starting floors to reach Mindseer and others waiting in the pign settlent.
Damian and Sulthar started the search for the key point on level 82 without wasting a single second once the others left.
He flew at his fastest speed, releasing fire from his soot-covered legs and hands to boost it further. This ti, the spider monsters were the ones caught by surprise. Damian did not spare them at all. In the ti it took for him to get from one side of the square to the other, he could easily leave several spells in the passing.
Dealing paper-thin, monstrously fast, aura-coated blade arcs that cut the bastards into pieces while flying was barely an effort. It took so twelve minutes, but Damian found the key point. Sulthar and he passed through.
A few minutes in a similar level 83, and he received the ssage from Mindseer that Sam had returned with Sacrium. To save ti, Landbreaker gave sacium ingots from Highsword reserves to Sam. It was useless to them anyway, and the information they had acquired by simply coming with Damian about their own dungeon floor was worth their weight in gold.
Damian used the waygate to get Sam, Veltrax, and Lucian. Shaping the sacrium into a bracer with the coin-sized waygate spell, he passed it on to the three additional helpers. Damian warned them of the increasing dangers, but did not lecture on the safety; all of them knew very well what lay ahead.
Landbreaker and his party had left the dungeon after reaching level 80. As Sulthar had guessed, the obsidian knight was too fucked up an opponent in a terrain that was vastly advantageous for it. Landbreaker almost defeated the guy, but the knight unleashed so skill that raised the temperature even further, exceeding the limits of the runic suits.
The coat of seven was not a simple technique. Even with mana cubes, Landbreaker could not focus on his fight while actively maintaining the coat and generating and absorbing liquid mana. All that aside, the knight was too crafty and actively attacked and damaged the mana cube as the fight progressed.
Forcing Landbreaker to retreat.
Both elves and Landbreaker were injured and burned after facing hordes of monsters in the land of lava. They were resting currently in the obsidian bastion. Landbreaker was planning to go back and end the fight with the obsidian knight, but after hearing what lay ahead of level 80 from Sam, it wouldn’t be as fruitful anymore.
Damian did not have ti to go back and create more runic tools for them. Afterwards, he could give them the tools to reach the end, but for now, they had to move forward on their own.
With five people searching for the key point, each floor barely took five to seven minutes to clear. Spider monsters were more powerful as levels rose. And a few more were added. So weird scorpion-snake venomous mix legendary rank monsters and eerie ghostly spirit monsters that were dark blue cold souls of the legendary monsters they had faced in earlier levels.
These floors were like a path connecting the living and the dead world for this dungeon. The souls of all those monsters died and ca here, type bullshit.
The spirits dealt ice and light attacks; if caught off guard, it could be lethal. But they were not as fast as the spider monsters, nor did they have hiding skills like the sneaky snake-scorpion hybrids. Fire was very effective against them, and so was lightning.
One dark floor after another, they inched closer to the end.
Level 85 had an unfathomable dragon. An exact copy of Sulthar, only bigger and aner. The boss monster’s fire was dark blue though, matching the spirit the. Even the magma covering its body was a dark blue color, and the lava blood it bled was dark blue as well.
It probably packed more power than that obsidian knight, but it didn’t have the sa level of intelligence as Sulthar or the obsidian knight. So, in comparison was easier to deal with. Added with clear ash ground terrain and a comfortable winter atmosphere, there were no restrictions on any of them, making it even easier to fight.
Sulthar alone was able to hold off the thing. When combined with Damian, Sam, Veltrax, and Lucian, they killed the thing effortlessly, stored the corpse in his sacrium helt, and moved on.
The next four levels were just slightly different, not difficult enough to change their strategy. There were so close calls from the spider, scorpion, and the ghost monsters, but simply keeping the small waygates open continuously for Sam and Lucian using the blazur mana cubes lessened the danger factor.
Damian could go to them at any sign of the monster and fight together.
The one for Veltrac Damian kept open from his own side. Sulthar was fine on his own.
At last they reached there.
Level 90.
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