With my new reality I finally feel free and it feels really good and it feels funny because I don't consider myself a free person yet to be really free, I have to be strong enough to be able to protect myself. With my new level I finally regained my cultivation speed again, and with the rest of the resources I ended up not using during my advancement, I spent the week after my advancement solidifying my new level.
And the rest of the mana and elemental energy from the materials I used to saturate my room I absorbed as much as I could from it and it didn't make that much difference in my cultivation level, during this week I realized that all the mana and elemental energy I'm absorbing is directed towards my body, just as during the advancement my core absorbed all the energy possible now and in turn of my body being cleansed by my new aura and elemental energy.
I thought this state wouldn't last long, but a week after my advancement nothing has changed and it makes me very happy because it shows how I had a superior quality advancement the longer the cleansing period, but my body had strengthened itself.
But I can't let this put off my plans even though my body is absorbing my aura and elemental energy, cleansing doesn't slow my energy regeneration it just keeps me from improving my cultivation. So, I started to prepare myself to enter the Bloody Arena Dungeon because only after I managed to gather enough money in it to be able to buy a new bow better than my current one, then I could enter the Moonlight Forest Dungeon.
Only when I get a level three bow or a level two elemental bow will I be able to hunt peacefully in the moonlight forest, and I want to be able to finish exploring the beginning levels of the two dungeons before classes start again since the weekend before after classes started my group agreed to meet to enter the black lair again.
But this will also be the last time we get together to explore the dark lair, Hilda, Erick and Sten have already made it clear that they are not interested in exploring this dungeon further. I understand their decision as the resources we can start harvesting from the dungeon don't interest them and the dungeon is too dangerous for them to explore without earning anything but a little money.
The black hole doesn't make much money with a large group of us on the floors we're going to explore, and the risk of giving shit increases and adding that neither one of them has advantages but disadvantages, especially Hilda that her gun and a spear she can't use properly in a closed cave.
So, they make it clear that they don't want to exist in this dungeon, Ingredi and Torris said they were still interested as the valuable materials of the earth element that can be retrieved in the dungeon and their positions are not as affected by the unfavorable environment of the dungeon and like the earth element the next floors grew stronger, Ingredi's magic strengthened and Torris' defense became more solid in the exploration of the black lair.
I'll have to find at least one replacement with good defensive skills to defend Ingredi or two new attackers to clear the dungeon more smoothly, but finding replacement candidates can only be accomplished after classes start.
I believe that among the older students at the institute I will be able to find new members and preferably I want them to be competent and loyal, to be betrayed in the dungeon and a real danger that I hope I will never experience.
But leaving those worries behind I prepare to go into the bloody arena, I leave my bow and arrows behind and only take a few supplies like a food elixir, water and some throwing weapons in addition to my main weapons. Since bloody arena and a dungeon that works similar to the matrix test, I won't be in the dungeon for long.
I head alone to the central part of town to enter the dungeon, and after paying the fee to one of the guilds guards, I find myself in front of a black portal. Unlike the black burrow, which is basically a hole in the ground, the bloody arena and a carved gold arch with various combat lanes, the dungeon frames often show characteristics of the dungeons.
Entering the black portal in the center of the golden arch I enter the second dungeon of my life and
I immediately notice the difference between my first and second dungeon. Upon entering the arena, I am greeted by dry air and a blue sky.
The bloody arena is basically the empty Roman coliseum, the sunlight is reflecting off the empty stands and the venue was in complete silence that was only broken when the metal bars that are strewn around the circumference of the arena opened and my enemies stepped out of them.
And speaking of my enemies I'm facing four hobgoblins at the same time and they're equipped with light gladiator armatures and various types of weapons, but that's not the problem I'm worried about and that the bars didn't close after the hobgoblins were gone. away from them.
My enemies are quite different than the hobgoblins I faced in the illusory matrix, the monsters in the matrix were much more robotic and didn't show that they had any smarts compared to the hobgoblins that are coming towards me now.
It seems that the illusory matrix is still far from being able to replicate a dungeon, I prepare to fight the hobgoblins and as they are scattered, I fire towards the hobgoblin who is equipped with a rusty trident. I choose him because his weapon and what will hinder me the most in a group combat that will probably be surrounded and targeted by several attacks at the same time.
When I approach the hobgoblin, he didn't just stand there waiting for me to kill him easily, but he dropped to the ground and grabbed the sand from the arena and hurled it towards me as I approached him. I'm surprised by this for several reasons, first and generally I use this type of move and second the intelligence of this hobgoblin is not a little too high, level one and two monsters should be dumb and at most have a rudimentary intelligence than the let's swing a gun or not kill yourself during combat but using a silly tactic like that is something i didn't expect and lastly, he looked around looking for his mates for help and that's pretty smart for a level one hobgoblin.
I engage with my wind element both to increase my speed and to block the sand coming towards me and as I approached him, I caught his trident with my hunting knife and used the strength I accumulated during my run to bend my arms of the hobgoblin and decapitate him with my sword.
And when I look around, I see that not only am I surrounded by three hobgoblins and there is a dark green shadow coming out of one of the gates that is still open. It looks like I'll be facing several hobgoblins on this first floor, and it's best that I kill them as quickly as possible, not only to get through the floor quickly but also to avoid being surrounded by several hobgoblins at the same time.
Over the next ten minutes I killed twenty hobgoblins armed with various weapons, even had one bastard throwing daggers and another one throwing small axes in min. Only one archer is needed to complete the hobgoblin band.
After the death of the last hobgoblin a golden arch goes out from the center of the arena and inside it another black portal came, it stopped that finally the first floor of the arena ended and it ended up being quiet for me, but when compared to the first floor of my first dungeon this one was much faster and had to kill fewer monsters, but having to kill them non-stop ended up showing that the floor of the bloody arena is more exhausting and complicated than the first floor of the black lair.
In the next floors I not only faced normal hobgoblin and some elites, I also faced some normal kobolds and elites' floor two to four the arena readout didn't change only the enemies got stronger the number didn't change much. So, when the golden arch for the fifth floor appeared I had already spent a little more than forty minutes in the dungeon it really ends faster and that's good for adventurers who keep repeating floors to accumulate magic gems, but unfortunately this isn't a strategy I'm inclined to follow for me and better move forward to face the guardian of the fifth floor.
And the guardian of the fifth floor was not a hobgoblin or kobold but a bloody level one elite kruthiks, I know how to identify him because he is blue-green which shows that he is an elite of his species and his size and number of paws shows which is level one. Lucky for me and only one enemy, but unfortunately fighting an elite kruthik is more complicated than facing hobgoblins or kobolds, because the kruthiks can release acid in their bite or simply spit their acid saliva in min, combining their deadly attack with their speed fast on four legs this is going to be a fight I can't fight.
I'll have to use my aura and elemental energy to the fullest to kill him fast enough not to get hit by his acid. When I analyzed my enemy the kruthiks quickly advanced towards me spitting his acid towards me.
I summon a large amount of wind element and move erratically towards the kruthiks who are releasing their acid all over the place. As I approach the kruthiks he is already starting to use his sharp paws to cut me, and when I move back to dodge his paws, he spits an acid bullet in my direction and nearly burns me.
That damn kruthik is behaving like a madman twirling his paws and spitting acid as I move around his body, I hurt my daggers against his jaw and into his eyes that aren't protected by their hard shell, but unfortunately my daggers barely they can pierce your jaw because the acid coming out of your mouth melts the sharp tip of the daggers plus one of the kruthik's eyes is pierced.
But that doesn't help me much, it just ends up pissing the kruthiks even more. To break this impasse, I keep my hunting knife and use my sword to make a concentrated movement with the strength of my two arms, aura and elemental energy of the fire and wind element and with this attack I try to cut one of the kruthiks's legs in a horizontal movement when your paw is attacking me vertically.
My blow breaks his paw in mine and it breaks the kruthiks' balance. With the leg cut in half where her defense is thicker, I kill the kruthik's ability to move and to finish him I run behind him and execute a second move draining almost all of my energy. This kind of attack depletes my energy very quickly, but I was the only way to penetrate the thick ripe of a Kruthik's paws.
After cutting his hind leg I can't perform an attack with that strength again, but luckily, I don't need to repeat the attack the kruthik's blood is gushing from his paws and as he writes on the ground I back away from him and wait for him to die by blood loss.
The kruthiks are much wider than the other monsters I faced on the previous floors and because of that I only had to move around the arena staying out of reach of the kruthiks who even writhing on the ground tried to chase me and spit acid in min.
It took a few minutes for the kruthiks to die from the severe bleeding I inflicted on him and with that I harvested his magic gem, but unfortunately the kruthik's acid ran out in the fight so I can't harvest him and his husk was melted by the acid he spat on it. same. That and the problem of leaving an enemy to thrash, many of the resources it could harvest from it can end up spoiled.
My only profit from killing the kruthiks was his magic gem and it is unfortunately worth no more than the gems I've sinned from the other elite monsters I've killed on the dungeon floors.