However, while looking at the now dead body of the boss monster he had just defeated Marcus could only feel a sense of accomplishment for a moment before the backlash of his soul burst kicked in.
He felt his body and soul become incredibly heavy and it was as if someone had loaded him up with multiple balls and chains.
Luckily, the feeling of weakness was soon ignored as Marcus heard two familiar notifications in his head.
'You have leveled up to level 28'
'You have leveled up to level 29'
A bit surprised by the two-level ups Marcus soon had a massive smile on his face.
Checking his log since he doubted that even though the boss monster of the third level was incredibly strong it would give him enough exp to level up twice.
'Low and behold, a notification that says I leveled up for defeating the strongest monster in a dungeon. It has been a while since I got two levels at the same time, except even with the increased power my stats are only at a fourth of their strength for a week.'
Looking at his status Marcus assigned seventeen skill points to spirt and intelligence, sixteen to agility, and fifteen to both strength and vitality.
Once he had finished doing that Marcus noticed that a blue light was traveling across the dungeon floor from many directions and all of them were converging in the center of the room.
A few moments later a chest popped up out of the ground, and the lid slid open.
Seeing the chest appear Marcus could not help but rush over to it even though he was exhausted.
Looking through it he found a load of rare and valuable items, there were a few dozen ingots of mithril, multiple natural treasures, vials of different colored liquids, and minerals imbued with magical properties like ice crystals. But the thing that stood out the most was the large egg that was half black and white and was flanked by two skill orb.
'Wow that is a lot of treasure, with this I should be able to have a number of magic items manufactured and anything I do not need will fetch a pretty penny. Though the most curious thing is this egg, from what I read, after beating the boss of a layer a few adventures did receive eggs and hatched powerful magical beasts out of them. I wonder what I will get out of this, maybe it will be a dragon or a phoenix or something really powerful like that.'
While he was fantasizing about what kind or creature would hatch from the egg he had just received, he heard the sound of shattering ice behind him and watched as the cocoon of ice protecting Mrazivý broke apart releasing her.
Looking behind him he saw Mrazivý coughing loudly as she recovered from being encased in ice.
Marcus then walked over to her, and said, "Hello there your highness are you doing okay."
Pulling herself together Mrazivý stood up and gave a little bow before saying, "Thank you for killing that monster even if it was not your intention to help me. Though I must say I am surprised that I do not recognize someone as strong as you, I thought I knew who all of the strongest people in Loursend were."
"Yeah, I just arrived a few days ago and became a silver rank adventure. That was when I heard of your highness' disappearance and decided to see if I could come down here and find you."
Mrazivý then looked at Marcus with a look of shock and then some suspicion wondering what was going on. She had her fair share off enemies, and she would not put it past some of them to hire an unknown expert to come and kill her during her time of plight.
However, she soon washed away these thoughts since her crystal prison artifacts would not have deactivated if a hostile mana source was still nearby.
'If he had any malicious intent towards me, I would still be encased in ice, and I doubt that there are many assassins that would be willing to stick around and fight the third layer boss when it was obvious that it would kill me on its own eventually.'
With her worries abated Mrazivý gave Marcus a bright smile before saying, "Again you have my gratitude for coming down here to save me and in the name of the thirteenth princess of the kingdom I promise you will be rewarded."
Hearing the possibility of a reward Marcus stared imagining what he could get for recuing a princess, he already had plenty of magic materials since he had just received them from dungeon chest, so he did not need any of those.
'I guess what I need most right now is more money, exploring the world is expensive and a few thousand gold would do me good right about now.'
Once he was done thinking about how much money he was going to ask for from the kingdom Marcus realized a fatal flaw in his rescue plan.
Certainly, he had come down here headstrong and found and rescued the princess from the boss monster of the third layer of the dungeon, but he had no idea how to get back to the surface since he had cheated his way down with his ghost form.
He also had another problem, even though his stats were especially high for his level they would be only at twenty-five percent for another week, and he would not be strong enough to fight through the dungeon's third layer.
While he was racking his brain on what to do Mrazivý spoke up and said to him.
"Are you okay, you have been deep in thought for a while now and I was wondering if you were going to collect your treasures so we can get out of here."
Coming out of his thoughts Marcus realized he was in no condition to traverse the dungeon right now and said, "I am afraid that I have a slight problem, I did manage to beat the boss monster over there, but I had to use a double-edged skill to do it, my stats are going to be quartered for the next week. I would like to leave now, but currently I am afraid I do not have the strength to make it back out of the dungeon."
With the look of suspicion coming back onto her face Mrazivý took out a magic item that looked like a monocle and put it over her eye. She then looked good and hard at Marcus for about a minute before she saw Marcus' status and was blown away.
She did find that his stats were all currently lowered to only a quarter of their normal value, but they were all unnaturally high to begin with. Not to mention the slew of powerful skills that only the most experienced adventures and knights would normally have.
'What the hell is he, he is only level twenty-nine, but he is already stronger than me, and I did not see the skill he was talking about… wait could he have a unique skill.'
Marcus noticed that Mrazivý had been staring at him intently with the magical molecule she had pulled out and was starting to get a bit uncomfortable.
"Um, do I have something on my face or have you not finished appraising me yet."
Mrazivý realizing that she had been staring at Marcus' face for too long quickly looked away with her cheeks turning slightly red.
"Sorry about that I know it is rude to appraise someone without their consent, but I have to be extra careful since it would not be the first time for assassins to try to kill me. On another note, I did not find the skill you were talking about that lowered your stats temporarily, do you by any chance have a unique skill?"
Thinking that there would be no harm in answering that questions since lying about it would just make him seem suspicious Marcus confirmed that he did indeed have a unique skill.
Mrazivý then looked at him with a gaze of respect and even a tinge of jealous, before saying, "Well if you are not confident in leaving the dungeon right now, we should stay here until you have recovered since now that the boss is gone this room should be safe. Though I am sure that a rescue party will have already been dispatched and since you found me in only a little over a day, I am sure they are not far behind."