"Young master, are you sure you want to go into that place alone?" Ron asked seemingly worried since it would be the first time I went into a dungeon all alone without Ron, Ran and even the Shadows.
"Yes. I need to recuperate properly"
Zanuki descendants were encouraged to be independent thus my request to go hunting alone wasn't something outrageous. Furthermore, I've been inside a low-level dungeon during my stay in Kazigare Valley a few times before.
Yes, they told me to recuperate properly but Zanuki's meaning of recuperating is to let loose and kill monsters.
That was why Ran had dragged me into a few dungeons under Grand's order. It was hard at first but I slowly got used to it.
Because of that, I was having a relatively easy time during the midterm test.
It was the start of summer break and I decided to go hunting inside a dungeon.
After getting grandpa's permission, I decided to venture into a random low-level dungeon alone. The dungeon I chose was a relatively hidden dungeon under the Zanuki management.
Without Ron and Ran, I have to disguise myself since everyone in Hargan knew who I am once they see my red hair.
[30 minutes before reaching Fog City...]
The monotone female robot voice announcement woke me up from my short nap on the train.
With a yawn, I stretched my hands lazily as I looked at my smartwatch.
It was almost 10 PM. I could leave Soga Mountain earlier but Eris had to check if I have packed all the necessities needed to enter a dungeon. She even dragged me to buy a new sets of combat suits.
Sigh.
Even though I sometimes felt a bit suffocated with all the familial affection that I received, I didn't hate it.
Looking outside the window, one could almost see Fog City from afar as it was dazzling with bright light, as the skyscrapers illuminated the whole city at night.
It took only two hours from Soga Town to Fog City.
Since I'm still a student, grandpa only allowed me to hunt around the outer region of Fog Forest as it was one of the unexplored lands in Hargan with both opportunity and peril due to its topography.
The reason why I chose Fog Forest was that, in the novel, Cedric never went to this place. Thus I could not accidentally take the protagonist's supposedly treasure.
I just wanted to do a solo hunting and also try a method to obtain immunity to poison that only I know about it currently.
The train finally reached Fog City.
[Passangers please exit the train in order]
The reason why I didn't use the teleportation portal to go to Fog City was that it is only accessible by train and other land vehicles due to the unstable mana in the area.
I exited the train and started looking for an inn at a low price. While staying at the inn, I also requested information regarding Fog Forest monsters.
The first half of the forest is filled with poisonous air. Thus most of the monsters were probably poisonous as well. Zanuki had a distant relative living in another country that were experts in creating antidotes for poisons.
The reason was that they also underwent mutation and were cursed by one of the high ranking demons to have poisonous blood.
Many of their descendants didn't survive childhood and died. But currently, since they knew how to prevent the poison from harming them and other people, they use it to their advantage.
Because of that, they were experts in creating poisons and antidotes. Universal antidotes were one of their products and Zanuki managed the sales of the antidotes in Hargan.
To be honest it was kind of weird why only Zanuki and that distant relative could suddenly undergo mutation and be immune to demonic energy.
The history books in Hargan said that Zanuki had undergone mutation when they were trapped in the Demonic realm more than 500 years ago during their mission to kill the newly emerging Demon King.
However, at that time, Zanuki's distant relative didn't involve in the mission so why did they also undergo the same mutation despite being at different places.
"I should think about this matter later and focus on what I'm going to do here" Ares muttered.
The reason why he specifically chose Fog Forest was because of the poisonous environment. Even though Zanuki was strong, they still weren't immune to poison. Even their distant relative will die due to poison. That was why they have to constantly consume antidote for their whole life due to the poison blood curse.
Due to the danger inside the forest, the government has set up a few safe zones inside it thus those who didn't manage to exit the forest could go to the safe zone and contact reinforcement or security team.
In the middle of the forest was a dungeon portal that had never been cleared and had broken out making the forest as dangerous as it was today and unhabitable for normal animals. The ecosystem of the forest has become similar to a dungeon.
The next morning I started gearing myself up. I put on the suit Eris purchased and put the daggers hidden all over my body. Currently, I have around a dozen daggers and two Katanas on my waist.
I didn't bring any backpack since my spatial bracelet has enough space for potions, dry food, water and a first aid kit.
Looking at the mirror, I ruffle my hair which has been dyed black to be as messy as it could be before putting on black contact lenses for my eyes. My usual black face mask is still on my face covering my nose and mouth hidden.
Keeping everything in place, I started my journey toward the forest.
The closer I got to the forest, the more variation in topography I noticed. There was a change in vegetation as the bushes and shrubs were replaced by small trees and big trees.
The loose sandy soil became firm and even the amateur me could see traces of a monster on the ground but luckily I still have yet to encounter any monster.
Before entering the forest, I sprayed myself with an anti-monster spray that could conceal my human scent finding it harder for any monster to track me through the smell.
The foggy atmosphere inside the forest really befitting the name of its name, Fog Forest. The deeper one goes into the forest, the thicker the fog becomes.
The reason for the forest not being explored is because of the fog. Once you're deep inside the forest, it was difficult for you to know the road and many who wanted to seek opportunity end up dead with no one to find their corpse.
It became more dangerous since some parts of the forest were poisonous on top of the fog disrupting your view.
That was why I was only allowed to roam on the outer layer of the forest.
I planned to kill around 12 species of poisonous species and take some part of their bodies and also their cores.
-Tack
I suddenly heard the sound of a broken twig.
Raising my vigilance. I took a few daggers out and started scanning my surrounding.
Bending down I started to move forward in the direction of the sound in light steps. I also have an artifact that allows me to use flash steps in case I needed to run away later.
The earring artifact that I got during the midterm dungeon test from an Ant Queen.
====================
Festia Earrings
Level: 2
Description: Can store holy power and mana just by injecting them into the earrings. Allow the user to use Shunpo (flash step) ability.
Restriction: This artifact level can't be improved.
Usage Limit: As long as the user still has mana.
========================
Since I don't have time to learn a flash step skill, I decided to use this artifact for the time being. The feather-like shaped earrings look out of place with my all-black outfit but I still wear them as long as it is useful.
Hiding behind a tree, I glanced at the side of the tree and saw a huge porcupine with a horn on the middle of its head, digging in the soil.
The porcupine's sharp thorns on its body made me hesitate to attack since I know it could shoot those thorns at me when it felt threatened and wanted to defend itself.
Thus I decided to quickly killed it using the daggers and with sudden stabs, the porcupine died.
"That was kind of easy. Should I just sneak attack all the monsters?" Ares pondered but decided the plan wasn't plausible since not all monsters were as easy as that dumb porcupine.
Ares looked at the porcupine corpse and decided to keep the corpse even though it wasn't one of the monsters he planned to hunt.
Looking at the list on the screen of his smartwatch, Ares quickened his pace further into the forest.
After a whole day of hunting, Ares managed to hunt more than half of the monsters on his list and decided to camp just outside the forest instead of going back to the inn he stayed in the previous night.
Even though it wasn't as dangerous as inside the forest, there were sometimes when stray monsters unknowingly went outside of the forest thus not many people would stay in the area at night after a full day of hunting.
Ares decided to do so since his guts told him that it was fine. Although he wasn't someone that did something just because his guts told him to, since the midterm test after hearing the strange voice, he started to follow what his guts told him to do.
Even though it sounded dangerous or illogical, he would still do it.
Moreover, he didn't have to enter the dungeon since the Fog Forest had become a dungeon due to all the monsters from inside the dungeon already coming out during the dungeon break and altering the ecosystem inside the forest to be dungeon-like.
There was a fire camp in front of him where he was currently roasting a few non-poisonous monsters' meats including some mutated rabbits and porcupine that he caught earlier.
"Should I hunt the Black Mamba early tomorrow morning?"
He was alone and usually in a complete group with someone that has tank ability and a healer was required to hunt an adult Black Mamba. However, Ares thought he could defeat it.
It was unknown when he started to change from someone that overly cautious with everything to someone that seemed reckless and confident at the same time.
Ares already made a list of monsters that he already confirmed to be inside the Fog Forest to achieve his plan of achieving the Eight Trigrams Urn.
'The Eight Trigrams Urn'
A method that was created in the future to defeat one of the strongest Demon Duke before humanity could defeat the Demon King. They used the method on Cedric to make him immune to poison and amplify his fire attribute.
It was unknown who created this method but since the method was kept by Leperon's matriarch, it might be created by one of their family members.
Leperon is Zanuki's distant relative from the same ancestors dating back almost a thousand years ago before they separated into two clans after Leperon decided to stop being a nomadic clan and settle down on a land that was now under the territory of the Talaga's Empire.
A few hundred years later, some Zanuki also decided to settle down in Hargan Empire while the others decided to continue wandering the world.
500 years ago during the Demonic Great War between humanity which consist of Elves, Giants and Humans against the demons' invasion to conquer the world.
At that time it was recorded the Zanuki started to undergo mutation along with Leperon. That was when the Divine Beast Phoenix blessed them with its fire attribute power. Making both clans' descendants mostly have fire attribute.
Unfortunately, a high ranking demon cursed the Leperon clan for killing his family. The Leperon's blood started becoming poisonous and many of them died especially their young children.
To counter the curse, the Leperon isolated themselves for almost a hundred years since their blood not only harming themselves but also other people.
That's also why they became experts in creating antidotes and started to learn how to. control poison from the ancestor of the current Tang clan.
The Eight Trigrams needed a few poisonous parts of certain monsters for it to be completed.
After a few hours of sleep, Ares quickly went hunting a few types of mambas inside the forest and collected their fire cores.
Unlike what common people know, fire and poison are closely related as poison or venom is actually a good burning substance. The stronger the venom, the stronger the fire burns.
"Fuhh..." A gust of fire came out from Ares's mouth after he finished devouring a few dozens of fire orbs from monsters.
His body also felt hot but he have to endure it since he knew it wasn't enough and he needed to hunt more monsters.
Ares continued walking into the forest and unknowingly he already exceeded the outer region border of the forest and went deeper inside.
"Did I hit a jackpot today?"
Not far from him is a Plague Spider on a huge spider net in the middle of feasting on its prey. The plague spider poisonous gland is one of the ingredients Ares needed.
However, knowing that he still couldn't kill the spider easily. Ares decided to go around some other place first. He planned to set up a few traps to kill the spider.
On the other side of the dungeon.
Two guards who were wearing the green army uniform, standing still at the security box while on standby in case they were called for a rescue mission inside Fog Forest.
Beep Beep
Suddenly a notification signal came out from the dungeon entrance inside the Fog Forest. Due to its status as an unclear dungeon that already become part of the forest, no one was allowed to enter the dungeon.
However, suddenly today someone or something suddenly entered the dungeon.
"Hmm Sergeant, what should we do?" Asked one of the guards.
"Dammit, which moron enter that dungeon. Don't tell me he unknowingly entered it because of the unclear view inside the forest?"
"But Sergeant, there was a barrier around the dungeon entrance forbidding humans to enter"
"Just let it be then. It might be an unlucky animal or a stupid Djinn"
Since no other people came into the forest this morning, they decided the one inside the dungeon wasn't human and possibly be a Djinn thus they didn't need to go and rescue him.
Meanwhile, Ares who accidentally step into a dungeon suddenly realized that the atmosphere around him seemed to be a little bit off.
"Wait a minute, where am I...ergh I'm fucked up"
The moment he saw his smartwatch map function suddenly froze, he instinctively knew where he was.
He accidentally went inside a fucking dungeon.
The smartwatch still functioned inside a dungeon since it was made of materials from dungeons. However, some of its functions would be limited due to the restrictions inside the dungeon.
Currently, Ares couldn't see his previous map since that map is the map of the forest, not the dungeon.
"Should I just clear this dungeon then" Although he knew the dungeon was never been cleared, he still didn't feel any sense of nervousness or panic.
On the contrary, he felt more excited as if he was suddenly being given a huge playground to play on by himself until he was satisfied.
"I might even get rewarded for clearing the dungeon. It is never wrong to have more money"