I was half expecting to find Blood Leopards or something similar to predatory spirit beasts on the floor above my dungeon, but it turned out that reality was different from a manhwa. This wasn't Dungeon Odyssey, and I would be in copyright trouble if my reality began ripping stuff off from whatever webtoon I happened to be reading at this point of time.
Hey, at least there were no Nagas in my dungeon.
Though the surroundings were still largely composed of what you would normally find in a subterranean cavern, with rocky walls, stalactites and stalagmites, and a claustrophobic feel, it wasn't entirely an underground cave. Apart from the ever present bioluminescent moss that generated light for what would otherwise be a pitch black environment, there were strange plants and vegetation that grew rampantly, making it seem like an underground forest.
The trees did resemble the same trees I saw on the surface, with thick trunks and green leaves. It appeared that normal plant life could still propagate here, which was surprising. There was even a thick layer of grass over the rocky floor, though it looked like a blend of moss, lichen and grass. I would have thought we were trekking through any normal forest that we could find on the surface, except that instead of seeing the sky whenever I raised my head, I could see nothing but rock, as well as the coat of glowing mold that expanded all over the ceiling of the cave like stars.
Even as we bashed through branches, vines and tendrils that hung from the trees, the foliage being as dense as any normal forest, I could hear the wildlife. The fauna appeared not very different from the usual bugs, birds and creatures that resided in trees. Insects scuttled and rattled, birds chirped, and mammals scrambled up trees or darted away quickly into bushes. They were mostly ordinary ranked spirit beasts that were analogues of squirrels, rabbits, antelopes or deer, or the usual bugs and birds that I could find in forests before the great rift opened up.
"Giant bugs," Jun Hai muttered, glancing around. "There's an Armored Rhino Beetle over there. It's blue."
I suppressed the temptation to call it a Heracles Cross because despite the physical resemblance, that wasn't the official name. nor was I going to call the gigantic butterflies that possessed magical powers such as shooting beams from their antennae or spreading spores that could induce sleep Free Butterflies. They were Fairy Butterflies, and their glowing wings seemed somewhat similar to Sylvie and Silvia's. Oh, and the Buzz Bees didn't have drills, though they were huge in size. They did have buzzsaws, though. Don't ask me why.
There were no Blood Leopards, thankfully. No, seriously. Enough of the Dungeon Odyssey references already. I swear, at this rate, we were going to meet a chibi weretiger.
"We'll have to go through this forest to get to the next level," Sylvie explained to us. Even though none of my spirit beasts had ventured this far or explored this level before, Raquel had provided us with a roughly sketched map. The entrance to a path leading to the next level above this one was located on the far side of this forest.
Originally, we had concerns over whether it would be a dangerous journey, but Raquel simply snorted.
"You're an Earth ranked cultivator now, Master. You defeated the Flood Dragon King in personal combat. You shouldn't have any problems going through a forest filled with bugs."
She was mistaken. I didn't defeat the Flood Dragon King in personal combat. I did so with the help of Hei Ba, who blew him up with nine golden beams. Nonetheless, she had a point. Though the spirit beasts dwelling in these levels were fairly strong, they were mostly Mystic ranked. None of them were much of a threat to an Earth ranked cultivator like me unless I let my guard down.
I wasn't going to underestimate my opponents just because their cultivation realms were lower than mine. Even though I technically was capable of defeating Mystic ranked opponents, that didn't mean they had no chance of winning against me. This wasn't a simple game of arithmetic or a comparison of stats where they dealt 1 damage against me with a HP of 1,000,000 or some bullshit like that. Reality was a lot more complex than merely assigning ranks, cultivation realms or numbers to the combatants and deciding victories or defeats like that. Just like in real life, a cobra could defeat an elephant with venom. A giraffe could kick a lion to death before the latter could sink its claws and teeth into the former. An army of ants could swarm over a bigger, stronger prey when it was isolated, and reduce it to a skeleton within minutes. Piranhas were known to tear apart creatures as big as buffalos in seconds when they dropped into the Amazon river. Jellyfishes could sting a shark and kill it with toxins.
Hell, let's not talk about the animal kingdom. Even in soccer, there was still a chance of upsets. A lesser known soccer team could knock out a supposedly top team in a tournament like the FA Cup, or even dark horses were known to eliminate the favorites or defending champions in the World Cup. Just like Saudi Arabia defeating eventual champions Argentina, or Japan defeating Germany.
Despite reality telling them such things were possible, I still saw comments from the existences beyond the fourth dimension raging whenever the protagonist lost, and they started screaming about how he was weak and pathetic, and questioning the inconsistency about him beating a supposedly stronger opponent previously, only to lose to a "nobody" later. Like, why did they even judge the other character a nobody? Just because this was his first appearance? I had to shake my head whenever I saw such stupid comments in Summoner Sovereign. Did it not occur to the readers that the protagonist couldn't win all the time? Not unless they wanted Mary Sue protagonists, and if that's what they wanted, they could go read fanfiction or something.
So thinking, I cautiously made my way forward, scanning the area ahead with my glasses. My sensors picked up quite a bit of movement, but mostly from smaller spirit beasts and bugs that avoided us. Jun Hai was probably right about my presence being intimidating, though I was disappointed to see that there weren't that many Earth ranked spirit beasts lurking around even in these depths of the Celestial Labyrinth.
I guess that made sense. It was absurd to expect this to be a place where Earth ranked spirit beasts suddenly became the most common existences. This was reality, not some badly written cultivation web novel with "map changes" where for some reason, the moment the protagonist hit a level cap and moved on to the next region, the previously established "rare geniuses" suddenly became as common as flies. How did that even make any sense? Considering that the cultivation authors loved their "strong eat the weak" rhetoric so much, how was the protagonist's hometown or home kingdom – which always inevitably ended up being the weakest and most pitiful places right at the bottom of the world hierarchy – not invaded or conquered by the strongest kingdoms already? It was conveniently contrived so that the protagonists started right from zero, the beginning, and slowly moved his way up, but I guess nobody considered how contradictory the logic was.
"Still, I'm sure there have to be at least a couple of Earth ranked spirit beasts somewhere here," I muttered to myself. I still recalled how I almost ran into an Earth ranked Volcanic Dragon when I first started trying to recover my crippled cultivation in the Di Yu Mountain Range.
"There are, but I hope we don't run into them," Jun Hai said with a sigh. "We don't want to expend too much strength before we even reach our objective. Don't forget, your goal is to find the weretiger and deny the enemy her strength. If we spend too much time getting bogged down with fighting strong spirit beasts here, then we might end up too late to stop the demonic sects from capturing her."
"Yeah, I know." I pushed away another fern and glanced at a fleeing Boxing Bunny. It was a Yellow ranked spirit beast that was capable of delivering devastating kicks, but even it didn't dare to challenge me to combat. How boring. Still, it looked kind of cute and I wondered idly if I could capture one. Unfortunately, the system had remained silent for now, and I didn't have any spirit contracts to use.
Odd. Normally, the system would notify me of a mission and reward me with spirit contracts. But at this rate, even if I found the weretiger, I wouldn't be able to bind her to a spirit contract. Not that I particularly aimed to do that because I wasn't that interested in weretigers, but it was interesting that the system didn't give me that option. Maybe it didn't think a weretiger was useful?
Interesting. Even now, I still didn't understand how the system worked.
We were about to continue onward without incident, which made the journey super boring (in my opinion). That wasn't good, because it meant I was going to start on another rant on edgy comments from beyond the fourth dimension or start rambling on criticisms of cultivation stories…
"Stop." I raised a hand and brought everyone to a halt. Everyone obeyed, falling into their respective positions and taking cover. Jun Hai was readying a summon, while Sylvie and Silvia began casting spells. They moved almost instinctively, as if expecting an attack at any moment. On one hand, I was impressed that they were perpetually on their guard, but on the other hand, I wanted to tell them to relax. I understood the need for caution, but I also knew how mentally draining it was to maintain such a high tension. Their minds would begin crumbling from exhaustion, which would in turn increase the chances of them making mistakes as more time went on.
And it required just a single fatal mistake for everything to be over. Which was why I never wanted to underestimate my enemies. Sure, I could be more powerful or have a higher cultivation realm, but I wasn't immortal. Often, it didn't matter how much I was dominating my opponent (like in soccer). As long as it sucker-punched me with a single decisive attack to my vitals, I would die. This wasn't a game where damage was dealt in terms of numbers and I lost a chunk of my HP. That was super unrealistic. Even a Mystic ranked spirit beast could kill me if it hit me in the right place at the right time. Again, like in soccer, it didn't matter if the favorites had 90% possession, 20 shots on target to the opponent's 1 shot or whatever. If they lost 0-1 to the underdogs, they lost. The results were all that mattered.
That was why I was watching the newcomer warily. A Topaz Tiger was prowling the region, sniffing the air and snarling. Its fur glowed a brilliant yellow, interrupted by dazzling black stripes. As massive as a house, it turned this way and that, searching for prey. A peak Mystic ranked spirit beast, huh? On paper, it wasn't a match for me, but I knew that if I let down my guard and underestimated it, it would still hurt me. It was still capable of delivering a killing blow if I was too reckless.
"What do we do, big bro?" Jun Hai asked. "Do we avoid it?"
Before I could answer him, the Topaz Tiger turned to us and bared its fangs. It had detected us, and within a second, it pounced.
"He who strikes first wins," I replied and let loose the arrow I had been preparing. It pierced the Topaz Tiger's forehead and blew out its brains, bringing its momentum to a halt and dropping it like a rock. I watched the carcass crash to the floor, exhaled in relief, and then lowered my bow. Even so, I did a cursory scan of the surroundings with my glasses to ensure there weren't any other predators lurking in ambush.
Nothing. For now.
"Let's go," I said, stepping around the Topaz Tiger's corpse and heading for the edge of the forest. Even though I killed it in one strike, it was still a worthy opponent. Had I chosen to engage it in close combat, the outcome of the battle might be very different. I knew Jun Hai, Sylvie and Silvia were staring at me, impressed, but I didn't tell them what a close shave it was.
If I hadn't spotted the Topaz Tiger a few seconds before it pounced, we would have been in great danger. What disturbed me was that I wasn't able to detect its presence until we were so close that we were withing its pouncing range.
Damn it. It looked like I needed more training. I was always allowing myself to get distracted by the sheer boredom of the journey, launching into irrelevant rants and rambling about nonsensical stuff. I had to learn to ignore comments from beyond the fourth dimension, and stop myself from reading trashy cultivation fiction. I had to learn to clear my mind and concentrate on my mission, not daydream and rant in the middle of the journey. That was a great weakness that I had yet to overcome. I really was in no position to criticize other cultivation authors when I couldn't even do such a simple thing.
Suppressing my frustration, I shook my head to clear my mind of more self-doubts and focused on the task ahead. Sure, this wasn't ideal, but I couldn't let it distract me from the primary objective – the weretiger. Once I denied the enemy their goal, then I could return to my dungeon and train myself back up on the basics.
Till then, I really shouldn't let my mind wander like right now.