With my stealth skill activated, I begin my trek through the 10th floor's Griffin Dungeon. I need to get a significant distance away before thinking about letting Ember fly free.
From now on, scanning my surrounding will be tougher than just looking for random high leveled targets. Anything on this floor or above could be a hunter or a monster. I'll have to be extra careful.
After 20 minutes of light jogging, I've come to the base of the first mountain. While moving forward, the layout of this Labyrinth begins to bug the pattern recognition portion of my brain.
A lot of the floors here have similar monsters to the smaller Labyrinth I defeated before. There is a small difference in floor ranking though. The Griffins here are on Floor 10 while they were on Floor 11 before. Other lower-level dungeons were swapped around one the floors before this too.
I guess it's somewhat random, but the strengths of monsters stay pretty consistent no matter what dungeon I fit them in. Griffins are still Griffins.
With a shrug, I make why way into the dense tree line at the base of this mountain. I scan the forest for enemies and trek around the backside to make certain that I'm not being watched.
Ember flies free from my item storage when I'm sure we're not being watched. The moment he comes out of the white twisting spacial magic to spread his wings I activate our telepathic link and deactivate my stealth skill.
"It's time to pick up the pace. Let's get to the 20th floor within the next few hours, I'm itching for a real fight."
With a smirk, I crack my knuckles and look toward the backside of this dungeon. Griffins fly high in the sky, and the artificial sun shines down a yellow-orange light on the mountain range before us.
Ember flaps his wings and replies as I air-step upwards to climb on his back.
"Understood."
We fly off together, blending into the mountainside and soaring high with the Griffins. Ember picks up his speed just like I've asked, we're able to fly through an entire dungeon in under 20 minutes.
It doesn't take long for the two of us to clear the next few dungeons. Floors 10 through 15 are pretty basic layouts, with rather weak monsters. They're all very similar to the exam's Labyrinth. Looking back, I'm much stronger now.
Arriving on the 16th floor I realize we've come across another High Ogre dungeon. This is the one that Rylan and his team were planning to train at tomorrow.
The last 5 floors took us just under 2 hours to clear, but I'm starting to get the feeling a little extra mana is going to be needed for the upcoming floors. We still have 5 more to go, and the base mobs here are already above level 320.
Mana crystal farming begins.
Ember flies me around to every corner of the dungeon so I can get all of my teleportation points sorted. For the next 2 hours, I use Dungeon Walker to slaughter every High Ogre in sight. At roughly 1 kill per minute, I take out 120 High Ogres, totaling me nearly 40k MP in loot, along with a few rings and swords.
Taking my mana usage into account from teleporting and releasing over 100 small attacks, this little side mission has netted me about 25k MP in profit.
Looking into my item storage, I count roughly 75k worth of crystals in total. This should be more than enough for any enemies that cross my path in battles to come.
Ember and I fly off to floor 17.
It's a near replica of The Great Plains dungeon. There are Rhino-like monsters, and even mutants deeper in. I shutter at first, expecting Titans to jump out any second and attack, but after a wide-range enemy detection scan, I don't sense a single one of them.
It seems like that C-Class dungeon in the capital is just an anomaly like Ember said. It's infected by Void Creepers, not a normal occurrence.
We fly to the back of the dungeon to face off with the boss. So far, there hasn't been a single monster here that can't be taken out with one hit from my sword. Unfortunately, this level 371 boss turns out to be the same. A single 500MP charged fire-imbued slash to the neck topples the beast.
I make it to floor 18.
This time around, as I take ember out of my pocket dimension I shiver for a valid reason. Not because I'm scared, but because of the snow that falls all around us. There's a thick white blizzard raging in all directions.
Looking ahead more than 10m or so is near impossible. It reminds me of the Mammoth dungeon I faced before with my team... just much more extreme.
Ember and I both ignite our full bodies into flames. This is the first time I've seen his advanced fire magic in its full glory.
Both of us create immense heat, and at first, I'm hesitant to get too close... The last time I touched advanced fire magic, I had to cut off my own arm to put the flames out.
I open the telepathic link and the flaming Dragon speaks.
"As per the contract you agreed to, our souls are linked. My flames cannot burn you, and your flames will not do harm to me."
With a gulp, I walk forward to reach out and touch the flickering black and red flames with my left hand.
I leave it engulfed in the fire for a few seconds, then bring it back. Letting out a sign of relief I mumble under my breath.
"Nothing happened."
With a grin, I hop on Ember's back and we both increase our Fire Summoning output to melt through the storm. Using enemy detection as we begin to fly toward the back of the dungeon, I find a few slow-moving targets on my radar. They're all between levels 360 and 370.
My curiosity tempts me, but I decide to just wait for the boss, it'll be a better fight anyways.
As we fly higher and higher into the sky, the snow begins to clear up a bit. I can make out an impossibly high mountain off in the distance. It's made of dark black rock, somewhat covered in snow at the base, jutting up to the top of the dungeon out of sight...
Ember speaks up as we approach it.
"It appears the portal is at the top of the mountain."
The flaming black-scaled dragon doubles its velocity and begins gliding upwards with powerful flaps of its wings through the heavy wind and snow.
I grit my teeth and hold on.
Our flames leave a dark red trail of fire residue behind as we begin to tilt upwards. The snow and ice coming down grows thicker and our fire burns hotter.
I activate enemy detection and inspect as we near the top.
[800m]
[Lv. 387]
[Lv. 369]
[Lv. 368]
[Lv. 366]
A small reading pops up to show 4 enemies on my radar. One of them is much more powerful than anything else in the dungeon, and they're still nearly 1km above us.
The thought that these could be hunters crosses my mind, but judging by their levels, It's highly unlikely. There are 3 of them that are the same as the base mobs in this dungeon, it would be much more worth their while to stay down below and continue training.
I've also learned that this is a common pattern for mutants. A group of base-level mobs traveling with a leader. It's the perfect pre-boss showdown.
We continue to rip through the skies. I take out my blades while adding a red and golden hue to my aura. Whatever is up there is going to be ready to fight. So, I am too.
As we near the mountaintop, the shape of its apex comes into view. Impossible to see from below in the heavy snow, but now fully visible as we soar out of the heavy cloud cover in a magnificent ball of flames.
Ember and I look down on a flat mountaintop. It's covered in a layer of snow from past storms, and multiple sharpened pillars of stone randomly pierce through showing their jet-black coloring.
It's silent. The wind has stopped, and the visibility has drastically increased.
My eyes dart across the 200-meter-long, circular plateau-like area. Near the backside, a spinning grey boss room portal waits for us to jump through.
Standing in our way, there are 4 massive Snow Yetis.
A wide grin creeps across my face as I examine the new creatures. They're all roughly 4m tall, with monkey-like frames and thick white fur that almost blends into the snow.
Their leader in the back is over 5m tall, carrying no weapons at all. Their eyes glow red, while their brown ape-like hands and facial features contrast the lighter snowy background.
It spots us.
The mutant leader stomps its feet, letting out a roar and pointing both of its arms straight at us. Low grunting noises sound from its 3 minions. They begin to charge, staying in a firm triangular formation as they approach.
Opening the telepathic link with Ember, I point down to the monsters and speak.
"Stay back, I'm going to have some fun. After this, there's only 1 floor between us, and the 20th."