Chereads / The Cursed Trickster / Chapter 27 - The Kartan Crypts

Chapter 27 - The Kartan Crypts

Leaving through the city gates, Morgana followed the dirt road on the deserted field until the buildings were barely visible.

"This should be far enough. I wonder what mount I should use…" she said to herself before opening her Admin screen and scrolling through the menu.

"Perfect," she remarked as she found what she was looking for.

"Mount: Arcane Board," she commanded, creating a circle of magic in front of her that materialized a panel the size and shape of a surfboard. However, this board had a metallic coat at the bottom that radiated powerful blue energy, allowing it to hover gently in the air.

Morgana jumped on top, wobbling the board a little as she adjusted her balance, and after bending her knees slightly, she set off into the sky quickly, leaving a trail of blue energy behind.

Scouting the field from the air, she noticed the entrance of a crypt that used to be a dungeon in the era before the Red Calamity. But from what she could tell, it had been a long time since anyone had been around.

As she descended toward the crypt, she noticed overgrown roots around the entrance, preventing her entry. However, upon closer inspection, she deduced that those roots were unnatural and that a skill had been used to seal the opening.

'Were they trying to keep people from going in or prevent something from going out?' she pondered while tapping her chin with her finger.

The people of Kartan never sent any guards to look after the crypt. While dungeons near cities usually had some people guarding the entrance, the one near Kartan never had the need for it.

The reason was that in this dungeon, known as the "Kartan Crypts," the monsters wouldn't dare leave the darkness of their hallways as any contact with the sunlight would kill them.

Back when Aegis was a game, the place used to be a famous spot for grinding quick levels since there were rooms where monsters spawned non-stop, allowing the players to fight to their hearts' content.

The crypt had four underground floors, each with stronger enemies.

The first floor had skeletal warriors that ranged between 20-40.

The second floor had skeletal warriors, archers, and mages between levels 30-50.

The third floor had "greater skeletons," a much stronger version of their previous counterparts, between levels 40-60, and could fight with magic and weapons.

On the last floor beneath it all, the Kartan Skeletal King resided, a boss level 80.

Still confused at the fact that the entrance was sealed, Morgana decided that she couldn't waste any more time and burned the roots with her "Curse Fire."

Leaving a hole big enough for her to squeeze through, the trickster put out the black fire that encased the roots and began making her way down the crypt.

A few steps inside, she noticed that she couldn't see anything, prompting her to open her Admin screen.

"Pet: Firefly," she said, producing a tiny mote of light to appear next to her, creating a radiant firefly that produced as much light as a bulb.

With the little insect illuminating the hallways of the dusty crypt, she reached the first floor.

To open the door to the next room, she would have to defeat 100 skeletal warriors. Back in the day, people would simply stay on the first floor, even after opening the door to the next area. That way, they could keep training since the monsters never stopped spawning.

However, if Morgana trained with low-level monsters such as those, she would take even longer to reach level 110.

Entering the room with confidence, the door behind her closed, and the torches around the massive squared hall began flickering, bringing light to the room's surroundings.

Eight different fireplaces were in the room, each producing an intense bright fire where the skeletal warriors appeared, rushing from the embers toward Morgana with weapons in hand.

The trickster calmly avoided their attacks, using only her hands to easily punch the skeletons and shatter them into pieces.

She moved quickly around the hall, killing the skeletons as soon as they materialized on the fireplace, not even allowing them to leave from their spawn point.

'We used to call this spawn camping…' she thought with an evil grin on her face as she shattered a skeleton into hundreds of pieces with one kick.

It took her around thirty minutes to clear, but after she had managed to get the kill count required, the door to the next floor opened for her.

Quickly making her way down the dark hall and a set of stairs, she reached another room that looked almost exactly like the previous one. However, this room had another trim level right above where the skeletal mages would spawn and shoot magic spells from above.

Knowing this, Morgana jumped to the room's second level and waited for the skeletons to start materializing in the sixteen fireplaces surrounding the area.

When the waves of monsters began appearing, she ran around the room for a few minutes, waiting for all of the skeletons that could possibly appear to come into the room.

She kept running without killing a single monster, avoiding all of the magical projectiles that were shot at her from the skeletal mages and deflecting some of the arrows.

After a few minutes, she noticed that the number of skeletons was too much for her to move freely around, making her do a somersault jump as she stared down into the room full of skeletons and crashed down in a loud stomp that raised the tiles around her and sent away any monster close to her.

Standing in the center of the room and surrounded by hundreds of skeletons, she muttered, "Black Ice," creating a giant explosion of dark ice that encased every single skeleton in the room.

"Ice Shatter," she continued, making all of the frozen skeletons burst into an icy explosion, leaving the room clean of any monster.

Morgana sighed. "AoE farming will always be the fastest method, in-game and in real life…" she muttered.

"AoE" was the acronym for "Area of Effect." Any ability that could damage more than a single target was considered an AoE ability.

In this case, "AoE farming" referred to her method of waiting for the room to fill up with monsters and killing them all simultaneously, generating tons of experience in a short time.

With the second room clear, the door to the next room opened, and Morgana kept making her way down before the skeletons respawned.