"So what are the dangers here?" Hector posed the question to their information gatherer.
"...The rest stayed below because that's where their climb ended. Those that attempted to explore this floor didn't want to share either. Not without some kind of payment. All I know is the cold is quite an issue for most ill-equipped parties, it's hard to get food and there is some kind of humanoid monster." Mark pulled at his armour's collar to let cool air in and his body heat to escape.
They could all see the steam that was emitted from Mark but he didn't look uncomfortable. None of them were nosy enough to ask what he was doing either.
"It's been a couple of years, there should be many parties that have cleared Ordina already right? Wouldn't the Quest Hall's information for Ordina's floors be updated?" Ebony asked what he was curious about for a while.
"...It hasn't been cleared. Even if it has, not everyone is nice enough to share valuable information that they can benefit from." Mark was almost beyond surprised at how little Ebony knew before just deciding to dive into a dungeon.
"Why? Isn't Ordina just a Common ranked dungeon? Albeit one that is on the cusp of being considered Uncommon ranked." Ebony just couldn't understand.
Any average adult in the Empire is Master Classed, above level 100. Seeing Tracy's party it was obvious they were more than capable of taking down weakened monsters that were of a higher level.
"That's exactly why. Those high level parties from deeper into the central Empire couldn't be bothered coming here when they have better and more suitable dungeons to clear." Mark explained.
"Ordina is also young and there's not much treasure to be discovered. The average combat standards of the people in this region is lower and they are not able to clear a dungeon with a horrible environmental disadvantage with so many monsters above level 200." Hector commented.
"The Quest Hall cannot just trust some random party's information and only published information that certified parties under the Empire obtained. Even such information shouldn't be fully trusted since dungeons can be fickle." Mallory added.
"And there's a lack of these certified parties?" Ebony guessed.
"Haha…yup!" Hector awkwardly laughed.
Throughout the conversation, they were each looking around and surveying their surroundings.
None of them could spot any monster as of yet. Without snow, mist or fog there was nothing clouding their vision either.
They did not have directions from here on out and had to slowly explore the unknown themselves.
"We're not going to fly through, you guys need all the strength and energy you have for every single fight don't you? Me too, my stamina expenditure will increase further as the fights get tougher." Mark doubted Ebony's seemingly endless stamina and he was right to do so.
The previous few battles already showed Mark their limits. Ebony's newfound power does not allow him to take on continuous or long-drawn battles. It was good enough to tell them that his stamina expenditure will be increased and not to share the details of his abilities.
"Seconded." Mallory could deal with less mental exertion from travelling. She needed the mental strength to focus on her barriers.
"Mmm." Ebony agreed. He already got heavily injured on the previous floor. There was no disagreement from Hector or Scarlet either.
They followed Mark's instinct or experience and went south. Apparently, a saying his father told him. "If you keep going south, sooner or later things won't go further south for you."
That was so silly a saying that none of them could come up with a reason not to follow it. It wasn't like they had any clues to follow anyway.
Their 'slow' pace was faster than an unawakened human's fastest running speed. Ebony did the smarter thing and reduced the strength of gravity on all of them so that it was easier on their bodies. Hence, reducing their stamina consumption and increasing their speed.
They were feeling fine due to the heat Mark emitted and the reduced load on their shoulders helped as well but Mallory, Hector and Mark had almost slipped a few times because of the ice under their feet melting just a little when they stood close to Mark.
Mark stopped to fiddle with his boots and inscription pens while Ebony added ice studs and spikes to Hector's and Mallory's boots to increase traction for them. They shouldn't melt so easily since he had plenty of mana to fully compress it for them. Scarlet's boots were made by Kong Jing, clearly built different.
Ebony was just bringing his attention to Icicle. It wasn't absorbing the ice mana in the surroundings.
'Does it not like the ice mana here or is it able to tell that the ice mana is not 100% natural?' Ebony wondered. His greatsword absorbs his ice mana without issue. Maybe it could tell that there was foreign essence in the ice mana here. Then again, it was made from a material that Ordina produced it might not be 'foreign' to it
He had no way to draw any conclusions and didn't bother continuing to ponder on the hows and whys.
Probably because of how slow they were going but the 19th floor felt much larger.
3 hours of boring walk in before Ebony had to call for them to stop. The others didn't even have to ask because they could see something coming right for them. Whatever it was, it was fast. All of them prepared the spells and skills they needed except Mark who was already as ready as he could be.
Three small figures gradually came into sight as something familiar. They looked similar to the kobolds and high kobolds on the first few floors of Ordina. They were about as large as a muscular teenage human with bluish-white skin. Their necks were protected by a thick coat of fur.
"Those ellers…" Hector who was slower on the uptake could not help but curse.
One of the shirtless blue-skinned kobolds wore gauntlets. Another had twin longswords. The last had a massive greatsword.
"Seems like we were memorable enough for Ordina to take inspiration from us." Ebony was excited to see what these new kobolds had to offer.
"Just a copy." Scarlet burst forth to meet the cocky kobold with twin blades.
Hector and Ebony didn't lag behind as they used their own enhancements to push forth. Mark and Mallory didn't just stand there. Mark had his spear ready and if Ebony or Hector was around they would be able to tell that Mallory was changing her barrier's forms.
Mallory gave up on attempting to support Scarlet. Her mind and magic were too slow to even catch sight of Scarlet's movements at times, trying to defend with awkwardly placed barriers would make things worse. Ebony had pretty tough defences and in terms of movement almost as fast as Scarlet. His attacks were much slower in comparison. Hector was the more reckless and careless one. As for Mark, he can take care of himself.
There were no tricks. Ebony and the greatsword-wielding [Prime Verglas Kobold Lvl ???] clashed. It overpowered him at maximum strength and pushed him back. His Chaotic Repulsive Membrane didn't do much as the kobold pushed right through. The metal greatsword it wielded was slowly getting sliced into by his Sonic Overlay and it didn't go unnoticed.
It pulled back and directly spit on the area where their weapons met without looking away from Ebony's gaze. The cut on its greatsword froze and it was now spiky. The tiny amount of Ebony's flames that caught on was extinguished with its spit.
'That footwork… seems similar to Hector's short bursts of speed. How far did they manage to copy our abilities?'
Icicle didn't even sustain a scratch but Ebony's arms were numb from the impact. He took the chance to take a stab when it retreated but his blade was easily slashed down towards the ground. Off balance, he had no choice but to have his Layered Ice Carapace to protect himself from the incoming follow up.
It didn't even take another few exchanges for him to find out that his improving but flawed swordsmanship didn't allow him to reach the kobold. That wasn't even very surprising to him since Ordina could have copied or improved its knowledge on swordsmanship by observing or consuming other dungeon divers.
The surprising thing was the heat coming from its body. The Prime Verglas Kobold had grabbed its sword's blade with its hand and ran it down, letting blood from its palms and fingers stain the blade. The steam rising from it and the fact that Ebony's flames had a hard time catching on due to the Kobold's wariness and the hot blood.
Was this also from copying others' fire enhancement magic or a natural trait of these kobolds?
It never stuck close to Ebony for long, reducing the chances of his flames sticking on. The intense burst of speed was used for an explosive advance before retreating immediately. If it wasn't for Ebony's Layered Ice Carapace, he might have been forced to stay put where he was since the Kobold was clearly trying to stop him from moving from where they were.
The other two were going all over the place during their exchange, splitting the party up.
Mark stayed close enough to Ebony to offer support should Ebony call upon him. Mallory followed after her cousin. They didn't bother trying to chase Scarlet.
'Ordina's elites… clearly the same monster but each has their unique set of abilities and a little intelligence. Ebony's in a pinch. I thought it was trying to tie him down so that he couldn't help Hector or Scarlet but…it's actually trying to run him dry. No matter how weakened they currently are, the sheer difference in stats of 90 levels is too much. His enhancement magic is insane but it obviously came with insane mana costs.' Mark analysed. The grip on his spear tightened.
Ebony dished out an Ice Sword to buy him an opportunity to get a good hit in. It didn't fall for it and kicked the slower attack away due to his pathetically low Intelligence. It easily blocked the slash that came from its left but it didn't notice the disappearance of two of the Layered Ice Carapaces floating near Ebony.
Ebony, who wasn't thinking, pulled Sonic Overlay down to his arms, let his left hand go and slapped Icicle's body. It did not work as well as he would have liked but getting a loud grunt that wiped the saliva-filled grin off the Prime Verglas Kobold's face was good enough. He was pretty sure its arm was slowly getting numb from their exchange as well.
He might have to work on experimenting with whether he should manipulate the frequencies of two bodies to be the same or different for a stronger effect. In this case, his left hand and greatsword.
It was very resistant against the cold but the high-frequency impact when it crossed blow with Ebony was getting to it. Hector had complained about it many times while Scarlet said that she was no longer affected since her twin longswords could now fully absorb all the shock from Ebony's Sonic Overlay. It must have been Kong Jing's handiwork.
The bright fires and heat from a distance away already died down. Scarlet was done with her battle.
The spread out scales on the ground shot towards the target and quickly encapsulated it. A few might be a mere nuisance but it couldn't knock all the scales when there was more than enough to completely cover him. Ebony didn't bother making it a perfect orb and just stuck them onto the Kobold like adding scale armour to it.
Ebony toned Frostblaze Augmentation back down so that he didn't burn any more mana than necessary. Piling up all the scales and Layered Ice Carapaces he had since they weren't using them as transport anymore. He had to combust the inner layers quickly as the Kobold had no issue swiping the scales off its body with its strength.
It was too early for him to slacken his offence as the Kobold took a deep breath before being fully encased. It hugged itself before flexing out both its arms and legs and giving a reverberating roar. The scales which were burning one side were sent flying as they threatened to break from the outburst. It merely bought the Kobold a fraction of a second as more scales came to swallow it up.
'Sound magic too?' Ebony could feel the intense vibrations of mana sent out from the Kobold's roar. It was directed to shatter his shields but they were too tough for the roar to break. He protected his ears and body by stabilising the mana in his body.
Mark could only cover his ears with his hands but he wasn't the target anyway so he wasn't really affected.
In the end, its resistance to cold was only so low. The flames caught on and it wasn't able to pat or spit on them to extinguish them. The flames dug deeper under its skin with Ebony's control. In minutes, only an ice block remained and he got his ninth increase of Natural Potential as the Prime Verglas Kobold was level 190. A nice coincidence.
'I'll need to optimise how to take them down. It took more than half of all my current shield's mana to take one down.'
Ebony was also aware that he was down to a quarter of his mana pool from Frostblaze Augmentation. He didn't really worry about mana to cast shields because he had plenty of ice mana stocked up in his robe but the fact that he took so long was worrisome since mana in his robe couldn't go back into his body to cast Frostblaze Augmentation.
He would drag them down if there was a group of these Kobolds. How the tables have turned, numbers used to be ineffective against him.
Both Hector and Scarlet also got their share of Natural Potential since 3 were the same level.
Discussing the strengths and weaknesses of their new enemies as they continued their slow walk.
"They are hot blooded, I don't sense fire mana in them. Technique is barely decent." Scarlet said. She finished up fast enough that she couldn't learn much about them.
'So she must have been looking down on my ability with the sword so much the entire time.' Ebony was just a little down heartened despite his self-awareness.
"Although they can't use enhancement magic their base physical stats are much higher than ours. Not mine but yeah, they're strong." Hector cockily added.
"They have a similar footwork to yours and can use sound magic, possibly just their roar." Ebony didn't bother mentioning their cold resistance since it would only affect him.
"Oh and their skin is elling hard. I cracked its arm almost halfway through and it recovered by spitting on the wound." Hector recalled. He had difficulty injuring the Prime Verglas Kobold even in his quadra-enhanced state.
"You guys have been here right after Ordina was born right?" Mark asked.
"Yup. I know what you're thinking. It used us as models. Ordina had plenty of data since we killed and fought thousands of monsters here."
"Anti-Ebony." Scarlet commented.
"...I do have some trouble with them." Ebony admitted.
The other 2 didn't mention the Kobold's usage of ice magic because they didn't think it was anything worth noting compared to his. Whether it was attempting to freeze Scarlet's swords with something similar to Ice Injection or doing the same to Hector's fists, the attempts were quite cute compared to his dumping of ice mana. Now that he used those cold flames of his, it was even worse as the cold hurt.
Night fell.
The cold got harsher and more penetrating as winds from who knows where suddenly started up. Deciding to hole up in their barrier when it got too dark. Without much foliage they just camped wherever they stopped. Mark pulled Ebony to scout the surroundings with him. They didn't find much and fortunately Ebony was together with Mark or he wouldn't have been able to find his way back to their camp.
Piping hot mushroom soup was served for dinner to warm up their bellies. The winds were blocked out but the piercing cold wasn't.
Ebony drew the heating rune that he used to keep himself alive on the icy floor. It provided Mallory and Hector they warmth that they needed to get through the night. Mark seemed completely unbothered by the cold, he was no longer steaming hot but the icy chair that Ebony conjured for them during dinner clearly melted by a little.
❅❅❅
Mark was dumbfounded that the unknown rune worked and heat was produced from it.
"How does this work on ice? I don't recognise this language but it seems familiar at the same time." It was not a complicated rune. Mark already started copying it down in his notebook after asking for Ebony's permission.
Since it was merely a heating rune, Ebony didn't see why not. Mark knew many other runic inscriptions that could do the same thing but it was the first time he saw a fire based rune work when ice was the material. He could attempt to copy the effects as long as he added a mana to fire mana conversation runic symbol in the runic circle or just have a fire mana ore as the power source but the effects would be greatly weakened and the ice would just melt off.
Mark experimented through the night. Copying the runic circle was the first step. Then he tried to use his inscription pen and draw the same runic circle up on a piece of paper like Ebony. Other than the thickness of the lines he had to control the density of mana of every stroke or portion of the stroke too.
It didn't work well at first, even with all his inscription and runic skills. He didn't panic. Failure was his old-time friend.