I don't own solo leveling or Naruto
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Traversing through the long whinny tunnels of the dungeon Sasuke couldn't help but think about how cold it was. With faint wisps of fog hanging in the air penetrating the thin barriers of his school uniform.
Releasing a breath, he was able to perceive the air retreating from his lungs condescending into fog. If there weren't any of the luminous stones scattered randomly across the walls he would honestly doubt being able to see anything in here, at least without his sharingan.
'Speaking of which...'
As he walked onward, he started lightly dragging his hand across the wall noting how unnatural the carvings along the walls were. Something that could only be performed with some kind of drill. He theorised that whatever made these unnatural carvings was the one that formed the tunnels that he currently trekked. It wasn't too far-fetched, especially considering the serpent he'd taken down not too long ago.
'It's safe to say that I'll hear it coming when it does close in on my location or maybe I'll encounter it in a space exceeding the volume of these tunnels. A space big enough to contain it,' Sasuke thought.
However, he could be wrong and all these carvings were created by hundreds of smaller creatures working in tandem with one another, either way he was going to get a challenge and that's all he was here for.
Nothing much happened after all that internal speculation and he walked on until he encountered a divergence in the tunnel. One leading left and the other to the right.
"A fork in the road, huh? It certainly makes things more interesting," he smirked, hand on his chin trying to decide which direction he would be best off going down.
He didn't have to think long though because he was able to pick up a familiar scent on the tip of his nose, the smell of something distinctly metallic when exposed to the air.
Blood.
'Hmm, it's towards the right," turning his head in that direction, he immediately took notice of the difference in lighting to what he had grown used to in these tunnels. It was darker, considerably so.
Rushing through several hand signs, sparks flew off from his palm in the form of Chidori and he rammed the jutsu into the wall, creating rubble that ran along the floor.
"That's good enough. This way I won't get lost," he said, activating his sharingan to burn the image in his mind, a nice perk of his visual prowess. Photographic memory.
After that, he rushed to discover the source of the blood and was, shortly, greeted to the sight of torn-up fur limbs, and crimson-red blood spilled all over the show. 'These are dungeon jackals judging by their fur…' he inspected the corpse of a jackal that was still intact, 'Judging by the blood stains this massacre occurred recently, probably two hours ago. Which means that whatever monster or monsters did this are still around in this area somewhere.'
He looked up when the ear-piercing screeching of bats penetrated his ears. With the minimal lighting of the tunnel, it would be very difficult for even an experienced hunter to track their movements, but this wasn't an issue for Sasuke and his Sharingan. The bats flew and swarmed around the Uchiha, using the darkness and their superior numbers to attempt to overwhelm the young Uchiha and sink their teeth and talons into his flesh.
Most likely a similar tactic they employed against the dungeon jackals. He would be equal to it though and without the need for hand signs.
[Chidori Stream]
Streams of high-frequency alternating current burst from his body, paralysing every bat within his range causing them to drop to the ground like flies. "Tch, pesky little things," he murmured in disgust, seeing the red blood leaking out of their orifices curtsy of his new lightning style jutsu.
He had honestly come up with it on the fly against Choi the first time, but after seeing how successful it was against him he figured it would be a good idea to expand upon it. Needing to activate Chidori was a prerequisite for using Chidori stream but after running his body through hell for the past month he was able to perform this technique without the aid of hand signs.
He believes the process would have been less strenuous with an actual teacher, but he'd be able to get by for now.
Several growls gained his attention, when he saw more dungeon jackals hoped in from the shadows.
"Come to avenge your fallen brethren, eh? I know the feeling."
The sinister wheels of his copy wheel eyes spun, emitting a superior red glow in the eyes of his adversaries.
They launched at each other with Sasuke closing the distance much quicker and kicking one into a wall. He rotated on his standing foot and launched a spinning heel kick on the cranium of another jackal.
Seeing the jackal in front of him bare its fangs and try to take a bite of his neck, but he flashed out of sight at the last second. Appearing behind it, bringing his leg down in a devastating axe kick that cracked its spine in half.
"Is that it? I know there's more of you!" he said, the hunger for combat reverberating from the pit of his stomach.
In response to this desire more bloodthirsty jackals lurched from the shadows.
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Gang Tae Shik walked through the front gates of the school, responding to the call about a gate appearing right on the school's grounds.
"Sheesh, this place cleared out pretty quickly and here I was hoping to see at least a few panicked faces," the purple haired agent commented, his gait nonchalant moving past the black and yellow tape that had been hastily set up by the local police.
Sporting the pacing woman ahead, he finally understood why things settled down so quickly.
"Oh, it's you, no wonder this place cleared out so quickly," he said with a note of familiarity with the woman. She ceased her worried steps to acknowledge him, "Do I know you from somewhere?" she asked flatly, catching on to his familiar tone with her.
"Nah, probably not, but I do know you," he responded with a low chuckle. She then fully examined his person, "You're from the monitoring division?" she questioned, but internally assured of her assessment of his affiliation.
"Right on the money there. So, what's got the assistant of the 'Ultimate Soldier' so worried, huh?" he asked, being sure to draw out Choi Jong-In's moniker as condescendingly as possible.
Kil Nari didn't take too kindly to his disrespect, "Watch your tongue, agent. Do you have any idea who you are talking about?"
"You do know that the dungeon isn't going to break anytime soon? That usually takes a week or so. Unless, it's something else that's got you awry…" he easily shifted the topic of discussion back to her previous worried disposition.
"If you must know, the charge under my care is trapped in this very dungeon before us and I can't seem to be getting a hold of a certain someone," she muttered bitterly.
Tae Shik raised a brow, "Trapped?" He found that hard to believe. Someone didn't just get trapped in a dungeon unless they walked in there willingly, it's not like the monsters could just stretch their arms out grab some unsuspecting victim at any moment, not until the dungeon breaks at least.
"Are they now?" he drawled, not buying her story one bit and now he was a little suspicious as to why she would lie about something like that.
He then pulled out a thick black box from the pouch on his side. The device had a purple magic crystal not dissimilar to the crystal ball used in magic evaluations.
"A magic detector!" Kil Nari perked up, 'To think he would have such a tool on hand. He must be a high-ranking member of the Monitoring division!' she thought, knowing that just from a glance that the device in his hands was the latest in magic detection hardware. Magic Tech like that was difficult to get a hold of even for the Hunters Guild, it seemed to be only readily available for high level government officials and Association members.
"Maa, don't drool too much. Your guild won't be getting hands on one of these for at least another couple of months," he teased once more, firing up the portable magic sensor.
'C-rank. Not too bad, I could probably get away with entering the dungeon without a team and saving her charge. Maybe even get a few essence stones!' he thought to himself. He sent through the results of the magic detector off to headquarters so that they could scramble up a team to take care of it.
He motioned to walk into the portal, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder, "What?" he questioned, his tone icy for the first time.
"Where are you going? You can't seriously tell me that you are entering a dungeon without a team to back you up? Does this not go against regulations standards that monitoring agents are supposed to follow," Kil Nari hastily chided his brashness, in her eyes.
"Don't you have a charge in there? I imagine that they're a student here and probably don't know what they've gotten themselves into, curiosity killed the cat as they say. They might be getting ripped limb from limb right now and here you are twiddling your thumbs waiting for backup. Although, I don't really blame you, being weak really is such an unfortunate fate."
Nari stepped back a little at the intense aura emanating from the man and she was just left stumbling over her words for a moment.
"You might be the assistant of some hotshot S-rank hunter, but when it comes down to it. You really can't do anything, can you?" he dismissed her coldly, leaving her stunned to silence.
Moving through the portal without further impediments, he pressed on ready to fulfil his insatiable lust for combat.
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Sasuke released a calming breath, as he finished laying waste to every jackal that had come to face, even some bats had joined the fun.
Rolling up his ripped sleeves and discarding the torn up blazer over his body, he couldn't help but think about how much of a good warm up that was. He even had the opportunity to try out the higher output of Chidori stream, it seemed his max range was a 1.5 m radius.
'Despite that, this was way too troublesome without any weapons. I'd rather avoid tiring myself out with multiple jutsu if I could just slice through them with some kind of weapon instead,' he surmised that some kind of weapons mastery would do him favours in the long run, allowing him to maintain his stamina during longer fights.
A blinding gleam cast itself on the floor, shining through even whilst embedded in the head of a jackal corpse. An essence stone.
He bent down and plucked from the skull, examining it,'I've heard about these from my lessons with Nari. Apparently, these are worth a lot of money, depending on the rank, and size of it. Maybe I could collect these and use the money to buy a weapon,' he internally smiled at the idea. Opportunities just kept on presenting themselves to him.
Getting up and cracking his neck he pressed on even further down the dark tunnel, with the aim of collecting the boss monster's essence stone or stones.
Chakra pumping through his veins he sped ahead using the body flicker technique, it had gotten darker and darker the further and further he ran. Sharingan blazing, it didn't matter how much darker it got, he would be able to see through the darkness and achieve his goal.
It was then at that moment that his instincts screamed at him to move to the side as a shadowy figure came barreling down on his person. At such short notice, all he was able to do was block the incoming blow and then feel himself careen several metres away into a wall.
'Ugh, what just hit me? It feels big…' he widened his eyes staring up at the massive ball of mana before him. 'It must have concealed its presence until the last minute,' he concluded as to why he was caught off guard so badly. His sharingan wasn't able to see in the dark in the conventional sense once it got too dark, but rather he was able to perceive chakra and the mana around him in crystal clear colours.
The colours the sharingan assigned to him weren't important and were only in relation to the knowledge he had at that moment. He climbed out the crater his body made with the impact on the wall, wincing in pain at the cuts that formed on his forearm from blocking the monster's initial strike.
He dived out the way when the red mass of mana struck at him again. He flipped back to avoid another swipe at him and then started leaning side to side to evade the monster's barrage of attacks.
Activating the curse mark and letting the black markings spread partially over his face. With power coursing through his veins he easily stopped the monster's considerable mass with a hand. Gripping the rough texture of its skin and flipping it over his shoulder, slamming it on its back.
It started to flail around wildly as if throwing a temper tantrum. Rocks and debris immediately began beaming down towards Sasuke and the beast aiming to crush the two, but they were more of a threat to the Uchiha than the behemoth that caused the shower of boulders.
'It's going to bring down the whole tunnel if this doesn't stop! And when it's this dark I can only make out shapes!' he weaved a couple of hand signs before a burst of flames erupted from his mouth.
[Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu]
The bright ball of fiery death completely shattered the house sized chunk of earth falling towards him. In the process of fragmenting the rock with his fire style, multiple luminous crystals emerged that were embedded deeply within the boulder, lighting up the cave in seconds with their light.
"That's better," he smiled at his fortune. With the lighting significantly increased he was able to actually make out he had been up against this entire time as continued to filial.
The monster was some kind of brown mole and rat hybrid with a drill-like face and long beefy arms with sharp claws perfect for rendering flesh into swiss cheese, or digging through the earth.
'This must be one of the creatures responsible for the tunnels. There has to be at least three more because this couldn't have performed such a feat by itself,' he deduced with certainty. This dungeon was far from being cleared.
"I think it's time for you to quiet down!" he stated profoundly, jumping through the air from falling rock to falling rock and then making a stance on the ceiling. Several hand signs later a concentrated ball of electrical energy sat in the palm of his hands. Pumping chakra through his legs he shoots forward, beaming down towards his target faster than lightning itself with only the sound of birds accompanying his dash.
[Chidori]
The mole rat raised one of its beefy arms in defence. A futile effort as it was run through like a hot knife through butter and then Sasuke plunged the Chidori right into the monster's chest, ending the fight.
Silence enveloped his surroundings as he plucked his arm out the monster's chest and let the curse mark flow back to its sealed state. Waving away the blood from his arm, he sat down on the monster's belly to catch his breath.
He didn't get some rest until a sarcastic, slow clapping was heard, turning his head to the source of the noise and he was greeted to the sight of purple haired monitoring agent, Gang Tae Shik.
"Maa, kids these days! They sure are getting rowdy."
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AN: Also posting on Fanfiction. Net