Cerise avoided all the pitfalls she knew about.
She deployed the spy camera given by Zion. The feedback of the mana circle was greater than she expected. She was disoriented for a good minute. As long as she closes her eyes and concentrates, she can completely see the picture.
She put one on Mary, the silversword orientation employee, another on Peter, the guy who harassed her. Yet another on the general manager Weiss, as she waited for her turn during the orientation.
Just like before, they have told her all the F-rank dungeons are full till the end of the day
She has a choice either to enter the E-rank dungeon, or wait for another month, after which, they still can not guarantee she enters the dungeon. Last time, she waited a month. For the entire month, enduring through peters harassment, Weiss's coercion, and Mary's disdain. She hoped her mother would come back from the quest to save her. However, after a week, all the tower entrances closed, locking in the players forever.
Since there is no way her mother would get back to save her, the greedy Wilcox family has done their utmost to coerce her into signing a slave contract with Silversword, under their family's purview.
Then, at the end of the month, she still died.
This time around, she made preparations. She has a powerful bomb, courtesy of Zion. She has more than one weapon, and plenty of traps.
" I will enter the E-rank dungeon. " Cerise made a decision.
She would rather get this over today than later.
Even so, before entering the dungeon, she telepathically told Zion where she was going. Just in case …
When she entered the dungeon, the first thought in her head was this is big.
This is far too big compared to the F-rank dungeon, despite being the lowest grade of the E-rank dungeon. She heard in dungeons, there will be a qualitative leap between certain ranks, such as F to E and D to C, B to A, but … This is beyond her expectation.
She did not walk forward. Instead, she moved sideways, finding the dungeon wall.
This is what she realized when she entered the dungeon for the first time. As long as she sticks to the wall, the monster ignores her. She tried moving by teleport. As long as she sticks to the wall, she can instantly teleport to another location on the wall. Cerise closed her eyes and thought about the fruit orchard, a C-rank dungeon's picture. Next moment, she was under an apple tree in the fruit orchard.
Cerise picked a few, placed them in her item box.
Now that she is sure she still has the ability, time to go back and finish clearing the dungeon.
The E-24 she entered was circular. She teleported to the quarter point from the dungeon's entrance. The dungeon is dimly lit, thus she could not see the monster.
She took out the flood light, and placed it on the ground, tilting it to the center.
Then she saw the appearance of the creature in the center.
It is indeed a bicorn.
But … it was not a sheep as expected, but a lizard. As she watched, the luminosity of the light increased, then, the flood light ran out of the juice in all but a second.
Then, the creature in the center glowed, like it had a fire lit inside.
It has a flat rounded face, glowing fire eyes with the square slit. The scales are large like tiles, with fire light running in between them like a river of fireflies. There is a large horn like a rhino on its snout. Right behind the gigantic horn is a smaller horn, which grew out of a small wart. The front horn looked like it could bash a shield into pieces. The second horn is delicate like a wand. The wart-like thing horn grows in is a muscle that moves like an eyeball. The front horn is used for physical attacks, while the second horn is used for the magical attacks.
This is a monster that only appears in upper C rank dungeons.
' They are really cutting no corners in trying to kill me… If not for my mother's foresight, I would be dead now ! ' she mused.
She opened her phone and snapped a picture of the beast. The phone connections do not work inside the dungeon. MonsterPedia is a standalone app which takes a photo, analyzes it using big data.
[ Bicorn - Dragon type ]
[ Estimated element : Fire , Unknown ]
[ estimated HP : 10000 ]
[ Suggested fighting methods: If you have a vampire type weapon, go for it, otherwise, run for your life. Bicorns defense is one level higher than their monster rank, Dragon's offense is one level higher than their rank. To meet a creature that is both, you must be the very epitome of unlucky ! ]
[ Best party combination : mage ( +1 ) , shield warrior ( +1 tower preferred ) , 3 healers, 12 archers. ]
[ (+ N ) indicates the awakener rank should be 'N' levels higher than monster ]
' Damn ! I can't even get out of this dungeon, ' Cerise cursed. Orientation entrants use a special badge that locks them inside the dungeon till they clear it. She has no choice but to kill the creature.
She retrieved an apple, stuck the coffee sugar stick inside the apple, then rolled it gently towards the creature.
The monster sniffed the air, clumsily moved to the apple, lapped it up. Then, its eyes swirled like a drunk man's and it fainted right in the middle of the field.
' Ah ! it can't see very well. ' she realized.
Sugar makes all monsters drunk, Zion told her in the morning as he bought a pocket of rock sugar stirrers for her. Now, she stuck them in the apple by the pointy end, and rolled them near the dragon's mouth. Even if it wakes, it will eat one more apple, and die drunk.
She neared the animal, took many more pictures for the monsterpedia. It is a free app. All they ask is for the hunters to take as many pictures as they could inside the dungeon, then let them upload during the time hunters sleep and wifi is on.
New message popped up on the monster pedia with the submission of the pictures.
[ Tip : If the monster is sleeping, then apply gentle cold to the nape of the neck to put it in coma. ]
[ Tip : Cut between sixth and seventh scale to sever the spine, to make it unable to move. ]
[ Tip : Inject a blood coagulant for the blood of this animal coagulates extremely fast, also, it may have regeneration feature. ]
Despite ice magic being useful, Cerise knew not to use dragon marks against a dragon. Dragons are sensitive to mana of their own type. If she casts magic using dragon mark, the beast will wake up immediately.
So, the best chance is to silver the spine, then install bombs around the beast to blast it off.
The tail of the animal twitched.
Cerise teleported away in a flash like a startled deer.
The dragon sniffed apples and candy, eating all of them in a single breath.
Then, it once more fell down, unable to control it's expression. Only, it fell on its back, making Cerise unable to reach its spine. Cerise cursed the animal. This damned beast is too hard to kill even it's sleep.
At this time, a light bulb went off in Cerise's head.
She still has the water bottle. It's a pull on type bottle with plenty of water in it. She drank some water, threw away the rest. Then, she filled the bottle with water containing blood worms. There were only two, but two are enough.
Cerise made a small incision on the tail of the monster, then placed the bottle on the wound, to let the blood worms get into the wound.
Blood worms by themselves do not occur in nature. They are harmless, unless and until you have a wound that is in direct contact with the medium they live in.
As soon as the blood touched the water, the worms were like there's a sales frenzy. They ran into the dragon's blood. Blood worms reproduce when they have become full. However, this is a limited cycle. They will become sterile after a certain number of divisions. Then, they can only become full and stay in that state. In a few seconds, the bottle started filling up with bloodworms as thick as a finger, and all full of dragon's blood. Cerise kept storing worms away, but they were proliferating inside the dragon's body.
She probably sat beside the dragon, storing away blood for hours. Then, she ran out of blood worms.
Fortunately, the dragon has long since fallen into a coma. At this point, Cerise did not know how precious this blood was.
The only thing she was sure of was that she could not kill this dragon with any of the weapons she carried. She has to use all the weapons she has at the same time to kill the dragon.
Thus, she set up cylinders all around the dragon. She tied them with a single rope, adjusting their wick on top of the dragon. She turned on the timed lighter. It's only then she vanished from the dungeon.
She gave it complete five minutes before returning to the dungeon.
The dragon carcass lay in the center, with a single glowing orb where the heart should be.
Cerise shielded herself with ice, reaching out to touch the orb.
With a bang, the fire exploded towards her.