'The second floor?' Staring at the message in front of her eyes, Aurora felt a little intrigued. The system did say that Aurus was the boss of the dungeon's first floor. It was just that she didn't realize that she could move to the second floor as soon as she defeated him.
'Well, I suppose it makes sense.' Shaking her head lightly, Aurora walked towards the corpse of the large wolf and picked up her spoils of war.
'A crystal and most probably an ice item. Truly, this place is a godsend.' She chuckled, crushing the four-sided crystal in her paw.
After she had absorbed all of the crystal's energy, Aurora looked down at her other paw that held a simple, silver earring with a saphire embedded in it. With a single thought, the earring disappeared, appearing back on her left ear.
[Equipment:
...
- Necklace: Poison Fang Necklace
- Earring 1: Frozen Saphire Earring
...
...
- Ring 1: Ring of Iron Defense
- Ring 2: Stone Breaker Ring
...
[Total stat boost:
- Health: 10
- Intelligence: 40
- Mana: 20
- Strength: 20
- Agility: 15
- Defense: 15
[Total affinity boost:
- Earth: Slight increase
- Poison: Slight increase
- Ice: Average increase
'Perfect, just perfect! It increases both intelligence and mana by 20 points! Not to mention the increase in ice affinity.' Aurora grinned excitedly, as the earring was basically all she could ever ask for. It increased both of her main stats as well as her main affinity.
'With this thing, the power of my ice spells just shot up once again. Actually, is there even anything that could be a threat to me in the first rank by this point?' She truly began to wonder, but those thoughts made her quickly shake her head.
She couldn't afford to get overconfident now. Only her downfall would await her if she were to do so. So even if it was difficult, she had to rein in her feelings and thoughts, for now at least. After all, the last she wanted was to die due to her own arrogance.
'Let's move forward; there's no reason to stay here any longer.' Seeing that Rejoke also just arrived next to her, Aurora put those thoughts aside and looked at the blue portal that opened up in place of Aurus's corpse.
'Huh? His body disappeared? That's probably why Rejoke came here; he must have felt the blue wolf's presence disappear completely.' She reasoned, stepping towards the portal without any hesitation.
There was no need to be too cautious or hesitant; after all, she knew where this portal led to.
Stepping into the swirling vortex of mana, Aurora soon appeared in a completely different place. And when I say 'completely different', I truly mean it.
Unlike the previous barren wasteland of ice and snow, this place truly held true to the name of the Tomb of the Frozen Hell. This looked just like what humans often imagined hell to look like.
The sky here was completely red, and the ground was devoid of any grass at all, made pure out of some graish rock that took on red tints at some spots.
Lava was streaming from almost any place it could, spreading out into the hellscape. Various strange monsters roamed this place, either by foot or through the air. Heck, some were even swimming in the lava.
'Well, that's certainly a change.' Honestly, Aurora wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry about her current situation.
'Whatever, it's not like this... 'minor' inconvenience will stop me. It will just be a pain to get around this place, and the monsters here will probably be resistant to all of my attacks; it's fine.' That's also called coping, Aurora.
'Speaking of attacks, how did I forget about this?' Thinking about fighting the monsters here, Aurora finally remembered that she forgot to check the info about her new skill.
[Slash]
- Level: 1
- Grade: Advanced
- Skill type: Active
- Attribute type: Universal
– An advanced version of a basic physical attack. Wields incredible cutting power.
[On activation:
- Consumes 1 MP to enhance the power behind any cutting or slashing attack the user uses.
- Works with body parts, like claws and talons, as well as with any bladed weapons.
- Deals average physical damage
- Has a low chance to inflict the status effect: Bleed.
- This skill can change forms if used with attributed mana.
[Bleed]
- Grade: Normal
- Attribute: Blood
[While active:
- Deals damage over time (DoT) every second.
- The damage is equal to 1.5% of the target's max HP.
- Duration: 2 minutes
Momentarily falling silent, Aurora carefully read through both entries. As she read more and more, she weighed the pros and cons of this skill over its previous form. The result? Unsurprisingly, Slash was superior in every way over Scratch.
The skill was simply better no matter what you looked at. It dealt higher damage, could be used even with weapons, something that didn't matter to Aurora, and it even inflicted a better effect. The skill even had a higher chance to inflict the effect.
There were literally no downsides that would make one use Scratch over Slash. The only change that wasn't a direct buff was the cost, which changed from SP to MP.
'Well, that's technically a buff as well. After all, it's easier to regenerate mana than to gain back stamina.' Aurora reasoned, nodding to herself. Overall, she was very satisfied with her new skill.
'But I wonder. It says that the skill will change forms if I use attributed mana. Does that mean that if I try to use it with fire, it'll deal fire damage?' Curious, she focused on using her fire and quickly slashed downward with her claw.
The next moment, instead of the usual silver light arc, a different arc of light appeared this time. It was bright orange with deep red accents, exactly the same as Aurora's regular fire.
'It worked! So now I have even more options for attacks.' However, one more thing came to her mind, causing Aurora to open her status.
'Good, it still takes only one point of mana.' She sighed in relief and turned around, only to jump in fright the next moment before sighing again.
'Jeez, don't do that again. How do I always forget that you exist anyway?' There, about a meter away from her previous position, stood Rejoke, who looked at Aurora with a confused expression.
He didn't understand why his alpha was reacting this way. After she stepped into the portal, he quickly followed suit and appeared here.
At that time, Aurora seemed to be focused on something, so he did nothing since he didn't want to disturb her. However, now, after turning around, the little fox almost attacked him again after she suddenly saw him.
This confused the black wolf; after all, he saw no reason for Aurora to get scared like that. Did she not feel his presence like she always did? Rejoke found this to be impossible. After all, he knew that his alpha always managed to spot everything around her.
In reality, Aurora really did not notice him. She was too preoccupied with trying out her new skill to pay attention to her surroundings. And since she didn't feel any danger, she failed to realize that she wasn't alone.
'Since you're already here, let's get going.' Sighing internally, Aurora wasted no more time or energy and turned back forward, heading towards the hellish plains.
Rejoke obviously followed her, though he did look around with curious eyes. To him, this place seemed very interesting. It was the same as when he saw snow for the first time.
-----
Time passed, and days flew by in the blink of a second. Unlike the first floor, the second one had no day and night cycle, so it was difficult for Aurora to tell the time.
Actually, she didn't even know if the time here passed the same as the time outside. She had no way of knowing, after all. However, she knew a few things about this place.
First of all, it was absolutely massive! And I know she said the same about the first floor, but if the first floor was massive, then this one was straight up gigantic. Aurora didn't have an exact idea of how big it was, but it just seemed to never end.
Even while they spent most of the time traveling through this hellish place, they found nothing that might mark the end of this place.
The other thing Aurora figured out was that there were even more monsters than on the previous floor. Their levels were only slightly higher, ranging from level 8 to 10. But just the sheer amount of them was something she had never seen before.
Just like on the first floor, the monsters were mostly moving in groups. But unlike the groups there that consisted of around 5 to 10 monsters, every single group here had at least 20 monsters in it!
The amount of monsters she killed in these last few days was probably greater than the amount she had killed in all the time she spent in this world. Worst of all, these monsters provided her with nothing but a few fire crystals from their corpses that she used the Flame of Conversion on.
On the other hand, Rejoke profited a lot from the abundance of monsters in this place. He wasn't a unique grade being unlike Aurora, so these monsters actually provided him with quite some exp.
Not only that, his darkness affinity also went up, even if he had no idea what it was. While most of the monsters here were fire type, some were darkness type. And if these few monsters managed to provide them with some dark crystals, Aurora would just give them to Rejoke.
Even if the wolf wasn't really magic focused, Aurora knew that his magic was related to the dark attribute. Besides, she had no use for those crystals, so she just gave them to Rejoke, who might have at least some use out of them.
However, Rejoke, who instinctively felt his magic becoming more powerful, interpreted Aurora's action of giving him the crystals as a way to say that he should use magic more. Because of that, he started using his magic much more during the fights.
This wasn't Aurora's intention at all and was a completely unexpected side effect, but it was a very welcome side effect. In her eyes, the biggest flaw Rejoke currently held was the lack of variety in his attacks, something that using magic while fighting normally could solve easily.
So, thanks to this, the wolf gained a lot more proficiency with his spells, even if he was nowhere close to Aurora's level.
Seeing that fighting seemed to be very helpful to him right now, Aurora mostly refrained from engaging in battles these few days. Most of the time, she merely observed Rejoke fight, assessing his progress.
And these observations of hers also helped her get a better grasp on the wolf's strength. First of all, the magical attacks he used seemed to not be spells but rather just a materialization of his mana. In simple terms, he wasn't using shadow or dark magic, but something similar to her Ice Creation.
Even now, as he fought a group of about twenty fire slimes, various blackish tentacles were whipping out of his shadows. One thing Aurora had to truly admit was that Rejoke was a genius, at least in her eyes.
Even with his subpar intelligence, he was making progress with his magic extremely quickly. At this pace, he might even reach Aurus's level if he keeps making steady progress.
Honestly, this dungeon really was a blessing for both of them. Were it not for the lack of water on this floor, this would have been the perfect farming place.
While on the theme of water, it might be good to address the glaring problem this floor has. As stated previously, there's a serious lack of water here, and by lack, I mean there's no water here at all.
Thankfully, Aurora could just let the ice made by her Ice Creation melt and drink that water. Otherwise, they would have died from dehydration a long time ago considering the temperature of this place.
'The current problem is that we haven't made any progress in locating this floor's boss.' Aurora thought absentmindedly as she observed Rejoke's battle with half-focused eyes.
'If we go by what we learned from the last floor, we should for something like a temple, or just something that is clearly not natural.' She clicked her tongue in annoyance.
They had no way to speed up the process of finding the boss of the second floor. They gained little to no information about floor bosses from the last floor. All they could for now was wander aimlessly around this floor.
'Whatever, it's not a big deal. And it's not like I have stagnated completely. My level may not be going up, but the same can't be said for my mastery over my spells.' In the end, Aurora just shook her head and went towards Rejoke.
The wolf just finished off all the fire slimes and was currently waiting for Aurora to do that weird fire stuff she always did.
'We'll find it eventually; no need to rush.' With a light heart, Aurora activated the Flame of Conversion on the slimes, getting rid of her previous thoughts.