Chapter Sixty-Two
Udaeus was defeated with a Greater Lightning Spear spam the likes of which the Dungeon had never seen before. I felt the Dungeon cry. Actually, I felt it cry and shiver and plead for mercy. I didn't grant it. The King had been toppled, the Spartoi collapsed, the line of Undead monsters and Coliseums that continuously spawned monsters annihilated without breaking a sweat, without once bothering to stop, catch my breath, or rest.
The Balor suffered the same fate. Though he at least tried to put up a fight, he actually died to an overwhelming amount of electricity thrown his way.
I reached the fiftieth floor.
The floor itself was a vast grey forest, dead trees, silence and a still air. Yet the crackling bonfire was within said area, and I found it with ease. It was the only source of bright light in an otherwise bleak place. Thus, I had no choice but to hide it from view. I used a combination of dirt walls, wooden branches and some rope to create a sort of camouflaged net from which the light wouldn't seep out.
With a sigh, I made a mental note of the days that had gone by. I had reached the floor in less than ten days. I hadn't slept, drank or ate anything since I didn't need it, and so I had managed to cover a lot more distance than an expedition would ever have. Perhaps I had done the task is five days, perhaps six or seven. It didn't matter.
What awaited me now were nine floors of utterly complicated maze-like labyrinth while I'd be under artillery strike from the dragons that lived on the bottom floor. There was a shortcut, but I didn't trust myself not to suffer through fall damage. Even then, while I could no longer increase my statistics, earning more souls was actually the only way I could achieve a state similar to consuming Ember.
Also, who knew what kind of drops the monsters of the floors before the fifty-ninth would bring?
Rhinoceros-like monsters with hides as tough as mithril were not a challenge, even though they came in groups of ten or more. The ground beneath my feet would begin to heat up the moment I stopped for too long, signaling the incoming explosion from the lower floors. However what truly was worrisome was the fact that since they ignored the floors, I could end up blocking my own path at a lower one, and this, in turn, meant a lot of backtracking to be had.
There were specific paths I could take.
No, rather, there were specific paths I had to take in order to reach the bottom. While the dungeon would restore the floors within a matter of hours, it didn't help when you had to clear a leaping chasm the size of a football stadium. "This is like Bomberman," I muttered as I finished making a drawing of the fifty-third floor, "Only it's tri-dimensional."
Having found a path, I descended for the fifty-fourth.
It took me a couple of days, but the fifty-fourth became the fifty-fifth.
Fifty-sixth arrived after a week, while I did a Sudoku mixed with the floors. I had drawn the floors on the ground with my fingers, and as I carefully eyed them with critical thinking, I knew that there were at most two to three viable paths an Adventurer could take to reach the bottom floor without risking his path being blocked.
"Sudoku, Dungeon Edition," I muttered as my mind reeled from the possibilities that the next floor would be the last before hitting the large floor without walls. I needed to conserve my powerful attacks to cleanse said floor and make my way past them, but even so...even so I couldn't help but chew on a branch while mulling a couple of afterthoughts.
If they were truly coming for me, I'd have at most ten days. Perhaps a couple more since they had to prepare and all to come strike me down. If that was the case, then they should have already arrived by then. It had taken me five days to reach the fiftieth floor, at the very least ten days had passed while I tried to find my way to the bottom without resorting to throwing myself into a hole crafted by the dragons at the bottom...and thus, without a doubt, they should have already been there.
I quietly glanced around the bonfire. The forest was quiet. There was nothing but silence. Had they not made it? Had they not arrived? Were they actually coming? Were they camping while taking turns on a higher floor?
I took a deep breath as I stepped out of the bonfire, a hand on the handle of my blade. I took a deep breath. The air of the dungeon was musky, stale, and in this place it was filled with the decaying smell of ashes. I stared at the path that would lead me down, and then embarked once more upon it. My steps were measured, my running controlled, my movements practiced. The explosions rocked behind me, but I still ignored them.
I did not fear death. I was not someone who'd fear it. My body moved on instinct through the floors, the monsters husks of their former selves as finally I found the path down to the bottom floor. The Fifty-eighth floor filled with the dragons that had killed me, blocked my path, and slowed me down was now in my sights. "Found ya," I said as I clenched the Sword of Light tighter, its length increasing at my unspoken command. "Time to drop down your population—" the dragons roared. Their varieties came in red, blue and green too. They had their differences in build, and their strengths.
They were, unfortunately, dragons.
"Greater," I spoke with determination, and the dragons' eyes widened. "Lightning," they knew fear. They cried. They begged and pleaded in raucous screams unintelligible by humans. "Spear." They died as if a cataclysm had evaporated their entire species. White bleached bones dissipated into dark gunk, their monster drops falling on the ground in tiny flickers. The souls they had devoured flew towards my open left hand, flames and fire starting to form across my frame.
I breathed in deeply for the first time, feeling the thrumming power within my chest boil. I took a step forward, and the ground of the dungeon screamed. I took another, and the walls began to bleed red with blood. I kept on walking forward, the stairs to the hole below slick with the blood that dripped from the walls. The pulsing beat of a heart echoed in the back of my head as I took the first step down to the fifty-ninth floor, and by the second the heartbeat became audible enough that I knew it was coming from somewhere near me.
Flames burst through my shoulders, my stomach, my legs. I kept on descending. The ground trembled as I reached the floor itself.
There wasn't a jungle to welcome me. There was only an ashen and barren landscape, filled with nothing but cinders, and bones.
Tendrils of green broke through the ashes, bathed with the blood of the floor above. Hungry mouths, lashing tentacles, giant, multicolored beaks snapped towards me with strength and power. A hundred, two hundred, three hundred hungry monstrous beaks pushed towards me. It took a swing of my blade to slice through them. The blade sliced, the blood poured, the rain fell slick on the ground and evaporated the moment it touched my body.
What was the next step, I wondered?
Where would it lead me? What would happen, once the inevitable maximum was achieved? Would the Dark Sign seal itself? Would it not? The Dungeon was bleeding. The dungeon was bleeding, and yet it wasn't stopping me. No, rather...it couldn't stop me. Was the blood poison to a God? Was it considering me a God, finally?
Even so...I wasn't a God.
I was a human imbued with humanity.
Thus...
...inevitably...
...the final floor...
...was reached.
