As they began to move through the corridor that led to the next cavern, Dante turned to Edward. “How long until the goblins come back?”
“Hmm.” Edward paused and looked around the cavern. “Given the density of the world essence, I would say… maybe a few months.”
Dante blinked. “That long?”
His question elicited a laugh from Edward. “Where do you think you are? This is the Outer Edge region, given the density here, the monsters will come back at the slowest speed possible.”
That did make some sense, but now his plan of coming back and clearing the dungeon by himself was ruined.
The group progressed through the caverns relatively unhindered. By the time they began to make their way to the last cavern, presumably where the dungeon boss would be, they had already cleared seventeen rooms in total. He was unsure of exactly how many essence crystals he had collected, but the large sack he had been given was almost full of the acorn-sized crystals, and he had to sling it over his shoulder to bear its weight.
The mage lit up the cavern ahead of them, but it seemed empty aside from the large boulders that were scattered across the floor.
Lance, who was ahead of the group and peering into the cavern addressed Edward. “Go scout ahead, this is the last room, so the dungeon boss should be in there somewhere.”
“Of course.” Edward, lazy smile on his face, walked nonchalantly towards the cavern.
As he neared Lance, who was still facing forward and looking for the dungeon boss, Edward wrapped his left hand around Lance’s head, yanked him off balance, then plunged a dagger into his back.
Chapter 8
Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 8
Edward ripped the dagger out of Lance’s back, then reinserted it into his side to pierce his heart.
“Well, that felt damn good.” He threw Lance’s corpse to the floor.
Everyone looked at him in complete silence, not daring to make a move. Edward turned back to face them, the lazy smile still on his face as though nothing had happened.
Two of the Warriors in the group were the first to react, shouting savagely before rushing him, and Edward’s smile didn’t disappear in the slightest as he stepped forward to meet them.
The first Warrior ran directly toward him, and Edward sidestepped at the last second, then slammed his dagger into the Warrior’s side as he passed. The other Warrior, who was trying to take advantage of Edward’s now lack of dagger, came at him from the front. Dante looked on in horror as Edward reached up, grabbed the Warrior’s neck, and tore it out with his bare hand.
The rest of the party rushed forward to confront him, and everything after that seemed to happen all at once.
Edward became death incarnate, moving far faster than he had before. Each strike he took put another corpse on the ground.
Dante was watching the entire event unfold, mortified, when he felt a hand grab his shoulder. Without even thinking, he Blinked away, then looked to see who had grabbed him. It was Sam, who seemed thoroughly surprised that he had slipped out of his grip.
Dante looked back to Edward, making sure that he wouldn’t be caught unaware. Edward was now standing over a cluster of bodies, and somehow there wasn’t a trace of blood on him.
He, Sam, and Edward were the only party members still alive.
Dante used his Create Blade skill, instantly bringing two long daggers into existence, then held them out in an effort to ward off the two should they choose to attack.
Edward saw Dante teleport away from Sam’s grip and create the two daggers and let out a laugh. “I knew I didn’t waste my time with you.” He looked around at the corpses around his feet and scratched his head. “Uh, maybe I owe you an explanation…”
Edward slipped a ring off of his finger, and his entire body shimmered momentarily. When the shimmering stopped, Edward was gone. In place of the middle-aged man was a young man who looked to be in his mid-twenties. The long ginger-hair that was swept back into a ponytail was now cropped pitch-black hair. His figure was fuller and covered in muscle that wasn’t there previously, and even his facial features changed. What were once plain features gave way to high cheekbones, a proud brow, and bright blue eyes. The only thing that didn’t change was his familiar lazy smile.
The new man placed his hand over his chest and gave a slight, formal bow. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Edward Ailloss, the current lord of House Ailloss.” He indicated towards Lance and the two men who had rushed towards him earlier. “I’m sorry to have startled you, but I had some cleaning up to do. Blood feuds and the like, I’m sure you understand.”
Edward was talking as though the entire thing was some big misunderstanding, but he was having a hard time coming to terms with everything that had happened in the last few minutes. After seeing Edward kill the others, he knew that he would die if Edward decided to attack. He wasn’t even sure if he would be able to Blink away from him, he had never seen anyone move anywhere near that fast.
Edward cleared his throat, seemingly a bit embarrassed by Dante’s frightened expression. “Perhaps I should explain a bit better. Lance’s actual name is Ervin Shearrant, he’s the scion of House Shearrant, a once powerful family in the Outer region. After a particularly brutal war with my house, House Shearrant was almost completely eradicated. A few of them snuck into my home during the fighting and killed my son. Which is why I brought my best guard, Sam, and came to the Outer Edge region to hunt him down.” He finished by indicating back to Lance, as if that was all the evidence needed.
That made a little bit of sense to him, hunting down his son’s killers could be something a lord would do themselves, but he wasn’t buying it. “Then why did you join his party and why haven’t you killed me?”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up, as if questioning his sanity.
I’m an Idiot. A complete idiot. Why would I ask that? He could kill me on a whim.
“Ah, of course. My apologies for being unclear. When we had finally hunted Ervin down and were preparing to kill him, we discovered he was recruiting for a recently discovered, and unexplored, dungeon. Even though we come from the Outer region, a monster crystal from a rare or powerful monster from the Outer Edge region could be useful to Sam or me, so we joined the group.”
Edward paused, and an uncomfortable expression covered his face. “The day we found you, we had volunteered to go to the dungeon and scout out the location early for the rest of the party. After discovered it was just a simple goblin dungeon and were on our way back to kill Ervin. That was when we found you sleeping.” He averted his gaze, not looking Dante in the eye. “To be fair… you do look a little strange, and seeing you sleeping, I was a tad bit curious, and may have… peaked under your glove.”
Edward glanced up to check his expression and gauge his reaction. His face was blank though, other than pondering how he could escape, the only thing he was thinking about was how hard he had screwed up by joining a random dungeon group.
Edward pushed forward. “Your Classifications were a shock to say the least. I haven’t even seen any of the symbols aside from the Blader Classification symbol, and that is already an exceptionally rare and powerful Classification. Your earlier performance did give me some hints about them though.” Edward indicated the two long daggers in Dante’s hands.
“Your sudden appearance destroyed all of my plans though. I thought that if I took you back with us and immediately slaughtered a group of people, it may scare you off…”
Dante just continued to stare at Edward. Didn’t want to scare him off? Was that a joke?
Edward saw his expression and cleared his throat. “You see, House Ailloss is in a bit of a situation right now and given your… potential, I think you may be able to help. Every five years there is a competition between the largest houses in the Outer region. Each house chooses their most exceptional youth under the age of twenty to compete in a tournament style combat competition. Not only does the competition determine a house’s standing in th
e Outer region, but the winner also gets total control of the best dungeon in the Outer region for a full five years.”
A brief expression of sorrow crossed Edward’s face, but it was quickly gone, and he was trying to assess whether or not the emotion was an act. “Typically, a house will spend massive amounts of resources on their candidate for the competition. Unfortunately, for the competition in four years, House Ailloss’ candidate for the competition was going to be my son.”
Dante gaped, if Edward had a son that was going to compete in the competition in 4 years it meant that his son must have been at least fourteen before he died. Given Edward’s appearance of being in his mid-twenties, the only reasonable explanation was that Edward had already specialized his Classification and therefore slowed his aging. Edward was even more terrifying than he thought.
“So, tell me if I’m getting this right. You took me back to a camp full of people you were planning on murdering, kept me awake by talking all night, dragged me through a dungeon, and killed all of the people I thought were my party members in front of me, all in an effort to recruit me for a competition?”
Sam burst out laughing.
Edward glared at his guard, then cleared his throat. “Reflecting on my earlier actions, perhaps I could have handled the situation better, but bringing you to the dungeon seemed like a good opportunity to accomplish two of my objectives at the same time.” He pointed to the bag of essence crystals that Dante had dropped on the floor during the fight. “Not only have I supplied a gift as a sign of my goodwill, but I have also completed the task I originally came to the Outer Edge region for.”
Seeing the misgivings on Dante’s face, Edward stepped forward and handed him a combatant’s glove with a lion sigil on it. “You don’t need to accept my offer now, take this to the city of Rork in the Outer region any time in the next three years if you want to compete, that should give us enough time to prepare you.” He gave Dante a mischievous smile. “I’m sure someone with your potential will eventually travel to inner Aleria. If you compete, I’ll give you all the resources at my house’s disposal to help prepare you for the Chaos region. And if you actually win the competition, I’ll give you the first access to the strongest dungeon in the Outer region.”
That gave him pause, if House Ailloss was really one of the largest houses in the Outer region, their resources would be a major help to him for when he traversed the Chaos region. Also, if he really did get first access to the strongest dungeon in the Outer region, the monster crystal he would get would be a massive boost to his overall abilities.
There was no reason to trust Edward though. There were too many inconsistencies in his story, and that was just at a glance with almost no information on House Ailloss itself. How was it possible that such a large house would only have one person who was strong enough to compete in a competition? Regardless, if Edward was going to allow him to leave, alive, he was more than willing to agree. Three years should be plenty of time to disappear if he needed to. Either way, he would need to do his own research on House Ailloss before he made any decisions on the matter.
After thinking it over, he gave a neutral answer. “I will consider your offer. If I accept, I will travel to Rork in the next three years.”
“Excellent, truly excellent. We will be off then. Oh, by the way, I wouldn’t stay in the dungeon too long. These mana manipulated lights will only last another hour or so.” Edward turned to walk back through the tunnel of the dungeon, but just before he was out of sight, he turned back to Dante. “Almost forgot to mention, the dungeon boss is still in the next room. It’s a goblin, so unless it drops an attribute monster crystal, it will be useless. But even if it is useless, you can always break it for the world essence.” He winked then turned to leave.
After the two men left, Dante sat alone in the tunnel of the dungeon. The events that had just transpired seemed absolutely absurd, and there were too many things that weren’t adding up. Taking a deep breath, Dante looked around at the bodies and the essence crystals.
Even though his nerves were still on edge from the fright that Edward had given him, he couldn’t help but be happy. The unexpected harvest that surrounded him was enormous.
Not only did he have hundreds of essence crystals from the dungeon, but he also had plenty of bodies to use for experimentation on his glove.
Dante walked over to the bodies, checking everyone’s wrist for their Classifications. Lance, or Ervin, had the rarest by far with a Lancer Classification and a Warrior Classification. Followed by the Mage Classification, of which there were two. There was also a Priest Classification, which surprised him. Usually, Priests used healing skills, but he had clearly seen the man out slaughtering goblins with a mace. The rest were Warrior and Ranger Classifications.
He began on one of the Warrior’s bodies. He wanted to test how much blood was needed to make a symbol appear on the glove, or even if another symbol would appear on the glove at all.
First, he began by placing one of his fingers in a pool of blood. After it dried he inspected the glove, nothing happened. After that, he placed his hand inside of the pool, coating his entire palm with blood. Still nothing. After using the entire palm of the glove didn’t work, he gave up on partially coating the glove. Dante stuck his entire hand inside of the Warrior’s wound, completely covering his hand. After pulling it out, he watched the glove dry, and as it did, a scarlet glow of a small Warrior symbol slowly appeared on the glove as it dried. Thrilled, he set off to collect the symbols of the other’s Classifications.
After he got the symbols of the other Classifications, now having a total of five, he decided it would be a waste not to squeeze out as much blood as he could from the bodies. When he had absorbed some of Isaac’s blood, the glove seemed to have changed slightly, but it was too subtle to be sure. So, he wanted to test the process out.
He began to use a multitude of methods to get blood out of the bodies. He tried pressing down on them to force blood out of the wound, putting them upside down on the wall to drain them, and even cutting into them to draw more out.
The entirety of the process made him sick. But thankfully after he threw up a few times he was only dry heaving. It took him around thirty minutes to drain and absorb as much blood as he could. After he had finished the glove had visibly changed. It was far less ancient looking now. It now looked more like something that had been handed down as a family heirloom. Still old and threadbare, but not threatening to fall apart. Dante glanced over at the desecrated bodies, they were covered in items that he may have found valuable, but stealing from the dead didn’t sit right with him after desecrating their corpses so thoroughly.
Experimentation done, Dante made his way over to the sack of essence crystals. Picking one up, he crushed it in his hand. After checking his Classification tab and making sure he got the world essence, he began crushing them in large handfuls. It took him a full ten minutes just to crush the handfuls of essence crystals. After he was done, Dante opened his Status and checked his Classification tab.
World Essence waiting to be assigned: 1386
Chronomancer lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)
Blademancer lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)
Blader lvl 1/10 (0/100 world essence)
Revenant lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)
Recent World Essence gain:
1380 World essence from: Essence Crystal x 276
The amount of world essence he had gotten from the crystals was staggering. Adventuring through dungeons was clearly the best way to level up. When he thought back to how the party was actually dejected when they found out that this dungeon was filled with goblins, and that each kill only awarded five world essence, his anticipation for other dungeons only increased.
He still had no idea what he wanted to level though. Blader was an easy choice, since it only cost him one hundred world essence. He decided to also level up the Chronomancer Class, not only would he get more total mana and mana regeneration, but he also wanted the
extra blink distance from the skill level up. He fed the world essence into the two Classifications.
Blader has reached level 2
Attributes have been added:
+1 Dexterity
+1 Agility
Skill description for Blade Dancer has been updated
Chronomancer has reached level 3
Attributes have been added:
+1 Intelligence
+1 Wisdom
Seeing the new popup, Dante couldn’t help but frown. He had been hoping that his skills would be upgraded every time he leveled, but since Blink didn’t get update, that didn’t seem to be the case. He dismissed the text he reexamined his Classification tab.
World Essence waiting to be assigned: 1086
Chronomancer lvl 3/10 (0/300 world essence)
Blademancer lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)
Blader lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)
Revenant lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)
Even though his skills didn’t get upgraded every level, there was some good news. When upgrading his Classifications from level 1 to level 2, the world essence he needed for the next level had doubled. He had been worried that it would continue to double every level, making it multiplicative. But after seeing that it was only adding one hundred world essence to the required amount per level, Dante heaved a sigh of relief.
He was looking over his Classifications and thinking about which ones would be best to level, when he decided to check how his Blade Dancer skill had changed before making his decision. He switched to the Skills tab.
Blade Dancer (Passive):
Increase Dexterity by 11%
Increase Agility by 11%
Increase ability with bladed weapons (+1)
Dante's Immortality: Beginnings Page 9