Chapter 356 – Exploring The Other Dungeon.

“Just like they said, there are other undead monsters than skeletons in here.”

“Oooooo…”

There wasn’t much time for him to look over this pale creature as its demise was rather swift. Before the monster could even react it was turned into a walking fire. The thin skin that it was covered by quickly evaporated along with the rest of it.

“This feels like a walk in the park.”

Roland commented while moving closer to the defeated creature. Agni was already looking for the praise inside the corpse and he had to be fast before he decided to swallow it.

“Don’t you dare…”

“Awoo!?”

“You’ll get a stomach ache if you continue to eat those corrupted mana stones…”

Agni whimpered a bit while looking in the direction of the burned Ghoul. A black mana stone was left behind by this creature that was different from the undead skeletons. Instead of having a core, it was more in line with the other regular monsters that dropped mana stones. Undead like this ghoul were considered to be evil and their mana stones cursed. They became ingredients in making cursed weapons and concoctions just like he used regular mana stones for runic crafting.

The black stone was grabbed by him and placed into the storage place. Agni had eaten a previous one and thankfully not succumbed to the cursed energies inside. Normally the stone would be considered poison. Only thanks to the unique evolution of a divine beast was it possible for the wolf to not receive a backlash. The holy energies inside of his body were somehow able to counter the cursed ones inside the stones.

‘It’s fine with these tier 2 stones, but if he tried to eat a tier 3 mana stone. I wonder if I can do something with those stones…’

There was potentially a new line of research that these stones could help him with. While the regular stones allowed him to buff his main stats, these dark ones could do the reverse. Lowering the main stats of an enemy would come in handy. Making cursed wares would be problematic but this didn’t mean that he wouldn’t go through it. After seeing the undead monsters succumb to divine spells, he now knew the potential of debuffing.

“Stop sulking, what kind of divine beasts eats mana stones from undead creatures?”

“Woof!”

“Yeah, yeah… Anyway. I think we reached the end of the road, this tunnel doesn’t seem to lead anywhere…”

Roland had climbed up all the possible dungeon levels and reached the end. It confirmed that the group of platinum adventurers had done their job. When looking at the map he couldn’t find any open paths, nor were there any secret ones. This whole level only had a few ghouls running around and lacked the complexity of the corridors that the other levels consisted of.

‘Interesting… The dungeon is moving.’

Myrtle and her party arrived here a while ago. They had placed several sensors in the walls just like he instructed them to. Thanks to this he was now able to calculate the changes as he had saved the previous map. When he overlaid the one from a few weeks ago he could tell that some of the corridors had become enlarged. The number of undead monsters had also increased by one.

‘This room is starting to form into something but at this pace it will take many years until it reaches the top.’

Thanks to some of the mathematical skills and his rather high intelligence he could perform some simple calculations. When taking the expansion rate of the corridors and his current location. Even if the dungeon went straight up it would take more than forty years to reach the top. If he took into account that the dungeon spread out horizontally first, it would probably take even more.

‘I guess I don’t need to worry about this thing reaching one of the other brothers.’

Unless the dungeon went through some type of hastening process, it would not reach the top. What he was previously worried about would not take place for a while. If the dungeon appeared somewhere within Theodore’s lands then he would have the right to claim the whole dungeon for himself. Even more, if it was discovered that he had drilled a hole from the other dungeon to get inside this one. While Arthur would still have some rights here, it was better to not give their opponents any legal validity to pursue.

With that issue somewhat resolved he could now focus on exploration. When going around the upper levels there wasn’t that much to discover besides the change in the monster types. Ghouls like this one became more prevalent but they did not appear as their tier 3 counterparts just yet.

‘The air in the dungeon became a lot more stale and the smell of rotten flesh is everywhere.’

When the dungeon continued to evolve he expected to encounter zombies that could evolve into ghouls. It was as if the skeletal crypt was a whole new region and it kind of reminded him of some information he read before. Some dungeons that had a stricter level divide sometimes changed themes every ten levels or so.

‘If it’s working in this direction, then perhaps it’s going to be the same when I go up.
He was banking on maintaining the advantage of divine spells, so encountering monsters that were resistant to it wouldn’t be great. Luckily, at the moment it was just a switch from skeletons to zombies so perhaps instead of them he would just encounter other undead creatures. As long as the main biome was kept all would be fine.

“Let’s see what I have…”

These were two weapons of note that he managed to unearth on the upper levels. The dungeon went for a skeletal theme where he discovered those. The spear tip looked like another skull with a long blade coming out of its open mouth. There were additional spikes around the black skull which contributed to the name. When it came to the dagger the hilt had some smaller skulls here and there to compliment the pitch-dark blade.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The black mithril these weapons were composed of made them a lot heavier than usual. They would not be usable by lower classes and probably give others some trouble too. A spear and a dagger required some finesse and having them become heavy could hinder the execution of some skills. If he found something like a battle axe or halberd it would have been much better. With these two here he wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t be better to just melt it down and use the black mithril on new armor pieces.

‘If people don’t find the hidden chambers, I could potentially use it to gather black mithril and make some things where weight won’t be a problem…’