Level 1 Fallen

After leaving the mimic tower, we continued to fly south along the border between the mountains and the forest. After over half an hour, the dungeon radar began to ding again. I looked over at Diane and Bella as we began to zero in on the dungeon’s location. “Think we have time for one more run for tonight?”

Diane nodded her head at that. “I should be able to stay online for another dungeon, as long as it doesn’t drag on too long.”

“I just don’t want that mimic place to be our last stop for the day,” Bella muttered mutinously, shuddering slightly.

It didn’t take us long to locate the dungeon entrance, a cave dug into the side of one of the mountains. Cautiously, I wrapped us in a layer of stealth and stepped inside, ready to attack anything that moved.

Thankfully, the monsters in this dungeon were not mimics, which we were able to confirm immediately when we saw the densely packed enemies inside. “Drake? Levels?” Diane asked quietly, prepared to back out if need be.

Using Observe, I appraised the horde of monsters. “Crystal Skeletons. Levels range around two hundred and eighty.”

These monsters truly lived up to their name, looking like walking skeletons made entirely of crystal. Some of them carried crystal weapons, whether a sword or a staff, while others were entirely unarmed.

Hearing that their levels were in the acceptable range, even if only barely, Diane let out a sigh of relief. “Bella, charge your energy rifle and fire it down the hall. Let’s test its destructive power.”

Bella’s eyes lit up, pulling her new rifle out and taking a stance. “It’ll take a minute for me to build up a max charge,” she informed us, and we took defensive positions around her. Although we were still hidden in my Wraith Field, the monsters were packed fairly tight, often bumping into each other as they lumbered about.

After a full minute of waiting, Bella pulled the trigger, and a thick beam of energy blasted through the corridor, punch a hole through the mob of crystal skeletons. This caused the others to freeze, before charging towards us with their weapons raised.

Bella switched to her pistols, while Diane and I both launched attacks at the incoming mob. Thankfully, the monsters were not quite smart enough to do anything more than simple tactics like charging the enemy to engage in melee combat, at least not in this part of the dungeon.

As we cleaned up the bodies, I earned myself two more monster cards, both Crystal Skeleton Swordsman. I felt like my Corpse Collector was finally leveling up to be at a level where it would be useful, even if I did have to kill fifty monsters per card. Then again, the odds seemed to be related to the corpse’s level. I could probably get far more cards if I went to a low level area, but that would defeat the purpose.

Regardless, in the next area, we found Crystal Armor Skeletons directing other Crystal Skeletons to mine mana crystals radiating a dark aura. Every now and then, a pile of these mined crystals would begin to assemble themselves, turning into a new Crystal Skeleton.

“I see, so that’s this dungeon’s mechanic,” Diane nodded her head, seeming to understand something. “Given how packed the entrance was, I was wondering why there weren’t monsters leaking out of the dungeon. The Crystal Skeletons that we fought earlier should just be the products of this mine, and are unable to leave it. The actual dungeon monsters should be those armored skeletons.”

As soon as we took action, the armored skeletons showed a far better reaction than those basic skeletons at the entrance. Some of them stepped to the back, holding up a staff and conjuring a rain of crystal shards while others lunged forward with swords, which released ominous lights.

I created projected shields and hammers to combat the charging figures and defend against the shards, while Diane flicked her wrist and summoned her puppet, sending it towards the group in the rear. At first, I was concerned why she would send her puppet into battle against higher level enemies, when she had not trained the skill enough to fight them.

However, what happened next surprised me. Once the puppet had reached them, Diane formed a quick gesture with her hands, a black flash erupting from her body. Then, she fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. She had used her new Substitution skill to swap places with her puppet and safely cover the distance to the backline.

I knew that she had learned Glancing Steps-X, so this briefly confused me, before I realized that it was likely a tactic to conserve energy. I still didn’t have a proper idea on how much energy these skills used, but it would make sense that her Substitution would be cheaper than Glancing Steps.

Regardless, Diane wove between the skeletons, placing her hands on each one as they tried to shoot her with crystal shards. She flipped up and backwards, high enough for her feet to touch the mine’s ceiling before vanishing and appearing next to me. “Open fire,” she told Bella, who began rapidly firing at the monsters.

Each one that Bella struck seemed to erupt in a mighty explosion, shaking the mine. I was busy smashing the skeletons charging at us, crushing them one by one beneath projected hammers. Some of them created blades of light that shot forward against my shields, and others shaped their crystal blades into different types of weapons. However, they could only push back my shields, not completely break them.

It was only a matter of time until we wiped out this lot, and continued our way through the dungeon. The further we went, the more that this started to look half like a resource dungeon, as we were able to simply pick up high level mana crystals off of the ground to carry them away. Still, a typical resource dungeon wouldn’t have enemies this high level.

As we continued onwards, we found a total of two treasure chests, though neither of them contained any significant loot. We received some potions of healing, some extra crystals, and even a piece of mana crystal armor, but no skill books or weapons better than what we currently had.

We swept through the dungeon, quickly adapting to the tactics of the monsters. Soon, we came across the boss, a crystal lich with a crown of diamonds. Its weapon was a giant, glittering scythe, and it constantly summoned skeletons from the exposed crystal veins in its chamber. With Bella handling the skeletons, and me using projected pillars to restrict the boss’s movement, Diane was easily able to destroy the boss within just a few minutes.

After we left, I started setting up the house for us to rest for the night. “Is this a good enough dungeon for us to farm for the next few days?” I asked the duo, who took a minute to think it over.

“From what we saw, there isn’t really any good loot that we would want here,” Bella thought aloud. “However, the experience is nice. It should be fine for us to stay here, at least until something else comes up or our levels are high enough that we need to move on.”

Diane agreed with that, and we settled in for the night. Meanwhile, I was thinking about what I could do to help Diane’s situation in her world. The sale of Transformation skill books had no doubt declined, so that would no longer be a sustainable income for her. Part of the reason that I had started accepting these requests from other players was in order to let Diane benefit from the commission reward.

Now that this new update was coming soon, we needed to make sure and increase our levels as much as possible to prepare for the new features. However, most of the new features in this update would revolve around the dungeons, which I wasn’t able to help with. I scrolled back through my private chat with her to look through the list of requests that she had shown me.

Out of the remaining quests, the one that caught my eye the most was naturally the level restricted dungeon. I didn’t know why such a dungeon would exist, since no Player should be capable of clearing it. Only a level one Fallen like myself should have any hope, and that’s only if they had been training for a long time.

If anything, it seemed like this dungeon was almost made for me. Which itself was an eerie thought. Still, the reward for this dungeon was paid primarily in Player currency. Additionally, this request existed only to satisfy the curiosity of the Player posting it. If nobody took the request after enough time passed, they would surely just move on.

I’ll bring it up with Diane after we’re done with this dungeon, I thought to myself. Although I was certainly curious about the level restricted dungeon myself, Diane clearly thought that it was more important to gain levels at this point in time, so I had to believe that her financial situation wasn’t currently urgent.

Starting the next day, we spent several hours at a time conquering this dungeon mine, staying outside just long enough to let the monsters respawn before running through it again. After a few runs, we began to get into a routine, knowing who to put in what role without even communicating.

During this time, I made sure to keep Ancient Shifter and Ancient Tutor both active, and they both managed to evolve at roughly the same time into Ancient Forms and Ancient Mentor the next day. Ancient Mentor allowed me to increase the experience of multiple targets, so I could boost both Diane and Bella at the same time, while Ancient Forms increased the range of creatures that I could turn into.

I was still limited to roughly the same total volume as my base form, but I could transform into a quadrupedal creature, or even an inanimate object. When I mentioned this to Bella, she shot me a death glare that made me immediately understand that she did not want me to become a discount mimic. That trauma would probably take a bit longer for her to move on from.

Regardless, this only confirmed my theory that the skill tree would lead me to being able to use Dragon King without transforming into a giant dragon. I just needed to get to the Master stage of the skill tree, most likely.

Late into our second day of running the dungeon, we finally started to get some skill books. One was for Crystal Weapon, which could reshape crystals into various shapes. Notably, this did not create crystals in various shapes, so the skill seemed rather useless without a handy source of crystals nearby.

Another one was Animal Crystal Skeleton, which did pretty much exactly as it said. Though, this shared the same weakness as Crystal Weapon in that it required a source of crystals to use as a target for the skill.

Both of these skills seemed utterly useless until we found the third skill of the dungeon, Manifest Crystal. This skill simply created a small pillar of crystal at the target area, which could then be used as a target for other skills. Unfortunately, only Crystal Weapon from this set was a Martial Skill, with the other two being Magic, so I had absolutely no interest in learning them.

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