137. Grit Castle

“Quite an interesting looking Dungeon,” Rakna commented as he dropped off everyone from his barrier. They landed in front of a large castle made out of sandstone, surrounded by fences as tall as humans.

“Yeah, it’s hard to miss too,” Allan said and groaned as he shielded his face from the sun. “Sheesh, this heat is freaking annoying. I already miss the isolation of your barrier. It was nice.”

“Hm?” Rakna tilted his head at him. “Oh…” He realized something and his aura became visible with the naked eye. Everyone widened their eyes as they felt a cool breeze sweep over them.

The blond blinked then gazed at his friend with sparkling eyes. “Of course!” He exclaimed and put an arm over the therian’s shoulder. “Your magic’s perfect for this! You’re the ultimate portable air condition-ack!” He ended his sentence with his head buried under the sand.

“Who the hell are you calling an air conditioner?” Rakna blankly retorted as he lowered the hand he had used to hit the idiot’s head.

“Peh! I have sand in my mouth!” Allan as he tried to spit out the grains. “How are you so strong?”

“30 in strength.”

“Huh? That’s basically the same as mine. Did you focus on strength? That’s surprising.”

“I didn’t focus on anything. I haven’t used any attribute points since the tutorial.”

“…what?”

“Wait, so what are your attributes right now? How many points do you have?” Flavia asked.

“On average, I have around 27 on all attributes. As for the points I have available…” Rakna paused at that and opened his status briefly. “54.6.”

Allan’s jaw dropped. He recovered from his shock then calmly stood up. He grabbed his friend’s shoulders and stared at him in the eyes. “…please give me some?”

“No,” Rakna immediately refused. “Can you even do that?”

[Affirmative,] Alexa provided. [It is possible to exchange unused attribute points with other Hosts if you desire so. It is not unusual for Hosts to use it as a secondary currency.]

“Uh… that’s good to know. Well, if you really need some in the future, I could give away some. Since my growth is honestly not limited in any way by that, it could be a good idea to help you instead.”

“On second thought… no thanks, it feels like I’m being pitied,” Allan blankly said.

Rakna shrugged. “Your choice. Let’s get to it now,” he said and started walking toward the gate of the castle. A system window popped up when he touched it.

❮ ◈ ❯

You are required to be in a party of five people or more to enter this Dungeon.

Four Friends have been detected nearby; would you like to forward them an invitation?

Yes/No

❮ ◈ ❯

“Yes,” Rakna answered and the invitations were sent. The others promptly accepted it.

❮ ◈ ❯

Party successfully formed.

Members: Hidden, Allan River, Flavia Jeina, Evelyn J. Malcanthet, Nyx Nocta Regysnite.

You will now enter the Dungeon, Grit Castle.

Recommended Level for this Dungeon: 30

---

Please select a difficulty:

⦓ Easy ⦔ - ⦓ Normal ⦔ - ⦓ Hard ⦔ - ⦓ Fiendish ⦔

❮ ◈ ❯

“Why does your name show up as ‘Hidden’?” Allan inquired; slightly confused.

Rakna blinked. He hadn’t expected this either. He had forgotten that his name would also show up in a party member list. He hadn’t taken that into account when trying to hide his full name. He had been lucky.

“I have a skill that hides certain parts of my status. I didn’t know it also extended to parties. By curiosity, how does my name appear in your friend list?” He asked back with a bit of apprehension.

“It’s still ‘Rakna Xiorra’ for me,” Evelyn replied first and the others nodded.

“I see…” Rakna scowled. ‘Alexa, explanation?’

[I took the liberty to hide your full name from your added friends,] she answered. [Since you did not wish to reveal it, I thought it would be an apt course of action. While I cannot change the name on your status back to what it was, I can bend the rules a bit in your favor.]

Rakna was a bit taken aback. ‘Is that something… you’re allowed to do as an AI?’

[Technically… I am not. If the main server comes to notice my infraction, I might get punished. But thanks to my being an S-Class AI, I have the know-how to do something like this.]

‘…thank you.’

[You are welcome.]

“{Such a devoted artificial intelligence. It is as if she has given her loyalty to you rather than the system that birthed her,}” Fray said. “{I cannot help but wonder if this will turn into a quest for humanity… yes, yes! That would be a-!}”

‘What did I say about talking?’

“{…aye, sir.}”

“So, we’re going in, yes or not?” Allan impatiently said. “I hope you won’t do that spacing-out thing when we’re in there.”

“It’s not my fault. I have chatty souls in my head and hundreds of words to read every now and then,” the therian retorted and pushed the gate of the castle open after selecting the difficulty.

“Normal, huh?” Nyx commented as she saw the difficulty appear on her system. “This will probably be easy for us but I concur with the caution.”

Rakna shrugged and pulled out the Dreorin Greatsword along with Sonata. He put the two of them close to each other before initiating the evolution. When the fusion was done, he ended up with a larger two-handed sword.

The blade was slightly curved and had two serrated sections on the back of it. Unlike the Dreorin Greatsword, the blade wasn’t ashen but of a glossy sky blue and the edge was of a gradient of red.

Rakna whirled the sword with one hand and nodded in satisfaction before opening its description.

❮ ◈ ❯

Designation: Blade/Greatsword

Name: Azure Sonata

Rarity: Orange

Attack power: +300

Durability: 100%

Perks:

- Intertwined Miniature Eion Systems

- Eion Energy Production

- Gale Outbreak (All forms)

- Demonic Spiritual Anchor

- Hyper Mana Oscillation Blade (Bladed Forms): Through oscillation, the blade can up to a hundred times sharper. Any reinforcement applied will be converted into oscillation and only when the limit is reached will it affect the material directly.

- Blood Rage (All forms): Let the weapon drain your blood and it will temporarily make you enter a high-powered state. Upon activation, a crowd control stun of three seconds will be cast on those nearby and the wielder will become able to send flying attacks by sacrificing a variable quantity of blood. The more blood used, the stronger it will be.

Duration: 1 min. Cooldown: 10 min.

- Primal Curse: This weapon has gained some level of curses from the evolutions it went through. It will inflict severe injuries to non-authorized wielders and the more the weapon is wielded, the more it will become altered to match its wielder.

Note: Evolvable.

❮ ◈ ❯

Rakna inwardly smiled. As expected, Sonata took in the original weapon’s perks and made them even better. It had added a restriction to Blood Wave, but overall, Blood Rage was a considerably better perk than what the Dreorin Greatsword could do. As for the Primal Curse, it didn’t seem to be detrimental to him. On the opposite, it appeared to be a positive thing.

He hummed and injected mana into his weapon under the curious eyes of his group. After a while, they started hearing an invasive whistling in their ears as Rakna poured more and more mana.

The sword’s blade was already blurry and when he put it close to the ground, the sand was pushed away by an invisible force. “It’s greatly stronger compared to before,” he commented and stopped the oscillation.

“I can also feel an increase in the DP and MP boost it gives me,” Evelyn remarked. “It went from 10% to 15%,” she said as she opened her status. “I think I can also get separated farther now.”

“Sonata will seriously become OP at this rate,” Allan commented as he observed the threatening blade.

“Indeed. The old man would be thrilled,” Rakna replied and commanded it to turn into a Guandao. At the same time, he noted that the ribbon that was tied around the shaft was now red instead of blue. He whirled the spear a few times and shouldered it. “I have to admit; I missed her.”

“So… finally ready to get in?” Allan deadpanned. “Seriously, I feel like you spend more time reading than fighting ever since we came to this world.”

“I honestly can’t refute that,” Rakna snorted and stepped past the gate. “Let’s go,” he said and they followed him. When they were all in, the gate instantly closed behind them.

Rakna glanced at the closed gate and looked back at the entrance of the castle before changing his focus a third time to something above it. His eyes flashed golden as he observed everything on the façade of the building. He squinted and stared at an unmoving perched gargoyle.

“Guys,” he uttered and everyone nodded.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Allan responded with a serious tone as he wore his plated gloves.

“On it,” the girls followed up as they conjured their respective magics.

“Ganymede,” Rakna called and the star-entity immediately reacted. “Attack every statue placed on the outer walls of this castle,” he ordered and the constellation given life jumped in the air without a noise and started floating.

At the same, every statue on the castle suddenly trembled and their eyes lit up. The gargoyles, the birds, the lions, the winged humanoids; all of them suddenly came to life. They all leaped off from their spot but before they could even touch the ground, several of them were destroyed by gravity beams, shadows, black fire, and compressed jets of water launched by Ganymede’s amphora.

Those that managed to land were promptly attacked by a charging Allan and the ones that flew off to escape the assaults were shot down by Tyran’s flames and Pronos’ acidic poison. Their wings would melt right off and they would crash down where Rakna awaited them to bisect them in one strike.

Everyone was quite relaxed whilst fighting these animated statues and Rakna especially seemed to be spectating more than actually participating in the battle.

“What are you looking at so intently?” Nyx asked from his side as she launched as a wave of darkness that swallowed a gargoyle.

“Him,” Rakna replied shortly while pointing at Ganymede with his chin. Without looking, he also constructed a random sword and threw it at a stone lion before detonating it.

Nyx followed his line of sight in confusion and watched as the star entity carefully and accurately shot down the statues with water. “What’s wrong with him?”

“You mean his intellect, don’t you?” Flavia joined in as she landed next to them with her telekinesis.

The night goddess instantly realized what she meant. “I see. So that’s why you’re keeping him here as much as you can. It’s not just for convenience. You’re curious to see if he has sentience.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Rakna answered as Allan and Evelyn finished off the last living statues. The former threw a punch that literally blew up the head of one while the latter trapped one in a cubic barrier and crushed it by compressing it.

“I wouldn’t like to be caught in something like that,” Flavia commented with a wry smile as the shattered remains of the statue fell to the ground after the succubus dispelled the barrier.

“Tch, none of these guys can even make a decent warm-up. They don’t even drop anything,” Allan complained whilst dusting his clothes. He regrouped with everyone else as Ganymede descended from the sky and they promptly began to head toward the entrance.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to see if there’s something better inside,” Rakna said and opened the doors of the castle.

AhraManyu

Hmm, I was planning on taking an actual break way later. But as things stand right now, I might have to reconsider.

It's not because I'm burnt out, mind you, it's because I'm super busy this month. But it's not a certainty. We'll see how it goes. I'll warn you beforehand either way so nothing to stress over.