Cedric, the Holy Assassin, was a rat-beastman. Although Aster imagined a disgusting appearance from the name, it was nothing but a stereotyping bias.
Cedric looked no different from a human, other than the whiskers near his nose, and the round ears diagonally on top of the side of his head. Regarding speed, it was amazing how he was actually on par with Kali, who was the fastest in their party!
Along the way, they encountered a lot of monsters, but with two parties working together, they finished the fights even faster than before. They weren't in a rush, so they carefully collected the loot they could harvest without missing anything.
Liz couldn't help but watch the other party's Holy Knight, a variant of her Knight class, and observe the difference between her and the Holy Knight's skills. However, the only difference was just the addition of the holy element, the damage, range, duration, and everything else seemed mostly equal.
In short, the "Holy" classes weren't much of a buff to the said class. This is also why they're still under the Uncommon Class and not a Rare Class even though getting a Holy modifier was rare.
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After running for about two hours, they finally saw a place swarming with people.
The location was practically the edge of the map, with how there's a visible cliff nearby. The bottom was too dark to even see, so falling from it was equivalent to death, more or less.
"This is the crypt!" Cedric announced, pointing at the large building ahead of the crowd. "But it seems like it'll take an hour before we can enter, seeing how many parties are lining up to enter."
"Amazing... this many adventurers gathered in one place is rare!" Liz commented in awe.
There were at least a hundred adventurers visible, meaning there were dozens of parties present! Some were, of course, a little familiar.
They were those who joined the "rush to the 5th floor" headed by the Dragon's Roar teams. Since they didn't really suffer much from the events that happened, they didn't need to rest and were able to check out the crypt ahead of Aster or the Dragon's Roar's teams.
"Won't the crypt be full of adventurers by now? I bet everything's been looted already." Aster muttered in resignation.
However, Cedric chuckled lightly, as if to prove him wrong. "That's where you got it wrong." He said, cockily. "After all this time, nobody has yet been able to completely map out the first floor of the crypt, as it's too wide!"
"Really?"
"... sounds good." Kali nodded, feeling that Aster's plan was reasonable.
The monsters inside the crypt were quite high-level, after all, so they first needed to increase their strength to be able to explore inside safely.
"Ugh...!"
But suddenly, Aster's right hand felt like it was burning hot, making him wince in pain. When he looked at it, he found that the Magic Carved Seal behind his hand was glowing red on its own!
"Aster!"
Kali called to him immediately. Panic was on her face as she worried that he would get controlled by it again. However, he already improved his stats, so that shouldn't be the case. Still, the pain was so unbearable that beads of cold sweat were forming on his forehead rapidly.
"...!"
Then, it happened.
His hand moved on its own. No, it was as if it were being pulled by a mysterious force, forcing Aster to run toward the edge of the cliff.
"Star!"
"Oh no!"
"Darling, no!"
Voices echoed behind him, trying to catch up, but he was too fast. He was faster than even Kali, who was already chasing at her top speed!
"Fuck...!"
Aster cursed as he reached the edge of the cliff, and was forced to jump. Soon, his body accelerated downward thanks to gravity, plummeting toward the dark depths.