Chapter 129 Three Seals

After looting the beast, there was nothing left except a soul stone – Jay had already taken the remaining bones of course.

[Soul Stone] (Empty) x 1

“Hmm, not very lucrative…” Jay pursed his lips and went into the dark room.

Something seemed different as he walked towards the cage with the half-bred.

The creature no longer cried, screeched or wailed. Was it sleeping?

Jay retrieved his trusty butcher knife that his skeleton dropped next to the cage before he checked inside the cage – it was silent because it was dead.

On first glance it appeared to only be resting, as if the little abomination had screeched itself to sleep, but after poking it Jay confirmed it was dead.

“What? But the skeleton only would have done 1 damage to it? …and it screeched after it was stabbed so.. How?”

There was no pool of blood around it, so it definitely didn’t bleed out,

“…I wonder how it died?” Jay had his skeletons check the room for any other life forms that could have killed it – nothing.

“Oh well.” he shrugged, attempting to loot it, “not all mysteries have to be solved.”

[Soul Stone] (Empty) x 1

“Weird…”

With the assistant dead, Jay checked his hidden quest.

<[Hidden Quest – Slay The assistant]>

[Slay the Assistant]

[Progress].

[2/2 Slayed]

[Complete! Collect Rewards?]

“Two slayed? I guess that half-bred thing counted as the assistant too, since its soul was in it? Huh.” he shrugged.

Jay wasn’t too concerned with the ambiguous quest, he was just glad to complete it as he ‘collected rewards’ – not that there were rewards other than ‘progress’.

It seemed like a pretty lame reward to Jay, but he didn’t care too much anyway – this pyramid had already given him a massive power boost. Besides, perhaps there was more loot after he made more ‘progress’.

After a quick search of the room he didn’t find anything of much interest, though the nest the creature had made contained some bones so he added those to his gauntlet.

Jay returned to the main chamber, it was brighter now as a third glowing circle was now lit up.

On the throne, somehow, a small stone effigy of the assistant had appeared.

It was strange to say the least, who would make a miniature statue of that monster?

Jay obviously went ahead and tried to place it in his inventory, thinking it was some sort of trophy, but it seemed it was part of the dungeon; he frowned lightly.

“Aw… it looks so cool too…”

He tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge either, it was like it was glued to the throne.

“Oh well” he smashed it with his hammer, at least he would get some enjoyment out of it…

Thankfully, it seemed that this was meant to happen as the three glyph circles began to slowly rotate, and soon, each of them stopped. It was like they were locking into place.

A red wave of energy suddenly travelled across the glyphs and they all disappeared.

Jay and his undead team were embraced by the darkness once more.

*Gurrrrrrr~*

All around them, deep groaning sounds came from stone grinding on stone within the pyramid walls as they listened in the darkness. It sounded like the whole thing was about to collapse.

This probably would have induced even more fear if Jay didn’t have a monster class, resisting the seemingly passive fear effect of the pyramid.

With a bored expression, Jay pulled out his luminous orb to see what was happening. The only thing that was different was some dust coming from the ceiling.

*DOON~*

A heavy noise reverberated through the room.

Suddenly a large stone block slid down across the exit; Jay was trapped.

Groaning stone sounds were still coming from the walls, and finally behind the throne, a stone wall lifted up as more of the blueish glyph light came from under it as it raised upwards, finally reflecting in Jay’s eyes as he was in awe at what he saw.

“Wow…” the light of course came from another glyph, but this one was very different.

Jay walked slowly into the hidden room behind the throne as he looked upwards to see how big this glyph was.

The glyph was huge and rectangular, perhaps nearly half the size of the pyramid – the pyramid itself almost touched the clouds above.

“Hmm, if those three small circular glyphs caused the rooms to open, then what the hell does this one do?” Jay raised a brow. Surely it would be powerful.

In front of the glyph was another throne – more majestic and larger than the assistant’s throne in the previous room.

A series of tubes, cords, wires, magic circles, glowing cylinders and other strange instruments were in an array around the throne, all feeding into one life form; this time, the throne was occupied…

– – –

~3rd Academy, Mirror Reality 34~

“Students of the third academy, things are going to be quite different next year… Some restructuring is taking place. We hope it will make you more cohesive and team-work oriented…” he cleared his throat.

“I know we’re better than the other academies; while we didn’t win the war games this year, you made the academy proud and lived up to our motto – ‘He who stands with me shall be my brother.’”

Some of the students looked inspired, but some looked bitter. Their academy placed last in the war games – they were the weakest; they felt pathetic.

“I have always treated you as professionals, and I won’t take up more of your time, so I will make this short and sweet.” Norgrim gazed across the cohort as his tone and demeanour changed to one of an old hunter.

“The rumours of a powerful monster class coming to join us are true.”

The crowd murmured and began to chatter, as Norgrim expected they would. After allowing it for a moment he raised his hands to hush the audience.

“Now, in light of this, we are opening new higher level dungeons to the first years…”

The crowd grew loud again, with differing reactions:

– “So unfair… I had to wait till second year. This damn shitty academy.”

– “Fuck yeah, we can run the higher level dungeons, finally! Better now than waiting a few more months!”

– “…All those hot heads are gunna get themselves killed. Did they really think this through?”

– “Meh, all I do is craft and forge, I never go into dungeons anyway.”

“Yeah? All I do is workout, no need to fight anything”

“Pff, you’re still level three after a year. Stop being a baby and go kill some shit.”

– “Aw, I hope I don’t get left behind.”

“I won’t leave you behind. He who stands with me shall be my brother, remember?”

Norgrim waved his hands, hushing the audience once more.

“With the increased risk, we have added a protective measure which will only apply to first years, which are as follows:

Parties will now be formed at the start of the year. You have to stick with your team until the very end of the year… If one of them perishes, you will all repeat the first year.

Again, this will only apply to first years starting next year.”

Despite it not affecting any of the current students, many were shocked. How the hell were they meant to assemble cohesive teams now? What about the guys who don’t even go into dungeons?

Of course, Norgrim already had plans for this.

– – –

~Feral Plains – Level 3 Dungeon, south of Losla~

*Huf huf huf~*

Matheson’s clothes were sticking to him with sweat; he was surrounded by a ring of corpses on a grassy hill after he had just killed another swarm of yellow grobs; monsters which were essentially one-eyed, two-footed, round jumping balls of teeth.

While this was a level three dungeon, it was not instanced and hence was not bound by the conventional rules – the lowest level of the enemies in this non-instanced dungeon was level 1.

This didn’t mean it would be easy though; the sheer number of enemies here made up for their individual weakness.

Meanwhile the weather was summer within this dungeon, combine that with the vigorous battles, some would even suffer heat stroke and have to either leave or die.

All around, many other groups of adventurers were on different hills, each fighting their own brutal battles.

These types of monsters had to be dealt with on a hill, otherwise they could simply roll right after you, the swarm surrounding you as they latched onto your flesh with their razor sharp spiny teeth.

The hill would force them to crawl upwards, slowing down their swarming speed – though even then it was still a challenge.

“Thanks for saving me,” a manacrafter behind Matheson called out.

Matheson squinted with disdain, remembering how he was weak… in fact, he still felt weak.

The manacrafter had no hope here as he only had a high damage single target attack; it was quite foolish for his party to come here.

“Next time save yourself.” Matheson bitterly said; he despised weakness – though more so in himself than others.

“Uh… right…” the manacrafter awkwardly scratched his head.

He thought about asking to party with Matheson, but quickly shot down the idea as soon as he heard Matheson’s harsh reply.

Now that they weren’t within the aggression range of any monsters, the manacrafter promptly left the dungeon. Next time, he would find a party that didn’t leave him behind as they desperately rushed to another hill.

Matheson began looting the hundreds of tiny corpses around him; some of their bodies rolled back down the hill before he could reach them, only to be consumed by a smaller swarm of them.

Matheson easily made short work of them since he was now level 8, not to mention his dexterity-based swordsman class. It was like a perfect match, he was like a demon to the grobs.

He was a little high level for this dungeon, but he was solo too; to him, this was a decent workout plus a way to get easy exp – the last battle giving him 600.

The grob’s didn’t always drop loot, but it was enough for most adventurers to save some money for better weapons.

[Yellow grob eye] x 63

Who used these? And for what purposes? Meh, who cares? As long as they paid for them… This was the mindset of most adventurers here… most…

Matheson was different, he had other plans compared to other adventurers who were simply trying to get by. He had zero thoughts about the low level loot since he had plenty of money after all – what he was trying to do was build the act of looting into his muscle memory, making it like a natural instinct.

He would be relying on selling loot when he eventually got cut off from his fathers wealth, but for now it was all as good as trash to him.

For him, battles were not really about loot, they were just another stepping stone to his strength; each one making him stronger than the last.

“Only strength ensures freedom” he thought, gazing into one of the yellow grob eyes before crushing it in his hand, the juices coating the grass; He imagined that crushed eye as himself in the hands of someone more powerful.

Other adventures would think he was mad if they could see him crushing some precious loot, but Matheson only gained from doing this since he imagined himself being crushed – it created a drive in him, a hunger, and so he continued onwards, towards the next hill.