Chapter 175 Stage Three

The reward chest spawned in the middle of the room, glowing, as always. This time, I'die was closest, so he opened it.

The chest's content took aback him. Dungeons were well known to drop good equipment, and the occasional rare skillbook.

But inside this chest before him was no equipment. In its place, four skillbooks were neatly stacked.

He opened up the description tab, reading the names of each skill.

Skillbook: Create Marshland (Active); Skillbook: Natural Camouflage (Passive); Skillbook: Hypnosis (Active); Skillbook: Poison Skin (Passive).

Everyone got near the chest while he was reading the descriptions, and they all saw the books. Jaws dropped at the wealth of skills they had gotten.

It wasn't that often that skill books dropped in dungeons, let alone four in one chest. From the descriptions in the books, if a single person got all those skills, that person would become a dangerous foe.

It tempted them to give all of them to I'die, since he was the most compatible. But he adamantly refused to take all of them.

So they talked about it for a while, coming to a consensus.

The poison skin book would go to Gulnur, since he was their tank.

The Create Marshland skillbook would go to I'die, since he was the only druid in the party.

The Natural Camouflage book would go to Athena, since it would synergize well with her huntress class.

And finally, the Hypnosis skill would go to Astaroth, as it would stack over his other skills from Morpheus, making him a very potent support while melded with him.

Astaroth looked at the Soul Core the boss monster dropped and was disappointed again. This was the second boss in the dungeon, both of which had dropped soul cores and were elite monsters.

And yet, neither Soul Cores contained a soul fragment. The cores were empty of any spiritual energy.

He guessed it was due to them being dungeon monsters, but it still peeved him. This dungeon run had yet to yield something he really wanted.

The equipment he had gotten was good and all, but this wasn't what he had hoped. Since he was a Soulmancer, and high-level monsters were a good potential source of power, he had hoped a dungeon would give him a few spirits.

But he was sorely disappointed. The skillbook was nice too, but this wasn't what he wanted.

After dispatching the books, and learning them for those who got some, the party ventured forth. Astaroth read the skill description while they walked to the door.

Hypnosis: You can project a repeating sound around you, causing the people that hear it to slowly lose mental resistance and possibly be charmed to fight for you. The hypnosis takes time, and if the player notices it, they can't be charmed by it. Mental resistances still go down, regardless of successful charm or not.

The spell takes 15 seconds to take hold and charm opponents.

Charm/Resistance down duration: 1 minute.

Mana cost: 1'000 MP.

Cooldown: 5 minutes.

This sounded like a pretty OP skill, but the prerequisites to make it strong were pretty harsh. Then again, that only applied to someone that had nothing that could be used with it.

Astaroth smiled as he thought about his other two sound-emitting skills. Summoning Morpheus or melding with him, gave him access to the Sleeping Pulse and Dissonance Screech skills.

If he bolstered this with Hypnosis, he would be stacking three different debuffs on enemies. This made him quite a useful support mage.

Of course, that was far from being his aim in combat, but there was nothing wrong with wearing more than one hat, was there? His class allowed him to do it, after all.

The door to the third part of the dungeon opened on its own when they walked to it. And it revealed something the group wasn't expecting.

Behind the door, the scenery changed from a musky marshland to that of a small city made of stone and wood. The city was in awful shape, though, and looked like someone had recently raided it.

The gates that led inside the city were crumbled to the ground, shattered by a massive impact. Claw marks were spread across the walls, massive and at different heights.

In the distance, a gigantic tree stood in the center of the city. It was just as roughed up as the rest of its surroundings, half burnt and many of its branches destroyed.

The trunk seemed like it had been dug into, and a hole the size of a small house led inside. From where they were, the party couldn't see inside, but they could guess how it would be there, too.

They cautiously advanced, watching around them for signs of enemies. They soon came across the first batch of monsters.

Weirdly, though, they were fighting amongst each other. Half the monsters were lizard-looking humanoids, and the other half were the familiar frogmen they had seen up to now.

But something was off. The frogmen were wearing armor, much like the Lieutenant boss they had felled, and the lizard men were dressed in what looked like leathers and furs.

The frogmen were fighting as a unit, trying to push back the lizard men, but it was a losing battle. Their opponents were twice their size and seemed much stronger.

As they kept slowly approaching the combat zone, the group started understanding some words being shouted.

Until they got a full phrase through.

"Repel the invaders! Protect the kingdom!"

Astaroth's stomach dropped.

'Are the lizard men invading the frogmen?' he wondered.

Which side should they fight against? Should they kill all of them?

These were the questions going through their minds at this moment. But Phoenix broke the silence.

"Get ready. We're helping the frogmen."

Athena and Silent frowned at the order, since they had been battling these same enemies until now. But they kept their thoughts to themselves and followed the order.

The party charged in, taking both sides by surprise. But when the frogmen saw that the new combatants only targeted the lizard folk, they redoubled efforts to fight back.

The scuffle was over in minutes, since the players overpowered the lizard men. But the frogmen still looked at the players warily.

"Identify yourselves!"