Chapter 173 First Trial [4]

Splash-

"It stinks"

"Tell me about it"

Henry and Nathan were sitting on a large rock surrounded by swamp water.

It had been an hour since they entered the third floor. Immediately after they found ourselves on Floor 3, they were given extra stats and a dozen monsters jumped on them.

Henry was especially bitter.

They weren't getting any drops!

Dungeon of Trials, a dungeon famous for its drop rates, and they got zero drops! Not even trash drops but ZERO!

They were tired, were engaging in combat frequently, the monsters were Meta-rank and gave meager exp, and they were on a tight schedule.

"It's like... like we are walking symbols of unluckiness!"

"Tell me about it"

Nathan was consoling Henry, who was tired to the point he didn't even care about monitoring Nathan anymore.

In his defense, all Nathan was doing was firing swords to hinder monsters until he kills them while Nathan himself didn't move much.

Henry wasn't complaining. He was the one who asked Nathan to stay back.

But at that time, he didn't know their situation was going to be this bad!

"What did I do wrong? Where are my drops!"

"Tell me about it"

"...are you even listening to me?"

"Tell me about it"

Henry gave Nathan a long, hard stare.

...until he realized Nathan was meditating.

"How the hell can you even hear me?"

"Tell me about it"

"Are you a tape recorder?"

"Tell me about it"

"YO-Fuuuu.... he must have expended a lot of energy creating those swords. I shouldn't get angry with him just because I'm having bad luck inside the dungeon."

"Tell me about it"

"..."

Henry stood up and sat on the opposite side of the rock.

"Fuck monitoring him. I'm too tired to use my brain"

Henry closed his eyes to rest. They had eliminated a lot of monsters, probably every monster within a few kilometers, thus he didn't need to worry about getting ambushed.

On the other side, Nathan was using his art.

Inside his soul, the God Killing Spear's constellation was shining brightly.

Suddenly, a spear constellation clattered.

The clattering increased, and the constellation flew inside the God-Killing Spear's constellation.

Nathan's brows furrowed as he struggled to fine-tune the God-Killing Spear.

The process to complete the God-Killing Spear was to sacrifice other constellations to it. Doing this, Nathan is able to understand the composition of the sacrificed constellation. Then he compares both of the constellations and finds the flaws in God-Killing Spear and rectifies them.

In short, he was using constellations to understand weapon structure and compositions, then using that as the base for finding flaws in God-Killing Spear.

Of course, God-Killing Spear had very minute flaws. The flaws were so insignificant that a master blacksmith wouldn't be able to find them and call the spear a masterpiece.

Nathan understood he would have to sacrifice hundreds of constellations to perfect the God Killing Spear.

'The power the spear showed in the Underworld wasn't in 1/100th of the original'

He was surprised he was able to even create an inferior version in a few seconds. He could only attribute this to the system assistance that came with forcefully increasing the art's mastery.

Nathan shook the unnecessary thoughts away and focused on refining the spear.

With each constellation sacrificed, he noticed how weapons became sharper and stronger, how some were better while some were worse, and how minute strokes during blacksmithing can make a masterpiece trash.

Comparing God-Killing Spear and other weapons was helping him improve his knowledge about weapons on a fundamental level.

His [Understanding] was increasing.

This made him realize...

'The art won't provide me a method of scanning higher grade weapons. I need to learn that by myself.'

Nathan hoped this wasn't true but knew better than to place his chances of succeeding on an uncertain hope.

Approximately 11 hours later, Nathan was done for today.

Opening his eyes, he found a beacon of light shooting into the sky.

Nathan covered his eyes and barely managed to see the outline of Henry inside the pillar of light.

"What the..."

Nathan pinched his cheeks to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The pain came and so did the conclusion.

He wasn't dreaming, unfortunately.

Perhaps sensing his movements, Henry closed the pillar. He doubled over and started breathing heavily.

Nathan did not go to help, he was trying to cope with reality.

"Do you... have to do 'that' to use the beacon?"

While the pillar was active, Henry's arms were in reverse grip and he was shouting 'Haaaa' endlessly. The pillar of light fluctuating depending on the volume of shouting didn't help either.

Was he trying to go Super Sayian?

Nathan finally understood why Henry was reluctant to explain his method of contacting them while they were entering the dungeon.

Indeed, it was too corny, Nathan would never do something like that, never.

"We're in trouble"

Henry spoke with a serious expression. Nathan jumped down from the rock and stood before him.

"Katrina?"

"Yes. I used the signals a few hours back, but she's still not here."

Listening to Henry, Nathan's brows furrowed.

"How much time has passed since then?"

"11 hours."

The time was too long even for Floor 3.

Nathan could only guess two things: Katrina was killed and teleported outside the dungeon. She didn't return after that.

Or she was in trouble and couldn't come to them.

"I can wait for a few more hours, but if she doesn't come in that time, we'll have to leave her behind."

Henry wasn't responsible for Katrina. His job was to bring Nathan to Floor 13.

Nathan had a troubled expression.

But, he managed to nod. They could only do so much if Katrina didn't come to them.

'I haven't even reached First Trial yet and things are already going haywire. Fuck, aren't I an extra, why the hell do I have more troubles than Leon?'

Recounting upcoming problems, Nathan's face scrunched up.

'Anna, I hope she didn't fuck something up because if she did...'

Nathan shook his head. Just thinking about the troubles if Anna didn't guide Class Katana like in the original novel was enough to bring tears to his eyes.

'Yeah, no way she would do something different. Isn't she always going logic this, logic that? Then, her actions shouldn't be much different."

Ultimately, he decided to stop thinking altogether.

Problems would come, he knew. He only hoped Leon could deal with them because he sure as hell didn't want to help.

'I'll just leave everything to luck. How bad can it be...'

'Did I just jinx myself twice?'