"Why?!" Noah exclaimed immediately questioning the system, unfortunately, it had gone silent on him. The system had disabled his reach to his more useful asset, now he had to settle for his bare hands and spells. His rings had become useless due to the command, and he could only sigh when the system still didn't answer him.
'Maybe I can call on Cudgel,' Noah thought raising his hand, but a panel appeared to shatter his already tiny hope.
[You are too far away]
'How far?' Noah thought forcing himself to focus on the task ahead.
Down the curved tunnel he could see lights, and also shadows, but no sound. He had to be honest, he lacked confidence. He would have to tear monsters apart or cast spells at them. Unfortunately, he couldn't reach his potions which meant he had to conserve what he had.
From the basic layout given to him by the system, after the first floor, at the end of the second floor he would have to kill a boss to move on. The same for the fourth floor. Then finally the fifth floor would be a one-on-one battle with the boss.
He expected the difficulty to be high, but now that he had more than half his assets locked from him it seemed to have become harder.
Casting his armor spell, Noah watched the light of a battle armor encase him in its deep-yellow light, and he began his slow march down the surprisingly wide tunnel.
Arriving at the edge that burst into an opening more than a kilometer in radius.
Noah felt himself gasp at the sight that lay before him, and even more of his confidence dwindled.
Legitimately more than 40 serpents silently roamed the wide and clear rocky expanse. The dungeon room was wide featuring a ceiling that was more than 500m in height. One could plant a small estate in that place.
The serpents were mainly green in color, but rather than slithering on the ground, their reptilian figures featured four legs that allowed their large and bulky figures crawl.
One of the serpents could comfortably swallow Noah in one gulp, and a meal of him wouldn't be enough to fill its stomach.
The snakes were silent, as even their march was graceful, but that sight couldn't hide the danger that they posed.
Noah for one felt his instincts tingle madly at the weirdly beautiful sight. But he had no choice but to face them head-on. And from the information he gained, unless he cleared the first floor he would not be able to advance.
[Grand serpent of flames]
[Level: 65]
[Affinity: Fire]
[Title: Protector of the Dishonored Serpent]
[Danger level: N/A]
The addition of their level stats but not their tiers left Noah taken aback. Unfortunately, he couldn't dwell on that topic.
'I need a plan,' Noah thought occasionally glancing at the peaceful-looking beasts, even if their faces were trauma-inducing.
After inspecting the beasts for over ten minutes, Noah realized that they all never moved past a certain point. It seemed they had posts, one that they dared not cross.
'I can use that,' Noah thought after studying their behavior for another while. He wondered, however, if things would change if they noticed an intruder. Needless to say, the only way he could find out was of course by revealing himself.
His figure casually strode into the expanse, and all the serpents stopped their movements in unison, to focus their reptilian gazes on his tiny figure. The sight freaked Noah out due to its perfect timing.
Something seemed to pop inside Noah's mind at that instant. His instincts had screamed so hard it lost their voice in his mind.
Not even two seconds had passed before the sound of wild and raged shrieking and hissing noises spread within the cave. The powerful sound waves bounced on the walls of the expanse to travel anywhere they liked.
The serpents surprisingly; all at once, began their raged march towards him.
Noah's figure crackled with power as he prepared for their eventual collision. He took Elder Sarah's advice and sped towards a different spot in the cave.
This needless to say caught the serpents unprepared, allowing Noah the chance to take down one of them. Or so he thought.
His right fist slammed into the side of one of the serpents, immediately sending it flying, but he had only been able to break a few of its rock-like scales.
The world seemed to lose all its color before Noah's eyes as his expression turned cold at what had happened. Quickly slamming his foot on the ground, Noah caused ice to explode from beneath him, spread in every direction.
A whitish-blue layer of ice around two inches in thickness spread out inside the expanse, but the bodies of the serpents shattered the ice before it could trap them.
That event surprised him since he knew that such was only possible if the serpents had resistance to cold that matched his.
One of the monsters cracked its tail at his moving figure, fortunately, he saw it coming and evaded it, before grabbing the serpent by its tail and beginning to spin on a spot.
The serpent slammed into many of its subordinates, and it surprisingly did more damage than Noah's punch had.
Unfortunately, Noah had to let go of the serpent since it had suddenly caught fire. At that point, explosions of orange flames lit up the underground expanse, and Noah soon found an army of flaming serpents spitting balls of flames at his figure.
"Fuck!" he exclaimed slamming his palms on the ground to raise a cylindrical wall of ice featuring many thick layers. However he didn't end there, he allowed a pillar of solid ice to shoot towards the ceiling of the expanse; multiple jagged edges appeared on it after it attached to the mana-stone-filled ceiling.
A rain of icy spikes occurred at that point dropping the temperature to a level below zero degrees.
The rain of spikes continued for whole minutes. but Noah received no notification, which meant he hadn't killed anything. To add to his inner turmoil, the room had turned silent apart from the explosions of uneven spikes that occurred immediately after his spikes landed on something.
Promptly creating a series of cubical shapes in the walls after unfolding his consciousness but they fell prey to a strange power, Noah gained a 360 view of the dungeon, and the color in his face drained at the sight.
'When did monsters have defensive spells,' he grimaced at the sight of more than forty spherical barriers of pure flames standing on different positions in the expanse. Noah never stopped raining frozen spikes which allowed him to see how his attacks had no effect on the flaming barriers.
However, there remained a detail that managed to explain the beast's unprecedented power, and it was due to the presence of the speed essence he sensed coming from the spells.