＜ 23. Test (2) ＞
“Tricia, in the back!”
“I know!”
Wedge – Liquid!!!
Perong-
“Kek, kehek!”
Trisha kicks off a wall, somersaults, and shoots an arrow backwards. It was a movement close to divine, so the swordfish couldn’t even think of avoiding it. One hit with an arrow pierced a hole in the stomach like a donut.
‘The Shrine Ascaliph’ showed outstanding performance worthy of its name.
The Razormaw is a dragon race monster whose entire body is covered with steel-like scales, but it is notorious for being cut in half regardless of physical or magical damage due to its inherently high resistance. However, Trisha had already caught the 8th Razormaw with an unreinforced arrow.
“Stone Needle!”
“Kuk, kuk, khehehe!”
Emilia was also fighting hard from the rear. Aside from occasionally flying stone needles, she was mainly in charge of creating barriers to make the terrain easy for molls to hunt.
Andrea and Mimic stood in front. Not to mention Andrea, who turns a fist-stretching monster into porridge, and the Mimic also showed a decent performance by chewing up the sharp anglers.
Andrea belatedly realized that the mark of courage could not be obtained by destroying the labyrinth.
Originally, the person who hit the last hit had the right to acquire the Mark of Courage, but a monster who died from being crushed by a wall was treated as a death by terrain, so the mark could not be obtained. Besides, even if there was a monster that died from direct punches, it was never easy to turn over the wreckage and find the corpse.
So, Andrea and the others were hunting monsters while wandering in the labyrinth like the normal challengers. Although the level of hunting was different from the other challengers.
Of course, it wasn’t that Andrea thoughtlessly turned the labyrinth’s entrance into a mess. It was a mark of some sort. It was destroyed so grandiosely that even if you get lost in the labyrinth, you should be able to quickly find out where the entrance is by standing on the wall.
For now, all the monsters in this area have been cleaned up. Andrea and the others searched to see if the mark of courage had come out of the monster’s corpse.
As a result, Andrea has one and Trisha has one. A total of 2 tokens were obtained.
It was a bit puzzling whether even the mimic was treated as a challenger, but anyway, the quota for each person was 5. You can’t take away the tokens, but you can pass them on, so I just had to collect 20 of them anyway. However, collecting it bit by bit was an impossible amount.
“…is it too little?”
Trisha’s voice. Emilia and Mimic nodded beside them as if they were sympathetic.
Andrea knew the cause. This was also a problem related to the core system that penetrates the dungeon.
High risk, high return. You cannot get good rewards without taking high risks. The Mark of Courage can only be obtained by those who prove their ‘courage’ by facing an enemy more powerful than themselves.
It is a test that is too strong and has the side of becoming poison. Andrea briefly clicked her tongue and explained the situation to the party.
“Right now, our combat power is objectively too high, and the probability of getting a mark against normal monsters is absurdly low. I need to find a strong elite monster or boss monster.”
A group of people nodding their heads. Tricia sat on her chin, pensive, then opened her mouth.
“But how do you find them?”
“Someone has to scout. Trisha, do you think you should go over the wall and take a look?”
“I want you to go up here?”
Trisha looked up at the far-high walls of the labyrinth. It was a smooth wall with no handle to hold on to, so it seemed impossible to climb it no matter how good a rock climber was brought.
“I’m not a mountain goat, so how can I get up here…”
“Wow, a bowman. How about punching through a wall and climbing up?”
“…If you’re going to use that method, Andrea would be better. No, I can’t control my strength, so I’m going to break the wall and eat it…”
Andrea hurriedly came up with an answer before the conversation between Mimic and Trisha went to pieces.
“No, there is a ‘blink shot’. If we just shoot it up there, we can go right away, right?”
“ah! That’s right. Why did you forget that?”
Trisha took a card from her deck, used it, and fired it upwards without delay. Soon, Tricia’s figure disappeared from the floor and appeared on the wall.
Andrea and the others watched as they waited for Trisha to bring good news.
* * *
“saw? Turning Razormaw into porridge with your fists?”
“No, he’s the guy who even knocked down the wall with his punches in the first place…”
“By the way, I thought only the guy who uses fists was a monster, but the girl who uses a bow and that box monster do one thing too?”
“Damn it, that’s nonsense. How come you only climbed the 90th floor and still have such strong guys?”
The entrance to the labyrinth, around the ruins that Andrea destroyed. At least 10 challengers gathered in front of the wall where the base remained. The illusion magic was projected vaguely on the wall, and the scene projected there was none other than the image of Andrea and the others.
Most of the challengers who gathered here were dropouts who entered the labyrinth belatedly and ran away after being brutally beaten.
Among them, the challengers who faced the sabermaw knew how strong and tricky the monster was. At their average level, one-on-one is not easy, and two people need to stick together to be able to hunt without difficulty.
However, the group slaughtered the Razormaw group as if they were straw puppets. For a person who risked his life and struggled, it was just astonishing.
“Now, have you all seen it? How dangerous are those guys?”
In front of the challengers was the person who used the illusion magic. It was Iza who gathered the people who had fled from the labyrinth together.
The sparse goatee and the bulging eyebrows gave him the impression of not being very trustworthy. He looked around at the gathered challengers with a smirk on his lips.
The man’s name is Jericho. The class is a illusionist who handles illusions and spatial arts. It was the third challenger to take the test on the 90th floor. Even throughout the long history of dungeons, few challengers have gone through such a strange journey.
Usually, a challenger who fails the 90th floor test usually dies without reaching the 90th floor again. However, Jericho didn’t die, but was alive and standing here again.
The first time I reached it, I managed to collect all the Marks of Courage, but I couldn’t find the exit and fell off. The second time I reached it, I was defeated in the upper level test and fell.
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Now that he has finally reached this place for the third time, Jericho is determined to do whatever it takes to get through. This time, what he focused on was the elimination of ridiculously strong competitors.
‘You can’t look at it narrowly. You have to paint the big picture. The test of the lower classes, where there are enough people to pass, is just a taste anyway. The real problem is that one of the two must pass the upper level test…’
The upper level test is a duel between challengers. That means that the more you attach the weaker ones and drop the stronger ones, the higher your chance of passing the test.
Jericho had mastered the lower class tests. While climbing the 180th floor of this damn dungeon again, he came up with a plan that would allow him to pass perfectly.
First passing the weak guys. It wasn’t difficult.
The level up continued to be reset, but the farming was maintained, so Jericho’s combat power was second only to Andrea’s group. He gathered monsters on the verge of death and took them to one of the weakest challengers.
“Mr. Wilhelm, Mr. Wilhelm, put an end to these monsters. And Wilhelm will keep five of the tokens of courage you have acquired, and give all the rest to me.”
I already knew that the mark of courage came out differently depending on how strong the challenger was. Jericho, who made the absurdly weak challenger eat the last blow, was able to secure dozens of tokens of courage at once.
Jericho used the mark of courage as bait to summon the fallen challengers. The challengers, who thought it was too late to pass anyway, flocked to Jericho with the thought that it would be a break-even.
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Now it was time to take the next step. Dropping strong guys. This was a lot harder than attaching the weak guys.
Physical damage is, of course, impossible. No matter how many chicks gather together, they cannot defeat the tiger. In addition, there is a penalty of falling to the first floor of the dungeon if you damage another challenger.
Jericho had a reverse idea there. If you can’t do physical harm, can’t you do something else without fear of retaliation? For example… making it impossible to obtain the mark of courage.
If you drop it once, you won’t have to face it again, right? With that in mind, Jericho conceived this plan. On top of that, if he used the Mark of Courage as bait, he didn’t have to take the slightest risk.
The one that Jericho was targeting right now was definitely Andrea and the others. Except for that side, there was no one who could be his opponent among the challengers this time. He captivated the audience with his subtle speech and made everyone perceive Andrea and the others as dangerous objects.
Then it was time to entice desperate challengers.
“Retaliation between challengers is impossible anyway. I have a way to drop that group of challengers, would you like to hear it?”
Challengers glaring at you with anxious eyes. Jericho pushed their backs with a single word.
“I’ll give 5 Courage Tokens to anyone who helps and let me know where the exit is!”
“…!”
After a while, there were no challengers who did not listen to Jericho.
* * *
Finding monsters was harder than catching them. After scouting for a while, Trisha found a boss monster.
A black sheep’s dream. This monster, which seemed to have mixed the properties of slime and race, had an irregular body with dozens of legs. In what could be called the spine, bones protruded through the slime, and a thick, wooly mist rose around it.
Consistent with his appearance, he hardly takes damage from physical attacks. However, Andrea knew this guy’s weakness all too well.
“Tricia, do you have the cards you put in the second deck? ‘An arrow of freezing’ and ‘An arrow of heat wave’. Use it now to hit him.”
“Okay.”
The weakness of ‘Dream of the Black Sheep’ is rapid temperature change. If it was hot or cold, it couldn’t do much damage, but if it was cold and suddenly hot, it could do devastating damage.
Wedge – Wedge – !
Pachijiji – Kwagwagwagwang!!
“Kureuk, kureuk, guruk…”
The black sheep’s dream, which had cooled down and received a high fever in an instant, fell into a groggy state at once as planned. Andrea called out to Emilia, grabbing her back and pressing her down.
“Emilia! Just hit it!”
“yea, I got it!”
“Kurruk, kurruk—”
Among the party, the one with the lowest combat power is Emilia. I don’t know if it’s going to be a melee like before, but I had to make Emilia kill it as much as possible if I could buy enough time to overpower and kill it.
‘I think I can collect about 8 with this guy.’
But while Emilia was running, the air suddenly split and a small portal appeared.
The one who came out of the portal was a small man. He looked at his eyes with frightened eyes, but his actions were quicker than ever.
The man thrust the fireball in his hand into the body of ‘Dream of the Black Sheep’. Being completely subdued, the monster could not resist.
“Grumble!”
The phlegmatic body grotesquely swelled, and then exploded with a grotesque sound.
Fur – uh!
Mucus splashing everywhere. At the place where the corpse exploded, there was a heap of ‘Marks of Courage’. The man hurriedly picked up the Token of Courage and returned to the portal he came out of. When I pushed my body in, the portal disappeared as if nothing had happened.
All of this happened in less than 5 seconds.
It was so sudden that it took me a while to realize the situation.
Andrea stared blankly at the empty space where the portal had disappeared and suddenly realized. That someone stole the last hit.
Andrea washing her face. I thought no one would dare to do crazy things like this if I showed them my strength, but I guess I was wrong. As expected, the world was wide and there were many crazy people.
‘Did you think you could survive if you ran away after committing this?’
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Now it was Andrea’s turn to tell the man who stole the last hit. You’ll never get out of here until you vomit up everything you just stole.
“Ha, you bastard… you got caught.”