Chapter 145: This Dungeon Is Different

POV Cornelius

We were ultimately able to reach the Lightning Dungeon almost unscathed. Our group was the last to arrive, just as I had planned. This minimized the danger we faced and allowed us to save our strength for the dungeon itself. After all, our recruits were supposed to go first and gain experience for themselves.

The first floors were not very exciting. Nevertheless, this approach allowed us to gather useful information about the dungeon's enemies. We received surprisingly little information in advance, with the instruction to act without hesitation and find out everything we needed to know for ourselves. We only knew that there were a variety of different enemies on each floor. I noticed that in the other two dungeons, we only had one type of enemy per floor, or two at most. We didn't know why that was.

It was also extremely irritating that the entrance was under water. The weather in this valley was really bad and unpleasant.

“Ugh, why does it have to be in the water? It's probably freezing cold.” <Eleonore>

“Hmm, the rain probably caused the lake to form here, and since we're in the mountains, the water won't be warm.” <Javier>

“That doesn't mean I have to like it. Do we really have to go in there?” <Eleonore>

“Yes, Eli. We're here to become stronger, and to do that, we have to go in. Look, the group in front of us has formed a chain by holding hands. That way, only two of them had to go into the water. You're lucky, you can stay dry.” <Cornelius>

“Then let's finally go in. It's very unpleasant out here. Hopefully it's warmer inside.” <Eleonore>

We approached the entrance. Ansgar volunteered to be the first to go into the water. Since Javier refused just like Eli, I was second. At least I gave in, because I knew that otherwise we would just argue for a long time and I would lose in the end anyway. So we formed a chain by holding hands. As soon as Ansgar entered the underwater entrance, we were all pulled in, suddenly appearing on the other side. Just before we disappeared, I thought I saw a small movement behind me. Weren't we the last group? But before I could turn around, we were already in the dungeon.

A swamp of unknown size stretched out before us. At first, the terrain was still firm and stable, but behind it, it became increasingly wet. In addition, a light fog hung over the ground. Small paths of solid ground ran between the larger pools of water. The temperature was uncomfortably cool, around 10°C at most. The humidity was very high. Overall, the entire situation was very unpleasant. Next to me, I heard Eli's quiet complaints, but we had to get through it.

We moved forward cautiously under Ansgar's leadership. We didn't encounter any monsters along the way, as the groups ahead of us had already defeated them all. The monsters' corpses were still lying around everywhere. We could see all kinds of lizards, amphibians, and snakes. However, I had great difficulty deciding whether they were normal animals. To me, they looked very normal.

We made rapid progress. We didn't have to fight, and the monster corpses showed us the way. This allowed us to quickly reach the lower levels, as we had planned. We also benefited from the fact that the first floors seemed to be smaller than those in the two dungeons we had already been in.

The first four floors looked exactly like the first one, and the monsters were similar. On floor 4, we met the first of the groups again. They were standing next to a water hole and were fishing out one of their comrades who had obviously fallen in. We left them behind and continued on.

Ahead of us, the first monsters that had not yet been defeated appeared. I had a hard time describing them properly. They looked like large jellyfish with long tentacles floating in the air in the fog. Since they were floating above the water, the others were able to avoid them. Now two of them floated toward us. They lashed out at us with their long arms, but they were too weak for us. Javier cast a few quick fire spells and took them out with ease.

On floor 5, we faced our first boss fight. However, it was not a room like before, but rather an area. In the large swamp area, there was an area at the edge that was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of fog. In this wall, there was a passageway that led us to a kind of island. Once everyone in the group had entered the island, the passage closed behind us and we were greeted by a familiar sight. The air glowed in front of us and the boss appeared in the middle with his minions. They were a mixture of the monsters we already knew.

The fight was no problem at all, even though we had recently changed classes. However, this did not make us weaker, as we retained our skills and HP, etc. Only our stats were lower, but with each level in the new class, the difference became smaller and we should quickly regain our old strength. We already knew that we only needed a certain special skill to benefit from both classes. Fortunately, we were able to learn the skill in the Empire as soon as we reached level 10 in the second class.

After that, a chest and a stele appeared. Ansgar could now show what he had learned after switching to a thief class. There was nothing to learn at the stele, so we just took the development point. Then a passage opened up in front of us in the fog and we reached the next floor.

We fought our way through the next floors at this pace. We encountered new monsters such as frogs, turtles, and crocodiles. In addition, the monsters we already knew appeared in several increasingly powerful variants. They essentially had three special characteristics. First, some were poisonous. Second, many had an attack that could briefly put you into a state of shock, which was equivalent to paralysis. This ability was the most important component of Lightning Magic itself. Many spells from this school could produce the stun effect.

The last of the special abilities was particularly annoying and presented us with some problems. Some monsters, especially the turtles, had a kind of anti-magic and were highly resistant to elemental magic. They were only vulnerable to light and dark magic. Besides Ansgar, Eli was able to show what she could do here.

The deeper we advanced into the levels, the more the terrain became a problem. The dungeon's traps turned out to be holes that you fell into in the swamp, even though they looked like solid ground. In these holes were leeches that bit you and sucked your blood. Many of them were also poisonous or caused an itchy rash. They could even transmit diseases. High endurance helped as resistance here, and if any of us were unlucky enough to get sick, Eli could heal us. As always, her healing abilities were worth their weight in gold.

We overtook the other groups relatively quickly and swiftly crossed the next floors. We rarely had to return to our base camp to recover. The next boss monsters were exclusively amphibians or crocodiles, which worked to our advantage. Our high poison resistance also proved beneficial, as the snakes in particular had an unpleasant venom.

On floor 25, we encountered the last boss, which we defeated. Here, the boss was a turtle that had both strong armor and anti-magic abilities. Only Eli could do any noticeable damage here, so we focused on the other monsters. Fortunately, the turtle was slow and had poor accuracy. But it was very tough and demanded almost all of our remaining reserves. So we decided to just go to the next floor and then return to the surface.

Overall, I was very satisfied with this dungeon visit. We were never really in mortal danger, but in the end we clearly realized that we had reached the limits of our abilities. That said, floor 26 was very good for our level and therefore acceptable. It took us less than a week to complete. However, one thing irritated me greatly. We had hardly found any mana cores, and when we did, they were only in the larger monsters. Together with the fact that the variety of monsters was significantly greater, this made me wonder. Why were the dungeons so different in nature? Maybe someone at home could explain it to me.

We returned to our camp and waited for the recruits. Only Ezekiel's group had not yet returned.

We had already decided on the way back from the dungeon that we had had enough of the bad weather and wanted to return home. So I decided that we should leave in four days. Until then, each group was free to continue going to the dungeon. If a group had not returned by then, a squad would be sent out to bring them back.