Chapter 146: Me Inside This Dungeon

POV Eliza

The heroes had just entered the Lightning Dungeon when I arrived. I had already devised a plan in advance for how I wanted to explore the dungeon. As in the last dungeon, I wanted to follow them and walked in their shadow so that I would be considered part of their group by the dungeon. Then I would get my share of their EXP and they would get less. But I didn't care about the latter. Thanks to my advantages, every EXP I gained counted triple for me. If you take into account the boss fights with their special rewards, which are credited to me, I benefited even more from the heroes. As always, I could only win.

I waited a few minutes and then followed them into the dungeon. To do so, I had to go into the lake, which was freezing cold. I would also got wet. I didn't feel like doing that, so I thought of an alternative. If my shadow could move and I could even touch things like a stele with it, it should be possible to touch the dungeon entrance and get inside. Surprisingly, it worked, and I found myself in the dungeon. The downside was that I briefly lost my bearings because I was thrown off my concentration when the spell was forcibly ended.

The area was one big swamp and therefore not very appealing. At least the visibility was lower than normal due to the fog, which worked to my advantage. This meant that the heroes couldn't see me, but I could see them. With my Sense Presence skill and my better eyesight, I could perceive their aura from a greater distance.

I followed them through the first floors without catching up to them. The battles, if there were any at all, were neither exciting nor did they give any noticeable EXP. I was only interested in the boss room and the development point. I also got the EXP when I cast a buff spell on one of the heroes outside of sight, and as long as the spell lasted, I was considered part of the group. If I wanted to. For the boss fights, I bypassed the heroes shortly before and lay in wait in front of the entrance. Due to the poor visibility and countless plants growing along the way, there were numerous shadows large enough for me to hide in. As soon as they passed me, I wandered back into Eleonore's shadow and passively participated in the boss fight.

This method was cowardly, but very effective. I just had to make sure I didn't run out of MP. I solved this problem by occasionally draining some of Eleonore's MP with my Mana Drain skill. In addition, I only had to maintain a shadow spell during boss fights. This kept my consumption within limits.

I used the time I spent out of her sight and out of her view to observe and study the characteristics of the monsters. I discovered that almost all monsters had a high resistance to air and water magic, but no noticeable resistance to light and dark magic. This knowledge would help me when I went back into the dungeon solo after the heroes. Unfortunately, I didn't know how many days I would have for my solo exploration without anyone noticing I was missing.

After a few days, the heroes managed to defeat the boss of the 25th floor, albeit with great difficulty. The armored turtle, with its almost complete armor and magic resistance, was a very difficult opponent for them. Fortunately, dark magic continued to be useful. A quick try with the curse spell did the trick. At least the heroes had prepared for the flying jellyfish with the stun effect by protecting Eleonore so she could heal the paralysis. After the fight, the four left the dungeon and went back to camp.

The special teleportation of the other dungeon was also possible here, which meant I didn't have to walk all the way back. This allowed me to stay here longer. However, my stay was still limited to a few days because I didn't have any more food with me. As a result, I decided to focus on the bosses and hardly engage in any other battles.

The first bosses were no problem at all, especially since I was immune to their poison and paralysis attacks thanks to my resistances. From floor 21 onwards, the battles became much more challenging, which slowed me down. I used every advantage I had. My battle tactic was therefore almost always to cast my strongest poison on my opponents by running past them and touching them with my hand. Then I turned to the next enemy and hoped that the poison would be enough to defeat them. Surprisingly, most monsters that were poisonous themselves were not resistant to this type of poison, which killed them. I didn't carry a weapon because I valued mobility more. I also had to be extra careful not to fall into a swamp hole. My Sense Danger skill helped me enormously with this.

Only the strongest monsters or those with poison resistance could not be defeated with a single poison spell. However, these monsters were also the ones that gave the most EXP, so I didn't want to skip them. In addition to the crocodiles and armored turtles, these included some of the floating jellyfish. Against these, I cast attack spells from dark magic and fought with my dagger.

This allowed me to defeat the boss of floor 25 relatively easily. I was actually more excited about this victory than I thought I would be. I was particularly excited about the rewards, especially the skill improvement. With floor 25, I was allowed to upgrade an advanced skill to expert, provided that the skill was one of the 8 in the class upgrade. As usual, sense and resistance skills were an exception and also included. When defeating the boss with the heroes, I didn't have much time and chose poison resistance under pressure. The skill was definitely not wasted regardless.

This time I had more time and looked through the possible skills. I had already upgraded hunger and sleep resistance to advanced on the lower floors. I had upgraded poison resistance before, so those three skills were out. That left paralyse resistance, which was very useful in this dungeon. There was only one other interesting skill, namely Air Magic. I could have improved this in other ways, so I chose paralyse resistance for safety reasons. Who knew when I would get another opportunity, and as a lone fighter, I couldn't afford to be paralyzed.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any further. From this point on, most of the monsters seemed to be at least partially resistant to poison. As a result, my poison couldn't cause enough damage, and the monsters had so many HP that my progress continued to slow down. I quickly had to admit to myself that it was taking too long to get anywhere, so I left the dungeon. I would have liked to try the boss on floor 30, but I didn't have the time. So I returned to the surface.

Outside the dungeon, I got really wet because I came out into the lake. I also slipped slightly and fell into the mud. I was accordingly dirty. I cursed briefly and made my way back. Hopefully my group hasn't returnes yet.

When I arrived at the camp, I was immediately spotted and welcomed.

“Recruit Stevt, where have you been? Your group returned from the dungeon a day ago.” <Soldier>

That was important information, so I had to spontaneously make up a lie.

“Unfortunately, I wasn't with my group in the dungeon because I had to bring back an injured person a few days ago. After that, I set out to see if I could catch up with them and rejoin them. Unfortunately, even after several days, my search was unsuccessful and I had to return.” <Eliza>

“You're back. You should get changed. You look terrible.” <Soldier>

“I fell into a mud puddle several times. I'll clean myself up right away and report to my group leader.” <Eliza>

But before I could change, Ezekiel caught up with me.

“Where did you come from? You were already missing.” <Ezekiel>

“You were in the dungeon for so long. I looked for you regularly, including today. But we must have missed each other.” <Eliza>

“At least you didn't go into the dungeon alone to look for us. But now go clean up. You look terrible.” <Ezekiel>

“Yes, I will. Should I come to you then?” <Eliza>

“Yes, do that. Then I'll bring you up to date on the dungeon. I suspect that now that everyone is back, we'll be leaving soon.” <Ezekiel>

While I was still cleaning myself up, we received the news that we would be leaving in two days to return to Lightburgh.