Chapter 16 S-Rank Dungeon Opens!
Rault Islands, Morning-
The next morning, we took a small boat and left for the main island, where we will be staying for about a week before the S rank gate will open. During this time the students are free to do anything they want, except commit crimes obviously. The rules and regulations are rather strict here on the Rault islands, since several awakeners visit this place every day, throughout the whole year. High-security measures are thus important here.
There are several battleships stationed on these islands to protect the islands from any kind of sea problems. A huge number of fishermen enter the sea every day and since the marine industries depend on these local fishermen the fishermen get rather special treatment. Of course, you can't get away after committing a crime though.
Only those who are C rank or above can get away after committing crimes by paying compensation, well you will only get accused of a crime if you get caught red-handed. Otherwise, as long as you don't cause a massacre, your crimes will be ignored. After all, this is a world where only the strong have the chance of survival, weak ones are always disregarded here.
'Hmm, should I take part in that event or not?'
Before the S rank gate opens there is still an event. According to the novel, when the original protagonist Fade defeated the bullies, he triggered a chain villain event. You must know what a chain villain is right? It's when you defeat one and its backer comes to make trouble for you, then you defeat them and even one more person comes to make trouble with you. Yeah, that type of villain.
So, when those bullies woke up and found out that Fade has defeated them, they got enraged and requested Link, their ultimate backer to avenge them.
Now when on these Rault islands the students will divide into two factions. One supports Fade to stand against the bullies and the other is Link's group including his lackeys. To sort out their fight they will challenge each other through a dungeon hunting contest. In a dungeon hunting contest, you have to clear dungeons of a particular rank in a set time period.
The team which will clear the most dungeon at the end will win and the one with a lower dungeon clearing number will lose this game. It's a type of team match where coordination is extremely important, after all, you can't clear several dungeons by yourself. It can only be done if you are too high in rank than the dungeon itself.
But in the novel, the rank of the dungeon decided in this contest by these two groups was E rank dungeons. Since it was a contest obviously there will be a bet. And the bet was on who will get a kiss from Kira the main heroine between Fade and Link.
If you are thinking that Fade must have won this contest. No, you guessed wrong this time. Fade didn't win this contest. Actually, Link was going to win this contest. But then destiny or you can say luck shined on Fade and an S rank gate was opened thus, the contest was never concluded.
But if the gate had not opened then Fade would have lost this contest. Are you wondering why?
Just close your eyes and think with your solid knees of yours, how can a mere Fade win against Link who is already midway to C rank? Even though Fade is the son of the heavens and has heavenly luck protecting him, it can't equal true strength.
No matter how much of heaven-defying cheats you have, you can't fight someone who is too high in ranks than you. Not to mention Fade is still an E rank there's a huge gap in their strength.
'In the end, I will choose not to get involved with the business of the protagonist again.'
After thinking about all this Rio came to the conclusion that rather than wasting his time on this cliché thing. He would rather polish his skills which will help him survive the next disaster, which will be coming in just a week.
Do you think that he should make others aware of the disaster? How will he make them believe it even if he told them everything about it? Not to mention people will mock him saying he has gotten mentally ill, instead.
'I just like minding my own business. Even if someone thinks that I am selfish it doesn't really matter much to me.'
In the following days, the plot developed just like Rio has expected it to be. The contest was decided and a lively atmosphere can be seen around the low-rank dungeons on several islands. The students who have already entered a dungeon before during the mid-term tests were already fearless about the dangers in the dungeons and were running toward them as if looking at a sweet.
Even the officials got a headache seeing the student's attitude, they tried to control the situation a bit, but the students just ignored them and continued to do their contest battle. In the end, the official sighed deeply and left while rubbing their heads. Ms. Anna just ignored it saying that the students are rather lively today.
While Rio was concentrating on his training and working on improving his skills, a fierce battle was going on between the students and the monsters:
"Come on! This is our 5th dungeon! We can win this contest!"
"Let's go!"
"Kill these nasty monsters!"
"Kill"
The students which have been fighting continuously have already their reason temporarily and just fighting like a madman, not caring for their own wounds, the only thing they care is about killing more monsters.
This is the infamous battle poisoning phenomenon. This can only be seen when you are fighting inside a dungeon. This phenomenon is also the reason why awakeners have to take breaks between their raid to a dungeon.
In this phenomenon, an awakener who has been fighting in the dungeon for a long time non-stop will slowly start to lose their sense of reason and the only thing they will care is about killing. Although, this can be cured rather easily by just carrying that particular person out of the dungeon after he ends up exhausted from his/her endless fight. But it can get extremely dangerous if you are not carried out of the dungeon on a time.
Because if you are not carried out and are still inside a dungeon even though you have collapsed from exhaustion, your desire to kill will start increasing very rapidly in that state, eventually it will affect your brain and cause serious brain damage to you, thus reducing you into a brainless killing machine. There have been examples of such people in the past and even now you can hear all this on news every once in a while
The students which have been fighting endlessly are obviously affected by this phenomenon but it's a relief that the officials have expected this outcome and a team of awakeners is nearby waiting for the students to collapse, in order to carry them out this place.
After clearing the fifth dungeon Fade's team of 10 students collapsed from exhaustion and got carried out by the awakeners hired by the officials. Although Fade was very unwilling to lose, in the end, he also collapsed from exhaustion.
Link's team was also not faring too well and except him most of his lackeys also collapsed. But since he is a C rank his resistance is obviously higher than others. So, he just continued until he got satisfied and Link was already laughing in happiness after finding out that he has already won the contest so easily.
Not to mention tomorrow is the day when the contest will end and he will be able to create his dominance among all the students. He was already thinking about how to punish those who were daring enough to go against him and helped that trash Fade.
But fate played a joke on the poor villain, the very next day at right 8 am a huge spatial shockwave ran throughout the islands. A huge area of space in the right middle of the all islands started to rumble and produce spatial cracks.
'It's finally starting.' (Rio)
All the space cracks started to merge and after merging they formed a small circular hole, which started to widen slowly and reached a diameter of 500m in just half an hour. Then the hole started to change its color, from pitch black it turned into purple, with tremendous spatial fluctuations surrounding it the dungeon gate finally stabilized itself and started to collect mana from the surrounding madly. Seeing such a huge dungeon gate opened in the middle of the Rault islands, the face of the officials became extremely ugly. They immediately sealed the location and started to prepare a blockade formation.
Everyone can understand from the amount of mana this dungeon is absorbing that it's preparing to spew a huge number of monsters out of it. If the blockade was not prepared at a time then the monsters will kill the citizens living on the Rault islands indiscriminately.
Even the fastest reinforcements will take about 4 hours to come to this place because of the distance of the Rault islands from the nearby military camp. Although there are warships stationed here, they are too few in number to fight against the monsters spewed by such a huge dungeon.
'So, this is how a Rank S dungeon looks like' (Rio)
Rio was already in awe after seeing this dungeon gate, the number of space fluctuations it is producing is already enough to destroy any creature below B rank immediately. Even B rank individuals will not be able to resist the sheer might of this gate for more than half an hour.
Only S rank or above creatures are qualified to enter it, without breaking a sweat. Others can only look from a distance. This is the might of an S-rank dungeon.
According to the history of this world, during the starting days when S rank was the mainstream and S rank people were extremely rare. These S rank dungeons were considered a huge disaster. Although these S rank dungeons would not release an S rank monster, the number of monsters released below S rank was already a huge headache. There's some kind of restriction which prevent monsters of the same rank as the dungeon gate cannot use that dungeon gate. There are only two way for monsters of the dungeon world to enter our world, one is through a dungeon gate of higher rank than you and another one is by becoming SS rank or above, thus acquiring the ability to open your own teleportation portal.
A huge number of casualties have been done by these S rank dungeons over time, but with the emergence of SS rank awakeners, these danger gates have been reduced to factories that provide several crucial things like mana stones for daily consumption. The number of S rank gates determines the economical conditions of a Race nowadays.
After observing the Dungeon gate for a while Rio's face was covered with a look of excitement. Although, he knew that he is not protected by heavenly luck like other named characters. But it's also true that:
'I will get to test my skills on several B rank monsters today, not to mention I can even increase my combat experience.'
'I am looking forward to it now!'