Chapter 29
Dragon Power Rises! (1)
Artis had placed all kinds of convenient tools in his new home in Highten, the Dungeon City.
His home had cold storage, magic lamps, a magic oven, etc.
Of course, for Ryu Han-bin, it was all the pie in the sky.
There wasn’t anything that he could use.
It didn’t make him uncomfortable, though.
“Artis, water!”
“Here.”
“Artis, food!”
“Here.”
“Artis, turn on the lights!”
He had someone else to rely on, after all.
Artis complained while turning on the magic lamp.
“It’s like I am serving a nobleman.”
Out of curiosity, Ryu Han-bin raised a question.
“How do the noblemen use these magic tools? Not all nobles have a high level, right?”
“Royals and nobles usually have a butler to manage magic tools.”
When it came to the great nobility or royalty, they were said to hire retired high-level Hunters as butlers.
The butlers operated magic tools in their stead.
“So when they have a conflict against another family, the person to be most wary of should be the owner of the house, right? But the butlers are the ones with a lot of combat experiences.”
Ryu Han-bin laughed.
He thought he saw a similar joke on the Internet.
“Is this the strongest theory of a butler?”
“What is that?”
“Oh, nothing.”
After dinner, they sat together in the living room.
They went over the details about that day’s Dungeon raid.
“What do you think? Did I look natural?”
He needed to know what Artis thought about the Valtara warrior, Felard Bean.
Artis nodded, recalling the other team’s surprise and admiration.
“Everyone looked deeply impressed.”
He thought they could continue doing what they did that day.
Eventually, one of the six Churches should contact them.
“If you get registered as a Church’s partner, we’ll proceed to the second phase of our plan.”
“About the Church’s partner policy, there’s something strange about it. If the six Goddesses show up in front of human beings themselves, isn’t that a golden opportunity for the Earthlings, too?”
Aliens could simply pretend to be Latnains, and when they’re about to be given a blessing, they could just kill the Goddesses.
“Do the Goddesses really need to do such a dangerous task? It should be enough just protecting the saints.”
Artis also had a similar question.
“Perhaps it’s also the target of the Goddesses.”
To receive the Goddesses’ blessing, you must kill numerous Aliens and close innumerable Dungeons.
“In other words, they could make the Devil’s pawns kill each other.”
It could be used to weaken the Devil Omphalos’ power while reducing the sacrifice of the Latnains.
“I’m sure they’ve prepared enough precautions for when the Earthlings attempt to use the opportunity of getting a blessing to kill the Goddesses. If I could see it happening, I’m sure the Goddesses have already thought about it as well.”
“We’ll see.”
“Rather, I feel the relationship between the Dungeon monsters and the Aliens is weirder.”
“Why’s that?”
“Han-bin, if you kill a monster in a Dungeon, you get the spirit energy of the monster, which is called ‘experience’ by the aliens, right?”
“Yeah. In my case, it should be at least level 45.”
“The others shouldn’t be that different from you because other aliens also secretly enter the dungeon to level up.”
Artis frowned.
“Why does the Devil allow Aliens to kill the Dungeon monsters?”
He would not have allowed the Earthlings to gain experience if he had to choose through killing Dungeon monsters.
“Then they’d only aim at the Latnains.”
The Devil Omphalos definitely did seem powerful enough to implement such a restriction.
He did make a system that prevented the Aliens from killing each other, after all.
“If both parties were sent to invade the Latna Continent, why did they need to kill each other?”
Ryu Han-bin blinked.
He didn’t think of that.
He asked the Guidelines just in case, but no answer came out.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem that can be solved easily anyway.”
As he shook his head, Artis took his arms out of his pockets.
In his hands was a sack of gold and silver coins.
“Okay, that’s today’s profit.”
“That’s a fair amount, but still not enough to reimburse the amount you spent on the house.”
“Homes aren’t cheap.”
Artis responded, and Ryu Han-bin jumped up from his seat.
“Then let’s go get more money.”
He then turned his head towards Artis and laughed.
“Of course, the real purpose is to raise your level, Artis.”
* * *
The Rastol Dungeon was a dungeon that resembled an ant nest.
Unlike the underground labyrinth-type Dungeons like Alpha and Tackle, it consisted only of pure natural crypts.
A man with a greatsword appeared in a cave covered in darkness.
Red dots soon began to appear in the shadow.s
The monsters dwelling within started making a fuss as they were alarmed by the intruder’s presence.
Kwack Kwack Kwack!
The sounds of keratin wings began to flutter.
From within the shadows emerged beetle-like monsters larger than a meter.
Most of the creatures in the Rastol Dungeon had the appearance of mutated insects.
[Race: Titan Krella. Lv. 40
Characteristics: It spreads and rubs its hard wings together to make a sound that can paralyze weak beings. Its strong exoskeleton can deflect knives, and its snout can spit out powerful acid.]
Ryu Han-bin laughed after checking the Guidelines.
“Hey, their level is pretty high!”
Aiming at the intruder, he was charged at by the beetle monsters.
Han-bin calmly unsheathed the greatsword on his back.
But he didn’t swing it.
“Humph!”
He shot up into the air to avoid the beetles.
His jumping power was so tremendous that he could land upside-down on the ceiling of the cave over 10 meters above him.
As he jumped over the monsters and headed for the other side of the cave, he glanced back.
‘Where is it…’
The rushing beetles turned and chased after him again.
He smiled and headed for the exit.
“Yes, keep chasing me like that!”
Ryu Han-bin, with a group of beetles behind his back, continued to run through the crypt.
A new cave appeared.
A new group of monsters also appeared.
This time, it was a crowd of giant scorpions over two meters in size.
Dozens of giant monsters clicked their fierce pincers and stabbed their pointed tails at him.
[Race: Giant Scorpion. Lv. 43]
He didn’t kill them either.
He ran around the cave wall, luring their gaze, and made them chase him to the next cave as well.
The next group was composed of monsters that didn’t look familiar, though they definitely looked like bugs.
They were about two meters long and had a bizarre appearance that looked like a combination of ants, scorpions, and centipedes.
[Race: Atopalios. Lv. 39]
There were dozens of them.
The sound of countless footsteps filling the cave rang out loud.
Tak tak tak tak!
The giant beetles and scorpions all joined together with the insect abominations, causing the cave to overflow with hundreds of monsters.
Despite being completely surrounded, Ryu Han-bin laughed.
“This should be enough.”
Holding his greatsword, he threw himself in the middle of the monsters.
The monsters sprayed acidic solutions, snapped their pincers at him, and tried to inject poison into his blood flow using their stingers.
“Huh!”
Still laughing, he swung his sword gently.
He easily blew away the acid fluids.
He then continued with his attack, cutting off the scorpions’ pincers one by one.
Wielding his sword sideways, he hit the monsters that attacked him with the blade’s fuller like a baseball.
Khaang!
He sent the monsters flying almost as if he had just hit a home run.
However, those who were hit by the monsters he sent flying also fell and died off. It was probably more fitting to call them bowling balls.
The giant warrior dashed through the monsters like lightning.
The monsters’ limbs were soon sent flying by the shockwaves his swings produced.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Calling his attacks crushing blows was an understatement.
No matter how strong the exoskeleton was, it shattered like glass at the hands of Ryu Han-bin.
Poong!
In one punch, he sent one of the monsters’ heads flying into its own body.
Weeeeeck!
The beetles’ thick armor was crushed in one kick.
Smash!
He ran around wildly– crushing, breaking, and tearing whatever they could.
Taaaaats!
Against the numerous monsters that gathered in the cave, Ryu Han-bin launched a bombardment of ruthless violence.
Their severed limbs and body fluids piled up and overflowed like mountains and rivers all over the battlefield.
Within a few moments, none had remained but monsters that were all on the brink of death.
Only a few of them had actually died.
Insect-type monsters’ vitality was more than high enough to prevent them from dying immediately after having their legs cut off and their bodies crushed. Instead, they would often fall on the floor and wriggle first.
Ryu Han-bin wiped the sweat on his forehead after defeating all the monsters.
“Oh, there are a lot of them. This should work.”
Then he smiled happily and screamed toward the entrance to the cave.
“Artis! The table is all set!”
* * *
Another individual entered the cave.
He wore no clothes and had gorgeous red hair dangling from his head.
A strip show in the middle of a Dungeon might have had sounded like some form of fetish, but he had a reason for being naked.
The man radiated red light from his whole body.
Soon enough, he transformed into a red Dragon.
“Gaaaaarrrrhh!”
The Dragon breathed flames toward the fallen monsters.
Fierce heat filled the cave, causing all the monsters to burn.
Krrrrrkkkk!
None of the insects had the power to avoid or stop its flames.
With a single breath, he had massacred hundreds of monsters.
“Fuuuuuh…”
After halting his Dragon Breath, Artis looked down at his chest with a blank expression.
“Oh my God, I never thought this was possible…”
An enormous amount of spirit energy was gathering into the dragon core.
It didn’t take long for his Dragon Power to be filled.
Ryu Han-bin gave him a proud expression.
[Race: Dragon. Fire dragon Lv. 53]
“Congratulations, Artis. You’ve leveled up.”
The red Dragon had a look of disbelief.
It was the first time he had absorbed so many spirits energy at once.
He could feel his Dragon Power rising.
“This doesn’t make any sense… It took me at least two years to level up once…”
Dragons grew slower than humans because of their long lifespan.
That was why Artis was still only a Level 36 Mage despite already being alive for several decades in his human form.
“How can I even make sense of this?”
Ryu Han-bin shrugged.
“Artis, how many monsters do you usually get to slay every year?”
“Well, I’m not hunting every day, so on average, about a thousand to 1,500?”
“You didn’t kill them all by yourself, did you?”
“Yeah. I’m always with a team.”
“If five hunters hunted, that would be around two or three hundred monsters killed per person.”
Ryu Han-bin pointed to the corpses of hundreds of monsters.
“Isn’t that the number of monsters you’ve just slain right now?”
“… That’s right.”
Artis nodded with a blank face.
It made enough sense upon hearing it.
Han-bin then asked him a question.
“What do you want to do? Shall we go down a little more?”
His Breath of Flame could be used up to three times a day.
He still had two shots left.
“Of course!”