Book 4: Chapter 44

A moment later as System energy whipped around them, the group appeared standing atop an absolutely massive stone foundation. And just as Aaron had surmised, everyone from their local cluster who had made it into the interval was standing nearby, spread across the foundation.

“So, we’re on the same side as the others?” He heard the centaur huffing and stomping the ground some distance away.

“He doesn’t look happy,” Aaron muttered mostly to himself. “Well, I’m sure everyone is going to get along just fine.”

“Heh, we’ll see about that,” Enrest smirked as he walked by.

Dungeon Announcement!

At any time, open your party menu within your System interface to swap out with one of your group’s chosen substitutes.

Warning! Substitutes may only spend an hour in the dungeon at a time! After which, they must spend at least two hours on the bench before being subbed back in.

Right,

Aron nodded at the notification. It was a good reminder of where exactly they were up to in this multilayered dungeon.

And that means our entire sector should be here now.

Immediately, he opened the chat, mentally typed a message, and hit send.

Error!

Global chat offline!

Aaron’s brow creased. What was up with that? The chat had been online from the start for all of the floors so far.

“Huh? I wonder why?”

But as he considered the surprising turn of events, his attention was dragged away by a commotion. Not far away, a crowd was forming, and he spotted a few familiar faces amongst it.

I wonder what that’s about?

Aaron walked closer and noticed that most of the crowd was gathered around a signpost, and Elmira was at the head of it.

Loud bickering and chatter filled the air, and he spotted several people pushing and shoving as a heated debate unravelled.

Aaron did his best to push through the crowd. A good number of angry faces met him, but they also seemed to remember who he was and didn’t cause any trouble as he made his way through.

Once more, Aaron was pleasantly surprised by the fame he had gained in the trials. It made a lot of things easier.

“One at a time, please,” Elmira pleaded with a bunch of heated dwarves, elves, and basalaks—the part-bald, fat humanoid, part centipede creatures—at the head of the crowd. “You’ll all get your chance to speak if you just go one at a time!”

“What’s all this?” Aaron said as he approached, eyeing the signpost behind her.

“Oh, hey, Aaron. Glad to see you. Can you speak some sense into these people?”

Aaron glanced at the group and then shrugged helplessly. “Ah, diplomacy is not really my thing.”

“Oh my, Pentival!” Elmira hissed.

It was pretty clear that she was happy to be Pentival’s captain, but she did not sign up for this part of the job. This was what he was meant to handle, and he was far away.

“So, what are you two scheming?” Voidrin said, appearing beside, popping out from a cloud of mist.

“Trying to get this mob under control,” Elmira slumped, but Voidrin wasn’t paying attention, stepping straight past her to the signpost at her back.

“You! Get out of the way! I won’t have you in control of this!” Red Song said, pushing to the front of the crowd, and glaring at Elmira.

“Seriously? Kill me now.”

“Take a break,” Aaron patted her shoulder. “Let someone else deal with organizing this group.”

“I would. But Pentival wouldn’t like it. He was very particular about this dungeon.”

The two of them stepped aside as Red Song pushed up to the signpost. Neither really caring if she wanted to read it herself.

“Alright, whatever,” Elmira huffed. “I’m going to go organize my own party. I’ll be back.”

Aaron watched as she left and noticed a peculiar ogre amongst them. She was a bit smaller than most ogres, going by what he had seen on the cover of a particular magazine gifted to him… and her teeth were, well, they were foul, but straighter than most. Even her gut wasn’t as proudly prominent as he remembered seeing. But that wasn’t what perked his attention.

No, it was because she was staring at him.

More ogre attention. Great. Just what I needed.

Aaron groaned internally. And was suddenly very thankful for Yendal’s intervention in his adipose Skill. The last thing he needed was to enlarge himself around that ogre. The way she ogled him made him rather uncomfortable.

“So, what do we need, wood and stones?” Voidrin said.

“Timber and bricks,” Red Song corrected. “This is a list of resources we need to build the tower. And it explains exactly how we need to go about collecting them.”

“Oh, there you go, princess. You’re good at this.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Red Song glared at Voidrin for a second, but then turned back to the signpost.

“You’re on the same world, right?” Aaron said as he stepped beside them.

“Don’t remind me,” Red Song huffed. “If it weren’t for his grace, Lenriel, I would not tolerate this one.”

“What humy waiting for?” Erdek said as she appeared by his side. Her short stature was easy to miss in a crowd.

Further away, Ernest and Raksha were chatting with a few rankers from another world—likely scheming more alliances.

Everyone’s got their own side mission, it seems.

“Move it, soft skin!” Erdek growled at Red Song. “You spend long enough looking.”

“Get this gremlin out of my face.”

“Gremlin?!” Erdek sneered.

“Hey, everyone! I’m doing this one!” Voidrin said, drawing attention to himself. “Secure the smithy to provide iron ingots to the tower. Difficulty: Very Hard. You lot can figure the rest out amongst yourselves.”

As soon as he finished talking, Voidrin walked off, snapping his fingers to call a couple of others from his world, who joined to trail behind him.

“Arrogant,” Red Song huffed and pointed to the signpost. “My team will secure the gold mine.”

And just like Voidrin, she walked off, followed by the other half of their world’s rankers.

Talk about hypocrisy.

A moment later, Elmira returned, and as before, her ogre friend couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

I need to get out of here.

Aaron quickly looked at the list, picked something, and turned.

“Leaving already?” Elmira said.

“Yeah. The timberyard. My world will handle it.”

“Since when do you get to decide what objectives you take?” Shouted a basalak.

“Well, if you would all quiet down and speak one at a time, maybe we could have a discussion about it!” Elmira shouted back, as the crowd was as lively as ever.

“Let her speak!” An elf shouted and then proceeded to get into an argument with the basalak.

“This is going wonderfully.” Elmira rubbed her temples.

“Well, I’m getting out of here,” Aaron proclaimed.

“That’s easy for you to say. Somebody needs to make sure everyone doesn’t just run off to complete the same objectives as each other.

“Yep. That sounds like a shit job. Anyway–”

Ernest and Raksha walked up to him mid-conversation, cutting Aaron off.

“You take Ikran and Erdek with you to the timberyard, Aaron,” Ernest said. “We’re going to work with a couple of others from another world for a bit.”

Aaron looked at Raksha, who just nodded. He knew they were putting down some intergalactic foundations, but he didn’t care too much. A part of him considered making the argument that they should stick together, but they were top rankers and could look after themselves. As long as they weren’t looking for his neck, he had more pressing matters to deal with.

Although it did make him wonder about Ernest. The man had been laser-focused on Darius, and he didn’t really know how involving people from other worlds really helped back on theirs.

Despite the cold aura he gave off, Ikran was rather quiet. Stood at the back of the crowd, and not arguing with anybody. That was something Aaron could get around.

“So, has everything worked out?” Ikran said pointedly as Aaron passed back through the crowd.

“Yeah, mate. We got a mission.”

Erdek looked as sour as ever as she rejoined them. Aaron had a feeling she would rather be with Raksha, although he figured she should be happy she wasn’t surrounded by humans anymore.

“Alright. I’ve got the Timberyard map maker. Let’s move.”

“Fine. Just watch out for me, fire, humy!”

Aaron looked around one last time before he started walking. They were in a small valley surrounded by high cliffs and couldn’t see far. All he had to go by was the map marker.

Before they could get walking again, the centaur trotted by. “Good luck, but you’ll see why I’m the greatest,” he snorted as he passed.

This dungeon had provided Aaron with one obvious observation. Being at the top turned you into a goal for many, many people. It almost seemed tiring, not that he wasn’t going to try as hard as ever to win.

The timberyard was rated as difficulty ‘hard’ by the System. Which was why Aaron had picked it.

He wasn't too bothered by that. But as they picked up pace, leaving the valley behind, he had a thought. What if the reason the global chat was turned off was that the clusters of their sector had to compete over the resources?

If that were true, then the mission difficulty might be far higher than appeared.

Aaron’s brow bent. He wasn’t one to get scared, but he was stuck in here with the greatest talents of their entire sector, and that was not the kind of thing to take lightly.

“Stick together and take things seriously,” he said. "We don't know what we're going to find out here. Be prepared for rankers.”

"We's prepared humy. Just lead the way.”

Aaron nodded and kept moving. And it wasn't long before they came up against their first challenge.

A group of horned monsters wielding flails came charging the moment they left the valley.

They were strong enough on their own, a bunch of low D-grades led by a couple of stronger D-grades.

But that wasn't really what had Aaron apprehensive about the engagement. His eyes were trained on their surroundings, and he had [ Gorgon’s Soul Vortex ] running and scanning the area.

There might not have been any direct request by the dungeon to fight one another, but if people thought they could claim an easy score, he was certain they would.

And his little run-in with the centaur had taught him something. There might be others out there looking to claim his fame, just as the centaur was trying to claim Mo’han’s.

Unfortunately, he couldn't be too careful. He had a job to do. He was the tank, and he met the enemy charge, slamming into them as he felt the heat of Erdek’s fireballs against his back.

Aaron phased just as the fireball was about to strike him, and it passed straight through, slamming into the monsters and disorienting them with its destructive power. He followed up with his own fists, crushing through the first line decisively.

He wasn't sure if Erdek’s spell had been aimed at him or the enemy. But he had to admit, they worked well together.

The battle exploded in chaos and flames as Aaron made his way through it.

It seemed there were perks to fighting alongside someone a little more careless about his life, although he wasn't sure how he felt about it.

But even as they fought, cutting through their enemies, Aaron felt something that gave him pause. A power energy signal, with a deadly aura.

Seeing creatures well into D grade already was troubling, and he really hoped nothing in the dungeon went beyond that. Because ultimately, the jump to C-grade was huge. And no one knew that better than Aaron with his true core. Anything that had the power to use a true core at full strength was stupidly strong, at least compared to a D-grade, and not the kind of enemy even their cluster’s greatest warriors stood a chance against.

Mo’han

He knew they meant well, but Mo’han couldn't help but feel a little exhausted as the top rankers of his cluster prostrated themselves before him, waiting for his command.

A picturesque elven woman who worked as his assistant cleared her throat and took over, barking orders.

The truth was, he missed having real challengers. It was why he was looking forward to seeing Aaron so much.

Despite his puny size, lack of arms, and discoloured skin, that little man had the heart of an asura, or perhaps something even stronger. And it excited him.

He couldn't wait to see him do something utterly stupid and somehow find a way to survive. He preferred that over these cowering subjects, even if they were just trying to please him.

“Selena!” He roared.

"Yes, my lord?” The elven woman said, pausing mid-speech to look at him.

"LET US GO! Let us crush this challenge! For I grow bored! And seek the entertainment of an old friend!”

"You heard him! Clear out everyone! We've got a Dungeon to win!"