Upon landing in front of the dungeon, Marcus, Stella, and Alice all collectively left their wyverns outside. Wyverns were quite intelligent creatures, some say even as intelligent as humans, and the wyverns of the royal family were especially befitting of this descriptor, as they were well-trained. As such, with only a few commands to Daisy, Stella’s white wyvern immediately puffed up its chest and nodded.
They would stay and stand guard outside, all three of them. With that, the trio turned to the Lost Fortress of Mendol. Now that they were on the ground, Marcus had to look up to fully view its imposing structure. He could imagine that once, it was a beautiful place. Possibly.
“What’s the rank of this dungeon again?” Marcus asked, curious.
“It’s an S-rank dungeon,” Stella said, as she procured a map from her skirt’s pocket. “And since it’s a permanent and ancient dungeon, the monsters inside must be quite powerful.”
“The only reason why it hasn’t been cleared for ages”—Alice winced a bit as her hand rested on the pommel of her sword. “I do have my fair share of clearing out S-rank dungeons, but I’ve only ever done it on new, spawned ones. Not these kinds.”
“Spawned dungeons?” Marcus frowned. “What?”
Quite frankly, a few things were actually quite off this time. Dungeons back in the old days were ranked normally, like, with gold, or platinum, or bronze. The letter naming scheme struck him as something odd. Secondarily…spawned?
Naturally, Stella on the side noticed Marcus’s confusion, and she was about to speak up to clear things out a bit when Alice did it first as she laughed.
“Sir Marcus, what kind of rock have you been under?” Alice giggled with mirth. “Isn’t it common knowledge that dungeons have been spawning randomly in mana-dense areas for…centuries now?”
“After the demon horde was defeated,” Stella added, clearly desperately attempting to salvage the situation, as it was quite suspicious that Marcus didn’t know of this. It was a new phenomenon after all, and while Alice did know Marcus’s name and how he and Stella met, she knew nothing of his past.
“Oh…” Marcus scratched the back of his hair, trying to act bewildered. “I see…almost forgot about that one. It’s been ages since I went into one.”
“So Sir Marcus has memory problems?” Alice murmured curiously to Stella.
She reddened a bit.
“N-not like that! He’s not senile or anything. He’s just…a bit out of the loop?”
“Out of the loop? Surprising. For someone who seems quite effective and so capable…”
“What can I say? I’m a man of many contradictions,” Marcus offered, trying his hardest to also escape his unintended exposure of his ignorance. “Anyhow, can we just go now? I’m itching to try out my magic.”
“Yes, of course!” Stella nodded. “Alice, you take point, please.”
“Roger that, Your Highness.” Alice seemed to be in good spirits now, as she walked to the wide entrance of the dungeon without a care in the world. Meanwhile, behind her, Stella and Marcus followed as Marcus leaned close to Stella.
“The hell does S-rank even mean though?” he whispered, hushed.
“It just means it’s filled with the strongest monsters…generally…”
“I see, I see. Good to know.”
And with that, they proceeded onward as a team.
[Ember’s Blade]!
Alice furiously zipped through the dark, labyrinthine maze of the Lost Fortress. As she did so, her blade, which was fully on fire, swirled through the horde of scorpion-like monsters that emerged to attack them earlier. With advanced footwork and swordplay reminiscent of Stella’s, she expertly stabbed and sliced through the monsters.
The scorpions themselves were massive, nearly the height of two humans, their pincers snapping and slashing at speeds that would be difficult to perceive for the untrained eye. Yet the leader of the Order of Wellness barely even broke a sweat as she did her work. Beside her, Stella did the same, though unlike Alice, she wasn’t even using any skill or any spell.
Instead, she would just zip through the enemy monster ahead of her, jump up straight to its head, and then plunge her broadsword deep into its skull. She would follow that up by jumping to the next one and eliminating them. Soon, the last of the monsters dropped as Marcus strode forward, whistling to himself.
“Beautiful, beautiful.” Marcus had a smile on his face, though it was hidden by his mask. His hands too were in the pockets of the grey coat that he wore, making him look like someone who barely cared about what was happening around them.
Alice breathed deeply for a second before looking at Marcus with a smile. “So, you’re really just going to let the ladies do the work for you?”
“Hmm…let’s see…” Marcus stared at Alice blankly. “I don’t know. I want to test my new spells on other foes.”
“These foes don’t count?” Alice asked, bewildered.
Meanwhile, Stella, who had her feet keeping down a poor scorpion that was unfortunate enough to survive a stab on its thorax, drove her sword down straight between its eyes. “Marcus wants to test it on a gold-rank monster at least.”
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“Yeah, that,” Marcus nodded to Stella before turning to Alice. “Quite frankly, I’m still a bit of an amateur at managing my mana reserves while conducting magecraft. I would prefer that I don’t waste it on less efficient XP sources.”
“Ah, I see…” Alice laughed. “You have a strange way of grinding your levels, sir. A lot of people just kill whatever monster is in front of them; they all lend out XP, after all.”
“Yes, that would be the standard way.”
Marcus had no need to go through the standard way, though. He never truly did. He already was at level 100 with his [Hell Ranger] class. It was only with his [Mage] class that he was quite behind, which was at level 29, iron rank. To be fair, he could have participated in this fight and ranked up to level 30, but, well, Marcus wanted to go through this steadily.
Eliminating the biggest, nastiest monster with his very crude spell mastery would be the most viable option if he was trying to get the most bang for the buck out of his mana reserves. Now, do not be mistaken, he had quite a ridiculous amount of mana due to his diamond rank mana core, but Marcus knew that he tended to be quite liberal with his mana usage due to his imprecise control of magecraft.
Experience at Eisenfeld showed that while Marcus was smoothly rising with his levels with speeds that would put the best mages to shame, he was still a novice. An amateur. He was a [Mage] that was advancing rapidly, not because he was a particularly good [Mage], but because he was a level 100 [Hell Ranger], so he could easily go toe-to-toe with enemies beyond his new class’s levels, allowing him to get more XP than he would otherwise.
That was why he was planning to only kill the most powerful opponents; in addition to that, he wanted to give Stella and Alice a chance to farm XP themselves.
“Anyhow, let’s retrieve their monster cores, shall we?” Marcus said. The trio immediately got to work. While the monster cores of the scorpions weren’t particularly awesome, as most of them were silver rank, with a few gold ranks here and there, they still decided to harvest them. After all, later on, once the battle was done, they could haul the low-rank monster cores outside to be retrieved by other members of Alice’s order.
Money, after all, was what they ultimately chased here. Anything of good value was going to be theirs, though; the trio themselves would only be returning to Kalthafen with the most valuable ones. They were the ones that Marcus placed in the bags of holding that he bought here.
It only took them ten minutes before they proceeded deeper into the dungeon. The deeper they went, the more ridiculous things became. There were scorpion-like monsters and red goblins powered by ancient magic that strengthened them to gold rank and above, chimeras and undead griffons, and there were even strange minotaurs made out of stone, which guarded sections of the Lost Fortress that hid within them artifacts and treasures.
By floor 48, Marcus already had to intervene twice to help out Stella and Alice due to the increasing amount of monsters coming their way. A group of skeletal land dragons, seemingly powered by a malevolent core tucked in the center of an abandoned chamber hall, attacked them right when they were trying to get to the stairs to proceed to the next floor.
What followed was a fight wherein Marcus had to, at last, use up his spells [Fireball] and [Rock Barrage] for the first time in combat since Eisenfeld. Naturally, Stella and Alice made good work of the monsters attacking them from the right and left flanks, with Stella opting to summon her staff to blast the damned things with her [Divine Strike] spell, sending in beams of light that vaporized the monsters in an instant.
Meanwhile, Marcus experimentally alternated between [Fireball] and [Rock Barrage]. He targeted two skeletal dragons at once, their glowing blue eyes the only thing that was fully visible in the dark halls. When he fired his [Fireballs], though, the area ahead would be illuminated, revealing their swarming numbers, before explosions rocked them, scattering their bones haphazardly as a result.
Unfortunately, [Rock Barrage] proved less effective, so he dropped it as his kill count racked up. One lucky skeleton dragon managed to sneak up on his right, though, and it bared its fangs as it closed in. Marcus, of course, already spotted the bastard early on with his [Mass Surveillance] skill, so with one fell swoop, he unsheathed one of his rapiers and mercilessly sent his sword in a diagonal arc.
The monster was quickly cut in half, its bones falling around him as he placed his sword back in its sheath. He looked around him, noting how they killed nearly three dozen of the monsters. All of them were gold ranked at least, with around two of them being at platinum rank. Unfortunately, Marcus didn’t have the chance to kill them, as Stella vaporized them early on with her spells.
“Hah…hah…hah…” Alice heaved a breath as she tiredly swiped sweat off her brow. She then placed her sword back in her scabbard as she turned to Stella with a tired yet determined smile. “That was…quite challenging. Though, you two really are unconcerned with that, huh?”
Stella rushed to Alice, noticing that there was blood oozing on the side of her armor. Even Marcus was worried, as he didn’t notice that. He was quite sure that Alice dodged all of the attacks headed her way. The woman, however, simply held up her hand as she procured something from her pocket.
“Don’t worry too much.” It was a potion, one that let off a soft, golden glow. “Just a flesh wound. One of them managed to sneak in a glancing hit with its claws. Guess I’m a bit rusty now, haha.”
As she laughed it off, she took a swig of the potion. Immediately, it started mending her wounds. That didn’t stop Stella from checking on her friend’s side, though, with great concern, her fingers running through Alice’s damaged armor plate. Alice of course just laughed further as Stella did that.
“You’re such a worrywart, princess,” Alice said. “This is why people always fall in love with you.”
“Hush it! And don’t move.”
“Hah…this saddens me. I guess the old days really are gone, huh? I’m now the weakest around here,” Alice laughed to herself. “Really, this is what I wanted to confirm by going down here.”
Marcus crossed his arms. “Look, you did pretty well.”
He hesitated saying that, but damn it, he did it anyway. After all, he realized that while Alice had quite the attitude for sticking with them and, well, messing with Marcus and Stella for a bit, just like Phoebe, ultimately, she was just being protective of Stella. Now though, it was clear that there was no need to protect the [Saint] anymore.
“Still disappoints me,” Alice said, as Stella finally stood up. “You be a good knight, okay? The deeper we go, the more of a damsel in distress I’ll become.”
“Oh, please,” Marcus snorted at that. “I swear, Stella, you seem to have a lot of weird friends,” Marcus paused, shaking his head. “Me included, of course.”
“I don’t think any of you are weird at all,” Stella said. “Aren’t I the weird one?”
“No,” Marcus and Alice both said in total agreement.
“You’re too normal,” Marcus said.
“You’re like your reading preferences. So painfully vanilla,” Alice said.
The saint looked between the two, as if she were stabbed from two different directions. Alice naturally just beamed and hugged Stella while saying it was just a joke, while Marcus decided to go check his system notifications on the side.
It seemed that he was now at silver rank at last.
