Chapter 133 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Carl

We were a bit early to this current raid, but I wouldn’t mind waiting for a little bit. Anna and I were currently waiting away from the gathering point so Tristan and Ziiipe could join us.

“What should we name the next one?” Anna asked me, and I purposely looked into the distance. “You aren't even pregnant yet.” She punched me in my arm.

“It's rude to talk to me while not looking at me,” I took a few deep breaths to center myself. “We are here to work, and I have learned not to look at you when you sound like that. Perhaps we should get you a mask, then that way perhaps we could get a little more rest and actually deal with the children we currently have?” “Rude,” she said while punching me once again.

She hit me as hard as she could. I barely felt those hits. She has gotten a lot stronger but not fast enough to keep up with me. Compared to most other adventurers, they're still doing really good.

One of the reasons why Ziiipe and I weren’t currently pushing the front lines was because we wanted to help Anna and Tristan advance, and of course, raid rooms always meant decent profit.

Finally, we saw Ziiipe and Tristan coming over the hill. When I saw their smiling faces, I knew that they had succeeded even before they said anything.

“Did you finish it?” Anna asked, and immediately Tristan started to speak with an excited voice. “Yes, it's finished, and it turned out quite nice in my opinion,” he said while pointing at his new necklace.

I frowned at that. “Is it a good idea to keep it in the open like that?” Tristan just shrugged. “Probably not, but it took us so long to actually finish this. Let me share the question.”

The moment he stopped speaking, his eyes went distant, and the next moment I received a new quest notification. I quickly looked over it and frowned once again. “Recommended for adventurers past the 24th floor,” I said out loud as I read the warning of the quest.

Immediately, I could see Anna’s and Tristan's mood sour a bit. I was certain that I could survive such a danger rating, and perhaps Ziiipe as well, but Tristan and Anna certainly couldn’t.

"We have waited so long, what's a few more years?" Tristan said, but I could hear the disappointment. "It doesn’t matter; we still completed this long and expensive quest. I wonder where it will take us?"

When Tristan finished, we all went silent as that was the true question. How could a dungeon have an area that was beyond the danger of the 24th floor when we were still on the 23rd floor, and this was the deepest floor the dungeon currently had?

Then I felt it—the telltale shaking that meant that the dungeon started a breakthrough. Did it once again wait for the perfect moment to mess with me? But I didn’t feel like this was a bad moment like the last time.

"Well, this sucks, they will probably cancel the raid now," Ziiipe said. She was probably right. I was about to suggest that we go to the meeting spot and see who had arrived and see if the raid was still on when I finally noticed that there were people quite close to us who were acting a bit weird.

The next moment, the one closest to me attacked me with a spear attack so filled with mana that I was surprised the spear hadn’t exploded.

When did they get so close? My body, however, also moved while I thought about that. Fortunately, my tattoo already gave me a boost, so I was fast enough to move my hand up, and just before the spear got close, I was able to activate the rest of my skills.

I grabbed the head of the spear and stopped its movement immediately; the person looked at me in complete shock. My right hand, however, grabbed that person's head as I stepped towards him. I simply twisted my hand, breaking his neck.

All of this happened so fast, but from the corner of my eye, I could see I wasn’t the only one being attacked. When I saw what was happening, it felt like cold sweat drenched my whole body.

Both Anna and Tristan were about to be hit, and it looked like they couldn’t do anything about it. Damn it, I’m sorry, Tristan. I activated one of my newest skills and used my devastating charge to get to the person attacking Anna before she could finish the attack.

I moved so fast that I couldn’t even track my movement, but when I stopped, there were only chunks left that were now slowly starting to fall down from the person trying to hurt Anna.

Immediately, I turned towards Tristan, but I knew it was already too late. I saw the long sword hit close to his neck and shoulder joint; it simply continued to go through his body.

Before the sword was able to kill Tristan, a crossbow bolt hit the person attacking him. Instead of the crossbow bolt going through the person, some sort of a magic reaction happened and launched the person away from us.

Blood spilled out of Tristan as the sword still managed to leave a massive wound. He would just have moments to live. I started to run towards him, pulling out the best healing potion I had.

While doing so, I also noticed another person flying through the air. That was most likely the one who attacked Ziiipe. Once again, her brilliance might have saved the day. If she had attacked him normally, they would probably have been able to continue fighting, but now they would survive, but they would be far enough away that we might be able to save Tristan.

He was barely moving when I reached him. Almost in slow motion, I watched as the potion started to heal his wound. Why the hell was it coming out so slowly? When there was about half the potion left, I moved it towards his mouth and forced him to swallow.

The potion kicked the life back into him, but he was far from saved. I was about to pull out a second potion when I felt motion behind me.

"Don't give him another potion," I heard Anna say, and the next moment she was next to me, her hands went onto the massive wound that was slowly healing. A moment later, her hands glowed with power. During all of this, Ziiipe was shooting her crossbow as fast as she could. "How is he?" I asked Anna, but she didn’t look up, fully concentrated on what she was doing.

Damn, that was bad. I pulled out my halberd and properly looked around us. There were a lot of people coming towards us, ready to kill us. A lot of them were yelling about dungeon freedom and death to the city lord.

How are there so many lunatics? When they got into my strike distance, I moved my halberd, and even the distant strike skill didn't stop them from being bisected by my attacks.

"Carl, it’s bad. It's not just us; it's happening all over this way station and probably beyond if there are so many of them," Ziiipe said. She had some recon skills, so I didn’t doubt her words. But it was still unbelievable what was happening. I looked down once again but still saw her completely focused. This was really bad.

"Carl, I can see the gateway powering up. What do we do, and not just this one—it’s the other two as well?" Oh shit, that was so bad. "Keep hold of Tristan, Anna," I said while making my halberd disappear and picking them up.

"Keep them off us, Ziiipe." As soon as I had them comfortably on my shoulder, I started to run towards the gateway as fast as I could.

As soon as we got over the hill, we saw a group of people near the gateway and as soon as they saw us, they were ready to defend the gateway. Damn, I know some of them, yet now they looked at me like I was the enemy.

I didn’t need to say anything as they started to die with crossbow bolts sticking out of their heads. I ran as fast as I could, but I could see the gateway horizon pushing out.

That meant a lot of people wanted to get into this place, and that was the warning this side of the gateway received whenever a lot of people were about to come through. Fortunately, when large groups of people moved, the gateways weren’t as instant as they were when a few people went through them. However, this didn't seem to matter as we weren’t going to make it.

"Don’t let go of Tristan, and don't worry, I’ll get back to you," I said to Anna before I threw her towards the gateway when the last person defending it died.

She shrieked but didn't let go. It was going to be close, but then I saw Anna stretching one of her hands out, and just after she touched it, they both disappeared. Almost immediately properly armored fighters started to pour out of the gateway.

I had not seen them before, but they felt a lot stronger than the people who had tried to attack us before. "Run!" I immediately said to Ziiipe, who didn’t argue and started to run deeper into the way station.

Just before we disappeared behind the hill, I turned around to see them already preparing spells to attack us, but also there were already 20 of them, and there didn’t seem to be an end to them.

If they were coming out of the other two gateways as well, that would mean that most of the tunnels would be blocked off quite quickly. "Let’s head towards the Kelso way."

Ziiipe gave me a simple nod as we both adjusted our heading. We needed to move fast; Kelso way was a tunnel network that would hopefully still be undefended when we reached it, and it was complicated and large enough that I didn’t think a large group of people could keep following us.

I almost tripped when my mind replayed the strike on Tristan and just now realized that the necklace we had worked so hard on had dropped as it was cut through. "We need to go," but before I could finish, Ziiipe showed me the necklace.

Apparently, she had picked it up. It was a teleportation necklace, and only the amulet was the important part, so it actually wasn’t damaged.

We could see spell attacks going off all around us. If it were nighttime, it would be quite colorful. I once again almost tripped when another quest notification, the loudest one I have ever heard, came from the necklace.

Alert: Total War protocols activated.

A significant portion of adventurers have declared war on the city lord. The reasons for war have been found lacking, so the war is declared invalid.

Everyone supporting the aggressor side is now marked. Reward points will be earned for supportive actions against the aggressors and for every marked adventurer killed. Happy hunting.

I wasn’t the only one to stop moving; Ziiipe did as well, and I could see a few people on the edge of the hills also stopped. Not just that, but most of the attack spells that had been going off continuously paused as well. Only a few moments later, however, their intensity spiked. I felt more fervor in the air, like the madmen were even more certain that what they were doing was right.