Mansion of the Damned, 1st Basement Floor
City State of Magic, Kasteblum
"Day Two of Dungeon diving and I am already regretting it."
Evan spoke up as he looked at the entrance to the second basement floor of the 'Mansion of the Damned'.
As the name implied, the dungeon looked like a mansion one would expect a rich noble to live in. It had a massive front garden filled with beautiful flowers of various kinds and a fountain that sprinkled clear water on all the plants around it.
It was built with wheat-coloured bricks and had tan stone decorations. Small, rounded windows placed at regular intervals allowed enough light to enter the building.
When one entered, they would be met with a large hall with doors on each side and a central stairway that led to the first basement floor of the building.
Each one of the doors on the sides was locked, probably with some sort of ancient magic as only those among the higher echelons of the City State knew what lay behind said doors.
All the doors had intricate writings that glowed a deep red colour, perhaps signifying the status of the doors as only the main door that had green writings could be opened while the others with red writings could not be opened.
The main dungeon began when one went down the basement floor after having their credentials checked and confirmed by the guild officials besides the main door.
As the hall was large enough to accommodate hundreds of people, there was never a situation where the entrance was crowded with adventurers.
Evan, Pride, and Eliza entered the dungeon the day before and were met with the default stater monsters of any dungeon in games and stories; goblins.
The trio spent the previous day killing dozens of these monsters while moving through the passageways, sometimes encountering other parties as they searched for an entrance to the deeper floors.
Something the trio finally found on the morning of Day two.
"And thus, they gathered their things into Evan's inventory and ventured down to the second basement floor of the mansion of the damned, where the ancient sword-wielding monster species, the Blade wraiths, laid in wait."
Pride and Eliza gave Evan confused gazes as he suddenly started narrating the current Events in third person.
"What are you doing?"
"Temporarily taking over the job of the narrator. What else does it look like?"
Pride only shook her head as she walked past the eleven-year-old and grabbed him by the collar, dragging him to the second basement floor entrance.
Ignoring Evan's earlier breach of role, the trio went down the stairs and officially entered the second basement floor.
Even Evan had to stop joking as he knew that from this floor, the difficulty of the dungeon spiked exponentially which was quite absurd considering it was just the second floor.
"From floor two to ten, we have to deal with Blade wraiths, from floor eleven, things change up a bit and we have to battle a very irritating set of monsters that have a habit of teleporting around mid-fight. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novel fire.net
They can even summon other monsters to help them mid-fight. They are called Rift Mages.
Then from floor twenty-one to thirty, the enemies we have to face there are snow boars. The floor thirty boss is the one who would provide us with the materials we need for our quest.
From floor thirty to floor fourth, we have another set of teleporters to deal with, the Doom Hounds.
Every ten floors are boss floors, with multiple boss rooms scattered around the large floor so we just have to find one that's not occupied at the time and enter.""
Evan gave the two a rundown of the dungeon's enemies as he pulled out the quest papers and passed them over to Pride and Eliza.
The two looked them over while being vigilant of their surroundings as even if they were still at the entrance of the dungeon floor, it was still possible to be attacked.
And that's exactly what just happened.
Pride who was flipping through the magic stone collection quests suddenly stopped and turned her gaze in a certain direction.
Seeing her actions, Evan realised that there was something there and asked her.
"Perfect, I've wanted to test out something for a while now."
As he said that, he pulled out the gauntlets that he used during the Spider Nest dungeon raid and put them on before taking a deep breath and telling Kayla to infuse herself in the gauntlets.
"What are you trying to do?"
To the ancient demon's question, Evan only gave a short reply.
Afterward, he took a deep breath and sensed the surrounding ambient magic power, before attempting to absorb it into his body.
His destructive magic circuit came alive and greedily sucked all the magic power, giving Evan a feeling of refreshment as if he just chugged down a jar of cold water after taking a walk in a desert at high noon.
'My energy manipulation speeds have increased since breaking past level 100, and this energy circuit makes things easier by increasing it even more by another ten percent.'
Evan thought to himself as he felt the absorbed energy coursing through his body, he wanted to relish in this feeling but he knew this was not the time.
The incoming presence had entered his range of detection and he was sure it was not a random unique monster that mistakenly came up to a higher floor.
Immediately the young great lightning spirit replied, and golden sparks began to dance around his arms, starting from his gauntlets.
As if the incoming enemy sensed the energy gathering around Evan's arms, it increased its speed and rushed forward, finally coming into view as Eliza and Pride set eyes upon a normal blade wraith for the first time.
Although they were called blade wraiths, they were completely different from the wraiths that Evan faced in Luka town with Eliza and her old party members.
It was a male humanoid dressed in ragged brown robes and a wide-brimmed straw hat that covered its face. The only thing visible was its pair of glowing red eyes that locked onto Evan.
In the blade wraith's left hand, was a long black curved blade that seemed to be joined with its palm.
"Um...remind me why they are called 'wraiths' again?"
Eliza couldn't help but ask as she saw the monster's appearance, it did not look like the ghostly creature she met a few months ago at all!
Seeing that the blade wraith had locked onto him, Evan closed his eyes and took a stance, with his left leg placed forward and his right leg placed backward.
He then clenched his right fist and pulled it back before extending his left arm forward.
The blade wraith saw his actions and tilted its head to the side, before cupping its right palm beside its waist.
A sword sheath appeared in its cupped palm and it proceeded to sheathe the blade in its left arm while staring at Evan.
'Is it perhaps planning to end things in a single strike?'
The monster's level of intelligence made Pride have high expectations for the monsters on the lower floors, as if one on the second floor could be this smart, then the ones on the lower floors should be just as smart, if not smarter.
The blade wraith took a stance and stared at Evan while silently infusing magic power into its blade.
There was a sudden silence as the only sound that could be heard was the crackling of the lightning condensing around Evan's fist.
Just when Eliza was about to break the silence and ask what was going on with the both of them, Evan and the blade wraith suddenly kicked off the ground simultaneously as if having planned on it before.
With a flash of golden light, Evan blitzed towards the blade wraith who soundlessly dashed towards Evan.
Multiple sounds resounded across the quiet dungeon hall as Evan's fist met the blade wraith's sword that was pulled out from its sheath faster than Eliza could see.
Before she could even make a comment on the clash, Evan pulled back his fist again with lightning-fast speed whilst grabbing the blade wraith's sword with his left hand coated in lightning.
He shouted internally as his lightning-clad fist slammed into the head of the blade wraith, burning its straw hat into ash and pulverizing its skull mere seconds after.
The rest of the monster's body was sent flying as Evan let go of the sword at the last moment.
The blade wraith slammed into the wall with enough force to crack the sturdy dungeon walls, falling down to the ground in the next moment.
Evan saw this and took a deep breath before telling Kayla to leave his gauntlets.
[Master, are you okay?]
As soon as the spirit moved out, her nose twitched as she perceived the smell of burning flesh. Instantly deducing the reason for it, she flew towards Evan's hand and tried to pull the gauntlet that still had some residual lighting in it off Evan's arm.
"Hmm? I can't say I'm okay, I didn't get any of the two things I wanted."