Delayed Transfer

The next day, everybody went and did their own personal business.  Sam and Melissa went to the place that Donald’s brother and Melissa rented for Mark’s private project of downloading all the media content to check if everything was running smoothly.  Enleed personally handled their group website and did some editing on the photos and videos that Mark took when they were dungeon diving and Sam would assist him once he got home.

Armina went to check on Donald’s research project on dungeon items to see if she could provide insight from a gamer’s and part of the group’s perspective.

Mark went to the dungeon alone to continue his solo delving but he decided to go to the 10th floor first to check if he could get an item with a skill that Melissa or Elizabeth could use.  Before he did that though, he went first to the 11th floor to continue building his villa. 

Mark only took about an hour to complete the 10th floor and was happy that he was able to get two Magic Blue item.  Unfortunately, neither of the item were for a mage or a healer.  The first one was a magic iron sword with a skill called Slash that would allow the wielder to activate a skill that will slash the enemy with a damage of 50 physical damage.  It had 60 charges as well and would earn one charge every 10 minutes.

The other item was another storage ring with one cubic meter of space.  Mark decided to give it to Sam and to give the Storage Satchel to Enleed for personal use and will promise Armina and Melissa that the next storage equipment would be theirs.

After completing the 10th floor, Mark headed to the 16th floor to continue his solo dive.  Unfortunately, the 16th floor was the dreaded jungle swamp setting.  Based on what he could see, it resembled the place on Diablo 2 called Kurast Docks.  He could only compare it to the game since he had never been to an actual jungle swamp before.  It was hot and humid and the smell of the jungle was distinct. 

Mark cast his Space Shield and Bark Skin for defense.  He thought of chasing after the Earth Ground Shield skill for added defense but decided to held off even though he had remaining 32 skill points.  He wasn’t able to decide if he should get all of the other skills, start Rune Engineer or specialize on a specific skill tree and thought he should probably give it some time for careful analysis.

Mark cast Flight so he could start flying since the mobility it gave him was much more dynamic compared to Levitation but he did limit his flight to a few feet from the ground.

The jungle was dark and mysterious as all jungles in the world, Mark assumed.  He could hear animal noises that were absent from the previous floor.  He didn’t know if there were actual animals that were created by the system or just noise made from mana by the system to add to the ambience of the floor but upon flying for a bit he actually saw some normal animals in the trees.

Mark killed a snake with a Void Bolt to check if the normal looking animals would be considered as monsters by the System and surprisingly it was not.  The corpse of the snake did not disappear like the normal mob monsters but remained on the ground even after he waited for quite some time.

Mark was full of sweat because of the humidity and he kept drinking Gatorade from his Inventory.  He kept on flying until he encountered a camp.  The moment he entered the camp, three zombies that looked like they’ve been underwater for quite sometime actually crawled from the ground to attack him.  Mark just increased his height and studied the zombies since they weren’t able to reach him.  According to Identify, they were swamp zombies but they weren’t actually dungeon monsters but summons.  One attack of Void Chain Lightning killed the three zombies and their corpses just disappeared but did not burst into bubbles that dropped loot.

While studying the corpses, he suddenly received an attack which was mitigated by his Space Shield and the notification window stated that it was a Nether Bolt.  A creature that was half snake and half man appeared between the trees and when Mark Identified it, it said that it was a Swamp Naga Necromancer.  It was alone and he immediately killed it with one cast of Glacial Void and Void Meteor since he wanted to test the skill.  He kept the loot in his Inventory and continued flying forward.

While he was flying, he received another ambush.  It was an arrow and it was also stopped by the Space Shield.  He cast Space Tower for added Defense and cast his Floating Sunflower and Bed of Daisies for MP resource management.

Mark saw the monster that shot an arrow at him and it was a Swamp Naga Archer based on his Identification.  There were two others with it and the three Swamp Nagas were archers.  He cast his Glacial Void at them then summon Glacial Hurricane and then lastly the Void Chain Lightning killed the three monsters.  Based on the ease of him killing the Swamp Nagas, he would probably not encounter any enemies on the 16th floor that he would have difficulty with. 

Based on his intuition, the difficulty would probably increased once he went past dungeon level 20th.

The next group of enemies were very large.  There were tens of zombies and looking at the horde, it looked like a setting of one of those horror movies especially since the jungle was dark.  He saw four Swamp Naga Necromancers in the distance and knew that they were the reason for the huge number of zombies. 

Mark actually heard them starting to chant and saw two of the Swamp Naga cast a Bone Spear at him.  He immediately cast Space Wall to block the spears and it did the job.  He then saw the hands of the other two Swamp Naga glow red and felt himself weakening.  He knew that the skill the necromancer cast were curses and gave him a de-buff.  He checked his Interface to see how the curse affected him and it reduced his stats by two points each which felt miniscule to him.

Mark killed the four Swamp Naga Necromancers by casting Void Meteor and Void Hurricane at them.  He used his big spells because it offended him that those insects deign to put a de-buff on him and he laughed at himself for feeling the hubris of the strong but knew that it was a mistake to feel that way since time immemorial, well based on the web novels that he read, with hubris came the humbling.