Chapter 98 — Endless Wave of Dark Wolves (Part 3)

Chapter 98 — Endless Wave of Dark Wolves (Part 3)

The iron mannequin, left without its head, did not fall to the ground.

Its body simply began to crumble into particles of light and completely disappeared a moment later.

The head vanished the same way.

Damn…

I was supposed to destroy it.

Why the hell did Rem interfere at all?

That was my prey.

A burning urge to attack Rem instantly flared up inside me.

I immediately deactivated Berserk.

Damn…

What a stupid skill.

And why do I become so stupid that I start wanting to attack Rem?

She had just saved my life.

During training, everything had been fine. But the moment a real threat to my life and a truly strong opponent appeared, I started losing control of myself again.

"Are you alright?" Rem asked as she approached me.

"Yeah, I’m fine," I answered while still lying on the ground.

"It doesn’t look like it. What’s happening to you? Why are you… sinking into the ground?"

Oh…

She noticed.

While I simply lay there, my body was slowly sinking downward under the monstrous gravity.

I crawled forward a little so I wouldn’t sink any deeper.

"Well… it’s a small side effect of my skill," I answered.

[Quest No. 1 completed.]

[Received: +100,000,000,000 experience.]

Finally, the one minute of survival had ended.

And the monstrous gravity that had made my body so heavy finally disappeared.

Feeling relieved, I got to my feet and started brushing dirt off my clothes.

Although… my magic armor would restore itself quickly anyway. And dirt barely stuck to it in the first place.

Convenient.

And for all that, I received one hundred billion experience points.

Was that reward worth the danger?

Well… I don’t think so.

If not for Rem, I would have simply been crushed.

Although… maybe I still would have survived. I’d probably just end up half-dead after the beating.

"If you’re alright, that’s good. But from now on we need to be much more careful. That monster was Rank 6. It’s far more dangerous than anything we’ve faced before. And monsters of Rank 6 shouldn’t even exist in this dungeon. Something is happening here that we don’t understand," Rem said.

And what exactly am I supposed to tell her?

Fine… I should probably just explain everything honestly.

"I don’t think we need to worry about that monster," I said after a short pause.

"What do you mean ‘not worry’? You saw yourself how dangerous it was," Rem replied in a slightly worried voice.

"Lately you’ve been overestimating your own strength too much," she added.

"No, I meant… that wasn’t a dungeon monster," I said.

"What does that mean?" Rem asked.

"Well… you could say that monster was… mine," I answered.

Rem silently looked at me.

She said nothing, but from her expression I could perfectly understand the question going through her mind.

"Well… you see… it was sort of mine, but not exactly mine," I began, already realizing how strange that sounded.

Damn, how am I even supposed to explain this properly?

"Can you make that clearer?" Rem asked.

"Well… I told you before that I receive quests inside the Training Room. And when I complete them, I get rewards… in the form of experience points," I started explaining.

"Yeah, you mentioned something like that," Rem replied.

—

The explanation took much longer than I expected. Mostly because it was really hard to find the right words.

But in the end, I still managed to explain everything.

"So your own skill almost killed you?" Sherial laughed.

Of course.

The moment she got an excuse to laugh at me.

Although… honestly, it really did sound incredibly stupid.

And so did my actions.

Who would immediately choose Hard Mode without knowing anything about a new trial?

So I guess I deserved the mockery.

When we returned to the Training Room, the girls seemed to enjoy the fact that the space had become much larger.

As for me, I immediately headed toward my improvised storage area.

One of the rooms inside the wooden building was already almost completely filled with crates of Rank 3 health potions.

Well, yeah, I hadn’t been wasting time and had been producing huge amounts of potions.

You could never have too many of them.

Besides, as far as I knew, the guild bought health potions practically without limit and never lowered the price no matter how many were brought in.

And simply having an enormous stockpile of health potions was never a bad idea.

Although it was a shame they were still only Rank 3 potions.

I hoped my Alchemy skill would rank up soon. Though honestly, considering how many potions I was producing, I felt like it should happen pretty soon already.

Well, with more than fifty million mana, it would be strange not to produce huge quantities of potions.

Although Rank 3 health potions were no longer that useful for me personally, they still worked perfectly well as energy drinks. And they still handled minor injuries without any problem.

I simply placed the crates in front of me, and potion bottles began appearing inside them one after another.

My control over the Alchemy skill had improved so much that now I could create potions directly inside the crates instead of summoning them in the air like before.

Right now, the distance at which I could create potions was still fairly limited. But within a radius of two to three meters, there were no problems anymore.

And most importantly—the risk of a bottle falling to the ground and shattering had completely disappeared.

Although, on the other hand, I was still creating potions one at a time. It was just that the creation speed had become so fast that I could make more than two thousand health potions in less than a minute.

I carefully placed another crate beside the others.

Yeah… I was almost out of crates.

Looks like after this I’d just have to pile the bottles together in heaps.

Though they were fairly durable and shouldn’t break from that.

And even if some of them did break—it wasn’t a big deal.

I still needed to continue leveling my Alchemy skill.

Although I could now create Rank 3 experience potions, there wasn’t much point in it. With my current mana reserves, I could only make a maximum of two of them.

But that was just a pointless waste of mana.

Spend twenty-five million mana for one hundred thousand experience points?

Completely ridiculous.

Alright, we’re done here.

I think after eating a little, I’ll go destroy Dark Wolves to relax.

—

Now I was ready to attempt Quest No. 2.

I moved farther away from the place where our belongings and wooden buildings were located. Thankfully, the Training Room had become much larger now, and all our possessions occupied only a small part of this enormous space.

So the chance of accidentally destroying something during the quest was pretty low.

[Quest No. 2]

[Choose quest completion mode.]

[Easy Mode: 120 minutes]

[Hard Mode: 2 minutes]

Just as I thought, the quest turned out to be the same as before. Only now the time had doubled.

Oh no.

This time I’m choosing not two minutes, but one hundred twenty.

Yes, maybe I’m not the smartest person, but I’m definitely not enough of an idiot to make the same mistake twice.

Although…

If something goes wrong, Rem and Sherial are nearby. They’re watching me.

And if a truly dangerous situation arises, they’ll help me.

Well then, I’m ready to begin the next quest.

"Hey, Alisar, can I ask something?" I suddenly heard Sherial’s voice.

"Yeah. What did you want to ask?" I replied.

Good thing I hadn’t started the quest yet.

"I was just thinking a little… This quest is supposed to be a trial specifically for you, right? To make you stronger?" Sherial asked.

"Well yeah… I think it’s something like that," I answered.

"And what do you think? Will there be any consequences if we interfere and help you?" she asked.

And that made me pause.

She was right.

This trial was meant specifically for me.

So what would happen if Rem and Sherial interfered and saved me?

Although…

Last time Rem destroyed the iron mannequin, and there didn’t seem to be any consequences.

Hopefully nothing will happen this time either.

"I don’t think there’ll be any problems," I answered Sherial.

"Well, that’s good then," she said.

Although honestly, I didn’t really believe my own words either.

But… hopefully everything really would be fine.

Alright.

I’m ready to begin the quest.

—

POV: Captain Varden

Captain Varden stood atop the wall, observing the distant battlefield.

From the top of the wall, it was impossible to make out the details of what was happening. All he could see was that the battle was still continuing. The distant thunder of combat constantly reached his ears.

But something else attracted far more of his attention.

The entire space before the wall, as far as the eye could see toward the depths of the dungeon, was filled with stone golems.

There were tens of thousands of them.

No… perhaps far more by now.

And with every passing hour, their numbers continued increasing.

"What the hell is even happening here…?" he muttered.

Until the very last moment, he had hoped the territorial lord’s army would soon arrive and stop the monsters.

But now he had already stopped waiting for help.

Because there was simply no need for it.

The stone golem army not only surpassed the lord’s forces in numbers—it surpassed them in strength as well.

"Sir, the scouts have returned with new information," a subordinate soldier said.

"And what’s happening there? Report," Captain Varden answered tiredly.

He had barely slept for more than two days already. And the situation itself was becoming more absurd with every hour.

"The number of Dark Wolves on the front line continues to increase. The last major wave contained more than three hundred thousand individuals. And… even between the major waves, which occur approximately every hour and a half, the flow of Dark Wolves does not stop," the soldier reported.

"Three hundred thousand…"

The Captain looked toward the stone golem army in front of the wall.

Three hundred thousand Dark Wolves… Even for them, that’s too many, he thought.

Yes, the stone golems were powerful. But he had already seen how exactly they fought against the Dark Wolves.

Each Dark Wolf was far stronger than an individual golem and managed to destroy dozens of them before being killed.

Yes, the frontline was still holding. But it held mainly because of those three adventurers and the enormous number of golems.

But even they could not fight forever.

And even if the territorial lord’s army arrived right now… it would no longer change anything.

Despair once again began creeping into the captain’s heart.

"And according to the scouts, how much longer can they hold out? Do they at least have any guesses?" Captain Varden asked.

"No, sir. There are no such estimates. But according to the scouts’ reports, those adventurers on the front line show absolutely no signs of trouble. They don’t even look tired. And it seems as though the Dark Wolves pose no threat to them at all, even in such numbers."

The soldier paused for a moment.

"And one more thing… new types of golems have appeared on the frontline."

"What? What new types?" Captain Varden asked in surprise.

"They’re as large as the golems near the wall. But they act completely differently."

The soldier nervously swallowed before continuing.

"Golems with enormous shields stand on the front line. They prevent the Dark Wolves from breaking through. And behind them are other golems carrying massive spears. They throw them with enough force to pierce straight through the Dark Wolves."

The soldier paused again.

"They move so smoothly together that, watching them, it’s easy to forget they’re even golems at all. From a distance, they look like an elite army of professional soldiers."

"And… according to the scouts’ reports, in direct clashes with the Dark Wolves, these new types of golems suffer almost no losses."

Captain Varden wanted to ask another question, but a massive explosion in the distance interrupted him.

Both he and the nearby soldier looked toward it at the same time.

Even from such an enormous distance, they could feel the air tremble.

The Captain could have sworn those explosions were becoming stronger and stronger each time.

It seemed those three adventurers had been hiding their true strength when they fought in front of the wall.

And only now were they beginning to reveal their real power.

Although…

Perhaps even this was not the limit of their strength.

A single explosion like that could easily destroy the wall they were currently protecting.

No…

Not just the wall.

After an explosion like that, almost nothing of the city behind the wall would remain either.

So this was…

This was the true power of the Adventurers Guild.

He had heard before that the Adventurers Guild was far more powerful than any individual kingdom.

But now, after seeing the strength of the Black Squad adventurers with his own eyes, he realized those rumors had not been exaggerated.

On the contrary.

They had been understated.

If every member of the Adventurers Guild’s Black Squad possessed such strength, then no kingdom would be capable of opposing them.

Even the combined armies of several kingdoms would most likely be unable to do anything against the Adventurers Guild.

And what was happening now inside this dungeon…

This anomaly with the endless Dark Wolves…

There was no way all of this was just a coincidence.

No.

The Adventurers Guild was definitely involved.

After all, there had to be a reason why adventurers from the Black Squad had been sent here specifically.

People like them could not have arrived here by accident.

"Sir, what are your orders?" the soldier asked.

"Continue observation. And report every change in the situation. Even if nothing changes, I still want a new report every hour," Captain Varden said.

"Yes, sir."

The soldier quickly left.

And Captain Varden silently continued staring toward the depths of the dungeon.