SB: Chapter 245 – Rain Of Feathers (Patreon)

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Looking at the chamber ahead on the 11th layer, my Danger Sense felt higher than normal. I scanned the entire chamber carefully. Since I had to do the majority of the fighting, I preferred scouting out which kind of monsters I would be facing every chamber.

While it added a bit of time to clearing, it gave me a sense of confidence before each fight that I wouldn’t get surprised. In the current chamber there were balls of wings and eyes. What could be called a shape monster or a deformed monster.

They weren’t as common as humanoid or creature variants, but they weren’t rare either. The monsters were floating about as well. Probably air based or visual skills with those wings and eyes. While my guesses were sometimes off, it was very rare. The chance of these monsters using something like water, fire, or earth was practically zero percent. Lightning might be possible but there was no static in the air.

If they did use lightning spell skills then their Mana control would be high and their physical stats would be on the lower end. Basically they would be specialized spellcasters. But with wings and the slight changes in the air, it was far more likely they used air magic combined with visual magic based on all the eyes they had.

I had been doing this for long enough, that I had a fairly good understanding of monster types. That was why I wasn’t too concerned about most fights once I had worked out what the monsters were capable of. The real challenge at the moment was the likely Abnormal hiding out in this chamber.

Ten minutes slowly passed as I scanned every inch of the jagged stone walls. There was a bonfire in the middle of the chamber and some small shrubs, which created annoying shadows, making it hard to work out if there was any kind of distortion. I couldn’t find where the Abnormal was hiding, but I trusted my Danger Sense.

It was the most important skill one could have in my opinion. Without it, each fight would be a gamble and it would be far too easy to walk into traps or situations beyond my ability to handle. I returned to the middle of the tunnel where Boris was waiting patiently along with Ozy.

“There is probably an Abnormal in the next chamber. I need to prepare some cores and stone plates,” I explained and Boris nodded. He took a seat off to one side as I got to work, content to watch me as I prepared cheap Mana bombs.

While I could have stocked up on tags and metal plates from the College, I had no desire to waste money or become attached to stronger equipment. While I could afford it, I had learned a valuable lesson from the armor set that had boosted my stats. Downgrading equipment was annoying.

If I upgraded my equipment, it would stay upgraded going forward. Switching between better equipment back to worse equipment was the absolute worst. Once I was done with my preparations after an hour, I advanced to the entrance of the chamber with winged eye monsters.

The College had official names for all the monsters, but it was rare that one of them stuck. The monsters had wings and eyes, no need to give them some kind of fancy name. I just needed to kill them. That was something both my mother and I had agreed on.

While knowing names could help in calling out tactics in a fight, that required both people know the name of the monster and it would have been better to just focus on some kind of combat skill to kill it off quicker.

I began drawing runes in the air. The monsters all instantly reacted and turned towards me. I released a large wave of fire, boosted by Ozy.

“Ward.”

I blocked several feathers that flew at me through the wave of fire. They were slightly smoking, but hadn’t burnt up or caught fire themselves. As my wave of fire cleared, the monsters were remaining at a distance and content to launch spear like feathers in my direction. I didn’t see where it emerged from, but a much bigger eye and wing monster emerged into the center of the chamber.

I could see Mana boosting the smaller monsters. Thank you, dungeon, for creating one of the most annoying fights possible. Flying ranged monsters that used physical attacks, that were resistant to fire, combined with an Abnormal that was boosting the minion type monsters. From what I could tell the Abnormal was boosting Mana recovery.

The feather bombardment increased forcing Ozy and me to retreat into the tunnel. The flying monsters kept their distance. I moved forward while dodging their attacks and they retreated. Some of the feathers hit my armor and did minor damage, but it was still damage. And one of those attacks on my eye or flesh and I would be hurting.

The Abnormal was also keeping back. This was the kind of behavior seen on the 16th layer and below. But with an Abnormal, the usual rules didn’t apply. I kept retreating and the monsters filled the tunnel, until the Abnormal entered in at the back.

I pulled out a stone plate and activated it. Ozy pulled in wind from behind both of us, unleashing a flame tornado in front of us at the monsters. I rushed forward.

“Fireball. Fireball. Ward.”

I unleashed more fire, not holding back while also shielding myself. As I raced closer, I felt space constrict around me. I couldn’t move as freely and quickly as before. Several of the smaller monsters were burnt and slightly charred, but none of them had died. Some kind of spatial defense.

This had officially become the most annoying monster to fight. The bug Abnormal with a scissor mouth and blades for legs, I could damage at least. These monsters seemed content to try and wear me down. I felt like the dungeon was messing with me, coming up with the one type of monster that would counter me perfectly and adding an Abnormal to the mix.

The monsters retreated and I couldn’t catch them. I couldn’t get in close. The Abnormal was keeping them topped off with Mana. My last attack did some damage, but I couldn’t keep doing something like that. And they had decent regeneration as well from what I could tell.

My only advantage was that their attacks were weak, even if there were a lot of them. They didn’t have much in terms of offense besides the spear like feathers. The problem was that there were a lot of monsters, which meant a lot of attacks.

How to deal with this situation?

It truly was a difficult question to answer. Time to test something. “Lightning Beam.” The monster I hit fell from the air, but then recovered after a few seconds. That was why being a spellblade was the best adventuring profession, due to the versatility I possessed.

I began drawing runes slowly in the air. I also mentally communicated to Ozy to begin transmuting the ground. This wouldn’t be pleasant, but it was the best option I had. I finished my runic circle and let it fly out into the chamber.

It became more and more unstable as the Mana inside of it built up. I pulled out another stone plate. The chamber filled with a massive blast of lightning. I felt some of it impact me, but thankfully my body didn’t lock up thanks to my Lightning Resistance. I immediately unleashed another torrent of fire.

The ground lit up into a massive pillar of flame, blasting me with heat and forcing me to take a step back. My Danger Sense spiked.

“Ward!”

The Abnormal burst out of the flames rushing right at me. I activated my ring and another Ward barrier appeared. Both shattered, but they slowed down the Abnormal quite a bit.

“Lightning Beam. Vibration Blade.”

The Abnormal locked up from my spell skill and Ozy’s Petrifying Gaze. I raced forward and cut into it with my sword. The flames from my Sun Amulet of Experience Blocking did additional damage.

“Lightning Beam. Lightning Beam.”

I kept hitting the Abnormal with spell skills bottoming out my Mana. The chamber had stopped being an inferno, but most of the smaller monsters were either dead or dying. I kept cutting back and forth through the Abnormal as blood poured out of it, over my blade and armor.

It tried to struggle and crush me, but it had taken too much damage. It finally collapsed to the ground, dead. I let out a sigh of relief and went around finishing off the remaining monsters.

An adventurer or a team without the versatility I had, would have probably wiped if they had tried to fight such monsters. Even with all the knowledge and experience I had, my guess about their abilities had been off. The Abnormal had changed things too much. Something to remember in the future if I ever encountered an Abnormal with minions.

I got to harvesting the Mana cores out of the monsters. I had become quite good at this. Ozy got Boris and then returned to eat the core of the Abnormal. It was a yellow core, so nothing special. Boris didn’t help handle the monster processing, since it wasn’t his job.

It was annoying, but I could respect that. Even regular porters rarely handled monster processing. Carrying that insanely heavy sword case was far more important anyways. I couldn’t afford him to get hurt or to lose that sword case. While it was hard to damage, that didn’t mean it was impossible.

So, while it was annoying to have to do a lot of the menial work, that was part of being an adventurer. 

“Nice try dungeon, nice try,” I muttered as I finished collecting the monster cores. If this was how fights on the 16th layer and below would go, I could sense they would be a massive headache.

I had used far too much time and Mana for this fight. It was acceptable since there was an Abnormal, but if it was a regular occurrence, trying to traverse the lower layers of the dungeon would be a nightmare.

While it was early, I called it a day. I needed to let my points recover and to find the secret treasure cave the Abnormal was linked to. That truly was the greatest piece of information the beastkin had given me. Even the College didn’t have that knowledge, which I found surprising.

I suppose that enough natural treasures were missed or Abnormals moved out of their starting chamber, that no one ever connected the dots.

As time went on, I became more annoyed, since I couldn’t spot any hidden or secret chamber. I had Ozy fly around the walls and ceiling, checking every single surface, but there was nothing.

I hadn’t seen where the Abnormal had come from, but this was the chamber it had to have formed in, since the smaller monsters were of a similar design. Unless there were two chambers next to each other with the same type of monster, but that was beyond exceedingly rare. The monsters didn’t seem like the tracking type either.

The more I looked, the more frustrated I became. Even Compass Of Desire was not working.

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