[Felixes Lava Cape (Legend)

Durability – 500/500 (Auto-repair)

Defense – 2,000

Equipment Requirement – Kang Shin

Option – Dexterity +40, Magic +40, Charm +40. Immune to sneak attacks. Flame Sucker is always active.

Flame Sucker – Absorbs all flames up to SSS rank and converts them to magic and constitution. Flames above SSS rank can be nullified, but EX rank flames cannot.]

Although I had many questions, I asked the most important one first.

“What’s an EX rank flame, Lin?”

He explained, “Imagine the flame breath of a 10,000 year old dragon that’s prepared to burn its throat. That’s EX rank. Or, imagine the Demon Lord from the Luka continent sacrificing his arm to make a flame. That would be EX rank. It’s hard for the dungeon to estimate anything above that. Just think of them all as EX rank.”

I murmured, “So it’s an ultimate flame that can even injure the user. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Demon Lord would bear the risk to use something like that, so I guess I’ll be in trouble if I think I can block all flames…”

“Good, now you’re thinking.”

Lin nodded with satisfaction. Then, he shoved his face toward me and continued, “Kang Shin, be careful with that armor. I’m the one who made it, but it’s too overbearing. I managed to make use of its aggressive nature to greatly increase the chance of landing critical hits, but its aggressive nature also increases the wearer’s chance of receiving critical hits by 50%. It’s going to be quite troublesome. You have to be especially wary of Devourer’s side effect.”

I pursed my lips. “The mutation, you mean?”

“Yeah, that. I’ve seen many people who didn’t take it seriously, but they only ended up being done in by it. What I’m trying to say is, don’t use Devourer so freely. Got it? If you mutate due to the Demon Lord factor…Damn, noonim’s going to end me.”

Lin glared at the black bracelet on my wrist as if he was contemplating whether he wanted to take it back. I nodded seriously and retorted, “I’m immune to mutations so it’s okay.”

“Right, since you’re immune to mutations, you should try not to use…Immune to mutations!?” His voice squeaked at the end.

I gave him a confused look and said, “Right. Isn’t being immune to mutations the basic requirement of all explorers? Are there explorers not immune to mutations? That can’t be, right?”

“Ku, kuuu… I want to… hit you…!” Lin howled angrily.

I thanked Lin again and left Fairy Garden. For some reason, Lin didn’t look too happy when I thanked him!

Mm, teasing Lin was very satisfying. Today was turning out to be great!

[Name: Kang Shin

Race: Human

Sex: Male

Class: Elementalist (Sub – Skill Mixer, Tamer)

Title: Savior Hero

Rank: Gold 7

Level: 60

HP – 55,860/55,860

MP – 60,960/60,960

Strength – 275(+124)

Dexterity – 250(+127)

Constitution – 250(+79)

Intelligence – 40(+82)

Magic – 320(+157)

Charm – 87(+147)

Luck – 39(+72)

Normal Skills – High-rank Martial Arts (Lv 7), Peruta – Mad Typhoon (Lv 2), High-rank Crossbow Marksmanship (Lv 1), Wing King’s Rage (Lv 3), High-rank Heroic Strike (Lv 3), High-rank Provoke (Lv 7), Divine Speed (Master), Return (Master), Peruta Circuit (Lv 9), Dimensional Travel (Lv 5), Overwhelm (Lv 3), Absolute Soul (Lv 3), Deific Manifestation, Riding

Class Skills – High-rank Spirit Mastery (Lv 4), High-rank Spirit Aura (Lv 3), High-rank Elemental Control (Lv 3), High-rank Elemental Contract (Lv 3), Lightning Spear Storm (Lv 2), Mid-rank Elemental Blade (Lv 9), Mid-rank Elemental Tempest (Lv 9)

Subclass Skill – Endow Skill, Taming (Lv 4), Spirit of the Collector, Spirit of the Mixer, Spirit of the Tamer (Lv 4)]

Before I challenged the dungeon’s 60th floor, I checked my stats to celebrate getting new equipment. At the same time, I used up all the bonus stats I hadn’t had the time to use in the past. I had reached Gold Rank 7, and a few stats had grown unbelievably high. Strength, dexterity, and constitution stats didn’t need much explaining. On the other hand, my intelligence base stat was only 40, but the number of bonuses I had added up to 82, which was over double the base amount. Even my luck stat had reached an absurd 111 points.

Magic was my highest stat, so I didn’t even know what to say. Unlike the other stats that were extremely difficult, if not impossible, to grow naturally, it was constantly improving the more I used Peruta Circuit.

I was most likely the explorer who had one of the highest stats in the dungeon. The two additional Legend-grade equipment heavily increased my bonus stats, but I had gotten rather aloof about stat increases.

Of course, I could still feel myself getting stronger every time my stats increased. However, I had gotten so many explosive increases in a short period of time that my body hadn’t adapted to the change. I was pretty much always in the process of updating. With all the stats I had gained from Event Dungeons, Event Raids, Beyond, and other sources, it looked as if I’d broken through the dungeon’s 100th floor. This was even including all the stats an explorer could gain by grinding Floor Masters!

Moreover, I found out that there were other specialities that mattered, such as traps, special attack methods, the power of one’s levels, and things that disregarded the gap between levels. After learning all of this, it was impossible for me to be happy with a simple increase of 10 or 20 stat points. Instead, I concluded that I needed to focus on honing my skills, which were in a unique and independent position.

In that sense, having all my skills increase by a level for defeating a world’s enemy was an outstanding benefit. Similar to stat increases, there were skills that had to be ‘updated’ slowly.

I murmured to myself, “That means Beyond is truly that important.”

Not only did clearing a Beyond’s floor raise my HP and MP, but it also added experience to the skills I used to clear that floor. Beyond would undoubtedly help me hone my abilities. My current self was still not strong enough to defeat the Demon Lord that I had met in the Luka continent. Furthermore, I had to think about the other world’s enemy that had yet to make its appearance. I couldn’t be content with just this. I had to get much stronger.

I felt anxious even though not even a month had passed since Loretta’s announcement of a two year time limit. Perhaps it was because so many things had happened in the past month. Regardless, I couldn’t do much about this feeling of anxiety. It was impossible to be completely unaffected now that I knew that I might die in two years and cause the entire world to fall to ruin. However, the key was knowing what to do about it.

To deal with my anxiety, I decided to tackle the 60th floor. After all, when things seemed complicated or when I just wanted to sweat off the stress of everyday life, climbing the dungeon was the best thing to do!

Something still felt off, but I decided not to pay any attention to it.

Like before, I equipped the armor by imbuing mana into the bracelet. Unlike the Crimson Scale Armor, which had hints of black on a red base, the Pure Black Desire was a pure black full plate armor just like its name suggested. There were strange engravings on the armor, which looked sophisticated and seemed to give off magic power.

These engravings gave off a faint, black glow and grabbed my attention. It looked rather ominous as it seemed to suck me into a trance when I looked at it. Overall, it was a cool piece of equipment that made the childish dreams I had during puberty reappear in my mind.

With the help of the new armor, I broke through the 60th floor in just three hours. I stood in front of the Floor Master room with Lotte in her human-form next to me. In the past, she couldn’t fully spread her wings out in the dungeon’s narrow passageways. Now that she could take on a human form, she was an excellent damage dealer with both speed and power. Since she was being treated as my tamed beast, it still counted as a solo clear when I brought her along.

I wiped the sweat off my brow. “Whew. Considering how the number of golems increased as I climbed the last few floors, the Floor Master is probably a golem too…”

Lotte commented, “Golems are annoying because my claws don’t penetrate them well. Regardless, let’s finish this quickly and go rest, Hero.”

Lotte, you can easily break them with aura-imbued attacks or flame breath. Don’t lie…

However, since the dungeon liked to play tricks on explorers, it was entirely possible for the Floor Master to be a mimic. I tightened my grip on Chaotic Spear and kicked the door open.

I shouted, “Fight me!”

[Guoooooooooooo!]

A loud, strange roar greeted us. The ceiling was unusually high, and an enormous steel giant was looking down at us. It had the exact appearance of a forty-foot tall human covered in steel. I trembled in excitement when I felt the overwhelming sense of existence I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“Lotte, you can fly here!”

She gleefully exclaimed, “I’ve been waiting for this, Hero!”

Lotte immediately transformed to her wyvern form. I jumped onto her back and raised my spear. It was the perfect chance to test one of my new armor’s abilities. Desire Thorn and Devourer were both straightforward skills to use, but Sacrifice seemed to have a somewhat ambiguous clause.

[Sacrifice – Usable with any attack skill. Receive half the damage of the skill, but doubles the skill’s effect. The damage received by Sacrifice cannot reduce your HP to under 10%.]

Just like its name suggested, Sacrifice traded one’s flesh for the enemy’s bones. The skill wouldn’t kill me, but it could potentially put me on the verge of death. I had to be careful before I used it.

The ambiguous part was receiving half of the skill’s damage. Did it double the skill’s effect after I received half the damage? Or did I receive half the damage from the doubled skill effect? If the skill’s damage was 100 and the amplified damage was 200, I wasn’t sure whether I took 50 or 100 damage in the end. That was what this fight was for. Once I tried it, I would get a feeling for it.

I immediately readied Sacrifice and aimed my spear toward the enemy.

[Kuaaaang!]

The giant golem raised its fists and sent a jab toward me. This guy knew how to box! Though Lotte seemed surprised by its quick jab, she flew backwards swiftly and dodged. Meanwhile, I slowly gathered energy in my spear. Sacrifice wasn’t a skill that could be used only once per day. As such, there was no need to save the skill for anything. There was nothing wrong with being a bit bold and using it now.

“Elemental Blade!”

In an instant, the spear blade elongated by over thirty feet. Immediately after using Sacrifice, I made Lotte accelerate and thrust my spear toward the giant golem’s left shoulder joint.

[Critical Hit!]

[Kuaaaaaang!]

“Whoa, that hurts!” I exclaimed.

That hurt enough to make me scream! Immediately after cutting off the golem’s arm, I checked my HP after feeling the electrifying pain. Shockingly, my HP had decreased by 35%. I really couldn’t use this skill freely! I gritted my teeth and gulped down a potion. At that moment, Lotte called me.

[Hero.]

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

[That guy feels like a weakling.]

“…What?”

I confusedly turned around. The golem had lost its arm and was roaring and charging toward me. Indeed, it did look quite pitiful. Wait, Elemental Blade was powerful, but still, it instantly cut off its arm?

“The 50% damage I took…” I muttered.

Did it hurt so much because I got a critical hit? But even critical hits only doubled the damage. That meant that the Elemental Blade with Sacrifice had dealt 4 times the normal damage. Mm, I couldn’t quite understand how it worked. Maybe if it had bones and was affected by the Skull Breaker effect… Ah!

The boss howled, [I’ll kill you, Humaaaaaaaaaaan!]

So that guy has bones inside of him!?