[Chapter 69. Not as Cute as Before]
The heavy crunch of loose stones under his boots marked his final exit from the dungeon. Behind him, the spatial portal began to contract; the floating stones that formed its ornate frame sank slowly toward the ground as the magic sustaining them dissipated. It stood now at only half its original height, and the once-turbulent swirling vortex had grown calm, settling into a low, rhythmic pulse. Searanox adjusted his shades with a practiced, fluid motion to compensate for the sudden shift in ambient light, then mounted his travel drone. The metallic platform lifted smoothly beneath him, carrying him across the rugged terrain toward the next predetermined location on his mental map.
While Searanox remained seated on his travel drone, a translucent global announcement window flickered into existence before his eyes, interrupting the steady flight.
As the message expanded to fill his field of vision, he looked at it and cocked his head slightly in confusion. "The third? When exactly was the second?" he muttered to the empty air. In the end, however, the political movements of other players were of so little importance to his personal objectives that he simply swiped the window away with a dismissive flick of his hand.
As the drone skimmed across the landscape, his mind kept returning to the System's recent reward. The ability to duplicate any single item was a level of power that demanded meticulous, careful consideration. It was a 'joker card' that could not be wasted on something trivial or easily replaceable. He needed something rare—something unique or perhaps even legendary.
Searanox mentally sifted through his entire inventory, evaluating the mechanical utility of each item in turn: the Magitech Gauntlet, the various lodestones, and even the rare Wavebreaker shield he had just acquired from the previous dungeon. After several minutes of cold deliberation, he concluded with grim certainty that nothing currently in his possession warranted such a singular, high-value opportunity. He minimized the notification window, tucking it into the far periphery of his vision where it remained a tiny, flickering icon.
It was a necessary form of mental compartmentalization, a pragmatic choice to save the reward for a future necessity.
Ten minutes later, the travel drone began its programmed descent. The entrance to the new dungeon was little more than a jagged hole gouged into the earth at the base of a small, grassy hill. A tilted portal hovered directly above the opening, its surface swirling with a dark, viscous energy that seemed to swallow the surrounding light. Searanox dismounted, his boots sinking slightly into the soft, rain-dampened soil. He approached the edge of the pit and peered into its depths, the vortex drawing his gaze into an impenetrable, ink-black darkness.
A sudden flash of white light signaled his transition, depositing him into a labyrinthine network of narrow tunnels. The walls were composed of densely packed earth, their surfaces occasionally interrupted by thick, gnarled roots that protruded from the ceiling and sides like twisted, petrified limbs. The air inside was stale and heavy, thick with the musky, pungent scent of rodents and damp, decaying soil. Even with his technologically enhanced vision, Searanox struggled against the oppressive darkness of the warren; only the faint, receding glow of the entry portal provided any immediate illumination.
Searanox summoned six drones to his side. They materialized in a rapid cascade of flickering blue light, their sleek, metallic forms standing out in stark contrast against the primitive gloom. Five were basic assault air drones, their red optical lenses active and sweeping the tunnels for heat signatures. The sixth was a specialized recon drone, its violet lens glowing as a dim pinprick in the dark as it calibrated its sensors for the confined space. Without uttering a single word, he sent them forward. Their silent, methodical advance quickly disappeared into the winding tunnels ahead of him.
The first signs of combat did not take long to appear. After Searanox rounded a sharp bend in the earthen passage, he came upon the bodies. They were rabbits, but they had been twisted by dungeon mana into something monstrous and predatory. These creatures were the size of a large dog, their fur matted with filth and missing in patchy clumps that revealed scarred, greyish skin beneath. Their overgrown incisors were yellowed, chipped, and frequently stained with dried blood. Their claws were sharp, dark, and elongated—biological tools clearly capable of tearing through much more than just dirt and roots.
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The carcasses of the Warren Hares littered the tunnel floor, their twisted forms creating a gruesome, physical obstacle course. Searanox was forced to physically shove the heavy carcasses aside with the toe of his boot to advance. The matted fur of the beasts caught on the edges of his armor with sickening, tactile scrapes.
The first large chamber he entered opened into a cavernous space thick with the overwhelming stench of death and biological decay. His eyes caught a blur of movement in the shadows near the ceiling, but his drones were already engaging the threat. Crimson energy beams lanced through the gloom, precisely striking the hidden predators before they could pounce.
He took a confident step forward, his boot landing on what appeared to be a patch of solid ground, only to have the earth give way instantly beneath his weight. He stumbled back with a sharp intake of breath, his hand slapping hard against the damp tunnel wall to regain his balance. A pit, at least two meters deep and lined with jagged debris, yawned open exactly where he had almost stepped. He noted another similar depression just a few meters ahead; both were crude, effective traps dug by the dungeon's inhabitants to catch the unwary.
He thought, his heart rate slowly returning to its baseline, However, the realization did little to ease the cold tension coiling in his gut. This dungeon was primitive, but its traps were grounded in a physical lethality that his drones couldn't always detect from the air.
In a hollowed-out space between two massive, overarching roots, a small chest rested. Its surface was made of unremarkable, weathered wood, lacking the silver inlays of the more prestigious chests he had seen earlier. The lid opened without any mechanical resistance, its iron hinges groaning loudly in the sudden silence of the chamber. Inside, nestled on a dry bed of straw, lay a small pile of silver coins. He counted them with a single, quick glance—exactly twenty. As he slipped the currency into his storage ring, the familiar blue glow of a System window materialized in his vision, the text appearing sharp and stark against the dungeon's darkness.
With the local population of Warren Hares cleared and the objective met, Searanox dismissed his drones. Their mental connections vanished one by one, leaving him momentarily alone in the oppressive, silent darkness. A travel drone materialized beneath him, its smooth, cool surface lifting him several inches off the uneven tunnel floor. The platform accelerated, its movements precise and controlled as it began to navigate the winding return passages. The walls of packed earth and gnarled roots blurred past in a brown haze, yet the drone maintained a perfect course, never so much as brushing against the narrow, claustrophobic confines of the warren.
The final tunnel widened abruptly into a vast, central chamber where the air was thickest with that musky scent. At its center lay the massive corpse of a colossal hare, the dungeon's primary guardian. Its fur was a mottled gradient of dark grey to midnight black, standing out in stark, somber contrast against the earthy browns of its smaller kin. Even without a formal System notification, the sheer scale of the creature made its status as a boss clear.
Searanox approached an ornate chest that had materialized near the boss's remains. He flipped open the lid with practiced ease, the mechanism clicking smoothly. Inside, nestled on a plush velvet cushion, lay the expected rewards: fifteen silver coins, two E-Grade Skillstones, and a simple, minor storage ring.
The coins and the glowing skillstones vanished into his primary storage ring with a single thought. The minor ring, however, resisted the transfer. It remained sitting in the center of his palm, a faint, stubborn shimmer preventing its absorption into his existing spatial storage.
"Figures," he grumbled, his voice echoing flatly in the chamber. "No stacking the easy way." He slipped the ring into his physical pocket instead, making a mental note of the limitation.
Less than twenty minutes after he had first entered the hole in the ground, he emerged back into the light of the surface world. The travel drone carried him up from the dark tunnel mouth and into the open air. He immediately directed the craft north, heading toward the next coordinate on his map.
He looked up at the sun, his eyes squinting despite the protection of his sunglasses. The orb was already sinking into the early afternoon sky. In a few more hours, night would fall across the landscape, and with its arrival, the system would announce the definitive end of the third day.
