Darius' Luck manifested itself in easy critical hits. It seemed like whenever he sprayed his spell around, it would strike the weak points of the monsters someway somehow, through some bizarre spot of… luck.
Darius felt reassured that allocating points in that stat had been the best possible choice he could make just seeing its effect in battle. In about 3 minutes, the duo of Gunner and Darius had cleared out the monsters within this cavern, being granted their loot as they did so.
As for the post-battle report…
[You have gained 15 EXP, 10 Bloodleaf, 13 Andir Fruits, 4 Indigo Sap, etc.]
[Gunner has gained 15 EXP, 5 High Fibro, 9 Kisu Stem, 7 Forest Essence, etc.]
Clearly, higher levels equaled low exp gain. In fact, both Darius and Gunner were lucky that these foes were within the 5 level boundary. Otherwise, forget 1 exp point, they would have to swallow a big fat nothing for their efforts.
Largely undeterred, Darius gave Gunner some time to recover his mana before they charged into the next cavern which seemed to contain monsters between the levels of 18 and 19.
Here too, Darius and Gunner adopted their same strategy from before, though since the monster concentration was lower, they were done much faster than previously.
As for Joneson and Mikey, they were not allowed to participate in the fights yet, as Darius thought of a much better way to raise their levels outside of this.
As such, they simply kept raising as many monsters as they could in the interim, greatly increasing their undead minion count. Once Darius and Gunner cleared the last but one cavern, the two Liches shared an uncertain look before following the duo in the final one.
At the final cavern, which was the smallest of the lot, there was a large tree smack dab in the center. It was a monstrosity about three times the size of even Gunner, with thick branches and many vines in its boughs.
Darius frowned as he Inspected it.
[Treeant - Level 20 Monster
HP: 600/600 MP: 250/250]
Clearly, this one wasn't as simple as those that came before. With such a high amount of HP and mana, it could prove to be a tough foe, Darius guessed.
Darius had severely underestimated how annoying this would be. It turned out that the Treeant had no combat skills, only a healing spell that restored its HP over time and could stack.
As such, he and Gunner had to spend almost 30 minutes just bringing it down. Darius had burned the Treeant until he was certain that it must have gained flame immunity. He partially regretted not investing more into Ember, but shook that thought off.
If he was free enough that he could continue to dungeon dive at his own leisure like he had been doing before, then there would be no problem. However, he had needed to allocate his points with his Quest in mind.
Once they cleared the Treeant, Darius discovered that neither Joneson nor Mikey could raise monsters above their level, which was why they had left some corpses behind in the previous cavern.
With a smile, he noticed that his drops for killing the Treeant were plentiful, unlike the experience which had been a measly 5 points that he and Gunner needed to share. Darius then noticed that the moment the treeant fell, two new paths at the back of the cavern were created.
One was a set of stairs that led deeper into the bowels of the dungeon while the other set curved upwards, which seemed like a stairway to heaven from this point of view.
Darius didn't rashly enter any of them, rather choosing to investigate. After all, what if this dungeon was the type where one started at the bottom and had to climb up.
So instead of floor 1 being closest to the surface, floor 1 would the deepest while the spelunker would have to take themselves back to the surface through their own efforts.
Darius sent Joneson through the stairway to the upper levels while he sent Mikey down to the levels below. After waiting for about 5 minutes, he resummoned both Undead.
Instead of breaking from the earth to gain life, this time, they materialized from small portals with a dangerous aura radiating from their forms that disgusted Darius subconsciously.
Mikey and Joneson appeared from both portals in extremely different conditions. Mikey who had gone down, looked a bit beaten up and tired, while Joneson who had gone up looked fresh and chipper.
When asked for an account of their adventurers, Mikey complained about being sieged by monsters the moment he had entered the second floor. If it wasn't for him sacrificing scores of his raised Undead to keep his enemies at bay long enough to be summoned back by Darius, he might have gotten seriously injured or worse.
As for Joneson, he had appeared at the mouth of the dungeon, and the bright sunshine had shone on his dark form ominously. As such, the crowd at the front of the dungeon had been frozen for the majority of the time until near the end, when they had panicked at the arrival of a powerful Lich.
Joneson even laughed and said that with how many officials they managed to gather in such a short amount of time to deal with him alone, he definitely would have been ruined had Darius not called him back in a timely manner.
Left speechless by the lack of awareness by the newly born Lich, Darius ascertained that going up was indeed the way out while going down would lead to further fighting.
Darius desummoned the two Undead and walked up the stairs with Gunner. After going up 20 steps, the familiar sensation of being whisked through space and time to reach a destination as he found while he was at the mouth of the dungeon with his servant.
This naturally attracted interest from onlookers as Darius was far too young for such responsibility, but Darius could care less about these blokes.
They gazed at him and Gunner with envy as the duo headed to the debriefing counter and went through their adventurers as well as their acquisitions.
Darius sold the amount he needed to the Guild for currency while he kept the rest.
Of course, the rule about coughing up half of your assets was for Novices only. Amateur stage fighters and mages were important to society, so they got discounts like this with ease.
