Ning arrived in a brightly lit cave with a wide pathway and a high ceiling. The place he had just come from was the end of the cave, with no way back.
Without waiting, he spread his divine sense all around him, looking for the monsters that would be in this place. However, when he actually did find them, he was surprised.
In the entire dungeon that had so many various pathways around it, there were maybe 20 monsters total. And not a single one of them was above E-rank.
"What… the hell?" Ning thought.
The monsters were giant, fluffy spiders that were not strong at all. He could defeat them with the snap of his finger if he wanted to.
"Why are there so few monsters?" he wondered "and where the hell is the boss?"
Ning did not move a single step and just stood there in confusion. There was definitely something wrong here, only he couldn't figure it out at all.
He snapped his finger and a ball of fire appeared in front of him. He sent the fire forward, guiding it with his divine sense as it made its way through the entire dungeon.
The dungeon was so massive that it took an entire minute for the fireball to reach the fire spire where a piece of it split off from it and hit the spider.
The spider burned immediately, leaving behind nothing. As E-rank monsters, there was a very low chance for them to contain mana stones in them.
The ball of fire moved around the dungeon until 5 minutes later every single spider in every pathway was fully defeated.
When he defeated the final spider, a portal appeared where the last spider had died.
"That's it?" Ning thought curiously. He had defaulted to long-ranged attacks just in case there was something about this dungeon that was still being hidden. However, from the look of it, that wasn't right at all.
He teleported over to the portal and checked around once again. Then, having nothing else to do, he walked out of the portal.
He appeared outside the dungeon and was surprised by what he saw. "What? Why is it dark?" he thought.
He looked at the sky and noticed that the moon was in the sky. Then, where was the sun?
Ning frowned and turned towards one of the people that were looking at him. "What's the time right now?" he asked.
"4— 4 AM," the woman said.
"How long have I been in here?" he asked.
"About 15 hours," she said.
Ning openly frowned now, making the people around him fear a bit. He sensed a divine sense fall onto him.
He teleported and arrived next to Ely.
"Are you okay? You've been gone for a while," she said.
"I'm fine," Ning said. "Was I really gone for 15 hours?"
"I'm afraid so," Ely said. "What happened? What took you so long?"
"Nothing took me so long," Ning said. "I was in there for maybe 10 minutes at most. I don't even think that's right. Maybe 7 minutes at best."
"What? Are you saying that time moved slowly in that dungeon?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so," he said with a frown on his face. He quickly contacted the Director and Apostle Kim to let them know he was out.
Both of them accepted the call despite the time.
"Young man, you're out?" the director asked.
"Yes," Ning said.
"Are you fine? Was the dungeon dangerous?"
"No, it was not," Ning said. "I'll go in once more and will let you know what I find in the meeting tomorrow."
He ended the call.
"You're going in again?" Ely asked.
"Yes, an experiment," Ning said. "Come with me."
They both went back to the portal site where Ning one of the people working there.
"Do you have stopwatches?" he asked.
"Stopwatch? Uh… I have one on my phone," the man said as he took out his smartphone and handed it over to Ning.
"Good," Ning said. He opened the stopwatch app and set it up. "What time is it right now? Exactly."
"Exactly… 4:13 AM," the man said as he looked at his wristwatch.
"Alright, I'm going in again," Ning said and turned toward the dungeon. He held the phone in his left hand and a small knife in his right.
Then, he started the stopwatch and entered. As soon as he was inside, he searched for the spiders in the dungeon. He found them immediately, so he killed them all by teleporting over to them and walking out of the portal that had appeared.
As he arrived, he pressed the stopwatch on the phone. "3.22 seconds," Ning said as he looked towards Ely and the man that was standing there doing nothing.
"What's the time?" he asked.
"4:20," the man said.
Ning handed him back his phone. "So every second in there, two minutes pass out here," he said. "Good to know."
He left the young man in a daze who looked at his phone and the number 3.22 displayed on it. That wasn't minutes, that was seconds.
How could anyone clear a dungeon in such little time? "Is that what it's like having the power of 5 gods?" he wondered.
Ely looked towards Ning who had a contemplative look on his face.
"What are you thinking?" she asked him.
"I'm thinking if I'm somehow wrong about all of this," he said.
"Wrong?" Ely looked confused. "How so?"
"Until now, I had been thinking that this was all the 'good' constellations that were making the dungeons to send the world into chaos, thus delaying my knowledge of magic circles from being spread," he said. "However, I don't see how whatever is going on right now is possibly going to help them."
"What are you trying to say?" Ely asked.
"I'm saying that this is more than just about magic circles," he said. "This… this isn't just about that, but about me destroying the SS-ranked dungeons. They're trying to overwhelm me with many new dungeons where time passes so slowly that it could never realistically be cleared completely."
"They're going to force the other SS-ranked dungeons into existence merely by diverting our attention elsewhere," Ning said. "And I'm afraid that it is working."
