'Damn!' He cursed within. So he still couldn't avoid misfortune. He thought about running the other way from where the red dots were coming, but what if there were even more hostiles that way. After a brief pondering, he decided to meet with the current enemy first. He needed to see how dangerous these hostiles were first before deciding. The movements on his radar were not particularly fast. If he decided to run away, he should still be able to do so after catching sight of them.
Problem was, in this foggy area, they would be rather close already when he caught sight of them.
Jack didn't waste time on hesitation, he rushed out to meet them. He paid attention to his radar and made sure he engaged the enemy by their sides. He didn't want to engage them in their center and ended up being circumvented by them and getting trapped inside their formation.
When he was close enough, he stopped advancing and waited. Soon, he saw shadows moving inside the fog. These shadows soon came out of the fog and revealed themselves to be… shadows?
Jack used Inspect on them.
Living Shadow (Elite monster, Magical), level 28
HP: 19,000
Luckily, they were not high-level monsters. However, all the ones he saw were elites, there was no basic monster. Fortunately, there was also no special elite one. He found it weird to see all these Living Shadows here had exactly the same level and grade. With these many numbers, he would expect a small variation at least. But he did not think too much about it. Since they were not too high level, Jack decided to engage them.
He slashed at one. The shadow had no blood. Jack felt as if he was slashing at an incorporeal being as he felt no resistance in his slash. But there was a trail of shadow that was dragged following his sword's slash and damage numbers appeared above the monster, so he knew his slash was effective.
The shadow, however, did not show any pain. It struck its clawed hand at Jack. Jack expected it to stagger a bit from his slash so he did not expect such a swift counterattack. His shoulder was clawed by the shadow. The damage was not large, but the other shadows were already pouncing at him. With how these monsters ignored their opponent's attacks, he would have to readjust his approach.
Jack used Swing while retreating. As expected, despite suffering damages, the shadows treated his Swing as if nothing and continued to advance. Some of the other shadows spat some kind of black smoke projectiles from their mouths.
Jack could not evade them all, so he evaded a portion and used Magic Shield to block the others. These shadows were not very strong, but because of their reckless-assault style that disregarded defense, it was also not possible for Jack to evade all attacks.
At one point, he received notification that he had received a Weakness status effect. This weakness status reduced his attributes. Luckily, the effect did not stack. With these many numbers of shadows he had to contend with, if the status stacked, his attributes would be reduced to negative already.
There were around fifty of these shadows in this wave, it took Jack more than an hour dealing with them all. He was getting more accustomed to fighting them after a while, so the speed picked up at the later half. These shadows didn't drop any items, coins, nor mana cores. All Jack got from fighting them was just exp points. He checked his Container of Souls and found out that these shadows also didn't contribute any souls.
Jack asked Peniel what this meant. She said she had no idea. Soulless monsters were usually illusions but these ones gave exp points so they were not simply illusions.
Jack didn't worry about it too much. His priority at the moment was finding a way out of this valley, so he continued to walk around again. He continued with his rotational movement. But after his rotation got bigger, he had trouble ascertaining his directions. He was not sure if he was still walking rotationally or was actually walking in a straight line. The fog made every direction looked the same, he had no point of reference, and there was still no wall in sight. He opened his Map and saw that everything was covered with grey fog, including the spot he was at.
Even though he was confused, he had no choice but to continue doing what he was doing, as staying still would also not solve anything. Not long after, he saw another group of red dots on his radar.
"Again?" He exclaimed.
As the new wave of red dots arrived, he found them to be the exact same as the previous Living Shadows. So he engaged them again.
There was another monster wave coming not long after he finished with this second one. And then another fourth wave. He continued in this manner and found out that it was slightly three hours in between the waves.
"This is weird, how come the monsters came in a clockwork manner like this? It was almost like they were set to come at us at a set interval," Jack commented.
"Indeed. This whole place felt more like a training place," Peniel agreed.
"But I can't stay down here continuing like this, I need to find a way out!"
Peniel didn't reply, she was clueless herself.
"And how come we still have not found the valley wall yet? We have been walking for hours. How big is this valley actually?"
Jack lost count already on how many waves of Living Shadows they had encountered. He was feeling rather tired now. He figured a day must have passed already. It was difficult to know about day and night at this place since he couldn't see the sky.
After wiping out the last wave, he asked Peniel to wake him up two hours from now before the next wave arrived. Seeing that Jack was too tired, she didn't protest.
When the next wave arrived, Peniel had to hit him in order to wake him up, since Jack didn't respond even after she was yelling at his ears. Jack woke up drowsily when the Living Shadows arrived. He was fighting clumsily and suffered much damage. Peniel had to remind him that his Immortal Soul was still on cooldown before he snapped back in alert and put more focus on the fight.
He went back to sleep after that.
The next day, which he knew because his Immortal Soul was off cooldown already, his levels were finally back to Warrior level 29 and Mage level 28 again. After his Warrior was back to level 29, the next wave of Living Shadows turned out to be level 29 elite monsters. He was sure now these Living Shadows adjusted their levels following him.
Peniel was right. The setup of this place functioned very much like a training place. But if it was so, who built it and why it was hidden in such a place?
He continued to walk. He no longer tried to walk in a rotation anymore, since he couldn't be sure anyway. He just walked straight in one direction.
He tried to send a message to Jeanny and John, wanted to inform them that he might be unavailable for don't know how long, but he received a notification that his message was unable to be sent. Whatever this place was, it did not only kept him from leaving. It also kept him from contacting the outside world.
And so he continued walking. Days passed, or so he thought. As he continued to fight the waves. The exp provided was not as much as the ones from Mouseants swarm above the gorge, but it was steady. It took him around an hour to finish off a wave, and then two hours of waiting, so three hours for one wave. One day he got eight waves. After what he thought was a week of walking and fighting. His Warrior class had become level 30. He wondered how much longer he would be trapped in this place. It would be a waste if he kept on increasing in level and yet could not apply for the Elite class.
He was walking while contemplating when he bumped into something. He was not paying attention since all this time it was just flat terrain. He looked at where he had bumped into. A steep rock wall was seen. He put his hands on it to make sure that the wall was real.
'Finally found it!' He thought. It was the gorge wall. He looked above. The wall was very steep and flat. No visible gripping part and foothold. His heart sank again. Even though he had found the wall, he still could not see a way to go back up.
Unwilling to give up, he still tried to scale the wall. He was not even three meters up before he slid down again. He was right. This wall was not possible to be scaled.
Out of option, he continued walking, now following the wall.
