I returned an hour later and met up with the girls.
“What did you go out to do Johra?”
Asked Lilinor curiously, but I simply shook my head.
“You’ll see later.”
Lilinor wanted to know what I had planned, but a secret arrangement doesn’t surprise anyone if you reveal it in advance. We took the chance to rest before delving back into the maze. In shifts of two hours, we always had one person on sentry duty.
“There don’t seem to be any adventurers coming in.”
Despite this supposedly being a famous dungeon, no one was around which made me quite curious as to why.
“Johra, the Jeduth dungeon was later known as the adventurer’s grave. Unlike the other 3 dungeons, this one has a very high difficulty from the very beginning which led to mass casualties. Just five years ago a country led a large punitive expedition here, but they were never heard from again and it was deemed as a failure.”
“Hmmm”
I got a better understanding due to Lena’s explanation which she learned from all the books we scanned.
‘Well, the magic in the maze is quite bewildering, and there is the Beholder right off the bat so I definitely understand others giving this dungeon a wide berth.
After hearing Lena’s update, I began contemplating something when Viezda asked me.
“What are you thinking about master?”
“Nothing much, just thinking how I’m going to get my revenge?”
“Really, you still want revenge on that thing? Then I might have to take my true form.”
“No need , no need, would you even fit inside in your dragon form?”
“Well we would just have to try, the defenses in the dungeon are meant to detain a God class being. If I don’t take my true form we won’t have any chance to kill that thing.”
Lilinor seemed to be quite conflicted, but I had already come up with a solution.
“When the time comes, just leave it to me. I’m confident I can find a way.”
“Are you sure? You do remember that the Beholder can negate any magic around it within a certain radius right? Not to mention that its defenses are very high so unless I take my true form, I don’t think we’d be able to even damage it.”
“I’m aware already, after all we did just face it. Don’t worry, if things don’t work out I’ll just run away again. I still have some more of those detoxification potions.”
“Ugh! Not those things again.”
I let out a chuckle seeing the look
of disgust evident on their faces. Potions that worked well often didn’t taste too good for some reason.
“Shall we go?”
“Johra do you really have confidence in yourself?”
Lilinor pulled the edge of my sleeve and stare at me imploringly with her large beady eyes.
Although it looked like an innocent child staring at me, I wasn’t deceived as I thought about her true self.
“Well… I have a certain level of confidence in my plan.”
“OK, I believe in maste…r!”
‘Wait, what’s going on?’
As we entered the Labyrinth, the two girls hid behind me, leaving me to take care of the occasional Goblins with a swing of my sword as I chose the shortest route towards the Beholder.
‘Is this was they called having faith in me?’
“Johra, according to my sonar it should be just around the next corner. We will be popping up right behind him so be ready.”
“Ok, operation start!”
“Oookay!”
“Who are you talking to Johra?”
“Just wait back here you two, I’ll go take care of something.”
“Huh?”
“Master?”
Leaving the girls behind, I turn the corner of the maze.
“Ha! Finally found you Beholde!”
Hearing my cry it turned towards me, but soon began scanning with its lage eye left and right.
“What’s wrong, confused?”
The current situation was that Lena had created dozen of copies of herself and was bouncing the echo of my voice from several locations, making it very difficult for the Beholder to pinpoint my location.
Zzzziing
It’s eye glowed a deep dark orange before emitting a powerful beam.
“Finally, great why don’t you have a taste of your own medecin! Lena assemble it!”
In our previous encounter, We learned that its main form of offense was that of a laser-like beam which shared similar refractive properties with light. Lena then hypothesized that with the right object we might be able to reflect back on the Beholder. However this was my no means a sure thing and there were certain risks. In order to maximize our chances, we made a concave mirror out of Opal photonic crystals which have reflect 100% of incoming light. Lena supervised the construction and I assisted with the my Material Creation ability.
Kuu Woong!
We did it! It’s a victory for science!
“Observing the phenomena, creating a theory, experimentation, We beat it with the scientific approach, Johra.”
“Johra you did it!”
“Master!”
Lilinor and Viezda which had been peeping on our battle from behind the corner of the granite walls, rushed up to get a good look at the corpse of the Beholder lying on the ground.
“Yeah, it
it worked out somehow.”
“How did you do it Johra? As I saw the Beholder get hit by his own magic.”
“It was all due to this reflective item.”
I showed off my shiny Opal crystal mirror.
“Oh… was it reflection magic?”
“I guess you could call it that, but it only worked because the opponent’s spell had properties similar to that of light. Because normal magic would be negated by the Beholder, I guessed that only the magic it cast itself would be able to harm it.”
“Ah so it was like that. Actually I was also a bit curious how the Beholder could use magic despite it having a field which negated it. Well don Johra.”
[+51542 experience points]
[Level has reached Max so the experience has been lost]
[Acquired knowledge of Beholders]
After my short talk with Lilinor, I had her help me loot the Beholder’s corpse. With her dragon strength it was surprisingly easy to do so, and I was able to obtain those priceless jewels which surrounded its large eye.
“It’s quite the nice haul right?”
The grade of the magic jewels were C~ B+ which was a few levels higher than any I could create myself.
“Did you want to go even deeper?”
“Of course, Isn’t this just the entrance?”
We were able to get through the first floor relatively easily with the aid of Lena. She detected the activation of a magic circle upon the death of the Beholder, which ended up being the entrance to the second floor.
“It looks like it only appears after the Beholder has died.”
“Yup, the magic circle must be linked to its life force.”
“Then does that mean that we are the first ones to enter the second floor?”
“Yes, that is quite likely.”
I felt quite good knowing that we were the pioneers of the dungeon.
“Then let’s try to delve a little deeper.”
The next floor was a large and vibrant jungle forest which remind me a lot of the Pit’s flora.
“How is it possible Master? The ceilings are so high!”
Just as Viezda had mentioned, it didn’t make much sense. We had only descended a short flight of stairs to arrive at the second floor, but the ceiling here was 30 meters tall and bright as day due to the many embedded shiny jewels.
“Maybe this is connected to another world.”
“What there are other worlds?” I asked Lilinor, trying to appear ignorant. She however didn’t seem to notice anything odd and continued to explain.
“The magic circle we walked through to arrive to this place
this place had certain symbols which were related to spatial magic, that’s all.”
“ it was not a simple maze then?”
“Well, this is afterall a dungeon where one of the defeated Evil Gods was buried by the High Gods.”
“Hmm, I wonder why the victorious council of High Gods chose to seal their defeated opponents instead of wiping them out.”
“That is their own business I guess.”
I looked out at the beautiful jungle forest.
“Master… it’s a giant ant!”
“Oh… right.”
“There are quite a few of them, is it okay if I freeze them?”
Lilinor eyes flashed with a mischievous gleam.She seemed eager to crush some weaklings and regain some of her lost confidence.
“Sure, but it won’t be super effective in the forest with all those trees, so let’s pull them first to that clearing over there. Viezda, come with me and we will shower them with some weaker spells to get their attention.
“Okay!”
“Polymorph!”
Kuoooooo
Lilinor finally revealed her true form.
“Master! Lilinor was that dragon from the forest back then.”
“Yes, I knew already, but i thought that you’d be more surprised”
“Well, I am just a little bit, but I did expect it somewhat.” answered Viezda.
Although Viezda did have a good sense of things, it was also true that Lilinor didn’t try very hard to blend in.
In her dragon form, Lilinor flew up into the air majestically.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
We lured the termites out into the open area, as a sea of those giant white insects poured out of the edges of the forest where Lilinor had been waiting.
Tshhh! tshhh!
Thousands of them rushed towards us while Lilinor soared in the air above.
Oooooooh!
She breathed in deeply, sucking in all the air around her as she transformed it into a dragon breath with the use of her mana. Some termites realized what was going on and turned to flee, but most weren’t aware and mindlessly charged forward with the swarm.
Poooaah!
Although Lilinor had tried to shoot out a weaker version of her full strength breath, it was still far more powerful that necessary.
Pubeeeuurr!
Thousands of termites in the open field, as well as many unlucky ones in the forest instantly turned into chunks of ice. The trees however became like beautiful icicle sculptures as if a devastating Icy Typhoon and just ravaged the area.
After a short pause, Lilinor then drew a magic circle in the air hich summoned dark clouds in the dungeon ceiling.
Ssshawwwww!
The air became warmer due to her magic spell, and rain began to blanket the forest, melting the forest, melting much of the snow and turning the jungle into more of a swamp.
“Master, it’s rain!”
“Indeed it is.”
The sight of rain falling over a frozen forest was quite spectacular.
“Polymorph!”
Lilinor resumed her human child form as she joined us on the ground.
“What do you think? Did I do a good job?”
I gave her the thumbs up in praise.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you did great Lilinor.”
“Truly?”
We waited together until the rainfall subsided, Lilinor was still a bit shy and happy from my glowing praise. When it finally stopped raining, we entered the jungle and any surviving termites gave us a wide berth.
“Hmm, there seems to be a certain hierarchy in place, there should be a boss her just like the Beholder on the first floor.”
“It would probably find us just like back then.”
“You think so?”
Kuooooo!
A gigantic creature appeared in the distance.
“Is that a Hydra?”
“Yeah, it looks like a subspecies of a Dragon.
“Any problems taking care of it Lilinor?”
“No, I don’t want to kill it myself!”
“Why is that? That thing will kill us if given the chance.”
“Why don’t you take care of it Johra?”
“What nonsense, how could a human win against such a monster?”
From this distance we could make out that it was about 15 meters tall, but it was partly hidden by the jungle trees and only 8 heads were visible.
“Johra, the more heads a Hydra has, the stronger it is. My scanners have confirmed that this one has 18 heads in total so it is quite powerful. Hydras have very high regenerative powers and each of their heads have a specific magic ability.”
Ugggh!
Hearing the update from Lena, I couldn’t help but groan. This was sure to be quite the headache.
“I’ll be going out Lilinor, so please assist me.”
“Okay, I understand. Polymorph!”
Qawaaa!
The surroundings trembled as she took her dragon form.
“Damn Lilinor! Don’t transform so close to us!”
Rooooar!
KuoOh!
Ignoring my words she roared towards the Hydra, who answered in kind, before rushing towards our position.
“So, 18 heads huh. I guess we’ll go a it one at the time.”
“Go master!”
*—————————————*
The Beholder is actually a pretty high ranked monster. It usually has a reasonably good level of intelligence but the one Johra encountered was less developed as it was raised in the isolation of the dungeon.
~High level Beholders can control several subordinates.
Name: N/A
Gender: N/A
Status: Normal
Type: Lesser Beholder
Class: N/A
Rank: C+
Level: 211/384
HP: 134,400/134,400
MP: 17,100/17,100
Attack: 3,211
Defense: 2,525
Agility: 211
Intelligence: 1,324
✧ Unique Skills
[Null- Magic Lv5] [Paralysis Beam Lv9] [Fog Lv3] [Body Slam Lv3] [Physical Resistance Lv7] [Magic Resistance Lv3] [Flight Lv3]
✧[1st Floor Boss of Jeduth Dungeon]