Chapter 349 – Going In
Damion hesitated for a moment while he tried to make up his mind. Explore, search for the core, or retreat and call for help. He studied the map for a little while longer zooming in on the area around him. As far as he could tell, there were no Demonic Beasts in the area, which was good, but it also meant he could not use True Sight to help determine the strength of the floor he was on.
True Sight would not give him an exact strength, but if he saw an A Rank Demonic Beast, he would at least know he was on an A Rank floor or stronger. Whereas if he saw a D Rank Beast, then he might just be only on a D Rank floor. It was not foolproof, but it could at least tell him give him a better idea if he should flee or not.
Now the question he had was, which direction should he go? Stay in the forest, go to the mountains, go to the water?
While there were no Demonic Beasts in the area of the gate, the auto-mapper did detect some moving around about a kilometer away. Most dungeons and labyrinths had a certain area around the entrance as a safe zone. Was it possible that this Breach had a huge safe zone, or was it just that none of the Demonic Beasts had wandered in the direction of the entrance?
Whatever was the case, it did not matter. If Damion wanted to find the core and stabilize the labyrinth, then he needed to explore. In most Beaches, the direction the entrance portal opened up to, was the direction of the core. This meant Damion would need to head towards the mountains.
Damion carefully studied the area on his map between the portal and the mountains, but found nothing he thought would be the core. In the foothills of the mountains though, he spotted a cave system, leading deep into the mountains themselves. The auto-mapper was able to penetrate a short distance into the caves, but because of the distance and the winding tunnels, he could not get an accurate picture of how large the tunnel network was.
“Phil, we are going to head north towards the mountains. I want you to fly ahead of me and check on the strength of any Demonic Beasts you come across. If you find any stronger then you, let me know right away.”
‘Fly!’ Phil sent back through their bond as the Blizzard King took off into the air.
It took the Demonic Beast only a few seconds to climb through the tree canopy and be out of Damion’s line of sight. With Phil scouting, he started to move through the forest. Since he knew there were no threats very close to him, he started jogging as fast as he could through the forest.
‘Prey, close,’ Phil sent through their bond after about twenty minutes in the dungeon.
Stopping where he was, Damion quickly consulted his tablet map to see where the Demonic Beast was. Since Phil called it prey, whatever the creature was, should be weaker than the bird, but there was no telling by how much.
A moving signal on the map told Damion the Demonic Beast was about 200 meters ahead of him and was moving slowly. After switching to the projection mode on his tablet, he was able to see that the Demonic Beast was actually in the trees. Now that he knew where to look for it, Damion pushed forward, keeping an eye checking the trees as he closed in on it.
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Once Damion closed the distance to inside 100 meters, True Sight was able to tell Damion the Demonic Beast’s Rank. C Rank. This was good, it meant the labyrinth floor was less likely to be too high of Rank. Labyrinths, unlike dungeons, tended to have Demonic Beasts close to the Rank of their floor, usually with no creatures lower than two Ranks from the floor rank. This meant a B Rank labyrinth floor would have D Rank through B Rank Demonic Beasts. Whereas a dungeon would usually have a range from F Rank all the way to the guardian being the same Rank as the dungeon, with most creatures filling out somewhere in the middle.
With encountering a C Rank Demonic Beast, Damion could now guess that this floor could be C Rank or likely at most A Rank. There was a chance the C Rank creature was an aberration, and the floor was actually much higher ranked, but the chances were quite low.
With the assistance of True Sight and Concealed Aura, Damion was able to close in on the Demonic Beast unnoticed. The creature was a jet-black feline, about a meter and a half in length, not counting its tail that had lethal looking spikes sticking out in all directions at its end. True Sight told him the feline Demonic Beast had a Shadow affinity, which was a rare affinity and could be troublesome if he missed his first attack. While Damion did not know the name of the Demonic Beast, he decided to call it a Shadow Cat.
Once Damion was close enough that he was sure he would not miss, he cast Ice Shard and sent a barrage of razor-sharp icicles at the Demonic Beast. The Shadow Cat evidently sensed the disturbance in the ambient mana from Ice Shard and vanished before the spell could strike it. Concealed Aura could hide Damion from perception, but not his magic once released.
The survival instincts of the creature flared when it detected the B Rank magic heading at it and used an ability similar to Damion’s Shadow Step. It moved from the shadow on the tree to another shadow, not far behind its attacker.
Not wanting to be outdone by a Demonic Beast, Damion cast Shadow Step himself, appearing behind the Shadow Cat, where he reached out and grabbed the Demonic Beast and cast a quick Icy Grasp that froze the Demonic Beast solid in half a second.
With the Shadow Cat dead, Damion pulled it into his personal storage space and resumed his journey. As he moved through the forest, Phil continued to alert Damion when it spotted Shadow Cats and Damion quickly learned to take them down with little effort.
Since the Shadow Cats were able to dodge when they sensed a magic attack coming at them, Damion began repeating his tactic of moving behind them with a Shadow Step and then using Icy Grasp to kill them before the creatures had a chance to realize what was happening.
By the time Damion reached the mountains, he had the carcasses of 18 C Rank Shadow Cats in his personal spatial storage.
With each Demonic Beast he encountered being C Rank, Damion became more and more convinced the Rank of the floor he was on was between C Rank and A Rank. There was just no way for that many C Rank Demonic Beasts to be outliers. If he was lucky, this floor was B Rank, and he would be able to handle anything this Breach threw at him.
Once outside one of the cave entrances to the mountains, Damion took out his tablet and took a look at the map generated by his auto-mapper. Now that he was close, the auto-mapper was able to thoroughly map the cave system.
The entrance he was standing in front of, led through a series of chambers, mostly deserted of Demonic Beasts. After a few minutes of tracing tunnels and chambers, Damion found what he was looking for. The core to the floor, it was located in a large offset chamber that appeared to have at least 100 Demonic Beasts inside.