Chapter 378 – 5,000,000!
“5,000,000 magic power?” Damion repeated in disbelief.
The number was five times the amount of magic power needed to reach S Rank and rather shocking to Damion. Sure, the jump from B Rank to A Rank was the same percentage, but that was only 10,000 to 50,000. After the jump from A Rank to S Rank, which required 1,000,000 magic power, he figured the increase for SS Rank would have been at most twofold. If SS was 5,000,000, what was the requirements to reach SSS or EX Rank? It was really starting to boggle the mind.
“Yes. Quite the peak to climb, isn’t it?” Mage Teft confirmed the number for Damion.
“I guess we should get started. You want to take me all the way to the A Rank floors right, but don’t you think we should scout around a little to give the soon-to-arrive adventurers information about what types of Demonic Beasts can be found on each floor?”
“Your information on the E and F Rank floors is enough. D Rank adventurers usually have enough experience to prepare and be ready for most situations on their own. Holding their hands too much will just waste your time.”
“Can we at least collect a few carcasses?” Damion asked, hopeful for credits to add to his System bank account. When Mage Teft raised an eyebrow at the question, he added, “I’m trying to get our economy on its feet. All the low Rank Demonic Beast materials I’ve provided are a start, but shouldn’t we gather some mid and high Rank carcasses for trade as well?”
“Once we open, the school gets 50% of the haul from adventurers going in. That is more than enough to get the economy going in no time. But anything you kill along the way, you can keep, but I won’t be waiting for you long, so be quick about it.”
“Great. Phil, let’s go,” Damion said heading into the labyrinth shimmering portal.
Once inside he cast Ice Sword and flew with Phil towards the entrance to the second floor. Since he knew where it was already, there was no need to consult the map on his tablet. In less than an hour the trio reached the entrance to the eleventh floor and presumably the D Rank floors.
“Here it is,” Damion told Mage Teft.
“That did not take long. I want to reach the C Rank floors in the same amount of time or less.”
Before Damion could respond, Mage Teft flew through the entrance on her artifact, forcing Damion to fly after her. When they emerged on the eleventh floor he was not sure what to make of the area.
The floor entrance deposited them on a wide plain. The landscape had rusted swords, broken flags and skeletal remains strewn about. From the looks of things, this was an ancient battlefield.
As the pair flew overhead, making their way to where Damion’s map indicated the core was, the skeletal remains began to rise up and take hold of their fallen weapons. The place reminded Damion strongly of the graveyard dungeon in Saung, only this labyrinth floor was D Rank and not C Rank.
"This floor will be a gold mine for you,” Mage Teft told Damion, but he did not follow what she meant. When he did not respond, she added, “Those old artifacts. They might be rusty and in some cases broken, but I hear you can work miracles on artifacts and even upgrade their Rank.”
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Damion suddenly realized Mage Teft was right. The Magic System would have no problem fixing and upgrading these old artifacts. They would probably cost more than most others, but he could still easily sell them or trade them for cores to more than make up for the credits spent. He could probably do the same for the weapons from the dungeon in Saung. Of course he would have to get ahold of those. Most of the time teams sold the weapons to the city and they were melted down for their raw materials to be crafted into new artifacts later.
To get his hands on any of the weapons from the Saung dungeon he would have to commission an adventurer team to do it, he was too high level to go in the graveyard anymore. But that was not the case with this D Rank floor. He could easily pick up a few hundred weapons along with plenty of F through D Rank cores. Most likely those cores would pay for the upgrades to the weapons and then he could sell the artifacts to make higher profits.
Even though his plan was taking shape, Damion did not have time to implement it. Right now, Mage Teft was flying a top speed over the ancient battlefield to the entrance to the next floor. And even if the next floor was similar, she was not planning on stopping until they reached the A Rank floors.
Mage Teft wanted to open as many floors as possible before letting the people new to their city in and they needed to do that soon. While he might not have time now, Damion knew he would have time on his way out of the labyrinth. He was sure Mage Teft was going to go deeper into the labyrinth after they reached the A Rank floors. Most likely, she would leave him behind so he could train in an A Rank environment. Once he had his fill of training and he headed back out of the dungeon, he could hunt and collect all the Demonic Beasts he wanted.
The twelfth floor of the labyrinth turned out to be an enormous graveyard. Tens of thousands of gravestones, possibly even millions dotted the rolling hills. There were a few crypts and mausoleums scattered throughout. Similar to how the graveyard dungeon worked, once they approached a grave, the skeleton or zombie buried there would begin to rise up.
The entrance to the thirteenth floor was actually located inside one of the mausoleums and after Mage Teft blasted the skeletal lich to pieces with a powerful Torrent, Damion collected the D Rank remains and followed his mentor to the next floor.
The thirteenth floor was quite similar to the twelfth. An enormous graveyard. Except on this floor, from what Damion could gather before they made it to the fifteenth since the core and entrance were right next to the passageway from twelve, was that the majority of the Demonic Beasts were incorporeal creatures. Ghosts and specters floated in the area around the graveyard with no signs of the usual skeletons or zombies.
On the fourteenth floor, they were forced to slow down. After coming out of the passageway they discovered they were inside catacombs built from what looked to be human, goblin, Alfar and Iblis remains. Damion had no issue seeing, but Mage Teft had to take out an artifact that illuminated the dark cramped tunnels.
Phil was forced to walk on its short legs behind them as they made their way through the catacombs. Since they were unable to fly over the entirety of the floor to reach the exit, their pace had slowed considerably. However, Mage Teft marched forward. To combat the growing number of skeletons, zombies, liches and an inordinate number of a rat type Demonic Beast, she summoned a thick wall of swirling water and pushed it forward ahead of them. The wall of water drowned the living Demonic Beasts and the undead ones, once trapped in the water, were pulled apart.
Once one of the Demonic Beasts died, it fell out of the water wall and Mage Teft continued to walk on, but Damion was able to collect the remains and store them in his personal spatial storage. In the twenty minutes it took them to navigate the maze of passageways in the catacombs, he was able to collect the remains of close to 200 E and D Rank Demonic Beasts.
“Finally, room to breathe,” Mage Teft said as she emerged on the fifteenth floor.