Chapter 104 - Dungeon - XII
** Fifth day inside the dungeon
"Buzz." The sound of footsteps and lightning echoed across the second mountain's summit.
"Still too slow! This won't work!" I complained to Dorian.
I had woken up over a day ago and was genuinely surprised to find that, inside the dungeon, only a little more than sixty hours had passed. That meant the time difference between the ring's inner world and the outside was about seventeen to one. Not bad.
The bad part was the possibility of dying inside that damn place.
The moment I woke up, the entire group overflowed with joy. They were all immensely grateful that I had saved them, which warmed my heart a little and even inflated my ego slightly.
But I didn't have time to bask in it, as they quickly began explaining our situation. The dungeon's pattern finally made sense, but the complications were far greater than we'd imagined.
The first option was a stealthy trek across the swamp. We debated whether it was possible—with Dália and Aeloria's help—to create a suspended frozen path that would let us cross to the next mountain without drawing attention. It was the kind of idea that sounded perfect in theory but would be disastrous in practice. We'd be constantly draining two members' prana, and even then, we'd risk being attacked by any centipede that sensed our movements in the water.
As for Dália, Lesley's restrictions no longer applied, and she'd have to use her water-affinity magic. That is, if she wanted to make it out alive herself. She understood the situation and knew she couldn't rely solely on healing magic anymore.
The second option was to jump to the next mountain's summit or leap to an intermediate level and climb the rest of the way.
The first question they asked me was whether I could transport everyone to the summit using one of my spatial rifts. But even after evolving inside the ring's inner world, my abilities were still far from allowing something like that.