The dragon, covered in thick armour and surrounded by dense clouds of smoke, hovered above black darkness under him. The smoke around him slowly moved towards the darkness as if it were being sucked inside.
The dragon’s golden eyes brightly shined as he kept looking into the black abyss. The winds around him moved to clear all of the smoke from around his snout.
The next moment he sucked in a large amount of air from the black dungeon entrance. The glow in his eyes intensified even more, his mouth opening to show up long teeth, ‘Finally, this is the smell I was looking for. Well, it was about time. I already started to feel like a dog.’
Without any worry, the dragon dived into the blackness, vanishing in the instant that his head touched the black darkness.
The world around him was malformed and vanished. The darkness filled his vision.
Ding!
// You have entered the dungeon: Burning Hill
Recommended level: 30-40
Type: One-time
//
The space around him stabilised, and the darkness vanished, revealing a massive mountain going all the way to the sky. Its sides are covered in tall trees with flames instead of leaves. A thick cloud of smoke obscured the black sky of the dungeon, making it impossible to see the hill’s peak.
The comfort seeped through his body, his hearts loudly beating as he looked at the beautiful fiery scenery and breathed in the air filled with smoke. His desire for him to form his volcanic domain to create the home that he wanted was becoming stronger than ever before.
His positive feeling got even stronger as Vesuvius was brimming with confidence for the first time when he entered a dungeon as a dragon. He felt no worry knowing that he was invulnerable against normal flames, ‘A volcano dragon in a fire dungeon… It is even lower level than me!’
He suppressed his laughter, his eyes brightly shining, ‘I will be like a god here!’.
A player would likely consider such a dungeon boring as it would be too easy, but for Vesuvius, it was ideal as he wasn’t seeking a thrill or to battle for his life. He wanted to gain power safely.
The dragon rose up higher in the sky, the smoke from his body mixing with the already present smoke as he kept rising higher through the sky.
Suddenly bright orange light pierced through the smoke, and a sphere of flames, big as an average child, flew towards the dragon.
Vesuvius didn’t even bother to dodge as he calmly flapped his wings. The sphere hit him, exploding in bright orange flames that enveloped his body, harmlessly washing over the black stone before dissipating.
Ding!
//
Congratulations, you are too powerful for this dungeon. You have triggered a special challenge!
Generating additional challenge…
//
Vesuvius froze, feeling unsettled, until he realised what it was and calmed down, ‘So you this how its system.’
//
Speedrunner mode is activated.
Your gained XP and rewards from the dungeon will be based on your completion time.
All of the XP will be withheld until the completion.
//
Immediately a clock appeared in his top right corner, time slowly ticking. A quiet yet nerve-breaking ticking started to resound in his head at a second interval.
‘As expected, the system is trying to make this more fun for players. But I think that it made a huge mistake now. I will clear it so fast that I will take every penny from this reward!’
The dragon flapped his wings, diving towards the source of the fireball that hit him, adrenaline pumping through his veins. His body turned into a dark blur as he descended at an immense speed.
Soon his body flew out of the smoke clouds, his eyes searching for the attacker. He immediately noticed a slightly different tree. A magical orange light belonging to fire mana was radiating out of its body at an increased rate, its branches unnaturally swaying.
‘So fire tenants. They can form cores, and in worse-case scenarios, their wood can also work. But I should find some stronger variants. Material from normal mobs will not be useful except in large quantities.’
Without even slowing, the dragon kept descending towards the tree, his body falling like a flaming meteor. The tree unrooted in panic, flames erupting around its body as it moved to try to get from the impact zones.
However, the dragon kept accelerating, his massive claws crashing into the treant and breaking all of the trees in its path as he stopped his fall at the last second. The treant immediately snapped as if it was a dry twig, its body breaking into multiple pieces.
[+310XP (W)]
Vesuvius wasn’t even worried about his time as he was more than confident that he would blast through it with his invulnerability to flames, his immense offensive powers, and his massive wings.
His heart was beating louder and louder as he started to like the challenge, ‘The system definitely knows what he is doing. It makes even me have fun!’
Not wasting any more time, the dragon flapped his wings, flying upwards along the steep mountain, the trees under him bending, swaying and creaking in the wind he had caused.
More and more fireballs ignited on the treants hidden between trees, all launching towards the dragon, their orange glow quickly passing through the sky, looking like orange lines. They were hitting and exploding all around the dragon’s body, his body covered in explosions that were not doing any damage.
Vesuvius opened his mouth, and bright yellow light soon lit up inside of them. The next moment, as if a volcano had erupted, a loud bang shook the hill, and a massive volcanic eruption spewed out of his mouth.
The black, yellow, golden and blue colours filled the fiery forest as he slowly turned his head, unleashing the destruction around him. All of the trees incinerated and broke under pressure. The treants were vanishing in an instant. A powerful shockwave and heatwave made by the highly pressurised breath swept through the forest, leaving behind bare, burned soil with swatches of magma spilled all over it.
[+310XP (W)]
[+310XP (W)]
[+310XP (W)]
…
‘I need to find out what the objective is and quickly!’ Vesuvius was more than aware that this was an opportunity for him to obtain insanely high rewards with his impossible time rewards multipliers.
He had no idea where to go, so he flapped his wings, flying high towards the mountain’s peak, his body quickly vanishing in the black clouds.
The smoke prevented his sight from reaching the peak, but he still could feel strong magical waves radiating.
He kept ascending upwards, faster and faster. The higher he flew, the more spheres of the flames launched from the trees around him, quickly filling the sky with orange light. All of them kept blasting towards the dragon, most of them missing his quickly accelerating body. The rest of them kept shaking the sky with explosions, flames erupting all over the dragon, harmlessly washing around his body.
The magical waves from the peak kept getting stronger and stronger, with the smoke clouds quickly thinning. Soon a massive tree, easily reaching at least ten floors in height, solemnly stood in the centre of the hill.
Hundreds of flaming spheres levitated around its branches as if they were leaves, the light filling the black sky of the dungeon as if they were stars.
Ding!
// Dungeon objective discovered.
Objective: Destroy The Mother Flaming Tree either directly in a fight or through destroying its root minibosses.
//
It was a fact that if a system offered an alternative path to beating the boss, it meant the boss was highly dangerous. However, Vesuvius felt no need to do it.
“Hahaha, as if I, a true dragon, would chicken out from an overgrown tree!” the dragon’s heart, still beating with excitement, sent his mind into clouds as his massive body launched towards the humongous tree.
,m Suddenly the whole hills started to shake, massive roots covered in bright orange flames launching from the ground, twisting and moving as if they were huge whips.
At the same time, gigantic spheres of flames launched from the tree branches. They filled the sky, all moving slowly before instantly accelerating, firing towards the dragon as if they were flaming bullets.
Hundreds of yellow lines flooded the sky, the dragon’s body enveloped in a flaming inferno of flames erupting all around his body.
He opened his massive mouth, and a loud bang resonated as a volcano erupted, magma, pyroclastic clouds, lightning and acid pouring out under immense pressure, flying towards the tree.
All of the roots moved in an instant, interviewing and forming a massive living wall before the tree, covering its whole wooden body in wiggling armour.
The stream smashed against the wall, loud cracking resounding out, bright yellow hiding everything. Magma was splashing everywhere, and lightning was throwing massive arcs. The black smoke enshrouded the whole mountain peak, pyroclastic clouds moving down its sides, destroying trees in its path.