Almond went to a weapon slab on the wall—a Broad Sword slab. As he touched it, a dreamy, cloudy, dark green-bordered screen appeared before his eyes.
[Broad Sword Slab]
1. Craft a random Broad Sword.
2. Use the Guaranteed Rare-grade Forge option.
Almond chose 2nd option, and the screen changed while an additional blank screen appeared beside the original one.
[Broad Sword Slab]
– Design:
—> Create your desired design of the broad sword on the blank screen.
– Rare-grade Guarantee Forge: [Up to 3 Spirits as ingredients]
—> Sacrifice 10 Uncommon-grade items for a Low-tier Rare-grade result. [0/10].
—> Sacrifice 15 Uncommon-grade items for a Mid-tier Rare-grade result. [0/15].
—> Sacrifice 20 Uncommon-grade items for a High-tier Rare-grade result. [0/20].
“So I can design a sword in that blank screen, huh? Neat,” Almond was kind of excited. Swords could really become exotic with myriad designs, from their blade’s width, length, and curvature to the blade’s shape itself.
“That said, I can use spirit items as a sacrifice, right?” Almond muttered. “It’d be bullshit if I needed to get normal items for sacrifices.”
Almond took out a Spirit Item—Glassblaze Shield and attempted to add it as a sacrificial item.
The count increased by 1!
‘Noice.’
…
Five minutes later, the trio landed in a restricted area of the city. The dungeon door had opened just yesterday, so it still had white-border around its gate.
The road was blocked since the door was in the middle of it.
There were two middle-aged men standing guard there. Seeing the aircraft landing nearby, they knew the Adventurers who were supposed to enter had arrived.
“Please sign this.”
“Only three of you are going in?” the second man asked.
“Yeah, us three are enough,” Almond smiled.
Almond signed on the paper before he nodded at them and entered, followed by Julian and Roken.
“Why did they send only three Gold-rank Adventurers after reading the dungeon’s density value?”
“Relax, one of them must be a peak Gold-rank Adventurer veteran if they only sent three here.”
“I see…”
…
[You have entered the Lair of the Orc Bandit King Trokka]
The group found themselves inside a huge hall with floating purple and orange lights after entering.
“It’s a structure-type dungeon, huh?” Julian raised his eyebrows. “The final boss must be at the very top.”
“This looks like a big castle,” Roken said as he looked around before stopping at the stairs. “There’s only one way.”
“You both have rare-grade weapons, right?” Almond asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Almond wore his Lethal Fang Boots, Snow Hide Cloak, and his Polen Tiger’s belt at his waist. He took out five other items and attached them to the belt in miniature form with the belt’s effect—Shimmering Trap x 1, Shimmering Spine Spears x 3, and Moonlight Crystal x 1.
“Woah, what’s that?” Roken blinked. “Cool item.”
Almond smiled and took out more items, “Here, take them.”
“This is called the White Polan Charm Ring. It has a magic shield skill and an illusion skill with a 10% chance to charm the target. Charm won’t work on monsters here since they are gold-ranked, but the shield will be helpful since it scales based on your stats.”
Roken took the ring and wore it. “Nice.”
“This is for you,” Almond handed over two small orbs to Julian. “They are Wispy Illusion Bombs. They’ll confuse monsters and cloud their vision, even if their effect is lowered against gold-rank monsters. Use them when required.”
“Got it.” Experience more tales on M-V-L
“Let’s go,” Almond said as he started walking while Julian and Roken followed him.
“Aren’t you going to use your summons?” Roken asked, confused.
“Nope. No need,” Almond chuckled as he unsheathed his Sword of Wildered from his back. “This is enough. I want to improve my combat ability this way. I can explore more possibilities on how to use my body and sword when I fight against monsters who each use different methods and styles. And another reason is that I can freely use my swords on them so that I can conjure more ideas, unlike on humans during training where I can’t kill them.”
‘Is that how geniuses think?’ Julian thought, a bit speechless.
The trio climbed up the stairs and faced a big, wide door at the end.
“We’ll likely face monsters inside, with some sort of challenge,” Julian said as he was ready with his sword.
Roken also gripped his big hammer tightly, his body packed in metal chain armor.
Both of them had worn Rare-grade armor, boots, gloves, and a couple of rings, so they were ready for this dungeon.
“Almond, you don’t have any armor, or you are not wearing one?” Julian asked with a frown.
“Not wearing one,” Almond walked forward and touched the door. “I don’t need it because I won’t get hit.”
“Get ready, I’m opening it.”
Saying that, Almond pushed the door with a palm attack as he activated his Physical Enchantment.
*Boom!*
The wide door flung open and crashed into a couple of monsters.
[You have entered the First Area—Hungry Pit. Defeat the 50 Pin-Furred Wolves within 5 minutes for challenge completion.]
But there was no light inside except for the glowing green eyes and the slightly glowing red fur of the monsters.
“Shit, it’s a dark area,” Roken cursed. “I hate those.”
“Welp, I didn’t think I would get to use this so fast,” Almond chuckled as he threw the Moonlight Crystal cube on the ceiling of the floor.
The monsters were already growling and looking at them. The cube lightened up the whole room as everyone saw the first section of the dungeon.
There was a wall just twenty meters away with a door on it, and in this twenty meters of space were roughly fifty strange monsters resembling a mix of wolves and porcupines. The wolf-type body had spikes on their fur, and they glowed menacingly.
Their levels ranged from 5 to 20.
[Pin-furred Wolves]
-Rank: Gold
-Level: 14
-Stats:
—Physical:
↳[Strength: 55|Health: 65|Stamina: 55]
—Mental:
↳[Mana: 55|Focus: 45|Perception: 65]
“So many at once in a single place? Fuck, they won’t shoot those spikes, right?” Roken gulped as he took out his tower shield. “I’m going into defensive mode, guys. You all handle them.”
*Awooo!*
“I think the strategy here was to open the open slowly, let out a few of them outside, and close the door again or we are supposed to have more people here,” Julian said as he gripped his sword tightly. ‘We’ll have to waste a few Mana bottles already to kill this many at once, or we’ll get overwhelmed unless Almond summons.’
*Swoosh*
Alas, Almond directly dashed inside.
He briefly vanished from their vision as he crossed past four wolves. In the next second, all four of those wolves were sliced cleanly into two as they vanished into motes, leaving behind four Magic Crystals.
The wolves focused on him, but Almond was dancing on the battlefield. The spike attacks of the wolves either missed, or he destroyed some with his sword as he cleanly sliced off wolves one by one.
At this moment, Julian fully realized that he wouldn’t be a match for Almond even if Almond didn’t use his summons.
“Bro, is it just me, or does Almond have higher stats than us?” Roken muttered.
“Way higher,” Julian said. “We have over 50 points in all stats and close to 100 with perks from the items we are wearing, but Almond has more than us, or at least close.”
“But I can’t fight like him,” Julian narrowed his eyes as he continued. “He knows exactly what to do in the next second, one second early. The way he uses his Focus Field is better. He is directing this battlefield solely to let his sword meet the flesh of these wolves ruthlessly and precisely.”