-The Contaminated Mine in Spirit Mountain (Epic) (Hidden)

Before the invasion of the Mechanical Civilization, in many parts of the mountain, there were mines for the mining of pure elemental crystals.

But after the invasion of the mechanical civilization, almost all of the mines turned polluted or disappeared.

That was because the mechanical civilization, which had coveted the powers of the spirit, carried out the mining randomly.

The mechanical civilization that occupied the mines were based on there to produce the machine monsters.

The elemental crystals that were mined in the mines were a very good material product for the powering of the machine monsters.

This was the trouble that the Guardian Syarlon had been facing.

There was a contaminated mine in the Southern side of the Spirit Sanctuary, where Syarlon was a guardian.

The machine monsters which used to produce the mine had periodically plundered the sanctuary, and the young spirits got frequently injured.

Syarlon had been facing this problem for quite some time.

The intermediate beings who kept the sanctuary safe, including Syarlon, were all tied down to the sanctuary.

Which is why Syarlon wants you to investigate the contaminated mine on his behalf, investigate the mine and find the source of the mechanical civilization, destroy them and return to Syarlon.

If you return successfully after completing the mission, you will be able to get valuables from Syarlon.

Quest Difficulty: A++

Quest Condition:

Defeat the Machine guardian and achieve the highest contribution.

Time limit: None.

Reward:

Spirit pickaxe

Guardians Bead, ???

The contaminated mine quest which was located in the spirit mine was marked with Epic and Hidden.

Among them, ‘hidden’ really meant ‘hidden’. It was a formula that could be recognized by anyone who had played the game even for just a little while.

Then, what did the term Epic mean?

First, the dictionary meaning for the word ‘epic’ meant ‘huge’.

The meaning of ‘epic’ in the quest windows of Kailan or items was not so different.

In Kailan the term ‘epic’ meant narration.

The words ‘epic’ could be interpreted to mean that the quest or an item was related to the main scenario.

Therefore, the quest of ‘Contaminated mine in Spirit Mountain’ was a similar quest which was closely related to the main scenario of the Spirit dimension.

‘If we read this quest very carefully, we can know how the spirit dimension works.’

In the spirit dimension, at the current point of time, the ‘mines’ were like a strategic base for the mechanical civilization.

In order to drive out the mechanical civilization from the spirit dimension, it was probably necessary to purify all of the mines in the mountain.

Gulp.

After gulping down, Ian started to take slow steps toward the mine.

Ian was quite nervous.

The quest difficulty was lower than the Guardian Machine one, so it was obvious that it could be an easy battle.

As he had entered the mine, the vision of Ian got dimmed and the system messages began to appear.

Tring-!

[You have entered the ‘Contaminated Mine C-01’]

[The Contaminated Mine C-01 dungeon has been discovered for the first time!]

[Increased fame by 100,000.]

[Rewards are doubled for the duration of 48 hours when taking down the monsters of the ‘Contaminated Mine C-01’.]

[Permanently gained Spirit Magic (transcendence) of 20.]

[Permanently gained Summon Magic (transcendence) of 15.]

Seeing the messages pop up, Ian couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

It was all because of the duplication of the first discovery reward buff.

To level up, there was a tremendous need for transcendence experience, but with four buffs in place, it would be quite easy to do.

‘Nice, Nice. I’ll take the level 8 of transcendence in a while.’

Feeling better, Ian began to enter the dungeon with Agbi.

After moving a bit inside, the dimness had faded and the mine could now be seen.

The body of Agbi which was a fire spirit had flames all over its body, and that created an additional effect of illuminating the dark.

‘Will the guys which appear here be higher than the monkey?’

Ian had started to look at the mine with all his five senses active.

Suddenly…

Gggng-!

Somewhere in the mine, a loud sound could be heard.

“…!”

In front of Ian came system messages.

Tring-!

[The machine inside the mine has begun to work.]

[The first phase has been triggered.]

[The ‘Room of Rock’ has been opened.]

‘Room of rock… huh?’

Ian looked at the direction of the sound with a puzzled look.

The stone walls on both sides, which seemed to have been blocked until then, moved up and a new space was revealed.

On the path where Ian was moving, a huge iron gate fell, blocking the passage.

Thud-!

When the engine stopped working with a heavy sound, the shape of the dungeon changed entirely.

The shape of the dungeon, which had been extended to the front, had now turned into a vacant lot.

Subsequently, another system message had appeared in front of Ian’s eyes.

Tring-!

[You have been completely disconnected from the outer dimension.]

[From now on, all kinds of ‘Summon’ skills have been limited.]

[From now on, all kinds of ‘Return’ skills have been limited.]

[Machine monsters with rock attributes will begin to appear.]

[Defeat the monsters and the Rock Key to escape from the room.]

[After 30 minutes, the monsters’ regen will increase by 10% every minute.]

After reading the messages, Ian had no choice but to panic.

Unlike the machine monkeys that appeared on the field, there were now going to be machine monsters with ‘attributes’.

‘And they are rock attributes…’

However, the most terrifying part was that the ‘Summon’ skill had been limited.

Which meant that no matter how critical the situation turned into, Ian wouldn’t be able to summon any of his familiars.

‘Oh, maybe I was a bit too careless.’

Ian bit his lip.

The summon ban message he saw hit Ian back to reality.

In any case, the stone was thrown and Ian had no choice.

He was supposed to clear the dungeon with his two spirits.

Ian tried to find his composure and began to think.

Ian was able to figure out how the dungeon was working.

‘There won’t be just one or two rooms. And the attribute will change along with the rooms.’

Ian was convinced that the first phase was going to be more difficult to challenge than the next ones.

The reason is that the attribute of his spirits was bad with rock.

No matter attribute monsters appeared in the future, they couldn’t be worse than the rock attribute.

* * *

Kailan had a number of attributes.

So far, there had been more than dozens of known attributes, and there had been a number of attributes that weren’t known yet.

And the attributes, each of them had a relation with other attributes.

The same goes for the rock attribute.

Ian was trying to memorize all of the relations.

‘The rock attribute is strong against fire and electricity. Of the two, it is most resistant to electricity… and weak in ice and grass attributes.’

Attributes relationships have a lot to do with combat, but it was especially important with magicians and spirits.

If the attack damage of other classes feels that of 20% even with the addition of spirit attributes of normal ones, then magicians which used a specific attribute would give out 100% damage.

In other words, when attacking water attributes with fire attributes, in case of the sword or spear, the damage would be reduced in the area of attack, but in case of the spirit magic, the whole attack power would be reduced.

‘At least, the fire attack might work, but I’d better not use the current multiplication.’

The monsters with light attribute rarely got damaged by the attacks of a lightning attribute.

It was because their resistance to lightning was at a maximum.

Even though Ian wasn’t exactly sure of the figures, around 90 to 95 percent of the damage would be absorbed by the resistance.

Kung-! Kung-!

With a rocky appearance, the monster had approached the direction where Ian had been standing.

And in the hands of Ian, who had just seen the battlefield, was a longbow with red flames all over it.

“Kay then. Let’s see who wins.”

With a shining arrow, Ian aimed for the monster, which was in front of him.

The moment the arrow left the bow.

Ping-!

The first battle of the contaminated mine dungeon had begun.

* * *

The transcendence level of the monsters in the ‘Room of Rock’ didn’t differ much from the machine monkeys.

From the lowest level being 11 to the highest level of transcendence being 13.

However, the difficulty of dealing with them and the dungeon was entirely different.

The transcendence level was only a difference of a digit or two, but the difficulty of the dungeon was almost double.

Kwakwang-!

[Hellfire marks have been overwritten at MAX.]

[The mark will cause a powerful explosion.]

[Inflicts deadly fire damage on the monster ‘Reprobot’!]

[The vitality of Reprobot has been decreased by 627.]

When the hellfire mark had blown up, the damage done to the machine monkey was over 2,000.

However, due to the high defense of the rock attribute monster, the damage was reduced to almost a quarter level.

‘Dammit, pig-like bastard…’

Was it three minutes since the battle had begun?

What Ian did so far was to cut the vitality to just half.

The only good thing was that they were incredibly slow.

Even with rough arrows, it was still easy to build up the stacks of the marks.

In addition, having slow attack motions, it wasn’t hard to avoid that guy.

Perhaps this wouldn’t even be difficult to clear even if they took their sweet time to clear the room.

Of course, Ian had no time to spare.

‘The time limit is the problem.’

In fact, it wasn’t just the time limit.

Just like in the Gorge of the Blast dungeon, the monster started to get faster as time went by.

Running out of time didn’t mean that the quest would fail.

However, Ian actually thought that it had to be done in 40 to 50 minutes.

‘If I don’t find the key, the whole room will be filled with monsters.’

There were a total of nine rock monsters in the room, and Ian still wasn’t able to kill even a single one of them.

Which meant that from the start, the speed of the monsters’ regen was getting faster.

There was still a room to spare, but in 30 to 40 minutes the whole room would get filled with rock attribute monsters.

No matter how talented as a user Ian was, he couldn’t avoid all the attacks.

There was no room to avoid.

‘Which one of them has the key? I need to figure it out.’

Looking around the monsters, Ian continued to fire his arrows.

Ian’s rate of firing the arrows was quicker than when he was against the monkeys.

Of course, that didn’t mean that the skills had increased.

The targets were all too big and too slow.

Papahk-!

Before the first arrows hit the target, Ian was able to release another four arrows.

The arrows Ian and Agbi were constantly stuck to the body of the monster, and the mark continued to burst.

Boom-boom-!

After a while, the first rock monster fell.

Khung-!

[Monster ‘Reprobot’ has been fatally damaged!]

[Reprobot’s vitality has been exhausted.]

[You have successfully defeated Reprobot!]

[Acquired transcendence experience of 112.]

[Obtained 18 aster.]

Ian’s mouth, which checked the messages, smiled.

The transcendence experience and the aster rewards were higher than he expected.

‘Nice, I just need to find the key…’

Ian was looking for his next target with gleaming eyes and with the intention of getting a clue about the monsters.

Killing all the monsters would surely be the best way, but he didn’t have the luxury of time.

It was urgent to get the key somehow and then escape the room.

The next moment…

“…!”

Ian’s sight fell on a shiny key-shaped object.

A necklace on one of the rock monsters.

‘That guy?’

Ian jumped right toward him but wasn’t able to continue. He stopped midway and started to get confused.

The reason being…

‘What is this!? It isn’t just one guy with the key!’

All of the other rock monsters there had a similar shaped necklace around their necks.