“Why the long face?” Fing asked as he patted Elena’s shoulders, accidentally pushing her with a bit more strength than necessary.

Elena stepped back one before standing up straight, her brows twitching. Seeing that she didn’t like his way of showing his liking, Fing asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

“It’s annoying when somebody you met a day ago comes to you and pats your shoulders, almost knocking you over, don’t you think? No, I’m pretty sure that I’d be annoyed even if it was one of my friends who did this…” Elena replied, slightly forgetting about her bad feeling.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t intend to use too much strength. Like this-” Fing was about to show it, but Dred grabbed his wrist this time. Leaning closer, he whispered into his ear, “I can see that you are really bad at this, but you should be gentler with women. Maybe it’s fine when you are with men, but I’m sure that any woman would be annoyed by you. Just stop it…”

“Ah! Thank you, my friend!” Fing shouted as he raised up his hands, flipping Dred into the air too since he was holding his wrist.

Dred landed on the ground on his feet and at the same time, the twenty meters tall stone-like doors of the dungeon started creaking and slowly opening.

“It’s time,” Elena mumbled and ran into the dungeon with her friends, ignoring that bad feeling. Poor Fing was left behind with a dumbfounded face. “Shit! If I want the ring, I need to hurry up too! Virgo, let’s go!” he shouted and the pink haired elf appeared beside him once again.

---

Elena and her friends ran through a hundred meters long corridor, along with the other twenty groups that came here. At the end of it, it split into exactly twenty passageways and each group took one. “Let’s go to the rightmost,” Dred thought.

Only one person fit comfortably into the passageway, so they had to run behind each other in a line. The path soon turned into a simple room, which was filled with thirty lightning elementals. They didn’t have legs, only upper bodies and arms, and their bodies were made up of lightning. Even touching them was dangerous.

Race: Lightning Elemental

Rarity: Common

Level: 410

Threat Level: 2

“Well, we can’t use our weapons, I guess. Gotta use Magic,” Elena commented as she grabbed the hem of Cor’s clothes and threw him towards the elementals.

“Fuck you!” he cursed loudly. While still in the air, he activated his armoured form and crashed into two elementals. They tried to kill him with electricity, but since it wasn’t strong enough to burn his nerves, organs, or even his hardened bone-like shell, he just absorbed all of it.

“Pull in as many of them as you can~” Elena mused with a smile on her face.

Cor started punching the elementals and drew their attention to himself. He ran to the middle of the room and most of the elementals followed him. His ‘masters’ and friends were standing on the sideline, watching him without doing anything. “You are all useless! Hear me?”

“Crystal clear. Two of them are coming our way, you left them. Come and get them,” Elena said with a chuckle.

Cor shook his head but still did as told. When finally all of them were in a single pile, trying to shock Cor to the death with lightning strikes and by touching him continuously, Audrey focused and an Earth Elemental formed beside her. Breathing out long, she closed her eyes and created four tons of dirt above the elementals.

Elena appeared behind Cor and pushed him towards the side of the room, while the earth fell towards the ground. She turned into her shadow form and slipped out without any trouble. Since the elementals’ strength was in their ranged attacks and numbers, they couldn’t do anything against the falling dirt. Their bodies simply faded away as if they never existed, and only a simple scroll on the top of the earth was all they left behind.

Dred took a quick look and found out that it was a lightning-related spell. Not something they needed, but he still stored it since they could use it or sell it in the future. For normal people, it could be worth much more than a good armour or a blade.

“Let’s move on, time is pressing,” Dred said as he quickly ran through the hidden door that appeared after the elementals’ death.

The next moment, they found themselves in a small paradise. There was earth below their feet, not just the cold stone floor of the dungeon, and trees filled the room. “It’s at least ten square kilometers big,” Jake commented while looking at the ceiling and the walls. All of them were sky-blue and even the sun could be found on the ceiling. Strangely enough, it radiated some light as well.

Just as the door closed behind them, “I found something!” Audrey shouted from a few meters away when she stumbled across a small table. Taking a closer look, it read, “Kill the other three groups in this room. Only one group can get ahead or all of you will die here old.”

“That’s not promising…” she shook her head.

“Hmm- we have the advantage of being the first. Let’s set up a few traps quickly and then hide. We will hide until the very end and let them brawl it out. If they are too strong, then even when they finished killing each other, don’t attack. Just wait silently for our preys to get freaked out and attack when you see that their minds are weak. I’ll get ready with Ekilsta too until then,” Elena quickly said.

Audrey laid out a few elemental traps and if stepped on, they would blow up, shock them, and call forth other smaller elemental attacks. Since they were quite weak, it didn’t take a lot of time to set up, but all of them could be life-saving or even a deadly piece of surprise. Audrey was about to lay down one more trap when she heard footsteps.

“They are here,” she notified the others through Elena’s spell and activated her shadow form to hide in the shadow of a tree.

“Alright. We will wait it out. Most of them are too strong for us, so we don’t have a good chance in a face to face battle,” Elena replied.

---

“Hmm, so we have to kill the others, but there is nobody besides us,” a short blonde haired woman said in a low voice. Her Sense ran through the whole room, but she still couldn’t catch anyone’s presence.

“Let’s set up a few traps! They will surely come,” her brother said.

“Shh- you are too loud, idiot. Amy, help us quickly,” the blonde haired girl rebuked him and then urged her friend. But before they could do anything of the sort, they sensed another group enter the room from another passage, that opened only a moment before they entered.

There was another man with the trio, who met them in a restaurant and joined them. Since both groups sensed each other, they didn’t try to hide and ran towards each other. The stranger and the blonde haired girl were in the front, while her friend and his brother stood in the back. Two groups started fighting and when the third one appeared, they stayed further away, waiting for one of the groups to die, ignorant of the threat that was stalking them.

But of course, the other two groups weren’t stupid either. “Hey! Let’s kill them at first, then we can brawl it out!” The blonde haired girl shouted. She put her hand on the blunt side of her katana and pressed it against the incoming slicing of her opponent.

“Nice deflecting. Captain, what do you say?” the black haired man said.

“I agree with you. Whoever wins will just get themselves killed this way. Why not take care of the other group?” the captain of their group replied, already planning to backstab his newfound allies.

“Great! Then let’s go!” The blonde haired girl said, planning ahead as well.

The third group was more than surprised when eight people rushed them, while they were only five-man-strong. With their combined forces, they easily took care of the group, but both the ‘captain’, and the blonde haired girl attacked another member of the group, instead of finishing the last person from the third group, confusing everyone.

The blonde haired girl killed one of the other groups’ member, while their captain killed her friend. Keeping her composure, she held back her rage and attacked another person, while her brother covered her back. But at the same time, the stranger that joined them stabbed her brother in the back, while the black haired boy she fought before did the same and then joined up with the stranger.

“YOU FUCKERS!” the blonde haired girl shouted as she turned around and jumped towards the traitors, followed by the captain of the other group. “Were you planning this from the beginning?” she questioned, but never got a reply.

“Careful, we still don’t know if there is another group,” the black haired man said in a low voice, but at that moment, he felt a strange feeling fill up his mind. I can’t move! By the time he felt his senses return, all he saw was his own body and a huge black panther standing behind him. Then everything faded into darkness.

Dred looked up, seeing that the others succeeded as well, except for Cor. The five of them joined up and quickly killed the remaining people together. Wiping her hands on the bark of a tree, Elena smiled, “Well, that’s how you take care of stronger opponents. Without a scratch!”

“Hurry up, we’ve wasted enough time already,” Audrey shooed her towards the hole that appeared in the middle of the room. The hole slowly started swirling and enlarging.

“Wait a moment, I’m not going to jump into a hole without knowing what’s on the other side,” she replied, and carefully crept closer to the edge.

“It’s so dark! Why can’t I see? My eyes should be able to see…” she muttered. Two hands touched her back and pushed her forward. Turning around in the air, she saw Audrey behind her back. “Fuck you! Come with me!” she shouted back as two vines shot towards Audrey and latched onto her ankles, dragging her down.

Elena landed on her asses with a loud thump, while Audrey fell right on her. Dred’s team of three followed after but on their feet. Audrey sat up, holding her forehead. What’s this? It’s soft, she thought as she looked down and found Elena’s breasts under her palms.

“You little cheeky bastard. You’ve been screwing with me a lot nowadays. I’ll be sure to punish you when we get out of here,” Elena raised her voice. Squatting down beside them, Dred poked Elena’s breasts and looked into Audrey’s eyes, “Those are mine. Could you let go of them?”

“You’re so silly,” Audrey laughed as she stood up and pulled up Elena from the ground. She stepped ahead and stopped beside Jake and Cor.

“You alright?” Dred asked.

“Mhm. What’s this place?”

“I don’t know, but it’s quite dangerous,” Dred replied. There were two narrow pathways, barely enough for one person. They were standing on a circular part and they could go both to the left or to the right side of the chasm that separated the pathways. The ceiling was only three meters above their heads.

Opposite of that, the chasm seemed to have no ceiling as only eternal darkness welcome those who looked up, but nobody would be stupid enough to fly even if they had enough space left because bolts of lightning flickered in the abyss between the pathways continuously.

“This is… beautiful,” Elena muttered those words.

“Huh? I’d call it fearsome, not beautiful” Audrey shook her head.

“Hmm- it is fearsome, but it’s still beautiful. Look how it’s flickering and lighting up this darkness. It’s also blocking my sight since my eyes can’t get used to the sudden change of light and darkness. I could see much further if I focused on controlling my eyes, but it would be a bother,” Elena replied.

“Lazy girl, I’ll do it in that case. But then watch our backs, just in case,” Dred knocked on the back of her head.

“Ouh~ Okay.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, they literally shone in the darkness. “There are turns on these pathways,” he said as he started walking, while Elena stayed at the back of the group. They walked in a line behind each other for a few hundred meters when the path started turning to the right.

“Someone is ahead of us. No, they are… three people,” Dred raised his voice and picked up his pace. As the turn came to an end, he saw the back of three people, who were walking on the other side of the chasm. Upon noticing each other, both sides started running to get ahead of the other.

At the same time, the ground started shaking and trembling below their feet and parts of the pathway crumbled down and fell into the darkness below them. A blue table popped up in front of everyone, slightly surprising them.

Solve the Problem

The longer you run, the shorter you get. The faster you run, the least you get. The way ahead is closed, it’s only up and down. Where’d you go?

Dred turned his head around as he said, “Will you follow me wherever I go?”

“I’ll definitely,” Elena replied quickly as she looked down with a pale face.

“Fine, then I command you guys to jump after me,” Dred said, meaning their blood servants. He wanted to make sure that neither of them would waste their time. He dived right into the abyss below them and created a lightning shield around their bodies.

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