While we sped through the forest towards our next destination, Odelia asked “Are you not going to question me about Minra and Sol, Lord Eyes?”

“Do you want me to?” I replied back.

“Not particularly.”

“Then I guess I won’t.”

“Is that because you are respecting me by not prying? Or do you simply not care?” Odelia genuinely questioned.

“A bit of both.” I answered truthfully; elaborating “I know I wouldn’t want you or others to pry on my sad past, so why would I pry on yours if you don’t want me to? And honestly, I couldn't care less about those two assholes.” telling her, “I was even tempted to give you permission to beat the shit out of them after hearing how they talked to you, and how that Sol guy laughed at the House earlier.”

“Well I hope you know I could have, and would have taken both of them down if you did ask me to.” Odelia confidently assured me.

“And I would’ve loved to watch that, but I know time isn’t my friend today.” As I decided to read the notification I ignored earlier.

‘Bloody Shame’ has been unmodified back into ‘Odelia’s Shame’.

“Interesting, so the blood counted as a modification?” I noted to myself, “I wonder what other strange modifications I can discover?”

“Time surely is not, but know that I am a friend, Lord Eyes.” Odelia told me while we continued through the forest, “And now that there are no longer any peering eyes and curious ears around us, this friend would like to congratulate you on reaching a level equivalent to a Long-Range Archer—but seeing how this will be the 2nd Style you know, I should rather congratulate on being equivalent to a Dual-Style Archer instead.” Then like before with the Magic Style, a large message appeared as I ran—causing me to stumble a little.

Class Change

Meeting both the required conditions to become a ‘Long-Range Archer’ Class or ‘Dual-Style Archer’ Class, you are now eligible to change your current ‘Magic Archer’ Class to one with equal or higher potential.

Which Class do you choose:

*Your next potential Class Progression Choice will greatly change depending on your chosen Class.*

[Dual-Style Archer] or [Magic Archer] or [Long-Range Archer]

“It’s nice to have options, but obviously I’m picking the one with more potential.” Choosing the Dual-Style Archer.

Congratulations, you have changed your current Class to 'Dual-Style Archer'! You have gained the Title: [A True Long-Range Archer]. You have learned the Proficiency: [Long-Range Archery]. You have learned the Skill: [Archer’s Duality]. You have learned the Skill: [Deadly Range]. Long-Range Archery proficiency increased by 33 Levels. Deadly Range increased by 3 Levels.

“Nice, I still got all the stuff related to Long-Range! Maybe it’s because I’m both a Magic Archer and a Long-Range Archer?” I figured, reading all the descriptions.

A True Long-Range Archer: Learning the Long-Range Archery Style from someone who’s already fully Mastered it, you obtained the power with your own ability and effort, and are acknowledged as a True Long-Range Archer. +33 Endurance and Sense. Long-Range Archery: One of the Three Pinnacle Styles of Elven Archery; Long-Range provides the Range, Accuracy, and Precision needed to become a Trinity Archer. Complete Mastery is required for combining the Styles, but unbalanced Mastery will result in overwhelming the others and erasing their progress. Skill Level based on Skill Levels of the Long-Range Style. Archer’s Duality: No longer limiting yourself to one target, your mind and body becomes truly capable of focusing on two things at once, and is free of natural preference. Deadly Range: All the arrows you shoot now become increasingly deadlier the further they travel, dealing an additional 1% Damage per 100 meters an arrow travels. Percentile Damage increases by 1% per Skill Level, Skill Level based on Long-Range Archery Level.

When I finished reading it all, I asked Odelia “Exactly how far is this Dungeon again?”

“It should be roughly about 15 hours away at our current pace.” Odelia estimated.

“That only leaves me 3 hours to beat the Combat Test, but who knows what I could come across there...” Quickly deciding, I said “Okay, let’s really pick up the pace then.” As I then activated Sprint and raced straight through the overgrown parts of the forest—remembering the conversation I had with Odelia four days ago.

Four days earlier...

“What? All I need to do is beat a single monster in a Dungeon?” Repeating Odelia’s surprisingly simple Combat Test; thinking “It’s too good to be true.”

“It may sound simple enough, but remember, you may only use the Combat Style to do so—or otherwise forfeit the monster and try again with another.” Odelia specifically stated.

“But you did say it could be any monster, right? It doesn’t have to be a Dungeon Boss?” Making sure I heard her right.

“Apologies my Lord, but I do not think I have correctly conveyed the severity of my Combat Test to you, so allow me to explain again.” Odelia’s face became serious, “I truly have lost many students who underestimated or did not properly prepare themselves for the difficulty of my Combat Test. And although we will only be fighting the monsters on the outskirts of the Dungeon, know that if we do come across any of the Bosses inside, you must immediately run outside of the Dungeon; for even I am unsure if I can survive a battle alone with one inside that bloody crimson place.”

“Wait, you're serious.” Finally heeding Odelia’s words, “Just what kind of place are we going to? And what do you mean ‘Bosses’? There’s more than one?” I felt my concern grow.

“It is a place of old. One which has yet to fall in the last ten centuries. And fittingly named the Millennium Dungeon of Blood...”

Abruptly hitting my nose, an intense horrid stench of fresh and drying blood began to fill the surrounding air ahead of us—reeking of metallic iron. I already felt slightly dazed, dreading my selfish and greedy choice of knowingly coming to a very dangerous Dungeon supposedly made out of blood. Odelia on the other hand was completely unfazed, continuing to lead me forward for a few more minutes, until we finally reached our destination; the Millennium Dungeon of Blood.

The beautiful forest of emerald green trees unnaturally changed ahead of us; and almost as if a perfectly clean line was drawn onto the ground, the grass turned from a fresh green to a deep crimson. And growing on top of this crimson grass was the very same type of trees I saw in House Baen’Mtor’s orchard; with the same black spiky bark, the same crimson leaf tops, and the same oozing red sap dripping out of them—now knowing it’s blood and not sap. However since these were unkept, their appearance was much wilder, having multiple large protruding spikes all along the trunks of the trees.

“Are you sure you want to enter, my Lord?” Odelia asked in concern, already gripping her bow with a hand on the hilt of her sword, “We can still return to the city and simply prepare for tomorrow’s festival, you know? You do not have to do the Combat Test on this today—in fact I highly implore you do otherwise."

Taking my time to tightly wrap the simple cloth I bought the other day around my lower face to cover my mouth and nose, I said “I’m not too psyched about all this blood, but unless you’re planning to forfeit your challenge, I’m winning it today. So, what’ll it be?” She thought about it for a second, but ultimately shook her head no. “That’s what I thought. Now let’s go find me a monster to fight.” And as we crossed onto the damp crimson grass, the Dungeon messages appeared.

You are now entering a Lv.10(Max) Open Dungeon. Your regeneration is now halved.

But before I could even question what that Dungeon Level meant, Odelia and I both heard screams of pain and cries for help in the distance; and with a simple acknowledgement to each other, we ran in the direction the voices were coming from.

Passing by stumps of cut down and burnt trees, we arrived at a scene with two partial bloodied armoured people—a man and a woman—protecting two other bloodied people on the ground—a woman screaming out in pain from what looked like a freshly torn off leg, and a man trying his best to heal the grievous wound. They were all surrounded by four large jaguar-like monsters, with another one to the right gnawing on what I assumed was the missing leg of the woman, and one more to the left ravaging through the insides of an already dead man.

“Blood Stalkers.” Odelia said to me, “Though if that many came out of hiding just to hunt them down, that must mean those adventurers have some pretty tasty smelling blood.” Watching the armoured people barely fending off the attacks from the four circling monsters.

Intrigued by the monsters’ appearance, I took note of their strange skinless and bone faces; exposing their head’s frontal bone structure, their orange coloured eyeballs, their solid black pupils, and displaying their several long and jagged sharp teeth. The rest of their body however had leathery hide, being the same crimson red as the leaves and the grass in the area, and had multiple bone spikes protruding down their back and spine—stopping just before their long thick tails. I also noticed that their tails and back had some crimson hair that looked exactly like the grass on the ground. And as they circled around those injured people on all fours, I admired their strong and powerful looking legs as they cautiously attacked with their long sharp bone claws.

“So what do you think, Eyes? Still think you can take one down for my test?” But before I answered, I took a look at the monsters’ levels and saw they all had different levels—each being one level higher than the other, and the highest being a Lv.55 Blood Stalker.

Although I was nervous about my chances only using the Combat Style and the huge level difference, I still said “Of course I do, but I want that one first.” Pointing to the Lv.50 gnawing on the woman’s leg.

“Looks like you can already accurately identify the weakest enemy out of the bunch. You have some great instincts. Eyes. I am impressed.” Odelia then formed herself an four arrows, “Now, just give me a moment to capture all of them. Oh, and take this.” handing me the satchel she brought, “There are six Greater Healing Potions in there if you want to help those adventurers out, though you can always save them for yourself in case you get injured later.”

Being overwhelmed, the armoured man—wielding a strange looking two-handed battle-axe—got pincered on both sides by the two Blood Stalker he was fending off, barely dodging the two attacks coming from the front, but not the two coming from the back. The Blood Stalker’s sharp claws cleanly tore through the metal of his armour, leaving a huge bloody 10 clawed gash on the man’s back, and causing him to scream out in excruciating pain.

The same thing was about to happen to the armoured woman, but she yelled out “Safeguard!” and a visible blue aura surrounded her armour and shield. She then blocked the front attacks with her shield, and countered with a hammer strike to the side of the Blood Stalkers’s face; however the attacks from behind did strike her back, but unlike the armoured man who wore the simliar looking armour, these claw attacks only left huge scratches on the armour instead of tearing through it. Though knowing that they wouldn’t last for much longer, Odelia rushed towards them, and I followed—choosing to help.

Leaping over the monsters and the people with a single jump, Odelia immediately shot 4 consecutive mana-arrows at each of the Blood Stalkers surrounding the people. But not recognizing the arrows, I took special notice of the 10 mana-rings around the shaft of the arrow, and watched as 3 of them hit onto the backs of the slow reacting Lv.51, Lv.52, and Lv.53 Blood Stalker; the fourth arrow however was noticed and avoided by the Lv.54 Blood Stalker. Then as Odelia landed back onto the ground, the mana-rings around the hit arrows suddenly enlarged and began binding each of the hit Blood Stalkers—4 rings binding the arms, 4 rings binding the legs, and the last 2 binding their wrists and ankles together. And in an instant, three Lv.50 monsters were helplessly bound and struggling to break free on the ground.

I smirkingly smiled and admired Odelia, “Man, she’s so cool. And it looks like she’s been hiding a better version of Ensnaring Arrow from me.” Then as I reached the adventurers, they were all surprised and relieved to see us, and I said "Here. Drink this." Quickly handing each of them a Greater Healing Potion.

Greater Healing Potion

Uncommon

Consume: Restores 30% of your Health over 60 seconds.

Craftable

Gulping the potion down, the armoured man collapsed to his knees, saying “Oh, thank god people heard us...I really thought we were gonna be goners there...” Crawling himself next to the woman who lost her leg.

Struggling to uncork the potion, the one-legged woman shouted in irritation, “God damnit, Dig! There’s still more of those Blood Stalkers around us, why are you acting so relaxed!” slapping the still bloodied gash on the man’s back.

“Fuuuckk!” He screamed out in pain, “What the hell, Hive!?” sitting up and turning his back away from her, “I know you lost your leg, but I didn’t think you lost your senses too! Can’t you tell these Npcs are clearly stronger than us?” Pointing to Odelia who was drawing all the attention of the remaining Blood Stalkers and trying to capture them unharmed.

“Wait, Npcs? These guys are Players?” I was taken by surprise, “I got so distracted by seeing new monster that I didn’t even bother to check their names and levels.”

Quickly checking all of them now, I saw that the armoured man was Lv.32 How Do I Get Home; he was a human with dark brown skin, a completely bald head, and a black scruffy beard. The one-legged woman was also human, with simple tied up brown hair, and slightly tanned skin; wearing a Mage looking robe, and had Lv.32 Ahhhhh above her head. And currently trying his best to still heal their injuries was Lv.31 Curly, appearing to be the only different Race in their Party—being a High Elf with short curly blonde hair. Then lastly the armoured woman wearing an open-faced helmet was named Lv.33 Jane Doe—guessing she is also human as she was too short to be an elf.

“Damn, Players are already in the Level 30s? I better finish up learning the Styles so I can level again too, or I’ll really end up falling behind everybody else. But leveling must be pretty hard if they only got to the early 30s in the last two weeks, though maybe these guys just haven’t leveled a lot compared to the other Players.” Taking a note to check out the Rankings later.

“Dig, shut up! If you and Fletch didn’t insist on collecting more wood than the request asked for, then we wouldn’t be in this situation right now, and that greedy idiot would still be alive and I wouldn’t have lost my leg!” The woman’s eyes began to tear up.

“I know you’re in a lot of pain, Hive, but don’t blame Dig. You know it was a Party decision to keep going further into the Dungeon.” Curly said, continuing to slowly heal the leg wound into a stump at the woman’s thigh.

“I know, Curly...” The woman sounded so exhausted and defeated as she finally opened the potion and drank it.

“If you really want to blame someone, blame me, Hive.” Jane spoke up, “I’m the Party Leader. I should’ve noticed the two Blood Stalkers hiding under the ground. And I should’ve protected both you and Fletch.” Tightly gripping her shield and hammer in regret.

“It’s no one's fault.” Curly told them; reasoning “If Fletch who had the highest Sense out of us didn’t notice, how would any of us been able to?”

“Do not feel bad about not noticing the Blood Stalkers," Odelia suddenly mentioned, "they do specialize in hiding in the terrain after all.” dragging behind her the six Blood Stalkers struggling to break free of her bindings—angrily growling at each and every one of us.