Chapter 175

With the crystal sparkling ahead of them to their spiritual senses, they turned to inspect the rest of the room, but didn’t find anything unusual. Matt approached the crystal and held his hand a couple inches from where he sensed it, probing the challenge with his spiritual sense and getting feedback about the contents within. It felt like…fighting overwhelming odds, a single massive obstacle, cooperation and assistance from others, and a sense of proving you could do it on your own. The reward, in turn, carried the sensation of teamwork, even when alone.

“I think it’s Ants vs. Elephant,” Matt decided. “It’s either that, Army vs. Dragon, Over the Mountain, or Abomination Civil War. Given the location, and the exact sense I’m getting from the crystal, I’m willing to bet it’s Ants vs Elephant.”

Ants vs. Elephant was definitely on the better end of challenge rooms they could face. Ostensibly, the goal was to take down a massive elephant, around peak Tier 15 in strength and Tier 16 in defense, with the aid of a massive carpet of giant ants. Doing so would complete the challenge and reward them a hefty amount of Genesis Energy, no matter the time of completion. And if they were fast enough, they would earn themselves a trinket or two as well.

The ‘normal’ strategy for Tier 11’s, and even Tier 14s who couldn't punch through Tier 16 defenses, was to help out the ants however possible. They would largely wait for them to, through teamwork, whittle down the elephant’s defenses over the course of a few hours before delivering the final blow. Left entirely on their own, the ants would kill the elephant after about 12 hours, and taking that long was considered a failure by Minkalla. If the battle took six hours, it refunded the Genesis Energy bet on the challenge, but nothing else. Killing the elephant in ten minutes was considered a ‘full’ win.

For them, their goal would be to kill all the ants and the elephant, as doing so would give them an extra reward of some kind; the more ants killed the better. Except it wasn’t that easy, killing the elephant would immediately end the challenge, so you needed to kill the elephant as fast as possible, not only without aid from the ants, but also while killing all of your supposed allies.

The other challenges were similar. Soldiers vs. Dragon was as the name implied, and the main variation was that the reward was scaled based on how many soldiers survived the battle. Over the Mountain was about getting a large group of people across a huge natural hazard, be it a mountain, raging ravine, or perilous desert. Abomination Civil War involved fighting an enormous monster with a group of people, and after each monster was killed, half of the surviving allies, and all of the dead ones, would fuse together into a giant abomination that acted as the next monster to fight.

In every case, there was a single big monster to take down, and likely a huge army of weaker monsters. In other words, it was just a normal rift delve for them, with the bonus of there potentially being a huge pool of blood for Liz to steal and command.

Liz asked, “So we’re definitely doing it, right?”

Matt and Aster immediately answered yes, but were still slower than Susanne, who simply nodded.

“If we all agree, let's try it. We have enough Genesis Energy to start the challenge, if just barely.”

“Race to the kill?” Liz winked at him. Their ‘original’ strategy for the challenge had involved Matt occupying the elephant and weakening it while Liz and Aster swept the army of ants, then Liz used the enormous ocean of blood accumulated from the ants’ extermination to [Blood Tidal Wave] the elephant and drown it. But the [AI] simulations they’d run once getting used to working with Queen had revealed another potential route to victory.

Why exactly [AI]s were so restricted within Minkalla was a matter of debate, with some saying that it was to force people to rely on their own abilities. Others said that it was restricted in the same that way all Tier 26 and above skills were, with the unusual nature of the artificial pseudo-skill the only reason it worked at all. Regardless of the true reason, Matt could brute-force a simulation with enough mana, even inside the Forge, but he didn’t need to here with their pre-entry prep.

With Queen acting as support for him, as well as providing the first crack into the elephant’s armor, he projected that he could take down the elephant with about a minute straight of [Cracked Mana Spear] at full bore. But he’d need someone to help keep the elephant occupied while he attempted to drill through its skull. At full charge, his skill was a massive strain on his spirit, and he’d need to cast it six times in a row to balance the timers of the skill destabilizing and the spiritual strain from overwhelming him while casting at max channel. His best guess was six casts of ten seconds would be his sweet spot. Susanne could keep him safe during that process though, and if this all went well, they could clear the challenge in record time.

“Only if it actually is Ants vs. Elephants,” he clarified. “Or Abomination Civil War. But it is likely to be AvE.”

“Oh of course.”

“Good. In that case, I wish you good luck stamping out a few bugs.”

With that settled, they gathered and put their hands and paw on the pillar of crystal. When they did so it sucked most of the Genesis Energy out of their bodies and into itself, brightly illuminating the crystal for all that they couldn’t see it themselves.

As the Genesis Energy stopped flowing out of them, a feeling of vertigo hit Matt and he almost blacked out, but he was able to resist the feeling.

The first thing that Matt noticed when the world stopped spinning was the fact he could see.

The floor’s restriction on their senses had been lifted, which after hours of sensory deprivation was a reprieve unlike any other, and Matt took a second or two to enjoy being able to see and feel. Not all challenge rooms abided by the floor's rules, but whether they did or not was more random chance than any set pattern. It did mean that he was able to enjoy the smile stretching across Liz’s mask, but he couldn’t linger on any of the thoughts that came to mind, as they quickly sprang into action. Spiritual perception was good and all, but it wasn't the same.

Before them was an elephant the size of a warship, the tip of its head tall enough to scrape the nonexistent clouds, and a writhing black carpet of human-sized ants that coated the forest’s floor.

Exactly as they hoped.

***

Liz leapt into the air, overseeing tens of thousands of ants as they charged at the massive elephant that Matt flew towards. In his wake, he left an enormous trail of blood and ice, spawned from his endless mana pushed through [Create Blood] and [Hail], filling the pocket space they found themselves in.

Time was ticking, and they didn’t want to waste any of it. After all, the faster they were, the better their rewards.

From Matt’s right hand, a three hundred foot wide [Hail] rushed forward, guided by Aster into a massive wave of ice that slowed and froze the ants en masse, cracking their exoskeletons and leaving a slight trail of blood from each insect. From his left hand, hundreds of gallons of sanguine liquid from [Create Blood] flooded the battlefield for her to use.

At the peak of her jump, Liz reached into her glove and withdrew just a bit of blood, with the growth item ensuring it was already perfectly primed to accept her skill. A quick flex of mana and will later, she sent off her first [Blood Sprite]. The red sparrow immediately dove into the river of blood that already occupied the battlefield and started multiplying, fast. Within a second there were dozens. After a few seconds more, there were hundreds, and that was when Liz unleashed the bloody birds on the frozen ants.

Aster’s prep work meant that the ants, with Tier 14 exoskeletons normally tough enough to block her skill, were brittle and lined with cracks and frost. They were oh so very vulnerable to their bodies being fully exsanguinated. Soon their internal fluids, close enough to blood for her Talent and skills to work on them, were hijacked by thousands, then tens of thousands of ferocious little sparrows who only desired to create more of their kind.

By the time she landed, her birds were already tearing through the ranks of frozen ants like a veritable swarm of locusts, and her spear mercilessly crushed the unfortunate ant that she landed on, with [Bloody Cleave] activating and empowering her follow-up strikes with every drop spilled. The onslaught allowed her to cut through a good dozen of the Tier 14 monsters as if they were Tier 8. On top of the focus that maintaining her [Blood Sprite] took, Liz still kept herself busy as they rushed towards the elephant, looking for any stragglers which the relatively mindless sprites had missed. She handled any stragglers by breaking their exoskeletons with [Blood Bullet] and leaving them bleeding just enough for the next stage.

[Hungering Darkness] had been one of the rewards she’d gotten from the tournament, and when her Talent passed through it, it did not disappoint. The normal skill drained life-force directly, leaving its victims as dry, withered corpses while healing the caster. It was just very slow, and was limited by the requirement of the skill’s targets to not be in direct sunlight, in addition to not having that great of a healing conversion rate.

[Hungering Blood] had none of those weaknesses, particularly when paired with [Blood Wind]. So long as her targets were already bleeding, it served as a massive AoE blood drain, siphoning off inordinate amounts of blood and delivering it straight to her, for use in her other skills. In that way, it worked similarly to [Blood Sprites], but was far less difficult to control, and started off at full speed. It may have been technically less powerful than [Cracked Blood Drain], but was definitely better against an army. The yellow-greenish ant blood cast everything in a very different hue than her normal red, but it responded just as well to her commands.

Like a rising tide, Liz commanded the blood to rise, and so it did.

The [Blood Sprites] had reached the end of Aster’s frozen ants, and were fruitlessly pecking at their still-healthy brethren in a vain attempt to break through the tough chitin. With them not really accomplishing anything beyond scratching the chitin, she let the skill lapse, and the birds collapsed into a fresh river of blood that surrounded the ants. Aster dashed off to deal with her half of the surviving ants, while Liz concentrated on the other half, using the mana stored in her teleportation ring and throwing herself forward with [Blood Dash] to help her close the distance in the blink of an eye.

With her connection to the flowing blood, she mentally closed the grip it had on the ants into a tight fist. The ants were too tough to be immediately crushed, but by concentrating, she was able to crack their exoskeletons well enough for [Hungering Blood] to do the rest of the job.

A few ants managed to wriggle their way out of her grip before she could crack them, but a [Blood Chakram] took care of those. The deadly conversion of [Floating Disc] decapitated them with relative ease. At the same time, Aster collected and brought down her mountain of ice, sending it slamming into the ground and creating an avalanche that ran right up to the edge of the pocket space.

The ants didn’t take their assault passively, of course, and those ants still in a state to actually attack raised their pincers and charged. Globs of acidic spit arced through the air, but Liz raised screens of blood to intercept each projectile in turn. Aster, by contrast, blew the projectiles aimed at her out of the way with [Air Manipulation]. Since her bloodline change, she got about as much aid to air mana as she did ice mana, though admittedly without the benefit of her Talents.

Liz eliminated each ant that got too uppity, whipping her blood across their backs and cracking them open like so many nuts. Above them, the elephant trumpeted angrily, the distant roar echoing throughout the pocket space as it kept trying and failing to squish the annoying insects that were Susanne and Matt as he started his own attack.

Well then, she couldn’t let them win their little race.

Liz stretched out her spiritual control, letting the ocean of blood around her settle into her direct grasp. It was a bit less than she usually preferred, but she could make do.

[Blood Tidal Wave] swept up all the blood around the elephant’s feet, pulling from the line of destruction that she and Aster had paved from where they entered. The wave surged forward, building momentum and crushing the ants in its wake like they were… well, ants. Chitin was crushed, legs were shattered, and most of those strong enough to stay in one piece and survive the initial pass were simply swept up in the blood cataclysm, serving as little more than massive bludgeons to crush their fellow insects.

Any ants which somehow made it past the [Blood Tidal Wave] had to deal with Liz herself. The Tier 20 skill strained her spirit and Concept alike to control, but it was manageable, and she was able to pick off any stragglers with empowered blows from her spear or her lesser skills.

Those few ants didn’t last too long after becoming victims to Liz’s personal attention. The blood-soaked ground served as the perfect medium for [Bloodthorn Vine]. Formerly [Thorny Grasp], a plant-based skill that caused thorn-covered vines to spring up from the ground to grapple and lacerate enemies, [Bloodthorn Vine] required a not insignificant amount of blood to form. But once it pierced the defenses of an enemy, it grew into their bloodstream, tearing at their internals. She typically used it on heavily armored foes, but with the amount of material she had to work with, the spell coated the ground with glistening, liquid vines that were veritably dripping with death. They turned any ants she missed into porcupines, with their own ‘blood’ piercing the insects’ chitin from the inside and swiftly ending their lives.

Behind her, Aster took care of her portion of the area by spreading and compacting her ice. She crushed anything in her path, including a few of the smaller trees, like they were little more than toothpicks.

The ice moved like a facsimile of her [Blood Tidal Wave] which, while slower, had much more weight behind its movement.

Still, Aster was only responsible for taking out a third of the area while Liz did the rest. Ice was harder to move than blood and Aster preferred more of a support role.

[Blood Tidal Wave] was nearing the end of its strength, and to push it all the way to the finish line, she used [Blood Sacrifice] on her thorn field to refill her mana and dove the given power at the wave. It only took a thought to merge with the tidal wave and directed it to demolish the still surviving ants within its depths.

Far overhead, Matt released [Cracked Mana Spear] and started another as Liz and Aster directed their respective waves together, creating an enormous crash that sent both elements flying into the sky.

From there, the primary difficulty was simply getting to the last few ants in less time than it took for Matt to finish off the elephant.

***

Susanne cursed as she pulled Matt along behind her while she cut and dodged the elephant's swatting trunk and swaying tusks.

Their relative size was working to their advantage, as the monster was so large, each of its attacks were generating enough wind pressure for her to be able to anticipate the attacks and avoid them.

It was only a viable strategy because the elephant was designed to be a punching bag, and didn’t have any spells to attack them with. But one mistake would mean being hit by its trunk, which must have weighed a few thousand tons and traveled at medium Tier 14 speeds.

Matt was being carried in her left hand as she used her sword manifestation to unleash [Wind Cutter]es and [Mana Slash]es one after the other, as fast as she could.

They did little damage to the elephant, but it must have at least stung, as the beast always veered slightly when she landed a good hit.

Or, it could be because of the beam of death that Matt was firing.

She preferred to take the credit.

Mana normally didn’t have heat unless it was used for a fire spell, but the unaspected beam of mana that Matt was casting was screaming through the air as if it had a personal grudge against the world itself. Part of the energy came off as waste heat as it tore through the air, and she could feel it through her armor, even as they were flying and dodging the swaying nose of the monster.

Susanne was more than impressed by both Matt and [Cracked Mana Spear] after seeing him unleash it in their training, but that paled in comparison to what he was doing now.

What was usually a beam two fingers wide was now thicker than her wrist, and pulsed with overwhelming energy as he kept it aimed at the elephant's eye.

It had only taken seconds to ruin the eye and bore a hole through the soft flesh, but the skull behind it was far more reinforced, and took much longer to burn through. Matt’s first attack ended while barely leaving a mark, even after she had thrown her best armor-piercing skills his way to speed things along. His subsequent attacks had each blackened and fractured the skull a little more, bit by bit. Every so often, the beam would swiftly grow more frazzled, leaking more and more power into the surroundings, and warbling in its flight path until Matt cut it off, with the energy lancing through the air and vanishing for an instant, until he started it up again. He’d gone through the cycle five times so far, and he was currently on his sixth iteration, with the beam growing ever more wild.

At this point, Matt was forced into holding his right hand with his left, pushing his own Concept into stabilizing the attack and keeping it on-target. She joined with him, pushing her own Concept to add her willpower to his own as best she could, but her Domain was only tangentially related at best. The fact that the base skill had been [Mana Spear] was the only reason she could do anything to help him at all and the different weapon time made it incredibly ineffective.

Even with her aid, the beam wavered, growing less and less stable with every passing moment, even as the trunk of the elephant approached them at near-supersonic speeds.

Seeing the approaching attack, she could tell that the latest blow would be incredibly close. Either Matt was going to kill the elephant in time, or they were going to have to take the hit.

With most of her remaining mana, Susanne prepared two [Hypersonic Edge]s and [Wind Cutter]s to try and cut through the trunk that was over thirty feet in diameter. She wasn’t entirely sure it would work, but Matt said to hold her ground, so she would do exactly that.

Just as she was about to unleash her attack, the world went black.

***

Matt felt like vomiting as they were ejected from the challenge room, the complete sensory deprivation doing nothing to give him reprieve from the spiritual nausea he was dealing with.

Using [Cracked Mana Spear] that many times in a row was exhausting, and the spiritual slap it gave him grew from an annoying slap to a fully debilitating blow in time. He could use it a maximum of ten times in a row at full mana before he straight-up passed out, and even six times in a row required him to use his Concept to stabilize not only his own spirit, but the beam itself.

Otherwise, it tended to go wild once he couldn’t keep directing it naturally. Normally, he could manage just fine- his mana manipulation skills had been deemed ‘adequate’ by Luna, which translated to ‘insanely good’ by anyone else- but as his spirit got more and more frazzled…

He’d practiced a lot, but it drained his willpower enough that essentially ‘continuous’ use of the spear at full power was only practical as a finishing move, on what was already a skill predominantly used in that role. The net result was that Matt felt like his spirit had been hit by a wyvern, and his body wasn’t faring much better. At least Queen had been able to lend a bit of strength to the attack, which helped… but it was far, far from enough.

Channeling [Endurance] and [Lesser Regeneration], he stood and tried to readjust to the suppression of his senses. It felt even more oppressive now that he had just gotten his sight back, but the pillar in front of him took most of his attention. Neither of the skills did anything for his spiritual strain, but they helped mute the physical side effects, which was all he could do until he had time to rest.

He just wished that Eternal Darkness worked on spiritual strain.

Liz asked him something, and he stared at the AI message for a good second before he properly was able to parse it.

“Think we got it?”

Ah, of course. She was asking whether or not they’d managed to kill all the ants before he finished off the elephant.

“I don’t know,” he responded. “You tell me. I killed the big guy in time, so it’s whether you managed to clean up the ants in time.”

“I think we did, but I don’t know if we missed one or two there at the end. I was definitely squishing them all the way up to the last second.”

“Would we even know if we missed any?” Queen added.

“I have no clue, but we probably did well enough for… something good. We killed it in way less than five minutes when the generally accepted max time is ten.” Matt shook his head, and added [Sharp Mind] to his roster of active ‘recovery’ skills. He really should be running his buff spells more, and circulating his Genesis Energy to try and get his armor bonded to him. That was a worry for another time though, as the challenge room finally seemed to settle on a reward.

The Genesis Energy they had put into the crystal started to bubble and churn before it turned into a roiling mass, and then seemed to overflow the crystal and rush into them. More than double the Genesis Energy he put into it crashed into Matt, and he rejoiced as the energy inside the crystal kept swirling around and started to form items.

As they got their reward, Matt calculated that the Genesis Energy he got back was roughly 220% what they had put in. A nice return, if not as high as he had hoped for completing the challenge so quickly, but the energy in the crystal hadn’t stopped churning, which meant that they had more rewards coming their way.

After a second or two, four rings materialized on the surface of the crystal, but the Genesis Energy kept churning, signifying it had more rewards to give.

The rings, each sized for them, were simple brass with little mechanical pressure gauges that would show how much Genesis Energy they had stored. It was an incredibly common reward from Minkalla, and was used to help people trade their Genesis Energy and hide just how much they had collected, making it harder to detect by enemies.

Now that they had gotten the reward, they wouldn't get another during their trip in Minkalla unless they lost theirs, which was just one of the many oddities of the planet that no one had figured out. It implied that there was a degree of consciousness with the planet, unlike in rifts, but just how aware of things the mass of ruins was remained a mystery.

Matt slipped his ring on next to his mana aspecting ring and helped Aster snap her larger one on her forearm like a bracelet.

Just as the Genesis Energy in the crystal reached a boil once again, a single, larger bracelet popped out of the crystal. Matt picked it up and carefully inspected it without physically touching it, just in case it was a cursed item.

Unlikely, given it was a challenge room reward, but it was always a possibility.

After a few minutes of trying to read the runes, Matt gave his report. “I think it's a summoning bracelet of some kind. I can't tell you what it summons, but it reserves a portion of mana to create something. It might be armor, or it might be a monster. I can't be sure, but I don't think it's a trap. I'd guess you need to reserve four to five hundred mana for its effect.”

He was slightly sad about the fact it was a reserved item, as it meant that he couldn't use it at all. Reserve skill took from his max mana pool and lowered his regeneration. When he had millions of mana, losing a few thousand MPS to reserve a skill would mean nothing, but for now, losing even five hundred mana each second would cripple his current fighting style.

Liz ended up taking it. As a warrior, Susanne didn’t focus on her mana cultivation, and she didn’t have enough mana to reserve a large portion of it either, even with Matt keeping them full with his Concept.

Aster would have been the best choice, but unlike the brass ring meant for holding Genesis Energy, Minkalla didn’t see fit to have the item built around a non-human form, so she couldn't wear it.

That left Liz, who slipped it on and channeled mana into the metal.

A shoulder-high mana elephant appeared and silently trumped its creation as it formed.

At least, that was what Matt interpreted it opening its mouth and extending its trunk to mean.

It had the same armored hide as the elephant in the challenge room, but was made entirely out of mana. Its armor plates were thick and seemed strong enough to turn away a blow or two.

“Well, I didn’t expect this.” Liz shrugged and tapped her helmeted chin. “We might as well test it.”

While Matt focused on recovering from his overstrained spirit and empty willpower, Liz and Susanne tested the new elephant summon.

They found it was just about as strong as they suspected it would be.

Like the elephant they had fought in the challenge room, it possessed no skills, but had an incredible defensive ability that was formidable even for peak Tier 14’s.

Sadly, that was all it had, but it was still useful as a front liner to take damage for them. With it, they could scout out any paths they traversed with just a five-minute cooldown to resummon the monster after it was destroyed. It also had no healing ability, but with its great defenses, it either was killed outright or ignored most attacks, so that was a minor problem at worst.

After half an hour of resting, Matt felt good enough to cast a few spells again, and they resumed their trek deeper into the tunnel, but with the elephant summon leading the way. Not long after they left the hidden room that had concealed the challenge room, they started encountering more ants and resumed killing their way through the nest.

It took them nearly six hours to make their way into the queen's chamber, where they were faced with thirty bulkier soldier ants and half as many of the ranged spitting ants.

Liz summoned out a wall of blood from her glove and blocked the initial barrage as Matt, while functional, didn’t want to strain his already overstressed spirit by using the Tier 20 [Bulwark], as he would have usually done.

What he did do was cast [Flamethrower] and use [Fire Manipulation] to spread the flames around the side of the room that he was guarding, using the flames to fry the ranged ants.

Aster used ice spells to do the same on the other side of the room, while Susanne kept right behind the elephant, who took the initial charge of ants on its mana tusks and armored hide.

Standing to the side of it and taking the other side of the tunnel, she lashed out with her manifestation blade swinging as if the wall to her side wasn't an impediment, as it would be to a physical blade.

By the time the summoned elephant was starting to go down, Matt had taken care of the ranged opponents on his side, and smoothly stepped forward to take its spot. He fought off two of the soldier ants that tried to press into them as he cast [Sword Twin].

As they were fighting, Aster turned and started attacking behind them, but she said that she had it handled, as there were only two of the soldier ants there, and she could take them down without any issues.

Matt used all his physical buffs and grabbed one of the ants as its pincers that glowed with mana that tried to latch onto his leg, and instead of forcing them apart, he let them close in open air and then kept pushing until he felt the snap of chitin, as the ant retreated.

The other ant he was fighting tried to bite down on him as well, but he let his magical [Sword Twin] that had been distracting the monster retreat, and he planted his foot on the ant's head then drove his real blade through it with a heavy downward thrust.

The chitin exploded, and ant blood flew as he hacked down on the next one that took its place.

They defended their tunnel for another ten minutes until the colony seemed to run out of ants, and no more reinforcements came to defend the queen ant, who just sat there guarding a nest full of eggs.

Matt didn’t feel even a twinge of remorse as Liz drowned the helpless queen and finished off the threat. The rush of Genesis Energy was like a tidal wave when compared to the standard amount they got from killing the soldier ants.

As the queen's massive body disappeared, a dagger materialized in its place, and each of the now crushed eggs dropped an essence stone. Even as they ‘watched,’ they sensed Minkalla begin to drain the new essence stone, so they quickly scooped them up and stashed them in their rings. While they didn’t need or really have a use for the dozen Tier 14 essence stones currently, they would be useful outside Minkalla, when they could Tier up. Or at the very least, they could be sold off for a hefty profit. They would be useful in an emergency as well, in case they needed to hit Tier 12 in desperation.

To their surprise, that wasn’t the leader of the ruin, and no exit appeared to take them to the next sub-level. It was, at best, a sub-boss of the ruin.

After Matt repeated his examination of the dagger, he believed that it had a simple but powerful armor penetrative passive effect. Interestingly enough, the dagger wasn’t enchanted; its power was a side effect of the material it was made of, whatever that may be.

He suspected that it was a chitin based alloy, but couldn't be sure until they could see with more than their spiritual perception.

If his conjecture was correct, once he figured out a plan to enchant the item, they would have a powerful backup weapon for any of the humans. They all kept daggers as backup weapons for close-range fights, but none of them relied on it as a main weapon, so it was really just a matter of who wanted it.

Stowing the dagger with the other items they had gotten from Minkalla so far, they exited the ant tunnels and started moving through the jungle.

After the challenge room and the ruin both produced the area’s oversized ants, Matt was getting tired of the motif, but they pushed on, thankfully not encountering any more ants until they were well away from the old nest.

Fifteen miles away, they started to find more ants, but they only killed the ones that they encountered, and didn’t go delving into the tunnels once again.

They needed to move fast, and while clearing the ants gave them Genesis Energy; they couldn’t afford to kill the ant colonies that took so long to kill once again.

The initial run through Minkalla, while not a full speedrun, couldn't be slow either, or they would fall behind and find it difficult to catch up to the front runners who would start monopolizing drops and monsters. So, they refused to be sidetracked and pushed forward. If they felt like they needed more Genesis Energy they would rather move vertically on the third subfloor of the first layer, instead of the first subfloor.

Liz even gave him a little surprise- a Tier 14 basil plant, growing next to the exotic Grasping Vines that she’d been harvesting. Well technically, she’d transplanted them both into her greenhouse herb garden orb, but it was still nice of her to grab the mundane herb for him. Minkalla was full of opportunities, and that apparently extended into the mundane. He had no clue how the domesticated plant was growing wild inside a lightless, oversized jungle within the mostly mechanical world, but he wasn’t going to complain about fresh herbs.

After a few more hours of trekking through the jungle in their spiritual perception, they all noticed the trees ahead of them shaking. Seeing that, they threw themselves into the oversized brush next to the tree they were moving around and waited.

A massive monkey, like the one they had seen being eaten by the ants earlier, swung by their hiding spot.

It seemed like it wouldn't notice them as it swung on the branch that extended over them and continued on, but it circled around, still in their limited spiritual perception. It was clearly ‘looking’ for them. As it moved in a searching pattern through the area they were in, the four of them knew they were as good as found, and would be forced to fight the oversized ape.

Not ones to run away from a challenge, no matter how large the opponent, they exited their camouflage and immediately unleashed their best attacks.

Or, most of their best attacks. Matt didn’t use [Cracked Mana Spear], but he did set up a few [Cracked Mana Trap]s while [Sword Twin] empowered his own blade and produced a second copy floating around them.

Susanne unleashed a [Wind Cutter] that he could see was empowered with [Hypersonic Edge], and he activated his Concept on his friends to keep them full.

Liz and Aster used more normal attacks and peppered the twenty-foot-tall monkey as it landed near them and silently roared.

Except, it wasn’t a roar, and all of them felt a ball of mana form then rapidly grow in its expanded mouth. As they scattered and the ball hit a critical mass, it formed a beam of energy not dissimilar to Matt’s [Cracked Mana Spear], and cut a deep furrow in the forest floor.

Thankfully, the attack seemed to take a lot out of the monkey, as it fell to its hands and knees for a few seconds to ostensibly recover.

That didn’t last long though, and even as they were landing another round of attacks, the monkey was getting back to its feet. Once standing, it jumped to get into the air, but Susanne lashed out and bent space to send a [Mana Slash] right into its path. The impact caused a spray of blood to explode from its face, and instead of falling as it normally should, the blood turned into a net and started to grapple with the monkey as the monster dropped back to the ground.

An aura Matt knew to be chilling cold washed out from Aster, and Matt felt himself grow slightly stronger and faster. [Winter’s Harvest] was a support type skill they had gotten for Aster after her upgrade to her bloodline. It empowered anyone she considered friendly while slowing and draining power from anyone she considered hostile.

It was a strong skill, but the boost in power wasn’t multiplicative with Matt’s physical boosting skills, as they tried to do the same thing and boost his already allocated faux essence. Liz’s potions, on the other hand, worked by empowering the physical body and worked wonders with Aster's buff.

Even as the monkey reached up and pulled the blood net off its face, Matt and Susanne had closed the distance and were on it.

Matt funneled mana into a [Mana Charge] and unleashed the stored power on the beast's fur-covered leg, while his [Sword Twin] rose up and started to attack the monkey's face.

As he was forced to roll from a giant leg stomping down, he felt Susanne’s manifestation blade vibrating as she channeled [Hypersonic Edge] and focused her Concept down.

Even only able to see with his spiritual perception, he knew that the world around them was growing sharper and more real as she took command of reality.

Just as Liz slapped a blood-encased shard of ice into the monkey's open mouth, Susanne cut clean through the beast's leg where he destroyed its protective fur, sending it stumbling.

Matt was ready, and as he came out of his roll, he threw out a Tier 14 explosion talisman where the monster's head was going to land.

Just as it hit the ground, the talisman went off, and the monster's head vaporized.

The rush of Genesis Energy they got from the kill was nearly as much as they had put into the challenge room pillar, and told them that the monkey was dead and gone.

As the monster vanished, a skill shard appeared in its place, and they grabbed it before they left the area. While the floor theme Eternal Darkness was in place, they couldn't be sure and were unwilling to risk the monkeys having a way of communicating.

After all, it had known their general location.

When they were a good mile away, they stopped to scout their surroundings, finding a deep pit that sunk into the ground well past the distance their spiritual perception could reach under Minkalla’s restrictions.

Seeing it, Liz asked, “Explore that once we have a break?”

At the unanimous agreement, they turned and started looking for a good place to set up their portable house.

Eventually, they settled on a dead toppled tree, and Matt hollowed out a hole in the root structure of a fallen tree to hide in. Deploying or recalling the house felt like a kick to the gut at the best of times, and Matt’s spirit, not recovered quite as well as he had thought, protested mightily at the treatment. It got to the point where Liz took pity on him, scooping him up and setting him in his favorite chair by the window.

Matt kicked off his shoes, pressing a toe to one of the embedded mana-charging ports in the floor and sending even more mana to the house’s reserves, giving them a chance to properly relax as some of the comfort enchantments activated. Cool air washed over them even though they couldn't feel it, and a very light healing field based off of Matt’s study of [Ranged Heal] helped ease their stressed bodies. He hadn’t gotten the spirit-soothing enchantments working yet- those were Tier 16 for even the simplest versions- but a relaxed body meant a relaxed mind, and a relaxed mind led to a relaxed spirit.

They didn’t relax completely, of course, but the house had barriers stronger than even Matt’s [Bulwark], and a few million mana to power it held in reserve. Even the beam attack from the monkey wouldn’t make a noticeable dent in the reserves, if it even overcame Matt’s charging of the enchantment.

Still, they weren't crazy, and they kept up a watch even as they took turns showering and then napping. A part of Matt itched to start sketching out an integration for a cloaking enchantment into the house’s defenses, but he put that off to the side, contenting himself with whipping up a small meal for the four of them during his watch instead.

Working in and caring for the house just felt so satisfying to Matt. It was the first place that he’d really had that was properly his, and he relished being able to just… work on things, and slowly make the house feel better to the three of them. Finding a problem and solving it, like he had with the kitchen, and getting it set up in just the right way just felt… right. Tweaking the lighting enchantments to let them emit any color of light, helping Liz get her alchemy room adjusted for her blood alchemy extraction apparatus, and helping Aster get a cold water jacuzzi set up that empowered her winter abilities were all interesting problem solving activities he enjoyed the challenge of.

It was just fun to work on their house.

From the cleaning enchantments he’d engraved into the knife-block, to the exact order of oil and vinegar bottles by the stove, it was all just the way he wanted it. His room at the orphanage hadn’t been bad, but it also wasn’t his. Same with his lodging at Benny’s, or the PlayPen. Whenever they were delving, they either ended up camping or staying in someone else’s place. But their house, for all that it usually ended up being set up on Luna’s front lawn, was his, and he loved it.

The food turned out bland, even only able to cook with his spiritual perception Matt was an excellent cook who wouldn’t let something as simple as a complete lack of normal telltale signs ruin his food. Once the others woke up, they all sat around and enjoyed some nice, hot tomato-basil soup and fresh bread, perfect for soothing the soul- literally, in Matt’s case. If they could have tasted the meal it would have been better but it was nice to go through the motions nonetheless.

With a full three hours of sleep and a small meal out of the way, they packed up, the house’s recall only slightly more painful than normal, and set their sights on the hole in the ground.

In Minkalla, deeper was always better.