The Colosseum was one of the most perplexing and mysterious places in the entire Dungeon. It wasn’t on any of the old maps of the While Palace, not because it had only been discovered recently, but because it literally hadn’t existed in the distant past. At one point, a few adventurers had stumbled into an empty version of the Colosseum and scratched their heads at the existence of the strange room that wasn’t on their maps. The next thing they knew, the whole place was chock-full of bloodthirsty monsters that constantly respawned. Going forward, basically everyone avoided this place because it was simply too deadly. Even Level 6s and 7s would struggle to cut their way across, due to the never-ending deluge of enemies. Quantity had a quality of its own, after all.
Naturally, Adama wasted no time jumping into the thick of it.
Hearthblade took a Barbarian in the neck and turned a few Lizardmen into chunks in the few moments before the monsters noticed the intruder. Their cries of malice were soon directed at the human target, the Dungeon-spawn setting aside their battles and converging on the intruder as one. Adama dashed to his left, cutting down the monsters in his path while fending off the one's chasing him in a flurry of motion. The Peluda shot a wave of lethal spines at him as he was distracted, but the Endless Sword deflected them all without Adama even looking their way. He ducked under a heavy blow from a Barbarian and sliced through its knee, conjuring a Hidden Sword in his other hand and cutting through a leaping Skull Sheep at the same time, eyes shifting around as they tracked numerous enemies at once.
Adama was a green-and-white windmill of death as he sheared through monsters in a grotesque fountain of crimson blood and shattered bones. He pulled out every trick in the book in the space of a few heartbeats. Rippling Swords cut down far away Peludas while Endless Swords minced any warriors that got close. He Forged Hidden Swords as supplemental weapons and convenient projectiles, the invisible blades more weapons to reflect his Endless magic. Adama also worked to create the invisible weapons beyond his hand, focusing on a specific location and willing his magic to coalesce there. It was something he’d been working on successfully outside of combat, but this was the first time he’d tried it under pressure.
After a few attempts, he succeeded, forging an invisible sword into a crack in the stone off to his left. Another Endless Sword annihilated any of the monsters nearby, and Adama smirked. He could do better, but that was a start.
Hearthblade nigh-constantly glowed with the light of the Flowing Sword, lending more weight to Adama’s attacks and allowing him to send countless enemies flying with each blow. Even though the monsters literally respawned instantly, they didn’t always do so near the swordsman. After cutting down a lot of them, he gave himself a few breaths of relief as they ran over to hunt him down again. Even when they did spawn at his feet, that just gave Adama the chance to kill them before they could get their bearings. He was constantly moving, impossible to pin down, and regularly killing monster before they even got the chance to threaten him. His ongoing mastery of non-verbal magic meant his spells came out smoother than ever, contributing heavily to the overwhelming nature of his assault.
A typical adventurer, no matter how skilled or powerful, would be ground down by the pace Adama was setting. He was casting so much magic that, by all rights, he should run out of Mind and get torn apart pretty quickly. However, Adama’s Mind of a Swordsman skill had officially kicked into full gear. He was in enough danger that he was regenerating Mind nearly as swiftly as he could use it. The natural boost to his swordsmanship the skill provided also made his movements even sharper and his strikes even crisper, an improvement that made using magic less necessary than it otherwise would’ve been. No matter how constant the pressure or how fierce the foes, so long as Adama kept his cool, he was able to cut down everything that came after him. Deep within the Goblet of Death, he slaughtered the monsters in droves.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
However, skilled or not, Adama wasn’t infallible. He took several cuts along his body over the first half-hour of fighting and the constant movement had him breathing hard already. In response, he pulled Blackfang out of spatial storage and lunged for the nearest Barbarian. The weapon’s lifesteal effect wouldn’t work on the Skull Sheep or the Spartoi, since they didn’t really have any life to steal, but the Barbarians were walking sacks of blood and strength. The ebony blade plunged into the monster’s chest, visibly sucking it dry at high speed. Adama was forced to cut off the drain and move out of the way as the other monsters attacked him, but he’d gotten what he needed. Strength flowed back into his limbs, healing his wounds and stabilizing his breathing. Adama felt fresh as a daisy as he turned to face the horde again, killing his way through the monsters with renewed vigor.
Half an hour slipped into a full hour, then two as Adama’s war reached a standstill. A never-ending army met an unkillable soldier in a truly twisted riot of chaos and death as the swordsman danced along the cliffs of Tartarus, always on the edge but never falling over. He slipped into a deep battle trance as the time ground ever onward, the music of battle thundering in his ears unceasing as the hours flew by. Unbeknownst to Adama, his movements began to take on a similar significance to Takemikazuchi’s, each pivot and each sword swing bearing a weight that went beyond the physical. This further improved his effectiveness, provoking more screams from the monsters as they were cut down like wheat before the scythe.
Focus wise, Adama felt like he could stay like that forever. Yet eventually, his vision began to dim. To his surprise, Adama’s body suddenly didn’t respond like he knew it should, and he was a little slow to jump out of the way of a Spartoi’s strike. As the monster’s sword dragged across his ribs, the pain woke Adama up to a new reality. He was on the verge of a Mind Down.
While his Mind regeneration was good, it wasn’t quite good enough to keep up with his incredible expenditure. While in his flow state, he couldn’t keep careful track of his Mind usage, causing him to dip close to the bottom of the well, especially since that state prompted him to fight in the most lethal way possible, not the most conservative. Adama managed to extricate himself from the monsters seeking to encircle him and chug a Mind potion, but the damage was done. His focus was disrupted, and he now noticed a certain amount of mental fatigue that’d been building up that went beyond his magic reserves. Like it or not, firing on all cylinders for hours on end had cost him mentally. Physically, he still felt okay, but he was also buck naked. His robe had been shredded by the countless attacks, and that couldn’t be regenerated with Blackfang.
Furthermore, the sword’s regenerative abilities had its limits as well. It infused Adama’s body with strength and healing, but when the energy boost began to wane, it left him more taxed than before. His body couldn’t heal itself over and over without experiencing a certain degree of fatigue at the end of each healing process, and that weakness built up steadily over time. Adama hunted down another Barbarian and secured another energy boost, but he knew he couldn’t continue to fight indefinitely. After a few more minutes, he fought his way back to the passage he’d come from and made his exit.
The monsters chased after him aggressively, yet they respawned back in the Colosseum when he killed them again. After a short chase sequence, Adama wiped his pursuers out, and for the first time in forever, his ears were graced with actual silence.
Limbs trembling, Adama leaned against the wall to take a short rest, though it wasn’t long before he was assaulted once again, this time by a small pack of Skull Sheep. These Sheep weren’t from the Colosseum, just natural spawns from the Dungeon, but that hardly mattered. They forced Adama to re-engage, and he mentally started working through a new plan. He defeated those monsters and started on the path away from the Colosseum, pushing through countless new trials and tribulations on his path out. The Dungeon almost seemed vindictive in its attacks as it sent new monsters after him, the walls opening and sending forth more creatures than he’d seen coming in. Perhaps the White Palace would begrudgingly let him in, but it was reluctant to let him leave.
Naturally, Adama pushed through all of it. This was nothing in comparison to the Colosseum, yet he’d muddled his way through that for hours. It wasn’t a surprise when, after another hour of fighting, he broke through the Palace’s blockade and trudged back up the passageway to the desert.
Muttering to himself, Adama ambled over to the 36th floor's oasis, cutting down the few nuisances that dared stand in his way. Once inside the tranquil locale, he picked an easily defensible nook and surrounded it with alarm systems (which had been tucked away in his spatial storage) and Hidden Swords at every conceivable angle. Any monster that wanted to come for him would need to break his through his magic, even if it somehow got past the alarms without alerting him.
Traps laid, he changed into a new robe, flopped down on the safe point’s dirt, and went to sleep.
[LitRPG] [Cultivation] [Crafting] [Smart MC]
Synopsis (Click to Expand)
To transcend the heavens, one must first forge the ladder.
He is a Cultivator who values volume over speed.
He is a Chronicler who will not stop at the sky.