The incoming attack landed properly and true, it was so focused on Sam that he got a lot of hits in its head and around its eye, doing a lot of critical hits. This changed the trajectory of the attack, making the Leviathan hit the ice next to Sam instead. The panic drinking of potions had filled his health but a 300+ damage bite would have killed him regardless.

  Lifting its head, the Leviathan moved almost impossibly fast as it coiled around the area, blocking off most movement within its little bowl of death as it inhaled deeply, looking at Sam.

  Sam had little he could do, given the size of the bowl, it had coiled around Sam specifically, not the whole arena as he expected, and then breathed out a bone-chilling mist.

  [ HP: 150 / 250 ██████???? ]

  He had nothing to block this with, and the leviathan’s powerful body was coiling closer. The guide listed this as a DPS race and he intended to win. He had a weird trick up his sleeve, and that was that he could drink potions and attack at the same time.

  He didn’t have to move far to get in range of its body to attack, taking out one of his remaining seven potions he chugged it, filling his health again, as he sent out his full volley, there was no need to hide any more as he couldn’t avoid the breadth regardless.

  Not many crits or activations, but the first damage was done.

  [ Void Rot has triggered on target: 5 damage.]

  [ Leviathan HP: 2170 / 3100 ]

  Another breath from the Leviathan lowered his health by 100, but another potion equalled that out again: 5 potions remaining, and the coiling was getting much closer.

  [ Void Rot has triggered on target: 10 damage.]

  [ Leviathan HP: 1295 / 3100 ]

  He got a volley out properly before the coiling of the Leviathan’s body made contact, he felt the strong, hard scales grab around him. He tried to climb out but he had no chance, he was grabbed and properly squashed, and at the same time the Leviathan didn’t stop using its freezing breath.

  [ Armour, Defence 55 has lowered the damage. ]

  [ HP: 105 / 250 ███████??? ]

  Sam had to store two of his cheaper daggers and use those hands to feed himself potions, it was the only way he could survive this. Using one hand to get a potion, and the other to uncork it he fed himself the potion.

  [ HP: 225 / 250 █████████? ]

  The rest of his hands were used to attack the Leviathan, even though he could attack just anywhere, being coiled up in it, he opted for going against its face, it felt more appropriate.

  [ Void Rot has triggered on target: 15 damage.]

  [ Leviathan HP: 245 / 3100 ]

  He was close, it was oh so close, but the Leviathan continued its assault, squeezing harder than before as it kept breathing the icy mist.

  [ Armour, Defence 55 has lowered the damage. ]

  [ HP: 80 / 250 ███??????? ]

  Sam wanted to heal up, but one potion would not save him from the next attack regardless. However, he felt confident in his damage output compared to the remaining health of the Leviathan.

  The following attack, aimed at it’s eyes, face and mouth, cut deep and did considerable damage. The Void Fang gritted, as did the Obsidian Warblade and several unnamed blades. The delivered damage took out over thrice the remaining health.

  Sam was dropped on the icy floor as the titanic creature spasmed, hissed and screamed out before its head fell, slamming into the hard ice and remaining still.

  Falling to his ass, Sam felt a humungous amount of relief. That was close, much closer than he had hoped.

  [ Dungeon clear conditions:

  Kill the Glacial Leviathan: 1/1 (Complete)

  Optional: Kill all monsters

  Monsters: 43/50 (Failed)

  Rewards:

  10 000 000 xp

  1x Aether Crystal

  Skill Crystal. ]

  [ Area Loot:

  - Leviathan’s tooth.

  - Leviathan’s eye. ]

  [ Levelup +1! ]

  [ XP to lv.25: 14 449 905 / 83 886 080 ██???????? ]

  [ Companion Dia, level up +1! ]

  [ Dia XP to lv.20: 14 779 / 14 779 █████ ]

  He immediately triggered the level-up, putting the point in Spirit as normal. But as he did that he noticed something. He had triggered a few rewards he wasn’t used to.

  From the reward itself he got a Skill Crystal, but also some area loot, that’s not something he had seen before. He put everything in the Item Box for now, and... started the daunting task of finding the core of the several hundred-meter-long snake... Though initially daunting he was happy to realize that it was very close to the head, he decided to start there and luckily enough it was in the throat. A silent mental prayer to the creators of that detail later he turned for the exit in the centre of the area, that’s where he saw the barely existing shimmer of the exit portal. Though he knew he could use the emergency exit, it felt more appropriate to do it this way.

  As he got within range, he accepted the exit, finding himself outside with a confused Dia, who upon seeing him immediately pounced on him and rode him to the ground where she remained attached.

  Janik appeared shortly after and could only smile as he looked at the two in the snow. “I assume it went well? She was asking about you quite a lot.”

  “Yeah... I almost died a few times but it’s all good,” Sam commented back as he somehow managed to force himself to at least somewhat sit.

  Dia stopped what she was doing and snapped to look at him with aggressively worried eyes. “Almost died?!”

  “Eh... well... Don’t worry about it, it’s fine. I’m here, right?” Sam didn’t realize what he had done before he saw her reaction, trying to metaphorically push it to the side didn’t seem to work either.

  She started a string of angry words he hadn’t heard, he knew a decent amount of her language so he got a few words in there but, there were many new ones.

  Janik chuckled and left them to their own, taking communication equipment out of his backpack.

  Sam had to somewhat wait for her to speak in words he understood but tried to change the subject instead.

  “But, you levelled up, where should we put your point?”

  Dia didn’t fall for it and continued her rant about him needing to be careful, he can’t die, that’s bad.

  “Well-” Janik came back a while later. Dia had calmed down and they had decided to put her point into Vitality. “-I spoke with the helicopter people, they’re going to be here in a few hours, so I suppose this is a good time to set up a camp and get something warm in us?”

  Though he toned it as a question, as he had already started unpacking the things to make a small camp it didn’t seem like he was asking.

  Sam agreed and they proceeded to set up camp, in record time when Sam used his Psyhands to help, they focused more on weather coverage than somewhere to sleep, using the mountain wall and some tarps to get a wind shelter going. Inside there they set up the little camp stove and cooked some simple food.

  “So, I noticed you didn’t manage to take out all the monsters?” Janik asked playfully with a wide grin.

  “Nope, and if you’re going to complain, you can do the next one,” Sam replied bluntly but jokingly.

  “Yeah... no. I think I’ll pass,” Janik chuckled. “But that means no rewards besides XP from this one. Or rather, not for me, I think you should keep any cores you have. It’s only fair.” Janik kept his smile which looked honest this time.

  Sam was glad to hear it, realistically it was the least he could do, but this also brought his mind back to what he got.

  “Speaking of, I got a Skill Crystal as the base reward and some other things. I haven’t heard of Area Loot before.”

  “Area loot?” Janik replied in a tone suggesting more that he wanted to confirm what he heard more than uncertainty of what it was. “That’s pretty rare. Some dungeons have a chance to get some local stuff, unique to that dungeon. But it doesn’t happen often.”

  “Ah, that’s neat,” Sam smiled as he took the items out of storage. “I got the Leviathan’s Tooth and an Eye.”

  Appraising them didn’t give much info.

  [ Leviathan’s Eye: Extremely rare and high-quality crafting item. ]

  [ Leviathan’s Tooth: Extremely rare and high-quality crafting item. ]

  “Rare and high-quality crafting items,” Sam paraphrased with an almost bored expression.

  “Huh,” Janik didn’t seem to know much about it either. “I suppose you can ask some crafters when we get to the Fourth Floor, the good crafters stay on the highest available floor most of the time.”

  Sam nodded to his statement, putting them back in storage, and taking out the Skill Crystal instead, quickly looking at the name. “Have you heard of the skill... Aura?”

  “Oh, yeah, Aura is a pretty good skill but requires a harsh stat investment to get the max of, but it’s pretty powerful if used right. You got an Aura skill?” Janik’s expression went into explaining mode as he gave the short explanation but changed to surprise and excitement at the ending question.

  “Yeah, is it that good?” Sam looked down at the Skill Crystal and read the info after Janik’s excitement.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  [ Aura: The user can channel internal energy to enhance physical and defensive capabilities.

  -Energy converts to Aura Points (AP) based on √(Vitality * Spirit) × 1.5.

  -AP can be allocated to

  |-Defensive Aura: +1 Defense per AP.

  |-Barrier Aura: +5 HP barrier per AP. (Recharges 5% per 5 seconds, after 10 seconds of not taking damage)

  |-Aura Blade: Create a melee weapon; +5 base weapon damage per AP.

  |-Empowered Strikes: Increase weapon damage, +3% total weapon damage per AP.

  -AP allocation is permanent until reallocated.

  -Aura is entirely self-focused and does not affect other players or entities directly. ]

  Sam used a moment to consider this. It was a bit strange that the calculation was the square root of two multiplied stats, but taking out his phone and doing some test calculations it seemed that this meant you’d get more out of it if you had the two stats equally levelled. Square root numbers were strange and he didn't understand them completely.

  Math aside, the things it could be used to was rather neat. Defence rating was always a boon, an HP shield was good for elemental effects or things that Defence didn’t affect, creating melee weapons was always nice when needed, and increasing damage of existing weapons was also very interesting.

  “It’s surprisingly versatile, but I see what you mean about the stat investment,” Sam added to his question.

  “If you don’t want it... for some reason,” Janik smiled at Sam with a wide grin. “I can take it off your hands.”

  “Yeah... no...” Sam smiled back, he knew this was a wishful joke and that Janik would probably take it if he gave it to him, but at the same time, it wasn’t something he expected to go through.

  Though Aura wouldn’t scale the best with how Sam was using his points, it didn’t mean that it wouldn’t do anything. Any boost was a good boost, and it even came with a point scaling of its own, so it didn’t use his Energy or need Mana.

  Without considering it more, ignoring what this could earn him on the Market, he activated the Skill Crystal.

  [ Aura skill obtained. ]

  [ Aura points: 24. ]

  The scaling would be much better if his stats were spread between Spt and Vit, but as a freebie, it seemed worth it. There also seemed to be a rounding part of the math as the exact number would be 23.95.

  With 24 points he could get a 24 bonus Defence rating, if he manifested a single weapon it would have a base damage of 120, he could boost the damage of an existing weapon by 72% or give himself a shield up to 120 HP. It could also be split how he wanted, Def and HP, several weapons or something like that.

  Though he would have put it all in Defence for now, having just almost died from ice breaths in the Dungeon it felt better to put that in a Shield. Mentally allocating the 24 points into the barrier pulsed out a thin, barely visible red field around him. It used a brief moment to stabilize before its colour faded and it seemingly disappeared.

  [ Barrier: 120 / 120 ]

  A little window popped up and displayed his shield HP before it moved and attached itself to the little widget that showed his HP. He felt good about this.

  Dia looked between Sam and Janik with curious eyes, landing on trying to smell whatever the field around Sam was, trying to touch it. She didn’t seem to find anything and she seemed almost disappointed when she couldn’t smell anything.

  Janik let out a fake sigh. “And here I thought you’d gift it to me because you didn’t need it.” Shrugging dramatically with his shoulders as he held his hands out to emphasise it.

  “And here I thought you were smarter than that,” Sam retorted with a smile of his own.

  They looked at each other for a few seconds before sharing a laugh.

  “Well, I’m glad it’s going well for you... I just can’t help but be envious, you know?” Janik honestly commented after their laugh.

  Sam couldn’t fault him, over the last... he lost track of time, but since they joined up, Janik hadn’t gotten more skills than he had before, not counting his Class skill. Ignoring class skills, Sam had now obtained 9 outside-of-class skills. Some he had paid for but most were rewards in different forms. Though he was out of the Solo Dungeons at this exact moment he could say that he was... ok... with the rewards he had gotten from them, but at the same time, he felt he would be fine even if he didn’t go through that.

  He felt lucky to be able to say that he didn’t feel completely mentally ruined by them, he could feel it in his heart that they had changed him. The Island and the last gauntlet more than the other.

  “A random thought,” Sam considered something, changing the subject. “When you appraise me now, what you do see?” Sam knew that Janik had a lower-powered Appraisal, it could only see the health of targets up to a few levels higher than him, but with the Barrier, he wondered what it would register as.

  “I see that your health is 275 and that you have a shield of 120.”

  “Ah, so the barrier is displayed, that’s a shame,” Sam replied. He had somewhat hoped that the cheaper appraisals couldn’t see it, but it made sense as it was linked to his health, after all.

  As they waited for the helicopter, they kept talking about random stuff. Suddenly Dia’s ears lowered and pressed against her head, she became almost defensive as she pressed against Sam. It didn’t take long before they realised that the helicopter was getting close, and given how much she liked it last time, her reactions made sense.

  However, there was no proper way around it, the alternative was to walk and fight the snow for days, not something Sam was interested in. She would just have to accept it.

  To Dia’s pleasant surprise, the way back from the mountain was much faster, the winds that fought them there now helped them back. Shortening down the trip significantly. Though she was still pressed in a corner between the seats and Sam, it was at least faster.

  During the trip, Sam had some more time to look around and noticed something new. The Ascendant thing had activated again, perhaps due to completing the End Dungeon on the Second Floor?

  In any case, he saw that he could affect numbers like before, but this time he could add +4. Was that relevant to levelling up stacked on top of the Dungeon completion? He also didn’t see any increasing possibilities on Dia or Janik, which deepened the mystery.

  There were too many uncertainties, but for now, he quietly put the four points in Spirit, raising it to 51 with the boost from the ring. This increased his HP and Telekinetic abilities as normal and had a huge chance of bumping his weight limit up a bit. The change let him use fewer hands on the multi-hand weapons, but the increased Energy also let him manifest more hands. This combination ended up with a total of seven ‘free hands’ that he could use for more weapons, giving him yet another exponential increase in power.

  Getting off the Helicopter was almost the best part in Dia’s eyes, Sam and Janik didn’t have the same distaste for it, which could be due to understanding or just not having as sensitive senses, in either case, it was over. Janik returned the communications equipment and got his deposit back, and they headed back to Earth. All in all, it was pretty straightforward now that the Dungeon itself was beaten.

  “So, the bonus thing kicked in again,” Sam broke the silence as they walked back from the transport people’s location to the Floor entry location.

  “Oh?” Janik raised an eyebrow. “Can you do it on me as well?”

  “It doesn’t seem like it, I still don’t know what triggers it, but the change was 4 this time,” Sam honestly answered and added some info at the end. He didn’t intend to talk too much about it but he felt like he should mention it to Janik, even though he didn’t explain how much this changed things for him.

  “Well... that’s a shame. Good for you, but a shame.” Like normal, he seemed happy on Sam’s behalf but a bit saddened that it couldn’t affect him.

  “I have also been thinking about something,” changing the subject, Sam continued. “If the System stops people from just getting rushed through... How can the booster people just rush a Dungeon, or like you where I did all the work?”

  “To be honest, I have no idea how this works. The only thing I know is that if you skip the steps and get yourself to a higher Floor, you don’t get to reap the benefits there. Like, if we had just gotten someone on the Fourth Floor to bring us up there right away, we could skip all this but... We wouldn’t get proper XP or loot from that floor before we ‘earned it’... or something.” Janik made air quotes around ‘earned it’ as he said that part. “Crafters do this at times because they don’t intend to go through the dungeons, but for us... I don’t think that’s a good idea, which is why I didn’t properly suggest it.”

  Sam had some ideas, Janik did explain this a while ago but a mix of forgetting details and not having it explained as well meant that he didn’t properly get it. But, like the games he played when young, skipping certain markers of progression would block you from entering or getting what you should. Much like how you might get less XP if you, as a low level, go into a Dungeon for your power but with a max-level player in the group. It followed a similar logic.

  “Yeah... now that you mention it, you did explain something like that before. I suppose being part of completing a Dungeon at least triggers the completion part. But going to the End dungeon with a higher level Player would probably mess up rewards or XP, but at least you get it completed.”

  Janik pointed like Sam had a point, even though he somewhat just rehashed what Janik said. “Yes, pretty much. You just need to complete them and if you don’t care about the rewards, you can rush it that way.”

  Sam pondered this for a moment and... it kind of made sense. Given how the System was structured and why the System exists at all, it would make sense that there were ways to bypass certain things if you just abuse it. Abusing the system was surprisingly easy and hard at the same time, after all.

  Dia didn’t add to the conversation, Sam knew she understood the words but at the same time she might not understand the context, he didn’t know how she saw the System, after all. He would have to ask her about that later.

  However, she did trot after them with a surprisingly content expression.

  Continuing to the entrance zone they got the familiar popup once they got in range, now with an option to go to the Third Floor as well as the others.

  “So, should we check it out before heading back?” Sam eagerly smiled.

  “I don’t see why not,” Janik smiled back, looking just about as eager as Sam was.