บท 25: The First Floor!

After looking around for a little bit Ark noticed how he was at the very top of a spiral staircase, this staircase was made entirely out of stone and it looked very exquisite, especially if you considered the fact that it was made entirely out of stone, so there wasn't much you could do in the looks department. Ark was even a bit astounded. It wasn't like he had never seen a beautiful staircase before, he did get to visit a nobles' house after all, but this one was made out of stone, and it was even better. You could see Charun's influence when he was still alive just from this, the craftsmen behind this could not have been ordinary by any means.

Just seeing some simple things like this could make Ark ponder sometimes, did the one who made this want to make it? Or were they forced to work? Maybe the demons saw Charun as a hero, who knows? Were the demons really that bad? As Ark thought about it more and more, he started to grow anxious. Who was the good guy? And who was the bad guy? Was there truly any good or bad?

More and more questions inevitably started popping up. Ark had actually only heard the human side of the story, and let's be real, his experience with humans wasn't exactly great by any means. And even though the only encounter he had ever had with demons was, in fact, a battle. Were one of them was clearly evil, that was just one of them. And it didn't necessarily mean all of them were evil. There were evil and psychopathic humans as well, but that doesn't mean that all humans are evil. Quite the opposite actually, as it just makes the good people seem a lot better.

Ark decided that it wasn't the time to be thinking things like this though, so he decided to start moving down the staircase, but not before activating his stealth skill. It would be kind of stupid after all if he went down into the dungeon only to notice that the monsters were way too high level, therefore he needed his stealth in case he needed to flee for his life.

Walking down the staircase, Ark noticed that it was actually quite narrow, considering how big the dungeon probably is, if humans were to try and walk on it they would probably only fit three people next to each other. To Ark's surprise, the staircase was actually very long, since he had been walking on it for 10 minutes without arriving at the first floor, he did walk in a very slow pace though, which meant that he still hadn't gotten that deep into the ground. But it was still more than expected nonetheless.

As he was advancing down the staircase he suddenly saw the end of it, it didn't look as grand as he expected, it just looked like a big doorframe without a door, that had gotten weary with time. Walking towards the entrance to the first floor, the hair on his hair abruptly stood straight up. Ark was surprised, but also a bit concerned if it was a good idea to continue into the dungeon. A feeling like this wasn't something you felt often, and when you did, it was often a good idea to run, but Ark didn't want to give up when he had already come this far, therefore he decided to continue.

Walking past the entrance and into the dungeon, Ark's vigilance was as high as it could possibly get, and he was quite nervous. The environment of the first floor was just a cave, and Ark felt like it was a bit lackluster, but he still moved on nonetheless. As his paws slowly traversed the ground within the dungeon, he noticed that the ground was super cold, but since he was aligned with the ice element, it didn't really bother him.

After he had walked into the cave for a bit, he suddenly entered a big space within the cave, that branched out into three different directions. Since he didn't know where they led to, he just decided to enter one at random and went into the right path. The cave was a bit bigger than the initial one, and this one also seemed to grow a little bigger as he went on. After about 5 minutes of walking, Ark suddenly came to a stop.

Click Clack

In the distance, he could hear some weird noise, that resembled the sound of a crab or something of similar nature walking around. Now he started to grow a bit restless, and he was ready to turn around if he needed to, but at that moment.

Drip Drip

He could feel something cold dripping against his scalp, but as he was just about to turn his head up to look, he suddenly felt a massive amount of killing intent. Thankfully for him, he had experienced what killing intent felt like when he had been battling against the demons, otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to move at all at this moment. With that said, Ark suddenly put a lot of strength in his front legs, and combusted some flames underneath them, causing him to fly backward at a rapid speed.

BANG!

At the place which he had just been standing in, a big hole appeared in the ground. Ark felt a shill running across his spine as he looked at the hole in the ground.

[If that would have hit me, I would have been a goner!]

This was the first thought that ran across Ark's mind when he saw the destruction of that attack. It would have been fine if it would have been head-on since he could have conjured up a magic shield or something of the like, but if he got hit by that when he least expected it, then he would definitely not survive the fight that followed.

As he thought about this, his head couldn't help but shift towards the ceiling of the cave. Up there he saw a pitch-black spider, about 2 thirds of his size, staring at him cruelly with eight dark red glowing eyes. One of the spider's legs was hanging in the air, above the hole that had formed in the ground. All in all, it created a very sinister picture as it silently hung onto the ceiling.

Ark also saw what had dropped onto his head from earlier, a seemingly vicious green liquid was dripping slowly onto the ground from one of the spider's fangs. Seeing this, Ark slowly checked his status to see if he had gotten any status ailments, and to his surprise, he hadn't gotten any. That meant that he didn't need to spend any Mana on recovering, which was pretty nice in a foreign environment.

Seeing his own status, Ark also decided to check out his opponent. Since he wasn't really sure if the opponent was strong or not.

"Inspect"

[Darkness Arachnid]

Lv. 10 (30)

An evolution of the Arachnid.

Affinity toward the darkness element.

Lv. 10 (30)

Stats: ??

Skills: [Silent Strike] ??

Seeing this, Ark knew what had happened earlier, and his confidence to beat this spider in a battle instantly went up since he could make a guess that this spider was good at stealth attacks, and not in combat. Since he didn't want to take any chances and let the spider attack again, he decided to go on the offensive straight away.

Gathering mana at the back of his legs, Ark suddenly exploded out from his original position, the spider didn't get much of a chance to react before Ark suddenly appeared in front of it, but as an instinct, it put up one of its legs in front of it. If Ark would've kept going, he would have impaled himself on the leg, therefore he abruptly came to a stop in front of it.

What the spider didn't know, was that Ark had anticipated this development, or at least something similar, therefore he had decided to try out something new for once, and gathered a lot of Mana in his lungs. A split-second after he stopped he let out a maddening howl, infused with a big chunk of Mana.

The spider didn't expect something like this to happen, the howl shook the spider's innards so fiercely that it got gravely injured from just a single attack. Seeing how his howl made the Arachnid scurry backward in a hurry, and the screeching sound it let out, Ark instantly followed up with an ice spear that he conjured up from the Mana in his body.

The spear found it's way into the Arachnid's head, instantly exploding it into a bloody mist. This pictured quite the grim scene, and it wasn't something the weak-hearted would want to look at, lest they throw up all over the place.

As Ark saw the corpse of the spider sprawled across the ground, he didn't relax in the slightest. The reason was quite simple, he had released that howl earlier, and it was bound to attract hordes of monsters to his location. Therefore he decided to retreat for the day since he didn't think it would be that wise to stay for much longer. Even if he didn't attract a bunch of monsters, he would still want to leave and rest for the night.

He also wanted to get either a darkness affinity or a light affinity, since this dungeon was focused around sneak attacks so far. And he needed either the lightness element to light the place up as well as counter the darkness element, or he needed the darkness element to know what was going on in the shadows, as well as upgrading his stealth. Ideally, he would get both though.

Just as he was about to retreat, he saw something flash in the corner of his eye, which instantly put him on high-alert again. But he soon relaxed a little as he noticed that the thing that flashed was a black translucent orb that had emerged from the Arachnid's backside. "Mana Stone!" was the first thing that emerged in Ark's eyes as he snatched it up in his jaws, and turned around to leave for the surface again...