บท 16: S-rank Dungeon opens!
Roult Islands, Morning.
The next morning, they took a small boat and left for the main island, where the group would be staying for about a week before the S rank gate opened.
During this time, the students are free to do anything they want, except commit crimes.
The rules and regulations are rather strict here on the Rault Islands, as several awakeners visit this place every day throughout the year. As a result, high security measures are critical.
There are several battleships stationed on these islands to protect them from any type of sea problem.
A huge number of fishermen enter the sea every day, and since the marine industries depend on these local fishermen, the fishermen get rather special treatment. Of course, once you commit a crime, you can't escape.
Only individuals with a C rank or higher have the ability to escape after committing crimes by paying compensation; however, you will only face criminal accusations if you are caught in the act.
Otherwise, your crimes will go unpunished as long as you don't commit a massacre. After all, this is a world where only the strong have the chance of survival; the weak ones are always disregarded here.
...
'Hmm, should I participate in that event or not?'
Before the S rank gate opens, there is still an event. According to the novel, when the original protagonist Fade defeated the bullies, he triggered a chain villain event.
You must know what a chain villain is, right? It's when you defeat one and its backer comes to make trouble for you, then you defeat them and even one more person comes to make trouble with you. Yeah, that type of villain.
So, when those bullies woke up and found out that Fade had defeated them, they got enraged and requested Link, their ultimate backer, to avenge them.
Now, on these Roult islands, the students will divide into two factions. One supports Fade to stand against the bullies, and the other is Link's group, including his lackeys.
To sort out their fight, they will challenge each other through a dungeon-hunting contest. In a dungeon hunting contest, you have to clear dungeons of a particular rank in a set time.
The team that clears the most dungeon at the end will win, and the one with a lower dungeon clearing number will lose this game.
It's a type of team match where coordination is extremely important; after all, you can't clear several dungeons by yourself. It can only be done if you are too high in rank than the dungeon itself.
However, in the novel, the dungeon rank determined in this contest by these two groups was E rank.
Since it was a contest, there will be a bet. And the bet was on who would get a kiss from Kira, the main heroine between Fade and Link.
No Fade and Link both didn't even care about Kira's consent at all. Fade already thinks of Kira as his woman, and Link only cares about making Fade eat dust he doesn't care about Kira at all.
You might assume that Fade emerged victorious in this competition. No, you guessed wrong this time. Fade didn't win this contest.
Link was going to win this contest. However, fate, or perhaps luck, favored Fade, opening an S-rank gate, leading to the contest's unresolved status.
But if the gate had not opened, then Fade would have lost this contest. Are you wondering why?
Just close your eyes and think with your solid knees: how can a mere Fade win against Link, who is already midway to C rank? Even though Fade is the son of the heavens and has heavenly luck protecting him, it can't equal true strength.
No matter how many heaven-defying cheats you have, you can't fight someone higher in rank than you. Not to mention, Fade is still an E rank; there's a huge gap in their battle experience.
...
'In the end, I will choose not to get involved with the business of the protagonist again.'
After considering all these factors, Rio came to the conclusion that instead of wasting his time on these cliche activities, he would rather polish his skills, which will help him survive the next disaster, which will be coming in just a week.
Do you think he should inform others of the disaster? Even if he tells them everything about the disaster, how will he convince them to believe it? Furthermore, people may even ridicule him, asserting that he has succumbed to mental illness.
'I just like minding my own business. Even if someone thinks that I am selfish, it doesn't matter much to me....'
In the following days, the plot developed just like Rio had expected it to. The contest was decided, and a lively atmosphere can be seen around the low-rank dungeons on several islands.
The students who had already entered a dungeon before during the midterm tests were already fearless about the dangers in the dungeons and were running toward them as if looking at a sweet.
Even the officials were troubled by the students' attitude; they attempted to exert some control, but the students simply ignored them and proceeded with their contest battle.
In the end, the officials sighed deeply and left while rubbing their heads. Ms. Anna simply ignored it, saying that the students are quite lively today.
...
While Rio focused on his training and skill improvement, a fierce battle raged between the students and the monsters:
"Come on! This is our fifth dungeon! We can win this contest!"
"Let's go!"
"Kill these nasty monsters!"
"Kill"
The students who have been fighting continuously have already had their reason temporarily and are just fighting like madmen, not caring for their wounds; the only thing they care about is killing more monsters.
This is the infamous battle poisoning phenomenon. This can only be seen when you are fighting inside a dungeon. This phenomenon also explains why awakeners must take breaks during their raids in dungeons.
In this phenomenon, an awakener who has been fighting in the dungeon for a long time non-stop will slowly start to lose their sense of reason, and the only thing they will care about is killing.
However, you can easily cure this by simply escorting the individual out of the dungeon once they've become exhausted from their never-ending battle.
However, failure to exit the dungeon promptly can lead to extreme danger.
If you are not carried out and are still inside a dungeon even after collapsing from exhaustion, your desire to kill will start increasing very rapidly in that state.
Eventually, it will affect your brain and cause serious brain damage to you, thus reducing you into a brainless killing machine.
There have been examples of such people in the past, and even now you can hear all this on the news every once in a while.
This phenomenon affects the students who have been fighting endlessly, but it's a relief that the officials anticipated this outcome and that a team of awakeners is nearby, waiting for the students to collapse so they can leave this place.
After clearing the fifth dungeon, Fade's team of 10 students collapsed from exhaustion and got carried out by the awakeners hired by the officials. Although Fade was very unwilling to lose, in the end, he also collapsed from exhaustion.
Link's team was also not faring too well, and except for him, most of his teammates also collapsed. But since he is a C rank, his resistance is higher than others.
So, he just continued until he got satisfied, and Link was already laughing in happiness after finding out that he had already won the contest so easily.
Not to mention tomorrow is the day when the contest will end and he will be able to create his dominance among all the students. He was already thinking about how to punish those who were daring enough to go against him and help that trash Fade.
But fate played a joke on the poor villain; the very next day at 8 am, a huge spatial shockwave ran throughout the islands.
A vast expanse of space in the center of the islands began to vibrate, causing spatial cracks to appear.
'It's finally starting.'
...
All the space cracks started to merge, and after merging, they formed a small circular hole, which started to widen slowly and reached a diameter of 500 m in just half an hour.
The hole began to change color, transitioning from pitch black to purple. Surrounded by tremendous spatial fluctuations, the dungeon gate finally stabilized itself and began to aggressively gather mana from its surroundings.
Seeing such a huge dungeon gate open in the middle of the Roult Islands, the faces of the officials became extremely ugly. They immediately sealed the location and started to prepare a blockade formation.
Everyone can tell from the mana this dungeon is absorbing that it's about to spew many monsters.
If the blockade was not prepared at a time, then the monsters would kill the citizens living on the Roult islands indiscriminately.
Even the fastest reinforcements will take about 4 hours to arrive at this location because of the Roult islands' distance from the nearby military camp.
Despite the presence of warships stationed here, their numbers are insufficient to combat the monsters unleashed by an S-rank Dungeon.
All the things that were supposed to work against an emergency ended up being useless in the case of an actual emergency, how ironic.
...
'So, this is how a Rank S dungeon looks like.'
After seeing this dungeon gate, Rio was already in awe; the number of space fluctuations it was producing was enough to destroy any creature below B rank immediately.
Even B-rank individuals will not be able to resist the sheer might of this gate for more than half an hour. Only S-rank or above creatures are qualified to enter it without breaking a sweat.
Others can only look from a distance. This is the force of an S-rank dungeon.
According to the history of this world, during the starting days when S rank was the mainstream and S rank people were extremely rare. These S-rank dungeons were viewed as a significant catastrophe.
There's some kind of restriction that prevents monsters of the same rank as the dungeon gate from using that dungeon gate.
Although these S-rank dungeons would not release an S-rank monster, the number of monsters released below S rank was already a huge headache.
There are only two ways for monsters of the dungeon world to enter this world: one is through a dungeon gate of higher rank than them, and another is by becoming SS rank or above, thus acquiring the ability to open their very own teleportation portal.
Over time, these S-rank dungeons have caused a significant number of casualties, but the advent of SS-rank awakeners has transformed these danger gates into factories that supply essential items such as mana stones for daily use.
The number of S-rank gates determines the economic conditions of a race nowadays.
After observing the Dungeon gate for a while, Rio's face was covered with a look of excitement. However, he knew that he was not protected by heavenly luck like other named characters.
'I will get to test my skills on several B-rank monsters today, not to mention I can even increase my combat experience! Hehehe...'
Without noticing it, Rio had become a battle junkie.
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