They made it to the dungeon entrance with 6 hours left until the next monster horde event started. They all had determined looks on their faces as they read the information on the podium near the entrance stone, which was a 20 foot tall stone in the shape of a coin with what looked like a wingless dragon with a long body and short legs. The dragon, or what Eli thought of as a lizard, not far off from the lizard men in the other dungeon, was spewing lava on people and had a human in each hand. It looked like it was supposed to scare the people getting ready to enter the dungeon, but the details in the carving were so immaculate that he had a hard time not just seeing its artistic beauty.
As if the carving was not enough to scare people away, the information on the podium was the icing on the cake. The odd thing was that there was an actual paragraph introducing the designer of this dungeon, and it seemed they were very proud of their creation. Their name was Tanius and they had made this dungeon whenever system date 13475.326 was. Eli immediately opened his system menu looking for a system date, after system help told him that the current date and time could be found on his map window, he checked there. However, it seemed that they had not unlocked that ability yet because he saw a spot in the bottom right corner with date and time that were greyed out, so greyed out that he could just barely see them.
The name of the dungeon was “Fire, Ice, and Everything Not Nice”. The podium said it was for 15 to 20 people with a suggested level of 80 in an uncommon class which surprised everyone since Eli had told him that the last dungeon measured suggested entrants at common level classes. Eli wasn’t sure what rarity everyone's classes were but Bethany and Lucy were connected to him so they should have rare or epic classes. He guessed Beau’s class was at least rare since his class ability was so strong. He had no idea about Cody, he had never really asked about it, the few times they talked it had been about magic theory. He did know, however, that Cody had heart, and that should be enough to get through this place with him and the others looking out for him.
“Last chance to back out, once we go in we either finish it, or we die.” Eli asked. No one seemed like they didn’t want to go so he had everyone stand close to him and he put his hand on the entrance stone. A system window came up asking who was entering with him, he selected the four with him, this may be if people were standing around that weren’t coming with. Everyone agreed to enter and they disappeared. Eli found himself in the empty system space he had been in just a day after the system had started. He made his body glow again, just to give his eyes something to do. A system window came up like last time, it wasn’t an announcement or a display of information, it was talking to him directly.
“Elias Konzak, you have chosen to enter this dungeon instead of facing the event. What are you hoping to accomplish with this action?” the system window asked.
“I thought that the event would be easier for the people there if I wasn’t a factor.” Eli said to the vast nothingness around him. He wasn’t even sure if he needed to speak his answers since it's not like the actual sound he was making was reaching someone's ears.
“You have a choice then, make your dungeon 40% more difficult, or make the event outside 20% more difficult. If you do not choose, both will be chosen.” the system window said.
“I choose dungeon. But I would like to ask, how much more difficult have the monster horde events I've been through been because of me being there.” Eli asked.
A blank system window appeared with a line going horizontally from one side to the other. Then the line curved up on one side disconnecting from the edge, Eli knew what this was, the system was smirking at him. He also belatedly realized that the way the system worded his options, the dungeon could already have been made more difficult because he was entering it, and it made it even more difficult because he entered it during an event. This was going to be tricky, he would need to work hard to make things easier on his friends, he wanted them to get stronger so he wouldn’t do everything for them. But he did believe that they did not deserve all the crazy that was always headed his way, he only hoped he would be enough to protect them.
Eli came to and saw the others had appeared at the same time as he did, he wondered what had happened to them while he was talking to the system, but just as he wondered it, Bethany spoke up about it.
“Was everyone else in an eternal darkness place for a while, then a system window showed up and smirked at you, all before getting here and being really nauseous?”
They all seemed to agree and they just kind of sat down where they were so the room would stop spinning. It took a full 5 minutes before someone spoke, Eli was worrying about these people who he felt responsible for, and if he should tell them how hard this is going to be. Everyone else was not speaking because they were also trying to not throw up, unsurprisingly, Bethany was the first to speak.
“Ok, everyone check your supplies and make sure everything is split between us evenly, we don't want to lose important supplies because they are all with one person and that one person is unconscious or dead,” She said. Eli was surprised at her, she was either really good at hiding fear, or she really wasn’t afraid.
They all started going through supplies, from dried food and flasks of water, to some magic healing stickers and bandages. Eli was struggling with how incongruous everything was feeling, this was going to be dangerous for them but they didn’t seem scared. Was it because they had faith in him or because they didn’t understand just how dangerous it was, they could die faster than they could blink. 40% increase in difficulty means some of these monsters could be over level 100, which isn’t even something that Eli had seen yet so he wasn’t sure if that made a difference. Deep in his gut he could feel that level 100 and beyond it were something completely on another level.
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Bethany was getting worried, the system window before the smirk, the one she was sure only she got because it related to her destiny, had said that ‘The Paragon’, which the system called Elias, would need her attention. Or maybe it just meant that she should pay more attention to him than usual, which was difficult since she already gave him most of her attention whenever he was around. Either way, she could tell that right now, he was struggling with a decision, he probably also got a system message, probably one that was more meaningful than hers. From the look of him, he didn’t know if he should share his with the group. She walked over to him and whispered in his ear that he should tell everyone what his windows said.
At first, he was startled that she knew, then he relaxed and realized he had been so tense he probably had veins poking out of his skin, making it obvious to her. He sighed and took a breath before speaking to everyone. “As most of you know, I came in here to avoid the possibility that the system would make the event outside more difficult since I was close by. The reason we got pulled into that darkness before you saw the smirk was because the system gave me a choice. I could allow for the difficulty of the event to remain elevated even though I am not there, or I could allow the system to increase the difficulty of this dungeon.”
“Obviously you chose this dungeon, so we all need to be extra careful and take our time. No one is dying here!” Bethany finished with a very stern raised voice.
Everyone went back to taking stock of supplies like nothing had been said, they were either expecting something crazy like this, or genuinely were not concerned. Either way, Eli decided to not, for once in his life, not look a gift horse in the mouth, and just let himself enjoy that everyone was on-board. Eli began walking around the first safe room while the inventory was being handled and everything was being split evenly, a strategy that Eli realized makes sense in case they got separated. The dungeon being for fifteen people meant it could be a lot larger and there were probably traps to separate the group. He noticed that it wasn’t that much larger than his first dungeon, but the ambient magic was stronger, even with his increased levels, it felt twice as strong. His best guess was that the reason for the higher magic was so up to 20 people could regain magic at normal rates without the ambient magic depleting.
The design of the safe room was similar to his first dungeon as well, a half sphere room with a 25 foot radius, a podium in the middle, and one door to the north. Eli had no idea if that was actually north, but for some reason he just thought it was and decided to label it as such. To the right of the door, which was a plain wooden arched door about 8 feet wide, was a plaque with a quick explanation of the dungeon.
“Welcome to my Raid Dungeon”
“There are five levels going from Ice to Fire”
“Each floor contains a problem, solve it to summon the floor boss”
“Time limit inside: 15 days”
The time limit combined with the ‘problem to solve’ line made Eli a bit more nervous than before but he figured it would hopefully take a day per floor for the first run, but then they would have extra time to run it again before the time limit ran out and it would go faster the second time. Ideally they would all get to the mid or upper 90s in level after this. Thinking about the time limit Eli focused on the greyed out date and time part of his map window and some options came up. The options were for which times to show on his map screen and in what format, he chose for it to show planetary time which was still in 24 hour format but he wasn't sure if the hours were still the same length. Then he selected for it to show planetary date as well, which just had 0.98, which he guessed was 0 years and 98 days since the system showed up.
There was an option for what was essentially a stop watch, however, it was counting so slow that he thought it was broken or using a different kind of measurement. After focusing on it a system help window showed up.
“System time Help”
“System time is kept regardless of subjective time”
“System planetary time is based on planetary orbit and rotation speed”
“Raid time Help”
“Raid dungeons run on a 3 to 1 ratio”
“3 minutes in the raid is 1 minute outside of it”
“Raid time limit is the time inside the raid, not planetary time”
Eli’s mind kind of stopped for a minute as he processed, not only was he going to be able to get stronger faster, but this had been the most help the system had ever given him on a subject. The windows weren’t vague or missing what information he needed, which could mean that the time effect here is important or that the system wants him to know this part because it wants him to take advantage of it. Either way, he was excited about how he could triple his growth speed and his determination to clear all the raid dungeons increased, though he knew at some point he would out-level them.
Bethany walked up to him and read the wall too after she noticed him standing there, the walls ceiling and floor were all made of ice so the writing wasn't clearly recognizable from where they had entered. After everyone had read it, they all looked to Eli for a plan, which he hadn’t thought he would be in charge of. This was an oversight on his part but he did his best to recover from the extended silence and spoke to everyone. “I have a plan, but I want to know what you guys think we should do before I tell you.” Bethany face-palmed so loud the ice cave echoed the sound for a good five seconds.
