Chapter 239 - Episode 239: The Game Plan.

Kingstar looks at the castle and looks at the walls.

"Can we just climb up the wall?"

As soon as he says that, an invincible wall is blocking his hand from reaching the wall and the fence, he tilts his head and sighs.

"Of course there will be an invincible wall..."

Boschwell looks at Kingstar while raising his eyebrows and hands.

"To be honest, I would rather play this one because this is kind of fun to me and I want to try it."

Ken is smiling and nodding in agreement, he seems happy and excited at the same time.

"Yeah, this reminds me of our childhood, right? It's been a while since I play this game and deep down I miss playing this kind of game."

Leo is scratching his head while grimacing.

"Well, it does but I don't think I can survive this one. I don't have the stat to survive by running around for an hour since I don't have the stamina and the extra move speed."

All the spellcasters are nodding in agreement, Ivonna looks at them and nods with understanding.

"It doesn't matter because we are going to stick together. They look kind of slow and we can just run away from them easily because we have encountered a few of them before and it was not that hard to kill them, but the problem is written on the information that we got. It's said that the Cursed Souls will become faster and stronger the longer they smell us, but we don't know how far they can smell us so we need to find out that first."

Everyone nods in agreement, Queenstar then looks at Kingstar.

"What's our plan?"

Kingstar is crossing his arms while looking at the monsters down in the city.

"We will do what Ivonna said, we need to test their sense of smell and see how far they can smell us. We need someone to go out there and gather some information while we are waiting here, but we need to hurry because they're slowly are going to roam near the castle. So, who wants to volunteer on gathering the information?"

Ken raises his hand.

"I will do it, but I don't want to be alone in this because I'm a bit nervous right now."

Kingstar is nodding with understanding, but then he looks at me.

"Trev? Do you want to go?"

Everyone is looking at me, I tilt my head and raise my eyebrow.

"Yeah, sure. Let's go, Ken."

Ken nods and smiles then we go down to the city.

We both are walking while looking around, we see there are at least hundreds of them that we can see on the ground, and there are at least thousands up there floating in the air as far as our eyes can see. There are exactly 150.000 Cursed Souls in here based on Becker's word, and this dungeon is the second dungeon in the game that requires the player to be at least level 500 to be able to beat the Sunny phase easily. They can do their best to clear the Sunny phase, but they won't be able to clear the Shady phase because it's impossible for them right now.

Ken looks at me and raises his eyebrows.

"What are you thinking right now?"

I look at him and shake my head.

"I'm thinking if it's possible for us to clear this dungeon."

Ken is laughing at me.

"What are you talking about? You're way stronger than us, that should be easy for you to clear it, right? I'm sometimes envious of you but in a good way. I wish I can be as strong as you every time you did something amazing it reminds me that I need to do more but the more I try to be stronger, the more I think that you're getting further than me. Still, I'm proud of myself because I'm not just looking up but I'm also looking down to value myself."

I scoff and smile.

"Everyone has their own phases, so don't try to burn yourself out because it's bad. Your achievement in real life is way better than mine because I'm only good at the game while you're good in both in real life and in the game."

Ken chuckles and nods.

"I know."

Ken is putting his hand in front of me and I immediately stop moving, he looks at me and then points at something on the corner. A cursed soul is floating very slowly and we are quite far away from it, Ken looks at me nods then we both are slowly walking toward it. We both use an A.I. assistance to give us an exact number of the distance between us and the cursed soul that we are looking at, and we both know that we are 201 meters away from the cursed soul. We keep walking toward it and we are 142 meters away from it, and the cursed soul hasn't noticed us. When the distance reaches 120 meters, the cursed soul stops floating and facing in our direction, we both slowly back away and when we are 122 meters away from it, the cursed soul starts to float and fly randomly again. Now we know that 120 meters is the maximum distance of its senses of smell.

I grab can on the shoulder and he looks at me.

"Yeah?"

I'm slowly pointing my finger upward, he's slowly looking up but then he realizes that the cursed souls that are floating up in the sky are descending and coming toward us. Ken is surprised because he forgot that it's not just what's in front of us, but it's what's around us. I grab my scythe and throw it as far as possible, then I grab Ken's arm and use [Blink Strike]. We immediately run back up to the castle to inform the others.

Everyone is looking at us and Ken is sighing with relief, Kingstar looks at us and furrows his forehead.

"What happened?"

Ken is shaking his head.

"Nothing, we almost made a huge mistake but we are fine now."

Kingstar is humming with understanding.

"So, what did you manage to get anything?"

Ken nods.

"Hmm, we know that 120 meters are the maximum range of their sense of smell, and I want you all to know that those cursed souls that are floating up in the air are about 80 to 100 meters above the ground, so we need to be careful because even if we are safe from those cursed souls on the ground, that doesn't mean we are safe from those up there."

Ken is shaking his head.

"And one more thing that you all need to know is that those monsters are attracted to sound as well because when Trevor threw his scythe, they were looking at us and approached us."

Ivonna is humming with understanding while crossing her arms, then she looks at me while squinting her eyes and I just raise my eyebrows. Ivonna walks to the middle and looks at Kingstar.

"This is going to be hard because there are a lot of them up there in the sky than those who are roaming on the ground. We can't sneak around because the walls are blocking our view and we have no idea if there's a cursed soul behind the walls, and the worst part is that they can walk through walls."

Kingstar is rubbing his chin while looking at Ivonna.

"And what's your suggestion?"

Ivonna looks at them and points at an open field down in the city.

"We are going to go to the open and stay there together. We must clear all the cursed souls that are roaming near that area and we can just stay there until the time runs out. When there are a few of those cursed souls that are roaming around the area after that, we kill them and if there are too many of them, we send a few players to lure them away and for that, we need the players who are good at escaping."

Kingstar is furrowing his forehead.

"You're telling me to send them to a suicide mission?"

Ivonna is nodding.

"The worst case of the scenario? Yes, they're not going to make it out alive, but we don't know until we try it out."

Diamond is tapping his chin while humming.

"But who wants to be the sacrificial lamb?"

Ken looks at his friends and they all nod, Ken then raises his hand.

"Don't worry about that, we will be the bait. We love to play with fire so leave it to us."

Leo looks at the cursed souls and turns around.

"We are running out of time, we need to move now because they're coming toward us."

Kingstar crosses his arms and nods.

"Alright, we are going to move now. Be careful, because we all know that this game always gives us an unpleasant surprise and we need to be ready for anything that's going to happen. Everyone ready?"

They all nod and then Kingstar unsheaths his sword.

"Let's move."