Chapter 553 Mrazivý’s, James’, and Quillon’s Challenges

‘Damn these things are annoying.’

Dodging an attack from one of her many enemies, Mrazivý was beginning to get fed up with her opponents.

She was currently fighting against a set of five statues, each one that used a different weapon.

Though this was only part of their characteristics, as each of them had some sort of blazing aura around them that made them incredibly resistant to ice and cold.

Along with that they were very sturdy, and her sword strikes seemed to bounce off of them even when she used her full force.

Truly they were enemies that perfectly countered her, which was exactly what everyone was met with on their own first floors.

‘Dragon Form.’

Transforming herself, Mrazivý could tell that she needed to go all out in order to deal with these statues she had hardly put a scratch on.

Taking to the air she flew above them and set her sights on the most annoying one.

This one was equipped with a bow and had been firing a barrage of arrows at her from the start.

Swooping over it she dodged its arrows, then opened her mouth and sent out a beam of cold energy.

Her dragons’ breath quickly froze the statue and covered the entire area in ice.

Nevertheless, just like before, the statues began to melt all of her ice and they came out unscathed from her attack.

‘These are mine now.’

Still, Mrazivý figured this was going to happen, and using the few moments where the archer statue was immobilized, she took out all of the stone arrows from its quiver.

Of course, more arrows quickly began to form in its quiver, but Mrazivý could care less about that..

What she wanted was the arrows to use as a weapon since she had a hypothesis.

Flying back into the air where most of the statues could not reach her, she took aim at the one that was wielding a spear and threw one of the arrows she had confiscated at its shoulder.

When the arrow hit, unlike her own weapon, it sunk in, and cracks began to form around its shoulder.

And while it had not been enough to do much damage or incapacitate this statue, it had proven her theory right.

She then smiled devilishly as she turned her gaze towards the one wielding a sword.

Pulling back her arm while flying around to avoid being hit, she let loose all of her arrows at the sword wielding statue.

It tried dodging and avoiding her volley of thrown arrows, but none of these statues were that fast, as they relied mostly on their high defensive abilities and devesting attack power to win.

Soon, the statue she had been targeting was beginning to crumble, and Mrazivý took this chance to dash down towards it.

When she arrived at it, the statue tried swinging its sword, but she spun out of the way and launched her head forward.

Opening her mouth, she bit down on the already cracked wrist of the statue and her dragon’s teeth broke through as she ripped the arm off.

“Pttt.”

Spitting the stone hand out of her mouth, Mrazivý held her arms out and grabbed the sword that was still within its grasp.

“Now it is my turn.” She said with a fiery gleam in her eyes.

Taking the new sword she had obtained, Mrazivý made quick work of all of the statues by crushing through them with their own weapons.

Soon all that was left of her enemies was rubble, and she let out a victory roar.

…

While Mrazivý was finishing up her own first floor, James was still in the middle of dealing with his adversaries that were meant to challenge him.

‘Ugh this is just insulting.’

Holding out his shield in front of him he blocked an electrical blast that came off from one of the two dozen monsters he was fighting.

The others soon joined in, and electricity blasted at him from multiple directions.

He was currently fighting a bunch of super-sized rhino beetles that instead of normal horns had what looked like coils on their heads.

However, as annoying as these beetles where, what was really irking him was that they were flying around above a barrier that seemed to block all of his attacks while allowing the beetles’ through.

‘This would be so much easier if I had Fallon with me.’ James thought as he rolled out of the way from the electrical blasts all around him.

If he had his partner with him, he could use his full strength and simply fly up to where the bugs were.

Jumping upwards, he tried to get past the barrier but the room he was in was stupidly tall, and even with his stats he could not leap high enough to hit these blasted bugs that were content to rain lightning down on him.

‘Damn it.’

Getting a bit angry James tossed his lance towards the beetles, but even his amethros weapon was stopped by the barrier that would not allow his attacks to pass from below.

Bringing his lance back to him, James swung it around and blew away the next batch of lightning blasts coming towards him.

They were pretty much unable to hurt him as long as he stayed on his guard, but they were still irritating as they continuously shot down bolts of electricity.

This went on for some time as James jumped around and used his shield and lance to block the attacks coming at him.

He had even tied climbing the walls, but he could not get any purchase on them as they were sturdy enough to not even be scratched by his lance.

‘What the hell is this? At this rate I am just going to end up exhausted and die. I thought this was supposed to be a dungeon. Why did it separate all of us and but me into this impossible death match?’

Becoming increasingly frustrated James had never been in this much of a bind.

Even when things had gotten tough, he always had Fallon to rely on, but now he was all alone and unable to do anything without her.

Eventually he came to the realization that what he was doing was not going to get him anywhere.

‘Damn I suck at mana control, but this is all I can do.’

Clicking his tongue James created his mana barrier and tired to use it as foot holds to ascend into the air.

He had always been a prodigy when it came to fighting, but his control over mana was pretty lack luster.

It had taken him forever to even learn how to enhance his weapons with mana, and even longer to send it flying.

Still, he learned how to do both of these, though he still was not great at regulating his output.

Failing over and over again, James was unable to ascend more than ten feet using his mana barrier as a foot hold.

It also certainly did not help that he was constantly being bombarded by lighting blasts which made it that much harder for him.

He had always had Fallon to be his wings, so he had never really tried to learn to fly with his own power, since it had been difficult and seemed unnecessary to him.

Yet now an ability he had deemed worthless for himself, was coming to bite him as now he was alone and had no one to rely on.

‘How pathetic am I? Thinking that if only Fallon was here this would be easy. Get a grip James. You are the leader of the sky knights and cannot go down here. Everyone will laugh at you if you die here in such a stupid battle.’

Amping himself up, James kept trying and failing again and again, but he never gave up. He had plenty of times given up on things he deemed too difficult or not worth doing, but he did not have that luxury now.

Hours went by as he attempted to get the hang of using his mana barrier as a foot hold in the air, but eventually he got the hang of it.

It was shaky and pathetic, but he was able to create one barrier under him and another above and jump up.

By no means was it impressive, and it could hardly be considered the advanced application of the skill.

Nevertheless, it was all he needed right now, and slowly he climbed his way up towards the beetles that had been protected by their impenetrable barrier.

When he arrived at the barrier, the beetles unleash an even more furious barrage, but he simply enlarged his shield and pushed through.

Passings through the barrier, James was relived to find that it did not keep him out.

Its purpose was only to prevent him from attacking from below.

But now that he was past it, all of these beetles were no longer protected from his attacks.

‘Eat this. Storm Buster.’

Launching his lance as he filled it with as much mana as he could, James created a huge pillar of energy that cut through all of the beetles and vaporized them.

…

‘It is impossible, how can I beat myself?’

Staring at his enemy and breathing heavily, Quillon was having the toughest time of anyone.

His opponent unlike anyone else’s, was a shadow copy of himself.

However, it made no attacks at him, and always waited to counter using the perfect move to block any of Quillon’s

It even had his unique and supreme skills and had expertly crushed and counted everything he could do.

Truly it was the ultimate opponent for him. A better version of himself.

He had tired feints, unusual combinations of his skills and attacks, but it seemed that the shadow version of him could read his mind and always was ready for whatever he used.

His supreme skill had even proved useless, as when he used his strongest attack it was just bounced back at him, and nearly killed him.

At this point he had already consumed his lesser elixir and three of his greater healing potions just to stay in the fight.

All the while he had not even but one scratch on the clone of himself.

Still, he realized that this must be a test of some kind.

If this dungeon was just intent on killing him, it would have just dropped him into some unescapable trap.

This was a dungeon after all, and even being a special one, he knew that the purpose was to make them stronger.

‘Unlike a normal dungeon this one must be targeting me specially. But what is it that it wants me to do?’

Pondering this question, Quillon eyed his shadow clone warily. Wondering if it might finally attack, when he realized something.

Sitting down and sheathing his sword, he simply refused to continue fighting.

When he had first appeared here, he thought he needed to defeat his opponent, but what was the point in fighting something you could not beat and was not attacking you.

“I give up. There is no way I can win.”

After he said this the shadow version of him bowed, before taking its sword and impaling itself.

Quickly it began to disappear into a black mist, and Quillon received the announcement that he had succeed on his first trial.