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Chapter 207 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”
🕑 Added 2024-09-03 15:44:23 +0000 UTCPov Rafe
It didn't take long for my presence to be noticed and for a patrol ship to start approaching my location. These creatures were highly regulated, and hunting them without permission had quite a severe punishment.
Even though a lot of resources were put into hunting and protecting them, it was still profitable despite all that expenditure, as the flesh of these creatures was truly valuable not just to platinum ranks but even to diamond ranks.
Most of the potions when I got to platinum rank were barely having an effect on me. Almost no alchemist was good enough or had the resources to make potions for my rank, let alone the next one in the dungeon. When I left, things were changing slowly as more and more platinums were showing up, but it won’t help me as I’m hoping to get to diamond rank sooner rather than later.
"What is your purpose here? Identify yourself!" I heard from the approaching ship that was still quite far away. Why did they expect that I could communicate with them from so far away? I didn’t have the fancy consoles most airships had for communications. It would simply take too much mana, and that equipment was really heavy, which would mean I would need a bigger ship, the problems would just escalate after that.
"I am here for the annual hunt. My name is Rafe, a third-class platinum with the Adventurer Guild." Fortunately, it wasn't too hard to make my voice incredibly loud. Unfortunately, I forgot to make my ears impervious to the sound, so now I had to fix my ears. "So damn annoying," I muttered, but I could barely hear it. Fortunately, I got my hearing back just in time to hear the response.
"Maintain your current heading. We will be escorting you until another ship rendezvous with us. It will take you the rest of the way to the floating fortress." I also had signal flags. I raised a yellow and green flag together to indicate that I understood what they said and that I would comply. It seems that they run a tight operation here because only 10 minutes later, a smaller ship got closer and eventually took over, guiding me further into this territory.
It took about an hour until we got close enough to the floating fortress, which was impressive when I was ordered to slow down. Now, within attacking distance, there were two other big ships that could destroy mine in not just one volley, but I’m guessing they wouldn’t need to use more than about 10% of their weaponry to make it happen. "Permission to board?" the smaller vessel that had been escorting me asked, and I once again waved two flags.
This time, the ship got close enough to me that I could easily see the faces of the people on board. Then three people jumped from that ship, which was still quite a distance from mine, and sort of floated/slashed flew towards my ship.
I didn’t bother getting up and stayed in my sitting position where I had access to almost all the controls of the ship. It seems that my actions were odd enough that their arrogance disappeared and was replaced by caution and professionalism.
"We do have you on our roster as one of the possible members of this season's hunt. We require your identification and qualifications to complete the registration process. You can find a ship to join in the town connected to the fortress," the tallest of the three said, though it looked like he wanted to add something more but chose not to.
I first nodded to them, then proved my identity and showed them the qualifications I needed to join the hunt.
The minimum requirements were to be able to survive a lightning strike and continue to function as if you hadn't been hit, survive platinum-rank poison for 30 minutes, be able to fly or hover for at least an hour, and have passed the third-class platinum qualification so they would know that you could actually do damage to this creature. Otherwise, it would be quite useless if you couldn’t even cut into the skin of this creature to get the flesh underneath.
"Everything seems to be in order. Take this flag and put it on your mast; it shows that you are a registered member of this season's hunt. But don't be flying too far away from the fortress, or it could be considered that you might be up to no good. If you need to leave, you need to go into the fortress office and register your departure. If you have any questions, ask; otherwise, you are free to proceed."
I simply shook my head, and they jumped, heading back to their ship. Well, that was easier than I expected. I flew past the two massive ships that still had their weapons following my movement, but they didn't change their position, allowing me to pass without attacking and destroying me—not that they actually could, but I wouldn’t have been able to protect my ship.
The flying fortress was impressive, as it wasn’t like a fortress I had seen on land. It was protected not just from the sides but from below and above as well. It was still a bit difficult to orient my mind for battle in three dimensions, but fortunately, I could change my brain structure a little bit, adapting some parts that are usually found in bird brains.
When I did that, it was like the world shifted, and everything in the air made sense. Unfortunately, it also meant that being on the ground made less sense. Hopefully, I can find a creature that's a master of both, so I wouldn’t have to switch as I currently do.
On one side of this fortress was an attached town for people like me. I tied my ship onto one of their piers and sensed what was around me. It was weird to realize that almost everyone was platinum rank, although some of the simpler workers were lower rank, some even still at the very beginning. I guess the workforce that maintained the town was just regular people, while the hunters were exclusively platinum, as only we could survive getting close to that creature we were all here to hunt.
My next destination was the registration office. While I was a member of the hunt, I also needed to register my ship as one of the vessels going out to hunt. The beginning of the hunt was only two weeks away, and I’m guessing no one wanted to hire someone new so close to the date. If they did, they were most likely desperate, which was something I didn’t want to experience. Desperate people were unpredictable, and I was in no mood to deal with backstabbing.
As I entered the establishment, things started to quiet down as people began to eye me. It seems like there’s going to be plenty of dick-measuring contests in this kind of place. What I did was simply look around once and then walk to the counter to start the registration process. "A bit late, aren't you? There are a few ships still looking for members, but honestly, I don’t recommend them," the person behind the counter said, the last part especially quietly.
"I have come to register my own ship. It is a smaller vessel I will be operating myself, Valter," I said, getting his name from the name tag attached to his uniform. There was a short pause before this individual, who was gold-ranked, gathered enough courage to speak. "Sir, there’s a minimum requirement for product harvested," he said. I held up my hand.
"Yes, I know, and that won’t be a problem. It was 20 tons at the standard weight of water, if I’m correct?" He quickly nodded. "Yes, that's perfect. I should make a good profit, as I’m pretty sure I can bring back double that, if not more." The registration process was surprisingly long, but Valter was efficient at what he did, so in about 15 minutes, I was done and about to walk out of this place when someone stepped in front of me.
"So you think you can bring back more than my ship, which is crewed by 20 people? The young really are arrogant," was all he managed to say before my punch didn’t simply drop him but made him fly halfway across the establishment, breaking one of the tables. "Here’s the coin for the table," I said as I looked back towards the counter and threw a small pouch of coins I had prepared ahead of time. No one stopped me after that.
For the next nearly two weeks, I simply spent my time on my boat, training and maintaining my ship. Then the bells finally started ringing, and the entire town started moving like an ant hill under attack. I was one of the first ships at the rendezvous point. When we started to move towards our destination, there were at least 200 ships besides mine, ready to harvest as much flesh as possible.
Some of the ships were truly massive and even purposely designed for this task. It took us three hours to reach the floating jellyfish we were hunting. This creature was particularly big and didn't have much life left.
I think the entirety of the Eternal City-State Nation could fit onto this thing. Fortunately, that meant I didn’t need to stick close to the others. When the signal was given, smaller vessels accelerated ahead of the bigger ones, with me at the very front.
I didn’t stop accelerating as I was heading towards the west, near the edge of the creature, while others headed further in to get as far away from the millions of tentacles that were floating underneath this creature and extended a few kilometers downward. It would try to protect itself by attempting to squash anything that was on it and hurting it, with those tentacles, but because it was so big, it couldn’t really reach that far in.
It was a stupid move on my behalf to stay so close to the edge, but it also meant no one was stupid enough to try to mess with me here. During this hunt, many accidents happened, and I didn’t want to be part of those statistics. When I felt I was far enough away, I headed closer to the creature itself, stopping the ship about 20 meters above the creature's skin.
I could already see the lightning running across the skin, which meant that some people had already started attacking and cutting deep enough for the creature to start reacting. Before I jumped down, I threw down four ropes with harpoons attached to them, two from each side. When I landed on the creature, I immediately got shocked, and while it still hurt, it wasn't debilitating.
There was another reason I got so close to the edge. The skin of this creature was worthless, at least compared to the flesh, and it had about three meters worth of skin. So I pulled out my sword and activated my favorite skill. It didn't directly improve my cutting power or length, but what it did do was improve those aspects proportionately to how strong and fast I attacked.
With the way I have modified my body and the few general improvement skills I have always active, the strike I did looked like a blur, but it was still just a simple training motion that didn't hit anything.
Yet with that skill, it did, and a moment later a large section of skin started to slit away, pulled down by gravity. I did that a few more times, but I made sure to leave a little bit of skin on top of the flesh; otherwise, the harpoons would have nothing solid enough to stick to and hold as much weight as I needed them to.
I could hear and feel, down below, all the tentacles starting to move to strike at anything and everything that might be hurting it. It could move those tentacles at surprising speed, but it would still take about four minutes for the strikes to start to hit.
So I moved fast, pulling my airship to the correct position using one of the ropes with the harpoon attached to it. Quickly, I assessed the correct locations to attach the harpoons and used basically all my strength to pierce through the skin so the harpoons would stick into the flesh.
That all took approximately two minutes, so I quickly moved to the edges, as I needed to make diagonal cuts deep into the flesh to get a big enough piece that I could not just clear the minimum amount required but also make a good profit.
My strike was interrupted by an especially strong electric strike, and just after that, I could feel the creature slowly starting to descend. Quickly, I finished the multiple strikes needed to cut the flesh away from the body.
Almost immediately, the ship pulled out the huge piece of flesh as the creature continued to accelerate towards the ground. Fortunately, I got the flesh detached well before it weighed as much as water, as my ship would in no way be able to carry that kind of weight. It seems that the big ships finally started to cut into the creature, causing it enough damage for it to think it was time for it to die by descending to the ocean it once came from.
What I didn’t expect was that it helped its tentacles move up faster. Many of them were heading towards me, so I quickly jumped onto my ship and started accelerating away from the creature and upwards. Fortunately, the tentacles had enough empty space between them that I could avoid them, but keeping the large chunk of flesh was another thing entirely.
That chunk of flesh was about 100 times bigger than the size of my ship, and flying with it was difficult and unfamiliar. I was able to dodge the first few tentacles, but then I was unable to completely clear one on the port side, and the hit shook the entire boat, even doing damage.
Fortunately, the ropes held. I accelerated more upwards, which gave me more breathing room, but I was burning through mana. After dodging about 12 more tentacles, I was through the thick of them. "That was way too close."
I also didn’t forget to take a tiny souvenir, and while making sure no one could observe me, I pulled out a small piece of flesh from my pocket and consumed it. It tasted like sweet blood, which was a weird combination, and I didn’t much enjoy it, but I did enjoy what followed.
I spent time absorbing and understanding what I was getting from the flesh of this creature while heading towards the rendezvous point not too far off, where a lot of warships were waiting. There was always someone trying to get away with the prize of this hunter, but I was just glad that I would be safe from any other vessels trying to mess with me.
There would be a few more hunts like this before the season was over. Hopefully, the other ones go as well as this one. I looked downwards and tried to estimate the weight, but it was a bit hard as the diagonal cuts didn’t really represent how much flesh I had when looking from above. Still, I’m pretty sure that’s about 50 tons at standard water rate, which would be really nice. Time to do this again in a few weeks.
Comments
Gordon
Tftc
brennon Petersen
Tftc!
