Like with all the rest, the apparitions eventually ended up disappearing. Kairos shook his head and didn’t think about what those things showed him any longer. Instead, he began thinking about the advantages that this spell provided.
For starters, channeling it longer seemed to improve the distance for which someone’s surroundings blackened. On top of that, the longer he channeled, the longer it would end up lasting. The final thing that Kairos didn’t put too much emphasis on was the mental weakness aspect of the spell, seemingly the phantom trying to pull at one of the person’s insecurities.
Nonetheless, it didn’t do anything to actually physically hamper the person in question. Kairos let out a sigh, feeling a little sad that was the main effect of the spell, but at the very least whatever it decided to apparate could be a distraction.
After all, despite using it on himself, he wasn’t exactly hampered much at all.
He rubbed his chin and thought to himself for a few moments.
He still had a little over twenty evolution points for him to use, along with a few spells he could upgrade to the E rank. Although it might’ve been a waste for him to spend them all recklessly, at the very least he would be able to get them back easily in the dungeon.
With that in mind, Kairos opened his status panel once more and began upgrading his spells.
[Gale Spell (F) – Gale Spell (E) | Points 22.1 – 12.1]
The reason he wanted to upgrade the gale spell was that he couldn’t stop thinking about how the dungeon used the gale spell against him. He also remembered the attack he couldn’t detect, and was pretty sure it had to be somehow related to the gale spell.
[Darkness Spell (F) – Darkness Spell (E) | Points 12.1 – 2.1]
As for this spell, it was already useful on his own, but he was quite curious what ranking up this ability would do. Perhaps the apparition could actually become a lethal threat instead of just a distraction.
He closed his eyes as his mind suddenly gained enlightenment, understanding other ways he could use the spell. For starters, he became a little surprised about the gale spell. He found himself able to reduce the ability to detect it even further.
After a bit of thought he tried doing so immediately, holding out four fingers.
Kairos prioritized making it as silent as he possibly could, and while he was channeling there wasn’t a single sound. Unfortunately, something he could tell was that the power was rather lacking.
That didn’t discourage him though, as he continued to push more and more mana into the spell, and over the slow process of nearly thirty seconds, he finally found himself willing to release the spell.
He held his breath as he released the spell, and a just barely audible sliver of wind was heard before an explosive bang slammed against the wall. A hair-line thin crack formed on the wall and quickly regenerated right after.
But as thin as it was, the power was definitely there.
Kairos rubbed his chin, wondering if he had done anything wrong. There was still a sound when he released the gale spell, which irked him. Though, to be fair, even just the sound of casual conversation would easily mask it. Perhaps even someone breathing a little heavy would as well.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t the perfectly silent killer that he had imagined.
Yet, at the same time, Kairos decided not to complain. After all, it was only at the E rank. Perhaps if he upgraded it to the D rank, then he could make something that was nearly completely silent.
Kairos rubbed his chin and thought about the changes to the darkness spell. He could tell now that he could make an AOE radius that would encapsulate all intelligent beings within the spell effect. But naturally, it would have lower effectiveness compared to just targeting a single person.
It was slightly disappointing to him, but he decided not to complain about it. Surely it would have some sort of use down the line.
From there, he rested on the cold ground, letting the time pass by. His expression softened as he got lost in his thoughts, and before he knew it, a sudden rocking sensation came from the room he was in.
When he got up, he noticed that a corridor had formed on one end. After a bit of thought, he decided to get up and walk through the corridor. A familiar massive area was revealed to him. There were countless rooms lined up next to each other along the walls. When Kairos counted, he was fairly sure there were at least one hundred different rooms.
At that same time, he heard someone call out.
“Kairos! Kairos, are you there!”
Nicole had run out screaming out loud like a child that got separated from their mother. And ironically enough, she was only a couple of meters away from him. Kairos let out a sigh and waved toward her.
“I’m over here, don’t worry so much.”
Nicole’s head snapped to him before she ran towards him with open arms. After colliding into him and hugging him tightly she let out a sigh of relief.
“I… I thought you might’ve been in trouble.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“You worry too much. I’ll be fine, alright?”
Nicole gave a small nod.
“Alright…”
A few moments later, both Kaede and Chen stumbled out of their rooms. They both seemed a little out of it like they were experiencing a hangover. However, they seemed to have gotten over the most of it.
Chen looked over at the other two and called out to them.
“Did you guys just get here as well?”
Kairos nodded.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Kaede looked over at Nicole, seeing that she was more or less stable before coughing.
“Ah, hello again.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“…Hi, I guess. What do you want?”
Kaede coughed awkwardly.
“Um, nothing. I’ll be on my way.”
She looked around the vast expanse for a little while, looking upwards at the ceiling, where a white crystal gave off some light, almost like it was the moon.
From there, her eyes caught on the many rooms far away, leading her to walk over to them. After she walked away, Kairos refocused his attention on Chen.
“Hey, you can use your dungeon points to get more evolution points, right? I imagine you should do that before anything.”
Chen looked back at him with confusion.
“Huh? Since when were we able to do that?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“…Are you not able to do that?”
Chen scratched the side of his head.
“Er… I don’t remember being able to. I looked over all of the shop items.”
Kairos grabbed onto the side of his head with frustration.
“What? Really?”
Chen blinked a few times.
“…I’ll go check again, but I’m pretty sure that it was never there.”
While Chen was saying that, Kairos went back to his own room to check out the shop, and Nicole followed from right behind.
[Shop]
[Dungeon Points: 1]
[Water and Rice – 1 point]
[Orange Juice and Hamburger – 3 points]
[Wine and Oysters – 5 points]
[Pillow and Two Blankets – 1 point]
[Random Upper-Elemental Spell – 10 points]
[Hide]
And just like Chen had said, there was no option to buy evolution points. His eyebrow twitched when he came to that realization. How did he miss such a small detail?
He hurriedly shook his head before pressing the back button.
As for Nicole, she tilted her head to the side.
“Um, Kairos, that’s just a projection! Not a real person.”
Kairos turned to her and nodded.
“Yeah, I know that already.”
Nicole pouted.
“…Then why were you staring at her so much?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“To look at the shop. What else?”
Nicole looked confused.
“I didn’t see anything though?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly as he thought. Then he came to a conclusion, only he could use the shop from here because it was his room. He coughed.
“Um, let’s go to your own room. I think you’ll be able to see it from there.”
Nicole’s eyes widened ever so slightly, but relaxed after hearing that.
“Ah, ok.”
Upon entering Nicole’s room, she walked up to the projection and waved her hand in front of it a few times before jumping back in surprise.
“Ah! It really is a shop. Huh… when did I get thirteen points?”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Regardless, you should buy the upper elemental thing.”
Nicole hurriedly nodded.
“Ok! Um, um… is it the one that says random elemental spell? I can’t find anything that says upper.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Oh… yeah, it’s that.”
He shook his head. If he thought about it, his being an upper-elemental was probably related to this being his second dungeon. He should’ve thought about that earlier, but for some reason, it slipped his mind entirely.
He took in a deep breath, realizing that the effects of those darkness spells may have been more than he expected.
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Um, I got a vine spell. What is that?”
Kairos shook his head, breaking out of his stupor.
“Ah, I’m not sure. Why don’t you test it?”
Nicole held out her hand in a relaxed position after hearing that.
“Ok!”
Vines suddenly began forming from the ground, growing rapidly and reaching outwards like snakes. Nicole smiled when she looked at it all.
“Wow! It feels like I have a bunch of extra arms!”
Kairos nodded.
“Seems like it.”
After that, they walked out, where Chen was looking around. Upon laying his eyes on them, Chen walked up.
“Yeah, I didn’t see it at all. Do we have different shops?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess so. But more importantly, we gotta clear this floor as well if we want to get out of here. The only thing we can hope for is that there aren’t too many of them.”
Chen sighed.
“Yeah, but what exactly are we supposed to do for that? It’s not like the system even told us what we were supposed to do.”
Kairos slowly nodded.
“That… is true.”
He looked around and noticed that there was a staircase in the distance. But instead of a spiral staircase. It was just a normal once that seemed to continue for quite a while. Kairos pointed at it.
“That seems like a good start, doesn’t it?”
Chen nodded.
“Yeah, I guess we should go there first of all.”
With that, the three of them began walking toward the staircase. Soon enough, they reached the steps and started walking up them. However, as they did so, Kairos saw a familiar face walking down the steps.
It was someone he had met in another dungeon before.
Oliver.
The giant scythe left a pretty big impression on him.