At Ace Academy.
Hiro returned to Ace Academy after talking with his sister. Despite having low chances, Hiro decided to go to the dungeons and try his luck to obtain the Legendary S-Rank Elixir.
Before that, however, he came to the Academy to ask a friend if they would accompany him.
Hiro soon found that the atmosphere at Ace Academy was not the same as before. Both professors and students looked more tense and there was an air of seriousness.
Even after two weeks had passed by since the Devil Invasion, it didn’t mean that people would forget easily. Although the buildings were all repaired and looked exactly like before, it didn’t mean that people’s hearts had also been repaired.
Many had lost their friends and even two S-Rank Professors were dead. After such an incident, no wonder people would be more vigilant and tense. If it happened once, there was always the chance that it would happen again.
The Ace Academy, with the help of the Authority and other guilds, investigated the Devil’s Invasion and took care of the traitors. However, there was no way to predict that there wouldn’t be more.
Hiro talked with some of the students and most of them were enthusiastic to see him back again, especially his classmates.
Many classmates had already witnessed the power of Hiro who fought toe-to-toe with a Rank-A Devil. Even after already knowing that Hiro was a rare genius, what they saw was truly astonishing. They were also grateful to him for saving their lives.
Without Hiro, Zion, Lisa, and Sylvia, more than half of Hiro’s classmates would have already died at the hands of the Devil Contractors. And if Hiro was not there to fight with the Devil, all the students of Alpha class would have already turned into corpses.
As Hiro chatted with his classmates, he was thanked many times until Zion and others entered the class.
Hiro wanted to ask Zion, Lisa, and Sylvia whether they were willing to go to the dungeon. While doing it alone was not a problem, it was more efficient with more people.
“Good morning guys”
Hiro greeted them.
In Hiro’s immediate vicinity, other students gave way to Zion, Lisa, and Sylvia. Prior to that, they occupied their seats and when their owners returned, they naturally stepped back.
“Good morning, Hiro! Someone seems to be very popular this morning.”
Sylvia said while smirking. Lisa just gave a polite nod to Hiro’s greeting while Zion seemed to be thinking about something and was not mentally present there.
“Hey guys, I was wondering if you would be interested in venturing into the dungeon with me?”
Hiro didn’t hesitate to ask them right away. As they were people who had experienced a life-or-death battle together, there was no issue asking them.
“Sure! I was looking to try my newly acquired Spear technique and those monsters would make for good practice”
“Okay!”
“Count me in too!”
They answered right away without hesitation. Even without knowing the reason why Hiro asked them, they had no problem agreeing to Hiro’s suggestion.
While they agreed because it was Hiro who asked them, it was also because they wanted to become stronger. And no place was more suitable than a dungeon to obtain more fighting experiences.
By gaining experience, they wanted to become more powerful. This is so that in the future when incidents such as the Devil Invasion happen, they would be able to help rather than being a burden.
The desire to become stronger was greater than ever before!
*****
Inside the Tower Of Obelisk!
-SLASH! -SLASH! -SLASH! -SLASH!
Zero swung his sword and with each of his swings, many goblin heads fell down. There were already hundreds of Goblins’ heads that were lying on Zero’s feet.
“Whew!”
Zero exclaimed.
It was not even a minute after Zero got teleported into the Tower Of Obelisk that a huge number of Goblins saw him and started attacking him. Luckily, it was the first floor and the monsters were only Goblins which he could easily defeat.
Zero easily annihilated the group without using any skills. He just needed to swing a couple of times before every goblin was dead.
“This Goddamn tower! How could you teleport someone right in the middle of a monster horde?”
Zero cursed at the Tower.
It was lucky that it was him that was teleported like this. If it were some Bronze Guild or low-grade Silver Guild, there would have been casualties because of such a sudden event.
“Anyway, how many goblins were there?”
Zero gave a quick glance at the bodies of Goblins. The number of Goblins that he killed was around a hundred. It would normally be equivalent to the total number of monsters inside a Rank-F + dungeon but on floor 1 of the Tower, it was just one group that had this many monsters.
Zero ventured further and encountered a similar number of monster hordes.
( Looks like Floor 1 of Tower Of Obelisk is equivalent to Rank-E dungeon outside. )
Zero was able to determine the strength of the monster on Floor 1. That meant that to clear Floor 1 of the Tower, at least a group of Rank-E Explorers or a Rank-D Explorer was needed. With Zero’s strength, it was nothing.
Upon exploring floor 1, Zero chose to either find the stairway leading to the upper floor or find the boss monster.
He wanted to quickly reach Floor 10 where there would usually be a safe zone. It was not that Zero was eager to find a safe place right after entering the Tower but because of Lilith.
He wanted to try waking Lilith there. While he could try to do it at any moment he wants but because of safety reasons, he didn’t.
Moreover, he had no idea how much Dark Energy he would need to use nor the time it would take for Lilith to wake up. What if it takes many hours? It would be a disaster if the monster disturbed him during a critical period.
And there was no guarantee that the method would even work. If so, having his stamina and mana exhausted would be a problem. Even if the monster were weak, he could not be careless. One mistake is all it takes to die.
-SLASH! -SLASH!
“Ice Shard!”
Zero then continued to speedrun the 1st floor by destroying every monster that came at him. It didn’t even take 10 seconds to annihilate the monster horde.
Soon enough Zero found the Boss monster which was a Giant Ogre which was similar to the one that he defeated in Labyrinth of Goblins.
-WHOOSH!
Zero immediately sped up and closed the distance while the Ogre and his minions were surprised by Zero’s arrival.
-SLASH! -THUD!
With one slash, Zero instantly killed the Giant Ogre. The goblin didn’t even have a moment to be scared as another slash from Zero took their lives as well.
“Well, that was easy!”
Previously, he needed to be very careful and it took a lot of effort to kill the Giant Ogre. Now after almost one year, Zero has grown to the point that the same monster that gave him trouble could be killed in a second.
However, Zero just thought of that as a natural result of his training. He was not very happy or excited about such an accomplishment.
Compared to his goal, Zero knew that he still had a long way to go.