Murbol's consciousness squirmed under his hands in a slow yet lively manner. Still, It meant nothing to Ed.
'Life or not it's to the system's belly with you' It wasn't a hard decision for two reasons. One he had already killed her. And two, Murbol had already willingly surrendered last time even going as far as asking him to finish her.
At the same time, as much as he would like to deny it, he was putting up a bit of a tough front. If reincarnation was a thing, which his current predicament suggested it was, using up their consciousness or life might be death on a whole other scale.
Ed having grabbed both wisps made his way out of the room. He decided to not assess the crystals until after leveling up the system link skill, at the very least he hoped it would indeed level up with just Murbol's consciousness as he really didn't have much else to offer for the moment.
As soon as he stepped out of the storage room with both wisps in hand, he was met by a message.
[Detected 1 new consciousness... Do you want to offer it? Y/N]
'How come it doesn't prompt for both? Is it because it's not new? Well whatever, yes' Ed said decisively after his short bout of confusion. The System wasted no time in taking its offering and a slew of messages appeared in front Ed.
[Taking offering...]
[System Link has leveled up]
[<SubSkill: Soul Calling> Unlocked]
After seeing the second message, Ed sighed internally feeling relieved. That relief soon changed to curiosity after seeing the skill acquire a new effect, well a subskill. Wasn't it the same as creating a new skill or was the subskill directly tied to the system link?
'Now that I think about it, what happens to me if the system disappears?' As soon as the thought entered his mind, he couldn't help but panic. There were many disastrous possibilities for Ed.
The worst-case scenario was death but it was far more likely that the dungeon would keep using him. The second possibility was the complete loss of all of his skills. This however seemed unlikely given the existence of sub-skills. Were he to ever lose the system he would probably only lose system-related skills.
Of course, this was only his own conjecture. Nonetheless, Ed couldn't help but feel relieved knowing that a lot of his hard work wouldn't go to waste. He wouldn't have gotten this far without the system but one couldn't downplay his own effort as well.
With the matter now on the back of his mind, Ed quickly prompted the system for the Soul calling sub-skills effect. Given that he was inside of the space where the system was likely to answer most of his queries a window promptly appeared.
[System link lvl. 1]
Soul Calling ~ Upgrades the system's ability to absorb the life of beings that die in your vicinity. If not used, the system may automatically take it as an offering.
Ed couldn't help but tilt his head in wonderment. Wasn't that incredibly shameless? To call that taking as an offer? Wasn't it just taking advantage of the fact that he couldn't access it half the time to take his hard work? Then again, it didn't say he had to kill them.
'Well, I guess the system also does all the work so it's fair.' Ed also didn't really know what he could possibly use consciousnesses for meaning that he would have probably given them to the system to level up anyway. In the end, he was losing nothing.
With that matter out of the way, Ed moved on to the next task on his backlog. He turned around and went back into the storeroom using the assessment skill, he examined all of the crystals, they were valuable experience after all.
[Water Element Crystal]
A crystal that emits a blue glow, it is made of crystalized water element mana.
[Fire Element Crystal]
A crystal that emits a red glow, it is made of crystalized fire element mana.
And so on and so forth. Maybe the crystals were incredibly dull and boring but he didn't find anything interesting when assessing the four primary elements. That was inside of his expectations however, what he was actually looking forward to was the new and exotic crystals.
[Ice Pseudo-Element Crystal]
A crystal that emits a hazy white glow, it is made of crystalized water and wind element mana.
[Magma Pseudo-Element Crystal]
A crystal that emits a fiery maroon glow, it is made of crystalized fire and earth element mana.
Ed proceeded to assess many similar crystals, regardless of the color, they all turned out to be pseudo-elements crystals. Ed didn't know such crystals existed so it came as a real surprise, it was still disappointing though.
'I guess I now know why they only took the four primary ones' The shaman ancestors only needed those four. All of these other crystals were just combinations of one another making it a pointlessly complicated endeavor to grab one of each type.
At least that was what Ed was going with. For all he knew they were just too complicated or something of the like. He didn't even know these things existed until now so he naturally didn't really know how these crystals could be used.
'Welp… I guess I should go back now' He should hurry over to Duma and see how things were going over there. He hoped he had kept his part of the deal if he didn't, well… the soul calling sub-skill still needs a trial run.
***
They reached their destination.
The 21 members of the expedition force now stood before a completely normal cave. Mossy and natural. It was hard to believe that this unassuming dungeon required such a fierce force of adventurers.
Following Samuel's defeat however, all of the B-class adventurers including Felix knew how dangerous this completely unassuming dungeon truly was. Were it not for the handsome reward they would have moved on to other, much easier, quests.
Their only solace was that the first few floors were easy cruising. If they had to deal with high leveled mobs and then fight a disastrous creature like a lich, the dungeon may as well belong to a rank of its own. They were only talking about the first three floors after all! Luckily that was indeed not the case.
Thus, although somewhat wary, the B-class adventurers were looking forward to the potential rewards that completing this mission would bring them. As most adventurers tended to be, they were all commoners. As commoners they were all hoping to bring their family prosperity or just bring themselves prosperity, they never had a taste of luxury after all.
Being B-class adventurers they were already pretty well off. As a matter of fact, to the average person, their position was more than enough. But once someone gets a taste of riches they tend to always go back for more.
"We are about to enter the dungeon, keep your guards up! I don't want any casualties!" It was the voice of Samuel who was standing in front of the cave entrance. His voice was heard loud and clear, his serious tone made the B-class adventurers follow his instruction.
With Samuel in the lead and Clarys and Drake following close behind, the expedition force entered the cave and made their way down into the dungeon. The steps were still leading into a safe room which meant that, so far, things were all good.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, they proceeded to walk out of the safe room but…!
As soon as they had set one foot out of the barrier the dungeon's ceiling crumbled blocking their exit. It was a trap.
Samuel as an A-rank adventurer was able to easily take a step back. If he wanted to he could have gone right through but...
'This didn't exist before' Samuel's expression was solemn. He wasn't taking the matter lightly.
It wasn't that he was worried about the traps themselves, he was worried about the implications of their existence.
'This dungeon… It is far more special than I gave it credit for' Whether the placement of the trap was arbitrary or planned didn't matter, the fact that the dungeon was able to so quickly enhance its difficulty meant that it wasn't just especial anymore, it was abnormal.
Seeing Samuel's expression, however, the fearless Drake Vermillion couldn't help but pitch in.
"We should move quickly then" Drake suddenly sprinted past Samuel, his rough and strong fists clad with intensely burning red fire.
The sound of what seemed to be an explosion nearly blew out the eardrums of some of the B-class adventurers who were standing not too far away. The ground slightly trembled and dust and debris flew threw the air. Once it settled, a clear passage was revealed.
Vermillion looked back at the group including Samuel and said, "let's go"
Traps or no traps. It didn't matter.. He was only confident in his fists.