sonovelo Chapter 413: Timberbell T0-Level Adventurers
Chapter 413: Timberbell T0-Level Adventurers
Thanks to the map crystal orb, Gauss moved through the second floor without a hitch.During the trek he unexpectedly added two new common entries to the Monster Encyclopedia,
and compared to the outside world, the chance of encountering rare monster varieties in the Maze truly was higher.
The group smoothly reached the entrance from the second floor to the third floor.
Unlike the entrance from the first to the second floor, there was no one lingering here now.
But this was understandable. The entire Maze was like an inverted triangle of strict tiers; the deeper you went, the fewer people remained.
Or rather, the route from the second floor to the third naturally filtered out many who hoped to ride along without contributing.
Don’t be fooled by how casually Gauss and the others arrived; that was because their strength far outmatched the monsters on this second floor. For ordinary low-level professionals, without properly coordinated teammates, reaching here would be no easy task.
Of course some might think they could pay others to bring them along, temporarily team up with a few capable teammates. That can work. But unless there’s enough profit, most adventurers won’t want a dead weight tagging along — that’s a joke with their own and their teammates’ lives.
At the end of the day, the adventuring world was still dominated by strength; opportunists rarely went far.
After a short rest, the group continued down the tunnel.
A narrow stairway tunnel reeked faintly of blood, probably left by earlier travelers, but most Red Dragon Guild members were seasoned professionals, so the smell was as ordinary to them as a meal.
After about ten minutes of walking in the tunnel, a glow at the end gradually brightened. Gauss knew they had reached the third floor of the Maze.
Crossing a thin membrane like a ripple in space, Gauss stepped onto the third-floor ground.
The area around the entrance was occupied by temporary camps one after another.
Most who reached the Maze’s third floor were adventuring guilds or teams; lone wolves were rare. In fact, if you saw a lone wolf here, you should be more cautious, because those who could brave the third floor alone usually had something special about them.
Lone wolves without skill either died in the Maze’s traps, were eaten by monsters, or were picked off by opportunistic teams when isolated.
“Newcomers again?”
“So many people! It’s a new adventuring guild!”
“They look unfamiliar.”
“I remember that Red Dragon banner. When I was roaming Falim a while back, I heard about this newly formed guild.”
“A guild from the provincial capital moving this fast?”
Teams in each camp all turned to look at the newly arrived Red Dragon Guild, eyes wary, whispering.
Even members from other guilds were no exception. Their main forces were currently on the fourth floor, leaving only a small number at the third-floor entrance to provide support.
That meant while the entrance area seemed crowded, the combined strength there likely didn’t match the main force of a guild the size of the Red Dragon Guild.
Of course, they weren’t overly worried. Unless the newly arrived guild leader had gone mad, he wouldn’t suddenly attack multiple guilds and teams present. Their caution was simply the instinctive prudence of experienced adventurers.
Everyone lingered, watching the members of Landul’s group.
Seeing their gear was not excessively dirty and their faces showed little fatigue, the awe in their gazes deepened.
Falim was relatively close to Barry, plus time spent on later supply prep and the journey before reaching the Maze, with rest stops along the way, moving from first to third floor at that pace suggested the team was not weak; most likely they would remain on the third floor and be formidable competitors for first-line exploration.
Don’t provoke them!
This thought appeared almost simultaneously in everyone’s minds.
“Guild Leader, should we leave some people behind to provide support?” Ivan asked quietly.
Gauss glanced at the other people in the camp, then shook his head.
Those left here were either teams lacking the strength to enter the fourth floor or injured/weaker members of guilds. Rather than slow down a team, it was better to remain here and be able to return to the second floor via the tunnel at any time to gather intelligence from the previous level.
For the Red Dragon Guild, sticking close to him was probably the safest option.
First, he didn’t need map intel for the first five floors.
Second, he currently possessed Transcendent-level combat power. The Maze’s monsters were unpredictable, but at least other adventurers weren’t as strong as he was. Truly Master-level adventurers, because of their domain-controlling powers, often found themselves repelled by the Maze environment at this stage; even with great strength, they couldn’t enter the Maze.
As for him, it was like exploiting a bug.
With no tigers in the huge Timberbell Maze hills for now, his strength could easily rank him among T0-level adventurers,
and even if they encountered larger guilds, he felt no fear.
As for why he brought so many Red Dragon Guild members, it was with the plan that during the fourth-floor siege on the Maze Lord, the others could handle assisting monster minions.
Like everyone else thought, the Red Dragon Guild only paused around the camp briefly, then neatly departed.
Gauss still led the way.
Normally, at the third floor, there wasn’t much useful intelligence to be had.
On one hand, fewer people reached the third floor, so less information flowed out; on the other hand, teams consciously kept their findings to themselves or swapped intelligence only in small circles.
Once inside the Maze, teams competed with each other.
They weren’t just here to kill monsters; more importantly, they wanted the treasures and curiosities buried within.
Every so often, word spread that someone had found a special item or encountered a chance that let them breakthrough to a new level.
The Maze was like a proving ground with a special magic that accelerated growth. Of course, besides the public successes, there were many unreported adventurers who quietly died without notice.
They might have become dried bones, or been excreted by monsters and turned into nutrients that fed the Maze.
Gauss still plotted the shortest path.
Although he suspected the third floor held many undiscovered treasures and new monster species, he had a map. The Maze was huge; searching it thoroughly would waste too much time.
Better to strike straight for the fourth floor and reach the fourth-floor Lord before others.
“Everyone follow the Guild Leader and captains closely. Don’t fall behind.”
“Yes!”
Soon the group disappeared into the endless green.
After entering the third floor, the chance of encountering elite monsters rose sharply, and from time to time one could meet a level 4 or 5 monster. At one moment, Gauss even encountered a Commander-level Constructed Armor.
They entered a hall that looked like a church, and ahead a group of adventurers were running for their lives.
“Kill the outsiders!”
The Constructed Armor roared as it ran.
Its sword easily split a pillar in the hall in half.
Gauss narrowed his eyes.
Considering it blocked their path, he thought for a moment then acted decisively, using Dimension Door to appear beside the armor, where red light filled the hollow helmet, as if the floating suit of armor in the void had suddenly been surrounded by him.
Constructed Armor was a very special monster: it was essentially an animated empty plate armor with a degree of intelligence.
Legend said creating one required rituals and sacrificing many lives for a chance to produce a single piece. Though manufacturing was extremely difficult, once successful, their loyalty to the creator was rock solid; even after the creator’s death, they would carry out the creator’s orders for millennia.
They needed no breath, food, or sleep — a truly terrifying creature.
Perhaps because the process was so bloody, the technique for making Constructed Armors had been lost; they were only found in Mazes and some wild ruins.
Gauss blinked to the Constructed Armor’s side and a flash of information about it passed through his mind.
“Challenge level is roughly... level 7?”
To be honest, such a monster posed almost no threat to Gauss now.
His slight curiosity was about the creature’s unique life form and its uncommon appearance.
“Control Water!”
A blue-gold sacred stream began to surge around Gauss.
Although the Constructed Armor reacted a beat late, as a Commander-level creature its combat awareness still let it notice the figure who had blinked beside it.
Its hollow helmet slowly turned toward Gauss.
But a slow start meant a chain of slow steps. Gauss, prepared, would not give it a chance to launch a follow-up attack.
The stream of water exploded at Gauss’s side, then transformed into countless fine water-threads that formed a web and covered the surrounding space.
“Bzzzz!!”
After the buzzing, the water-thread network vibrated several times yet held its shape.
That was only how it looked to ordinary vision. With dynamic visual acuity, one would see the seemingly still water threads actually cutting through the air so fast they appeared frozen.
In a single second they could slice and vibrate dozens to hundreds of times in place.
The Constructed Armor had just turned and raised its sword arm when the water-line sphere two meters beyond Gauss’ outer edge completely enveloped it.
“Shrrrk shrrrk!”
Countless dense, sharp explosive sounds rang out.
For a moment, several adventurers hiding behind cover nearby clapped their hands over their ears.
Thin threads of blood trickled from their earlobes.
Clearly, in an instant those sound waves had ruptured their eardrums.
They didn’t have time to think; they obediently stayed behind cover.
In that split-second alarm they had seen a silhouette appear beside the armor; surviving at all now was their greatest luck. As for their temporary hearing loss, that trifling injury barely mattered.
They certainly had no intention of leaving cover to run. It wasn’t curiosity about the distant fight; they simply lacked the courage.
Logic told them that their eardrums had bled from the sound alone; exposing themselves to the attack’s residual waves would only be more dangerous.
In fact, their choice was correct.
Rock fragments ridden by shockwaves flew like shrapnel in all directions, leaving pits in walls and pillars.
“Commander-level monster Constructed Armor defeated *1”
Thousand Threads Severing Boundary’s attack lasted over ten seconds, and then a kill notification flashed before Gauss’ eyes.
“Its vitality is really tenacious.”
Gauss murmured.
A normal level-7 goblin would likely be one-shot by the initial blast of his Thousand Threads Severing Boundary and not last more than a few seconds.
But Constructed Armors were different; their unique life form left them almost without weak points.
To truly kill them required releasing in a very short time damage beyond their tolerance, leaving them no time to replenish, and exhausting the special magic inside them.
Gauss glanced at the Commander-level monster page in the Monster Encyclopedia. After killing that Constructed Armor, the number of Commander-level monster species he’d recorded rose to fourteen.
He was another step closer to the twenty Commander-level species required to obtain a new purple-quality racial talent.
When the commotion died down, Gauss curiously picked up the Constructed Armor’s helmet.
Inside the armor, extremely complex magical runes were engraved.
He felt these ancient magic patterns were worth studying.
But now wasn’t the time for research, so after a brief look he stored all the armor pieces in his storage space.
“Um... thank you for saving us!”
The others cautiously peeked out from behind cover.
When they realized the Constructed Armor had vanished and the handsome man at a distance was looking at them, one of them spoke up to thank him.
“A small favor.”
Gauss nodded.
Normally he would choose to help weaker adventurers in the wild.
In fact, this wasn’t the first time; for him scenes like this were commonplace.
Other Red Dragon Guild members had by now walked over.
“Serlandul, heal their ears.”
“All right, Captain.”
Seeing the group about to speak, Gauss had Serlandul step forward to heal.
Ruptured eardrums weren’t too troublesome for Serlandul; they were easy to cure.
As Serlandul worked, a green light of vitality enveloped the adventurers’ ears.
After a few minutes their hearing returned to normal, and Serlandul also patched scratches on their arms and knees.
After finishing treatment, Gauss pointed the newcomers toward the third-floor entrance,
then continued on the planned route.
They had crossed nearly half the third-floor map, and close to evening Gauss arrived at the entrance to the fourth floor.
“Find a place to rest.”
Gauss didn’t rush inside; he told the team to find a patch of ground nearby to make camp.
They had fought many battles today, fighting from the first floor up to the fourth-floor entrance.
“Total monsters killed: 39,540”
On the day they entered the Maze, his cumulative monster kills had increased by thirty; that pace was impressive.
This was thanks not only to his own efforts but to others’ contributions during the long march; they had all added to the tally.
Gauss withdrew into his consciousness, an odd expression passing over his face.
His mana cup had become immensely full; clearly a breakthrough wasn’t far off.
So fast? Is this what the Maze does? Even Gauss was a little surprised.
Too bad it was still a little short of feeling it.
Gauss took a deep breath and didn’t worry too much. Compared to reaching the fourth floor tomorrow, finding that fourth-floor Lord and besieging it would allow quick kills of other monsters and make up that final small gap.
Thinking that, he took out an iron shard to check.
“4.89%”
The number had risen considerably.
From his afternoon research, Gauss had also realized this was indeed something like an exploration percentage. However, the number didn’t entirely tie to map exploration; killing monsters also pushed this percentage forward.