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Chapter 103: Gaining Great Feats, Adventure
The Dungeon, 15th Floor.
As the final magic stone was tossed into the deep, swirling violet-blue vortex, the portal emitted a low, resonant hum and flared with blinding light.
An intense sensation of spatial distortion instantly seized everyone, as if the entire world were being kneaded, stretched to its limits, and violently thrown across dimensions.
When the nausea-inducing vertigo finally receded like a pulling tide, Aiden's hand was already gripping the hilt of his sword, his vigilant gaze sweeping across their entirely new surroundings.
They stood within an unimaginably colossal underground cavern.
The ceiling arched so high it vanished into an abyss of absolute darkness, completely obscuring any sense of a boundary.
The dark, jagged stone floor, scattered with countless loose rocks and drifts of gray ash, stretched unevenly into the distance.
And there, in the very heart of the distant darkness, a sphere of soft, fragile blue light hovered suspended in the air. It looked like a lone candle flickering in a storm, yet it stubbornly illuminated this realm of dead silence.
The Ley Line Monolith.
Three days had passed since they had completed Naaza's commission.
During those three days, the Focalors Familia hadn't rested for a single moment.
Under the intense strain of continuous, high-level magic application, Robin's magic stat had finally shattered its bottleneck, firmly crossing the threshold into the SSS-rank domain during last night's status update.
Her other attributes had similarly advanced. On paper, her raw data meant she was fully qualified to level up. The only thing missing was the most intangible, yet absolutely vital requirement: a Great Feat.
A Great Feat was the ultimate recognition of an adventurer's achievements, the sole ticket required to shatter mortal limits and ascend to a higher tier of existence.
For ordinary adventurers, accumulating High-Quality Excelia meant either challenging their absolute limits on the razor's edge of life and death, or relying on the agonizingly slow grind of time to slowly temper their souls.
But Aiden did not have the luxury of time.
To ensure Robin, and by extension the entire Familia, grew rapidly enough to survive what was coming, he had made a breathtakingly bold decision—to conquer this Domain Instance, the "Hidden Palace of Zhou Formula," catalyzed by his own [Abyss Gazed Back] skill. The difficulty here far exceeded their current canonical levels.
He knew perfectly well that Robin, Tifa, and Hyacine were fundamentally different from him.
He was pursuing the path of a flawlessly balanced powerhouse, aiming for SSS in every single attribute. They, on the other hand, only needed to break their limits in one or two specialized fields.
Without his cheat-like skills and innate talents, achieving full SSS stats was an impossible task for them.
Originally, Aiden's plan was to wait until Robin and Tifa safely reached Level 2, acquiring the necessary self-preservation skills before attempting a challenge of this magnitude.
However, in the Dungeon's middle floors, no matter how many standard monsters they slaughtered, the High-Quality Excelia they yielded was pitifully scarce. Relying on that method, accumulating a Great Feat would take an eternity.
So, he decided to gamble.
He would use one glorious, blood-pumping victory to instantly satisfy the Great Feat requirements for Robin, Tifa, and Hyacine all at once.
Standing on the scorched earth of this Domain, the oppressive atmosphere was so thick it was almost tangible.
This wasn't the standard pressure exuded by the Dungeon's native monsters. This aura was far more ancient, far more barbaric. It felt as though some colossal beast that had slumbered for a millennium was casting its icy, predatory gaze upon them from every shadowed corner of the cavern.
Waves of blistering heat rolled from the depths, each breath feeling like they were swallowing boiling flames and liquid sulfur.
The massive, bone-deep claw marks gouged into the cavern walls looked unspeakably grotesque under the weak blue glow of the Monolith, as if a leviathan might awaken from the lurking darkness at any second.
"The pressure of this level..."
Aiden's voice dropped low in the scorching air. He could feel a faint, prickling sensation spreading across his skin.
Tifa surveyed their surroundings, her raven-black hair dancing in the thermal updrafts. Her eyes, usually so warm and gentle, now flashed with absolute deadly seriousness.
As a Pugilist, her sensory perception of the environment was the sharpest among them. Every cell in her body was screaming warnings.
"Be careful," she murmured softly, already shifting her weight into a flawless combat stance. "This time, we hold nothing back."
"Understood."
Robin tightened her grip on her unadorned staff. The gemstone at its tip remained dark; she was deliberately restricting her mana output, saving it for the critical moment.
She took a slow, deep breath, forcing her lungs to adapt to the suffocating, sulfurous air. Yet, within those vibrant teal eyes, an unprecedented fighting spirit burned brighter than ever.
Hyacine tilted her head back, her gaze piercing through the rippling heat distortion to stare into the deepest shadows.
There, countless pinpricks of crimson light began to ignite in the darkness, like will-o'-the-wisps waking in a graveyard.
Densely packed. Innumerable.
"They're coming," she whispered.
From the darkness, the first sound to reach them was the ear-piercing scrape of countless claws dragging across jagged rock.
Hilichurls.
Fifty of them.
They poured out from every bottomless fissure and from behind every craggy stalagmite like a surging tide.
Their short, hunched silhouettes packed tightly together, forming a writhing, undulating carpet of shadows in the gloom.
Beneath their crude tribal masks, their crimson eyes merged into a burning ocean of primitive, unadulterated malice.
Immediately following them, the ground began to tremble slightly.
Pyro Slimes.
Twenty of them.
These spherical monsters, glowing bright orange with veins that looked like flowing magma, bounced and rolled heavily behind the chaotic Hilichurl vanguard.
Every clumsy bounce left a scorched brand on the solid rock floor, accompanied by a sickening sizzle of melting stone.
Big and small, they clustered together like a horde of mindless deformities freshly birthed from the earth's molten core.
"Yaya ika!" A shrill, bizarre incantation echoed off the cavern walls.
Samachurls.
Ten of them.
Their stooped bodies were wrapped in tattered, filthy animal skins, appearing far frailer than their brethren. Yet, at the tip of their wooden staves, spheres of eerie, deep red fire burned as if possessed by a life of their own.
This was no ordinary flame. It was a cursed fire, an evil hex that would cause those with weak wills to lose their minds entirely in the agony of its burn.
"Muhe ye!" A heavy, guttural roar caused the entire cavern to shudder violently.
Blazing Axe Mitachurls.
Five of them.
They were the equivalent of minor behemoths, towering over three meters tall. The knotted muscles in their arms were thicker than a normal human's waist.
The crude, massive battleaxes they wielded were wreathed in abyssal, pitch-black flames. Every swing tore through the air with a scorching, localized gale.
Every single pair of their eyes was locked with dead certainty onto the cavern's center—the solitary blue light of the Ley Line Monolith, and the four insignificant humans who dared to trespass in their domain.
And behind them, in a darkness so profound it seemed to devour the very light of the flames, five clusters of ghostly purple fire slowly levitated into the air.
Pyro Abyss Mages.
Five of them.
This was the trial the Focalors Familia faced.
Fifty, twenty, ten, five, and another five.
A horrifying, overwhelming tide of ninety monsters in total.
And among them, ten were the equivalent of elite Level 3 entities.
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