Making a b-line for the Dungeon Core, Art and Amanda not even slowing down as they destroyed everything in their path.
The group hardly even registered all of the Mana Crystals around them as they moved up the stairs towards the Dungeon Core.
{40 Self-evolution Points have been consumed. Installing [Dungeon Core Manipulation]... Installation complete.}
{Warning: Once infiltration of Dungeon Core begins, this room and the Dungeon Core itself will be swarmed by Demonic Beasts in order to interfere with our progress. Estimated threat level will be three ranks above the Dungeon's normal threat level.}
"If it is only a C-rank threat, then there is no need to worry. We can handle it." Amanda said, putting off the conversation about what exactly 'Rani' was for later, as time was of the essence.
[Amanda, I'm trusting you to take care of Art while I'm occupied.]
"Just hurry up! We don't have time to waste!" Art shouted as she shoved Archer in front of the large crystal.
[[Dungeon Core Manipulation]] {[Dungeon Core Manipulation]}
Archer and Rani activated the skills. Archer felt as his consciousness was drawn into the Dungeon Core.
"Well, this is deja vu all over again." Archer said as he observed his surroundings. It looked almost exactly like the Dungeon in the real world, only with glowing blue lines on all the walls, like something out of a science fiction movie. It reminded him of the arenas from the Moon Cell, and it wasn't too far off from the truth.
"This is the Between World, the world which exists within the Leylines and acts as a bridge between the Mortal and Immortal Realm." Rani explained. "The Dungeon Core acts as a terminal, but its functionality is limited to only what is necessary for the Dungeon Masters. If we wish to gain access to the Dungeon Map and reset the Dungeon Monster Roster, this system will have to hack into the deeper programming."
"Which will draw attention to us, as we are messing with the Leyline itself." Archer finished as he turned his head to where he had heard Rani's voice, only to freeze at the sight of her.
"Correct. But it is the most surefire way to save registered user "Fran"." Rani said as she started to walk forward to the simulated Dungeon Core. "Unlike on the outside, there will not be the normal manifestation resistance that exists in the mortal world to stop more powerful enemies to arrive. This system predicts that there is a 89.2% chance of an A-rank threat arriving to stop us. This system will have basic defenses during the process to guard against stray attacks, but will otherwise be vulnerable." As she spoke a menu appeared above the core and she started to rapidly press buttons. "This system will be depending on you to protect it, unit name "Nameless"."
"...Of course." Archer said as he traced copies of Kuroko and Shiroko.
He turned away and faced the entrance to the room, so that he would not have to see her. So that he wouldn't see the young school girl with her wavy brown hair and nearly passive face. "Now breaching the first level of security… First level of security has been breached."
The air became tense as mana began to flow into the room and the blue lines on the walls turned red. Demonic Beasts seemed to simply ooze out of the ground before turning their eyes on the intruders, barring claws and fangs.
"I will not let them touch you."
Fran's fist slammed into the side of a Trick Spider's head, breaking its mandibles and sending it tumbling to the ground, heavily injured, but still not dead. It was something that was happening a lot. Unfortunately, Fran didn't have time to finish the job as she had to turn her attention to three more Trap Spiders that were coming up on her other side, requiring a flurry of fists to deal with.
Pacing oneself in battle.
It had been a principle that Fran had learned, but had never needed to put into practice, as between her own and Archer's [Automatic MP Recovery] skills, and the [Mana Drain] abilities, it took a lot of waste to run oneself out of mana. She had been regenerating mana at a rate of almost 2 MP per second. It had always been enough, since she never threw around giant spells like Art did, burning 400 MP in a single shot to produce an attack capable of flooring even any C-rank Demonic Beasts.
Even in the very beginning, she had had over 2000 units of mana to work with, with it having passed the 5000 mark in the last few days. Because of this, casting an area of effect fire spell spell for 25 MP, or using [Herculean Strength] Lv3 to exchange up to 30 mana for 60 STR for 15 seconds, had never seemed like that big of a deal.
Now, with only around 240 MP at her disposal, and no way to regain it without stopping the fight to meditate or drinking potions that she didn't have, those small mana costs were starting to look like a lot. Especially with how many targets she was forced to deal with.
Fran would like nothing more than to beat all these worms to a pulp, but to do so would mean letting go of her [Wind Wall] spell, something she couldn't afford to do.
It was the Trickster Spider that was generating the poisonous gas that was filling the room, and while Fran was protected from the fumes by her Black Cat Set's [Poison Resistance Up (High)], the other two most certainly were not. If they became "Deadly Poisoned" she wouldn't be able to heal them. They would be dead within minutes.
In order to fund the spell, she was having to forgo her physical enhancements and her [Hand-to-Hand Techniques]. Not to mention that concentrating on maintaining the spell was making it difficult to fight.
Without Archer's [Appraisal], she couldn't be sure just how much the spell was costing her, or how long she could keep this up. She needed to do something about that Trickster Spider. The problem was that the Trickster Spider was in no hurry to join the battle, hanging up high in the ceiling, where Fran couldn't reach it.
If only she had Archer, she could just jump up and cut that stupid spider down, or blast it to pieces. She could use the stones they gathered inside of the [Dimensional Storage] and some [Earth Magic] to create a barrier around the two weaklings, so she wouldn't have to stand guard over them. She would be able to reinforce her body to her heart's content and drain mana from her fallen enemies. She could throw around so many AOE spells that the entire army of spiders would be torn to shreds in a matter of seconds.
She wondered how many she had killed thus far. It felt like somewhere around a hundred and fifty, but there was no end in sight.
A trio of Spiders attempted to jump down at Fran from the ceiling, requiring her to backup before striking forward. A kick smashed in the head of one. A punch broke through the body of another. A chop took down a third. But there were still hundreds to go.
As Fran planted her feet, she stepped in a large glob of webbing, causing her to trip and fall. A Trick Spider, seeing an opening, lunged to take advantage of it, but before it could attempt to bite her, Fran's foot erupted into flames, burning away the web before she kicked the spider in the stomach, sending it spinning through the air and lighting it on fire.
The [Elemental Weapon] skill took a small bit of Fran mana. She felt as though she had just lost a minute and her foot tingled from the heat, a small warning not to overdo it.
[Elemental Weapon] was a very powerful skill. With just a little mana, it could produce an effect equivalent to a low rank spell. But its true power came from its lack of a ceiling. You could poor as much mana as you desired into the skill and it would continue to grow stronger. It's only true limits were the amount of mana of the user, and the durability of what the skill was used with. At its lowest level, like how Fran had just used it on her boot, it did no damage to the boot at all, but if pressed to its highest form, it could do thousands of damage in durability a second.
Amanda had told stories about completely breaking her own weapons in the past in just a single attack in order to kill A-rank Demonic Beasts. The destructive power of the skill was unreal, but it was not without drawbacks.
Well, it wasn't like Fran needed to worry about that right now. Not with her limited mana.
However, as Fran returned to her feet, ready for more, she saw the flaming spider dancing about in a panic, trying to put itself out. In doing so, it stumbled into a nearby nest, setting it on fire as well.
The threads burned quickly and fell away, not giving the fire enough fuel to spread properly, but destroy the nest and revealing the contents inside.
Fran's eyes widened as she caught the glint of steel in the mess and saw the dries corpse of a man who must have been the victim of the spiders. The person's body had been sucked dry leaving only hollowed skin and bones behind, but his inedible equipment still remained behind, including a large sword, several throwing knives, and what looked to be a sealed satchel, which gave off a bit of magical energy. Fran hoped that those bulges in the satchel were what she thought they were.
"Nn~!" Fran squealed as she cut open the bag and looked inside.
Twenty High-Quality Mana Crystals, each one as large as Fran's own head. Probably a good 2000 units of Mana worth of them, with a combined value of over a million gorudos.
Fran's ears twitched with delight as she drained one of the Mana Crystals to fuel her skills before grabbing the sword and spilling about. Over three dozen spiders were shredded as she unleashed her [Divine Aura Blade], with even more tossed about by the wind created by the attack. The crazed grin of a true battle junkie spread across the girl's face.
The Goddess of Chaos was still watching out for her.
(New Title Unlocked: Bad Target For Ambush | I'm not stuck in here with you, you're stuck in here with me. | Gain increased stats when ambushed.)
Archer shot his arrows of steel one after another, with each one sinking into the fleshy part of its target. Dozens of B-rank Demonic Beasts had come charging in at him, and even a pair of A-rank creatures that took on the form of flaming minotaurs. However, even these couldn't stand up to the Servant of the Bow and were more of a hassle for him to kill than a real threat.
In this Between World place, Archer had returned to being his Servant self, and could easily match the B-rank monster's in terms of stats, and with the weapons he had forged over the last few weeks, he had an arsenal of magic weapons capable of damaging them. The Minotaurs had been the strongest opponents, resisting the cutting edge of most of his blades, but even they couldn't stop Kuroko and Shiroko, whose blades were sharper than even Archer's own.
One thing did feel odd though, and that was that ever since he had entered the Between World, he no longer had access to any of the [Skill] he had been collecting since he had first woken up to find that he had become a sword. It was as if the Skill had only ever belonged to the Sword, and that just like Fran had been borrowing them through [Skill Share], so had Archer himself.
It was a shame really, while unneeded here, the [Skills] sure were covenant.
"Finished." Rani said after four minutes of high speed typing. "Location of 'Fran' has been found. Dungeon Core resetting. All active Dungeon Monsters shall be terminated in three… two… one… all Dungeon Monsters have been terminated. Mission: Complete."
"Good. Then I suggest we make our escape." Archer said.
"Agreed. Opening exit now… Failed… Something is blocking this system from opening a return path." "...What?"
"Making another attempt… Failed. This is not good." Rani said, a bit of fear entering her voice. "Large disturbance in the mana flow detected. Something is changing the server layout!"
Something that looked like fingertips appeared, digging through the ceiling above them, pulling the stone away to create a gap over twenty feet across, and staring down through the gap was the black skinned face of a woman with pointed elf-like ears and a mat of cobweb-like hair, only with a pair of spider's mandibles in place of a lower jaw and eight beady black eyes. The abomination seemed to grin as it spotted them.
"I found you, doggo!" It said, its cackling voice shaking the world as the ceiling and walls started to dissolve around them in order to reveal a spider as large as a castle, with the top half of a armored woman grafted onto it. An absolutely insane amount of magical energy radiating from the creature. "And this time, I'm going to be the one eating you!"
Lolth
Race: Spider God (Divine Beast)
Status: Normal
Level 2/99
HP: 58123 MP: 10023 STR: 10274 END: 16967
AGI: 2020 INT: 1253 MGC: 8425 DEX: 1643
Skills: Darkness Resistance: LvMax, Darkness Nullification: Lv3, Poison Resistance: LvMax, Poison Nullification: LvMax, Dark Magic: LvMax, Darkness Magic: Lv7, Poison Magic: LvMax, Decay Magic: LvMax, Fang Arts: Lv8, Fang Technique: Lv6, Spear Arts: LvMax, Divine Spear Arts: Lv3, Spear Techniques: Lv9, Dread: Lv9, Leap: Lv7, Mental Resistance: Lv9, Shorten Chant: LvMax, Chantless Magic: Lv5, Summon Kin: LvMax, Overload Summoning: LvMax, Diamond Skin: LvMax, Night Vision, Automatic HP Recovery, Automatic MP Recovery, Shell Reinforcement, Magic Manipulation, Poison Spray: LvMax, Poison Fog: LvMax, Lasso: LvMax
Extra Skills: God-Slaying Poison Generation
Description: Lolth, the Goddess of Decay, was an S-rank Divine Beast which once terrorized all of the Eastern Continent, along with her many children. Not much is known about this monstrous being, but it is said to have poison powerful enough to even kill other Divine Beasts. Though many a hero tried, none could face this monstrous being. However, its reign was brought to an abrupt end when it itself was devoured by Fenrir, the Gluttonous God Eating Wolf.
I lowered Lolth's stats to being only around half those of a normal Divine Beast, with the logic that she has been sitting around waiting to be reincarnated, and that lowers her stats. (That's why she is a level 2)
So yeah, even those stats are low for a Divine Beast.
Alright, I'm confused now. Apparently, Shishou could absorb Extra and Innate skills, he just wasn't always absorbing them. So it isn't that Fran couldn't kill a Wyvern and suddenly gain the ability to fly (Flying is confirmed to being a Skill), the Author was just not acknowledging it. As for what the difference is between Extra Skill that can be absorbed and those that can't, I still don't know.
Fuck it, I'm keeping the rule that Archer can't absorb Innate and Extra skills. No killing fishes and suddenly being able to breath underwater even though you don't have gills. And no killing spiders and being able to generate your own poison, even without poison pouches.
Just so you are all aware, the breathing water and generating poisons are things that Fran really gets in canon, though they never see any use. She can breath underwater, and her blood was turned poisonous.