Chapter 5: Returning to the Ruins
Dolores reinforced her body with magic and sprinted through the night.
Before long, she arrived at the entrance to the ruins.
Along the way, she had been thinking about how games usually featured flashy movement sword techniques that consumed enormous amounts of mana.
Those skills would be perfect for traveling while draining her mana at the same time.
But after opening her skill panel, she discovered that all her skills were plain and basic.
Horizontal slash.
Vertical slash.
Block.
Dodge…
Could these even count as sword techniques?
The inside of the ruins was pitch black, making it impossible to see clearly.
From the depths, rustling noises occasionally echoed out.
At night, the ruins looked rather eerie.
Dolores drew the sword from beneath her cloak and cautiously stepped inside.
She tried casting Light magic to illuminate the path ahead, only to discover that the bright glow made the surrounding darkness even harder to see.
In the end, she simply dispelled the Light spell and closed her eyes.
Instead, she relied on mana perception to navigate.
In darkness, the flow of magical essence was more reliable than vision.
The magical essence within the ruins was sparse, and the presence of monsters was far weaker than during the day.
That wasn’t surprising.
Over the past two days, she, Philly, and the others had already cleared out the upper levels of the ruins.
Then that afternoon, she herself had slaughtered her way upward from the bottom.
Now that the Demon God had disappeared and no new monsters were being created, there naturally weren’t many left.
From the entrance down to the bottom of the ruins, the journey was almost completely unobstructed.
Before long, Dolores returned to that cavern once more.
Stepping over the shattered rocks at the entrance, she raised her sword and illuminated the entire cave.
Walking toward the crack where she had previously pulled out the sword, she discovered that the dark crimson glow once emanating from it had completely vanished.
She carefully inspected every corner of the cavern again.
There wasn’t the slightest trace of the Demon God’s aura.
The Demon God really had disappeared.
Dolores lowered her sword and sighed before turning back the way she came.
She had barely consumed any mana at all.
Not even a third of it was gone.
Originally, she wanted to use the monsters inside the ruins to properly drain her mana.
But these monsters were all ridiculously fragile.
Every single one died in a single strike.
None of them even gave her the chance to use more than two moves.
This was the first time she had ever felt annoyed about killing monsters too quickly…
“Ow!”
Dolores suddenly tripped over something.
What was that…?
She cast Light magic and looked down, only to discover a monster skeleton.
Nearby were many more identical skeletons.
The bones were completely clean, stripped of flesh so thoroughly that the sight was horrifying.
These monsters were slightly different from the ones summoned by the Demon God.
They were beasts from outside that had been transformed into monsters.
After death, they didn’t disappear, leaving corpses behind instead.
But she clearly remembered that when she passed through here earlier, those corpses had still been intact.
Yet in such a short amount of time, only bones remained?
Having watched countless insect disaster movies in her previous life, she immediately guessed this had to be the work of some kind of carnivorous flying insect.
The kind that appeared in overwhelming swarms capable of devouring living creatures into skeletons within moments.
Compared to those things, large monsters were nothing.
Dolores felt her legs trembling.
Yeah.
The ruins were definitely just too cold.
She was barely wearing anything on her lower half, so naturally she’d be shivering from the cold, right?
No way she was scared.
She was a dignified manly man.
How could she possibly fear tiny little bugs?
Dolores desperately tried convincing herself.
But in reality, she was already running.
One hand continuously stacked defensive buffs on herself while her legs practically kicked up afterimages.
A silver figure sprinted desperately through the ruins.
Before the monsters blocking her path could even react, their heads were severed by a single slash.
Stop blocking my way aaaahhh!!
Dolores didn’t care what kind of monster she encountered anymore.
Anything in her path got cut down instantly.
Right now, all she wanted was to get out of this cursed place as quickly as possible.
She could practically hear buzzing around her ears.
She had even started hallucinating an enormous cloud of insects chasing after her.
How did she even have the courage to come back in here earlier?!
If she had known this place contained something like that, she never would’ve entered even if you beat her to death!
Dolores swung her sword while sprinting wildly upward.
Without even stopping to catch her breath, she rushed through ten floors in succession.
Just as she was about to charge up the final staircase, a dense buzzing sound suddenly came from above.
She abruptly stopped in her tracks.
That sound…
Dolores swallowed nervously and cautiously extended her senses toward the staircase.
She regretted it instantly.
Holy crap, that scared the life out of me!
Inside the walls…
There were densely packed demonic insects everywhere.
She should never have looked!
After finally calming down a little, Dolores realized an even worse problem.
That swarm of demonic insects seemed to have completely blocked the only exit.
“……”
Looks like there’s no avoiding this.
Dolores shakily raised her sword and slowly moved toward the staircase.
With every step, her heartbeat accelerated further.
When she finally reached the stairs, she noticed a slash mark on the wall under the faint glow of her Light spell.
Wait.
That slash mark…
She remembered now.
Earlier, while descending the stairs, she had encountered a monster and casually swung her sword at it.
The monster dodged, and her blade struck the wall instead.
And those demonic insects…
They had been hiding in the hollow space behind that crack.
Seriously?
Even this counts as hitting the jackpot?
Back when she bought lottery tickets in her previous life, why couldn’t she win this easily with a random scratch?
Dolores took a deep breath.
After confirming that the defensive buffs on her body were still active, she coated her sword with flame magic.
Who cares what kind of bugs they are.
She’d just burn them all to death.
But before she could even approach, several demonic insects suddenly flew out.
Their black armored wings buzzed loudly, and the moment they spotted her, they immediately charged toward her.
Dolores quickly swung her sword, slicing the leading insect clean in half.
The two behind it met the same fate.
She dealt with them effortlessly.
Despite how tiny the insects were, she could cut them with astonishing precision.
Just as Dolores was marveling at this, one insect silently circled to her side and bit toward her arm.
Crap crap cra—
The expected pain never came.
The insect was blasted away before even reaching her skin, as if it had slammed into an invisible wall.
It rolled several times across the floor.
Hm?
These bugs can’t break through her defenses?
She looked at the insect still struggling on the ground.
You should’ve told me that earlier!
I spent all this time freaking out for nothing!
Dolores instantly regained her confidence.
She shoved her sword directly into the crack and unleashed a full-scale roasted bug barbecue inside.
A burnt smell drifted out.
Then suddenly, countless insects with charred red bodies swarmed out from within, densely surrounding her.
These bugs have magic resistance?!
There were actually fire-resistant demonic insects.
That was way too ridiculous.
But it didn’t matter.
She could still eliminate them physically.
Using sword techniques against flying insects was like using a cannon to kill mosquitoes.
But that suited her perfectly.
She had been worrying about where to spend all her mana anyway.
Hehe, bring it on~
Who knew how much time had passed before Dolores finally walked out of the ruins with a satisfied expression.
Very nice.
Her mana was finally almost depleted.
There had been an absurd number of those demonic insects.
She spent ages cutting them down one by one before finally exterminating them all.
Although sword techniques consumed very little mana individually, repeatedly using them hundreds or even thousands of times still added up.
Combined with continuously maintaining defensive buff magic, even her enormous mana reserves were eventually drained dry.
What surprised her was how useful those basic sword techniques became when combined together.
It felt like the arcade fighting games from her previous life.
A bunch of basic attacks chained into combos were far more flexible than fixed special techniques.
That aside, after killing so many monsters, she must have leveled up quite a lot, right?
In a good mood, Dolores opened her status panel.
【Level: Lv2】
“……”
She rubbed her eyes and looked again.
【Level: Lv2】
You’ve got to be kidding me.
How is it only level two?!
She had practically slaughtered every monster inside the ruins and fought off that many demonic insects.
Even if monsters summoned by the Demon God only granted half experience in the game, she should still have reached at least level five or six.
Something’s wrong.
There had to be some hidden explanation again, just like that transformation mechanic.
Pouting angrily, Dolores searched through the interface.
Suddenly, she noticed a new icon had appeared beside the level section.
A red bat-shaped exclamation mark was blinking repeatedly.
What’s this?