It was Evening, Rocky was feeling giddy, because his Mana sense had gained another level, and his sense had increased up to a range of 40 meters. Moreover he had finally gained the soul shifting skill which he was so eagerly practicing for.

But he gained more than just that and the way came as a surprise for him too.

The first one he gained was the [Astral projection]. He knew that he was close to getting this one and gained it after his fiftieth try.

The skill wasn’t too special on its own, but it did improve the time he could stay in his soul form by a lot.

The after playing around in his soul form, he gained the skill [Ghost vision]; which made him gain the ability to sense the presence of life around him.

And because the dungeon itself was a living thing, everything around him lit up as he activated the skill.

The last one was [Possession]. Yes, it took him a lot more time to get than the other skills because all the time he was leaving and possessing his own body and not a foreign object. Although that made it easier for him to do a pseudo possession, which did make his skill gaining speed slower, but it had to be done, otherwise there was the risk of him completely destroying his soul.

So it took him some time, but in the end, after possessing and returning from the wall of his dungeon heart like countless times, he finally gained [possession].

And like its name, it gave him the ability to possess inanimate objects.

Then the change happened. He was still in the process of happily jumping around while hugging Minnie, when another system message came up.

The skills [Astral projection], [Ghost vision] and [Possession] can be joined together to create a Rare ranked skill.

Would you like to proceed with the skill evolution: Yes/No

After confirming with Minnie, who said that it was a rare blessing from the heavens, and he should take it, he confirmed the evolution.

And after a sudden blinding light, and a feeling of something leaving him, the skills combined and evolved to their final form.

(Passive/active) Soul Manipulation ® Lv (1) Soul, one of the greatest mysteries of the world. Soul is the container that holds the power. While body is just a way to display. Skills:

Allows the use of skills in soul form, but with an increased cost and decreased effect.

Able to leave your current body and posses any inanimate object. (1Mp/sec)

Death won’t be instant. Get a second to live after death. Time increases with increase in skill level.

Rockies eyes opened wide as he looked at the information. But the celebrations were short lived as the intruder alarm rang out.

Warning: Intruder alert

“Where are they?”

“Forget that. Why is it showing the view of the room next door and not of the outside like it used too?”

They were looking at the screen from Rockies inner world, but instead of displaying the intruders, the screen was instead showing the queen laying eggs.

“Probably because your mana sense only has the range of 40 meters and we are more than half a mile away from the entrance.”

“Shit.” Rocky punched the air in distress, but Minnie’s words helped him calm down; instantly.

“Oh, don’t worry so much. Why did you think I tasked you to get the soul shifting skill?” She asked him moving his brows up and down.

“It was in preparation for this moment. After all, everyone knows that it takes a long time to level the [Mana sense] skill to optimum levels. And by everyone, I mean the humans, who only need to extend their sense to one or two hundred meters, while you need to cover your whole dungeon.”

“Oh!” Rocky exclaimed.

Then Minnie pushed him and said, “Now you go. Leave the control room to me, and go play possession with the walls.”

“But…”

“Now, now, don’t be scared. You will be alright.” Then turned her head around before joking, “Alright, but only If they don’t have a priest in their party, but don’t worry, they won’t be able to exorcise you if you possess the wall quickly enough.”

“Exorcise?!”

Rocky knew what the word meant, and understood how near he would be to extinction, not just death if he did let a priest play around with his soul.

“Okay, go now. The more time you waste, the easily they will advance.”

“Oh, okay.”

He turned around to leave the crystal heart, when Minnie called him again.

“Ah! One more thing…”

“What?” He asked.

Minnie looked at him, smiled and said, “Good luck.”

‘That smile.’ Rocky thought and smiled back before flowing out of his core and travelling to the surface; bypassing floors and walls.

“Ah! This has so much potential.” He said as he passed by a group of ants.

It took him just twenty seconds to reach the entrance and he saw that the humans had already come down from the hole.

There were five of them, wearing different getups; looking strong and robust. He contacted Minnie to say he was there, who replied back saying she knew because the screen was up again.

Minnie felt his worry from their connection and joked, “Don’t worry there are no priests in the group.”

But Rocky replied saying he wasn’t worried about that.

“This group they look strong.”

Noticing the group formation and their artifacts and diversity in their classes, even Minnie got serious.

“Check out their levels. Let’s see what we have.”

Intruders List Dungeon default [Analyze] failed to determine their stats and skills. Results:

Number 13 (Human) (Assassin) (R-1) (Lv-94)

Jasmine D’ Renee (Human) (Fire Mage) (R-0) (Lv-65)

Daisy Fields (Human) (Earth Mage) (R-0) (Lv-89)

Daniel Knight (Human) (Knight) (R-1) (Lv-35)

Bill long shorts (Human) (Archer) (Lv-55)

And Rocky operating his dungeon interface analyzed their status and felt goose bumps by looking at their levels. His eyes wide open and his jaw opened wide. He asked Minnie, “D-did you see that?”

And in an imposingly gloomy voice Minnie replied,

“Unfortunately, I did.”

“So what now?”

“Now, we evacuate or make a game plan. First let’s see the number and types of ants we have.”

“Yeah, sure.” Rocky nodded in affirmation.

Monsters Available (DC:49) (Name) (Rank) (Amount)

Queen Ant (1): 1

Ant soldiers (0): 2

Ant workers (0): 6

Ant chuchas (0): 200/1600 (+6/min)

But that made Minnie even sadder.

“I feel they should give us a handicap for sending two fucking rankers to destroy our pitiful forces.”

“Calm down Minnie, calm down. Though I have to say, the decision to buy the queen has proved to be a good one. Moreover, one of it eggs even gave birth to a worker ant. What more could we want?”

Some of her confidence returned as she heard him.

“So what’s the plan?”

“The plan…” she said and sighed. She gave the screen one more look before taking a deep breath, and then the discussion started.

The group of humans with the Hero William in the lead reached the mission site. Coming out of the forest, they saw the hole and the wolf which the scout mentioned in the report.

“So that’s the wolf, which the report talked about.” Bill said looking at the skeleton lying to the right of the hole.

“Looks like it.” Daniel commented.

“Okay team. We will enter in a minute. Give your gear a final check up, and warm up if you all want to.”

William gave the orders and walked up to the wolf. He bent in front of it, and then using a stick opened its mouth. Maggots fell out of it, but William didn’t fell disgusted looking at them, and thoroughly checked the body.

The scene of William searching through a rotten and highly infested body disgusted the girls. It didn’t disturb Dust, but Martha couldn’t take the scene and ended up throwing up.

Daniel the knight moved to support her and rubbed her back saying, “Easy there, easy. Don’t worry about it. Did you bring water…” and seeing her watery eye he sighed. He helped her stand up by holding her body, as she shivered from his touch and gave her a bottle of water.

“Relax and don’t look at the wol…” seeing her face turning pale again, he quickly changed his word. “West, don’t look toward the west!”

Dust came up and after staring into Daniels eyes for a second; she took Martha away, Leaving Daniel standing there with his face twitching.

William came back to the front of the hole and went inside after pointing at it.

The girls came back after a minute, with Martha looking better than before, and with the rest of the group entered the hole.

The first thing they encountered was a 10 meters wide hole right at the entrance. So they slid down and climbed over the other side, but not without carefully inspecting the surrounding’s first. Even though it was just the entrance, they didn’t want to get ambushed by ants while they were in the hole.

On the other side of the hole was a tunnel; dark, moist and straight.

“Looks like we have a path to follow.” William said and decided their formation for walking, with Daniel at the front and the rest following him.

They moved just a few meters into the tunnel, when darkness engulfed them all.

“Do anyone of you know a light spell. It’s too dark here.” William asked, when he saw that he wasn’t even able to see a single meter in front of him.

And Martha raised her hand looking at him like a kid. “Martha knows. Martha knows.” She said.

“Now are you an idiot or something. We don’t need a fireball.” He whispered, his voice almost breaking before reaching her.

“Martha knows you are scared that the fire will eat all the oxygen, but don’t worry Martha’s fire is special. It won’t eat oxygen. This place is too eerie. Martha is scared. Please let Martha show you.” she replied with puppy eyes, but the hero couldn’t see the spectacle.

‘Huh…’ it was not something that one of them uttered, they yelled in sync.

“How is that possible?”

Even William couldn’t help, but look at her in new light. He wanted to ask her how that was possible, but the archer left him in dirt in his excitement, “How is that possible? Is it a secret art or something?”

“It’s not a secret or anything. Like Martha told you all when we were introducing each other, although Martha’s level is not that great, Martha’s skill mastery and elemental control is top notch.”

“So, what kind of a relation does it have with oxygen less fire?” William asked.

She didn’t answer his question straight away, but looked at the ground and pondered on whether to tell him the reason or not, but maybe the dread of darkness won over her mind and she finally answered saying, “It’s because Martha can directly use mana as the fuel and create fire burning mana. So, Martha doesn’t think it will affect the oxygen level at all.”

William felt irritated hearing her speak, but the idea did sound good to him.

“Okay do it. I want light at least 10 meters on front and five meters on behind. Got it?”

“Yes, yes. Martha is not stupid. Martha understands.”

And she clicked her fingers, following which a small [fireball] conjured in front of her.

The fireball created enough heat to melt iron and created blinding light every.

But Martha pouted seeing that the light from the fireball wasn’t enough and dissolved it. Then she closed her eyes and placing her hands near each other and gathered mana inside the cavity.

She concentrated enough mana to create ten such fireballs, and condensed it until it took the shape of a crystal ball. It glowed with enough intensity to brighten the tunnel up to twenty meters in front of them.

“Gwah! What is this? It’s too intense…!”

“Martha, stop it…!”

“Ah, my eyes…!”

But the light from the ball turned out to be too intense and ended up hurting the others.

Martha panicked at first, but then removed some mana from the ball, and then made it float behind them at some distance.

Martha seeing that the light was bright enough to light the tunnel, but not strong enough to not hurt their eyes called out to them.

“Don’t worry guys, you all can open your eyes now.”

Following her voice they slowly opened their eyes, and saw each other’s faces. The tunnel was bright enough to show 15 meters in front of them.

William was about to say something, but Daniel jumped the gun and praised her, “Good job.”

To which she replied with a vibrant smile.

William seeing that sighed and gave his instructions, “Okay Daniel get at the front, and don’t forget to keep your shield up. Archer move behind him. Girls stay with me, and assassin you know what to do.”

They changed their formation like advised and started walking. Bill noticed five holes in the shape of a pentagon on the ground and on the roof, and warned the group about them.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably the ants. With openings so small they are probably not bigger than a fist.” Dust replied.

They travelled through that tight tunnel which wasn’t even wide enough to have three people travel shoulder to shoulder, and reached a small clearing. Daniel walked inside the room followed by the others and stopped.

“Where are the ants?” Daniel mumbled, which others easily heard as his voice echoed inside the room.

His doubt was real after all they hadn’t met a single ant on the way, and they had travelled for whole 200 meters. Ants were considered to have high sentimental value with their mound, and were known to attack all the intruders.

Dust hearing his mumble decided to use her skill [life detection], which could detect the presence of every being in contact with the ground.

“Okay guys, give me a second.” She said and released a pulse of mana into the ground. Much like the result of sonar, everything with light lit up in front of her eyes.

“Oh no!” She looked up and shouted, “They are on the roof!” and as if the ants had woken up from their slumber, the whole roof came down on them.

“Fuck! The whole roof is full of ants!” Daniel shouted, but his voice got drowned by the screeches from the ants. The ants fell and were right upon them, but then Martha shouted

“Everyone, Get down…!”

Everyone followed her excited voice, hearing her excited except William and dropped their bodies to the ground.

“Explode!!” Martha yelled right after that and the light ball hovering behind them cracked, and

*Boom!*

An ear deafening explosion occurred. All the ants above their heads got evaporated, and the rest, which were falling from the side, got flung away to the walls by the blast wave.

Daniel and dust hurriedly stood back up, with their eyes fixed on Martha. No one cared about William, who was looking as perfect as ever, even after taking the force of explosion form behind.

The archer hanged his bow on his back and held his dagger. They noticed that the blast wave after the explosion alone had killed one fourth of the ants, and even more had gotten killed by the explosion.

The ant’s which didn’t die in the explosion started running toward them with their mandibles wide open and William commanded Dust.

“Create a wall. Keep them away. And you, fire girl…” He laughed and spoke, “grill them. Knight and archer…” he looked at them and moved out after saying, “Take care of the girls.”

The rest of the ants couldn’t enter the wall created by dust and were grilled to death by Martha’s [Flame throw].

A jet of fire coming out of her hand burned every ant in two meter radius of her to a crisp.

Enco the assassin and the Hero - William came back unscathed after killing all the ants left. While Enco removed blood from his dagger by moving it between his gloved fingers, William just shook his sword once, and it became as good as new.

But just as they were returning, something amazing happened. All the dead ants which hadn’t evaporated form the explosion, started breaking into multiple dot of lights. The dots flew into the air like fireflies, before disappearing into thin air.

Everyone was left looked tongue tied by the display. Well, everyone except Martha, who enjoyed the spectacle.

“So pretty!!” she murmured.

But others were too busy in connecting the dots and looking at each other with their eyes wide open.

“Dungeon?” Dust spoke first, followed by William, “Maybe?” and Daniel just nodded his head while Bill mumbled, “Looks like we can kill the queen.”

And his statement jollified the mood even more.

“Ha-ha… Well, we’ll know when we see the core, but until then let’s just enjoy hunting.” But Martha interrupted Daniel by pulling him arm before hurriedly asking, “Danny! Martha doesn’t know what a dungeon is. Can you tell Martha what a dungeon is?”

William looked at her jumping around like a kitten and spoke, “Martha…”

Who replied with, “Yes?” opening her eyes wide open, bobbing her head up and down. But William did not get taken in by her cuteness, and simply gave her- her next task.

“Conjure another, no at least three more of those light balls.” He then, looked at the others and ordered, “We are moving.”

“But dungeon??” Martha pinched Daniel’s arm, who replied saying, “Afterwards.”

“Okay. Martha will do what the bad man says.” She said, her lips quivering.

And Daniel smacked her head with the flat side of his sword.

After half a minute three more of those light balls emerged behind them, as Dust tried to help the pouting bunny.

Moving forward they were again greeted by a tunnel. They saw egg shells stacked together by the side. But what really surprised them wasn’t there presence, as they had already met with their owners, but the sheer number of them.

Because in the twenty meters they had travelled, they saw no less than three hundred egg shells, and the number was rising with each step they took.

“Careful! I sense of a lot of life signals up ahead!” Dust spoke as she kept taking glances at the captain.

‘Why can’t I sense him? Is the hero class really that strong?’ she thought because this was the second time she was using her skill [Life detection], and the second time she had failed to sense William.

The tunnel ended without any conflict and another room stood in front of them.

Daniel was about to step inside, when William stopped him.

“Stop for now. Martha…” she looked at him while still pouting, “can you send one of those light balls inside the room?” he pointed to the room.

“Huh, who does he think Martha is? Does he think Martha can’t even do that? Idiot leader.” she mumbled while looking at the light ball, and then pointed her finger to the front toward the room.

“Shuu, go there and do a boom.”

And as if the light ball was her pet, it heeded her command, and silently went inside the room.

*Boom*

It exploded and a huge amount of fire once again singed William, Who just puffed a smoke cloud out of frustration.

“So?” he asked Dust to once again use her skill, and see if there were any ants left inside and she gave a thumbs up, but just a second later her face paled, and she started back stepping.

“They are coming! A whole lot of them are coming!” And she created a make shift wall of dirt; A barrier to stop the ants from entering the tunnel.

“What happened? That explosion didn’t kill them?” Bill asked, as he tried to take shots from the widows in the barrier created by Dust.

“Don’t know, but these feel a little different from before.” Dust answered as she poured even more mana into the wall to strengthen it.

The wall held on and didn’t let a single ant to come out of the room, but just as they sighed and took their breaths of relief, sand started falling from one corner of the wall.

“Huh? What is that?” Martha pointed at the corner, but before anyone could react, the same phenomenon started occurring all over the wall.

“Shit they are drilling through!!” Daniel yelled and pushed his shield onto the wall, trying to do a fusion, but a wave of mana pushed him back instead. He tried it once again, but with no result.

“Damn it…!” he yelled and Dust warned everyone, “Get ready! They are here!!”

Then abusing her mana to the limit, she blasted the wall away to force the ants back, which was followed by the assassin once again running out of the group and diving into the ants.

The number of ants was similar to the amount in the previous room, but they were more concentrated than before.

Daniel stood at the front as his shield glowed bright white, and a [Mana shield] extended from his own shield.

It stopped the ants from overrunning them, but then he noticed something and stood up.

He walked forward and the ants got pushed back with him.

“Tsk!” Disappointed by his own cowardliness, he used bash and minced all the ants into paste within five seconds.

He looked at Enco who was once again returning after fighting the ants alone, and understood why he was so eager to go fight in their midst.

“You should have said something!” he said to Enco who said something using sign language which he didn’t understand.

“He says there was no time, and I can’t speak, so I’m sorry.” Martha translated for him.

She noticed everyone looking at her and swayed her hand left and right, “Don’t look at Martha like that! Martha is a shy girl you know!”

And once again the ants disappeared midst light dots.

“But if this is a dungeon, then why aren’t we getting anything from them? I mean I didn’t even get any experience from them at all. Not even .001%?” Daniel asked the others scratching his head.

“Maybe these are common ants?”

“Who knows? I hope we’ll at least get something from the queen?” Bill commented.

“Okay, let’s go. We still have a long way ahead of us.”

Then travelling through another tunnel, they once again stood in front of a room, but this time they didn’t stop or waste Martha’s mana by making her explode that ball. They knew after all that a single Daniel was enough to destroy all the ants.

But following the light ball, when Daniel entered the room, he was left scratching his head, because forget ants the room was totally empty.

There were no ants, but he did see a slope descending downwards. ‘Probably towards the second floor.’ He thought.

The others followed him inside, and also didn’t find anything.

“Let’s just go down. Who know how many floors this dungeon has?” Bill commented, but instead of reprehending him, the others decided to just rush to the second floor.

They moved leaving him standing there. He shook his head and followed behind them, but just as he was about to get out of the room, the ground beneath his foot trembled.

Daniel looked back, and moved to push Bill out of danger, but before he could do so, a ridiculously big ant head came out of the ground and

*Snap*

“Ahhh..!!!”

It went back inside the hole it had come from after cutting bills foot.

“My foot!! My foot!!” Bill screamed, as Daniel dragged him away from the room, yelling, “What the fuck was that?”

“Danny, it’s coming up from right underneath you!!” Dust yelled at him telling him that he was in danger.

Daniel pushed Bill away, and rolled backward, as a 4’3” tall and even longer ant came flying out of the ground.

It made *tick*tick* noise as his eyes met with Daniel’s, who was already in the motion of swinging his sword at its soft bottom.

*Roar*

The ant screamed as the sword left a long cut before parting from its body. It fell onto the ground and tried to dig, but Enco appeared directly over the ants head and pierced his dagger into his head.

The ant didn’t even get enough time to screech, and its head got chopped off from its neck.

Like the other ants, it also turned into a series of light dots.

By the time the ant died Daniel had made Bill drink a health potion, which stabilized his dropping health and made Martha char his wound.

“Ahh, ahh, ahhh… this is fucking crazy!!” only the sound of bill crying rang inside the room, while Daniel grunted, trying to hold him still, so that he wouldn’t end up worsening his wound.

“Shut up and hold on for a minute. The pain will pass.” Dust slapped bill and preached.

They stayed in the room for half an hour and waited for his condition to stabilize, while the other looked at him.

No one said anything about his injured foot, but Bill saw concern in their eyes.

Grunting he stood up using his bow as support, and spoke, “If I leave now, I won’t be able to payback my due and then the loan sharks will kill me. So this is the only way for me to stay alive. Understand me, if I leave now then I will die outside. I have no choice; the loan my previous party took to buy provisions is now on my head, so please understand.”

Daniel was going to say something, but then William walked up to Bill and patted his shoulder, “Sure, you need our help right now. so we will help you. Why won’t we. We are a team after all. Let’s go… I’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you boss.” Bill smiled hearing William say that, and the others nodded their heads.

“Don’t mention it. Okay let’s see what the second floor has in store for us.” William replied and turned around.

His face warped and a cynical smile appeared on his face. He gritted his teeth to stop his smile, and descended down the slope.