15 minutes later, my mana was recovered and I along with my parents traveled up to the third floor. Like the floor before, everything was the same except the number and strength of the monsters. There were 5 this time and each one of them had a CP in the 80's.

Dad: "I have a feeling. Son, what are these beast's combat power? I feel like that they are abnormally strong for this floor. Usually, these should be between 60 and 70."

Me: "Each one of them have a CP in the 80's. the strongest one is at 89. So, this means that this strange energy is already affecting them? It's making them more powerful?

Dad: "Yeah, it looks that way. If this is the case, the boss of this dungeon might very well be an E-rank. If this is the case, we will leave immediately. I know you are an E-rank as well, but this rank covers 1,000 points of power. You are only at the 100's of E-rank. By the time we get to that floor and your CP is less than it, we will leave. Anyway, get started and try and finish quickly. I fear that as more time passes the stronger the beasts will get. This energy is also getting even stronger as time passes. How is your mind holding up? Can you still ward it off?

Me: "Yeah. I can, pretty easily too, though, it is gradually becoming harder. I'll finish each floor as quickly as possible. First, let me prepare something."

Since I levelled up twice, I could create 2 sub-skills for my bullet skill. I already have an idea in mind so I immediately started the creating process. I imagined channeling my mana in my body and having it form the shape I wanted and how it would act. I imagined the skill activating and attacking imaginary beasts. A couplie minutes later, I got a notification saying the sub-skill had been created. I took a look at it and it brought a grin to my face. This would definitely speed up the grinding.

Sub-skill created: Bullet Gatling

Bullet Gatling: Level 1: creates a Gatling gun that auto-targets the beasts with the highest HP. Range: 10 feet. Firing speed: 2 bullets/sec. Cost: 15 mana. Duration: 1 minute. Cooldown: 1 minute. Limit at one time: 1

Immediately wanting to try it out, I stepped forward and got closer to the group of beasts. I fired a couple bullets at a couple of them to grab all of their attention. It worked like a charm. They stopped what they were doing, looked around to find who disturbed them. They noticed me standing there grinning like a doofus and roared and started to charge over. seeing this, I activated the bullet Gatling skill. A Gatling gun made of mana appeared in front of me floating in the air. As soon as the first beast got to the 10 foot range, the gun targeted it and started firing. 3 bullets and a second and a half later, the beast was turned into particles. The gun didn't stop, it targeted another that got within range. Actually the rest of them were now in range. I joined my gun and started firing as well, while standing my ground. By the time they got within 2 feet of me and the gun, there were 2 beasts left and they were injured, and slowed down. I finished them easily with another bullet each.

This new skill was great, despite the limited range. It was quite effective though. With it, the fight lasted only a minute, less than that actually. There were no drops this time but I did manage to level up to 4 and gain 4 stat points. I put 2 into intelligence and 2 to wisdom. My mana capacity and magic strength were the most important right now and what I wanted to focus on in the future. I looked at my rewards from this fight.

5 kobolds defeated. Reward:

+ 215 XP

+107 system points

+53 gold

Closing that out, I nodded to my parents indicating that I was done and ready to go on to the next floor. They nodded back and we carried on. The next 2 floors followed the same pattern. Stronger monsters but less of them, about half. Floor 4 had 3, and floor 5 had 2. These floors however, the weird energy had even more of an effect on the beasts. the beasts on floor 4 had a CP range of 90 to 95, and floor 5 the beats were even rank E, CP's of 105 and 110. My parents questioned whether I should continue or leave. I said I should be able to handle it and they agreed although they were apprehensive about it. Floor 4 was no trouble. I had to move a bit as the beasts were faster and had more defense and HP. It actually took 5 bullets to finish them and more than 75% of my mana. I had to recover for 20 minutes or so to fully restore it before I moved on to floor 5. Floor 5 gave me a bit of trouble. The beasts almost had the same speed as me and i had a bit of trouble keeping my distance from them while having them stay within range of my Gatling gun. I really needed that skill to level up so I can move about more and have it be more effective and have a larger range. thankfully, after that fight it did as well as the bullet skill.

Bullet: Level 3: Shoot a bullet of mana from the palm dealing 100% magic damage. Ignores 30% of defense. Infuse elements for increased effects. Cast speed: Shoot 3 bullet / sec.

Cost: 1 mana/ shot

Bullet Gatling: Level 2: creates a Gatling gun that auto-targets the beasts with the highest HP. Range: 20 feet. Firing speed: 4 bullets/sec. Cost: 15 mana. Duration: 1 minute. Cooldown: 1 minute. Limit at one time: 1

Those two floors awarded me with another 250 XP, 125 system points, and 62 gold. I even leveled up to 5. I assigned my points to wisdom and intelligence like before. After I finished up, I spoke with my parents on what we should do. I felt like we should and try and continue on and see if we could figure out what this weird energy was and see how much more of an effect this energy was having on the beasts. However, my parents were worried that it would get exponentially worse as we continued up. this was an f-rank dungeon, but at floor 5, I faced E-rank beasts. If it was like this already, what would the boss on the last floor be like? I made a compromise with them. We would continue on until the beasts got close to my CP level or I was hurt even a bit. They also gave me a time limit of 5 minutes for each floor. We had to report to the guild about this as soon as possible, as the longer this energy affected the dungeon, the more dangerous it would be and unsuspecting adventurers would be in a perilous state in here. people needed to be informed and prepared.

i rested until my mana recovered and continued on. The 6th floor, as we suspected was even more difficult. The environment and beasts also changed. this floor was a forest. the beasts were goblins, 3 foot tall green skinned, pointy eared monsters with black beady eyes. They were notorious for their decent speed and low defense but high attack. they were also quite ferocious as they didn't care for their own injuries. they would ignore them and attack an enemy with even more savagery. their CP stood out even more. Normally, they would be between 60 and 70. However, due to this damn energy, it spiked to between 120 and 130, almost twice their normal strength. Their agility was even higher than me. These beasts was also the first to have a higher attack than my defense, so now I had the chance of being hurt. before, since my defense and damage reduction was higher than the opponents attack, I couldn't be hurt. Now, it's possible. On top of that, there were 6 goblins and they were all grouped together, doing really disturbing explicit acts with each other. seeing that made me shudder.

This would have been a much more difficult fight if my skills didn't level up. With those, I could now fire 6 bullets every second. So, in one second, I could cripple all their legs and slow them down immediately. And with the guns new range of 20 feet, I would not have to worry about them getting close as long as the plan went smoothly. I took a deep breath and got started.

Thankfully, the plan went perfectly again. I set up my attacking point perfectly at the 20 foot range and cast Gatling bullet. as soon as it targeted one and fired, I did as well. A second later the goblin's legs were pierced and they fell. By the time they got up and tried getting close, half of them were killed. I finished them the others with ease before they could get within 18 feet. With the CP of them being high, the rewards reflected it.

6 Goblins defeated. Rewards:

+ 375 XP

+ 187 system points

+93 gold

That brought me within 65 XP of levelling up again to 6. I sat down to refill my mana like usual. While doing so I imagined that the next floor would probably be my last. Considering how the energy affected the monsters more and more the higher we went, the CP for the next floor would probably be close to if not 150 or so. The floor after might have CP's of 200 or so, way above where I am now. Even If I level up to 6, I would still be shy of that mark. this realization made me frown in dissatisfaction for a bit and my hunger for more power grew. My parents also frowned, realizing that the problem here was growing more and more. After my mana refilled, I sighed and got up, ready to tackle the last floor for the day. before we continued on, I took a look at my stat panel.

Name: Aug Ulrich

Combat Power: 173

Rank: E-rank

Race: Low Tier 1 Human

Bloodlines: None

Elemental Affinities: All

Class: None

Level: 5 (435/500 XP)

Stat Points: 5

System Points: 527

Stats:

HP: (STA x 2): 34

Mana: (WIS x 2): 40

Strength: 19

Intelligence: 25

Agility: 19

Defense: 11

Wisdom: 20

Stamina: 17

Phy. Att (STR x 2): 38

Mag. Att (INT x 2): 50

Dam. Red. (DEF x 1): 11

Rec. / min

(STA x .1): 1.7 HP / min

(WIS x .1): 2 Mana / min