~ Chapter 27: My first Emperor Rank Skill! ~

[Illsyore’s point of view]

Not long after Dankyun was guided to the dormitory by Tuberculus, his small army of loyal soldiers began to set up their temporary camp. They confiscated the small garden behind the main building and took it upon themselves to keep any nosy students from interfering with them.

Two groups were already formed with the sole mission of finding any trace of the royal princess inside the academy’s campus. I was told to let them inside any room they pleased, however, I had no intention of letting them step inside mine. I removed the front door and raised an Inconel wall in its stead. It made it bothersome to invite people over, but until I made a safe door, it had to do.

While the soldiers were getting settled in, the other teachers took it upon themselves to inform the curious and worried students of what was happening. Nanya was part of the group who watched over the soldiers. It was only her and Paladinus, but they were more than enough to handle the bunch. I highly doubted any of them could cause trouble for the duo of experienced dungeon explorers and high ranked adventurers.

As for me, I realized I may have left Shanteya to hunt for too long. I immediately rushed over there as soon as Nanya assured me that she will keep a close watch over my crystal body. As I flew over the tips of the trees in the forest, I pondered whether or not keeping Shanteya hidden as well was a good move. With her all the way in the forest, hunting for dangerous monsters to help me level up and stack on some decent parts, none of the soldiers and probably Dankyun himself noticed her. This also meant that she could be considered our trump card, after all, my [Bond of Trust] offered her some decent stats, higher than those seen in a Master Rank adventurer.

If Shanteya kept hunting like that for me, our levels could steadily grow and reach a suitable peak where I could acquire the battle power I needed to maybe stand up to Dankyun and his gang of bullies, however, I had the feeling she might end up exterminating all the monster species within a 30 km radius before we reached that point. This was only because the leveling went extremely slow like this, and it got even harder as I leveled up each time. It was exactly like in a game: going from 1 to 60 was a snap, but once you got past it, things got a bit complicated. Or maybe, it all depended on the sort of monsters I hunted down and the deeds I accomplished. It was certainly something worth researching in the future.

When I met my lovely el’doraw slave, she was in the middle of a battle with an Urkin, the beast wasn’t attacking her but running away from her. The maid with big breasts and long ears was catching up fast from behind. With a single jump and a powerful punch, she silenced the beast for good by shattering its spine. It tumbled downed on the ground, rolling over two times before it came to a motionless stop.

Shanteya let out a sigh of relief and approached the body. I flew closer to her and announced my presence through a simple: “Hello!”

“Ah! Good evening, Master!” she replied with a soft smile, looking back towards my general direction.

“I’m sorry I’m late. You seem to be handling yourself pretty well…” I told her.

“Thank you, Master.” she made a soft bow with her head “I’ve hunted all the beasts I could find as per instructed, but…” she stopped and then looked up at me with a bit of worry in her eyes. “Is everything alright, Master? I felt the dark fog spreading throughout the forest… That’s the sign of you releasing your killing intent, isn’t it?” she then looked down at her feet.

I blinked surprised when I heard her. I didn’t think it reached all the way here, but then again, all of this territory was quite literally part of me. The fact that the black fog manifested itself here as well shouldn’t have been unexpected.

Letting out a sigh, I nodded once even though she couldn’t see me.

“Yes, that’s true. Dankyun, the Supreme Ayuseya was engaged with, arrived at the academy.” I explained.

“To force the usual gentle and kind Master to release his killing intent means that something bad must have happened, right?” she asked without removing the worried look in her eyes.

“Yes, he tried to act a bit violent, but Nanya calmed him down. I don’t know, but there’s something off about that man.” I replied.

“Off?” she tilted her head to the left when she asked that.

“Yes… It’s like… how should I say this, he’s up to no good, he’s evil.” I tried to explain myself, but it was hard to put the finger on what exactly I was feeling, seeing as how his sword forced some rather exaggerated negative emotions in regard to him.

“Should I kill him?” asked Shanteya bluntly.

“Yes… No, I mean no! That would only cause more trouble, but can you even kill him? I mean, he is a Supreme, after all.” I asked a bit curious.

“I don’t know if it would work, but if I manage to slip inside his Magic Armor, I can poison or even kill him.” she explained.

“How do you plan on doing that?” I asked squinting my eyes at her.

“I would use my body to lure him in a bed and while he…”

There was no need to hear the rest.

“NO! That’s a definite no! I’m not letting that filthy man touch you and don’t even think about doing something like that behind my back! To know that you let yourself be touched by that scum, even if it was for me, it’s too much! NO! I won’t allow it!” I said shaking my head.

Shanteya merely showed me a gentle smile and nodded.

“Then I won’t, Master.”

“Good… I don’t even want to think about using either Nanya's body or yours to get to him! Anyway, I noticed there were two scouts he sent away from his main group. I lost track of them at one point, but keep an eye out for them. Don’t let yourself be seen.” I warned her.

“I will, Master. The two might be Thieves, Rogues, or Assassins. The skill they used is called [Dungeon Blindness]. It causes a dungeon to lose track of them or their group while on its territory. However, it only blinds the territory life detection sense. It doesn’t make them invisible.” she explained.

“I didn’t think there was a skill like that. It should be quite handy for adventurers, right?” I asked.

“Indeed. Many employ the skills of one who can use it in order sneak inside dungeons or get past the first levels. If the dungeon doesn’t sense them, the traps usually don’t activate.” she explained.

“Huh? But I made mine to react when an adventurer pushes a button, pulls a lever, or steps on a trigger trap.”

“As expected of Master!” she showed me a proud smile “Most traps are triggered directly by the Dungeon Core because it allows them to take adventurers by surprise, but they are usually identified by the thickness of the black fog in the area. Triggered ones can be a bit deadlier because you may not realize when you found one until it’s too late, but a skilled trapologist can usually deactivate them.” she explained.

“Still, if that’s so, why didn’t you use the skill back then, when you reached the academy?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. It seemed like a logical move to me.

“The ones who were supposed to hide us from you were killed on the way here. Besides, we never expected you to be that strong, especially since your level was shown to be 1.”

“Well, guess I was lucky, and I learned something new. Speaking of which, something bothers me… I never actually felt like creating a locked room for my core. I always feel the need to make some sort of path leading up to me. Meanwhile, feel free to lead the way to your monster pile.” I said.

“Of course, Master!” she made a small bow, and after I absorbed the Urkin, I followed her through the forest. “Unfortunately, I don’t know the reason why you feel that way, Master. What I know is that all Dungeons, without exception, have a path leading to their Core. While dungeon crystals are quite valuable for some people, in general it’s useless to most practical applications. The only reason adventurers destroy the core is if it grows to the point where it’s too dangerous. Once that happens, the core’s remains are tossed away and the dungeon stripped of anything valuable or worth carrying such as metals or marble.” she explained.

“In other words, metal walls are a sign of a profitable dungeon, right?” I asked.

“Indeed.” she nodded.

“I guess I just made myself a target…” I groaned.

“You need not worry, Master. I’ll protect you! Besides, metal walls also mean a highly dangerous dungeon. Few will dare venture into one.” she said with a smile.

I was happy with her declaration, but I really didn’t want to hide behind Shanteya when I was to face Dankyun.

Once we reached the monster pile, I absorbed all of it and left Shanteya to keep hunting until the sun went down.

“If you need anything, just erm… move towards the academy?” I told her.

“I understand.” she smiled and then ran off into the forest.

After returning to the school, I began to remodel the underground structure. I started by creating a tunnel leading all the way to the edge of my territory. It was quite time and energy consuming to absorb all the materials for a 16 km distance, but despite trying my best, I wasn’t able to finish it, and one part even collapsed because I forgot to reinforce the walls. Enchanting didn’t work unless I actually created those walls.

Total distance I achieved when the sun went down: 2.6 km. Rebuilt tunnel length: 1.8 km.

A normal human might have needed a few months or even years to achieve this.

Once I picked up Shanteya, I retreated in the safety of my Inner Mind and went to sleep. I didn’t call Ayuseya this time because of what happened earlier that day. I thought that maybe she needed some time to think about what I said.

The following day, I released Shanteya at around 6:00 AM in the morning, and she immediately sneaked out into the forest. I had to make a small, temporary hole in the wall to let her slip through and then repair it. As bothersome as it was, I had to keep my guard up about many things, including possible assassins sent over by Dankyun, however, I had a feeling my Divine Auras would make quick work of them.

While Shanteya was out hunting, I made a quick list about the things I wanted to do that day: 1) continue the escape tunnel for the students; 2) upgrade my room’s defenses; 3) build another floor in my dungeon where my escape tunnel led to; 4) spend some skill points at the end of the day.

The first thing was the easiest job to do. I only had to do a copy-paste of a section of that tunnel. Absorb the ground in perfect squares, replace walls with [Make a Room], enchant walls with High Endurance. I did this until the clock struck noon. After that, I headed up to my room and started to plan what I wanted to add or change.

I made a safe door with a locking mechanism which could be activated only from the inside. Just in case, I also made it so that it only worked when I added a certain gear inside the whole locking mechanism. It was supposed to be a temporary key just in case someone else had [Telekinezy]. I covered the door in the strongest endurance enchantments I had and masked the exit with a simple 1 cm thick normal wall. This way, all I had to do was unlock the safe door and destroy just a bit, meaning less energy to spend.

After that, I added some electric Power Crystals to charge up the floor and walls, after all, the Inconel super-alloy had a rather high electric conductibility. This small trap together with the AGLMC lasers guaranteed a very low chance of anything coming close to my room and survive, but it still felt like it wasn’t enough, but then again, I had a rather limited space to begin with.

Unfortunately, there was no way for me to test everything out, but I prayed I would never need to do so in the first place. If Dankyun simply left the Academy’s ground like it was nothing, that would have been great! Unfortunately, real life tended to give me a slap over the face whenever I thought things were going smoothly for me.

A small incident happened before I headed off to my dungeon to build the fourth floor. While I was flying up above the trees, I saw four soldiers surrounding a twenty years-old human woman at the edge of the forest. She was a noble wearing a long, brown frilled dress, with long brown hair and green eyes. Holding a big book with a worn-out leather cover, she tried to look brave and oppose the four. Still, I didn’t need any extra explanation to make me understand the grave danger she was in.

“Please stand aside and let me leave! If the teachers hear about your rude behavior towards me, they…” she tried to oppose them.

“They will what?” one asked with a big smirk on his lips.

I feel like I’m watching a cliché 'girl getting ganged up by bullies' scene. I thought as I was scrolling around through the not-so-deadly list of traps.

“M-My f-father is a v-very powerful man! H-he…” she gulped and tightened her grip on the book.

“He will what? Our master is Dankyun, a Supreme! You think he can do anything against him?” another spoke, but unlike them, his accent was really bad, showing that he didn’t know human language all that well.

“Indeed, the girl’s father might not, but there’s nothing stopping me.” I said and used my absorption ability to make a big square hole, 4 meters deep, right under their feet. I then placed a gas trap inside and covered the top of the hole with a metal lid.

“Huh?” the men didn’t even have time to react. They all dropped like rocks at the bottom of the hole.

The gas trap activated immediately, and they all went to bed in a matter of seconds. The sleeping gas was extremely potent, and I was lucky their Magic Armor wasn’t strong enough to repel the gas.

“Go to Nanya, now!” I told the woman.

She nodded once and dashed off to get her teacher.

When I opened the lid. All four soldiers were deep asleep. Using [Telekinezy], I pulled them out and hung them by their belts in the nearby tree. The hole and trap were made to vanish as though they were never there to begin with.

Seeing Nanya in the far, I made myself scarce and left her to handle the hanging trash. I knew it was bad to litter, but I had to make an exception just this once. Before I left for my dungeon, I did look around the perimeter of the academy to make sure no such other unfortunate incidents were taking place. Most of the soldiers were resting in their camps, and Dankyun was having tea in his room. Two other groups of soldiers were looking around the place, trying to find a clue to Ayuseya’s hiding hole.

“Looks clear…” I told myself as I scouted the whole scenery with my gaze from far above in the sky.

Satisfied, I flew off to my dungeon. I was bent on creating the fourth floor today. Regarding as to how I was going to make it. I was thinking of using lots of traps, but also to install some AGLMC Lasers I could control remotely. If I or Nanya could activate them remotely just with our will, then we had the perfect way to snipe the adventurers right in the back when they least expected it. Of course, I wanted to spare myself of useless work, so I usually aimed for creating something automatic, but until I discovered how to build it, manual control had to suffice.

This floor wasn’t supposed to be mind numbing crazy difficult in regard to its complexity, just very very deadly. What I had in mind for it were lava traps, pit falls with spikes, pressure walls, rolling spiked metal spheres, electric traps, poison traps, lasers, timed platforms, and all of them enchanted to make them even more dangerous.

Without beating around the bush, I wanted to make this dungeon floor be my trump card, just in case I had to fight against Dankyun. With it, I wanted to weaken his magic armor and maybe even manage to shatter it completely. If I could do something like that, then defeating him was only a matter of disarming him and injuring him to the point where he gave up.

The idea sounded good in my head, but I knew there was a high chance I was mistaken about my dungeon’s ability and my own strength. I had to think of the worst-case scenario as well: that he would reach my core’s room. Therefore, if that was the final arena for our battle, it had to be VERY deadly. I had to build stronger AGLMC lasers. I had to make it electrified. I had to make ways to protect myself and allow myself the freedom to launch my most powerful abilities at him.

I had my work cut out for me, and it was insane. With a heavy sigh, I descended to the last part of the third floor and went down on the exit shaft. Just like always, I created first a giant empty room of the floor where all the walls and traps were supposed to be laid out in perfect order.

Easier said than done. For safety’s sake, I also added some support beams to the plan. I really didn't want all of my previously built floors to crumble down on top of my head just like that.

Looking back at the second floor, this one was a bit bigger than it and ended with a big circular room of a 50 meters diameter. It was really huge, but all of that space was going to be used to make a complicated maze of traps and all sorts of deadly things. Unfortunately, there was no room for monsters in it. Even so, I wasn’t able to create monsters stronger than what a Master could handle on his own. My opponent would probably be a Supreme, so pesky imps who fell in love with boots could only get me so far.

I spent a few hours on the maze, managing to finish about 25% of it, give or take a few walls. The most time-consuming part was drawing the map for the whole thing, then the countless traps I laid all over the place.

Once I was done, it was time for me to head back to the academy. I was to finish it after I had a bit of rest. There were also the things the students and maybe the soldiers may have broken during the day. I had to fix those as well.

“Ugh… I hope no one decided to blow up a hole in the wall again…” I groaned.

After a quick check, I sighed in relief and praised my luck no one decided to make a mess of the place.

It was then when I remembered that I had left Shanteya in the woods, and I forgot to go and collect the many things she hunted throughout the day.

“Crud…” I immediately flew that way.

Sometime later, I found myself in front of a big pile of monsters. There were barely any left in the area. She hunted so much, I feared she may have exterminated all of them. As for the lovely maid, she was still hunting a couple of Dayuks. I absorbed the stockpiled bodies and then went after her.

After she made her kill, I approached her and said “Hey there! Hope you aren’t upset I made you wait for so long?” I asked with an awkward smile.

“Oh! Master! Good evening! Why would I be upset? I did as you told me. I hunted all the monsters I could find and piled them up together this entire~ day, from the break of dawn ’till now.” she replied with a smile as she wiped the blood off of her hands.

“Mhm… yeah. Again, sorry! I’ll absorb these monsters and then you?” I put it more as a question.

She replied with a small nod.

I did as said and then flew back to the academy. On the way, I did take a quick peak at my current level.

[Level]: 72

[Strength]: 200+1000

[Agility]: 150+1000

[Intelligence]: 225+1000

[Magic Energy]: 8120

[Magic Energy Regeneration]: 30 Magic Energy Points per Second

[Available points]: 155

[Available skill points]: 180

Well, this is great! I told myself and then I went back to the skill I wasn’t able to upgrade before.

After a simple command I decided to upgrade [Seeker Fireball X18], and the following message popped up in front of me:

[Select skills to fuse: [Skill 1] & [Skill 2]]

It was then when I realized that in order to create an Emperor Rank skill, I was required to have one skill of any Rank at Improvement level 5 and a Master Skill of Improvement level 5.

Now it makes sense why Nanya described an Emperor Rank skill that sounded like a combination of [Fireball] and [Ice Spear]. I thought as I looked at the message.

I suspected this from the moment I saw the message regarding the requirements for the next Upgrade. The upgraded [Fireball] skill to Master Rank and what Nanya described didn’t match at all. In other words, I can make an incredible amount of Emperor Rank skills by fusing them together, but wasting so many skill points didn’t sound too exciting to me.

I chose the only two skills I had at Improvement level 5: [Explosive Jagged Ice Spear X4] and [Seeker Fireball X18]. The result cost me 150 points and the skill I obtained was the following:

[Infernal Glacier X10] <Creates 10 spears of ice with jagged tips covered entirely in liquid fire. The core of the spear is 100 degrees below water freezing point. The liquid fire is over 3000 degrees above water freezing point. Upon impact, the liquid fire spreads and sticks to the target, while the jagged tip of the ice spear detonates inside. Cost: 200 Magic Energy Points>

I gulped when I read the description. It sounded quite dangerous and honestly speaking, I couldn’t wait to test it out.

Curious about it, I chose the option to upgrade this one as well, just to see what the requirements were.

[[Infernal Glacier X10] cannot be upgraded further in Crystal Core Form.]

Huh? Then… What if I were to ask… I thought and with a gulp, I looked at the last part of the message.

“Upgrade Crystal Core Form.” I said.

Nothing happened.

“Improve Crystal Core Form.” I tried again, but with the same result.

“Make a New Body.”

[Error 404]

SERIOUSLY?! I screamed in my mind.

I let out a long sigh and decided to simply relax and enjoy the fact that I acquired an Emperor Rank Skill. Tomorrow was testing time for it.

That night, I fell asleep with a pleased smile on my lips. If it was because of Shanteya’s bosom or the new skill I obtained, I didn’t know, but the following day, I was planning on continuing gaining levels and maybe debate with Nanya and Tuberculus about how I could gain a new body.