Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 505
Chapter 505: Basement Floor 1 (1)
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
She was running through the cave with her new teammates, facing their backs after she’d used the excuse of watching the rear.
“Mister, please explain. Why are we going to the second floor?”
There was a yawning gap between them, one that prevented her from getting close to them. Still, she could overcome it in a second if she tried. Yeah, she was sure she could.
However.
“Not the second floor. We’re going toward the Goblin Forest.”
Why did she feel like she’d never be able to narrow that gap, even if she spent the rest of her life trying?
I thought for sure it would happen… Over time, things would eventually return to normal…
She decided to not get impatient, but her confidence was starting to fade day by day. What she had just witnessed a little while ago was evidence enough.
“I thought it would be better for you.”
“Yandel, don’t get offended and just hear me out. You are in a very unstable state right now.”
She watched those words convince Bjorn. Yet still, the first thought she had was, I should have been the one to say that.
She had lost.
It had never even occurred to her to say something like that. The answer she gave was simple. She only answered what she figured Bjorn wanted to hear. Yet despite the many years that had passed between them, she wasn’t even sure what “the thing Bjorn wanted to hear” would sound like.
“I’m not sure. I guess killing them… would be better…?”
She hadn’t voiced her own opinion. No, she’d merely looked around the room and gave an answer she thought most of them would agree upon. It had been like this for a long time now. She never questioned Bjorn or advised him on the path he should take. She decided to follow him silently, no matter what he did. That was all she had done.
Amelia Rainwales…
The fundamental difference between them as people was palpable. She looked at Amelia and realized that this was what it meant to be a companion. It wasn’t as if her position in the group had disappeared while she was gone. She always thought she could go back to that position at any moment, but now she realized it wasn’t anything special in the first place.
“…Are you alright?” Amelia slowed down to fall into the back, to talk with her.
“You’ve looked off for a while now.”
However, as she looked up at her, all she could do was respond with clenched teeth. “Don’t mind me. I’m alright.”
It didn’t matter whether or not her position was still open. Nor did it matter if he recognized her or not.
“If you don’t, Bjorn Yandel will die.”
Because there was something more important that she had to do here.
***
About an hour after day three began, the entire cave began to shake as the crystals glowed red. That meant that the Lord of Terror, Dreadfear, had been summoned somewhere, likely the result of one of the eight subjugation requests that had already been submitted to the Adventurers’ Guild. The issue was the amount of time it took for it to summon.
It takes an hour for it to summon. Just how many people are waiting for it?
None of that mattered to us since our goal was different. Still, the eight teams who had received a subjugation permit were thinking along the same lines. In fact, it was safe to say that most adventurers had considered the very same possibility.
What would happen if they defeated the Lord of Terror, Dreadfear?
When planning our expedition this time, I also considered whether a key to the hidden area might appear if we defeated him again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t apply since the application spots were already filled.
However, if the Lord of the Abyss, Berzak, was the key, then there was nothing we could do about it right now.
…If they have a brain, they won’t summon Berzak, right?
That was what I assumed, but I still didn’t feel all that reassured. Just looking around, there were dozens of teams all over the Crystal Cave, not just the eight teams who had applied for a subjugation permit. If even just one of those extra teams got overly greedy, a catastrophe would occur.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll just focus on my own job.
It wasn’t like I could persuade every adventurer around the cave not to get greedy and summon Berzak. In the end, I decided we would just run as fast as we could to get out.
[You have entered the Goblin Forest on the second floor.]
We quickly made our way to the second floor and then the third floor. Since we were running as fast as we could, we were able to do it all before the third day finished.
[You have entered the Pilgrim’s Path on the third floor.]
It was a massive floor with over ten different areas. After making our way through the Goblin Forest, we made our way past the Greentail Marsh where the lizardmen appeared.
Finally, we arrived at the nearby area of the Sculpture Temple. The area was full of rubble from collapsed stone buildings. It looked similar to the Panthelion Ruins on the seventh floor’s Dark Continent, but there were also some differences here and there. One of which was that this place was full of sculptures, though they were all broken from the neck up.
“I get a bad feeling every time I come here.”
“At least no one ever comes here.”
The Sculpture Temple was the most unpopular area on the third floor by an overwhelming margin. First off, there was only one type of monster that appeared here.
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
Unnamed sculptures were rank 7 monsters that looked similar to the Stone Golem.
The main difference was that it was much smaller in size, more like a regular person, and somewhat agile.
[The Unnamed Sculpture has cast Unanswered Prayer.]
Their skill was famous for being absolute trash. When a player used it, it consumed an insane amount of MP and failed pretty much every single time, not doing a thing. That said, when these guys used it, there was a much higher chance of success.
[The Unnamed Sculpture is imbued with great power.]
If the prayer succeeded, a random essence of rank 5 or lower would be temporarily granted. Because of that, fighting them was abnormally difficult for a rank 7 monster. Well, it was more tricky than it was difficult. There were numerous variables to take into account since predicting what type of skills they would get was impossible. Because of that, no adventurer ever chose to hunt or pass by here.
Why would they when even the essence drop was trash? If your goal was to take the exp from them, you could just kill one that was roaming the outskirts and pass the area entirely.
What’s more, this area is out of the way.
If you wanted to go to the fourth floor, it was much easier to go down another route. This area was completely out of the way, to the point that most adventurers never even saw it.
The item drops aren’t that bad, though…
The main advantage of this place lay in the items that were dropped. If you used distortion magic, you were sometimes able to pick up a magic power crystal, which could be sold for a hefty price. Even then, it was more efficient to dig for them on the fifth floor. Hence, no one ever came here.
Either way, the reason we were here was for another item that had a chance of dropping.
“Everyone, let’s move quickly.”
Feeling short on time, I ordered everyone to go hunting.
[Versyl Gowland has cast rank 6 spacetime magic High-Rank Distortion.]
[Versyl Gowland has cast rank 6 spacetime magic High-Rank Distortion.]
[Versyl Gowland has cast rank 6 spacetime magic High-Rank Distortion.]
Since we had more than enough combat power on our team, I had our wizard focus on using distortion magic to grab the items.
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
[You have defeated an…]
I smashed every sculpture I saw to pieces. Since that was still taking too long, I ordered some members of the team to attract the attention of the monsters so they would gather in one place.
“Behell—aaaaaaaaah!”
Unlike humans, raising your threat level would make monsters run at you in a frenzy. Using that to our advantage, we were able to gather them in one area to defeat them quickly. Then we had Versyl cast distortion magic to grab the items.
When they were respawning again, we would run far away to aggro them and corral them to one specific area once more. Divvying our team up that way allowed us to swiftly defeat countless monsters.
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
[You have defeated an Unnamed Sculpture.]
[You have defeated an…]
We continued to hunt with single-minded focus without any breaks for a while. Only after we had collected six magic power crystals were we able to finally find what we came for.
“Bjooorn! Is this what you’re looking for?!”
Ainar held up a small piece of rubble with a unique pattern on it.
[You have acquired an unnamed fragment.]
It was the pattern of the sun.
Unnamed Fragment was an item that had a certain probability of dropping when casting distortion magic on Unnamed Sculptures. It was unique in that you couldn’t have more than one in your inventory, and they randomly dropped one of three patterns. It was also impossible to get back to the city.
Since we found the sun, all that’s left is the moon and star.
I always had a feeling there was some secret behind it, which is why I tried everything I could think of. To think that, finally, I had found what they were used for.
“Is this what you were searching out, Mr. Yandel?”
“That makes sense? They drop with a sun, star, and moon pattern.”
I hesitated before saying, “I can’t say for sure, but that seems likely. Time is tight, but we might just make it.”
Coming to the third floor, defeating the monsters to drop these three specific items, and then making your way down to the first floor before it closed-the requirements were pretty difficult to achieve but not impossible. In our case, we were cutting it close since we wasted more than two days on the first floor. We would have had a better chance if we had run straight to the third floor from the start.
“I think we’ll be able to do it next time,” Versyl offered in consolation.
I had to admit that it was going to be too difficult to make it to the hidden area this time. It took eight hours alone for just one of these unnamed fragments to drop while using Distortion.
If we want to find the other two, it’s going to take sixteen hours.
Simple math made it clear that we would run out of time, and that was also under the assumption that the other ones that dropped didn’t have the same pattern. Still, how were we supposed to speed up the rate at which we hunted? Even when we were going all out, running around the entire area aggroing every monster we saw, it still took eight hours.
But more than that, at this rate, Versyl will run out of MP and won’t be able to use Distortion.
Damn, was it too much to do this time? I thought it might be possible if we tried, but it seemed I was banking on a hope that—
“Oh! Bjorn! Another one!”
Huh?
I blinked down at the stone Ainar placed in my hand, completely dumbfounded.
[You have acquired an unnamed fragment.]
It had a star pattern. In other words, we had eight hours to find the last moon pattern piece.
What? How did Ainar randomly find this?
Ainar had Beginner’s Luck, yes, but that shouldn’t affect the drop rate. Whatever the case, it was best to take advantage of her unexplainable luck while we could.
“Change of plans,” I called out. “From now on, Ainar will be in charge of defeating the monsters. Everyone else’s job is to run around and aggro them for her.”
Even if it wasn’t as efficient as before, I decided to leave Ainar in charge of defeating all the monsters. It happened roughly five hours later.
[You have acquired an unnamed fragment.]
“A moon pattern…”
It was time to admit it. “Ainar.”
“You can compliment me as much as you want!” she preened.
“You’re right! Barbarians are the superior race!”
“Woooooo!”
Instead of stopping Ainar from being noisy, I cast Giantization and threw her high in the air.
“Ahahahaha!” As expected, Ainar was happier than ever.
Thud!
Alright, that was enough playing around. I quickly went back to leading the team back down.
Day five, day six, day seven…
Going back down to the bottom floors was even harder than climbing through them. However, thanks to Ainar, we had extra time to camp, rest, and regain our physical strength. We were able to arrive on the afternoon of the seventh day in the middle of the Goblin Forest on the second floor. There, we stepped up to the empty space around the portal that led to the first floor’s Crystal Cave. It was also the same place where we once fought a fierce battle with Noark, who had been blocking the entrance.
“…What is this?”
However, now, the place was abuzz with adventurers I didn’t recognize. There looked to be well over a hundred of them, and judging by their appearances, they didn’t seem like adventurers who had given up and were heading back to the first floor to catch when the labyrinth closed. If that were the case, they wouldn’t just be standing in front of the portal. They also didn’t look like adventurers who had just made their way through the first floor and came out of the Crystal Cave.
“Priest! Is there a priest?! Please help!”
“Let’s drink!”
What the hell was going on? As soon as I approached the portal, countless adventurers recognized me as they began to whisper to each other.
“Bjorn Yandel…?”
“Wasn’t he on the first floor?”
The adventurers seemed confused to see me coming from the other end and not from the portal. I sighed. I wanted to secretly go back down to the first floor, instead of gathering attention like this. Since we wouldn’t be able to make our way back down secretly like this, I called on an adventurer who looked rather talkative to explain things.
“Hey! What’s going on?”
He quickly responded, “Berzak! That devilish bastard has appeared!”
Hah, I figured something like this might happen.
No wonder we were so lucky.