The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1246: Back To The Dungeon

The next morning, they had three guests for breakfast, all eager to get going for the Dungeon run.

“Is Rae ready?” Tessa asked as she settled into a chair beside Thor.

Karl shook his head. “Not yet. She’s perfecting her bath, and will likely reach the peak of Totem Rank later today. She’s very close, but not quite at the bottleneck, and she’s convinced that it will be better if she pushes the bottleneck a bit before trying to advance.”

Tessa sighed. “That’s a shame, the run would go faster if she was at Mythic Rank.”

Karl nodded. “Well, there’s always another attempt. After all, now that the experiment is public knowledge, every Alliance is going to be trying to find ways to unlock new difficulty levels for every Dungeon.

But that reminds me, has the Overlord Ranked team asked any of you to accompany them on their runs since we returned?”

Tessa nodded. “Yeah, we will all be going with them today. It took some convincing to get Lotus to do something other than argue about cookies with Button, but we put them both down for a nap before the dungeon after lunch.”

Terry, the visiting Blood Knight, chuckled.

It made them both sound like small children, but he had been accosted about the cookies when he first arrived as well. He wasn’t sure if they were sisters or simply kindred spirits, but there was definitely more than a decade between their ages.

That also explained why Lotus was missing breakfast.

She had been up all night eating cookies.

She could dress it up with any sort of excuse that she wanted, but the fact remained that she had definitely eaten enough of the cookies to put her and a small dragon into a sugar coma.

In fact, Karl wouldn’t be shocked if they were both in dragon form right now, sleeping it off. Lotus’ Beast Form was a small green dragon, roughly the same size as Button’s Forest Dragon form.

One day, he would have to find out why she didn’t get a humanoid beast form transformation the way that everyone else did.

She was a cute dragon, though.

In preparation for the trip, Karl formed the Group, with himself as the lead, just in case that made a difference in whether they would be offered the chance to do the higher difficulty again.

There was a large crowd gathered in front of the dungeon entrance when they arrived, including a few that Karl was sure were reporters, taking notes and using a System Skill to record the group entering.

“We’re not exactly subtle.” Mars, their Trollish Shaman, joked.

“Well, we are pretty awesome. Hard to ignore.” Karl agreed.

The Troll chuckled, while Terry rolled his eyes.

“I can see why you are Deve’s friend. That man is pathologically incapable of taking anything seriously.”

Dana giggled, and Karl noticed that many of the young men in the crowd blushed the moment that [Fox Charm] hit them.

“You should have seen him when the dungeon difficulty increased. We’ve got a Chaos Badger on the team, and he’s absolutely sure that the whole thing was a divine cosmic joke, some sort of secret Badger plot to mess with him.”

Mars nodded and stroked his beard with a sage expression on his face.

“Given his history, I agree. It is possible that the Laughing God and the Beast Gods have teamed up to turn his life into their own personal entertainment channel. All it needs is one more badger and a Green Dragon Cleric.”

Karl smiled. “Both of which we have in the Darklight Host. They get along famously with his children.”

A few of the bystanders laughed at Karl’s joke. Deve was somewhat famous in town, thanks to his many outings with the children, and those who had gathered here today were all aware of the basics about the situation and the Alliance.

“Mister Karl, is it true that your group believes they can set a second kill time record in one week?” One of the reporters called.

“These fine gentlemen aren’t from our Alliance, but we have optimized the group for maximum damage, so there is a good chance that we will be able to beat the time that the Alliance group set yesterday.” Karl replied.

At the very least, they wouldn’t have a white dragon hanging out at the back with nothing to do.

The onlookers would naturally assume that the Shaman was their healer, with a side of extra damage to try to increase the total. And that Terry was their tank, as the Blood Knight was an excellent self-healing tank class, with better than average damage output.

From the outside, it looked like they had a reasonable, but damage optimized group.

However, for those who knew, it was obvious that they had simply sent their four best damage dealers with a tank who should be able to keep himself alive.

Karl led the group inside, then prepared to give one last warning about the plan.

That was when the System brought up a new message.

{Group Leader has enabled difficulty settings.}

{Please Choose Difficulty} 1 ⇒ 5

Karl smiled. “Well, gentlemen, how brave are you feeling today? The System says that we get to play on hard mode.”

Tian laughed as he came out to sit on Dana’s shoulder, and Cara exited her space to fly around their heads.

They had ten seconds to choose, or she was picking six again.

“What level did you pick last time?” Terry asked.

“Yes.”

The Blood Knight laughed. “I thought that might be the case. Why don’t we try level three and see how the loot is? If nothing else, it will satisfy the others’ questions about other options.”

Karl nodded and called out his golems, along with the Spectral Knights.

“System, we choose level three.”

{Level three Difficulty chosen. Dungeon timers set to forty-five minutes.}

Totem Ranked Apes appeared all over the Dungeon, and the closest ones began to charge straight for them, having a much larger aggressive range than the standard groups.

“Alright, go time. Tian, look after the Dana Mage. Cara, don’t let Tian fall on the ground. Rae, when you have a moment, there’s plenty more blood here for you.”

The others ignored Karl’s habit of talking to beasts who clearly couldn’t speak to answer him, and prepared to meet the rush.

They only had forty-five minutes to complete the run before the Enrage Timer peaked.