Tomb of Vengeful Souls

At the present time, Yuna and Fang were standing in front of what looked to be a statue of sorts, one sculpted rather beautifully and with obvious signs of masterful craftsmanship. Both the statue and the base it stood upon were all made using stone.

The statue itself appeared to be that of an armoured individual, and since it was made of stone, there were some very obvious cracks no doubt formed over time. The person's head was also completely concerned with a four-horned helmet.

To give it a more remarkable appearance, the statue was standing tall and resting their hands on the handle of the sword they had firmly stuck into the ground in front of them. Fang had to admit, whoever made this statue knew what they were doing.

"In honour of King Karnus, the most powerful knight king of this land..." Yuna read aloud as she looked at the carved-out words at the base of the statue. "Looks like we have NewWorld Online's variation of King Arthur."

"Seems like it. Knight King, huh?" Fang muttered with interest as he held his chin. "Looks like a really cool statue, people that lived here must have really respected him to build such a grand statue in honour of his death."

"That or he was a tyrant and forced people to respect him." Yuna added as Fang just gave a shrug, that was certainly a possibility as well. "In any case, hurry and put that gem or whatever it is on the torch stand!"

"Right, right."

Taking out the ball from his inventory, Fang walked over to one of the tall black metal torch stands alongside the statue. There was another on the opposite side of the one he walked to, already with a ball the exact as the one he had gotten from the grave.

After inspecting the torch for a moment, Fang eventually figured out its mechanism before inserting the orb through a gap just big enough for it to fit through. As soon as he did, Fang stepped back next to Yuna as they watched a scene unfold.

As soon as the orb was inserted, both torches seemed to light up with a crimson fire that burned brightly at the once-previously dead tops of the torches. Then followed a number of red lights that began to emit from the statue itself.

The eyes beneath the visor of the helmet began glowing a deep crimson, and finally came the base that the statue stood upon. The space separating it from the ground along the edges also began to shine a red light before a slight shaking was felt by both of them.

Both of them watched as the statue began to move, more specifically, the entire statue was soon moved out of the way by some strange means. After having done so, it revealed a large dark staircase leading deep underground to who knows where.

"A mysterious object opens up a path leading to some sketchy dark tunnel leading underground... fantastic." Yuna deadpanned as she looked down at the staircase. "Though, that does at least mean that there could be some good stuff down there."

"And we're the first to discover it, so everything we find is ours."

"...That's because no one else was willing to become a graverobber."

"Shut thy mouth. Let us proceed."

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

The interior of the underground labyrinth was honestly what both of them expected it to be, made entirely of decaying stones bricks and such. As for the enemies, they were all skeletons, but not the usual skeletons they fought before.

Unlike the ones up on the surface, the skeletons down here each seemed to have a constant red aura coming off of them. They were definitely stronger than the ones up above, but not enough that it proved too much for them to handle.

As the two of them continued their way through the labyrinth, they took down any monsters that they happened to find along the way. Along the way, they even managed to learn a few new skills as well.

Fang reached level 20 while Yuna had just reached 19.

Looking at the group of monsters ahead of them, Yuna immediately raised her bow before rapidly firing a total of ten arrows one after the other. Two arrows struck one skeleton each, the first arrows making the skeletons stumble before the second ones flew right through their skulls, effectively 'killing' them.

"You want the last three, Fang?" Yuna nonchalantly offered when she glanced to the side, though she was confused when Fang was no longer beside her. Looking back forward, her eyes showed a look of understanding. "Oh, never mind."

Yuna took notice of the swirling patch of shadow that appeared on the ground behind the remaining three skeletons. Soon enough, she watched as Fang slowly rose up from the ground with his daggers already prepared to swing.

With a single swing of each dagger, Fang sliced apart the skulls of all three skeletons as they dropped to the ground before disappearing into particles. Yuna then walked over with her bow now resting on her shoulder.

"Seriously, that Shadow Dweller skill is a bit broken, no?"

"Depends." Fang shrugged after hearing her words. "Since this place is pretty much covered in one big shadow, I can just stay inside of them and pretty much skip any fight. Then again, it does have a limit of thirty seconds before needing to cool down."

"True that." Yuna nodded after hearing that. "Well, let's not waste time. We should be getting close to the end of this place by now."

With that, they both quickly got back to running as they continued down the long hallways. This entire place seemed to be made up of hallways, there weren't even some built-in rooms along the walls or anything, at least from what they've seen.

After some time, they eventually found themselves running into a rather large room. Looking around, they could see that there were multiple pillars as well as platforms that seemed to be floating due to some form of magic.

"If this ain't a boss room, I don't know what is." Yuna commented as she already got her bow ready, the same being for Fang as he already unsheathed his daggers. "Considering what we've faced up until now, it definitely has to do with spirits."

"Probably, yeah."

As if on cue, they both watched as blue and green floating fiery wisps along with lanterns seemed to flicker into existence. The wisps and lanterns appeared in all kinds of spots in the air, though the most eye-catching were the wisps that were slowly gathering together high in the air.

As the gathering wisps began to condense, they watched as a figure formed floating in the air. Its upper body was humanoid while the bottom half was like your typical ghost in movies, and its body seemed to be made entirely out of the same fiery wisps currently surrounding them.

Aside from its fiery appearance, the monster also had sections of black metallic armour. Two large gauntlets, a cross-shaped plate at the chest, and a horned helmet with a black X-shaped visor where two glowing eyes could be seen shining through.

"Think that's the boss?" Yuna asked sarcastically. "Something tells me it uses fire, not sure what though."

"Well, unless you want to get burnt to a crisp. We better move, it's attacking."

With that, both of them quickly jumped to opposite sides as a blast of blue and green fire exploded where they stood previously. Fang quickly began charging forwards while Yuna began firing arrows up towards the boss.

As Fang was charging in, his body suddenly transformed into purple and black shadows that quickly scaled up the pillars. Appearing on top of one of them, Fang leapt up to one of the floating platforms before continuing to do so as the distance began to close between him and the boss.

"Watch out, Fang!"

"I know!"

Fang saw the incoming ball of fire, and to avoid it, his body once again changed into shadows as he began jumping from platform to platform even faster. This was one of the effects of his skill called [Shadow Strider II].

For every five seconds that he was in this shadowy state, his speed would increase by 5% for thirty seconds, or until he is hit. The maximum amount his speed could increase right now was 100%, the downside is that there's a ten-second duration and cool down for the skill.

"My arrows aren't working!

"Let me give it a try!" Fang did notice how Yuna's arrows all flew straight through the boss, doing no damage whatsoever. After avoiding the attacks for a bit, he finally reached where the boss was. "Here we go!"

〖Sonic Slash〗

One of Fang's daggers gave off a bright glow before his body suddenly lunged forward with incredible speed, and the swing he performed with his glowing dagger left behind an arc of light that slowly disappeared soon after.

Unfortunately, even though he hit the boss straight on, it didn't seem to do any visible damage. In fact, he had even slashed against the armour it had on, yet that too seemed to have his slash phase right through.

After landing on another pillar a few meters below, Fang had to quickly use [Shadow Strider II] to turn himself into shadows as he avoided a powerful blast of flames that was aimed directly at him. Soon enough, he arrived back down next to Yuna.

"Okay, this won't be easy..."

"No damn." Yuna responded dryly as they saw the boss looking down at them as fire once again began to gather around it. "So, any bright ideas? Cause I'm honestly up for any kind of suggestions right now."

"Well, physical attacks obviously don't work." Fang frowned as he narrowed his eyes up at the boss. "Or perhaps that's how it is normally. Not sure if you noticed, but those lanterns around us keep appearing and disappearing. Almost as if taunting us like a damn power-up, bunch of sons of bitches. Get what I'm saying?"

"So... if we attack those lanterns, we may get something to help us actually fight it? How certain are we of this exactly?"

"Not at all." Fang replied with a blank look while Yuna deadpanned as she turned her face to look at him. "However, if it does actually benefit us in this fight, then it'll be great for us 'cause we can't do jack right now against it. I mean, maybe magic could work, but neither of us have any magic-attacking skills."

"So, it's a gamble? Well, guess we have no choice." Yuna seemed to accept their situation as she then continued. "Well, if it doesn't work, we're screwed. If it does something, we may not be screwed... or it could help us but we'd be screwed regardless."

"Pretty much. By the way... dodge!"

Fang shouted as they both quickly avoided a powerful blast of fire, to which Fang then charged forwards like at the start of the fight. Quickly using [Shadow Strider II], Fang rapidly made his way back up the pillars and to the platforms once more.

"Yuna, I've got it distracted, try and attack it!"

"I hear ya!"

Aiming her shot, Yuna cleanly hit one of the floating lanterns as a glowing green aura immediately surrounded her soon after. Ignoring it for now, Yuna quickly shot another arrow towards the boss, but unlike last time, the arrow actually caused it to flinch back after hitting its arm.

However, Fang and Yuna soon noticed the flames that were coating the arrow after being shot were now being absorbed into the boss. It didn't take long for it to do so as they soon noticed its health replenishing back to full.

"It heals?" Yuna voiced in a dead tone. "This is crap!"

"Maybe so, but it should have a limit!" He doubted that the healing wouldn't have some form of limit, otherwise, it really would be far too ridiculous. After hitting one of the lanterns himself, Fang charged toward the boss. "And... strike!"

Just like with Yuna's attack, Fang's slash did properly hit this time. After landing back onto one of the other platforms, Fang looked up to see the flames from his attack being absorbed into the boss, which of course then allowed it to heal some health, although not to full.

However, since Fang had slashed with both daggers, the boss absorbed twice as many flames as he did when Yuna attacked, which then allowed that second dose of fire to be absorbed, bringing the boss to full health.

"I see..." Fang muttered to himself as he began hopping across the platforms. "Hey, Yuna! I think the flames only heal a certain amount for each individual hit! If that's true, then we'll need to dish out more damage if we want to kill it!"

"In other words, hit more than it can heal, huh?" Yuna seemed to understand what Fang was saying as she glanced between each of the floating lanterns. "Then I'll leave dealing the actual damage to you! I'll try and keep it stunned for as long as I can!"

"I'll leave it to you!"

With how the aura around the both of them had long since disappeared, that was more than enough to tell them both that the effects of destroying one of the lanterns were only temporary. Meaning, they had to keep destroying them to deal damage.

With this in mind, Yuna destroyed a lantern every now and then and hit the boss with as many shots as she could. Even though she couldn't deal enough damage on her own, the attacks still hit, so each successful shot stunned the boss for a very short time.

As Yuna was keeping the boss distracted, Fang circled up behind the boss before destroying one of the nearby lanterns. Before attacking the boss, Fang's body suddenly began to give off a red aura together with the one from destroying the lanterns.

After hitting the boss from behind, Fang landed back onto the platforms, wasting no time as he quickly began using [Shadow Strider II] as often as he could to destroy more of the lanterns before delivering two powerful strikes with his daggers.

This process continued for a good while, and the dense red aura around him only got brighter and brighter.

〖Reckless Onslaught I〗

This skill was the reason why the red aura was surrounding Fang.

It was his most recent skill that he unlocked, which basically increased his physical attacks by 5% up to a maximum of 100% for thirty seconds. The downsides were that the attacks that received the boost could not be skill-based attacks, and on top of that, any damage he received would be multiplied by three.

Another downside was probably the limit of uses, which was three times per day. In other words, it was essentially a trump card he'd probably only use whenever he truly needed to turn the tide in a battle.

This skill was also a double-edged sword, and that was why he was depending on Yuna to keep the boss stunned to help lessen the chance of him being attacked. He could definitely dodge the attacks himself, but having Yuna was backup in this regard was reassuring, and it also allowed him to focus more on attacking than dodging.

It didn't take long before his boost reached the maximum limit of 100%, this was also the same for the speed boost he gained from using [Shadow Strider II]. In other words, he was having a 100% boost in both physical damage and speed at the same time.

Both [Reckless Onslaught I] and [Shadow Strider II] worked very well together, especially since the latter boosted his speed, it became easier for him to build up the percentage increase with the former within the thirty-second time limit.

"It's almost dead!" Yuna shouted after seeing that the health bar of the boss was less than 25%. Her task was just as difficult as Fang's, mainly because the boss was also firing blasts at her as well. She had to both concentrate and aim, while also making sure to avoid being hit. "If you fail, I'm never gonna let you hear the end of this!"

"Thanks for the motivation!"

Whether or not Fang gave that response consciously or unconsciously was unknown, but now that his speed was at its possible current maximum. After destroying one more lantern, Fang jumped up to the boss before throwing a rapid succession of slashes as fast as he could.

Due to how fast he was slashing, the boss didn't seem to have any time to recover as each slash made it flinch back heavily. Before long, Fang's final strike had cleaved off the remaining chunk of its health.

As the boss disappeared into particles along with the floating wisps and remaining lanterns, Fang landed back on the ground as Yuna quickly ran over to him.

"Alright, we actually did it!"

"Just in time too..." Fang gave a tired sigh as he noticed both the green and red aura around him fading away into nothingness. Fang then opened up his status menu. "Looks like I gained two levels from that, way less than I thought we could've gotten..."

"Well, we did grind our asses with a ton of monsters. The only thing that made this boss challenging was the fact that we couldn't hurt it unless we hit those lanterns." Yuna responded with a shrug of her shoulders. "That aside, it was probably a relatively weak boss if you take that aspect away."

"True." Fang couldn't really disagree with that, he had managed to kill it in under thirty seconds after all. "Well, no point in complaining. Let's allocate our points first, and then we can take a look at the spoils."

While Fang had received ten extra points from his two levels, Yuna had gained fifteen since while she had levelled up twice as well, one of those levels was her reaching level 20, thus granting her ten points for that one level up.

"Make sure to actually put some into strength, please." Fang made sure to speak up before Yuna could press anything on her screen. "I'm pretty certain it affects your carrying capacity, so please make sure to add some points to it."

"Yeah, yeah."

In the end, this was the result:

● Fang - [Agility: 85 ➣ 90] [Intelligence: 25 ➣ 30]

● Yuna - [Strength: 0 ➣ 5] [Agility: 65 ➣ 70] [Dexterity: 25 ➣ 30]

Fang had decided to invest a bit into his Intelligence, mainly because he was thinking of buying a potential magic skill from the shop back in town. His physical attack skills, which he was certain weren't benefitting from his Intelligence stat, were probably not going to cut it forever.

Even for magic-based skills such as [Shadow Strider II], Intelligence didn't do anything since it wasn't even a magic skill that involved dealing damage.

Since he was looking to be a blade dancer, perhaps he could get some magic skills that in some way benefited physical attacks while also benefitting themselves in calculations that included his Intelligence stat.

In any case.

After allocating their points, the both of them walked over to the chest that seemed to appear on the ground right below where the boss had died mid-air. The chest was rather large and had silver and blue colourations.

Giving each other a look, they both opened the lid of the chest together, which allowed the chest to reveal a golden glow from within. Soon after opening it, the chest began to disappear as they each received their own chain of notifications.

"Cool, so even though it's one chest, we both still get the loot." Yuna commented lightly after seeing that Fang also received rewards. "I got a bunch of stuff! Strangely enough, it seems to be stuff suited for my chosen play style. It even looks to be related to this dungeon's theme."

"I think our weapons as well as the dungeon itself might affect what kind of drops we get, I could be wrong though."

『Fang』-『Acquired: Spiritual Vengeance』

『Fang』-『Acquired: Cloak of Shadows』

『Fang』-『Acquired: Berserker's Bracelet』

『Yuna』-『Acquired: Phantom Strings』

『Yuna』-『Acquired: Archer's Blessing』

『Yuna』-『Acquired: Wind Walker Boots』

It was just as Yuna had stated before, both of them seemed to gain entirely different items, items of which seemed to correlate well with their chosen 'classes'. Wasting no time, they both checked the in-depth info on their equipment.

"Wait, why don't you go first?" Yuna stated as she looked up from her screen. "It's more fun if we look through them one by one."

"I mean, sure? Let's see... first off is Spiritual Vengeance."