The two of them left the corpse of the Martial Squire behind, Rui had no intention of lugging the corpse back to the surface in order to return it to her dependents or friends. It seemed that she had entered the dungeon alone too, as opposed to being part of a party.
“Alright, what do we do?” Kane asked, turning to Rui.
“Our goal is to harvest all the esoteric ores of this floor,” Rui explained. “The biggest threat on this floor is the bite from the taipan which would kill us. The simplest way to avoid them is by sky-walking, however, if we do that, we cannot get at the esoteric ores that are on and beneath the ground.”
Rui calmly analyzed the situation that they were in. “I would rather avoid combat with the serpents. This is different from the second floor where the rabbits, while very dangerous, were not extremely lethal. Here, even if I chop up all of the taipans, there is still the chance that I would get bitten by a surviving head hiding under the pile of corpses and flesh that I would leave behind. My Riemannian Sense is different from Primordial Instinct in the sense that its affinity for combat is not too great.”
Primordial instinct was simply his danger sense and risk evaluation sense highly trained to detect and counter threats based on the sensory data that he naturally gathered from all of his senses. The latter was hampered, thus Primordial Instinct was also naturally hampered.
However, that did not mean that the Riemannian Sense could replace Primordial instinct. It was not an instinctual sense and was actually closer to reading a language than it was sensing his surroundings.
“That makes sense,” Kane nodded. “So it’s a simple plan of harvesting the esoteric ores on the ground when we’re in stealth, and then moving back to the air when I time out, right?” Kane asked.
“It’s a simple plan but entirely effective,” Rui replied. “However, we cannot go too high, I don’t want to be spotted by others even if their senses are hampered and it wouldn’t really matter.”
“Wouldn’t that mean that we’re within their striking range?” Kane asked.
“Yes, but I am more confident of ensuring that I can’t be caught off-guard if I’m sky-walking. Because their decapitated heads would fall back to the ground and won’t be able to hurt me from the ground. Furthermore, all the attacks would come from only one direction, down. Dealing with attacks coming from one direction is vastly easier than dealing with directions coming from all directions, which is liable to be the case if you time out on land and we’re in a snake-infested pit.”
Rui was confident that as long as he could turn his back up to the ceiling of the floor without fearing an attack on his back, he could handle even a barrage of snake attacks.
“Let’s begin,” He told Kane, who promptly nodded, putting his arm on Rui’s back before the two of them descended into the grasslands.
Rui could see why this kind of environment was great for the snakes, the lack of visibility as well as the sensory jamming meant that it was difficult for many Martial Squires to safely identify all of the snakes ahead of time. They would need to react after an attack was initiated, which wasn’t easy, albeit not impossible.
Rui, on the other hand, not only knew the locations of all the snakes within a few kilometers of radius around him but also verified that they could not sense him thanks to Void Step. Thus the two of them were confident that as long as they were in any level of meaningful motion, they could avoid being detected.
Rui was more than fast enough, by virtue of being a Martial Squire, to set up the instruments, apply them to extract both the mineral and organic ores from the land and from the roots of the dungeon and the grass, and put them in a bag, all before he walked a single step.
There were even moments when he extracted mineral and organic ores right in front of the faces of a bunch of taipans, and they did not even so much as budge!
(‘What a remarkable technique,’) Rui grinned to himself
PAT PAT PAT
Kane quickly tapped him twice, indicating that he was about a minute away from his limit. Even though one minute was no different to a Martial Squire than an hour, Rui did not want to take any risks whatsoever. One minute was not worth risking their lives by accidentally not being prepared for the time-out in time.
If it just so happened that they timed out when Rui was just digging, even he would not be able to draw his weapons and kill all of them before at least one of them gets a bite in, which would be game over for him.
“Phew…” Kane elevated himself a meter higher than Rui.
SHING
Rui drew his sword from his scabbard before the technique was deactivated.
Instantly, three snakes shot up from the ground, lunging meters high into the air.
“SSSSK!”
Their lunges were so extraordinarily fast that the atmosphere itself recoiled in a sonic boom as they shot forth with enough power to destroy an entire building.
Yet, the second they reached Rui, the world suddenly went dark for them. They lost all sight, awareness, and even consciousness.
SPLAT𝑶𝓋𝔩xt.𝗇t
A single arc from his Hellborn Stell blade cleaved past their skulls, splitting their eyes in half. Rui specifically make sure that he destroyed the brain, to ensure that the head did not retain consciousness where it could hurt unsuspecting Martial Squires.
The two halves of their skull blasted away from each other so faster that it was almost as though they were magically parting way for the blade.
SHING
He immediately sheathed his blade to ensure it reached maximum coldness once more. The only disadvantage that the blade had was that it needed to be cooled, which meant he needed to periodically sheath his blade in order to maintain its effectiveness over time.
***
Author’s note:
Dear tier 2 priv readers, I apologize for the delay in chapters that occurred due to a WN priv glitch that caused tier 3 priv to require 8 more chapters against my wishes. I spent the 1st and 2nd of June filling tier 3 priv up. I will publish 6 extra chapters this month to compensate, so you will get what you paid for.
Apologies for the inconvenience again, and than you for your support. 🙂