Vol. 6 - Captivity - Chapter 25 (Patreon)

The guards stared at the dust-covered Thomas and the hole he'd dug through the wall. Thomas glanced over his shoulder at the short tunnel and smiled, "What? I thought I'd found something in there. Turns out I did."

He looked up at the darkening sky and smiled to himself, "Workday is over. I'm going to get some sleep. Let Yorik know that I'm heading into the dungeon tomorrow. I also plan to stay inside of it for forty-eight hours straight."

Several of the guards gave Thomas odd looks at his declaration. Going into the dungeon for the day was one thing, but staying overnight? No one had done that in their whole group. The dungeon wasn't safe so sleep inside of. The only safe spot was the first room on the floor. Monsters could spawn or respawn in any other room, after a time. Trying to sleep in any room but the safe room would be a good way to get surprise attacked. If sleep wasn't planned then was he going to stay awake for the full forty-eight hours?

Thomas did, in fact, intend to stay awake for the full forty-eight hours. Maybe take a nap if necessary but it wouldn't be the first time he'd stayed awake for an extended amount of time. His personal best was one hundred and one hours, or just over four full days. Two wouldn't be much of an issue and would give him a lot of time to not only create and experiment with gear for his escape but to also allow him to gain some experience to increase his odds. Depending on how much he could get done and how successful his experiments were, he just might be able to break out after getting some rest.

Thomas cleaned up his workspace and stored away the special items and materials he planned to take down into the dungeon. He was on the fence about moving on to running into the dungeon before checking out the new ore, he just felt that he had to hurry. It had been nearly a month since he'd seen Snowlily. His plan, weak as it was, had been successful so far. The guards barely paid him any attention and his trips into the dungeon were completely unsupervised. He'd even confirmed that the growth of the pirates was slower than his own because they needed to team up to take on tougher opponents that he could solo with his gear.

With everything cleaned up and a few extra goodies sneakily dropped into his storage space, it was time for him to get some sleep in preparation for the next two days.

The next morning he enjoyed a well-made breakfast from Mr. Pancake before being led back to the entrance of the dungeon by his guards. He'd been strictly warned by Yorik that if he didn't come out within the forty-eight-hour limit that Snowlily would pay. Thomas didn't take kindly to the threat to Snowlily and planned to make sure all of the pirates paid for it, soon. When they arrived at the dungeon entrance, Thomas immediately used the teleportation circle to head to the third floor where the experience rich trolls were located.

Thomas quickly left the saferoom while drawing out his Spell Cannon and loading in the Fire Arrow shell. Mana flowed from his hand causing the amplification and compression rings to whir to life and emit soft lights. As he stepped into the first room the trolls barely managed to roar before three sounds of popping echoed out of the Spell Cannon and blew their heads clear off. As their bodies dropped and disintegrated, he conjured up some thin wires made of metal from his fingertips and snatched up the mana crystals to store them away.

Without stopping he moved onto the next room and repeated the process of shooting the Trolls to death and collecting their mana crystals. Right now he wasn't down here for fun. It was all about efficiency and getting as much experience as he could as fast as he could. The Spell Cannon was the most efficient way he could dispose of the trolls using one of their weaknesses. He was glad he'd designed the shells for the Spell Cannon to not only run off their internal supply of mana but also mana provided by him. He didn't have to stop one-shotting the Trolls until he ran low on mana. That wouldn't be for quite a while.

Room after room was cleared with brutal efficiency. He barely stopped moving as he just randomly wandered through the hallways of the dungeon. The only time he wasted was walking and occasionally backtracking when he reached a dead end. Otherwise, every time he stepped into a room Trolls died and he gained more experience. He was focused, lethal, and eventually ran low on mana and needed to stop to check over his gains. He was looking forward to the results of his three-hour-long slaughterfest of the Trolls.

Name: Thomas Darkrose
Race: Nephilim (Lord Class)
Experience Gained: 928,247 Experience Spent: 718,420 Experience Remaining: 209,827

Thomas couldn't keep a broad grin off of his face at the sight of how much experience he'd gained over the last three hours. In just those few hours he'd earned over two-hundred thousand experience points from slaughtering over seventy Trolls. This was like heaven to him! He planned to spend the first twelve hours inside of the dungeon just killing Trolls non-stop. If they respawned fast enough and he could keep up this pace he should have somewhere around eight-hundred thousand experience! He couldn't help shuddering at that amount. He was basically going to double the amount of experience he'd earned up to this point in just twelve hours. Insane!

Despite his excitement, he grew worried. He already knew this dungeon was amazing for experience and it only further increased his worry over the pirate's strength. Even though he had talked to them about their experience it didn't guarantee that the one pirate who answered him spoke for the whole group of pirates. It would make sense if the group of pirates had some trump card players who kept their real strength hidden. He had no idea how long they had occupied this place and farmed the monsters in the dungeon.

He pulled out a snack to eat and fill his stomach while he continued to recover mana and think. In the end, it didn't really matter how strong the pirates were. He just needed to build items that could kick the ass of a god! He was determined to build everything he needed to take out the pirates down here. Once Snowlily was secure he would decide to escape then or to kill the pirates. To do that he needed something powerful. Something along the lines of a doomsday device perhaps? He finished the snack and closed his eyes while quieting his mind. He used Serenity to recover his mana quickly so he could continue to slaughter the Trolls and gain more power. The pirates may have been here longer but they couldn't have been nearly as efficient as he was.

Once his mana was completely recovered, Thomas began to slaughter Trolls once again. He avoided spending the experience he'd gained because he didn't want spending it to slow him down while he recovered. The more he increased his attributes the more effect it had on his body. Whether the effect was pleasant or not, the huge increase he was about to have would keep him down for a while. He decided to blow his entire load all at once when he stopped to rest for a while after his twelve hours of Troll murder.

Thomas felt a little bit of regret with what he was doing. While it was nice to gain so much so quickly it didn't really fit with his preferred style of play. He played games to have fun and make cool shit, he never cared about power leveling or being as efficient with his experience gains as possible. If he wasn't in this situation he probably would still be lower powered than he currently was. Being captured forced him to this point. If he had a choice, he would much rather pull out the flaming greatsword and battle the Trolls to the death. Instead, he was just calmly walking into rooms and firing off one to three shots to kill just as many Trolls. It was fucking boring to him.

Still, he did it. For nine hours with breaks only to recover mana, eat, and drink, he killed Trolls. They stood no chance at all and it was no fun at all. Just... monotonous. The only bright spot was the sheer amount of experience he'd managed to gain from all the dead Trolls. He killed his way back to the safe room of the third floor and sat down to look over all of his gains. It might have been boring and something he would prefer not to do, but he had to admit that it was effective when he looked at all of his gains.

Name: Thomas Darkrose
Race: Nephilim (Lord Class)
Experience Gained: 1,476,622 Experience Spent: 718,420 Experience Remaining: 758,202

He looked over his gains and couldn't help smiling once more. He'd basically gained as much experience over the last twelve hours as he had during his entire time playing Age of Gods. It was nice but it still left a bad aftertaste. There was nothing fun in the last twelve hours and he hated that. Still... now he was getting on par with what the pirate minion had told him before. The pirates should have somewhere around one to two million total experience. Now he was somewhere in the middle. If he just killed the Trolls for the next thirty-six hours he estimated that he could get up to an additional two point four million experience. It was tempting on one level, but he'd rather spend that time making the tools he needed to find Snowlily and rescue her while making the pirates pay.

He took a deep breath and started spending the experience on his Power, Endurance and Agility. He wanted to raise them as much as he could. When his attributes evened out he would go back to spreading them evenly once again. Slowly the large pool of experience points drained down as his three attributes increased point by point... 150... 175... 200... 225... 250... 260. His experience only got him to 260 in each of those attributes but it was an excellent upgrade. His finger hovered over the confirm button as he took a deep breath. He had no idea what this was going to feel like so he prepared himself for the worst, then confirmed the changes.

Energy exploded out of his heart and flooded into every corner of his physical being. Pure raw power flowed through his veins like liquid fire that was determined to burn him from the inside out. He couldn't even breath as the sensation flooded his mind and drove out every single thought. His whole body collapsed to sprawl out on the ground as it changed. As the power continued to flow through him black and white flames formed and faded on various spots all over his body. They didn't burn him but instead gave off feelings. The white flames felt warm and comforting while the black flames felt ominous and powerful. Yin and Yang, Good and Evil, Holy and Unholy. The power flowing through him couldn't be completely contained by his body.

At first, when the energy faded and his blood cooled down he had no idea how much time had passed. A quick check revealed that he had been down and out for a little over an hour. Thirteen hours down, thirty-five to go. He carefully climbed to his feet and tried to get a feel for his newly improved body. He felt... powerful. Every physical aspect of his body had been improved by a massive margin. He had just about doubled his three attributes and he could very clearly feel the difference. While the numbers were pretty much just doubled the effect felt like more than twice the increase. If his previous self could lift ten thousand kilograms he felt that his present self could easily lift twenty-five thousand kilograms. Of course, he had no way to prove this without actually lifting weights.

Suddenly he spun around and slammed his fist into the wall of the dungeon. There was a thunderous boom as stone chips blew off of the wall and scattered around. The force of the impact made it feel like the whole room jolted and shook. When he drew his hand back his knuckles were barely scraped thanks to his increased Endurance. In a fit of power induced insanity, he pulled his Peace Maker out of his inventory, cocked the hammer, and fired it as his left hand from just an inch away. With a thunderous crack, the bullet exploded out of the barrel and slammed into his bare hand. He felt a brutal impact on his hand but nothing more. Sitting in his hand was a crumped and deformed bullet.

He was fucking bulletproof now! At least to a weapon as powerful as the Peace Maker. Excited and overwhelmed as he currently was, he still wasn't stupid enough to pull out the Spell Cannon and shoot his own hand. He wasn't really sure what possessed him to shoot his hand with the Peace Maker, to begin with. The thought of blowing a hole through his hand on quickly sobered him up. The power had just literally gone to his head. He put the Peace Maker away and took a long deep breath. He needed to calm down, get a grip on his suddenly increased attributes and then get to work. He had pirates to murder and a Garou to save.