Chapter 38: Speedrun
"IF ANY SAPLING CAN HEAR ME RIGHT NOW, CALL OUT TO ME SO I COULD COME SAVE YOU….. ALTERNATIVELY, IF THAT WOULD GET YOU KILLED, PLEASE STAY THE FUCK STILL, AND DON'T MAKE A SOUND!" I yell out as loud as I can and focus on my surroundings to try and hear if someone calls out to me. No one does, of course.
I am currently on the 19th floor, the last one before the boss, and I even already found the exit door but have yet to go through it. There are two reasons for that. The first is that I haven't accomplished the task to pass through yet, that being to kill two Shroom Titans. The name makes them seem much scarier than what they really are, a 5 meters tall mushroom that is unable to move and can only headbutt the ground around them.
The second reason for not having passed through yet is that there is still a sapling hiding somewhere on this floor. I've found one on every previous floor so far, bringing my quest progress to (8/9), but god damn, if they haven't all been a pain in the ass to save.
Without fail, every single one of them has been in a situation where if I don't act fast and put myself in danger to jump to their rescue, they would be dead in a matter of seconds. Usually, that means being in the middle of a bunch of enemies who are charging at them with weapons or being caught in a trap and getting close to burning alive or being impaled by spikes in a pitfall trap.
My desire to complete this bonus objective and get the rewards has pushed me to essentially speedrun these floors with little to no care for my own health unless it gets critically low. Rather than methodically clearing out groups of enemies using stealth, I've been jumping in their midst and slashing around my sword until everything dies.
The downside of this whole thing is that I have taken lots of damage throughout the night and had to down every last one of my very weak health potions that recover 10 HP. Thankfully the enemies here drop better ones that heal 50 HP, so those have kept me going pretty well.
Other than that, they also drop a shit ton of seeds of a wide variety that I have just dumped into my inventory. I did run into a random elite enemy on floor 16 that was nice enough to gift me this thing, though.
------------------------------
[Wreath of Thorns] (Uncommon)
[Durability - 196 / 200]
[Defence - 60]
5% of the damage done to you is reflected back at enemies.
------------------------------
It looks a bit weird being worn on top of my head when I'm already wearing the spiderman mask, but hey, I'm the type of person that prioritizes stats over looks in video games, and I don't think a spandex costume was ever the peak of fashion anyway.
After about 15 minutes of running around and grinding xp on any enemies unfortunate enough to get in my way, I finally found what I'm probably looking for, a small camp.
I climb up a tall tree to get a bird's eye view of what is happening inside there, and it's undoubtedly one of the most bizarre sights I've seen yet inside the dungeon.
There are over 100 enemies of every type I have encountered on these floors so far, standing in a circular formation. Watchmen, spearmen, swordsmen, archers, and even a few titans at the gates are all happily gathering together and bouncing around a… guillotine in the center. The sapling I've been searching for is, as expected, strapped into that guillotine. Are they trying to reenact the french revolution here?
After a few seconds of observing the situation, I see a lone Shroom Swordsman walk through the crowd next to the Guillotine and cut the rope to make the blade fall and behead (Beleaf?) the sapling strapped into the death trap, but… it doesn't.
Why? Because I already shot some web to attach the blade to its wooden frame, halting its fall. Honestly, this was the easiest trap to stop, at least for someone with my particular skill set.
While the crowd is confused as to why their victim isn't getting beheaded, I swoop in and quickly grab the sapling before webbing up to a tall tree on the opposite side of the base.
I set the sapling down on the branch. "Alright, you sit here and do your best not to die while I go take care of things, ok?"
It gives me a brief nod as I turn away and jump down toward the now furious crowd staring up at me.
Most enemies on this floor are already pretty high leveled, reaching around 37 to 39. Now you may think killing over 100 enemies this high leveled would be difficult for me, but you'd be wrong. It's super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Committing genocide on their entire race in one night has been quite fruitful for me in terms of xp bringing me up to level 43. It also has become more apparent that an unique class like the Spiderman class I currently hold is much more superior to regular classes than I thought.
Even an equal leveled enemy can only get floored by me due to the giant discrepancy in stats. Still, maybe that's just because they are regular dungeons mobs and are only meant to be dangerous in significant numbers.
Taking care of this crowd is hardly challenging, thanks to the trees all around the camp. All I do is jump from branch to branch, moving around them in circles to dodge the arrows of the Shroom archers and fire off a Mana Bolt every 30 seconds that does AoE damage to the cluster of mobs that are too dumb to separate from each other.
It takes a while to kill them all, but I manage to do it without ever taking a single point of damage.
[Bonus Objective 1 of Don't do Shrooms Completed]
[Bonus Objective - Save all the saplings which were sent out as scouts (9/9)]
I look over to where I placed the sapling earlier, and it's gone… Didn't even say "thank you," how ungrateful.
Whatever, all that's left to do now is to go kill the boss. I glance at the time, and I have 30 minutes until my first class starts; I've been in the dungeon the whole night. Well, the first class today is literature which I don't like regardless, so I can skip it with an easy heart.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Not much "substance" in this chapter. The next one is the last one in the dungeon then we can go back out to the normal world
Also, this chapter is uploaded a bit later than usual. I went for a nap, but the nap somehow ended up being 8 hours long. Rip sleep schedule.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone