Chapter 5: Return to the Ruins

Duoluolisi used magic to strengthen her body and sprinted through the night, soon arriving at the entrance to the ruins.

Along the way, she pondered.

Aren’t there plenty of flashy, mana-intensive movement Sword Techniques in the game? I can use them to travel and consume mana at the same time.

When she opened her skill panel, she found only the most basic, unadorned actions.

Horizontal slash, vertical chop, block, dodge…

Can these really be considered Sword Techniques?

The ruins were pitch black, impossible to see anything, and from deep inside came occasional rustling sounds.

The ruins look pretty eerie at night.

Duoluolisi drew her sword from her cloak and cautiously stepped into the ruins.

She tried using the Illumination Spell to light the way, but found the strong light only made the dark areas even harder to see.

She stopped the Illumination Spell altogether, closed her eyes, and switched to Mana Perception.

In the darkness, the flow of Mana Particles was more reliable than sight.

The Mana Particles in the ruins were sparse, and the presence of monsters was much less than during the day.

That wasn’t surprising.

Over the past two days, she and Feili had already cleared the upper floors of the ruins, and that afternoon she had fought her way up from the bottom.

Plus, the Demon God had disappeared, so no new monsters were being created.

There weren’t many monsters left.

From the entrance down to the bottom, the path was almost completely unobstructed.

Before long, Duoluolisi was back in that cave.

Stepping over the rubble at the entrance, she raised her sword to illuminate the entire cave.

Walking to the spot where she had previously drawn this sword, she found the crack that once emitted a dark red glow was now completely dark.

She carefully inspected every corner of the cave.

There was no trace of the Demon God’s presence.

The Demon God really is gone.

Duoluolisi lowered her sword and sighed, then turned back the way she came.

She hadn’t used much mana at all—not even two-thirds of it.

She had planned to use the monsters in the ruins to drain her mana, but these monsters were all so fragile—one hit each, not even giving her a chance to use two moves.

First time I’ve felt so annoyed at one-shotting monsters…

“Ah!”

Duoluolisi seemed to have tripped over something.

What the heck…

She cast the Illumination Spell and looked down to find a monster’s skeleton.

Nearby were many similar skeletons, completely clean of flesh as if gnawed off.

It looked horrifying.

These monsters were different from those summoned by the Demon God—they had been transformed from outside beasts, and when they died, they didn’t disappear; they left corpses behind.

But she clearly remembered that when she passed by here earlier, these were still intact corpses.

In such a short time, only bones remained?

Having seen countless insect plague films in her past life, she guessed this must be the work of some kind of flesh-eating flying insects.

Those flying insects, which could cover the sky and instantly gnaw a living creature to bones, were ten thousand times more terrifying than those large monsters.

Duoluolisi felt her legs trembling.

Yeah, it must be because the ruins are too cold.

I’m wearing so little below—it’s not cold-proof at all.

It’s normal to shiver from cold, right?

It can’t be that I’m scared, can it?

I am a real man—how could I be afraid of those little bugs?

Duoluolisi tried hard to convince herself, but in reality she was already running.

One hand was frantically casting defense buffs on herself, and her feet were moving so fast they almost left afterimages.

In the ruins, a silver figure was sprinting desperately.

Any monster that got in her way was decapitated before it could react.

Don’t stop me!

Aaaaah!

Duoluolisi didn’t care what monster she encountered—if it blocked her, she just cut it down.

She just wanted to get out of this damn place as quickly as possible.

She kept feeling a buzzing sound around her ears, and had even started hallucinating a cloud of insects chasing her from behind.

How did I have the courage to come in earlier?!

If I had known this was in here, I never would have come in even if it killed me!

Duoluolisi ran all the way, swinging her sword, without even panting, climbing ten floors.

Just as she was about to charge up the last flight of stairs, a dense buzzing sound came from the stairway.

She abruptly stopped in her tracks.

This sound…

Duoluolisi swallowed hard and carefully extended her perception to the stairway, but she immediately regretted it.

Holy crap, scared me to death!

Inside the wall, there were countless magic insects packed tightly together.

I shouldn’t have looked!

Duoluolisi finally steadied herself, and then realized an even more serious problem.

That swarm of magic insects seemed to have blocked the only exit.

Looks like there’s no escape.

Duoluolisi raised her sword shakily and moved step by step toward the stairway.

With each step, her heartbeat grew faster.

When she finally reached the stairway, by the dim light of the Illumination Spell, she saw a sword scar on the wall.

Wait, this sword scar?

She remembered.

When she came down earlier, she encountered a monster and casually swung her sword at it.

The monster dodged, and the blade hit the wall instead.

And those magic insects were hiding in the space behind this very sword scar.

No way, I hit the jackpot like this?

In my past life, when I bought lottery tickets, why couldn’t I win just by scratching one?

Duoluolisi took a deep breath.

After confirming her defense buffs were still active, she imbued her sword with fire magic.

No matter what bugs they are, I’ll burn them all with one blaze.

But before she could approach, several magic insects suddenly flew out, fluttering their black carapace wings.

Upon seeing her, they immediately lunged.

Duoluolisi quickly swung her sword, cutting the leading insect in two.

The two following were the same—she dispatched them with ease.

The insects are so small, yet I can cut them so accurately.

Just as Duoluolisi was marveling, a magic insect silently slipped to her side and bit her arm.

Crap crap crap—

The pain she expected never came.

The insect was sent flying less than an inch from her skin, as if hitting an invisible wall, and tumbled several times on the ground.

Huh?

This magic insect can’t break my defense?

She glanced at the insect still struggling on the ground.

Why didn’t you say so earlier!

You made me be a coward for so long!

Duoluolisi suddenly felt confident.

She directly thrust her sword into the crack and gave the insects a round of barbecue.

A burnt sugar smell came from inside.

Then a swarm of charred red insects poured out, surrounding her in dense numbers.

These insects have magic resistance?

There are even fire-resistant insects—that’s too crazy.

But no matter, she could destroy them physically.

Using Sword Techniques to cut flying insects was like using a cannon to hit mosquitoes.

But that suited her just fine—she was just worried about not being able to use her mana.

Hehe, come on~

***

After who knows how long, Duoluolisi emerged from the ruins with a look of pleasure.

Not bad.

My mana is finally almost empty.

That swarm of magic insects was really numerous—she spent a long time cutting them one by one until they were all destroyed.

Although Sword Techniques consumed little mana, even that couldn’t withstand hundreds or thousands of uses.

With constantly maintaining defensive buffs, no matter how much mana she had, it would be drained.

What surprised her was that combining those basic Sword Techniques worked quite well.

Like the arcade games she played in her past life, combining basic attacks into combos was much more flexible than fixed-skill moves.

After all, I’ve killed so many monsters.

I should have leveled up quite a bit, right?

Duoluolisi cheerfully opened her status window.

[Level: LV.2]

She rubbed her eyes and looked again.

[Level: LV.2]

What kind of joke is this?

Why am I only level 2?!

I clearly slaughtered all the monsters in the ruins and took out that many magic insects.

Even if the monsters summoned by the Demon God give half experience, I should at least be level 5 or 6, right?

This isn’t right.

They must have hidden another explanation again, just like with that Transformation Mechanism.

Duoluolisi puffed up with anger and searched around on her status window.

Suddenly, she noticed a new icon had appeared next to the level bar.

A red bat-shaped exclamation mark, blinking.

What’s this?