Back Again II

"Eight legs, eight eyes… Just what I needed." He grinned sarcastically.

…

"It's already been three hours, it's past 11:00 already… Heh. Maybe I should have rejected?"

"You opted to be an ass kisser, so suffer the consequences. I'm the one who's suffering here." Mailyn said, her eye brows almost touching each other.

It was an A rank gate after all, so it would naturally take Ezra more time to clear it than it took in the B rank gates. It should have looked been clear from the start, but, there was no way Ezra was going to be done clearing the dungeon in a mere four hours. It would seem that they had just bought themselves a free gate pass to stay up overnight.

More time passed as 12:00am came and went in a breeze. "It's 3am already, he still isn't out. Did he go to challenge the boss directly?"

"We should go in and take a look. It's not like he's invincible or anything." Mailyn said as she took steps towards the gate. Luck didn't speak and just followed, since she wasn't wrong.

As soon as they entered the gate, the first site was a decapitated giant spider. The atmosphere in the dungeon was filled with a kind of smell that almost triggered a mechanism within the two who entered to regurgitate a bit of inner content. The deeper they went, the more carcasses they found scattered all over.

"Damn, you can tell the amount of hate from how these guys were killed." Luck was astounded by the among of decapitation he was seeing. Certain insect monsters have a weak spot which is targeted, since only cutting the heads is not very efficient as the body would still be moving for a while. This however…

"Come on, let's moved fast." Luck urges.

In a matter of time, they had made it through the entire dungeon. It was nothing like an A rank dungeon, way too small. There seemed to be no boss room too, no matter how much they looked. The most disturbing however was the fact that Ezra was nowhere to be found, neither was a body or any evidence that he was still in there.

"This makes no sense. Let's return immediately and report this."

None of it made sense. Both of them had been outside the entire time and had not seem anyone enter or leave the dungeon, so there was no way Ezra had exited the dungeon. -"If it's so, then the only other possibility is that it's the work of a monster in the dungeon." A voice said from the other side of a phone.

"Yes, but then there was no boss room, neither was there evidence of any fight with a boss level monster. It's as though he just disappeared completely in to thin air." Luck said. He had a complicated expression on his face as the situation was quite the confusing one. As the call went on, the gate went through a peculiar change.

"Luck!..." Mailyn called out.

If there was a drop of sweat on Luck's face, this was the time it would drop, as the very gate they just came out of closed gradually and within a few seconds dissipated into nothingness like it never was there.

"You won't believe what just happened, sir. The gate, it just closed."

…

As Ezra ventured deeper into the abyss, he found that this second floor was filled not only with spiders, but also had other insect type monsters, from crawling web slingers to flying acid spitting. It was a good thing that Ezra had predicted that the next time he would enter the abyss, it would be similar to the first time, so he always carried different supplies to suit different needs with him in the inventory space. "This is proving to be very productive, planning for it ahead of time, that is."

Instead of seeing this as a kidnap from home, Ezra felt happy that he could enter the abyss again. Here he was sure he would face off against strong monsters which only means he would be increasing his strength. Furthermore, the fact that he didn't have to go through all the trouble just to have some experience points was also quite relieving.

Time passed by quickly in the abyss, and with the consistency of the abyss, it was impossible to tell dawn from dusk. Ezra had to spend the first few days adjusting to the way the abyss worked and also adjust his sleep cycle, naturally. The monsters in the second floor turned out to be a bit less challenging than what Ezra had expected. Sure, they got stronger as he made his way into the deeper parts of the dungeon, but he could still handle most of them.

'Maybe it's because I hate insect type monsters and have dedicated a good portion of my time studying the most efficient way to kill them.' Ezra swiftly and easily made his way through a wave of monsters. Since he used to be very weak then and was only slightly better than normal humans, he really needed to learn the most effective way to kill these monsters in case one got to him during a raid.

The second floor seemed to be very abundant in its supply of monsters for Ezra to kill. In the first floor, he sometimes had to leave an area for a while before coming back so that the monsters in the area would respawn, but here in the second floor he barely needed to do so as monsters were ever present, even reducing his chances to rest. Even then, Ezra still made sure to reap the full benefits of the monster spawning by going back to kill them over and over again. He soon figured out that after clearing a particular area fifteen times, the monsters in that area would no longer spawn. Of course, there was no need to go all fifteen times though, as it became quite dull after some time and the experience provided reduces as well.