Chapter 20 Marchelle town 3

Nicholas POV

Another two weeks have passed since their rest day.

According to the system quest panel, only three days are left until the estimated time for the dungeon break. And I think our levels and power are already sufficient for this dungeon break.

Also, additional information had been disseminated to the adventurers and awakeners. And aside from the Monster Lord's Labyrinth, the other large-scale dungeon was finally revealed. 

[Mass Grave of the Fallen]

[Level Requirement – 20-25]

[Party Size 20-40]

[This place is a desecrated mausoleum; here lie the soldiers who bravely fought the war to protect their land. Unfortunately, this sacred land has been forgotten due to the test of time. And on one disastrous day, an evil mage stumbled upon this site. [Slowly turning the mausoleum to his castle, the deceased were its soldiers, and finally, after some time mingling with death, the mage himself succumbed, transforming into a necromancer.]

Nicholas: "This dungeon must also have a lot of monsters."

I was in my room with Maria, and Clarice was by my side reading about the information disseminated by the Adventurers Guild about the Mausoleum. We went back to the inn to have lunch; luckily, we went past the Adventurers Guild personnel who were disseminating these papers.

Maria: "We should prepare for undead creatures, since from the report it looks like an undead."

Clarice: "Should we buy some extra accessories and potions just in case?"

Nicholas: "With the release of this information, I think the day of the dungeon break is near. They should be announcing it tomorrow or the next day."

Nicholas: "You guys are right, we should buy some extra sets of accessories and potion just in case. But by the looks of it, if we don't hurry, the potion stores might run out of it."

Clarice: "Well, we should go, young master. Also, will we be continuing to go to the dungeon today?"

Nicholas shook his head horizontally and said, 

Nicholas: "Well, I think we should just prepare for the dungeon break these next few days. Because, even if we continue at our pace, it wouldn't greatly increase our strength and may even tire us out when the dungeon break occurs."

Maria: "If you say so, Master."

Clarice: "Yay! I was getting pretty tired out since we go to dungeons every day. Don't get me wrong, my liege, I enjoy exploring, but not that much."

Nicholas: "Sure, sure. Let's go then; there are a lot of things to prepare."

After discussing the things we needed, we immediately left the inn to purchase some emergency potion and accessories. Since we were already going out, we also stopped by the smith and tailor shop for some minor repairs on our equipment.

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The day of the dungeon break.

The estimated time for the first dungeon break will occur before dusk. Though I knew the exact time when it would happen, we still went a bit early to familiarize ourselves with the environment and prepare our nerves.

We are currently walking to the destination; we could have used a carriage for this, but Maria insisted that it might be accidentally in the commotion, so I had to back down.

Soon as we arrived at our destination, there were already dozens of teams waiting for the dungeon break nearby.

Nicholas: "It looks like we are not the first to arrive."

Maria: "Master, you do know we are quite late. Its nearly dusk already, and of course there are already dozens of teams."

Nicholas: "Hahah, well... There are still a lot of adventurers in town, so I thought we were quite early."

He looked around the place and saw that most of the of the team today is from the adventurer's guild. This includes some of the high-level awakeners in the center.

Normally, in a dungeon break clearing, the organization that will clear the monsters leaving the portal will send a main assault team that will deal with the important and high-level monsters, which in this case will be the high-level awakener team.

While an intercepting group (us and a few dozen teams) will follow to clean up the stragglers, which normally also came from the same organization,.

However, in this case, there are two large-scale dungeons, which need more intercepting groups to prevent the weaker monsters from getting away and create ruckus in nearby places.

Therefore, the adventurer's guild gave a tariff token, especially for this event. Adventurers Guild members are encouraged to join, while unaffiliated awakener teams can also participate, but at a higher price for not being members. Like our team.

After arriving and completing the scouting preparation, we began to start the strategic meeting. The monsters they will be fighting today will be a lot higher-level than they are. So, we need to choose our position carefully, lest things don't go as planned and we get overwhelmed by the number of monsters.

After reminding the girls about our formation and completing their final check of equipment and accessories, we began to take it easy and wait for the event to start.

Marking the end of the planning, Maria took out some food that she had prepared. We decided to chat along to burn some time before the dungeon break occurs.

We were having a great time, like a picnic in the park, which made some of the adventuring teams jealous. However, they didn't confront us since there is still a tense atmosphere in the air, and in a few hours, according to the information they have, the dungeon break will occur.

This event should be manageable for us since we worked hard and prepared well specifically for this day; however, there is still a foreboding feeling in my gut that things will not go well as planned.

In the last few days, I have been preparing diligently for the dungeon break. We went to the market to procure accessories with healing properties and consumables from the potions shops that may help with the undead.

I even went to the adventurer's guild on the last day of registration for the dungeon break event to sponsor awakened teams. So that they can participate by shouldering the tariff token prices.

Since I had the feeling that there would be more than a hundred monsters breaking out of that dungeon, Even today, I placed our group at the outer edge of the intercepting group formation just to avoid taking in the brunt of the huge monster wave. Maria and Clarice even argued that if they were placed near the edge, it would be hard to get kills and experience points in this location.

But as I explained that we might be overwhelmed by the amount of monster, they chose to trust me since I know some information that they don't. After some more planning, I gave them a supporting accessory capable of healing, which he procured in the in the last few days. This will serve as an emergency-saving device in the event that they can't protect themselves.

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A few hours passed by.

Then suddenly, an ominous grumbling from one of the portals occurred. The labyrinth portal is slowly crumbling; appearing in its place is a crack in the void connecting the two space their world and the labyrinth itself.

The dungeon break has begun.

????: "Everyone!! Get ready, it's time!"

As the person finished his word, a torrent of monsters rushed out as soon as the crack in the void stabilized. A variety of low-level monsters came first, rushing out of the portal feeling thirsty for their new-found freedom.

But to the monsters' disappointment, they were immediately intercepted by the awakeners in the front line. They were immediately subdued by the monsters left and right. Our team at the back still hasn't even engaged in combat after a few minutes since the front lines haven't been overwhelmed yet.

The portal was continuously letting out dozens of monsters every few seconds, and the slow and accumulating numbers of the monsters finally caused a breach in the front line formation. This gave the awakened team in the back a chance to fight for rewards and experience.

With this breach, a monster finally reached our team, albeit a few; it will serve as a warmup before the real battle begins. All this time, most of the monsters coming out of the portal were still low-leveled, meaning the main monster in the dungeon had yet to come out.

The battle right now was overwhelmingly in favor of the awakeners, maybe due to my move to sponsor more teams. However, I knew that this was just the start. The real battle has yet to begin.

After 15 minutes of battle, most of the low-level monsters had already come out. The monsters coming out have already reached the level of 30; this marked the prelude to the peak of the battle.

As the first level 30 monster came out, the main assault team quickly finished the current monster they were fighting to confront the higher-level monster. This is necessary for them since this is their primary goal as the main assault team: to destroy the boss and high-level monster.

The assault team is composed of five members with a level of 40 to 45. Quickly, they rush to the high-level monsters, slaying them with great coordination. I was also impressed by their instinctual understanding of each of their team members. Their coordination was great; they could take advantage of the weakness of the monster and support each other with just implicit orders.

30 minutes had passed.

The monster in the area is slowly dwindling. Most of the monsters left were high-level ones. Our team, despite being on the edge, still killed 35 monsters because most of the front line is tired after fighting for so long. So, some teams in front just let monsters pass through them so people on the back get rewards.

Nicholas: *Just 35 monsters; did I calculate wrongly? * I started to doubt my calculations.

But then suddenly, a loud grumbling sound was heard, followed by the appearance of the monster lord. The Tundra Grey Wolf and its lackeys.

The appearance of the wolf lord, however, was not the end. Their entrance was accompanied by multiple large grumbling sounds around the area. Most of the awakener teams who were familiar with that sound were startled, not because of the howl of the monster lord's but because of what followed it. The large grumbling sounds were a sign of dungeon portal collapse, meaning that there were dungeon breaks occurring simultaneously all around the area.

Silence was spreading through the air. The news is that only two dungeons will be breaking tonight. But contrary to their expectations, several more grumbling sounds permeated the air. Hence, several dungeons are breaking around them. They don't know any information about those dungeons or what type of monsters are inside of them.