-Zaaaaaaaaa…!

It prepared an attack that was powerful enough to destroy this entire arena. Whether it hits the target or not did not matter anymore either.

The death knight was fulfilling its purpose of doing anything to fulfill the order while at the same time using his body to deal the final blow to honor the rules of their duel.

This act of craziness and the eyes that showed respect for the opponent… They were admirable.

-Boooooooooom!

But, KiRA used his holy power to put a rest to all of this one last time.

"May your afterlife be honorable, great knight."

Right before the knight initiated the final attack, KiRA used his concentrated, almost crystalised holy power to cut through the entire darkness covering the knight.

-Ooooooooooooong!

Then, he cut through the dark armor and pierced through the core of the knight…

-Zak!

Resulting in an instant end to the last of the knight's attempts.

-Oooooooooooooooooong!

The knight was doing great until the end, but the final decision to use everything it had was a mistake. It left the core vulnerable, giving KiRA direct access to the most vulnerable part of a death knight.

-Thud.

'Perhaps it did not realise it needed to protect the core since it was a new creation.'

But whatever the case may be… this was the end for the knight.

As well as for the second stage of the dungeon that had gone on for needlessly too long.

"Huuuuu."

The death knight's body vanished into dark ashes. It did not drop anything other than the armor that it was already wearing.

There was also no notification for the clearance of the stage for the time being so KiRA did not let his guard down.

He waited and Unity kept her skills ready in case there was some unexpected ambush, but nothing like that happened this time.

[Ding!]

[You have cleared the (Stage-2) of Temple of Tatar's Lord.]

The system was perhaps calculating something for the final rewards and made the announcement a little late.

[You will now enter (Stage-3). Please be prepared.]

KiRA was exhausted after the last fight but it was also more exhilarating than the previous stage. Unlike the start of the stage where everything just died in his presence, the death knight was different.

At the very least, it gave him a good fight. One that might have turned disadvantageous had KiRA not been prepared for it.

The knight also gave him plenty of reason to stay on his toes. If it had been a different death knight with lesser intelligence, things would have been much more difficult.

[{ Master, are you alright? Will you be able to fight again? }]

Uni was worried about her master since he had used a lot of his energy in that fight. She had skills that could heal stamina and restore some energy, but they weren't very effective.

He was still not in the perfect condition to fight anything else, or go through a path full of traps once again. He needed rest, but it didn't seem like he was going to get it.

-Suuuuuuuuu…

The two of them were being moved to a deeper level once again. It was surprising how deep this dungeon was, and even more so how there was a rune structure above it.

Perhaps the dungeon master of this place made it especially for people who were here for the runes— though if that were the case, it was more likely that the dungeon master had already forgotten about this barren dungeon.

"It's a big place this time." KiRA reached his destination and commented on the vastness of the place.

Unlike the small corridor and the medium arena, the place that he ended up in this time was three times the arena.

The arena could not be called small but this place was just too big. Also, there was another ceiling above him this time, a dorm ceiling with the same kind of paintings and murals present all around them.

While it wasn't clearly visible, KiRA could also tell the same kind of murals were present at the end of this vast place, on the walls that surrounded what seemed like the bottom of a large water tank.

"What's it going to be this time? The ground here seems to be the same as the desert ground outside."

KiRA did not wait even a second to inspect everything with his {Mana sensitivity} when he saw the ground. He even used the sonar technique that he had used outside to locate whether there was anything underground or not.

The results came negative, confirming there was nothing out of ordinary here.

Since there were murals here as well, he was expecting this to be another one of the trap zones.

He was calculating what kind of path he would need to follow or what he would need to do to survive if this was a trap zone, but when the system window popped up next, his face almost went pale as his eyes widened in shock.

[Ding!]

[Please clear the (Stage-3) by escaping the sealed chamber within the given time.]

-Surrrrrr…

The sand beneath his feet wasn't going to be the only sand in this room.

[The chamber will be filled with Sand and different monsters until the challenger escapes.]

[Please find the escape route within the given time limit.]

[Time until chamber closes: 00:44:58].

The different murals around him did not shoot weapons or spells at them but one by one, the creatures that were present inside of these murals started coming out in their full size along with a ton of sand particles that added to the existing volume of Sand.

'This is the worst!'

The creatures that were coming out the murals weren't undead or the smaller creatures of the desert. Instead, they were the common monsters that existed a long time ago, monsters like the ash-skinned goblins famous for their acidic breath, the one horned ogres, the strange beasts that don't roam the world anymore.

These creatures were found in the middle floors of the tower and not on the lower floors. They should not be in the dungeons either but right now, they were coming out of the walls and ceilings as if they were taking a stroll in the park.

To make things a little easier, there was conflict between many of the species that were coming out of there, but that did not change anything.

They were still going to fight amongst themselves and then stop the only being that wasn't anything like them.

[{ "Uni, hide and stay hidden. Keep looking for anything unusual. The escape route should be around here." }]

The minimum level of these creatures was the same as the knight that he had just defeated but that did not mean they were the same as the knight.

Unlike the undead creatures, these creatures and monsters weren't vulnerable to the Holy power or purity.

They were simple creatures that he would have to fight without much advantages— which meant he wasn't going to fight at all.

'Let's hope they're as stupid as I remember.' KiRA used his stealth technique and hid away from the rest of the crowd while trying to look around for any clues.

The sand was filling up quickly, and it was already above where his feet were when he came here.

Thanks to the nature of this filling up, the ground itself was getting higher with the layers of sand piling up from one another. He wasn't going to be buried here since it was happening in a systematic manner, but if he missed the exit or the clues to the exit on the parts that were already inside the sand, he would be doomed.

[{ "Anything on that side, Uni?" }]

His voice was urgent right now, the monster fights around him were getting fiercer. The more monsters gathered in this place, even if it was vast, there would be monster blood, and the blood of these monsters was more corrosive than normal monsters.

He would die of the dangerous gases that they produce before the chamber was half-filled with sand.

The dangers in this place were simply too big. Why this place was designed like this was unknown to him but the creator must have been a sadist to include all kinds of different things.

The theme of this dungeon may be correlating to the runes, but this place was a mess!

[{ There's nothing particularly different here, master! The paintings are all simple, complicated, weird, a mix of everything! I don't see anything that could be called a key or a door! }]

The answer was around them. It was right there before them. They just needed to find it, they just needed to find the answer, the escape route, the key…

[{ "Think, Uni, think. The messages that we got since we came here had been strange since the start. Do you think the answer was hidden inside the messages?" }]

Many puzzle dungeons had the answers hidden inside the way they presented the 'question' to them.

There was no particular 'escape' route or key to a 'locked' door here. It did not have to be something so concrete.

The riddles are many times abstract and in a place filled with all kinds of things hiding within these paintings, the chances of anything logical being the answer may as well be little.

[{ Master! I think the answer is inside these paintings! There are so many strange energy balls here! }]

[{ "Energy balls? What are they?" }]

[{ I do not know! I can just sense these strange packs of energy scattered around this place! }]

That wasn't normal. What was she talking about?

KiRA was unsure whether these packs of energy were the answer or just a distraction, but he had to check it first.

The text that he got through the system windows was not all that complex. The chances that any clues were hidden within them were little so… these energy packs were his only hope.

If that did not work, he might just have to use brute force to get out of this place.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.