Hell Mode: Volume 9, page 5
“Is there a boss on the final layer of the place?”
“There is not.”
The Summoner was making sure to jot everything down. “What kind of monsters will appear?”
“Rank A, B, and C monsters will appear.”
“Rank As, huh? The difficulty level is pretty high.”
Huh? Wait, even those who’ve maxed out their Talents will probably get wiped out if they face a dragon or something. Even with a party of eight capable people, it was extremely tricky to defeat a dragon. Allen himself had struggled during his Academy days when the final floor’s boss was a dragon.
“Difficulty is relative to the people entering the dungeon. I am not sure if everyone will agree with you regarding difficulty.”
The cube made it clear that it could not provide any further information.
“Got it,” Allen replied, satisfied with the information he had received. “Please send us inside.”
“Sending you to the class promotion dungeon.”
In a flash, the scenery changed, and Allen and his party found themselves in a relatively large room.
“Spacious,” Allen commented.
“I agree. Look, there’s something over there,” Cecil said, pointing to a new floating cube.
They approached it, figuring that it must have something to do with the aforementioned tasks.
“Hello, No-life Gamers. I am Class Promotion Dungeon Task Enforcement System T10235. I shall provide everyone with a question.”
Does the “T” stand for “task”? Allen thought, but he decided to focus on the issue at hand.
“Wait, a question? What do you mean?” he asked.
“Yes. Please choose the numbered door you think is correct.”
As the cube spoke, five doors appeared behind it.
“Whoa! Doors!” Meruru squealed excitedly. “There’s stuff written on them!”
Looks like Dygragni’s hard work was worth it. Meruru pointed at the set of doors, each with a number between one and five glowing on it.
“Please answer this question: Which of the following classes cannot use Healing Magic?”
Glowing letters appeared in the space in front of Allen.
“Whoa! Glowing letters!” Meruru cried excitedly.
Question 1 of the Class Promotion Dungeon
Holy Knight
Paladin
Cleric
Swordsman Mage
Saint
“Um, the answer is the fourth one, right? The Swordsman Mage?” Cecil asked.
“I agree,” Sophie added.
Allen also agreed with that answer. Swordsman Mage derived from Mage and Swordsman, and was the only listed class that could not use Healing Magic. I see... This is easy for us, but if you haven’t studied class promotions and stuff, I can see this being a tricky question. Information was not valued very highly in this world, and not everyone had the knowledge to determine the correct answer.
He scribbled the correct answer in his grimoire, hoping to share it with the rest of the Allen Army later. Once he was done, they all headed toward the five doors.
“Okay, I’ll go through the third door, so I want everyone else to go through the fourth one,” Allen said. He was going to intentionally head through the incorrect door because he wanted to see what would happen.
“Huh? Are you sure?” Cecil asked.
“I don’t think there are any insta-death traps,” Allen replied.
Hopefully. None of the others could deny that they believed Allen would be fine by himself, so he turned away from his party members and headed for the third door. When he opened it, he saw a long corridor. He summoned a Beast A behind him and Spirit A beside him before he walked down it.
After walking for a good while, he came across a door. Wait? Is this it? The next moment, there was a blinding glow.
“Huh?” Allen asked.
“Graaar!” roared a tigerlike beast. It appeared out of nowhere and pounced at him.
“Hayate.”
“Rah!” the silver Beast A replied, and it jumped over Allen to defend him by attacking the enemy.
As the two beasts fought, Spirit A joined the fray, making the battle two of Allen’s Summons against the monster. Hmm... My Strengthening is Lvl. 9, but this monster is stubborn. I’m guessing it’s Rank A. Allen’s Summons were launching a barrage of attacks and had the tiger monster on the defensive, but it refused to fall, attesting to its strength. Neither of the Summons had been King Me’d, as King Me could only be used on one Rank A Summon of each type, and Allen had already King Me’d Merus and sent him to hunt iron golems in the Rank S dungeon.
Ever since Gushara, the Pontiff of Daemonism, had been defeated, Allen had focused solely on gaining skill experience and had recently managed to reach Strengthening Lvl. 9, which buffed two stats by +5,000. He had provided advice and led the Allen Army, but his party had been understanding and was allowing him to spend time gaining XP for his Summoning skill. His party was keenly aware that doing so was the key to victory against the Demon Lord Army, not strengthening the Allen Army.
While he was lost in his thoughts, his Summons defeated the monster.
Over a million XP? Then it must at least be a Rank A monster, and on the stronger side at that. Talentless people would not stand a chance against it even if there was an army of them, and even those with Talents would struggle against such a dangerous monster. One wrong move and the entire party might be wiped out.
I don’t think I stepped on any traps... If you choose the wrong answer, there’s just a monster waiting for you in the middle of the hallway, I guess. Allen walked ahead and arrived at a large room. Another cube was floating in the air, and Cecil and the others were standing there.
“Huh. I guess we end up in the same place,” Allen noted.
“Oh, you’re finally here. How was it?” Cecil asked.
“I ran into a monster. I guess you get attacked if you pick the wrong answer.” But even if one chose an incorrect answer, they could proceed as long as they could brute-force their way past the monster.
Allen explained the Rank A monster that he had run into. Cecil wanted to press on, but Allen ignored her request and went through all the other incorrect doors.
Monster Ranks Behind Each Door for Question 1 of the Class Promotion Dungeon
Rank C
Rank C
Rank A
None (correct answer)
Rank B
Like the cube said, only monsters between Ranks A and C are here. The third choice was “Cleric,” and the fifth choice was “Saint.” There was likely some sort of penalty for choosing an obviously wrong answer. Conversely, the closer to the correct answer one was, the weaker the monsters were. “Cleric” was the most clearly wrong choice by far, thus it had led to a stronger monster as punishment.
After Allen’s tests were done, he finally returned to the hall where Cecil and everyone were waiting. They then spoke to the cube.
“Congratulations on completing the first task. Do you wish to advance to the next task? Or will you withdraw from the class promotion dungeon?”
“If we leave, can we pick up where we left off?” Allen asked.
“No. You will start from the beginning.”
There were no save states allowed. Not everyone might make it through the first question. I guess this is some sort of safety measure.
“Will the tasks be the same for whoever tackles this dungeon?” Allen asked.
“It will not. The format and content of the tasks will differ every time, with an almost infinite number of variations.”
Makes sense. The tasks don’t change according to a person’s class either, so the next party might not get this multiple-choice question. There being an unlimited number of tasks with varying questions and content meant that it would be difficult to come up with any sort of universal solution. They’ve thought this through.
Allen jotted it all down in his grimoire and tried to think of a plan as he decided to proceed with this dungeon.
“May we please have the next task?” he asked.
“You will be transported to the next task.”
The scenery shifted once more as the party was transported to another spacious room. It seemed to go on forever in every direction, and Allen spotted bumpy obstacles dotting the landscape.
“Is this our next task?” he inquired.
“Correct. I am Class Promotion Dungeon Task Enforcement System T20235. There is a teleportation system somewhere within this area. If you manage to speak to it, you will clear this task.”
Allen Summoned a Bird E and had it fly around while using its Awakened Ability, Farsight, to search for cubes. He spotted several of them floating a few kilometers from their current location, each one about a kilometer away from any of the others. It seemed that the Gamers had options.
“There’s a cube over there,” Allen said, walking toward a random cube from among the candidates. His party followed close behind.
“When you’re with us, you end up finding the correct answer before we can even think about it,” Cecil said behind him. “It honestly feels like we’re just running a couple of light errands.”
As the cube grew nearer, he realized that the obstacles he had seen in the distance were boulders. They walked past the boulders and saw a long waterway a few meters wide barring their path. When they peered into it, they spotted the shadow of a fish, a couple of meters long, swimming in the water. Aquatic monsters were lurking about.
Allen glanced around and spotted a lever near the waterway. He pulled it, and the water started to drain, allowing them to cross.
“I’m guessing we have to either find levers like these or use one of the boulders lying around to stop the water and press forward,” Allen explained, finally understanding the reason these rocks were scattered throughout the area.
“I see. A wonderful observation, Lord Allen,” Sophie praised, clutching her hands in front of her chest.
“But does this have anything to do with class promotions?” Cecil wondered.
The first task was a question about classes, which pertained to the promotion at hand, but pulling levers and solving puzzles to move forward seemed completely unrelated to class promotions.
Allen could not understand what she was on about. “Huh? If you don’t clear it, you can’t get a promotion.”
In his previous life, Allen had played games where one would receive various tasks and side quests that had nothing to do with the main story. He found this all to be common sense and did not even question the apparently absurd second task. In fact, he was so used to fetching items or buying objects for a quest that it felt natural to him to run an unrelated set of errands.
“Yeah, but why do we have to do this?” Cecil grumbled.
“Because that’s our task,” Allen replied.
“Argh! Never mind!”
She figured that arguing further would get her nowhere, as she would occasionally get into such conversations with Allen and had learned that it was meaningless to get bothered by every little thing. She would grow mad.
Allen was so wrapped up in his task that he failed to recognize how his conversation was not clicking with Cecil. A Talentless person with low Attack would probably struggle to move a boulder like that. I could probably clear this task in minutes if I rode Bird B, but future parties of the Allen Army won’t have that luxury. I guess I’ll just keep going slow and steady.
Upon closer inspection, he spotted a few chests in the water. He dropped a boulder to stop the water completely, then had his Summons open the chests. Almost all of them were monsters—there were not just Rank B mimics but Rank A abyss boxes as well. His Summons made short work of them, and Allen guessed that some people would perish upon trying to open these chests. He jotted it down in his grimoire.
Since Bird E had already found the party’s goal, Allen was working backward, trying to use the solution to solve any problem that stood in their way. He came up with the most efficient route, and the party reached its target in less than an hour.
“There wasn’t any fighting this time,” Meruru said as they approached the cube. She had simply tagged along and had finished the second task without breaking a sweat.
“Yeah,” Allen agreed.
“Congratulations on completing the second task. Do you wish to advance to the next task? Or will you withdraw from the class promotion dungeon?”
“Hmm?” Allen thought aloud in response to the cube’s question. “Could I ask if you’re the only teleportation system around?”
“I cannot answer that.”
What?
“I’m gonna go talk to another cube,” Allen said to his party.
“You’re experimenting again?” Cecil asked wearily. “Do as you like.”
Allen rode a Bird B with the rest of his party and spoke to another cube. Up through the fourth cube, they received the same response. However, when they approached the fifth and final cube, there was a loud vwoom. The scenery immediately shifted, and a pack of massive wolf monsters growled at them and pounced.
“Grr!”
“Looks like we were sent to a pack of monsters,” Allen said.
“Looks like it,” Cecil replied.
These monsters were the same rank as the final boss of the Rank A dungeon, but the No-life Gamers had already cleared a Rank S dungeon—in fact, it had become an XP farm for them. These monsters proved little trouble, with Allen and his party taking care of them in a flash.
“There weren’t too many,” Meruru remarked as she piloted Tam-Tam, clearing the monsters away.
“When you compare it to the death zone, yeah,” Allen replied.
Unlike the death zones in the Rank S dungeon, the class promotion dungeon did not have locations where hundreds of Rank A monsters attacked at once. Their numbers here were nothing to sneeze at, though. And given how the Gamers had been immediately teleported in the middle of the group of monsters, any unwary victims would have little time to get into formation and defend. If their formation is sloppy, I can see a party of eight being wiped out. We were surrounded in the middle of a room with nowhere to escape to, after all.
Allen had to think of ways to react to these precarious situations so that his army could follow his lead, but he could come up with no such plan at the moment. There were five floating cubes scattered throughout this space, and one was a dud that transported anyone who got close into an area with monsters. Unfortunately, there was no way to discern which cube was the dud. Luck was a part of clearing the class promotion dungeon, it seemed.
With the monsters dealt with, Allen approached the cube. He had been aware of the floating object ever since he had been teleported to this space, but the monsters that had barred his path had prevented him from getting close until now.
“Congratulations on completing the second task. Do you wish to advance to the next task? Or will you withdraw from the class promotion dungeon?”
It did not matter if one unluckily picked the dud. Much like with the previous task, as long as the monsters were defeated, the party was allowed to press on.
Since Allen had no further questions, he requested to head to the final task. The Gamers were once again teleported to a spacious room, though this one was a bit smaller than the previous area. Walls surrounded them, each of which featured a hallway that led to a different place. The usual cube floated in the central space.
“I am Class Promotion Dungeon Task Enforcement System T30235. There is a teleportation system somewhere within this area. If you manage to speak to it within the next twenty-four hours, you will clear this task.”
“Huh, there’s a time limit on this one,” Allen said. “What happens if we go over that time?”
“You will fail this task and be teleported outside of the class promotion dungeon. If you would like to try again, you must restart from the first task.”
“All right, should we start by taking the hallway in front of us?” Allen suggested to his party.
“I’m in!” Meruru replied excitedly.
She was eager to get class promoted as soon as possible, but she was also aware that Allen wanted to do his usual testing. The No-life Gamers went through the corridor in front of them, and Allen sent his Summons down the other three routes, hoping to maximize efficiency.
“This is a labyrinth, isn’t it?” Cecil asked.
“Yeah,” Allen replied. “Seems like the other routes branch off a bunch of times.”
“Really?”
The other three paths had many twists, turns, and forks, but for some inexplicable reason, the path that Allen and his party had taken did not. Their route had only a large curve, and at the end of it stood a dragon.
“Ah, so you foolish humans came straight here like moths to a flame,” the dragon said.
A cube floated behind the monster, implying that it needed to be defeated to clear this task.
“Get ’em, Orochi,” Allen ordered, Summoning his Dragon A.
“Aye, Master Allen,” three heads roared in response. The Strengthened Orochi had an Attack of 15,000.
“Ngh?! Graaar!” the dragon roared back.
The Dragon A’s five heads chomped at the monster, and the haughty dragon that proudly guarded the cube was ripped to shreds within a matter of moments. All the while, the Strengthened Bird As with 15,000 Agility were flying through the labyrinth, relaying the layout of the place and any information they gathered.
There were four routes in total, and each route differed in straightforwardness, length, and the monster that guarded the cube. The path in the front had no branches and was only a short distance away from their goal, which was guarded by a Rank A monster. If monsters were not an issue, it would take around an hour to clear this final task.
The path to the left had several forks, one coming every few kilometers, and required a moderate amount of time to reach the cube. Quite a few Rank B monsters popped out along it. Even if the party got lost along the way, it would take around four to five hours to defeat the monsters and press on. The route to the right was also teeming with Rank B monsters. There were fewer forks in the road than there were in the left path, but it was far longer.
