Chamber 2 felt easier than the last, one such prominent reason for that ease was.
I didn't participate in the fight whatsoever.
Okay, that may seem bad at first, but there was a reason!
I allowed my newly acquired bodyguard to handle it all. So what? I hired him giving up one of my holy blessing slots as payment, shouldn't he carry me?
Killing and smacking the craniums of zombies together, that wasn't my cup of tea so to say anyway.
My cup of tea required the slanted sun to cast its orange illumination on me, tanning my skin as I relaxed, while Ares kept bulldozing through the polished dark blue marble the large corridor's architects shaped it to be.
In the silent slaughters behind me. The breeze rose my hair in steady rises.
"Haaa. To auto-farm is the reason this heart of mine still beats...."
A yawn drifted in the air as I closed a weary eye, walking slowly to the broken window sill.
The scenery was baffling. The entire outside submerged in a drowning hell, forcibly kept alive to struggle afloat. Buildings collapsed, toppling to the ground like dominoes with each kill Ares did.
In all of the crippling misery, I take a small step back, letting my gaze fall over the deaths still happening in this dungeon.
'I don't feel anything. No, I do, it's just more dull.' I had noticed that my emotions existed as Ares fought, they just took more stimuli to be riled up.
A wave of relief washed over my sandy mind, sighs, long and stretching like the shadows tethering together left as quickly as my relief passed.
When you first clear a dungeon, you can also change the past the dungeon depicts. It isn't recommended though.
The things you can change are very limited as well.
'Dungeons are portals into the past after all.'
Without a past, a dungeon can't exist, that was one of the rules of the world I had come to know.
Since I myself have changed history numerous times, so I knew the consequences of changing something in the far past.
When changing something, it changes everything in the present, no matter how insignificant it may have seemed to you, your changes are devastating, which is just another reason as to why you shouldn't change the past no matter what.
For example, if I changed the past, Ares, the Ares before me I mean wouldn't exist.
He'd disappear from my very memory and everyone I ever knew about would also be forgotten.
That's what it meant to change the past. To change it, you have to change everything about yourself to do it.
Moving on, this dungeon specifically depicted the valiant battle of Baltan the playboy, this is the battle where his pride, ethics, morality shifted his own title and tide of the very battle itself.
Off in the distance, I could see it. A man donning leisure clothes to the battlefield, bright, blazing orange hair fell to his shoulders and spear with its head shaped like a dragon's maw. A sharp grin stretched to his eyes with spurts of blood coming from his wounded body with each exertion.
He was about 15 miles from here, the way I could tell wasn't with mana that allowed me to see that far but my sheer physical capabilities as an awakener that allowed it.
Baltan, that was the hero Baltan fighting in place of Pylon who was rushing at the same battlefield as we speak, in the form of a snake of course.
Baltan fought tooth and nail against a demon immortal to the passage of time, a steel-like aura surrounded his body, blanketing his sharp strikes with heavy slams.
"So that's Holy Altar?"
In the game, Holy Altar was simply a talent you could unlock, an ultimate buff, the best buff for any character in the game.
It granted an omni-boost to every single stat as the default, and added many other buffs depending on what character you used.
The character's ultimate, their blessing in other words also changed most of the time when they went through the Holy Altar awakening.
Mine included, only that.... mine was very underwhelming.
From the very start of transmigration. I had gone through a Holy Altar awakening, making me the only one with the fastest ever rate of obtainment over Holy Altar, that was my regression ability.
Dew of Regression.
Holy Altar awakenings could only happen to one of your blessings, if you had two in the first place.
What did this mean?
This my friends meant that I could reap in a massive physical boost early on but couldn't actually make use of the ability until I died.
So a waste of a slot in other words.
However, everything's a different scenario with the leaving of said blessing.
A slot for Holy Altar awakening was open. And I could truly reap the benefits of it.
The sounds behind me grew silent. A stark contrast to my slow, twitching grin plastered onto my face.
Creaaaakkk~
The door to chamber three opened up.
Kicking away from the window. I walk back toward Ares, already moving to sweep the third room.
My eyes hovered over his unlabored figure, clearly not in the least bit exerted from this dungeon.
Well, that blank expression would shift whether it wanted to or not due to my curse.
Crossing the door, it slowly closed in on us.
Fwooosh!
Lamps lit with blue wisps hovering to their sides.
An overbearing chandelier hung overhead, its crystal diamonds blinking in the light it was exposed to.
A row of knight statues squirmed at our presence.
The metal of their armor seared with warmth, its source belonging to a completely other third-party.
—!
Flame skeletons melted through the statues of the knights, awakened by the arrival of a visitor.
Rare monsters that wouldn't normally appear in this dungeon unless you were really unlucky.
Just like last time.
Ares took the mantle, rushing forward to clear it all like last time.
*
*
*
The battle was swift, but burdensome even to Ares.
'He's weaker at this point of the story huh?'
I never knew that, no truly I never knew.
It was surprisingly human of him
"Haa... Haa."
The rabid panting of Ares reached me, sweat clung to his face like glue, some of his bustled hair clung to the sides of his face.
He took one deep breath after another. Letting his exhaustion echo loudly between us.
I stood close to the open door to chamber 5, the boss room.
I was mostly untouched by the mobs of the dungeon due to my skill, but that didn't mean my involvement was nonexistent.
I did help, just not much.
"Ehem." I coughed to get Ares's attention on me.
He ignored my cough.
To explain how this crazy assassin I had been glazing nonstop since the start end up in this sorry state. I also had to explain another trashy encounter that actually happened quite recently in terms of regressions.
My curse had taken effect. A curse that I had gotten in the 18th reset after my last memory wipe.
To summarize said encounter, I had encountered a goddess, that goddess didn't like my uncouth way of speech, so she inflicted a curse on me.
Too simple? Well, she fucking detested me and my guts and potential generation of kids following after me and wanted an excuse to curse me. There, happy?
Honestly speaking, I was more shocked that the curse carried over resets more than the goddess being a certified Karen.
'Like seriously... I only stole a single grape man. Why did I deserve that?'
The saving grace in all of this maybe was that the curse only took affect when the dungeon was a holy pillar one and on its virginity status so to speak, holy pillar dungeons who had their chastity taken were free from the curse's range in other words.
"Ehem!" I coughed a little louder this time, which snapped Ares out of his miserable state.
We couldn't stay in one spot for long, it would be disadvantageous otherwise.
"We should continue, we can't let the dungeon implode in on us." I said, ignoring his withering bones crumbling down.
Finally, as if the air finally settled in his lungs, he spoke, a flash of surprise flickering for a moment on his eyes.
"What... was that all about?"
"Ah."
His confusion, palpable with the intensity of the situation grew more.
Even back in the association, the quest givers said to not worry about crazy rare monsters appearing all of a sudden.
But ever since the start of our clearing.
Only crazy rare monsters had been striking us.
So his confusion made sense, and he wasn't dumb enough to not know that that was the exact reason he was here for.
Meaning that he knew that I was somehow at fault for all of this.
Now there wasn't much reason to keep my curse a secret from him, but there also wasn't much reason to tell him everything as it was.
If people knew the goddess detested me, oh boy is the church gonna hound at me.
'...A half truth and half lie then?'
With those thoughts in mind, I gallop towards the panting horse I betted my life on for this dungeon clear. Crouching to meet him at eye level.
Being so close to him heightened the sounds of exhaustion coming from him.
His breaths, labored as they were fell on my ears with heavy tire.
"It's a curse."
I said flatly, inching for a reaction out of him. Which also had an adverse effect of settling a weight to my words.
Seeing as they were none being elicited, I continued explaining further.
"The curse increases the dungeon rank by one but the rewards that come from forcing a dungeon rank increase are guaranteed to be shit."
I look back, staring at the abyss winking seductively to me before looking back at Ares who more or less recovered.
"It's a drawback to being a prophet. The gods don't like it much when some random orients accurate prophecies you see."
Prophets aren't known much to the public, now the possibility of Ares knowing I'm lying are high, but I couldn't help but severely doubt whether he actually did know about the blessing of the prophet itself and its drawbacks. There just shouldn't be any reason for him to know.
But, his gaze seemed to pierce through me.
It appeared as if he knew that I were lying. That I kept some truth away from him.
He didn't have a blessing to check through lies, nor a skill for that, although there was one such skill that could be obtained.
His silence was stifling to me, it felt like being submerged in cold water right in front of a tiger.
The urge to tremble never once left me.
I held it desperately down. Waiting patiently for the ice to break
To my desires, the world finally answered, as the next moment, the ice broke between us with just a single word from Ares.
"Okay."
That was all he said, he accepted my explanation with open arms, getting up from his spot and walking through the boss room with more calmness than before.
But the image of flickers of fakeness in his eyes were sucked in my brain.
"...." The situation was weird, very, very weird.
Was he up to something?
Definitely, with that sudden recovery in complexion.
He was plotting something one hundred percent.
Did I know what kind of plot would befall on me?
No, I'd be going blind, with no information backing me up.
I felt caution, freight for the future that could change any moment.
As Ares entered the boss chamber where the pillar and servant of Master Midnight, the queen vampire resided once before dying to Pylon.
I entered too, following behind, jaw clenched in fear of my last life being in the hands of someone I now realized I shouldn't have willingly gave my life to so readily.