BXBX NOVEL Chapter 126: Hell Dive Undeads
"Another day...another Hell Dive. Man, when will it end?"
"You know, you'd think that after doing it for so long we'd get used to it by now, but no, I just can't seem to get used to it, for some reason."
"Me either, but what can we do? This is how the world works. Us normal folks could only do our best to stay alive."
From the hushed discussions of the crowd, it was obvious that the reason behind the tension all over them was because of the Hell Dives.
It's the start of the month, and that generally means that humans should prepare for their Hell Dives this early so that they can free up the rest of their month. And the majority of them often take their Hell Dives on the first week of the month, only a fraction of the population delays theirs for whatever reason.
Even for the Instructors, Staff, and students of the Starlight Royal Academy, this rings true. Granted, most of them are confident about their chances. However, there's always going to be a handful of people who still feel nervous about this.
It's the start of the weekend today. Cedric keeps his schedule open during these days to rest and relax. While he does have Saturday classes, they're not that hard so he could afford to enjoy his time.
Usually, Cedric likes taking his Hell Dives in the last week of the month. He wants to make sure that his progress is going well to increase his confidence in clearing his monthly mandatory service. However, starting this month, he'll be changing that.
He doesn't have a big reason or whatever. He just noticed that this seemed to be what everybody around him was doing so he was inclined to do the same, that's all.
So, with that said, Cedric woke up early today to descend to the Purgatory to clear his task.
**
[Mandatory Task:]
: Hell Dive - Survive the Endless Undead Horde for 5 hours twice.
: Rewards - 100% Demon Soul gain, Clearance Streak +1
: Punishment for Failure - Failure Streak +1.
: Record: Clear Streak - 13, Failure Streak - 0
**
This is the current record. Not bad for such a difficult task.
He went as Cedric for the first time, wearing light but decent armor on top of his combat suit. His sword was at its scabbard hanging by his side and his mood primed and ready for combat.
When the timer started, he immediately sensed swarms of Zombies appearing out of thin air.
Because his task grows harder according to his growth, the amount of zombies that spawn each minute as well as their strength was only a bit lower than his current realm - which means Tier 1 at minimum.
However, don't forget that the Undead Horde evolves every ten minutes and he has to do this for 5 hours with barely any rest. No matter how confident Cedric becomes, he has to take this seriously, or else he'll find his way back to the RMC.
As soon as the countdown began, Cedric wasted no time and started killing the zombies.
However, instead of using his Sword, he used this chance to test his Elemental Mastery in combat.
This meant that he sent out a packed orb of fire toward the swarm and watched as that skill reduced the entire ground into ashes in mere seconds.
"Hmm...I overdid it." He mused out loud before turning to the other direction where he sensed another wave incoming.
This time, he lowered the output, making the fireball weaker. Thanks to his calculations, his next attack still took down the next wave. The impact and heat of the fireball as well as the flames spreading took care of the rest who survived the initial contact.
While it did take longer to do so, the energy needed for an attack like that was considerably lower compared to the previous one he sent.
"Because this isn't ordinary fire, it packs more punch and spreads faster." He muttered as he analyzed the result. "The previous attack barely cost Ki, and because I regenerate Ki faster than anybody, I can afford to throw as many as I want."
"But that wouldn't work in the long run," Cedric stated as he threw another fireball toward another cluster of zombies.
"Because the Horde evolves every ten minutes, I will eventually need to send strong attacks, which will cost more Ki. Eventually, my regeneration wouldn't be able to keep up with my expenditure."
He looked around the purgatory and sighed: "And it's not like I could burn this entire place because it's weird. If I wanted the fire to spread, I could only rely on zombies making contact with each other. Even then, with the horde's consistent evolution, I would need to make my flames hotter to deal with them.
This then turns into a cycle that will only prove detrimental to my chances at clearing this task."
It only took him a couple of seconds to come to this conclusion. But that doesn't mean that he will stop right here. The horde hasn't evolved enough yet to warrant another strategy.
But as he got absorbed into his thoughts and the first 10-minute mark passed, he noticed a surprising development within his field of senses.
"Is that...?"
Cedric narrowed his eyes. He saw a unique type of undead that didn't look like a zombie or a ghoul.
It took on a humanoid shape. It has rotting bits of flesh attached to its body while the rest were reduced to mere bones. It has a ghastly green hue on its eye-sockets and somehow, was wearing a dirty robe and holding a rotting book which emanated with the same ghastly aura.
It released a fluctuation that resulted in several more undead clawing their way out of the ground, eventually joining the growing horde.
"Corpse-raisers, huh? So the task has reached this level of difficulty, I see."
The Corpse-raisers are also known as Lesser Necromancers. Their abilities are tied to what they're called, obviously. However, unlike Necromancers, this is all they could do.
Necromancers learned spells that could empower their summons or weaken their enemy. Corpse-raisers can't do that. Their only ability is to raise the Undead for their grave. They don't even have the ability to make their summons completely loyal to them. Their only task is just that, to raise them.
Although Cedric already realized this during the time he saw a Ghoul appearing in his Hell Dive, it only fully sunk into him now that this is indeed, an 'Undead' horde, not just a Zombie horde.
And since the Corpse-raisers already started appearing, it's almost certain that he'd be seeing a true Necromancer someday, if not today.
'Zombies, Ghouls, Corpse-raisers, Skeletons, Necromancers, Headless Knights, Banshees, Mummies, Lich, Arch-Lich, Wraiths...'
'It's so easy to overlook the true extent of what the 'Undead' could be with how inclusive the Demon Race is.' Cedric pursed his lips as he realized this.
It's still a mystery to him how Demons could take on many forms but that's irrelevant to his current situation really. With him knowing the sheer number of forms he could expect to see in his future battles in the Purgatory, his focus should be on how he could prepare against them.
'Fire is effective against them.' Cedric mused inwardly, proven by how his enemies reacted to his attacks just now. 'Sunfire is even more effective due to its latent properties.'
'However, Sunfire could only be used by Derrek - my alter ego. And if I want to keep up with the ruse, which I should be since I could still feel eyes on me, this means that I'm only limited to ordinary fire.'
'That's not too bad I suppose.' He added, 'I mean, I could work my way around it. But the stronger the Undead are, the more resilient they are against Fire.'
'Higher forms of the Undead could harness the power of 'Death' and/or Curses and Hexes. They could use those spells to weaken me severely and cause me to fail my task.'
Drawing his sword from its scabbard, Cedric released his Sword Intent and prepared to face the undead head-on, on top of this, flames billowed on his sword too, further increasing its killing potential.
Cedric grew rather bored of just hurling fireballs so he decided to use his sword and Sword Intent in conjunction with his flames to increase his killing speed.
By now, he's already facing Tier 2 of both Regular and Mutated Zombies, Ghouls, and Corpse-raisers. Their numbers will constantly increase from this point onwards. After every hour, he'll also have to face a Boss.
'I should start learning spells that could counter Dark Magic after I'm done with this. It's better to start early rather than late after all.' Cedric concluded as he finally focused on the task ahead.