Next to the Metropolis-D Tower, a man was chuckling non-stop. Josh had just received news from Frank, and the first student recruitment session had been a massive success!
Many of the new students had even left reviews on the school website site vouching for how "unique", "challenging", and "surprising" the whole experience was. They couldn't slander the school as per contract, so the best they could do was bait poor souls to share their misery.
<You've received 385 052 Credits!> This message was very welcomed too!
Josh headed toward the Tower with excitement. It turned out that Floor 20 was very peculiar.
It was called a melding Floor, meaning it would combine many previous Floors into one. People didn't talk that much about this one because while it was surprising, it wasn't that challenging.
Still, Josh couldn't help but wonder how it would play out in Hellish. He could be heard whistling while carrying some zombie skin he had just bought (Easy counter to 2 Floors). Under the disgusted gazes of the passerby, he teleported in.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Welcome to Floor 20 Hellish! Mission Defeat Smelly Knight in the Tournament!]
"What the fuck?" Josh couldn't help but exclaim in surprise. Every 10 Floors, it was supposed to be a Boss hunting mission. What was up with this tournament? Also, talk about a bad nickname!
The surroundings were gloomy and relatively empty besides a few smelly ancient stone monoliths. There was a moon illuminating the Floor lightly. Had the Tower gotten an upgrade? On each rock were short messages:
<We wander so they can rest>
<Flesh for the Flesh God>
<Follow the Ghoul Emperor!>
<So hungry…>
Ghoul Emperor, this meant undeads, a shitload of them. Wasn't it weird how he was already facing ghouls again? They had appeared on Floor 16 just recently! Josh's musings were interrupted by the sound of intense galloping. Clip Clop Clip Clop!
He dove behind a monolith, his hand gripping his morphing weapon as he sneakily peeked toward the sound. Many dark horses were coming his way, about 20 of them: nightmares!
On their back were gray ghouls that wore bronze armor and held moon-shaped scimitars. They turned out to be patrolling. After doing a short round near his location, they disappeared toward the distance once more.
These monsters had coordination. This likely meant that killing them could provoke issues by alerting their brethren. Josh didn't mind slaughtering, but he would find his objective first above anything else.
That is how he began roaming all over the place, soon finding even more monoliths. Every 15 minutes, there would be a new patrol passing by. Josh was very tempted to start an indiscriminate slaughter, but he reined himself in.
Instead, he steadily tracked them to their base. He had been expecting a village like the goblins or the kobolds had with about 50 individuals. Nope, this one was way bigger! It was an entire town with hundreds of ghouls wandering around!
The only defensive measure seemed to be a low-height bone wall —besides the insane number of soldiers of course. Next to the town, there was a large fenced area that appeared to be a Nightmare ranch.
The whole scene reminded him of the ending of the first ghoul mission. Except, would they gently allow him to 1 v 1 this boss? Probably not...
Funny how the monsters on a previous Floor were nothing but domesticated mounts on this one. "Navi, what's the best clear strategy here?"
<Apologies, master. Insufficient data. According to the database, the number of ghouls present should be significantly lower. Impossible to compute!>
So, it turned out that only Hellish had such a ghoul fest. There was one thing that would render his task easier: none of them were watching. They probably assumed that the patrols would have detected any intruder, or maybe that no one would be dumb enough to come this close.
Either way, Josh would use this to his advantage! He first covered himself in dirt and putrid zombie skin before slowly crawling forward, one meter at a time.
He kept going until he suddenly noticed a ghoul starting to sniff the air with rapt attention. Before it could figure out his location, Josh crawled backward as fast as possible. He'd have to find another solution.
Since he couldn't go anywhere near them, he would have to make them come to him. He already had an idea. He backtracked until he reached the biggest monolith he could find. Then, Josh began digging at its base to create himself a small hideout.
Using the OP pickaxe for such a delicate task was akin to using dynamite to get rid of the weeds in his garden. He soon had a lair that he could barely fit into to evade his pursuers. Being inside the rock would camouflage his smell which was all that mattered.
With this step completed, he could finally have fun. He patiently waited for the next patrol, ramrod straight, not giving a fuck about hiding. Clip Clop Clip Clop! As soon as they came nearby, they saw him and erupted in raucous cheers.
"Flesh!!!"
"Human!"
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"So hungry!"
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They had horrendous grins on their cadaver faces as their sharp teeth could be seen along with an unbelievable amount of blackish saliva. How would Josh handle these guys? He would use a halberd! This gave him enough reach to target the riders directly.
<Ghoulish Nightmare Rider Lv 24> (Uncommon)
Oh, this would be fun. Josh made sure to dodge their first charge by jumping into the air, then swung with all the strength he could muster. One of the ghoul riders was thrown off his mount, landing heavily to the ground with its neck broken.
"Oh? Interesting." Josh couldn't help but murmur. In front of him there now were:
<Ghoulish Soldier Lv 22> (Common)
<Nightmare Lv 22> (Common)
The ghoul was even slowly getting up. Of course, an undead wouldn't be so easy to kill. Seeing them gallop away and coming back, Josh quickly finished the poor bastard and decided to even the playing field.
"Nightmare, I summon you!"
The pet spawned, looked around, saw the other Nightmares, and seemed confused for a second. But then it saw the ghouls and its eyes showed sympathetic sorrow. Poor brethren, they too were slaves to an evil master!
"Alright, charge to battle!" Josh happily shouted.
Man and horse increased speed until they finally reached the opponents. It seemed like Nightmare was slightly more agile than its unnamed counterparts. For a while, Josh had fun throwing all the riders to the ground.
The ghouls called for their mounts, but Josh had an ace up his sleeve. He emitted pure killing intent. Against savage nightmares, it would have barely been effective, but these were more cowardly and instantly ran away. The rest was straightforward.
Josh looked down on them (literally) as he beat them till true death atop Nightmare. Just as he was done with the fight, he heard the sound of gallop once again. It was another patrol with another 20 ghouls, bringing along the lost mounts.
"Oh, another group of friends to play with!" Josh happily welcomed them. What happened next were tons of dead people getting fucked over and over with a very long, hard, and powerful halberd. Josh set the mounts free again for them to get reinforcements.
Afterward came many waves of enemies:
40 riders — They took a while to dispatch.
80 Riders — This time, they sent a messenger to ask for help early on. This rendered Josh's life Hell for he had to rush things so much!
160 Riders — No way that Josh was fighting them this time around. Nope, he hid in his smelly monolith. Actually, why was a rock stinking in the first place? Also, did he really want to know?
240 Riders— They were using a lot of ghoulpower to find him. They made the ground tremble whenever they came near. This was pretty annoying as Josh was trying to take a nap. Couldn't they dismount and search carefully on foot instead?
200 Riders— They seemed to have determined him to be gone. After all, no one sane would remain in the surroundings after such a show of strength, right?!
100 Riders— They could be heard grumbling as they had to do patrol after patrol. It seemed like they were communicating through primal, guttural sounds. Anyway, Josh killed them all, sending the ghoul town into a frenzy once more, or so he assumed.
240 Riders— Josh thought this was extremely normal until he suddenly heard a voice. What?! There was suddenly an intelligent NPC? Was this his target? Talk about luck!
Still, the problem was still the tournament. Josh hadn't found any clue so far. He couldn't just remain hiding in this rock forever. He had to do something.
"Alright, Nightmare. I have a mission for you! Are you ready to be bait?"
Why was the poor pet condemned to such fate?! Couldn't its master be bait for once?! The horse would have been cursing if it could. But sadly, it had to resign itself to trot away, smeared with Josh's blood for the smell.
"Make sure you bring them in a wild goose chase. The bigger the circles, the better!" Josh shouted at it as it disappeared over the horizon.
Now, he would lurk around and exploit any positioning error. Whenever a unit failed to follow the army, he would be there beating the shit out of them. Thus began another hunt similar to what had happened with the trolls: the hunted became the hunter.
Josh's current target was the voice's owner. An intelligent NPC could provide him with so much info! He first thinned the enemy forces.
240 Riders —> 100 Riders —> 50 Riders
Josh took his time to do the job well. When there were only 50 Riders left to the main group, he struck! In the middle of their group was a special ghoul that was everything he had been looking for and more.
If he wasn't wrong, this ghoul would be his ticket to victory! How nice...
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