Dungeon Diver: Stealing a Monster's Power

Chapter 85

[Test 1][Time Remaining: 29 Hours]

I make my way back to the group and Maria is the first to speak up.

"Mission accomplished?"

I grin and wave my new talon-shaped necklace at her to confirm my victory.

Bruce, the tank is fully healed now, he turns to me with a thankful look on his face.

"I appreciate the save back there, we wouldn't have made it out in one piece. You said you'd faced him before? How'd that happen?"

I nod.

"Yeah. I fought him on a lower floor too. Fortunately, or I guess unfortunately he's not coming back this time. Sorry about your teammates, at this rate they won't be passing the exam..."

Bruce crosses his arms and shrugs.

"We already made an agreement before entering. If any of us fall behind, it's in our best interest to keep moving forward. We may have come as a team, but each of us is here to pass the exam as an individual."

I look around to see Nessa nodding as well. I turn to Maria, she's close by my right side.

"How about us? What's our plan?"

Maria shrugs and replies.

"I guess we can do the same deal. We're too far in to wait for each other now."

I nod and look around with confidence.

"Agreed. I doubt we'll run into that scenario anyway."

Nessa jumps in.

"Well you're full of yourself today aren't ya? I know you just saved us, but come on, this is still just test 1!"

We all laugh a bit and keep walking toward the back of the dungeon. I lead the way using enemy detection to keep us away from as many teams as possible. Maria takes the lead every once in a while to make our weaving path a little less suspicious. Nessa and Bruce just seem to be thankful there are no enemies around, they don't speak up to question it. I have a feeling Nessa knows exactly what's going on though, her skill is Mimic after all.

We battle 6 more groups of Ogres, then make it to the boss room without facing any other teams. Before we enter, I speak up.

"Hey Nessa, what skill are you using today?"

She grins.

"How about I show you?"

I nod, then all 4 of us enter the boss room.

It's a gross wet cave-like environment with high rocky walls, pretty much the same as every other mountain or forest dungeon boss room. We wait around in silence for a few seconds until a massive mutant ogre appears. It's level 198, 4m tall, has dark green skin, and smells like rotting flesh.

Nessa runs forward and we all stand back to watch.

Her long silver sword begins to glow with a light pink tint. I've never seen anything like this before....

She jumps up at the roaring beast and slices through its neck like butter. This isn't overly impressive, there's still a pretty large skill level gap, but that was no ordinary cut. The monster's flesh dematerializes the moment it makes contact with the pink aura around Nessa's blade.

I use appraisal on her to fully examine what's going on with that skill.

[Mimic]: Combat Magic [Mana Manipulation]

I raise an eyebrow as she turns back around with her head held high.

"So, what do you think? Mana Manipulation is pretty neat isn't it?"