Chapter 136 - 136: Toxic Swamp Speed Farm

With the new danger of having a skill that can potentially endanger the area he was in Ezekiel put the wand away so he would not make any mistakes.

'Looks like if I want to get somewhere quickly I can try out the skill but I will have to test the mana usage first. Welp back to farming the dungeon!'

So far the part of the game that Ezekiel loved most was the combat since it let him blow off a lot of steam.

No matter how nice someone was or how shy or peaceful they were they would still get some level of stress from their daily activities.

As a member of food service he had to keep his reactions as polite as possible no matter how ridiculous or disrespectful a customer might be, his uncle allowed staff to throw out overly problematic customers but he did make sure to teach them that throwing out a customer simply for being rude isn't always the best option.

Ezekiel was not meant or secretly hateful towards customers but no matter how much he tried to let it go, he still kept a lot of pent up anger that combat allowed him to release on monsters.

Inside of the dungeon he saw the familiar trees and toxic smog that made the area so dangerous, before absorbing the mana he decided to check for danger with his mana sense.

He focused his senses and allowed his eyes to shift into the state of viewing mana but what he saw shocked him.

He had spawned into the dungeon in an abnormal location with many serpents in the area.

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Congratulations!

Player has joined the special dungeon event "Snake Queen Courtship"

Player is recommended to avoid the swarm and attempt to survive!

Rewards: ?

~~~~~~~~~~

He thought about what he knew about snakes from nature shows and even old movies from when his mother was a child, these thoughts led him to immediately jump out of the swamp and fly high into the air for safety.

He kept the flying birds and insect monsters off of him but the creatures in that swamp were only a threat at the elite and mini-boss level by now.

He was wondering what sort of behavior the snakes of this dungeon would display for the mating ritual with the queen, usually venomous snakes would compete between rivals in a non deadly way but this was a fantasy world where the rules did not follow natural evolution.

He would get his answer as he started to notice snakes traveling across the swamp and occasionally witness them fighting one another.

What he saw left him astonished as snakes of all sizes were rapidly slithering in the dame direction, occasionally some would stop to fight one another but usually those had a clear winner as the aggressor often ate the victim.

He could also see that those with more potent poison mana would often be the victors, a strange circumstance where the more venomous serpent would kill their foe before sinking their fangs into the area near the core of the snake and somehow drain it's mana into themselves.

He began to cast a spell to start slaying some of those serpents but when he did so he discovered a problem.

His mana pool felt like it had almost been cut into one tenth of it's previous size as the mana pool now consisted solely of void mana.

It was almost as if the void core had fully taken over his previous mana system and he now had to rely on this more potent but far lower quantity system.

'Damn I knew that was reckless but this is just extreme... ok I cant just spam my strongest spells anymore I actually need to be careful.'

He began by picking off a few targets with Frenzied Void Needles while his spells were stored around him as blobs of void mana ready to shape.

Each snake he killed showed a progress bar beginning to fill but the event did not tell him what that progress was for.

As he got more kills and more progress he began to notice other snakes with bars above their heads as well.

He decided to target one and when he did so he realized it was a much higher level than many of the others that he had slain.

He also noticed that his own progress got filled by a larger degree because of it.

'The best way to do this event might be to pick off the snakes without a progress bar and then when I see a snake with a large amount of the bar filled I should slay it myself.'

With this idea in mind he began to test the most efficient way to use his mana since he could no longer just make spells stronger by pushing absurd amounts of mana inside to create more fragments to damage with.

He realized that the damage over time effect of the void mana combined with the effect of the shadowfire element actually made up for a lot of what he used before.

The raw damage output of unmodified Frenzied Void spells were better than most modified spells now that he was using pure void mana.

When he was testing his casting limits under these new circumstances he noticed the that there was a snake with a third of the bar filled so he swooped low to try to kill it.

Hovering in place he unleashed a barrage of Frenzied Void Needles onto this target but as soon as they his the snake he realized it was an elite.

It had swallowed another snake with potent poison affinity and upon looking at Ezekiel it hissed with rage from the damage he had caused it.

The pain of the mana eating away at it's body seemed to enrage this elite and it spit a powerful stream of venom at him which he was forced to dive to avoid.

Normally diving was a horrible idea for such a circumstance but he had noticed a very important detail since the start of the event.

Other creatures in the swamp seemed to hesitate to attack this swarm for obvious reasons but even elite creatures were avoiding it.

He also noticed that when two rivals fought eachother the snakes often did not interfere until the end when a snake may try to steal the mana from the body of the dead snake.

When he got near the ground he leveled out and used that extra speed to launch himself at this elite venomous snake.

As he got closer he confirmed that this snake was at least the size of an anaconda in the later stages of adulthood, it would easily be able to wrap around his body so he had to be agile.

'Cats are able to beat snakes, I need to think like a predator to kill a predator.'

He covered his gloved hand in a blade of Frenzied Void Mana and slashed out, the large snake dodged with a savage hiss before a sickly purple and green spell circle glowed within it's wide maw.

A number of needles made from the magic of this creature shot out like the barrage of a chain gun forcing Ezekiel to throw himself into the air to avoid the attack.

A flap of his powerful wings launched him above the snake as it followed him with a sudden flick of it's head that tracked him faster than he had expected.

"OH COME ON!"

He had to use the claws on his wing to grab a tree and swing to the side just to change his direction to match the speed of this snake.

He saw that the magic affinity of the elite must be high as the plants that normally seemed immune to the toxic nature of the swamp were beginning to melt from the potent spell.

He covered his clawed gloves in mana once again but this time he had a new idea, using the momentum of his swings he would launch shards of his compressed mana at the serpent almost like the silly old cartoon attacks where a swordsman would launch slashes of energy at a target using their blade.

If he could just make that attack into a more reliable version then it would function for his idea.

When he slashed out with one hand the air seemed to warp around his mana infused claws before he launched out a number of shards.

The snake saw him lashing out and with the paranoid instincts of a predator it began to move in time to avoid the attacks.

The damage over time effecfs of the Frenzied Void Needles were slowing down and the snake had lost about a fifth of it's own HP as it began to spit venom again.

A sharply sprayed stream of venom that hissed on the ground and plants that caught stray droplets while Ezekiel dodged around, his needle spells launching again at the snake while he tried to keep it's movements restricted with his slashing claws.

Both seemed to be in a rush to defeat the enemy but the snake also seemed to be just as hesitant to enter melee as he was.

It was obvious this elite was keeping itself safe or at least conserving energy for something, maybe to compete with other rivals?

Eventually with each dodge and spell cast Ezekiel noticed his mana start to fall while the snake was spewing longer and longer sprays og venom as if the creature were getting frustrated.

He used the lesser cost shards to keep the snake feeling restricted while his needles targeted the main body, each time he launched a spell he would move and slash with his clawed hands to force the snake to watch two locations.

Finally he began to leave a single needle hovering at each location he jumped away from with the goal of launching so many attacks at once that the snake would not be able to avoid them all.

He would kill this elite and take it's progress.