Chapter 287: Underprepared

The green baptism lasted for a full twenty-four hours after we completed the Seed Bed dungeon. During that time, we watched as the world around us seemed to change. Visibility may have been limited due to the glowing rain, but there were still many details that everyone was able to make out, such as the sand soaking up the rain with unusual speed, condensing over the course of the day into wet, marshy soil.

At the same time, greenery began to sprout from this newly grown soil, forming trees, bushes, vines, and reeds that poked up out of the scattered ponds. As Bella had predicted, the excessive water from the early rain had caused Khestra to develop in the direction of a swamp world.

While this was happening, I continued frequently monitoring the various areas that we had visited with Beyond Horizons, wanting to keep an eye out for any other changes that I needed to be aware of. What I saw was a surprising number of dungeons appearing. Everywhere that I looked, at least one new dungeon had appeared, though I wasn’t able to gauge exactly what type of dungeon it was without going there in person and sacrificing some of my time under the baptism.

Because the baptism had begun late at night, it wasn’t until dawn of the day after it ended that everyone actually left to return to their own homes. Naturally, I teleported those back that I had brought here, with Wisteria leaving on her own. Although they all had regretful looks on their faces when they left, the regret was not that they weren’t able to gain anything from this baptism. Rather, it was that they couldn’t keep absorbing the easy experience.

Looking at my own skills as an example, I shuddered to compare it to what I had just two days before. Aside from those skills that had already reached the Grandmaster rank, nearly every skill that I possessed had evolved, some of them doing so more than once. Of course, those that evolved multiple times had primarily been my magic skills that were still at the basic tier.

Going over each individual skill’s evolution would take hours, so I only focused on those that I used the most, or those that seemed like they had the greatest advancement. Perhaps the most significant in terms of regularly used skills was Internal Recovery-X, which had evolved into the long-awaited Golden Body. According to its description, this skill would grant me a significant defense buff while active, so I was tempted to see if I could use it to lessen the backlash of enchanting a magic skill. After a moment of thought, though, I realized that there was little need to endure the pain regardless.

Next on the list of useful upgrades was Prism Citadel, the grandmaster evolution to Crystal Bastion-X. Using this skill now created a full crystalline palace at the target destination, complete with turrets along the wall that automatically shot at enemies. I would need to find a chance to use this later as a test.

Of the remaining skill evolutions, only two truly stood out among the rest. Ki General-X had evolved into Ki Lord, whereas Fire General and Water General had evolved into Fire Legion and Water Legion respectively, due to not having been trained from the basic tier. Ki Lord allows for the summoning of a more advanced troop, which themselves can summon three Ki Generals, who then have their normal troops.

The last one was a skill that I had relied on for a while, and yet had gradually begun using less and less as the need for specialized skill enhancements declined, Myriad Strikes-X. This skill evolved in a direction that took me by surprise, changing into Power Bestowal.

Power Bestowal allowed for two now abilities. The first was that I could now teach skills without the need for quests, using Power Bestowal to directly grant a skill as if I were a living skill book. This was already a significant ability, but it paled in comparison to the second feature of the skill.

The true strength of the skill came from its name. I could directly bestow a skill or enchantment onto someone, and that person could use the skill as if they were me. This was markedly different from teaching them the skill, as they would also gain my levels in the skill. And, after a quick test conducted with Diane, they would also cast that skill or enchantment as if they had my traits.

We found this out when I bestowed Diane with Shadow Forge, and she began forging and throwing out shadow knives with absolutely no need for any downtime. Her eyes had widened, fists clenched at the potential.

Of course, this bestowal did not come without limits. I could only bestow a single skill to any one individual. And at level nineteen, which was where Power Bestowal had risen to by the end of the baptism, I could only have skills bestowed to two individuals at a time. Additionally, all of my traits are considered when the receiver uses these skills. I swapped out Shadow Forge with the grandmaster evolution to Create Feast-X, Divine Table, on Diane, but she was incapable of activating it due to my trait preventing the direct casting of magic skills.

Because of these restrictions, I had to carefully consider which skills I wanted to bestow. Who would get them at this point was rather obvious. I had two chances and two people that I often teamed up with.

For Diane, the two of us consulted one another on my list of skills. There were a few of my skills that she would have wanted if she had the chance, namely Beyond the Veil, Shadow King, Shadow Forge, and King of All Trades. Any one of these would have been a massive enhancement to her playstyle as a ninja. In the end, she chose Beyond the Veil, as she believed it the most practical for her situation. This was because we discovered that the experience buff from King of All Trades wouldn’t stack.

And for Bella, the choice was just as difficult, as she also had multiple skills that she wanted from my list. In the end, she went for Identify Vulnerability-X, which was the master-ranked upgrade to Greater Detect Weakness. Given her role as a sniper with chaotic ammunition, the ability to identify not only the target’s weakness but also its elemental vulnerabilities would greatly synergize with her powers.

Once we had finished up with distributing the bestowal quotas, the three of us naturally wanted to test our new enhancements out. “Why don’t we visit one of those dungeons that you mentioned yesterday?” Bella asked curiously. “The dungeons are only a day old, so they should have finished saturating with their spawns, but won’t be overflowing just yet.”

Diane and I both agreed with this suggestion, so I teleported the three of us to a dungeon near the location where we first found the water recycling plant. Now that the transformation of Khestra was done, this region was a giant marsh, reeds poking out of muddied waters and trees rising from the shallows.

In the distance, we saw a shimmering green dungeon portal, and quickly made our way inside. Within the portal was a tropical jungle, the hot air thick with humidity. “Got eye on any enemies?” Diane asked, crouching down and preparing to try out Beyond the Veil.

I scanned the area with True Sight, soon locking onto the monsters of this dungeon, which were large reptiles with elongated necks and spikes along their backs. I appraised the creature, and my brow immediately twitched. Without a word, I grabbed both Diane and Bella, teleporting us back to the safety of the stone platform where we had spent the last day.

Diane blinked in confusion, looking over at me. “What’s wrong?” she asked, eyes narrowing slightly. “Not like you to run away without a word.”

I didn’t answer verbally. Rather, I opened the private message window and sent both Diane and Bella a screenshot of the appraisal I had taken. Seeing the incoming message, both girls looked confused once again, at least until they opened the message.

“Level six hundred and seventy-five Ancient Spino?” they shouted out in unison, their eyes going wide. Immediately, they both understood why I had suddenly retreated from the dungeon without giving any chance for those monsters to locate us.

“That… that has to be an outlier, right?” Bella asked hopefully, looking at the number. “The new dungeons can’t all be that level…”

With Bella’s insistence, I took us to another dungeon, this one near the location of the Stilled Shadows dungeon. We walked in with the greatest caution that we could muster, thoroughly conditioned by the results of the previous dungeon. Inside was a dark forest with webs covering the trees.

Diane and Bella both clenched their fists and looked at me, but I once again retreated as soon as I saw one of the giant arachnid monsters making its way slowly towards us. “Six hundred and eighty,” I said simply as soon as we appeared on the stone platform again.

“That’s just… way too high!” Bella complained, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “We’re not even at level three hundred and thirty yet, and they’re spawning monsters double our level? Did we do something wrong, or are we lagging behind the leading Players by that much?”

Diane hummed thoughtfully, pursing her lips. “There are a few possible explanations. The first is that we simply completed the story missions of Khestra too quickly, and these were meant to be drawn out over a long period of time, such as multiple months while Players continued to level up.”

“Given the difficulties of traveling over vast distances, as well as the amount of time that it should have taken to train Timeless Traces, this seems like a reasonable assumption.”

Still, she continued. “Another possibility is that this is a result of the unintended result in terraforming. I personally think that this is less likely, but we have no real evidence behind the logic of what dungeons spawn under what conditions.”

“The last possibility that I can think of with the information we have is that this is the natural progression of a realm. We ‘completed’ the story of Khestra, so the difficulty level spiked to present a new challenge. I’d consider this to be just as likely as the first option, and they may even overlap. If true, that means that every realm will have a spike in monster levels when the story for that realm is finished.”

“We didn’t see anything like this after we helped Marron last time,” Bella pointed out. “Does that mean that there are still story dungeons left unexplored in Chimeris?”

“Very likely,” Diane answered. “Khestra’s was more straightforward because a significant part of the difficulty was likely meant to be just getting there in the first place. Not to mention finding the different dungeons, which relied on traveling all the way to the north pole each time before using a mountain range as a guide to plot the next course. On Chimeris, travel is inconvenient, but not nearly as much of a challenge as it is for Khestra. The realm itself is also far more accessible.”

“I take it that this means we will not be continuing to level up in Khestra,” I pointed out, and the two nodded their heads with grim expressions.

“The big problem is that those dungeons are bound to overflow soon.” Diane’s voice was dark as she spoke. “You said that you were seeing them all over the place. That means that the dungeons are going to flood Khestra with monsters in the level six hundred range. I was wondering how the Cromorans intended to repopulate the fauna after completely terraforming the environment. The monsters that lived in the desert simply wouldn’t be able to adapt to the drastic change, and most will probably die out within a week. The rest will likely become food for the new monsters moving in.”