[+10FP]
[+10FP]
[+10FP]
--
[50FP]
As Abel stepped out of the blazing room, he was momentarily surprised that the fire hadn't harmed him. Though the heat affected him, it wasn't enough to cause any real damage.
If he had remained in the inferno a few moments longer, he would surely have been burned.
However, it had been the original the Dungeon's Final Boss, afraid of light and fire. The flames would have trapped him in the room and probably killed him. Unfortunately for the Hunters, he was not the original Dungeon's Final Boss; they were now facing Abel, who had taken control.
Another thing Abel noticed was that, though the doors of the rooms could be easily cracked, destroyed, or set ablaze, they didn't collapse, nor did they affect the adjacent or lower rooms.
'Thank goodness. I don't want the children to leave their rooms.' Abel thought, sighing inwardly.
Abel glanced at the status screen as he glared menacingly at the Hunters.
In an instant, he had raked in 50 Fear points.
[Congratulations, you can now use [Fear Points] to increase the proficiency of your status. Please note that the more significant the changes, the higher the cost in Fear Points. The amount of Fear Points will also affect your [Reward Extraction] for this Boss Character.]
Meanwhile, the group finally retreated to a safe distance.
"Impossible! How is this possible? Isn't he supposed to be afraid of light and fire?" Vanessa exclaimed, stepping back, her eyes wide in a mix of shock and fear.
"I read the entire dungeon files over and over again. The Caretaker is a Shadow Reaper and is afraid of light and fire. He would do anything to avoid them; the last thing he should do is walk through fire! This… this is not supposed to happen!" John spat, his eyes wide in terror.
"This…" Jonathan paled in fright.
"…Let's get out of here quickly," Kelvin said, breaking free from the frozen terror that had paralysed him.
He grabbed John's hand, holding the luminous white stone, turned around, and immediately raced down the other side of the hallway.
John's mind continued spinning, trying to figure out where they had gone wrong.
Vanessa ran alongside them, expanding the radius of her light. She still had faith that the White Illumination Stone would protect them, even if the Dungeon's Final Boss had defied their expectations.
"Hey, wait for us!" Jonathan shouted, grabbing Cynthia as he ran behind the others, his expression filled with terror.
Abel watched them flee. He was momentarily stunned that Mr Jonathan was one of the Hunters raiding the dungeon. He hadn't realised Jonathan was a Hunter.
For all he knew, he had been a pudgy, drunken old man with a family barely scraping by. Despite owning an apartment, Abel found it strange. But seeing the body suit he wore and the various weapons strapped to him, items only available to Hunters, some costing thousands or even millions of rubies, Abel finally understood the reason why.
Because Abel hesitated to attack the group, he decided to test the limits of how many Fear Points he could gather. He also didn't want to kill his fellow humans.
However, he knew that if he didn't act, they might pull another trick against him. The consequence of failing the quest was dying along with the Dungeon's Final Boss
Abel didn't want to die. He wanted to grow stronger. He wanted to see what else this world had to offer from the eyes of those standing above it. And they were all Hunters, his aspiration and the inspiration that woke him each day.
He remembered promising himself he would take any cheat as long as it allowed him to grow stronger. He wondered if this was fate's cruel response.
So Abel vanished into the shadows. They rippled like water as he moved forward and emerged in front of the fleeing figures. Then he swung his cutlass forward, precisely at one of the Hunters.
SWIISHHH!! PTUII!!
It happened too quickly for anyone to react. The cutlass appeared out of nowhere in front of the fleeing group and penetrated deep into Vanessa's chest.
"What…?" Vanessa froze, her mouth hanging open as she stared down at her upper chest where the familiar blade had pierced her.
She had been momentarily stunned, creating a brief lapse in her judgment that left her unable to protect herself.
SWISSHH!! CLANNG!!
Abel pulled back the cutlass, causing blood to gush from Vanessa's open wound.
Her lips were also stained with blood as she lifted her head, but she couldn't spot the figure draped in a black coat and hat in the thick darkness of the dungeon.
Still, she could feel it watching her with chilling calmness.
Surprisingly, Vanessa smiled wryly. "You're a terrible Dungeon Boss… It seems that the Level One Dungeon had undergone a certain change... If only I had challenged another dungeon... I'm so unlucky," she muttered softly, before collapsing face-first onto the ground with a resounding "THUD!!" Her White Illumination stone slid from her hand and rolled across the floor before coming to a stop.
[+100FP]
[+20FP]
[+20FP]
--
[230FP]
"AHHHHH!!"
"AAHHHHH!!"
The group behind Vanessa screamed in terror as they stared at her lifeless body sprawled on the ground.
They turned around and fled in the opposite direction from which they had come.
'The fear of death is greater than that of any terror,' Abel thought as he looked at the fallen huntress before shifting his attention to the amount of Fear Points he had gathered in a short amount of time.
He froze, paralysed by the act of taking a life, and didn't pursue the others as they fled in terror. At best, he had intended only to seriously injure her, hoping she might perish from her wounds, because he didn't dare to kill a fellow human.
At most, she might have deflected and escaped, running in panic, allowing him to generate even more Fear Points.
He had just discovered that he gained a certain amount of Fear Points each minute, refreshed depending on how terrified the targets were.