Chapter 261: Passing The Bridge
"Is that thing a bridge, right?" Dhruv couldn’t help but ask his guardian to confirm whether what he was seeing was really the reality and not some sort of illusion.
"Yes, Master. If my memory is correct, then that is indeed a bridge," After giving some sort of cryptic answer, Azarex nodded his head.
"Hmmm! A bridge in the middle of the dungeon... well, that makes this a whole bunch more interesting," Dhruv muttered as he began to analyze the footage.
"We couldn’t clearly guess the material for which it was made, but one thing is clear: the bridge isn’t natural... which, in turn, means that this dungeon consists of smart monsters. Smart monsters with intelligence no lesser than that of a human, at least," Dhruv muttered as he thought of the species responsible for building the bridge.
"Master, I think this is the work of those Crystalline Ice species monsters..." While Dhruv was still lost in his thoughts, Azarex didn’t hesitate to chime in with his theory.
"Well, they are a serious contender considering that this is their dungeon... but what made you conclude this," Dhruv asked, not trusting anything until hearing the full explanation.
"If you remember, Master... during your evolution, we had seen three of some sort of unique tier 3 Crystalline monsters entering the island. All three of them showed signs of intelligence, which is far greater than a normal tier 3 monster would show." Remembering a crucial piece of information, Azarex added,
"If I remember correctly, they even possessed some sort of weird magic rituals... and all these actions of theirs clearly show that they have far more intelligence than that of a monster... it wasn’t still at the level of humans, though," Azarex explained how he perceived the monsters.
"Hmmm! That did happen... I don’t think I remember that..." Putting some pressure on his brain, Dhruv tried to recall if he had seen such a monster. After a few seconds of pondering, he remembers everything.
"Ohhh! Yes, the monster that I had killed just after getting out of my egg. They indeed looked and behaved quite differently from the usual monsters as well." Dhruv muttered, agreeing with his guardian.
"So, Master, do you think the boss monster of this dungeon will be from that species... perhaps a tier above the same one?" Azarex asked with clear excitement all over his face.
He was this excited because the undeads he had made with those tier 3 Crystalline were quite powerful in using magic, but because their core had been destroyed during the fight, they couldn’t become perfect undead.
"We can’t rule out the options..." Dhruv replied as he began looking at the scene once again.
"So, could you tell in which direction this ravine is in?" Dhruv asked, fully excited to meet someone new.
"We are in the right direction, Master... another 10 or so kilometers, and we will reach where the ravine is," Azarex reported with confidence.
Nodding his head, Dhruv asked while pointing in the worm’s direction, "Will it be coming with us?"
"I want to bring it along, but there might be a problem with us crossing the bridge, so I don’t have a clear answer for that..." Azarex muttered without any second thought.
Nodding his head, Dhruv suggested, "Let’s bring the guy along. If it can cross the bridge, that would be good; if not, it can stop on this side of the ravine."
"That is a great suggestion, Master," Azurux muttered and began to command the worm according to the suggestion.
"Let’s go then." Saying these words, the duo began to move toward their newfound purpose.
While moving in that direction, they found numerous spots where corpses were lying without their cores. As time passed, the corpses they found began to get very mutilated.
But from the way the corpses were placed, one could distinguish the reason for their death. All of them had died from the thunder.
Due to corpses scattered all around them, the duo didn’t find any lack of monsters either. During their journey, they were able to kill at least one hundred fifty more monsters.
Throughout the way, Dhruv insisted on killing all the monsters, as he was hell-bent on evolving before leaving the dungeon. At the rate he was leveling up, he was sure that he would reach level 40 pretty soon.
As they continued in the dungeon there was one thing Dhruv was paying attention to as well, and that was their stocks of mana potions.
Even though his mana generation had upgraded to the point where they could almost regenerate a fireball’s worth of mana in a second, it wasn’t enough. This almost continued to cost him mana potions, which slowly began to make a dent in the number of potions he had.
Considering this point, Dhruv had begun to stockpile all the cores to use them as a mana source in case of emergencies when he didn’t have mana potions.
***
Dhruv stopped moving his feet as he saw something appearing in front of his vision.
"Huh! Is that it..." Dhruv whispered as he watched something different appear in front of himself. Instead of continuous whiteness, it had been broken by something... Something humongous.
"That appeared to be the case," Azarex muttered as he confirmed that it was indeed a ravine with the help of his eagle. After two hours of travel, they finally reached the location.
"Shall we go then?" Like a child about to get a Christmas gift, Dhruv was full of excitement.
Nodding his head, Azarex began to follow his master while also commanding his eagle to get a proper measure of the ravine.
After a few more minutes of travel, they finally reached the place from where they could fully catch the beauty of the ravine.
The colossal ravine stretched as wide as one’s vision could pierce. If one were to fall into it, it is hard to say if they died due to the cold or from the fall.
One couldn’t even see the opposite side as it was obscured by an ethereal mist of cold. The sheer magnitude of the ravine commanded awe from the duo.
"Shit... it literally looked like the dungeon has been cracked... Isn’t it, Azarex?" Dhruv asked as he calmed himself down.
"Yes, master, I can’t even see how deep it is... I don’t think there is any chance for the worm to pass this place," Azarex muttered.
"I-It truly is magnificent," Nodding his head, Dhruv muttered as he admired the beast in front of himself.
Satisfied with the sightseeing, they began to find the bridge they had seen in the vision of the worm. With the help of both of his undead, it didn’t take Azarex five minutes to find that place.
"It is 1 km right from here, master," Azarex concluded.
"Ohh! Let’s go then..." Blurting these words, Dhruv quickly began to move toward the right.
Increasing their speed, they reached the bridge before the timer even hit the ten-minute mark. Looking at the ancient bridge in front of him, Dhruv couldn’t help but find himself awed by it once again.
"Did... some sort of giants build this thing? If not them, then who would need this wide bridge?" Dhruv said, examining the architecture of the bridge.
The bridge connecting both sides of the dungeon was almost five meters wide, and the material used for building it seemed almost unbreakable.
Saying these words, Dhruv began to inspect the condition of the bridge. After looking at it for a minute, a sigh left his mouth, "Sigh! Even this magnificent bridge can’t hold a candle against the beating of time."
After just a minute of careful observation, he was able to find multiple places on the bridge that could break if a monster the size of the worm undead or bigger were to travel on it.
Not wanting to take the risk, they finally decided that the worm would wait for them on this side of the dungeon. Having nothing else to do, they finally began to move toward it.
"Here goes nothing..." Saying these words, Dhruv put his first steps on the bridge with some suspicion on his face.
Chummm!!
His steps caused some sort of sound to be produced from the bridge. Thinking that it was because the bridge had been old, the duo continued on their path.
Chuuuuurrr!
Churrrr!
Crackkk!!
When they had walked about 20 meters, the bridge vibrated violently and broke from somewhere. Within a second, everything under their feet began to fall as the duo was suspended in the air.
They didn’t fall to their death because a metal sheet had appeared below their feet, saving them at the last second.
Looking at the falling bridge, Dhruv couldn’t help but laugh out loud and shouted, "Do you think after watching all those movies and anime I will even trust a bridge... an old ass bridge on top of that? Ahhhh! For some reason, it really feels good to outsmart you."
He didn’t know who he was mocking, but he was doing that nonetheless.
While the duo were flying peacefully through the ravine, Azarex’s eagle caught something on the opposite side of the dungeon.
It saw two humanoid ice monsters pulling out something resembling a paper and writing something on it. After writing it, they packed the paper into a box and handed it to some type of bird monster.
The Undead Eagle watched as the bird placed the bottle between its beak and flew further to the north.
Processing all this information in real-time, Azarex muttered, "Master, I think we have found our first crystalline monsters."
