Chapter 152
Forge of the God was an oversized dungeon in every possible way. The ceiling was weirdly high and every structure around them, including the occasional decorations that stood out here and there, was huge. The reason for that became obvious as soon as they headed downstairs.
“There are intruders!”
“Those bastards who smashed the gate and forced their way in are over there.”
The monsters they ran into the moment they reached the lower floor were Ghost Giants that stood over five meters tall. They had human silhouettes, but their bodies looked like an ugly fusion between ogre, troll, and dwarf.
“Impurities cannot be allowed to taint the swords and spears dedicated to the divine.”
The Ghost Giants charged in with a roar. They were armed with dull greatswords, axes, and shields studded with spikes.
Do-Jin’s group responded instantly. Theresa moved in front to tank while Do-Jin flung spell after spell to keep the Ghost Giants from closing in. Tanto disappeared in the blink of an eye, slipped into stealth, appeared in the middle of their formation, and started ripping into them from behind.
Some of the Ghost Giants were shield types that pushed forward like armored carriers, blocking for all the others.
“I will focus on the ones with shields.” Tanto had already figured out the entire situation at a glance and targeted their weak points, especially their hamstrings and the tendons behind the knees.
Weapons with enough magical power could damage ghosts, and Tanto’s weapon was a relic axe on top of that. Every time Tanto’s axe bit in, the Ghost Giant’s body scattered like smoke. Blue vapor poured from the wounds instead of blood.
“Watch your feet. Something small crawled into our formation,” said one of the shield giants.
“What are you talking about? I don’t see anything,” replied another.
Tanto at full power was enough to lock down more than ten Ghost Giants at once. They were basically infantry stuck inside an armored vehicle that had run out of fuel.
Do-Jin blasted them with spell after spell without holding back for even a heartbeat. Their HP was enormous and completely matched their massive bodies. Any average mage would have drained every last drop of mana in their pool just to bring down one group of them.
That applied only to normal players, though. Do-Jin’s offensive power existed on a completely different plane and he erased more than ten Ghost Giants in one breathless moment like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“This almost feels kind of awkward,” Theresa muttered while staring at the filthy remains of those Ghost Giant bastards, now reduced to nothing but piles of bones, armor, and weapons. She had tensed up fully expecting impact, but she had not even made proper contact with the monsters.
“A party where the tank has nothing to do is the kind of party that is performing well,” Soso said.
If the tank has to constantly grind their face into the ground to keep the party alive, it means the party’s damage is pathetically low. There was no way this party would ever have a damage shortage problem. Even though there were only two of them, both their weapons were relic-grade and their offensive power overflowed.
“Let’s keep moving. These things have more HP than I expected. If we start a war of attrition with the ones that keep respawning, it will turn into a pain in the ass,” Do-Jin explained.
I need to find a safe place to rest first.
From what he could tell, Forge of the God was not the kind of dungeon they could sprint through from start to finish. A dungeon this massive would take a ridiculous amount of time just to explore every corner. Do-Jin planned to clear it step by step, so he decided the first thing he needed was a spot to rest. He eventually managed to find a recessed space tucked away in a corner.
“We should take a short break here.”
After calling for a break, Do-Jin pulled a pen and notebook straight out of his inventory without wasting a second. He had no clue how big this place really was, so he figured he might as well start drawing the map right now. He had never bothered to learn any proper map-making skill, but the layout here was not complicated at all, so sketching out a rough map was easy work for him.
“Uh, excuse me.” Tanto approached without making a sound and held something out. “I have a crafting skill. I figured you were about to draw one.”
Rogue-type classes were also responsible for pathfinding, so Tanto took it upon himself to finish mapping the entire area. In his previous life, Do-Jin had always played solo, so this possibility had never even occurred to him.
Realizing that he still had remnants of a loner mindset, Do-Jin gave a bitter smile and took the map. “Thanks.”
“No problem. This is part of my job after all,” Tanto answered with words that sounded humble, but his eyes looked pretty proud as he returned to the corner.
Unlike the rough sketch Do-Jin had been planning to whip out, this was a formally crafted map made using an actual skill. He could pull it up as a map window and share it with the whole party. All that was left to do was figure out what sort of monsters or traps the dungeon had and clear it step by step.
As Do-Jin was thinking things through, faint voices drifted over from far away.
“They should be somewhere around here.”
“Woof. Woof.”
“Feels like it’s this way.”
Do-Jin leaned forward a little and took a look. Ghost Giants were searching the area while leading enormous ghost hounds.
Their owners were huge, so of course those translucent ghost hounds were also insanely massive. Their shoulder height alone was over three meters, making them the size of a small elephant, though they looked much more terrifying. Even though they were ghosts, they seemed to have picked up a scent because they were heading directly toward this spot.
If Do-Jin wanted things to go smoothly, he knew he had to ambush them, but they were still too far away. And if they got any closer, the hounds would probably smell him and give everything away.
Do-Jin ran through the angles in his head for a moment, then asked Tanto, “If you cross to the opposite side using Stealth and wait there, can you pull aggro when I send you the signal?”
“Of course.”
If they were trying to track scent, then he simply needed to give them something even more obvious to focus on. Do-Jin sent Tanto to the opposite side, then quieted his breathing and waited. The Ghost Giants approached while pushing their sniffing ghost hounds out in front of them. At that moment, one of the hounds’ noses turned directly toward the hiding spot.
Do-Jin: Now!
Acting on his signal, Tanto threw out a smoke bomb. Almost at the exact same moment, one of the Ghost Giants let out a scream. Tanto must have gone in for an attack while detonating it.
“Over here!”
“You worthless creatures!”
All of the ghosts suddenly swung their attention toward the smoke. Because of that, they turned their backs completely toward Do-Jin. It looked like someone had just set up a perfect buffet for him.
The Flash Lance he’d been preparing consolidated as a luminous point on the back of one of the giants’ heads. A moment later, a blinding light erupted, leaving behind a gaping hole. It seemed that wiping them out would be just as easy as the last batch.
However, the ghosts hadn’t come here solely to kill the intruder. Of course, killing him would have been ideal, but if they couldn’t get the job done, then they’d simply reveal his location.
“He’s over here!” one of them shouted.
Great, now the rest are going to rush this way... Do-Jin had a sinking feeling that this would turn into a dragged-out war of attrition that he had absolutely no desire to deal with, so he tried to get the hell out of that position quickly.
“Which rats dare crawl into the territory under my watch?”
Before he could move, an overwhelming wave of mana surged from around a distant corner. A female-shaped giant appeared, and countless sickening ornaments hung all over her body. Unlike the others, this female giant was not a ghost.
[The Priestess of Condemnation has appeared!]
There was nothing even remotely sacred about this dungeon’s boss. She was supposed to be some kind of spectral entity, yet she was so bloated that her tiny eyes were buried in her cheeks. She panted like she actually had lungs, which meant she clearly was not undead. Her sagging flesh looked so filthy that Do-Jin wondered if parts of it might literally be rotting. Worst of all, that fat priestess bitch gripped two massive slaughter knives, one in each hand.
“You dare cause a commotion in my domain! Even the idea of forgiveness is not an option!”
The slaughterer smashed her blades together like she was ready to murder everything in sight, and she charged forward. Strength aside, her appearance alone was so horrifying that Theresa actually felt terrified just looking at her.
Soso’s reaction was much simpler. She loved pretty things, and she immediately grimaced with pure revulsion the moment she saw that Priestess barreling toward them.
“Disgusting.”
“W-what? What did you just say, you bitch!”
The Priestess somehow heard Soso even while sprinting and glared straight at her.
Theresa instinctively tried to fire a taunt skill, but it did nothing at all. “This is insane. The taunt is not working.”
The Priestess charged like an enraged rhino. “Rise, useless creatures. Rip that woman into pieces.”
To make things even worse, she revived the ghosts that Do-Jin had already killed.
Is she a necromancer? he wondered.
The Priestess stepped into attack range as Do-Jin was setting up his strike. The sudden chaos blindsided him, forcing his attention on the boss. Meanwhile, the area had quietly filled with enemies again. Every single one of them was now targeting Soso, the healer, instead of the tank.
This is just ridiculous, he thought.
There was no universe where losing the healer here was acceptable, so Do-Jin grabbed Soso’s wrist and activated Transcendence.
“Come here!”
In that instant, his latent potential exploded outward, and the power of his magic and casting speed blew far past his normal limit. A Flame Spear much larger than usual pierced straight through one of the charging Ghost Giants, neutralizing it in a single strike.
Do-Jin then used Psychokinetic Enhancement to burst forward for a split second, seizing the opening he’d made to drag Soso out of the encirclement. Shocked by the sudden acceleration, she let out a drawn-out scream.
An axe came whistling in from the side, but Do-Jin blocked it with an Ice Shield. He marked another giant’s skull with the same glowing point, which burst forth with light and snapped the Ghost Giant’s head backward. However, the giant he had just killed, as well as the one whose head had just been hit, both rose to their feet again.
“Hand that woman over to me!” the Priestess shrieked, closing the distance before they even realized it.
Do-Jin fired magic like a possessed man. However, spectral masses shot out from the Priestess’ ornaments and blocked his magic. Tanto was also struggling, surrounded by wave after wave of ghosts that kept pouring out. Theresa had been chasing after the Priestess, but the boss moved past her and aimed straight for Do-Jin and Soso.
“You fat pig grandmother!” Theresa suddenly yelled out. None of her skills had forced the Priestess to look at her, so out of pure desperation, she resorted to straight-up insults.
She got the idea after seeing how the Priestess reacted to Soso’s insult. Since the Priestess had gone rabid over it, Theresa just started throwing out every insult she could think of.
It wasn’t long before the Priestess spun around. “Y-you...! I will grind you up first!”
Not only that, the other ghosts also snapped their heads toward Theresa and began moving toward her. The effect of Theresa’s offensive words was far greater than anyone expected.
“Huh?”
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