Free Web NovelChapter 5: Chapter5-Exploiting a System Bug? Speedrunning the Dungeon!
"Graaagh!"
The zombie snarled as it lunged toward John’s neck with its jaws wide open.
But in the very next instant, a flash of white light streaked through the darkness.
John swung his sword once, and the zombie’s head instantly fell to the ground.
At the same time, the ghostly blue torch on the wall was extinguished.
[-11,907!]
The terrifying five-digit damage instantly emptied the low-level zombie’s HP bar.
[You have slain a Lv. 5 Zombie. You have obtained 60 EXP and Hundred-Year Longsword ×1 (Quest Equipment)!]
[Congratulations, host. You have obtained 6 attribute points!]
John casually absorbed the corpse on the ground.
Without slowing his pace in the slightest, he continued killing his way forward.
Each time he passed one of the large ghostly blue torches, several zombies would burst out and attack him.
Without exception, all of them fell beneath John’s blade.
Sword light continuously flashed through the gloomy corridor, and every single strike dealt an outrageous amount of damage.
[-11,900!]
[You have slain a Lv. 6 Zombie. You have obtained 60 EXP and Hundred-Year Dagger ×1 (Quest Equipment)!]
[-11,908!]
[You have slain a Lv. 8 Zombie. You have obtained 80 EXP and Hundred-Year Battle Boots ×1 (Quest Equipment)!]
[-11,920!]
[You have slain...]
Not a single zombie was capable of enduring even one strike from him.
John’s EXP and attributes continued to rise at a steady pace.
However, after slaying nearly a hundred zombies, John suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Gazing into the deep, winding passageway ahead, he frowned.
"Killing them one by one like this is still too slow."
At his current pace, it would probably take John another forty minutes to clear out the entire passageway.
To other players, such efficiency would already have been unbelievably fast.
But John was not satisfied.
This dungeon was simply not worth spending forty minutes clearing.
At that moment, his gaze fell upon one of the ghostly blue torches beside him.
In the next instant, the corner of his mouth lifted as a bold idea formed in his mind.
"According to the game’s rules, this should work."
Having made up his mind, John directly pulled one of the ghostly blue torches out of the wall.
Then, before the zombies hidden within the stone wall could even crawl out, John raised the torch and sprinted deeper into the passageway.
In an instant, the entire Catacombs erupted into chaos!
Holding the torch in his hand, John awakened the zombies inside every passageway he passed.
Since all of those zombies had been awakened by the torch in his hand, their aggro instantly locked onto John, and they began chasing after him one after another.
John paid them no attention whatsoever as he charged deeper into the winding corridors.
After racing through countless twisting turns and branching passageways, a massive arched doorway finally appeared at the end of the path ahead.
Beyond that archway lay the core area of the dungeon:
The Underground Chapel!
Still holding the torch, John abruptly leaped through the archway.
The moment he entered, the tide of corpses that had been chasing closely behind him suddenly stopped in its tracks.
The zombies crowded outside the archway, yet not a single one dared step any closer.
John planted the torch into the ground before swiftly scanning the interior of the chapel.
The entire chapel was mottled and dilapidated, covered everywhere in dust and cobwebs.
At the very center of the chapel, in the place where a divine statue should originally have stood, there was instead a corpse clad in rust-covered armor, standing motionless and silent.
Suddenly, two ghostly blue flames appeared within the corpse’s hollow eye sockets.
[Dungeon BOSS Awakened!]
John immediately cast Appraisal, and the BOSS’s information appeared before him.
[Fallen Gravekeeper]
[Rank]: B-rank
[Level]: 20
[Skills]: Wrath of the Dead, Guardian of the Dead...
[Description]: The former village chief of Starter Village No. 616.
Following the great battle that took place a hundred years ago, he could not bear to part with the soldiers who had fallen defending the castle. Defying all taboos, he attempted to resurrect the castle guards using a forbidden secret art.
The secret art backfired, and he was cursed to remain imprisoned underground forever, neither living nor dead, forever barred from the cycle of reincarnation.
...
A Level 20 B-rank BOSS would have been more than capable of slaughtering the entirety of Starter Village if it were released outside.
This was the true difficulty of a Hell Difficulty dungeon. free𝑤ebnovel.com
As the BOSS awakened, the corpse of the former village chief abruptly unleashed a furious roar.
Hearing that roar, the horde of corpses gathered outside the archway suddenly had their eyes turn crimson. They surged into the chapel in a frenzy.
At the same time, their status changed, and a layer of berserk undead buff appeared over every one of them.
[Wrath of the Dead]
[Effect]: Each attack deals damage equal to 1% of the target’s maximum HP. Duration: 60 seconds.
...
This buff could not exactly be considered extremely powerful.
However, because of John’s earlier monster-pulling maneuver, there were several hundred zombies present!
Yet John showed no signs of panic whatsoever.
According to the system’s judgment rules, even though these corpses had been resurrected, they should still technically count as corpses.
And since they were corpses, theoretically speaking, they could be directly devoured.
Looking at the zombies charging toward him, John’s lips curved upward.
"Then I’ll take the gamble."
John raised one hand toward the incoming zombie horde.
"Recycle!"
In an instant, brilliant white light erupted throughout the Underground Chapel.
Hundreds of zombies were recycled on the spot!
A continuous stream of system notifications rang out beside John’s ear.
[You have devoured a Lv. 7 Zombie. Attribute Points +7!]
[You have devoured a Lv. 9 Zombie. Attribute Points +9!]
[You have devoured...]
By the time the white light faded, the entire chapel had become completely empty.
Not a single zombie remained in sight.
John glanced at the attribute points displayed on his status panel.
This single wave had actually granted him 3,712 attribute points, far more than he had initially estimated.
At the center of the chapel, the newly awakened undead BOSS could only watch helplessly as this human devoured every last one of its subordinates.
It released a furious roar, and ghostly blue flames erupted across its entire body.
But in the next instant, John suddenly threw his weapon.
A streak of cold light left his hand and shot through the air at terrifying speed.
Clang!
The undead BOSS’s chest was pierced straight through, and its body was nailed firmly against the divine pedestal behind it.
[-11,001!]
The undead BOSS’s HP was instantly emptied.
It had been completely incapable of fighting back.
[Congratulations, player. You have slain the B-rank BOSS, Fallen Gravekeeper. You have obtained 50,000 EXP and 10 Gold Coins!]
[You have obtained B-rank Equipment: Gravekeeper’s Shield!]
Two system notifications rang out in succession.
John’s expression did not change at all. He simply raised his hand and devoured the BOSS corpse lying before him as well.
...
[Devouring Complete!]
[You have obtained an A-rank Skill Book: Summon Undead!]
[You have obtained a Special Attribute: Luck Points +20!]
[You have obtained 1,000 Free Attribute Points!]
As the corpse was recycled into white light, an additional skill book appeared in John’s inventory.
"An A-rank summoning-type skill?"
John raised his eyebrows slightly, somewhat surprised.
[Summon Undead]
[Rank]: A-rank
[Effect]: Consumes 10 MP to randomly summon 10 servants from among enemies you have slain. Summoned servants retain 50% of their attributes from when they were alive and last for 10 minutes.
...
Summoning-type skills were extraordinarily rare.
Ordinarily, only players who possessed the hidden class, Summoner, were capable of mastering such abilities.
There had been countless players in his previous life, yet the number of Summoners had only been in the hundreds.
As for those possessing an A-rank summoning-type skill, they could practically be counted on one hand!
John had never expected that he would obtain one from a Starter Village dungeon.
Besides this skill book, he had also obtained 20 points in the special attribute, Luck.
There was no normal means of acquiring Luck Points. For most players, their Luck Points were essentially fixed the moment their characters were created.
The vast majority of players would never increase their Luck Points even once in their entire lives.
Players with unusually high drop rates and a greater chance of triggering quests generally possessed no less than 5 Luck Points.
In his previous life, the fact that John had managed to reach the position of Fire God while possessing only an ordinary talent had, to a great extent, depended on the unexpected 10 Luck Points he had obtained.
He had never imagined that this time, he would obtain 20 Luck Points right from the start!
Just then, another system notification sounded.
[A server-wide announcement is about to be issued. Would you like to conceal your ID?]
"No!"
In this life, John had no intention of keeping such a low profile again.
