The Martial Unity

It wasn't often that Rui ran into something capable of pressuring to this degree.

It wasn't often that Rui ran into something that transcended the Squire Realm.

Yet, the fear it generated had not exceeded his bewilderment and confusion. The sheer dreadful avalanche of pressure that washed over him had not deprived him of his rational thoughts.

The first thought that flashed through his mind was the fact that creatures that transcended the Squire Realm as far as threat level went were not supposed to be able to enter the dungeon without triggering its defense mechanisms. How on Earth was something like whatever it was that was emanating such a terrifying degree of pressure not being attacked by the dungeon?

This utterly contradicted everything he understood about dungeonified vegetation. Dungeons were essentially mutated patches of vegetation that had monsterified after absorbing large amounts of potent esoteric ore from mines far below the surface with their roots. They produced all kinds of fruit and other organic masses that drew in beasts that consumed them, monsterifying those animals and further animals ahead in the food chain into monsters. The vegetation massively evolved and grew to produce large structures with tunnels and large cracks producing spaces generally known as floors.

The defensive mechanism in place was a violent outbreak against anything it sensed to be a threat to it.

So why wasn't it activating now?

There were several possibilities, but Rui put them aside for now.

He wasn't in a position to engage in a long contemplative thought, not with whatever it was that was producing this pressure.

His nerves, his instincts, every cell in his body insisted that he turn back and run away.

But he knew he needed to at least get a glimpse of what he was dealing with here.

Just a glimpse.

He had evaluated the risk rather rapidly and had unfortunately come to the conclusion that the risk of just gaining bare basic information on the creature was worth it.

was brave enough to even begin conceiving of the idea of challenging

far harder now given that his presence was no more than an ordinary human at the moment. On top of that,

more than even Martial Seniors could. The reason for this was that he bypassed the sensory

producing the devastating aura to be low enough for it to be worth undertaking

STEP

took the gentlest

Slowly.

Carefully.

STEP

STEP

STEP

what he saw shocked his senses once he

worth of

couldn't even begin to believe his eyes. ('That's

be bewildered that the Shionel Dungeon contained a floor worth of esoteric ore deposits. Who couldn't have possibly imagined a mountain worth of esoteric ore deposits existed

murmured. ('How can such a huge mine be inside

wasn't until he got further and further that he realized what the answer was. His senses detected that the bedrock of the floor was quite different from all other floors so far. It didn't contain any of the roots embedded across all of it, holding it

isn't part of the dungeon,') Rui's eyes widened. ('I've hit the actual mine

It made sense.

had spent more than

bottom of the dungeon rather easily. The fact that

water elucidating the way to the bottom of the dungeon, he had reached the very esoteric ore mine that had

esoteric ore deposits in this place!') Rui could already sense that he