Dante was sitting on a massive rock in the middle of the woods, looking at the endless trees and bushes around him with pure disdain and fury. This place looked worse than hell, all of those green plants looking like pure nightmare fuel.
Alexander approached him, clad in his armor and looking like a walking machine. "Nervous?" He looked at him and Dante smiled. "Nope, not one bit. This place just gives me the creep. Look, that bush over there. Is it poisonous?"
Alexander looked to where Dante pointed. "No, but it attracts a lot of bugs. Better stay away from it. That one over there beside it is deadly. Don't touch it." He pointed at another and smiled. "The scouting team had just returned, and they have located the exact location of the dungeons' entrance."
"They did?" Dante finally stood. "So? What does it look like? A large ornate stone gate, a hole in the ground, or is it one of those glowing magical ones?"
Alexander finally sounded a bit worried. "It's a pond, a crystal clear pond of pure water and magic, here in the middle of the swampy amazon. To get into the dungeon, we need to jump in and swim down until we emerge inside."
Dante looked at the distance where all of the Blessed gathered and were listening to one of the Saint's Masters explaining what they should expect. Dante had already learned everything he needed to from the library and had even practiced a lot. He was fully ready and didn't need to hear it. The same was true for Alexander and a few of the Blessed who were confident in their ability to survive and make it out alive.
Dungeons are ranked from Mundane up to divine, so to rank up, a Blessed must clear a dungeon of their rank or higher. A dungeon's rank also determines the rank of the abominations inside and their numbers.
Dungeons also have classes like the abominations, and the class determines the dungeon's length and the number of Final Bosses it has. For example, a God-Class dungeon would have eight Final Bosses.
Then there was the X factor, which is when the dungeon proactively changes its class or rank after the Blesseds have entered. Usually, when a lot of Blessed enter it all at once, or if a higher-ranked Blessed jumps in.
If Maria, for example, decided to enter this dungeon, its rank would shoot up from Mundane to Celestial to balance her. But there was a catch: after being cleared, the dungeon would still act based on its original rank, therefore only ranking up the Mundane Blesseds.
"Let's go. They are going in." Alexander cracked his neck, and Dante stood, quickly summoning a longsword. This was the weapon he got to pick from the church's treasury and got bound to his soul just this morning.
The sword was of the same quality as Alexander's backup sword that he lent him before. It was sharp and durable, but unlike his armor, it didn't gain any ability when he bound it to his soul.
It won't repair itself inside his soul. It can still be transferred to someone else and sold, and it is, by all means, just another Mundane magic item. Dante had felt a bit sad about it, but this was how it should've gone with the armor.
Alexander and Dante approached the pond where countless Blessed stood. Some were praying, some were excited, some were crying, and many looked to be still uncertain about jumping in. A Mundane Dungeon's survival rate stayed firmly below 10%, meaning nine out of ten people here won't make it back alive.
Dante looked around and quickly spotted Rain and Alicia beside the pond. Rain seemed stiff, glaring right at the water with a stern and somber face. Alicia, on the other hand, was shaking in her wheelchair, sweating and on the verge of throwing up from the sheer fear.
Out of everyone here, Alicia had the worst changes. She can't even walk, let alone swim to the other side or fight the abominations. To everyone, she was already a corpse, a dead woman who was still breathing, and it was clear that she was on the verge of backing up and giving up on ranking up.
Saint Maria walked in, approached Alicia and Rain, and tapped Alicia on the shoulder. "Calm down and take a deep breath. You can do it. Just trust in yourself. Out of everyone here, I have the most hope for you." She then threw a glance at Rain. "Well, as long as you aren't alone."
Rain glared at the Saint as if she were about to rip her apart. "I'm not going in with her. I'll go on my own." Hearing that, the Saint's eyes widened, and Alicia looked to be on the verge of crying, having just been abandoned by the one friend she had managed to make.
"I thought you promised to accompany her." The Saint looked right back at Rain's eyes while keeping her passive face. But before she could get a reply, Alicia lifted her hand and cut them. "I'm fine. I'll just drop out. I don't want to be a burden on her. Even if she promised that before, when facing death like this, I can understand why she would change her mind."
The Saint sighed, "Fine, I'll find someone else to be your partner. Rain, don't worry, no one would take this against you." But at that moment, Dante approached with a tired face.
"Yo! Rain, when are you going in? I might love baths, but I'm in the habit of getting into one with a toaster." Hearing his voice, Rain looked back at him with a smile. "When everyone is already gone. Otherwise, I'll kill them all."
It was then when the Saint and Alicia blinked, looked at each other, and then back at Rain. "Wait..."
"I never said I won't help her inside. But I can't go in with her. I can't go into the pond with anyone." Rain's entire body was overcharged with electricity, and if she jumped into the water with the others, they'd get fried alive.
As Alicia's eyes opened wide, Dante looked at them with a grin as Alexander jumped into the water behind him. "Well then, see you on the other side. Make sure you stay alive."
Dante jumped to the side and hit the water with a massive splash, sinking into the crystal-clear water.
Rain looked down at Alicia. "I'll go last, so go before me. We don't want anyone here to get electrocuted." Alicia smiled and looked up at her. "Let's do our best then."
As Dante's hit the water and sank to the bottom of the lake thanks to the weight of his armor, everything suddenly turned dark. He didn't panic, as this was expected. It was how the dungeon teleported the Blessed to its inner world.
He was in the darkness for what felt like a minute or two, falling through the nothingness. But then...
[From Nothing, Everything is Born.]
[Hell welcomes Death]
[Praise be the Dark Divine]
The darkness immediately cleared as Dante was still confused, and he found himself falling through an endless dark pit. The only sources of light around him were the glowing mushrooms zipping past him at blinding speed. But that wasn't what caught his eyes. What horrified him the most was the endless large souls he was seeing on the walls around him.
Most of those souls were either Mundane or Scarred Beasts, but as Dante felt, he did spot a few Cursed Aliens and Nightmares crawling inside the walls, barely on the edge of his [Soul Sense].
He hit the wall, rolled on it with enough force that he would've died on the spot if not for his armor, and after a few painful impacts, he finally landed on the water belly first.
His entire body was in pure agony, and he couldn't even breathe as his heavy armor drowned him. He couldn't move any of his limbs either, as the pain of hitting the wall and then the water right after left him in shock, practically paralyzed.
But before he could even orient himself, he could feel it. Something massive was biting his leg, and the pain of his bones almost cracking jolted him back to his senses. He growled underwater, unable to even speak or breathe, but his eyes immediately shot down into the darkness, seeing the Mundane Soul beneath him.
It was a whole caiman. ^What is going on?!^ Dante cursed in his mind as he pulled his sword and stabbed the foul abomination in the eyes several times in panic as its death rolled with him. Thanks to Dante's durable greaves, it didn't rip his leg off his body like a chicken wing.
After a few stabs and a lot of pain, the caiman let go of Dante's legs as it could only taste the aluminum of his armor, and the pain of its eye getting stabbed over and over made the entire thing not worth it.
Taking his chance, Dante immediately swam up, using the shape of the caiman's soul to know what was up and what was down in the pitch-black darkness. All souls looked like torch flames, and that flame always points up no matter the body's orientation.
As Dante rolled on the shore, he coughed all of the water inside his lungs and growled in pure rage. "What... the hell was that? Weren't we supposed to appear safely inside the dungeon? Who the fuck designed this shitty place?"