Ch. 12 The Dungeon

'.....' (Character's thoughts)

"....." (Speech)

[…..] (Voice Transmission)

{.....} (Spell Names)

<…. > (Telepathic Communication)

I made it to Raygarn Village after a day of rest in which I just stayed at the base, practiced some new spells, and let the others do their thing. Apparently the dungeon was in the forest behind the village and already the inhabitants were worried that monsters would come from the dungeon and attack them. They were glad when they saw a Magic Knight arrive and they directed him to the Village Chief.

"We were so scared that our request would take too long to be answered and the dungeon would have monsters who would attack our village so we are glad to have a Magic Knight here to take care of it." The village Chief said, an old man who was relatively short and walked with a hunch and used a cane.

"It's no problem at all, it's my duty as a Magic Knight. I don't know how long it will take me to take care of this dungeon so I'd recommend you keep the villagers away from the forest for now, just in case." I explained.

"Of course Sir Knight. I wish you luck in the dungeon." The Village Chief replied as he waved and walked back inside his house.

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(Outside the dungeon)

"So this is a dungeon? It looks very similar to the one I saw in the show, except it seems to be a little smaller" I said as I made my way inside.

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(In the dungeon)

{Storm Magic: Wind Creation Magic: Wind Golem}

{Enchant Infinity Storm Magic: Wind Golem}

I cast my Wind Golem spell as I figured it'd be better to have and I even Enchanted it with Infinity as I knew it'd need the Golem to be able to take a couple Trap Spells before being destroyed. I had never enchanted this spell before so I was surprised by the result.

The Wind Golem was now over 50 meters tall and had what looked like Armor made of super compressed wind and it was the armor of a Knight from a medieval fantasy world and it even had a tower shield and a great sword.

I saw it also had the capability to shrink itself as the corridors were too small to fit it. I continued to walk along in the dark corridors with a ball of lightning in my hand for light and I walked for quite some time before I came across a stone that had a red glowing outline.

I walked up to the stone and pressed it. The stone fell away along with the wall and what I saw was both amazing and terrifying at the same time. There was a crazy heat that was saturating the air and I could feel a thick field of Mana everywhere. The air was so thick with mana that I could see particles of mana floating in the air. The particles were red almost as if symbolizing the heat of the air maybe it was fire mana.

I then looked around and saw that the design of the dungeon was strange and kind of creepy. There were stairs along the walls and ceilings leading to different areas and there were waterfalls of blood along the walls and falling from areas of the ceiling. The bloodfalls gave me bad vibes and I decided I'd steer clear of them.

I spread my mana sense and was overwhelmed by the amount of mana and I had to concentrate to find the direction where the mana was congregated the most. I also decided to cast a spell to protect me from the heat as it was getting uncomfortable.

{Storm Magic: Wind Creation Magic: Cloak of the Zephyr}

I robe made of wind appeared around my body and instantly the feeling of heat dissipated and all I felt was a cool breeze as I walked.

I made my way to what could only be the source of the mana as the mana was highly concentrated in that area. And I could tell the heat was increasing as the the bloodfalls seemed to be boiling as bubbles appeared on their surface. My Wind Golem had to deal with a couple trap spells where he was attacked by a shower of arrows which he blocked with his shield and then there was a sort of Blood Hound made entirely of blood but also ignited in flame that attacked them.

It looked similar to Greek mythology's depictions of a Hellhound, but my golem used his great sword to slash through it making the bloody body separate into two halves. I thought it was over until the two halves morphed back together much like blood pooling on the ground after someone was killed and hit the floor.

This process repeated a few times and i realized that cutting and slashing wouldn't work on the bloody beast so I cast a spell that I had practiced over my rest day.

{Storm Magic: Lighting Beast Manifestation}

A film of lightning covered me and I seemed to transform into a beast made of lightning as I went to all fours and was covered in a beast like armor of lightning and with how bright it was unless you looked carefully, it would just seem to be an amalgamation of lightning until the spell stabilized and the light dimmed. if one was to be looking at the situation, they would only see a beast made of lightning appear and myself disappear.

This was different from my other spell as that spell was more like i had beast armor, but this time i turned into the beast itself.

Claws made of lightning appeared where my hands and feet were and my head was elongated into the maw of a feline like beast with a litany of sharp teeth.

*ROAR*

A huge roar escaped my 'new body' and I rushed toward the bloody hound. As I attacked with teeth and claws I was happy to see that I was doing lasting damage as the lightning was burning the blood and as the the lightning burned it, a majority of the blood was evaporating because of the heat while what was left was a transparent fluid that fell to the ground.

I assumed the transparent fluid was plasma as when it comes to the components of blood, plasma makes of 60% and plasma itself is made up of 92% water so most of it evaporated as well. Everything else aside from the water which makes up the majority of blood, are tiny cells invisible to the naked eye which most likely burned up as well.

I came across a few of these types of beasts on our way through the dungeon and I ended up just using lightning to take care of them. I also came across fire beasts and even some strange monster with tentacles which I froze and shattered as it was slimy and I knew the slime would make it susceptible to the cold.

Of the spells i had practiced on my day off, some of them were my water magic as i could now use some rudimentary ice magic spells.

I finally entered into a large cavern and I saw lava pools all around the room with the boiling and steaming bloodfalls and in the center of the cavern sitting on a raised platform on a large pedestal, was a Giant Crimson Red Crystal. I maneuvered my way through the gaps between the pools of lava and finally made it to the platform and was standing in front of the crystal.

I felt a weird vibe from the crystal and It felt like I was being pulled towards it slightly.

I placed my hand on the crystal and it started to glow a crimson sheen, and I then heard a voice in my head.

<Yes, yes. You will do perfectly, I couldn't ask for a better choice.>

"Who are you?!?" I asked aloud.

<Who I am isn't important, what is important that can make you powerful, more powerful then even the strongest being in world.>

"Hmph. I am already plenty powerful as you may have already noticed." I replied back.

<Yes, you are. Given enough time, I'm sure could rise to great heights in power, but as know, have your own weaknesses and with my help can be relieved of those become more powerful than ever dreamed.>

It sounded too good to be true so I asked.

"What's the catch?"

<The catch is what comes after, you will experience immense pain and may due in the process, but keep mind I not force to do anything. As said before, have plenty of power already.>

'He's right, I do have plenty of power and I don't need anymore, but honestly, why does it matter if I don't need more power, if this can rid me of my weaknesses and give me even greater power, why would I not accept. So what if there will be immense pain, what power is ever gained without some form of pain. It's decided I will take his offer.' I thought to myself as I weighed the pros and cons.

"Very well, I will accept. Now how do I receive the power?"

<This power is an Inheritance from the Sanguine Emperor, and all you must do cut your hand place it on crystal.>

"Okay" I replied.

I made a large gash on my hand with a throwing dagger I had clipped to my belt and placed it on the crystal. I instantly felt weakened and it felt like my blood was being ripped from my body and I couldn't remove my hand from the crystal. For a second I had thought that the voice had tricked me and was lamenting my stupidity for trusting this voice that I didn't know that promised power.

Just as I thought that, the feeling ended and I collapsed on the floor, my hand released from the crystals grasp. There was no other pain, so I thought maybe it was over until suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my mouth. I started to feel a pulsing pain in my mouth and then I started to choke, I coughed and coughed and I finally coughed up a tooth, it was then that I realized i had inadvertently swallowed a tooth.

My confusion stopped the feeling of pain momentarily until I felt a popping feeling and an excruciating pain followed. My teeth started to pop out of their sockets each pop felt like I was having them ripped out of my mouth. After about 2 minutes of this that felt like an hour, the pain increased. A new pain was now assaulting me, I started wriggling on the ground as I felt my bones breaking.

Every bone in my body was breaking and then disintegrating as if it was burned to ash and the bones did not break all at once. The bones took between 2-3 breaks before they started to disintegrate. The pain had been so bad now that I almost passed out. I tried to cast my healing magic, but it didn't help at all it actually made the pain worse as if whatever process that had been started was angered at being interrupted.

After my bones were all gone, the blood vessels in my body started to burst one at a time. There are over 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body and it seemed they vessels were bursting one mile at a time. This pain was a thousand times worse than the other pain i'd felt thus far to the point where I couldn't remain conscious and promptly passed out.

As I was unconscious, my body underwent a transformation. My bones started to reform stronger than ever and seemed to have the consistency of diamonds and my muscles were compacting and expanding at the same time. My teeth seemed to become sharper, especially my canines, and there seemed to be a special pocket in my gums in specific areas that had additional space as if to fit something bigger than was originally there.

My eyes were stinging and if I was awake I would've felt like someone had poured bleach, hand sanitizer, and hydrogen peroxide in my eyes. And my ears seemed to burn off and then reform over and over and my ear canal seemed to be strengthened and the canal seemed to be reinforced as if it was a tunnel coated with tungsten carbide.

My skin was falling off my body and reforming at a rapid pace and after each reformation, the skin seemed to lose some of it's hue and turned paler. Near the end the skin seemed to have the consistency of Kevlar as far as toughness is concerned.

The blood in my body was undergoing a transformation that was the strangest. After the blood vessels were reformed strong as wires of carbon fiber, the blood itself started to change.

First the blood began to increase in quantity. In terms of units if one unit of blood was 1 liter, then now one unit of blood is equivalent to 1000 liters. This is an insane difference as there are only 5 liters of blood in the entire human body. Next, what increased was the quality of blood. Normal deoxygenated blood is a dark red color and oxygenated blood is a normal red color. His blood now is silver in color, but the blood that is still flowing from the unclosed wounds on his body are now white in color.

This was the case for about 5 minutes until the blood seemed to be coated in a protective film that made it look like normal blood. If I could've seen this process I would've made the determination that this was my body's way of both protecting my new blood from the outside world and as a defensive mechanism to make myself not stand out.

The process seemed to take little time to explain, but the whole process took multiple hours to fully complete as the destruction and reforming of all aspects of the body happened multiple times. After what seemed like weeks, but was actually only 3 days, I woke up and surprisingly felt better than I ever had before.

This lasted for about a second, before my nose was assaulted with probably the worst smell I had ever smelled before and it seemed that all my senses were heightened so I made sure to get as far away as possible from the smell which seemed to come from the multicolored puddle beneath my body.

Once I had left the cavern and gotten about halfway to the entrance of the dungeon, I finally stopped smelling the putrid scent. Now I don't know if the distance I had to go to not smell it is an indication of the strength of my new senses, or a measure of how bad the smell was. I'm inclined to believe it is a combination of both.

Now that my sense of smell wasn't being overloaded, I had a chance to look over all my gains. I took some time to go over what I've noticed. So I already know my smell is enhanced, and since I can still hear the sound of many different bloodfalls, but don't see any around then I can check off enhanced hearing. And I can see perfectly well in this dark corridor despite no source of light.

I could feel that my strength had increased, but I couldn't tell how much and the beasts in this dungeon are immune to physical attacks due to their water like constitution so they aren't good test subjects. As for my speed, I could already notice that my speed was fast as I had rushed out of the cavern and the scenery was literally blurring past as I ran, but if I focused my senses I could see the scenery clearly. I'd say I'm at least 10 times faster than before without the enhancement of magic, and that is probably a guess on the low side as I'd have to fully test it.

I did some small tests like testing if I can function without sight by using my other senses and I found that with a cloth over my eyes, using my hearing and my sense of touch as I walked, I walked toward the sound of the bloodfalls. I got closer and closer and slowly I was able to walk as easily as before and started to slowly run, careful to adjust my speed slowly as to not overwhelm myself. I spent about an hour testing running blind, and eventually I could run normally while blindfolded, but lost control when trying to use my enhanced speed. That was good enough for now.

I took off the blindfold and I could see in the distance an opening filled with an orange light that most likely led to the bloodfalls cavern that I saw when I first entered as I seemed to have taken a different route than I did before and didn't come across any other bloodfalls. I used my enhanced speed and made my way over, surprisingly not coming across any blood beasts.

I finally stepped into the cavern and winced in pain at the change in lighting due to my enhanced eyesight. I could see the cavern in a lot more detail, but that wasn't what shocked me, I could feel a connection to the bloodfalls. I was sensing all the red liquid falling and felt I only needed but a thought to make the liquid move as I wished.

I walked over to the nearest bloodfall and tugged on the connection and I saw to my utter shock that a small river of blood was moving toward me. I willed it to move around me and it followed my thoughts and moved around me and looked like a large red ring was floating around me and it was seamless, as if the blood was moving of it's own initiative.

This wasn't magic, this was instinctual, this was a connection. I could tell that the blood would do exactly what I wished and would never be able to wrest itself from my control. At this moment I finally understood why the inheritance was called Sanguine Emperor. I am the Emperor of Blood.

I then had an interesting thought and pulled a large amount of blood from the nearest bloodfall and condensed it as much as I could until it formed into the shape of a number of daggers. I then had the blood go back to it's original shape and it worked flawlessly. I then condensed it all into the shape of a round ball. This ball had a huge amount of blood in it and was only the size of a Marble and I could easily store it for easy access.

I also noticed that the bloodfalls didn't seem to stop flowing, probably due to the magic of the dungeon. I then attempted to pull every drop of the blood from the bloodfall and I found to my astonishment, that the blood really wasn't decreasing at all even after pulling the blood from the bloodfall for over an hour. This made me super excited and I walked to the center of the cavern and pulled upon my connection to all the bloodfalls and started to pull gallons of blood from them. If one was to walk in they would see a lone individual surrounded by multiple rivers of blood flowing toward them and then flowing in a ring around the individual.

This ring then had whole sections of it disappear as they were condensed into hundreds of marbles which I put into my spatial bag before reforming the whole ring as fast as it was deformed. A spatial bag is a bag that held a massive amount of space inside but remained the same outside. I filled the bag about a quarter of the way with the marbles of blood and stopped my connection to the bloodfalls and the blood floated back into the bloodfalls and they reformed into their original shape.

This really is an insane ability and I will probably be invincible in a bloody battlefield as I will have a huge supply of blood. And this isn't even magic, my mana is still as full as it was when I made into the huge cavern that housed the crystal. This is an ability that is ingrained into my new body.

Speaking of my new body, I don't even know what I look like. I used water creation magic to create a ball of water which I flattened then froze to create a pure reflective surface.

I finally got a look at my new body and I was shocked.

My height had increased by about 1 foot which made me 6'7 (he is only 16). I didn't notice the change in height because as I was on my way to the dungeon I stopped by a town and bought some clothes that used magic thread to grow with me and had some self cleaning properties.

I also had some more refined features and could easily pass for a young man in his early to mid 20s. My black hair had now gotten streaks of red all throughout it and my original grey eyes had gotten brighter and looked more silver than their original color. It wasn't extremely obvious, and would probably only be noticed by those who knew me really well. I took off my jacket and shirt and saw that my body was refined as hell and I could see that I still looked lean but the muscle on my body was very compact, yet it didn't make me heavier.

If Ranto had looked at his reflection while he was using his blood control ability, he would've seen his eyes glow red instead of the color he has now. And he would've seen he had four large canines that were elongated.

**RUMBLE**

Hearing the sound I saw that the dungeon seemed to be collapsing, I guess it took a while for the dungeon to notice the inheritance was received and the inheritance seemed to be the focal point to keeping the dungeon active.

Hearing this, i pushed my speed to make it out of the dungeon before it closed in on me. With a fast speed, i made it out of the dungeon in record time. it had taken me a total of 4 minutes to get out as i had to dodge falling debris. as i was outside the dungeon, after about 10 minutes, the dungeon collapsed in on itself and started to fall back to the earth from which it sprang.

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(Black Bulls Hideout)

I made it back to the hideout and before i could even say anything, i was bombarded with a hug from Asta and Charmy.

"Thank god you are okay Ranto, you had been gone for almost 4 days, we were all worried, i wanted to go after you, but, Captain Yami refused to tell us where you went and only said not to worry as you were still alive." Asta said loudly as he grabbed him in a bear hug so tight that if it was before my dungeon exploration, would have hurt, but I almost didn't feel that he was being hugged.

Charmy came next and she had a veritable smorgasbord of food and she was crying as she brought all the food over to me.

"Im so glad you are safe, i need someone to try my food, you are the only one who would try my experimental food." Charmy said.

 Vanessa then walked over.

"Glad you're alright kiddo, Captain Yami said to have you see him when you got back. By the way, did you get taller?" she said quickly while her voice had a drunken tone near the end.

"Got it, I'll go see Captain Yami, and no, i have always been this tall, you're just drunk." i said as i quickly made my way to Captain Yami.

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(Outside Captain Yami's Office)

**Knock**

"Captain, It's me, i have returned from my mission!" I said loud enough to be heard through the door.

"GET YOUR ASS IN HERE!!" Captain Yami shouted angrily.

i walked inside and stood in front of Captain Yami who was radiating with mana and he was releasing a large amount of Mana Pressure which surprisingly i was barely affected, but i attributed it to Captain Yami holding back.

'What's with this kid? i am only holding back my Mana Pressure by 25% and he is not only standing, but seems completely unaffected. What exactly happened to him in that dungeon?' Yami thought to himself.

"Hey brat, what happened in that dungeon? You have grown, your body has gained an insane amount of muscle, your complexion is very pale, your hair has changed, and you don't seem to be emitting any waves of mana anymore as you usually radiated waves of mana even if in miniscule amounts. It's almost as if you have no mana, but it feels different then that loud brat, it's almost as if your mana is buried, it is sort of muffled." Captain Yami asked as his pressure faded.

"It is sort of a long story, but it is definitely amazing, and we need to make sure we aren't overheard much like our first meeting about my power" i replied to which he nodded and got ready to hear my tale of my dungeon dive.