Unwelcome Surprise
~Tell me why~
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Or perhaps not as legendary as one might think. But what came about as aftermath could not even be called collateral damage.
The 49th floor shook with each and every blow as man and monster fought for dominance in this fight. The Juggernaut relying on its body which was built for speed and swift attacks and Steve depending on his resilience and his ability to track the things movements as it rebounded off the walls in his direction.
He uppercut it cleanly under the chin and sent it smashing into the ceiling before he appeared above it and kicked it down, making it form a crater underneath. But just as as quick as it landed did it jump out of the hole and move out the way as he tried to pummel it on his way down. His punch instead slammed into the ground of the Floor and made the whole thing tremble.
Steve ducked out of the way faster than a blink as a spiked tail whipped at where his head. He grabbed the tail and started running with it, dragging the monster along the ground as it tried to find a footing by sticking it claws in the ground. Steve swung it around by its tail and slammed it into the rock of the canyon and then rag dolling it as he ran through cluster of boulders, making its head bounce and shatter the boulders as he tried to give it a concussion at least.
The Juggernaut used it powerful limbs to flip itself off one large rock face so it would land in front of Steve. This allowed it to take back some more control of its tail as it hoisted Steve into the air and wrenched the appendage from his grasp. While he was mid-air, the Juggernaut swiped at him and he was sent careening through the rust coloured grit, bouncing along the ground before he smashed into one the far walls and stayed there a little dazed.
He looked at his GUI and saw that his armours durability had taken a heavy beating. Almost half was gone at this point. He himself was relatively unharmed, because the fact of the matter was he was still too strong for this beast.
It was once said somewhere that Alfia the Silence, a level 7 from the Hera Familia could kill a Juggernaut from the 70th floor provided she did so within the first 20 seconds of the fight. So what chance did this 49th floor one have against him?
The problem was that it was extremely difficult to catch and it was very slippery. And its size did not make it easy to grab a hold of something that would assure him an assertive grip besides its tail. But the beast was smart and it had a tolerance for pain as it had taken several of his punches and matched them equally. He suspected though that it was because of the velocity at which it was travelling. That speed put extra weight behind its body and countered his own heavy attacks.
The Juggernaut leapt for him again and he jumped out of the human shaped hole in the wall he'd made and hurled a boulder at it, cracking the thing against its skull and making it bounce off its initial trajectory and land on the ground. The Juggernaut pulled itself together and turned just in time to evade being stomped into the ground and another crater was formed as Steve dug his heel into where he was sure the Juggernauts head would be.
The monster swiped again with its claws but Steve was ready as he whirled around and deflected the offending end organs with the back of his gauntlet. Showers of sparks flew off the connection as the two traded blows faster than lightning, the Juggernauts frontal limbs and Steve's arms becoming a blur as they ferociously countered one another. Shockwaves crashed and sliced through the area around them, damaging more and more of the floor which ironically, the Juggernaut was supposed to protect.
The creature could not understand why it wasn't able to exterminate this invader from the surface. It had been called specifically to take care of the mortal filth that invaded the belly of its mother like the viruses and leeches they were but it had accomplished nothing so far except failure after failure. This human had physically superior might and the creature knew that if it was faced with its full strength in on clean blow, the Juggernaut probably would not survive. The best it could do was mess up the human's attack and senses while it probed its defences and hopefully found a weak spot.
Steve saw an opening and slapped one arm aside before stamping down on the other and locking the clawed hand in place as he landed a thunderous punch on the beast's snout. No literally, the impact sounded like a thunderclap as burst of air exploded in a resulting shockwave and the Juggernaut was stunned for a moment. Steve then grabbed the clawed hand under his foot and swung the Juggernaut around so hard that the claws ripped out, making blood spurts as its main weapons of offense were torn from it and went sailing into the giant tunnel created by the Hollow Purple from earlier.
Steve followed after it and jumped up high into the air, watching in amusement as the Juggernaut scrambled to get away from where he was about to to land. Having a couple of its claws ripped out gave it a bit of a limp as it clumsily avoided him and he landed with a a confident smirk on his face.
"Your kind eats Monster Rexes for breakfast." Steve said as he stalked towards the beast, which backed away as it tried to get used to the pain in its right arm. "A monster like you should surely be feared but from what I see so far...you're really just a cowardly monster that depends on ambush to kill your opponents. You're too afraid to face me head on." Steve lifted his arm as his Netherite axe appeared. "You're making this boring!"
Steve threw the 9 tonne axe right at the beast, and like it had an innate sense of danger, instead of tanking this weapon, the Juggernaut ducked under and it knew that it had made the right choice. As the axe flew over it, the creature felt the sheer air pressure created by the axe due to its weight and speed at which it was thrown. It definitely would not have survived. Seeing Steve in the latter part of a throwing motion from having thrown the axe, the monster felt this was an opportune moment to strike and lunged towards him.
Steve's immense processing abilities however quickly picked up on it and he slid underneath the monster's lunge on his knees as he bent himself backwards to meet the monster's gaze upside down as the passed on another. The Juggernaut saw Steve's eyes under his helmet flash a sky blue for a moment as Steve lifted a finger and a red glow emerged from the finger tip.
"Jutsushiki Hanten Aka" Steve said as he threw a Reversal at it.
This time the Juggernaut felt a moment of triumph as the attack suddenly hit a glowing shield that formed over its skin. The attack stayed there for a moment before it rebounded back towards Steve and an explosion of pressure burst outwards omni-directionally which sent the the Juggernaut flying out of the tunnel.
The point of a Reversal Red was this it created an expulsive force, a divergence of space to repel, so even though the Juggernaut had not been hit point blank, it was still blown away by the aftermath. Still though, it basked in its victory that the human had thought magic would be a good asset against the beast.
"What are you so pleased about?"
The Juggernaut looked above to see Steve flying above it, keeping pace with its body that was literally bulleting through the air. In Steve's hand was another Reversal Red.
"I'm surprised you can deflect cursed techniques but then again it is called sorcery, which counts as magic I suppose. But can you activate that shield consecutively?"
Steve launched the new Reversal right into the Juggernauts belly. Unlike last time which was small, this one was large and true to Steve's theory, the shield did not activate this time and the Juggernaut was blasted into the floor, the Reversal Red still pushing down on its stomach.
To both their surprise though, it seemed that the damage they had done to the floor was to much for this level to handle. The ground gave way as the 49th floor shattered, literally collapsed to reveal what Steve knew to be the 50th floor, hundreds of feet below as an entire floor came crashing down onto another under the weight of a Reversed Limitless Technique. In that time the attack dissipated and the Juggernaut was left to free fall to the exposed safe zone below.
Steve meanwhile floated in the air as he watched this spectacle with a bit of awkwardness.
"Oops." He said before frowning, taking off his helmet and rubbing his forehead as he squeezed the skin on his nose. "These Six Eyes give me a headache. All well and all that the system lets me use these powers smooth like software but it looks like there are still side effects. Note to self, start training."
He turned the mod off and allowed himself to fall too. Watching keenly, he saw the 50th floor get demolished as it had literal cliffs and mountains fall on top of it, demolishing the forests and filling all the multiple water sources with debris. The resulting Earthquake was the biggest one he'd produced yet. Keeping an eye on the Juggernaut, he saw it splash into a pool of water, the blood from its mutilated hand, paw, foot, whatever the hell it was called. There was a massive dent in its belly armour in a perfect circular shape.
Steve landed by the pool, uncaring that pieces of the floor above was still crashing down all around him.
The creature still appeared to keep its nature though as it launched out of the water akin to a crocodile with its mouth wide open to bite his head. He ducked out of the way, and dug his fist into its already damaged belly. The armour finally cracked and then smashed apart, revealing raw, vulnerable pink skin underneath as it shrieked in pain.
It bounded off, jumping between what trees were left as it tried to retreat and recuperate for a moment, but Steve would not let it get away so easily as he took out his Netherite spear and took aim. He understood why spears were never added to the game, because the sheer damage they could do was unbelievable, especially with the kind of enchants Steve had put on his. He threw it straight and true.
The spear flew high above the ground after the metallic lizard creature, catching it by the tail and pinning it deep into a chunk of the 49th floor that had fallen from above and there it stayed, swinging from side to side like the tail that had been pinned on a donkey, with its exposed belly on full display as it became aware of its condition.
/fireball
"Explosion power 1000." Steve said as he decided to end it once and for all. At the same time, the Loyalty enchantment began to take effect and the spear returned to the hands of its owner.
The fireball rocketed towards its target as the juggernaut activated its shield again. But it was useless since this was not a magical attack but a physical one. And even if the shield had managed to stop it, the Juggernaut would not have been protected from the aftermath.
Not as a literal nuke went off, which was actually so loud that it was like no sound could be heard at all. But Steve definitely felt it as the ground seized for a moment in a tiny tremor as giant mushroom cloud began to form and the ground began uprooting and exploding outwards with rivers of fire as the explosion began tearing everything apart. And the heat was so intense that all the water in the pools were vaporised, while rocks and the chunks from the 49th floor began melting.
Steve teleported out of there before he could get caught up in the shockwave and reappeared back where the 49th floor had been. He took off his helmet and surveyed the unfolding destruction.
"Well, I've read that the dungeon is able to regenerate itself. But I don't know how it's going to fix what I've done here."
He searched for any sign of the Juggernaut, keeping a keen eye for any chance that the creature might have survived. But considering it had been hit point blank by a nuke, it was unlikely. His mouth suddenly felt weird for a moment and he took his helmet off. Dabbing around at his mouth area with a finger, he winced as sharp pain on his face suddenly appeared when he poked one side, and on his finer came away a smudge of blood. He licked around the area and found a bleeding injury above the corner of his lip.
"Looks like I didn't come out so invincible after all. I wonder if I would qualify for a level up to level 10 though." He pulled up his GUI and looked at the stat information he was given when Ptah gave him his Falna. There was no change to his stats at all because his life had not been in danger but his screen still said that he was only 99% of the way done to level up. He couldn't understand why though. As far as he knew, all his stats were maxed out at SSS all the way. He still had not determined if that was his hard limit but seeing that the statistics of his system was telling him that he only had a percentage of progress left, it was very likely the case.
So what was he missing?
He once read somewhere that in order to level up, one had to perform a great feat or some marvellous achievement that even the gods had to acknowledge. But if he wanted to level up, what feat would be marvellous enough to make him eligible?
"Maybe something in the guidebook will help me." Steve said as he took out the manual Nekros had given him. He had not completed studying it yet. He had mastered the basics and had just winged the rest but the more complex stuff were things he was still working on. He flicked through the pages one by one to see if he could find anything remotely connected to levelling up but the book was about his Minecraft powers. He couldn't expect it to talk about his Falna. Steve sighed as he reach the last page. He held it one hand and flipped the book closed by jerking it upwards as he rolled his eyes. As he was going to put it away though, he noticed something.
Right at the very end, a piece of paper had been forced out of the actual book cover itself, discreetly hidden beneath the flap but clearly put there for him to find at some point or another. Well, he guessed that point was now.
He pinched the paper and tentatively pulled it out. It was a very small piece of folded paper. Opened, he surmised it would only be about as big as his palm. Using his thumb and index to open the note, and resting the back of it against the side of his middle finger, he read the contents...
...which was not a lot, disappointingly. Instead there were four words written in big, bold capital letters. Something about them unsettled him.
"Good copy?...Bad copy?" He read aloud.
In the left of his vision in the chat bar, he suddenly received something that looked like an achievement. Except it was written in all green letters, so it was more of a notification than anything else. Reading it, for some reason he couldn't understand, he got a sick feeling in his stomach.
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HIDDEN MISSION: GOOD COPY, BAD COPY
Defeat the hidden enemy.
He who runs unseen. Never revealing himself to anyone beyond a passing glance. And those who look for him, never find him. The first horror, and your (Steve's) longest and truest rival. Terror to all players, yet never truly believed in. The greatest defence he ever had, was convincing players that he was all but hoax, never anything more than a myth.
Reward: Level up to level 10.
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All of a sudden, Steve felt a very invasive prickly feeling on the back of his neck, and his hair stood on end. This was something that was built into him from a young age even when he was on Earth. An innate instinct he always had that only ever told him one thing and always ended up being true.
He was being watched.
He whipped his head up and franticly looked all around as goosebumps raised on his skin and his hairs began to feel like pins in it. The temperature inside his armour dropped rapidly, even though he was supposed to feel the heat of a nuke on his face. His heart began racing and his stomach felt like he'd just swallowed a rock. Fear gripped him with an icy cold fist as every sense of his was assaulted with some sort of impending doom.
Every muscle twitched to flee, every instinct screamed to run. Yet such fear he was feeling that he was frozen in place.
He knew for a FACT he was being spied on.
'Someone' had just been watching him, but he could not source the location of where he was getting the evil eye from. Every crack, every hole, every pit, every inch of ground his eyes ran over, desperately looking for anything that might be alive and moving.
But nothing, even with all the superhuman senses he had now, nothing. He couldn't find a single thing. But even though his eyes were telling him one thing, his heart was saying another. Someone was here messing with him.
He looked back at his GUI, only to see the notification gone. Even when going through the logs, he could not find it. It had completely vanished. But he knew what he saw. He had read the note and it had appeared. He read the note again, only to see that the letters which were written on it before had also vanished now. It had gone completely blank and was now just a white sheet of paper.
'Wait, white paper?' He realized suddenly confused.
The paper that the book was made of was that old fashioned paper that became yellow because of oxidisation. But this note was made of the bleached paper produced by modern manufacturing. It was also not a square as he though. Looking at it now, it was a slim rectangle which now sat horizontally in the middle of his palm.
...
Something about the appearance of it was making him feel very uneasy. For some reason, he though that the paper looked like it was glowing. A glowing white rectangle. Shaking his hand, he let the note float down into the awaiting fires below.
His attention was then caught by a series of pounding footsteps coming down the stairs and before he knew it, the executives of the Loki Familia had burst out of the entrance and nearly tumbled over the edge into the floor below.
"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?!" Bete yelled as he saw the non-existent 49th floor.
Finn gaped as he saw below him what was clearly the 50th floor which he knew to be a relaxing paradise after the trials of the last ten floors but was now a burning wasteland.
"What did you do Steve?" Finn asked. "Was this...necessary?"
"I didn't mean to." Steve reasoned as he floated down next to them. "I think my first magical attack I used to kill Balor weakened the floor a little and in the middle of my battle, the ground just collapsed.
"Well this is as magnificent as it is terrifying a sight to be had lad." Gareth said. "You destroyed an entire floor."
"Where's the monster?" Ais butted in and the Loki Familia looked around.
"I killed it." Steve said. "Don't worry, it won't be bothering us anymore."
"I doubt anything will be bothering us beyond this point." Finn sighed. "With no way to get to the fiftieth floor or even go past it, I'm afraid this is where our expedition must end."
There was a collective groan amongst the younger lot barring Ais who just stared at Steve like she usually did. She walked up to him as he landed on the ground and held his hand as she inspected the injury above his mouth. Usually Steve would have tried to ease out of the grip but subconsciously, he allowed her to hold him.
He still could not forget that dreadful sensation he'd had earlier.
"I could make a pathway with my powers Finn." Steve said. "I can create a bridge or a safe walkway all the way down there and we can continue on."
"I think we've had enough excitement on this trip Steve." Riveria smiled a little. Her mood had increased a little ever since he'd performed his spells. "Besides, thanks to your efforts, we have made quite a lot in spoils from the dungeon. I think this is where we should stop and head back, same as the captain."
"If you want to carry on, you can do so." Finn said. "I'm pretty sure you'll handle the next floors with ease. If you're having provision problems, we can give you some of our rations to keep going?"
Steve looked back, once again looking for whatever it was that had spooked him. The sensation of being watched was gone now that he was with his friends. But something inside his bones advised against continuing onwards.
"I think I'll head back too then." Steve said. "I've been here long enough."
"Then let us go." Finn said. "There is much to do when we reach the surface. The sooner we all get home, the better."
Steve found that he couldn't agree more and followed them up the stairs with Ais leading him by the hand still.
Tiona was the last one to go up the stairs and she looked back around the place that the boy of her interest had trashed. She marvelled and at the same time gulped at the destruction. He was both strong and kind, and he scared her...the perfect kind of mate Amazons liked. The more she saw of him, the fonder she got and the more excited she became. The sexual energy between them was undeniable at this point which how much they flirted and how much suggestive conversation they exchanged.
She was about to to turn around and head up the stairs when she looked at the giant tunnel in the other end of what used to be the 49th floor. The giant hole in the rust coloured rock that had been created by the Hollow Purple. In the darkness that rested at the very end, for a brief moment, she could have sworn she saw a pair of glowing eyes staring right back at her. She blinked and then it was gone.
"TIONA!" Her sister yelled down the stairs. "Get your ass moving! Don't you dare make the Captain wait for you!"
"Coming you screeching cow." Tiona muttered as she shrugged of what she saw earlier and bounded up the stairs.
...
In the Tunnel, the pair of eyes Tiona had seen briefly followed her movement with great intrigue before looking down where the Juggernaut had perished. It looked back to see Tiona's feet disappear up the stairway and then eyelids closed over them and complete darkness returned once again to the Tunnel.
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