A Path of Bone and Poison 93 The cursed book

I appraised the book before I opened it, It ended up actually being a mythical book. A book that was above the legendary grade. That was where the good news ended.

The book was bonded to me ever since it had appeared. I would not be able to sell it. The only way the book would become non bonded would be if I died. If that's all the bad news then I would not be upset at all. I would simply leave it in my inventory and be done with it.

Unfortunately, the book had also decided to take up residence in my library. Using up one on the three spots I had left. Even that would not be the end of the world, but alas it was not the end of the bad news.

The book also had a price of ownership. The book would actively absorb 1,000 coins from me, every day by midnight. If I did not have the coins it would take the price out of my life by absorbing my life force. Every day I did not pay the 1000 coins I would lose a year of my life.

All of this was became aware to me before I had been read the book. The book was most definitely a cursed item, and it was my luck to have gained it. If only it had been a pie.

With a sigh I decided to head to the dungeon. I would have a chance to read the book later. For now I would need to gain the coins I needed or I would litterally lose my life. At least a portion of it.

The dungeon was not very populated today. I had seen a dea individual adventurers like myself going in to do a daily dungeon run, but I only saw a single party enter. The party itself seemed rather well equipped and was led by an elf who seemed rather full of herself. More so than most of the elves I had encountered.

What made the party stand out to me was that every member of the party was an elf, and all of them but her were male. They also were wearing the same uniform. It was in various shades of green, and reminded me of the soothing calm of the forest outside of Slagstone. The area that had not been corrupted by the Dyrad.

The elven women's eyes passed over me as she walked by, her arrogant eyes looking at me in disdain. Her eyes slightly widened as she looked at my face, I could only assume she had noticed the sun mark that had once been given to me as a blessing from the Elven goddess. The mark turned cold as she stared at me, not a bitter cold, but a cool breeze on a summer day.

I could not stop the smile that crossed my face at the feeling, which called the Elven woman to frown. I could tell she wanted to stop to reprimand me, but before she could I had already slipped past her group into the dungeon. But I managed to stick my tongue out at her on my way in. I don't know why, but somehow it just felt right.

The instance itself was a new one for me. As always it was a D ranked instance as I was entering myself. I found it surprising, because the dungeon in Slagstone had never bothered to listen before, and handed out whatever ranked missions it wanted to me. But this was fine by me. I only came because I needed the coins and the levels for my proficiency skill.

The enemies I encountered in the instance were strange. The were a type of bug that liked to burrow into the ground. They set traps, but the traps were easily noticable as long as you were careful. With my stealth and light foot abilities I had no problem sneaking past them without difficulty.

When I identified one of the traps I would fire several of my bullets into the ground at its location. The insects would inevitably squeal and emerge from their hiding places.

The insects reminded me of worms, they were had long segmented bodies and a rather large mouth with two long fangs. They no eyes or ears, and it seemed the were only capable of knowing their opponents location from the vibrations in the earth. They were incredibly disturbing to look at. I could not tell you how strong they were as I had no intention of finding out.

The species was not identified in either my encyclopedia or in the notes I had taken from the lich. Thankfully they seemed to have low defense and were easily slain by my bullets. I came to the conclusion that most of their power must have come from their sneak attacks.

I easily cleared the floor, as the monsters were nothing to me. I had them beat on stealth, and the knowledge I had gained from my survival book made finding the traps relatively easy.

The second floor was also occupied by the strange worms, but it also had a type of bat creature that occupied the skies. They two seemed to be blind, but they were able to easily see with their ultrasonic attacks. They sound thenemmited not only could locate me in my stealth state, but would break my stealth and do damage to my eardrums.

The resulting loss of balance caused me to trigger a trap set by one of the worms. Unfortunately I was able to find out how effective the worms were with their sneak attacks personally. They worm latched onto my leg, its large fangs sinking deep into the muscles on my calf.

A strange venom was being released into my leg, causing a sense of numbness that made it difficult to move my leg. The creature died easily enough when I put a bullet into its head, but the numbness of my leg did not go away.

I was more careful moving forward. I did not utilize stealth, but rather attacked the bats as soon as they were within my range. As long as I stayed far enough away their ultrasonic attacks would remain ineffective.

Following the simple strategy I cleared the second floor without obtaining a second injury. Thankfully by then I had regained some of the feeling in my leg and it felt more like my leg was asleep than anything.

The third floor was the boss floor. The boss was an extremely large version of the worms. Unfortunately he had a summoning skill and was able to summon a total of 10 bats and 10 worms at the same time. The fight was actually bery difficult, I had to focus on killing the bats when they appeared before they could cause me to lose my balance. At the same time I had to dodge the attacks of the worms who were making no effort to hide and simply lunging at me.

The boss itself watched the entire thing, occasionally striking at me when I seemed to busy to react.

I did not get out of the battle unscathed. No matter how good I was at dodging or how many times I used shadow step, there were simply to many enemies to keep track of. I was hit by the ultrasonic attacks several times, but I was always able to shadow step away in time.

It took me almost 2 hours to kill the boss. I did not gain any levels as usual, but the rewards were much better than the previous instance.

1. 5,000 coins

2. 1 gold coin

3. [spectral movement]

[Spectral Movement]

A type of skill that integrates shadow movement and stealth. It is considered an upgrade to both skills, and replaces them both. You can move freely through shadows for free, but stealth now has a constant cost of 50 mana per second.

The skill was not bad, but the mana cost was pretty high. I would need a wisdom of at least 500 to maintain it indefinitely, as long as I was not using other skills. Thankfully by wisdom had already surpassed that, so the skill would not be a burden.

Chapter end