Level Up Inquisitor [EN]: Chapter 33

콰앙!

Alisa rushed inside at the sudden loud noise.

As she entered through the open doorway, a bizarre, half-destroyed statue stood right in front of her.

A human-shaped statue with its head and torso partially broken off.

It raised its only arm high.

Clang!

Alisa reacted instantly, raising her staff, and the statue’s heavy sword clashed against it with a sharp sound.

“I was told there weren’t any monsters inside…!”

The information she had researched beforehand stated that there weren’t even any common neutral NPCs [Non-Player Characters], let alone dangerous monsters. But the statue before her was clearly a preemptive strike monster.

In the midst of the chaos, Alisa quickly turned her head to assess the situation.

As she shifted her gaze, she saw Aeil, who had been knocked back, gulping down a potion on the floor.

He had been caught off guard by the suddenly awakened statue.

Kee-gee-geek!

As the statue put more force into slamming down its sword, Alisa’s arm trembled.

As a healer, it was far too strong for her to handle easily.

‘Level 24, Broken Ancient Statue… I’ve never heard of this monster before.’

Aeil and Alisa’s average level was 18.

Even though it was a regular monster and not an elite or boss, level 24 was quite high.

This meant they couldn’t let their guard down.

After checking the level and information of the monster in front of her, Alisa slightly twisted her staff to deflect the sword.

Then, she threw herself to the side, creating distance.

Clang!

The statue’s sword, now deflected, struck the floor.

In that moment, Aeil, who had appeared behind it, swung his longsword with white flames.

The longsword deeply slashed the statue’s back.

As expected, it didn’t inflict additional elemental damage to an enemy made entirely of stone, but it certainly dealt the skill’s inherent damage on top of the attack.

Whoong!

Aeil tilted his head slightly, retreated, and gauged his health.

He estimated that two more solid hits like that would be enough to bring it down.

However, the situation wasn’t going to end that easily.

“Oh no…!”

The statues lying on both sides began to move slightly from the front.

The statue at the very front had already risen and was striding towards them, and the statues behind it were also twitching slightly, as if they were awakening in order from the front.

“We need to hurry!”

“I’ll finish this one first!”

Crack! Quack!

At Aeil’s shout, their momentarily scattered focus returned, and the statue, under concentrated attacks from both directions, couldn’t withstand it and collapsed.

Experience points rose nicely, and a loot item sparkled, but they had no time to pay attention to such things right now.

The statues in the passage, now moving, all creaked and groaned as they swarmed towards them, attacking.

The party was quickly engaged in combat against a large number of enemies and struggled.

Despite their disheveled appearance, they were high level and had very strong stats.

‘Damn it, we can’t last long like this…!’

Aeil gritted his teeth as he parried the three spear tips coming at him.

Even retreating and dodging attacks was now difficult as they were completely surrounded and overwhelmed.

Alisa was barely holding on as well, but she was in just as tough a situation.

There was the option of escaping from this place, even if it meant giving up the quest rewards, but even that wasn’t feasible.

Their position wasn’t ideal for running back towards the entrance due to the fight with the first statue, and it was already too late.

The unexpected appearance of the monsters had left them trapped and facing death.

But dying like this would mean incurring huge penalties.

48 hours of disconnection, level down, and item drop.

Perhaps they could recover the dropped items since it was an uninhabited area, but the first two penalties alone were enough to darken their outlook.

Especially for Aeil, who had started late and was already trying to catch up, it was a very critical blow.

And as he faced such a desperate situation, a ray of salvation descended upon him.

“Aeil, catch!”

Alisa shouted and threw an item.

A transparent glass bottle filled with a white liquid sloshing inside.

The floating potion flew in an arc, avoiding the statues’ arms, and Aeil quickly reached out and caught it.

“What is this…?”

The item Aeil caught was the mysterious white potion she had been making in front of the dungeon before.

He still didn’t know what it was, but Alisa, who had thrown it to him, was already gulping down the same potion, and since they were going to die anyway, Aeil didn’t hesitate.

He struggled to fend off the statues’ attacks and swallowed the potion, emptying the small bottle in no time.

Sizzle.

His doubts were short-lived as the effects appeared instantly.

Aeil’s arm, which had barely deflected a mace, began to turn transparent.

‘Could it be…?’.

It was only the beginning, but Aeil could already guess the potion’s effect.

A potion of invisibility that temporarily concealed the body.

That was for sure.

‘She was making this?’

The effectiveness of the invisibility potion was undeniable.

Being able to hide the body and avoid detection made it useful in all sorts of situations.

However, it also had clear limitations.

First, the effect would break the moment someone attacked, and it only made the body transparent, not concealing presence or sound, making it useless against opponents with keen senses.

Additionally, it suffered from low cost-effectiveness and no immunity to detection skills, among numerous other drawbacks.

However, most of these drawbacks, except for the cost issue, weren’t significant problems at low levels.

Thud!

The statues, dumbfounded by the disappearance of the two intruders, blankly looked around.

Low-level monsters weren’t likely to have the keen senses to detect an invisible enemy, nor did they possess detection skills.

Above all, the stone statues couldn’t hear or smell, relying solely on their eyesight.

Thus, the two held their breaths among the statues, carefully avoiding contact with them as they slipped deeper into the passage.

‘It’s not something easy to make…’

Aeil thought to himself as he slipped past the statue’s arm.

Invisibility potions could be crafted from relatively low alchemy ranks, but they required rare ingredients that were difficult to obtain, making it impossible for most to even attempt.

He wanted to ask how she had made such a thing, but Aeil wasn’t sure if the statues could hear sounds.

At the end of the first passage was a large door.

It was tightly closed but badly damaged, making it easy to enter.

And as Aeil emerged through the twisted door, he faced the second passage.

Unlike the previous passage, which was a straight path, the front was blocked, and it split into three paths like a fork in the road.

According to some of the photos attached to the post by the first user who discovered it, there were a total of three passages before entering the ruins.

The first was a straight passage, the second was a maze, and the third was a circular hall.

The disgruntled post didn’t include a detailed map of the internal structure, so they had to find that part themselves.

“Ouch!”

“Ah…!”

Aeil and Alisa stumbled back as they bumped into each other at the entrance of the passage.

The invisibility potion had worked to fool the other monsters, but they couldn’t see each other either.

Warlords basically had no special functions other than experience distribution, even when in the same party, so they couldn’t see the invisible state, and if they misaimed a skill, they could end up team-killing.

“Something seems to have changed. This isn’t where monsters are supposed to appear…”

Aeil spoke first, lowering his voice.

He glanced behind the door just in case, but there was no sign of the statues coming this way.

For now, considering the possible scenarios, there was the possibility that the first discoverer had lied to people, but that was ridiculous and immediately dismissed.

Several curious people had already visited the ruins, and if it were a dungeon where monsters appeared, the discoverer wouldn’t have announced it that way.

Even if it was a low-level dungeon that wasn’t needed much at this point, they could have received some money by reporting the discovery to the Adventurers’ Guild, but there was nothing to gain from lying with a verified ID.

The second possibility was that Severa of the Bloody Hands, who had brought them here, had used some kind of trick.

There was suspicion that she had awakened the monsters to trap them, either to silence them about the request or to avoid paying the reward.

Warlord NPCs [Non-Player Characters] were practically indistinguishable from humans, so they engaged in all sorts of activities beyond typical interactions.

They even occasionally gave out requests and then ran away without paying the rewards or killed users, though it wasn’t common.

There was even a community culture of posting 인증 [proof] posts saying they had been scammed by an AI.

But this case was different.

If she wanted to eliminate them, Severa could have simply done it herself.

They were just common low-level users, with no influential connections or affiliations.

There was no way a big shot like her would go to such trouble.

Then the last possibility.

Something had triggered the events related to this quest, and the regional lock on the ruins had been lifted.

It was reasonable to assume that the request from the Bloody Hands wasn’t a quest involving just one or two places, but a large-scale quest of considerable size.

“It seems like we’re not the only ones involved in this.”

Alisa pointed out what Aeil was thinking.

Severa’s sudden move to this place, the monsters awakening just as they arrived, and the unrelated events unfolding one after another suggested that this was the case.

Moreover, Severa had said when they first received the request that once they stepped in, they could never quit.

An implication that this was no ordinary matter.

It wasn’t just an incident involving them, but there was a high possibility that related events were unfolding elsewhere at this very moment.

Whether that only applied to NPCs [Non-Player Characters] from other factions or even other players was unknown.

“Indeed… If we encounter Severa inside the ruins, we might be able to hear something. But if we go deeper like this, it’ll be quite a headache to get out.”

“Don’t worry about that. I still have two more bottles.”

Alisa said with a slight smile.

Judging by the sound of the liquid sloshing, she seemed to be shaking an extra invisibility potion she had taken out.

Krrr!

At that moment, the sound of a monster was faintly heard from the other side of the passage.

Judging by the sound coming from the front, the statues in the maze of the second passage seemed to be awakening.

Aeil and Alisa reflexively held their breaths and exchanged glances.

The duration of the invisibility potion was running out, and they hurried towards the interior of the ruins.