Chapter 55: Leveling Holy Land!

Zhou Huai looked at the stone gate slowly swinging open, and his heart skipped a beat.

What is this situation?

Hidden dungeon?

After clearing it so many times before, this door had always remained motionless.

Why did it open by itself precisely this time?

Zhou Huai's thoughts spun rapidly, analyzing the differences between before and now.

The biggest difference was that Gandalf had reached Rank 10.

The skill power was even stronger, and the map-clearing efficiency had greatly increased due to the surge in his attributes.

This time clearing it, they only used thirty minutes.

Could it be… this is the key to opening the stone gate?

Must kill the final BOSS within thirty minutes?

Zhou Huai thought to himself, unable to think of any other reason besides this.

If this really was the condition, it could be said to be harsh to the extreme.

Even an elite team where everyone was Rank 20 wanting to clear the calamity-difficulty Shadow Swamp Demon Cave would take at least four or five hours.

And Professionals above Rank 30 would exceed the dungeon's Rank limit and couldn't enter at all.

What on earth was hidden behind this door?

Keeping the mindset of "since we're already here".

Zhou Huai controlled Yasuo and Gandalf, one in front and one behind, stepping into that profound darkness.

However, just walking in two steps…

Zhou Huai's brows furrowed sharply, and he immediately stopped his steps, rapidly retreating.

The moment they stepped into the gate,

Yasuo's and Gandalf's HP actually began to frantically drop at a rate of one hundred points per second.

-100!

-100!

As if an invisible, highly toxic poison permeated the space behind the door.

As long as one stepped in, they would continuously suffer damage.

Yasuo's and Gandalf's current HP was only around three thousand points.

Going on like this, they probably wouldn't even last half a minute before both dying.

Go out and find a few healers?

Zhou Huai immediately vetoed this thought.

Let alone whether he could find a trustworthy healer.

What if leaving the dungeon and coming back in caused this stone gate, which had been opened with such difficulty, to close again?

Moreover, at this HP-dropping speed, even if he found a few healers, they probably wouldn't be able to heal fast enough.

Zhou Huai was in a bit of a dilemma for a moment.

Theoretically, for this kind of hidden map, the higher the danger level, the richer the rewards usually meant.

He was truly unwilling to just give up like this.

After brief consideration, Zhou Huai's gaze landed on Gandalf.

With a thought, he controlled Gandalf to raise the staff in his hand.

"Arcane Barrier!"

Hum——!

Surging arcane energy instantly gushed out, condensing on Gandalf's surface into a nearly substantial semi-transparent shield composed of countless blue runes.

Light flowed across the surface of the shield, exuding an indestructible aura.

He wondered if this barrier shield could withstand that invisible toxin damage.

Zhou Huai controlled Gandalf, who had activated the shield, to step into the stone gate once more.

-100!

-100!

The familiar damage numbers popped up again.

But this time, what was being deducted was no longer Gandalf's HP, but the shield value of the Arcane Barrier on his surface!

Zhou Huai's heart rejoiced.

Gandalf's shield value had a full sixty thousand plus points!

Even if the shield was depleted, the skill cooldown was only one minute, and it could be generated again.

This was simply an infinitely refillable death-immunity token!

Thinking of this, Zhou Huai immediately made a decision.

Have Yasuo guard the entrance just in case.

Let Gandalf go in alone to investigate.

Gandalf took strides and walked towards the depths of the darkness.

The scene before him was a section of ancient stone steps spiraling downwards.

As he went deeper step by step, dusty torches on the rock walls on both sides automatically ignited without any warning.

What danced were eerie, deep blue flames.

The light of the flames illuminated the twisted and grotesque reliefs on the rock walls, making them flicker as if they could come alive at any moment.

A chilly wind roared up from the depths of the underground, carrying a decaying aura.

All the way down, Zhou Huai didn't see any traces of exotic beasts.

The entire space was frighteningly dead silent.

Not knowing how long he walked, the spiraling stairs finally reached the end.

The view below suddenly opened up.

Appearing before Gandalf was a corridor so long it seemed endless.

The corridor was dilapidated, with skeletal frames of various exotic beasts scattered across the ground, having been silent here for who knows how many years.

Zhou Huai controlled Gandalf to continue forward.

Underfoot, dark green gas began to spread like light gauze.

Gandalf's shield value also gradually increased from a deduction of one hundred points per second to one hundred and fifty points.

Afterwards, not long after walking, the damage increased once more.

-200!

-200!

The further Zhou Huai walked, the more alarmed he became. Seeing that a chunk of the shield value had dropped, he hurriedly released [Arcane Barrier] once more to fill the shield back up.

This toxin damage was so ferocious that if any other tank profession came in, they probably wouldn't be able to hold on.

The difficulty of this hidden map was frighteningly high.

Only an Archmage with an abnormal shield could barely gain a foothold here.

Very soon, Gandalf arrived at the end of the corridor.

The exotic beast skeletons here were even more numerous, densely packed, almost piling up into a small mountain.

One could only barely see a narrow passage between the bone mountains.

Zhou Huai was just preparing to control Gandalf to continue moving forward.

The moment he stepped out of the corridor,

the shield value that had been continuously deducting suddenly stopped.

Zhou Huai couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

It looked like this area shouldn't have toxin damage.

He continued forward.

Suddenly, a booming sound came from behind.

Zhou Huai looked back in surprise.

He saw that the exit of the corridor he had come from was slowly being sealed off by a huge sluice gate.

The retreat path was cut off.

At the same time, strange cracking sounds came from the bone mountain ahead.

Within countless skull heads scattered on the ground, clusters of miserable green Soul fire suddenly lit up.

Those scattered skeletons, as if pulled by invisible threads, began to rapidly reorganize.

[Undead War Beast LV30 (Elite)]

[HP: 1000/1000]

[Skills: Bone Crash, Undead Bite]

[…]

As if triggering some kind of mechanism.

One, two, ten, a hundred…

The surrounding skeletal exotic beasts became more and more numerous, reviving from the bone mountain one after another and staggering to their feet.

Within just a few seconds, as many as a hundred undead war beasts surrounded Gandalf tightly.

Seeing this, Zhou Huai was not alarmed but rejoiced.

An Archmage feared nothing more than having a large number of enemies.

"Just in time."

Gandalf slowly raised the staff in his hand, ancient and profound syllables chanted out from his lips.

"[Forbidden Spell: Meteor Fire Rain]!"

Boom!

The space above his head seemed to be torn open by an invisible force!

A huge portal burning with raging flames materialized out of thin air!

Following closely, huge meteors trailing long tail flames roared down from the portal like a doomsday natural disaster!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The earth shook violently.

Every meteor that landed triggered an earth-shattering explosion.

The violent flame shockwave swept wildly in all directions.

Those newly resurrected undead war beasts couldn't even launch a decent attack before they were smashed to smithereens, turning into flying ash in the raging flames.

For a time, countless exotic beast skeletons were smashed into dust.

[Killed Undead War Beast LV30, gained 2000 experience points!]

[Killed Undead War Beast LV30, gained 2000 experience points!]

[…]

In Zhou Huai's mind, the System prompt sound frantically flooded the screen like a waterfall.

[Ding! Congratulations to the Host, Clone 'Gandalf' Rank has increased to LV11!]

A dazzling golden light of leveling up soared into the sky from Gandalf's body.

Zhou Huai's eyes lit up instantly.

Goodness gracious.

This place was simply a leveling Holy Land!