The Dungeon Conquerors: Journey to the Peak

Chapter 26: Ch 26: The Ascension Test (1)

"Now, everyone please welcome miss Natasha Zeon. She is only 20 years old but has managed to complete enough quests to reach the peak of silver rank. She is in a party called "The Conquerors" with a platinum rank adventurer and the guild had judged her ability to be above her established guild rank.

She would be facing off against a peak rank 6 Koubagion (Blood Hound). Now, let's see how easily she could defeat this ferocious monster."

All the audience were very intrigued and excited. From the tone of the guild announcer it was sure that this wolf girl named Natasha was stronger than what her rank suggested. A platinum rank adventurer would never allow a silver ranker in his or her party if that person was not strong enough.

So everyone was sure that she would definitely be able to defeat the rank 6 monster. But the exciting thing was to see how much time she would need to do that. Everyone was looking forward to her fight.

Since the silver rank ascension test began, one of the mithril rank adventurers of this city and the only retired adamantine rank adventurer had joined the guild staff for commentary.

As the guild staff themselves were not very strong, they needed someone really powerful to comment on the higher ranking adventurers.

Tasha went on the stage to face off against her opponent. It was a large wolf-like monster with red coloured far. It had a ferocious and brutal expression on its face. As soon as Tasha came in front of this monster, it immediately attacked her.

It opened its mouth wide as if trying to swallow her whole.

Tasha moved her body just a little bit so that the wolf missed his attack and then she flicked her finger on his head. Immediately this monster's head blasted like a watermelon and it died.

Her action was so swift and fast that the audience were just able to see the big wolf launching himself toward Tasha and then immediately dying with its head disappearing.

Only the mithril and adamantine ranks were able to understand what she did. That was also because Tasha used the minimum possible power she was capable of using. And that was enough to leave the high ranking commentators speechless.

As the guild staff asked them to explain what happened to the audience, both of them said what they were able to see. Then they also judged Tasha's power level to be closer to their own and that was enough to leave everyone even more dumbstruck.

A 20 year old with such a high power level was definitely a genius.

The referee who was waiting for the high ranking adventurers confirmation declared Tasha's victory and then she who was waiting on the stage for confirmation left and went back to Rein's VIP room.

Both Rein and Stella congratulated Tasha after she came back. It was not a big deal but still supporting and encouraging each other was very important. Soon, it was time for the platinum rank ascension test and Stella had to leave the room this time.

This platinum rank ascension test had the least amount of participants, only 4. All of them were famous adventurers from this except for Stella who was new here. Gold rankers could be said to be aces of the adventurer guild and a platinum ranker could very well be the strongest for many small nations.

So they were definitely important people.

Other than Stella who was quite young, the other participants were quite old. The youngest among them was a dwarven woman who was 32 years old, Hethio. He had a head full of red hair just like Rein and she was carrying a large hammer on her back.

Most of the dwarf adventurers were heavy warriors carrying either an axe or a hammer and she was no different. And from the way she handled herself, it was evident that she was quite experienced.

There was also a large bearkin man named Dork. He was a brawler with an inherent special ability to increase the weight of his body part, which was a very suitable skill for a free hand fighter like him.

Obviously the amount of weight he could increase was not unlimited or it would have been a broken skill. He was currently trying to hit on Hethio who was getting annoyed with him.

And the last person was another beastkin man but he was wearing a black robe to hide all his features so what type of beastkin he actually was not certain of. His name was Geiser. But Rein could see through him and understood why he was hiding his identity.

He was from a race of very rare beastkin which was called the wisdom monkeykin. They were not very strong physically but all of them were very intelligent and were good at magic.

But it was said that there was a special type of stone found inside a wisdom monkeykin that could grant strong magical ability to a child. For that reason, they were hunted everywhere for a long amount of time. Currently no one was sure where the hidden settlement of the wisdom monkeykin was.

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The first one to go on the stage was Dork. Before going he confidently said to Hethio that he was going to dedicate his victory to her with a refreshing smile on his face.

But after entering the stage, he face turned serious. Even though he was confident in his strength, underestimating an opponent was a recipe for disaster.

He was facing off against a monster that was standing on eight piller like legs and its whole body was covered in a black armour. It looked like a very slow monster. But it had four giant claw-like hands coming out from its back which were attacking Dork from all sides with quite fast speed.

He took a slow and steady approach and dodged all the attacks while counter attacking whenever he got a chance with his weighted gauntlets. Just like that after five minutes of back and forth he was able to defeat the monster.

Next, Geiser went up and fought against a large spider-like monster. It could create threads to catch the enemy and also could spray poisonous liquid.

To fight it, Geiser always stayed away from this monster. If he got closer then this monster with eight legs would obviously kill him easily. And as a mage, he was supposed to maintain as much distance as possible from it.

He then used her earth magic to first trap the monster in a quick sand and then rained down boulders on it over and over again, until the monster breathed his last. It was a straight forward and very effective strategy.

Then Hethio went up. She unfortunately got a very bad matchup. Her opponent was a large rabbit with a poisonous looking horn. It was a very fast monster and was extremely hard to hit.

Hethio's attacks were very strong but her speed was average at best. So she was having trouble hitting the rabbit. Not only that, but the poison of this monster was also very powerful, so needed to avoid most of its attacks.

But as an experienced adventurer, she was quickly able to adjust and came up with a plan. She showed the monster an intentional opening and got scratched by its horn. Then she acted as if she quickly got weakened by the poison and sat on her knees.

The monster thought that it was a perfect opportunity to finish her off, so it immediately went for a straight forward attack. But that was the chance that Hethio was waiting for.

She immediately stood up as if nothing had happened and smashed the monster with her hammer. Even though this rabbit was very fast, its defense was very low. So it immediately died and Hethio cleared the round.

Finally it was Stella's turn. Her opponent was a large bull whose body was crackling with purple lightning. It was not only a peak rank 5 monster but was a powerhouse among even peak rank five monsters.

Stella immediately transformed her lightning spirit into a ring in secret and cast a lightning spell. Immediately cyan coloured lightning shot out from her hand and hit the bull immediately. It was so fast that the bull had no time to dodge.

But still everyone expected this bull to shrug off this spell easily. They also felt bad for Stella as this bull was the worst possible opponent for a lightning mage.

Then suddenly there was a pin drop silence in the battle arena. Everyone had their eyes bulging out of their socket by an impossible scene. That bull, who should be resistant to lightning was unable to withstand even a single bolt from Stella and turned into ash.

Stella reminded the referee to declare her victory and then she left the stage happily with the anticipation of getting praise from Rein.