After I returned to the castle, I waited for just a few minutes, to see whether or not there would be yet another wave coming after the Nightmare Whale. The last thing that we needed was to get ready to take off, only for two or three of those giant monstrosities to appear in the sky next to our car.

However, my waiting was interrupted by Diane and Bella, who called out to me saying that a new treasure chest had appeared in the audience chamber of the castle. With that, it was evident that the dungeon had been fully cleared, so I relaxed and returned to my normal form before heading inside.

The loot that we got was… interesting, I suppose it could be called? Most of it was rather mundane, just some Nightmare Whale bones, and yet another scythe. However, when Bella opened the chest, she received the dungeon's key.

The three of us looked at the key, not quite sure what to do with it. Could we sell it? Who would even buy the key for a dungeon out in the middle of the ocean? Worse, was it even smart to sell it, since giving away the location of a dungeon that we had run would also tell anyone pursuing us where to start looking?

"What about that auction house?" I asked Diane as we were coming up with ideas for what to do with the key. "If you sell it through them, they promise anonymity, right?"

Diane had a bitter smile on her face as she nodded. "They do, but how many people do you suppose are currently roaming in this part of the ocean? We haven't seen a single player or ship since we left Evergreen's waters, aside from ones that were attached to a dungeon."

That… was a good point. No amount of anonymity could replace common sense. "Maybe the league would be interested?" I suggested with a shrug. "Three basic magic skills drop in this dungeon, and the first wave is easy to clear even for novices."

"I'll ask, but I doubt it. They'd still need a reliable way to get here if they wanted to farm it." She said, before typing out a message to Wisteria and waiting. This was the only other thing I could think of to do with the key, since we didn't really need it ourselves, and the closest nation was still looking to arrest us.

After a few minutes, Diane received her response from Wisteria. "She said that she can't buy it from us for gold. However, if we submit the dungeon key to the league, they can award us with faction points."

Honestly, money would have been preferable, but some form of reward was better than nothing. "I'd say we take it." I suggested. "At least this way, we're able to get something for it. And faction points can be used to buy items, too."

Diane nodded her head, sending the message that we would hand the key over. However, since Wisteria wasn't coming to pick it up herself, the actual handover would need to wait until we arrived somewhere with a mailbox.

With that out of the way, we moved on to what was probably a far more pressing matter… feeding our blood familiars. I had asked Bella to be sure, and she said that she didn't want to learn the skill, despite its potential power. I personally thought she was just being a little squeamish, but it probably didn't fit the type of skills she wanted to build.

Regardless, I looked at the loot from all of the whales, which occupied forty-six slots of my backpack in total. Among the Dark Whales, three received a double-enhancement, evolving into Nightmare Whale corpses. At the same time, the Nightmare Whale itself received a single level of enhancement.

In other words, we had the bodies of four giant boss monsters, and over ten thousand gallons of boss-level blood. Diane and I divided this blood up amongst ourselves, and summoned our blood familiars. I had noticed during the dungeon waves that my familiar gained experience incredibly slowly. However, once I withdrew blood from my inventory to fill a giant, projected basin, the familiar opened its mouth and began sucking that blood in at an impossible rate. Almost as if its mouth was a red vortex, with Diane's doing something similar nearby.

In the process, the experience level of the familiar began to climb faster than when it was fighting. That said, I was too focused on constantly refilling the basin to really track it, depositing over two hundred gallons into the basin every few seconds.

After five minutes, all of the Nightmare Whale blood had been absorbed, but there was no visible change to my familiar's body. All that I had left was the enhanced blood, but first I decided to check the messages that had appeared throughout the process.

My eyes widened at the repeated messages indicating that both the familiar and its associated skill had leveled up. The former, the familiar itself, reached level sixty. However, the skill itself… reached level twenty-five. More than enough for me to evolve it.

Judging by the expression on Diane's face, she was seeing something similar. We nodded at one another, both evolving our familiars into the Blood Puppet skill. "Karlson said that we needed corpses with blood in them. We don't have any more Nightmare Whales, but… do you have enough Dark Whales?"

I nodded at that. "I had five Dark Whales with a layer of enhancement on them. We can use one each for our familiars." I said, before leading Diane out towards the ocean outside the fortress. Summoning a giant whale inside the structure seemed like a bad idea, after all.

Once we were outside, I released two of the enhanced whales, which landed in the water with heavy splashes. Afterwards, both Diane and I sent our familiars into the corpses, and I was simply glad that I hadn't taken the time to dismantle and appraise them yet.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Once the familiars were in the bodies, I saw a progress bar appear above the body of the whale, which said that it would take fifteen minutes to completely consume this corpse. Diane no doubt received the same message, so the two of us stood guard, having to kill a few lower-level shark monsters that appeared a few minutes into the process.

Over time, cracks began to appear on the skin of the two whale bodies, glowing with red energy. At the end of the countdown, both whales exploded into showers of gore. In their place were two blood-red whales, just as large as their previous forms.

When I checked, I was pleased to discover that the base level of the familiar had increased to seventy, but it was able to pull out the full power of the level one hundred and twenty Dark Whale, together with its skills. "You should check if it got your traits." Diane suggested, and I nodded.

Without hesitation, I ordered the familiar to shoot its skill, Shadow Torrent, into the air as rapidly as it could. The whale opened its mouth, charging a black line of energy, which it fired into the sky. However, it had to wait a full minute before it could fire the second blast. Clearly, it had not inherited either of my traits, for better or worse.

Unfortunately, it also couldn't use my skills. This basically just made it a variable monster that we could summon. It was still useful, but not quite the overpowering skill I had initially assumed. In addition, the Blood Puppet skill had leveled up to eight from consuming the high level whale.

When I dismissed the familiar, it seemed to dissolve into a stream of red energy that returned to my body. "I'll sort through the rest of the materials now, before the dungeon resets." I said, and Diane nodded her head in agreement.

Thus, I sorted through the various corpses remaining in my inventory, appraising their components. The Shadow Whales, which formed the majority of the corpses in my possession, weren't particularly worth much. When considering that their value came from the sheer size of the materials, but those materials were rather cheap normally… Diane and I decided to scrap those whales, clearing up room in my inventory.

However, the Dark Whales and the Nightmare Whales were another matter entirely. Of the nineteen total monsters, their estimated value was over thirty platinum. And that was even discounting the value of the blood that had already been consumed. While not comparable in value to a dragon when considering the size of the monsters, they were still far better than normal monsters.

Once we were done with our business, I collected the respawn anchor, and the three of us left the dungeon without delay. After that, we began to drive around, looking for more dungeons that we could raid.

The first one we found, we decided to entirely avoid. It was a large cove made of crashed ships, forming a crescent shape in the water. Spectral ships sailed idly around the cove, and giant skeletal crabs crawled the surface of the ships within the cove itself. When I got close, I was able to confirm that this was the same dungeon that Slithers had told us about. Meaning, the monsters were level two hundred at a minimum, too high for us to fight.

After we drove far away from that cove, we looked for another dungeon, wanting to end the day with something nice before looking for a place to spend the night. Thus, I was driving fairly low to the water, my Ghost Zone active to avoid us being spotted.

Diane and Bella were both looking out the windows, trying to find any signs of dungeons near the surface of the water. As for me, I was enjoying the feeling of driving without a destination, simply cruising as I listened to the music Diane put on the radio.

As I was watching the waves ahead, Diane suddenly gulped. "Drake, it looks like there's something below us. Something big below us."

"How big are we talking?" I asked, glancing back.

"...Too big. And its rising!" She shouted, her tone turning more urgent. My eyes widened, and I quickly lifted the platform I was driving on while projecting my vision out above the car.

Beneath the car, I could see a massive shadow, several times bigger than that of the Nightmare Whale. The surface of the water seemed to explode as it rose up, revealing itself. What greeted us was the sight of a massive skeleton, one that seemed to stretch for thousands of meters. However, it was still moving, slowly swimming in a straight line.

"That's odd…" I muttered, and the other two looked at me like I was crazy.

"You think?" Bella questioned. "How could something like that possibly be normal?!"

"No, what's odd is that I can't appraise it. It's not registering as any kind of monster." I explained, and the two paused. "I think the skeleton itself might actually be a dungeon's body."

"Do you see any monsters on it?" Diane questioned, poking her head out the window to look. "I was about to panic when I saw it rising, since I thought it had noticed us."

"I'm not seeing any monsters. However, there is a large hole at the top of one of its vertebrae, like a tunnel entrance. As for it noticing us… let me check something." I didn't want to take any risks, so I drove the car away quickly. "Keep an eye on it." I told the duo while driving.

After a minute, Diane blinked. "It's descending again." She said, at which point I turned around and began driving back to where we had last seen the skeleton. "...And now it's coming back." She muttered, the water erupting once again as it breached the surface. "It's a proximity mechanic to reveal itself to challengers?"

"That'd make sense." I confirmed with a nod. "Depending on what type of monsters are in there, doing it like this might prevent them from being able to spill out."

As I said that, I slowly drove the car up towards the giant skeleton's spine, attaching the platform I was driving on to the skeleton to prevent me needing to constantly control the car. "So, who wants to see what type of dungeon this is?" I asked, pulling the respawn anchor out of my inventory.

"Why don't you do it?" Diane asked with an amused grin, but I shook my head.

"Because if there are level two hundred or higher flying monsters in there, I won't have time to get the car ready if I'm running out for my life. I'd rather we not all be at the mercy of whatever horrors might be inside if they get out of hand. Which means I need to stay out here, keeping the car ready to leave at a moment's notice in case whoever goes inside either dies and respawns here or comes running."

Diane chuckled, nodding her head and opening the door. "I'll check it out, then. Once I've got an idea on the general type and strength of the monsters, I'll send you a message."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.