"Obsidian Caverns?" Uhtred muttered. "That sounds ominous..."

The moment he stepped onto Floor 19, his senses spread out in vigilance immediately. From the name of the floor alone, he knew he was about to face creatures that were very strong.

Only two levels separated him from the Level 19 beasts that would populate this floor, but Uhtred was not about to underestimate them at all.

Of course, he was used to fighting above his level already, and he knew we could take on Level 19 beasts, even several of them. But this was an entire floor. And from the battles he’d had coming down here so far, the numbers of beasts per floor began to scale increasingly.

Floor 18 was already a hurdle on its own, and now he had to face up against a horde of Level 19 beasts. So he was being extra careful.

However, as he carefully moved forward further into the floor with his senses spread out fully, he couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t picked up any trace of a single beast so far.

"Fuck, don’t tell me I’m dealing with stealth-type beasts!" Uhtred hissed under his breath.

The unnerving silence put him on edge, and with every step he took, he felt even more vigilant and weirded out by the way he hadn’t seen anything yet.

The ambiance and scenery of the floor were also not helping the situation at all. The ground was some solid black material that absorbed light to a great extent, making the entire chamber very, very dim despite the light that was emanating from the walls.

Uhtred had to rely more on his senses than his eyes, as he could barely even see more than a few feet from his position in any direction.

Only the sound of his breathing could be heard as he walked forward very slowly. Then suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted something.

Cosmic essence rushed and spread out through his body in an instinctive reaction, flooding his entire frame with energy ready for immediate action.

However, by the time Uhtred’s mind processed exactly what he was seeing, he quickly realized it wasn’t a threat.

"Is that..." Uhtred moved forward slowly to the figure he saw on the ground. "...a dead beast?"

Right before him, on the ground, with a fist-sized hole right through the center of its chest, was a creature that looked like the ogres from RPG games and fantasy books. Except this one was totally obsidian black. Its skin looked extremely hard, like some type of black, matte steel.

"What the hell happened here?" Uhtred frowned immediately, his vigilance becoming even greater.

The beast before him started to sizzle and dissolve little by little, but the tough skin of its body prevented it from decomposing as quickly as the other beasts in the earlier floors. However, the moment the process began and the smell reached Uhtred’s nose, he noticed something else too.

That same dissolving smell emanated not just from the beast before him, but also wafted from beyond, deeper into the darkness of the dungeon floor.

"Don’t tell me..." Uhtred stood up from his kneeling position near the body of the dead beast and peered into the darkness, squinting his eyes. He could see vague shapes of figures on the ground. Dead beasts that were in various phases of their decomposition.

"You’ve gotta be kidding me..."

Without hesitation, Uhtred brought up his multiversal store panel and pulled up the search function to search for some kind of light device, which he bought very quickly at a cheap price of less than one multiversal token.

The moment the product materialized before him, Uhtred didn’t waste time. He urged his Cosmic Essence into the orb-like device, and in an instant the orb began to glow with a very bright light that illuminated the floor far more than the few feet he could see on his own.

"Bloody hell."

The entire floor was filled with heaps of dead bodies of the same ogre beast. Far deeper into the floor, a stinking pit of the congregated grey sludge of decomposed beasts filled that entire area.

"Did they attack themselves?" Uhtred muttered in confusion as he covered his nose with the crook of his arm. "Or was someone here before me?"

The latter question seemed impossible, seeing as Uhtred was the number one ranked individual on the entire planet. He dismissed that thought entirely, seeing as even if King Alexei himself, wherever he was on the planet, was the one to enter this dungeon, he would not have reached Floor 19.

The guy was currently at Level 11, and Uhtred didn’t think he could bypass an entire 8-level difference. Not to mention the fact that there had been a horde of Level 19 beasts on this floor.

So the only logical conclusion was that somehow these beasts had had an infighting that led to their demise entirely.

But what sort of infighting could cause such a level of destruction? From all Uhtred could see, there wasn’t even one beast left alive.

He pressed further into the chamber, enduring the dense, choking smell of the decomposing masses of the beasts.

Is it even possible for dungeon beasts to fight among themselves?

Somehow that explanation just didn’t sit right with Uhtred. He was now extremely curious but also wary at the same time. He had to get to the bottom of this.

"Wait... what’s that?"

Straight ahead, right in the center of the pit of congregated grey sludge, Uhtred spotted a movement.

It was very brief, and even Uhtred himself thought he was seeing things, but he raised his arm and directed the light of the orb towards that area specifically, squinting his eyes.

And it turned out it was correct.

Right there in the middle of the sludge, in the area where most of the beasts had already fully decomposed into grey matter that the dungeon was beginning to reclaim, was the vague shape of something alive and breathing.

Uhtred’s eyes widened immediately. He dashed forward, not minding the squishy feeling of the decomposing beasts that his boots crushed under his foot.

He even went directly into the pit of the grey, foul-smelling sludge, directly wading through it ankle-deep.

He reached the breathing shape he saw within the pit and dropped his battle-axe immediately before yanking out the body.

It was a human... a human girl, to be exact.

Her facial features could barely be seen through the grey sludge that coated her entire face, and even her breathing was partially hindered. If not for Uhtred’s arrival, she would have eventually drowned in the grey sludge.

He wiped away the sludge that had partially blocked her nose and cleaned off what he could from her face.

There was no mistaking it. This person was a human, fully and totally. There had been some doubts in Uhtred’s mind when he had first pulled her out. This was a dungeon that bore creatures that were very similar to fantasy creatures, after all.

There was still some part of his mind that had thought perhaps she was some sort of fantasy species that looked very human, maybe an elf or something. But seeing her now, with the grey sludge trickling down her body and revealing more of her face, there was no mistaking the fact that she was a normal human female...

...Or perhaps not so normal. Because right above her head, as Uhtred activated his inspect skill just to be sure, he received another round of intense shock.

[Level 16]