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Chapter 46: Shiro's Normal Day

After the meeting last night, everything went back to normal. Once he woke up, he started his preparations. However, he was surprised to find out that his Exp gain in the 19th floor became lower.

"...The <<Cardinal System>>."

Up until now, he forgot about it due to the fact that he's always changing grinding places every day. Now that he stayed in one place for more than a day, he finally noticed this change.

"It balances the entire game itself, right. Even if it can't affect us directly, it can lower the EXP and drop gains."

With this, he was forced to scrap the grinding plan and headed towards the 20th floor in search for possible grinding locations.

This floor's theme is creepiness, with fog hovering all over the Twilight Forest, the field outside its city Ralberg. Contrary to expectations, there weren't any skeletons here, but Killer Boars, Killer Mantis, Orcs, and Slivery Squirrels.

Dead trees populated this place, adding more creepiness into it.

In the field, only the Boars and the Mantises are present, which made his life so easy---or not.

"There shouldn't be anyth-?!" Shiro got startled as he felt himself freefalling. "...I swear there's only a normal mass of land here!"

When he uses his mental power, it doesn't mean that he's using it constantly. In actuality, he gradually uses it to ensure the places he would explore into. Though, he never expected that a hole hundreds of meters deep would open up the moment he steps into it.

Thankfully, he placed [Reinforcement] on his legs, making him avoid the fate of dying from fall damage. Since the floor itself is an Immortal Item, it wasn't riddled with any cracks.

His HP bar went down by a bit, but it's within his acceptable range.

"Now... Where am I?"

In his front, he could only see a huge hallway that is hundreds of meters wide. The entire thing is made out of black metals that shone slightly under the light sources placed on its side--the light sources looking similar to a white crystal enclosed in a lamp.

When he used his mental power to scan the place, he was surprised that it couldn't do it completely as the place is too big. Though, he still saw the general layout of its place together with the monsters that inhabited this place.

"With my mental power, I could already scan nearly half of the Town of Beginnings, yet I couldn't here. This is gonna be troublesome."

A quest window appeared in front of him, interrupting his thoughts.

[Official Quest: Underworld's Anomaly]

Details: Due to the increased deaths from the 3rd floor to the 9th floor, <<Cardinal>> generated a dungeon that will house the fallen entities of the said floors. A player has a very low chance of entering, but the immense luck made it possible.

Objective: Clear the dungeon [Fake Underworld]

Reward/s: 100,000 Soul Points, 3 Weapon Enhancement Cards, 1 Buff Upgrader (A)

"An income of Soul Points?"

During his stay in <<Aincrad>>, it's not possible to gain Soul Points since everything here is virtual. That is, unless you kill a player.

Placing this in the back of his mind, Shiro looked at hundreds of skeleton warriors residing in the hallway, all standing dumbly. There are a variety of them, with some wielding swords, spears, and daggers; some skeletons who stands out from the rest are also present.