Infinite Realm

'A Dark Priest?' Sato analysed the data sent by Katsuo as the fight went on.

'Now I know why they look familiar.'

Recalling the image of the black hooded figure he had found at the ghost mansion in Gnorka, Sato matched the two and found out that they looked quite the same and were a bit similar to each other.

Both the Cursed Servant and Dak Priests were all aligned towards the dark side and their spells were ever so similar to the other. If that wasn't enough, even their dressing and appearance almost matched each other with a 70-80% similarity or more between them.

'Are they related to the other or is Black Rock Province just riddled with dark forces?' 

As he was lost in thought, Sato failed to realise that the team had already cleared up the passageway and the Dark Priests were all dead. Apart from some scorch marks from Xue Yan's devastating flames, only the leftover corpses of the creatures were left behind.

"Oi, Sato! We're done here." Yato called out to him.

"Oh?" Sato snapped back from his thoughts.

"Loot the corpses of then; let's see what we've got."

After receiving the go-ahead from the team leader, Yato walked up towards the remains of the Dark Priests, planning to loot it. Halfway through though, he was beaten by Fudo, who has appeared almost out of nowhere and landed at his target.

"Allow me." Fudo grinned as he rubbed his palms, itching to have a go at looting dead bodies.

Yato didn't have the energy to bother with Fudo so he simply walked to the side and watched on.

The looting process for monsters in IR was anything but complicated. By simply approaching the corpse, one would place their hand either over or on top of it and a loot icon visible only to them would appear. By simply 'clicking' in the icon mentally, the looting function would commence as the corpse would disintegrate.

However, there was one other mechanism of looting in IR. This was by actually doing the job yourself and searching for any treasured on the monster's body. This was the developers' idea of making the process more realistic but it was made optional for players due to various reasons, one being the duration and energy involved. 

Fudo, just like a majority of the players on the server, preferred the automatic looting function as it saved time and was less stressful than its counterpart.

As he looted the first corpse, two items dropped out from it but Fudo didn't bother to check what it was before putting it in his space bag. He then went over to the next corpse and repeated the same action, but this time around, only one item appeared.

Still maintaining his calm, Fudo went on to perform the same series of actions on the remaining 5 corpses and what he got in return was either 1 or 2 items from each corpse. In most cases, he only got a few silver coins or some random but extremely common item or material.

"Such a low drop rate. Both quantity and quality are lacking a lot." Fudo's face had a slight irregularity as he mouthed those words out.

Fudo had always termed himself as the lucky mascot of the team. For him to get such a terrible reward rate from the loot was a challenge to his title.

"Haha. Next time, why don't you let me have a go, alright?" Yato laughed from the side.

"Tch." Fudo tightened his staff in vexation.

"Alright. You all calm down first. Even if the loot isn't a lot, we still profited from this exercise." Sato said.

"There's the 10% increase to rewards and the Experience points you gained so be a little bit satisfied."

Infinite Realm determined the allocation of Experience points from a defeated enemy in priority of who participated the most. Since Sato had avoided the battle all through, he received a very meagre amount of Experience points for belonging to the party whereas the rest received much more. While this seemed detrimental to Sato's growth, it actually wasn't.

The level difference between him and the monsters had already surpassed 5 levels so his gains from the battle would still be less if he participated. Also, his participation would affect the reward of the others as the system would classify the fight as them being 'carried'[1] by Sato and their rewards would be small. But with his absence from the fights, the effect of Sato's presence in the party wouldn't be much and the team would receive more Experience points than with him joining the battle. 

However, Xue Yan, who had a major hand in the fight, was still above the monsters by at least 4 levels. The level difference alongside her active participation had affected the rewards of the team so there was no major improvement on their levelling speed, but it was still better than when they were out in the fields.

"Fudo. What did we get?" Sato turned to him and asked.

"Done." Right after Sato had asked, Fudo sent a message to the team chat. He had already scanned the items as he picked them but he had never gone through the results yet.

"What the heck is a darkness crystal shard?" Yato suddenly asked.

Of the items Fudo had picked up, 65% of them comprised of these darkness crystal shards. The 25% were silver coins and 2-star materials while the remaining 10% were two pieces of equipment; a leather glove and a belt, both level 10 equipment.

Because the team already had their weapons and equipment revamped, thanks to Sato's skilled hands, they didn't find the two pieces of equipment attractive and only focused on the unknown.

"I don't know. It's probably a dungeon specialty." Seiichi analysed.

"Just keep it with you. It would probably be useful later on in time. We will eventually find out its use as we proceed further. Let's go." Sato said.

With that, the team began heading deeper into the corridor, maintaining the same formation as they did in the beginning.

. . .

. . .

. . .

While team Seven Star Glory was exploring the [Temple of Vasiliás] dungeon, the other top teams were exploring their various dungeons. Compared to Sato's team, these ones lacked a mage with critical firepower like Xue Yan, much less an OP factor such as Sato. What more, apart from the top teams from 1st tier guilds and super guilds, the levels of the raid team's members of the various guilds weren't anything special, so even though their dungeon was supposedly easier than Seven Star Glory's, they were already experiencing some difficulties.

"Hold on. We can still turn this around.* Daichi screamed at his men.

"There are too many of them." Swift Blade, one of the main attackers of the East Crow guild as well as the man who had fought alongside Sato and Fudo during the Goblin battle, exclaimed.

Hearing his words, Daichi began frowning.

Compared to the dungeon Sato and the others had gone for, the forest dungeon East Crow guild took was one with monsters starting from level 10 and above. According to Aldeus' calculations, the dungeon was supposed to be safer than the Earth dungeon, and also more profitable. However, all these calculations were based on the data Daichi and his men had fed to it and they were losing one missing factor, which led to the team underestimating the dungeon, as well as Aldeus not deciphering one feature of the dungeon. 

As a forest-type dungeon, there was a high chance that the population of monsters present in the dungeon would be above-average. However, as the scout team wasn't able to go in too deep to the dungeon, they didn't notice this factor and had presumed that the monster count was average. This proved to be a fatal flaw, both to Aldeus' calculations, as well as the team's preparations.

The first 30 minutes to an hour wasn't much of an issue for the team as they easily made their way in. But it was just as they had gone deeper in that the monsters began to flood them. While there were a few level 13 players in the mix, against a pack of 4-6 level 10 monsters, they could only hold their ground and be forced into a drawn-out battle, losing their stamina with the passage of time.

With the experts being preoccupied, it was inevitable for the weaker ones to fall prey to the monsters. If it took one level 13 player to hold off four level 10 monsters, what could a level 11 player do in a similar scenario?

"Arghh!!"

Before long, the first death was reported as a player disintegrated into starlight and his name in the team chat was greyed out. However, this wasn't all as with time, more and more players began to die.

With the number of players reducing, the monsters has fewer targets to focus on and the experts in the team had their burden increased. The battle only lasted an extra 12 minutes from the death of the first player before everyone in the team, including Daichi, had died. 

In dungeons in IR, death meant game over and the player would respawn outside of the dungeon. This meant that the team's adventures in the dungeon this time around was brought to an untimely end and became a failure.

While this was quite sad, it wasn't the only dreadful experience. Various other teams all over the world in Infinite Realm, ranging from 4th tiers to 2nd tiers had experienced team wipes. Even a low-rank 1st guild had a majority of their numbers forced out of the dungeon with the rest trying to keep their lives safe as they ran from their pursuers. And this was one of the luckier ones. Some had already experienced team wipes and were forced out of the dungeon.

From this single experience, a majority of players came to the conclusion that the achievement of Global First clear for a dungeon, was not an easy task, even with all the preparations they had made.