Hellmode ~A Hardcore Gamer Becomes Peerless in Another World with Retro Game Settings~

Chapter 642: Earth Labyrinth RTA (11) A God's objective

[42nd floor, 17:26 left]

-2 Admantite ore

-2 Explosive Grass

-3 Instant Charcoal

-1 Supreme Hammer

-2 Keys

-Other necessary items omitted

Allen's group had reached the 42nd floor.

"The stairs don't seem to be anywhere nearby. And we just used our hihiirokane shovel."

Cecile started complaining.

"It can't be helped. It's all luck based after all."

Allen replied next to her. She was always direct with everything she thought, but everyone shared that sentiment too.

Thanks to Temi they did not need to search a lot for the stairs, but the distance was still an issue. On top of that, if there was a shop on the way there they had to stop to pick up items.

(I'm trying to go as fast as possible, but the shop earlier did take some time away from us.)

Allen looked at the timer on the mini-sculpture.

They had gotten past the 40th floor in 6 hours, but then they spent 15 minutes in a shop.

[Adamantite Ore] did not usually appear past the 40th floor, so when Temi said there was one on the 41st floor Allen took a quite large detour to pick it up.

After the 40th floor the gatekeeper ghosts also became much stronger, which also wasted more time.

(We still have time, but it's harder without a shovel. A single mistake can waste a lot of time.)

Allen's mind was working on overdrive, since usually they were not under such time constraints.

"Sophie, we're almost at the limit. Use Spirit God's Blessing."

(Time to accelerate!)

"Understood. Spirit God's Blessing!!"

A rain of light fell on everyone and resetted all their cooldowns, allowing them to add more buffs on top of their current ones.

Since they had no more shovels, Allen wanted to use their buffs to brute force their way through.

Some of their buffs had already ran out, so this would give them a lot more speed again.

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"Hey, there's a pitfall!!"

Rosetta used her Skill [Trap Detector] and found a pitfall.

"Oh, thank you Rosetta!"

Time attack roguelikes were not fully dependent on luck, but finding shortcuts like that was.

"Let's go!"

Rosalina threw one of her daggers to activate a stone switch on the floor and a large hole appeared, leading to the floor below.

The hole was around 1 kilometer wide, and 10 kilometers deep to reach the next floor.

[Rosetta's role]

-Discovering pitfalls

-Help with stealing from shops and collecting loot from bosses

-Discover and avoid teleporting traps

Rosetta would often complain, but she was an invaluable asset to the party.

Thanks to her, they were able to find a pitfall before the next stairs.

"We already have the ores, so we can keep going down without looking for a shop, right?"

"Yes, Sophie. It might be what we notice in hindsight, but at least now we know we didn't make the wrong choice earlier."

"Hey! I didn't say anything about our choice being wrong!"

Cecile felt the need to shout at them from the side.

It was common during roguelike RTAs to not know if a choice was the right one or not.

The further they went, the stronger the ghosts became, and past the 40th floor they were also becoming resistant to Rosalina's [Charming Song], increasing the number of fights.

[Floors and the strength of ghosts and bosses]

-1st floor to 39th floor, ghosts are B~A Rank, bosses are S~Demon General Rank

-40th floor to 80th floor, ghosts are A~S Rank, bosses are Demon General~Demigod Rank

*Ranks are compared to those on the surface to make it easier to understand

"Hmm, this is bad. We're heading straight to a ghost den."

Temi looked at the long passage they were in as she said that.

(We don't have any shovels so we can't avoid it. Maybe our luck wasn't the best after all. I still think it was a good idea to use Spirit God's Blessing though.)

Allen felt like he could see something at the bottom of that long pitfall.

Once the hole opened up, and they reached the end, they found themselves in a ghost den.

'Grrrrrr!!'

'Gyass!!'

'Keek keek keek!!'

Usually the stairs would lead to a small room, with a long corridor in front, which sometimes would lead to a ghost den. So appearing in one right away was not unexpected.

"It can't be helped. We already used the shovel when stealing from the shop earlier. Let's just smash through them. Temi, is there a [Forge] on this floor?"

While they fought, Allen asked Temi to find things on the floor.

"Hmhmm, there doesn't seem to be any."

"Then guide us to the stairs."

They had all the items they needed to make an adamantite shovel.

Now they just had to find a [Forge] before the 50th floor, and they searched while fighting the ghosts of the 43rd floor. [Forges] had a 1 in 5 chance of appearing on a floor.

They were getting to the limit of those odds, so finding one was more important than the stairs.

Constantly watching over their priorities, they reached the 48th floor in around 2 hours.

"There's finally one, just at the last minute."

After exiting a corridor, they reached a much larger space with a big building in it, with smoke billowing out from the top.

(Finally, the forge we've been waiting for.)

"There it is, a forge."

Habarak hopped off from Tam-Tam and went into the building.

Allen and the rest followed after him, though there was little space to rest inside. Almost everything was covered with forging tools and various metal lumps.

Tools and materials not there had to be picked up in the previous floors.

"Please make 2 shovels."

"Shovels? I could make a pickaxe too though?"

"Hmm, the plan is to get to the 99th floor, so please make 2 shovels."

[Earth Labyrinth notes (7)]

-Shovels can make holes in corridors and the floor

-Pickaxes are needed to gather ore from bigger chunks

-Hammers can make shovels and pickaxes

-To make shovels and pickaxes an ore, explosive grass, and instant charcoal are needed

-Shovels, pickaxes, and hammers have ranks, and they only work with ores of the right rank

"Got it, I'll get them done right away."

Allen gave him 2 adamantite ore, 2 explosive grass, and 2 instant charcoal.

Explosive grass would light up when crumpled around, which could be thrown into a receptacle with charcoal to set it on fire. Then the hammer could be used to craft on top.

"Rest while you can, everyone. We're far from done here."

"Got it."

Cecile took out rectangular cookies that looked like very large CalorieMates, and began eating them while drinking from a long cylindrical water bottle.

That was the only food available in the dungeon, so they had to eat it without complaining.

Those nutrient blocks were important, as they needed the energy to focus and move forward.

(It's not like 24 hours without eating would kill us though. Still, this reminds me of the times when I had to survive in games with only dried bread.)

Roguelikes were a genre of game he had not played a lot.

"It feels nice, it's been a while since I've been able to work with adamantite so early."

Habarak worked happily like always.

Time was still ticking away, but he was going as fast as he could.

Explosive grass and instant charcoal were items exclusive to the Earth Dungeon and did not work outside. But others like Magic Board Expansion Terminals could be used outside.

(Habarak looks happy. He also received the [Blessing] reward from the 60th floor after all.)

As they ate, everyone watched the ores slowly transforming into shovels.

Before Allen joined but after Rosalina joined them, Merle had reached past the 60th floor.

[Rewards from the God of Earth Gaia's Trial]

-Reaching floor 20: Enter Extra Mode

-Reaching floor 40: Obtain a Divine Technique

-Reaching floor 60: Obtain Earth's Blessing

-Reaching floor 80: Obtain the Divine Artifact [Earth Hammer]

-Reaching floor 99: A wish from God of Earth Gaia

When that happened, they gave the God of Earth's Blessing to Habarak.

They had checked what the Blessing did on the sculpture, and it mentioned that the Blessing would speed up the time it took to make pickaxes and shovels.

Hearing that Allen almost told Merle to take the Blessing instead, since it only seemed useful inside the Earth Labyrinth, but then sculpture quickly explained that it would also speed up the time it took to craft items outside.

(The way it had to explain that makes me think that the God of Earth really wants the faith of dwarves.)

The way the sculpture seemed desperate to add that while also offering tips on how to get through the Earth Labyrinth made Allen feel like the God of Earth was really trying to obtain the faith of dwarves.

Then again, Merle had already received the Blessing from Digragni, so it was better for Habarak to take this one, as the faster Allen could get weapons to fight the Demon King's Army the better.

"Alright, they're done."

Allen felt like he should have guessed as much back when he saw the Divine Artifact was called Earth Hammer, and just as he thought of that Habarak was done crafting.

"