Chapter 24: A Massive Discovery
After entering the dungeon with a wilderness environment, Lucas immediately began looking for monsters to Devastate.
'Since this dungeon only has monsters below level 10, I shouldn't run into any trouble unless I encounter another elite monster.' Lucas thought to himself.
After walking around for about an hour, Lucas encountered his first monster, but it wasn't a green goblin like he'd expected. Instead, it was a grey wolf— a group of them.
However, it wasn't as large as the white wolf from before.
'A grey wolf, huh...'
Lucas remembered seeing them in the monster encyclopedia. Grey wolves are agile monsters that can be annoying to deal with if you're alone despite their low levels, and they're usually in groups.
Of course, their agility wasn't a problem for Lucas who had the Vanishing Steps.
Lucas quickly counted the grey wolves.
'Five of them, huh?'
After taking a deep breath, Lucas used Vanishing Steps to approach these unsuspecting grey wolves.
Unlike the white wolf, these grey wolves weren't as keen and didn't notice Lucas until he was already close enough to touch them.
[Devastate!]
Lucas used both of his hands to touch the grey wolves, instantly turning them black.
Once he felt the grey wolves' body, he immediately went for his next victims.
And in less than three seconds, Lucas had managed to kill all 5 grey wolves before they could even retaliate.
[You have Plundered the ability 'Minor Agility Boost' from your victim]
{Minor Agility Boost(Lv. 1): Permanently increases Agility by 5}
After killing the grey wolves, Lucas went to pick up their mana crystals.
He then looked at the kill count device on his wrist.
However, to his surprise, the counter remained at zero.
"Huh? It didn't count the kills just now?" Lucas waited a few more moments just to be sure.
"Is this thing broken?" He tapped on the watch.
Lucas had no idea how the kill count device worked or how they counted the kills, so he didn't know why the kills didn't count for him, but he wasn't complaining, as this meant that he wouldn't need to pay for the last 5 kills.
"However, it would be problematic if they blame me for tampering with the device, forcing me to pay 10,000 dollars..."
This was the only thing that made Lucas worried. What if the owner of this dungeon had purposefully tampered with the device so that he could blame his victims for tampering with it, forcing them to pay 10,000 dollars? What was certainly more profitable than selling the kills.
"There's nothing I can do about it now. Let's just keep killing as many monsters as possible. Maybe it will start working again later."
With that in mind, Lucas continued to wander the dungeon.
Once Lucas' mana reached less than 200, he would consume a mana potion and wait for it to recover for a little.
However, each mana potion only restored 100 mana maximum, and he only had 15— 14 after drinking one. This meant that even if he consumed all of his mana potions, he'd be able to use Devaste 30 times at most.
"It would be convenient if I could turn mana crystals into mana potions, but I will need the ability to do that..." Lucas wondered if there were any monsters that could grant him this unique skill.
Of course, he could also find another Player that had this ability and Plunder it from them.
About eight hours into his dungeon run, Lucas had managed to kill a total of 23 monsters— 9 grey wolves and 14 green goblins.
Lucas looked at his kill count device again after killing his 23rd monster, and sure enough, the count remained at zero.
He then looked at the mana potions he had left.
"4 mana potions left... They sure disappear in the blink of an eye." Lucas sighed out loud.
His mana would only recover 10 points every half an hour, so unless he wanted to stay inside this dungeon for the next few days without leaving, he would need to use the mana potions to speed things up significantly.
Two hours later, Lucas drank his last mana potions, but at least he was up to his 34th kill.
Unfortunately, he was out of mana after his 34th kill, and he would need to wait two and a half hours to recover enough mana naturally to use a single Devastate, so he could only leave the dungeon for now to restock his mana potions.
On his way out, Lucas encountered a green goblin. However, since he didn't have any mana, he had to kill it with his sword.
After killing the green goblin, Lucas heard a small beeping noise coming from his watch.
He looked at the watch, and to his surprise, the kill counter that had remained at 0 had finally changed to 1 after his 35th kill.
"Why did it suddenly start working?" Lucas pondered to himself.
After thinking about it, he realized that he'd only been using Devastate this entire time to kill monsters, and this was his first kill without using Devastate.
"Could it be that this device cannot track monsters killed by Devastate?" Lucas came to this conclusion.
"If this is true... I can take advantage of this to enter private dungeons without paying anything!" Lucas was filled with excitement when he realized this.
He then searched for another monster to test out his theory.
After killing another monster with his sword, Lucas checked his watch.
[Kill Count: 2]
Seeing this, his excitement grew.
Lucas then decided to stay in the dungeon until he could use one more Devastate to confirm his theory.
About two hours later, once he had enough mana to use Devastate, Lucas used it on a green goblin, getting his 35th kill using Devastate.
After killing the monster, Lucas looked at his watch.
[Kill Count: 2]
The device didn't count the kill when he used Devastate! This confirmed his theory! It was a massive discovery that will save him a lot of money!