Anton enjoyed the food that he ordered from the hotel’s in-dining services. After eating, he checked the time, and it was around three in the morning, so in his thoughts, the dungeon portal, or at least the people manning it, should be resting, so he decided to enter his Diablo II system to level up his ladder assassin.

He remembered that he thought of reaching the maximum level of his ladder assassin before entering the dungeon again, but due to his excitement for the adventure, Anton had forgotten that goal.

Since he remembered, Anton decided to just go through with that small goal. He still had a lot of funds remaining to support being idle for the next several days, so he spent the next seven days just focused on reaching his ladder assassin's maximum level.

Those days were a little enjoyable for Anton. He woke up early daily, had a scrumptious breakfast, spent the next few hours leveling up his ladder assassin, exited his Diablo II system at noon to explore the mini town that surrounded the dungeon, which was called the Dungeon of Balathar, and ate scrumptious lunch, then he would return to his room in the hotel to continue leveling up his assassin. He would then take some breaks by watching movies, television shows, and anime.

Going back to using the part of his system where he could watch movies and shows, it felt to Anton that he was starting to mend but he was still averse to befriending anyone.

After seven days, his funds dwindled to around three hundred gold coins, but to be honest, Anton was still not worried about coins, since he did still have plenty of enchanted items in his inventory that he could sell if it came to him needing coins, but since he had already reached his tiny goal, his next step was to delve into the dungeon. He knew that he might earn a lot of coins down there.

First things first, he needed to choose the next item that he wanted to bring out from the game to real life, and he had already prepared it. It was the unique helm, Harlequin Crest, commonly referred to as Shako. The plus two to skills would make his spells more powerful, and the addition to his life and mana and reduction to damage received would make his defenses more significant. He didn’t know if the fifty percent better chance of receiving more items would have an impact in real life, like maybe more loot from the dungeons. If it did, the value of that particular option would skyrocket.

When Anton retrieved the gear Shako from his inventory, he knew what it would look like since he was using the same headgear in his original sorceress. At the very least, the helmet was good-looking enough that it would not detract from the set gear that anyone was wearing, be it mage robes or a full set of armor.

Wearing the mage robes that he purchased from the hotel on top of his Chains of Honor runeword armor and his Shako, Anton was prepared to go into the dungeon.

Before he did, though, Anton created his Ladder Barbarian first, so he could level it up whenever he had downtime inside the dungeon. After that, Anton checked out of his hotel room to avoid any more charges. The good thing about this hotel near the dungeon was it looked like it always had rooms available, so the moment he exited the dungeon, he could rent a room any time he wanted.

Anton did plan to rent a semi-permanent place, so that Anna and his father would find him easily. That was what he was going to do after he left the dungeon.

When he arrived at the Adventurer Guild’s establishment beside the Dungeon of Balathar, Anton approached one of the clerks manning the front desk. As usual, it was another extremely beautiful girl, although the girl was from the Serpent Folk species.

“Good morning, sir. How can I help you?” The beautiful serpent lady asked.

“Good morning. I’m a gold level adventurer, and I want to enter the lowest dungeon that I’m allowed to enter based on my identification card,” Anton provided his guild card to the lady.

Anton saw the front desk lady tap his card into a magical globe and read information there. He assumed that the globe functioned as the Adventurer Guild’s computer. After a few minutes, the lady talked to him.

“The lowest floor you can enter in the Dungeon of Balathar is the twentieth floor. Any lower than that, you will need to submit a hundred completed gold-level quests to increase your rank.”

“Can you give me a list of quests that I can complete on the dungeon’s twentieth floor?”

The serpent lady gave him a booklet that contained repeatable gold-level quests that he could complete by delving the twentieth floor of the dungeon of Balathar and below. Giving it a quick scan, Anton saw that the quests were basically “gather resources” quests like retrieve a certain number of medium mana stones, a certain number of high mana stones, a certain number of monsters’ body parts found on the twentieth floor and below, those kinds of quests.

Anton then understood why the entrance fee for delving into the dungeon was cheap, just an additional one gold every ten levels. It was because most of the resources from the dungeon would go into the kingdom of Ormunda through the Adventurer Guild.

The serpent lady then gave him a portal key and gave him advised that the most important thing was his life and his group’s life, so if they felt that they couldn’t move forward, to just use the key to go back into the surface.  

Anton appreciated the concern from the lady and said goodbye. He then walked into the dungeon portal and showed his key to the guard. When the guard asked if he wanted to wait for his group mates, he told the guard that he was delving alone, and the guard just shrugged and waved him forward.

There were other groups of adventurers near the portal, probably waiting for their members to arrive, but all of them ignored him. All of the adventurers looked good, though, probably because they were all high-level adventurers.

The guild staff looked like he didn’t care that Anton was going solo and he guessed that solo divers were not rare, and the guild had already given all the information and warnings they could give to adventurers, so if they persisted in going through with it solo, if they died inside, then so be it.

Anton activated the portal using his warp key and then entered the dungeon. He stumbled into a huge chamber made of ancient-looking stone and knew that the dungeon instance that he entered was a labyrinth of winding corridors and hidden chambers made of ancient stone. He assumed that the interconnected chambers and corridors would be filled with monsters and traps.

Based on the booklet that the lady gave him, this specific dungeon instance would probably contain monsters like minotaurs, cyclops, stone pythons, rock golems, rock trolls, undead mummies, and more.

Anton touched the wall behind him, and suddenly, he received a notification from his Diablo II system. Startled, he opened it immediately.

“The system detected that you have entered a dungeon with a high enough level for your ladder character to gain experience. Since the only ladder character that has not reached the maximum level is the Barbarian, experience earned in this dungeon would go into leveling up your ladder Barbarian character.”

He was delighted by the announcement because that meant delving into a high-level dungeon would allow him to level up a character.

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