Chapter 87: Alice, Brann and Kael
Mark had tried very hard to think carefully about where exactly he had gone wrong, but he still couldn’t calm down even now. But no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with an answer.
If he wanted to find some random excuse, he could say that it was his survival instinct making him unable to stay calm when his life was in danger. But Mark was a human, a cultivator, not some low-intelligence creature that could only let instinct control it.
"When will this finally end?"
Looking up at the gloomy sky of this dungeon, Mark felt a little homesick for the atmosphere on Earth. Even though he lived somewhere that was a little polluted, it was still tens of thousands of times better than this gloomy and oppressive air.
A familiar sound reached Mark’s ears, making him shudder. He used his spear to support his body and slowly walked outside to face the enemy.
Facing an old enemy that he had already killed twice, Mark didn’t dare be careless because his current physical condition was extremely bad.
Right now, he definitely couldn’t withstand even a single attack from a skull ape. If he forcibly used the power of his spiritual root to temporarily increase his strength too many times, he didn’t know what long-term bad consequences there would be.
"Come here. Let’s finish this quickly."
Mark’s voice was so quiet that it was as if only he himself could hear it. His dark circles and dazed eyes, which looked like he could fall asleep at any moment, no longer had much fighting spirit left.
This was just a lesson. It wasn’t a real battle, much less some proud act of protecting humanity. That was exactly why Mark’s spirit had become more and more discouraged like this.
This skull ape wasn’t stupid, and it immediately charged straight at him at full speed. Its full-powered punch was thrown out as if it wanted to finish Mark with this one blow.
Seeing the punch rushing toward him while his heavy body refused to move according to his will, Mark’s heart began to race.
Mark panicked. He wanted to use the power of his spiritual root to temporarily increase his strength, but in the end, he had still made progress... at least a little.
Mark went against his own survival instinct. He refused to use the power of his spiritual root and just stood there, staring at death as it approached.
His heart was still beating, his mind was still in chaos. The only thing he could do was force his will to overcome the feeling of wanting to find a way to survive at all costs.
Of course, this level wasn’t what Nexus wanted. It was true that Mark had made some progress, but this much was still useless.
Just as Mark was about to take a fatal punch, a series of gunshots rang out. Bullets flew past Mark’s face, but luckily, none of them hit him.
The skull ape was hit by a barrage of bullets and immediately stopped to defend itself. But at that exact moment, an arrow shot straight through its weak point, causing it to helplessly collapse onto the ground.
"Are you okay?"
A gentle voice rang out beside Mark. Turning his head, he saw a beautiful young woman carrying a rifle and running quickly toward him.
Inside dungeons, guns, missiles, tanks, and many other things could be brought in. But things that had communication functions like phones couldn’t.
Of course, these toys could only be used against low-rank monsters. The combat intelligence, speed, endurance, and strength of high-rank monsters were far superior, making them useless.
Weapons of mass destruction like nuclear bombs weren’t very effective either. Using nuclear bombs in resource-gathering dungeons would just be self-destruction. In A-rank and above dungeons, nuclear bombs weren’t powerful enough.
Mark looked at her blankly. He had the illusion that he had met an angel and was about to fly to heaven... No, when he was about to go to heaven, it seemed like he hadn’t even had time to see the angel before the system dragged his soul back to Earth.
Seeing Mark looking even more dumbfounded and realizing that his mental state seemed to be in bad shape, Alice immediately used her healing ability on his body.
Mark’s body was already far beyond what an F-rank hunter could compare with, so healing him would consume more energy. But this wasn’t a big problem for a B-rank like Alice.
The green light covered Mark’s body, making his wounds quickly heal. Drops of sweat began to fall from Alice’s forehead, but she still didn’t stop.
Only when Mark’s physical condition was no longer at a dangerous level did Alice stop and ask him.
"How did you end up here? According to the report we received, there shouldn’t be anyone here."
Alice could save Mark for no reason, but that didn’t mean she had no doubts about his identity.
Before she could get an answer, two men had already chased after them. The one who had used the bow to shoot down the skull ape earlier was Kael, the captain of this hunter team. Beside him was a muscular, burly man named Brann, the fighter of the team.
All three of them were B-rank hunters and the leaders of the hunter team that had come here to explore the dungeon today.
Aside from the three of them, who wore more special outfits, the dozen or so people carrying firearms who followed behind them were equipped no differently from special forces soldiers. They were also hunters, but they were definitely lower ranked, which was why they needed to be equipped so thoroughly.
"Hey, you. Alice asked you. Why aren’t you answering?"
Brann glared fiercely at Mark as if warning him. But no one knew what he was warning Mark about.
"Huh? Ah, sorry. That was too sudden; I thought I was definitely going to die."
Mark awkwardly looked at these unexpected lifesavers. He hadn’t expected Nexus and the system not to interfere with these people saving him.
Kael glanced around and saw the two corpses of other skull apes. Then he looked at Mark’s battered body and frowned slightly.
"How could these weak-ass skull apes injure you this badly?"
In Kael’s team, anyone could easily take down a skull ape, even those people equipped the same way who looked like a bunch of NPCs. This dungeon was B-rank, and the skull apes were the lowest-rank monsters.