The Almighty Search Engine Chapter 8 Act 5 The Dungeon Race

Time passed.

Ever since Ivankov had entered the gate together with his children and presumed dead no more news was being spread about him, the survivor camp that had originally been lead by him had long since been taken under the control of the awakened, everything else happening in the world was just as I previously mentioned.

The appearance of Samson and then his disappearance, the emergence of the church of Samson, the world congress in which the austrian president had lost his life turning into stone.

And then finally.

The return of the 1 million survivors from the gates all over the world.

In a span 3 days they came back, the 1 million survivors that came out of the estimated 5 million had finally survived their ordeal and made it out alive.

Their sudden reappearance was a total surprise towards the people all over the world, even though a major event had just happened within the world congress meeting everyone seemed to have completely forgotten about that event and instead immediately focused their attention towards those survivors who came out of those mysterious gates that were the cause of all the chaos in the world.

The governments and different organizations scrambled over each other within their nations as they hastily tried to grab those people and get information from them.

Another round of turmoil happened as this was going on, the thought of war seemed to have completely been forgotten for the time being not sure whether it was a good or a bad thing.

But ultimately once those survivors were finally caught and gathered no organization wasted even a single second asking them the crucial question that laid on everyone’s mind.

What was inside those gates ?

The answer they got were beyond their imaginations.

Tales of monsters, wide floors and all kinds of fantasy or game lingo were thrown out of the mouths of the survivors, their struggles and experiences echoing behind their horrified faces as they recalled the terrifying things they had seen and done.

Some were crying while talking about these events while others looked cold and apathetic when speaking of those things, as if they still couldn’t believe that it wasn’t a dream but something happening in reality.

The people who listened to those survivors half doubted whether the things they were saying were true or not, but because everyone was telling the same story and some had strange injuries coming from unknown creatures that couldn’t be identified, they couldn’t help but start believe and take what they said seriously about the horrors of the dungeon gates.

But ultimately all of this became the truth in everyones mind when finally a survivor came forward and showed those people a item they had looted from the dungeon that came out of a monster the survivor had killed.

A Mana stone.

A shining fingernail sized piece of blue crystal that exuded strange light, the discovery of this item had forever change the history of earth ever since its first appearance this is also the main reason why hunters go into the dungeon and hunt monsters, any monster inside the dungeon had one of these small fingernail sized crystals inside of them that acted as a type of power source for the monsters, in a sense it was just like a human heart for the monsters giving it life.

But to us humans this piece of crystal was more then just the remains of a creature.

It was a source of power !

Upon further inspection and research the scientists that studied the mana stone immediately came to realize that the crystal had unimaginable amount of energy stored within it.

A single mana stone the size of a fingernail could power a entire smartphone for up to 3 months without having to recharge, this discovery had thrown the entire world into uproar once again especially the scientists who went wild by this discovery and further became ecstatic when they realized that these mana stones weren’t the only things the survivors brought back out of the dungeons.

Monster parts, strange cloth,minerals, gems, armor, accessories, weaponry of all kinds such as swords, spears and bows, even consumable items such as strange potions were found that had ridiculous effects upon consumption capable of healing a superficial wound in a matter of seconds visible to the eye.

But most importantly it weren’t only these items that had caused such an uproar.

The humans themselves the survivors that came out of the dungeons were even more strange and bizarre, upon further inspection these people were found to be incredibly athletic and strong for some reason, a middle aged man who was in his late thirties who was originally a salary man was found to be just as fit and strong as a young man in his twenties who had been working out his entire life, his motor skills and reaction speed could rival a standard soldier and even though the middle aged man hadn’t worked out once every since he became a salary man he became fit just through clearing a single dungeon floor which was simply inconceivable.

But this wasn’t the only thing that caused a stir !

There was more !

It was later found that throughout these 1 million people there were a very small few that had surprisingly extraordinary abilities !

At first it was believed that these people were actually awakened that had entered these gates, and while something like this wasn’t heard of before it wasn’t out of question.

But as the investigation continued it was quickly found out that these people with abilities weren’t actually awakened at all !

They were all originally humans with no abilities they only gained those abilities inside the dungeon when they continued to advance forward slaying monsters, the way they gained those abilities at that was even more inconceivable as they all similarly found a strange book either dropped by a monster or within a chest written in a mysterious language that couldn’t be opened no matter how hard they tried to open it.

But upon holding the book closer to their heads the book shone with bright light and when they finally realized what was going everyone seemed to have experienced a voice or intent speaking to them whether or not they wanted to acquire the knowledge that was held in the book.

Almost everyone that first encountered this event had immediately accepted the intent and let the book enter their minds, in the end the book vanished into light particles with the survivor finally gaining the knowledge that the book itself held.

The knowledge that was held within the book was immediately grasped by the user as if it became their second nature, the result of this was that people had gained all kinds of abilities through the use of different books that helped them survive inside the dungeon like the ability to cast firebolts, attack instantly or being able to perceive other living beings from a distance without using their eyes.

Many of these abilities were even found to be not only possessed by a single person but multiple people who had found a similar book with the same design within the same dungeon.

It was also later discovered that these abilities were totally different from the abilities that the awakened possessed, while the awakened couldn’t use their abilities without a rest they still could control it as if it was an extension of their body and use it for a long time, the abilities the survivors on the other hand exhibited were more like extra functions to the body that weren’t a part of the user but still depended on the strength of the user to grow and control.

Different people when using the same ability could exhibit different amount of control and power when they cast’ed it, some people also had different amounts of capacity then others, meaning that while person A could use 10 firebolts consecutively until they get tired person B could only use 5 firebolts until they hit their limit, but in turn it may also be that person A could only cast 10 weaker firebolts while person B could cast 5 stronger firebolts showing that there were a lot of aspects which depended solely on the user of the ability.

Because of this the abilities that were acquired from the books were called Skills while the books that bestowed these skills were called Skill Books.

The different skills were in the end further differentiated between combat,support and auxiliary skills which was further branched down starting from the combat skills that had two types of effects being physical and magical skills both of which dealt damage but in different forms.

The other two main branches had similar sub branches like healing, buffing/debuffing, summoning, body strengthening, alchemy and crafting but right now I liked to talk about this some other time.

Now with all of this discovered and made clear the governments all around the world didn’t hesitate anymore as they full on started to besiege those dungeons, they first all tried to capture and seize the dungeons within their own countries while stopping people from entering them anymore so they could get a monopoly on the dungeons themselves.

Armed with the knowledge that the dungeons could make a ordinary human become more powerful, everyone seemed to have found a way to suppress those awakened that were getting too out of hand, the awakened themselves even understood what this meant as well as they had also caught some of the survivors and interrogated them for information, unfortunately because they were all still too short on manpower they couldn’t match the resourcefulness or networking of the other giant nations and could only helpless watch as all the dungeons were being claimed on after another.

The awakened tried to claim a dungeon for themselves but because of the sheer amount of soldiers that were being deployed towards those dungeons they couldn’t come close as they were still mortals who could die if they weren’t careful.

Even though they were strong and could kill a ordinary human like a ant under their feet it didn’t mean that they could kill a thousand or millions of ants just as easily without dying, the only reason the awakened weren’t hunted and capture so far even though they were doing all kinds of crimes was because most of the awakened had made an alliance with other awakened and surrounded themselves with their own troops which were also civilians that the governments couldn’t easily touch without it turning into war crimes and turning the public opinion against the governments.

Plus the awakened themselves were still nothing to scoff at even if they were only a single people, they were extremely slippery because of their powers and while some plans in killing these awakened were successful these plans would always come with a big price with ultimately not stopping the problem from its roots as another awakened would soon be found to replace the other awakened that was killed this time with a different ability keeping the numbers steady between 10 to 20 awakened in each country.

Though while this looked bad for the awakened it still didn’t fully stop them from using those dungeon gates.

Even though the awakened weren’t capable of accessing the dungeon gates of the powerful countries they could still access the dungeons of the weaker countries who didn’t have any impressive military force.

This in fact happened with a particular awakened alliance called the “Chosen Ones” that was lead by the pope of the church of samson, they not only claimed that dungeon of that weak country they even claimed entire small nation as their own killing the entire upper echelon without leaving anyone alive, once again shocking the entire world with their ruthless strength.

Now it seemed as if every country and organization were racing with each other on who could produce more capable hunters, the war that everyone expected by now seemed to be very close but not quite there yet making everyone feel anxious on the bleak future up ahead with the natural disaster still happening.

With all of this you probably already wonder.

Where was Ivankov when this all happened ?

Well Ivankov was actually still inside the Dungeon together with his daughters, not that he hadn’t come out the first time when he cleared it.

This was actually the 8th time he cleared the first floor of the dungeon together with his daughters, and right at that moment he was doing his 9th raid.