The Rise Of A Porter

[I know I gave you the permission to kill but that doesn't mean you can go haywire.]

"Can't you let me vent out my frustration a bit?" Arnold gritted his teeth while punching yet another skeleton into oblivion, "I mean I can't use any of my abilities in this forsaken dungeon. At least let me go all out!"

[Fine. Suit yourself.]

"Thank you!"

When Arnold teleported to Shanghai. He did not expect to teleport right in front of a dungeon. However, since he was there, the warriors who were about to enter the dungeon immediately backed out. They thought that Arnold was there to take care of the dungeon himself, and if that was the case, the dungeon would've been obviously dangerous for them to even casually walk into. So they happily surrendered the right to the dungeon to Arnold and went their merry way.

In hindsight, it was all just a misunderstanding, but it turned out to be a blessing for the warriors. Because the moment Arnold walked into the dungeon System sama informed him that his mana usage was sealed. Thus Arnold could not use his abilities, just like he couldn't use them during his trial all those years back. However, his stats weren't affected and thus he had to depend on his stats to take care of the dungeon.

Not having mana also led to another problem. He could no longer use the mana shield. This meant that since he was against a horde of creatures he couldn't keep track of all the wounds he would get from the skeletons. As well, he couldn't feel them at all. Moreover, he couldn't even summon anyone to help him either as even summoning required a teensy bit of mana.

However, because Arnold already wanted to test his new arm out, it was just the perfect scenario for him. Once inside, it looked it was another typical dungeon filled with skeletons. But this dungeon, in particular, had way more skeletons than any other dungeon Arnold had ever been into. Even system sama didn't have a solid reason to explain why it was happening.

Still, the system had a theory. According to it, this abnormality could be a hint to what kind of tasks the Gods were planning for the Vassals and Paladins to do during the <war of the worlds>. Also, these dungeons could be a planning phase for the gods to determine whether the tasks would be enough to test them or not. 

Since Arnold was the one to enter the dungeon, system sama was sure the difficulty would rise up in this dungeon was implemented during the <war of the worlds> tournament. Unless the system's guess was wrong and this was just an abnormality. Either way, Arnold had to kill them all as fast as he could because the more he waited around, the more skeletons he was being forced to face. 

"There has to be a source to them. They can not keep popping us endlessly without some kind or spawn spot." Arnold had finally started breaking a sweat against the skeletons, "Da*n it! Why did this dungeon have to take away my abilities? I could have easily one-shot the entire army and be done with it."

[You see, that's the entire point of having a dungeon like this. In case your intelligence points have betrayed you again, let me-]

"It's fine you know. I can do this. If only you would be generous enough to help me out by locating the thing that's spawning these basta*ds like a bit*h in heat?"

[We ain't that close yet that I start doing you favours. You have to take me out for dinner first.]

"Oh fck you!"

[I'll decide that after seeing how the dinner goes. But first, you should get this over with.]

"Your humour is impeccable." Arnold didn't even have the time to roast the system back. Despite him wanting to do it so badly. 

[Keep practising. Maybe you'll have enough humour that you wouldn't need someone else to roast you.]

"Can you look at it or not!?"

[No can do.]

"Fine. I didn't want to do this but alright!" Arnold finally had enough, "I'm done testing the arm. Not Its time to test the firearms."

[Finally got it, huh?]

Arnold remained quiet and drew the cardinal's sin out of the inventory. The dungeon only sealed the mana usage of the warriors. The restriction didn't affect the weapons having abilities as the weapons did not need to have mana to use the abilities. They just have the in-built abilities. Initially, Arnold only wanted to test his arm but now that he was willing to use weapons, he also brought out some old weapons. Especially the grenades.

[Ayo, now that's cheating.]

"Shut the fck up. I tried to do it your way, but you didn't help me." Arnold smirked before pulling the pins of a handful of grenades, "So now I'm gonna do this my way."

[Alright! Have a blast then.]

It had been ages since Arnold used the incendiary or cryo grenades. Even since he started getting stronger he rarely ever used them. But now that he was forced to be reacquainted with them he once again realised how important and strategically useful they were. Because what was taking him forever to do, now took him less than a couple of seconds.

All of the skeletons around him had either been burned to ashes or turned into frozen popsicles. This gave Arnold the crucial time he needed to find out the source of their production, which turned out to be... a gigantic black slime. Or so it looked like.  It would appear that the slime had taken over a graveyard and for some reason the corpses it fed on were being turned into skeletal warriors.

"What the hell even is that thing? A necromancer slime?"

[You have a skill made to look at these things.]

"I know I have the skill to look at it. But in case you forgot, I can't use it because I can't use mana!"

[... you're right about that.]

***

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