Anton had been wanting a challenge for quite some time, and he had to admit that the 50th floor of the Corridors of Amuneta dungeon was a little challenging, but not to the point that he was worried about his life. He could kill the monsters that he had encountered so far, but it was taking him a while to do so.
If he were being honest, if Anton’s goal were to earn a lot of coins only, then the previous dungeons like the 40th floor or even the 30th floor of the Corridors of Amuneta would have been better since the rate that he earned mana stones and items from there would be higher simply by the fact that he could kill the dungeon monsters there faster.
With his current power, he could go through the 30th floor in a day, but with the 50th
floor, it would probably take him two or three days, and that amount of mana stones and items he would earn from the 50th floor, although more valuable was not much more that the previous floors.The fact was, his goal was not only to earn coins. His goal was to learn battle experience. Particularly, battle experience against difficult monsters, because he still firmly believed in his theory that sooner or later, he would battle it out with the Undead Coalition together with the rest of humanity.
Anton also formed a theory that what he was feeling was the main character syndrome, coupled with a persecution mentality, and he really hoped that that was just it. But he truly believed that it would be better to be prepared. He knew that at first, his father, Anders, and his sister Anna did not agree with him, but with their recent experiences, he knew that they had somewhat finally agreed with him. He felt a little vindicated but was sad as well. If he was given a choice, Anton would have preferred to live their lives in some sort of slice of life story wherein the family would focus on showing movies and television shows from Earth to the citizens of this world as their business and then the people of this world would then strive to create their own movies and shows and finally, some powerful wizards would create portals that would lead to Earth, and then a joyful cultural exchange would happen.
That would have been a very nice story for Anton and his little family. Then, when he’s old enough, he would have a meet-cute encounter with a girl who had the same hobbies as his, and they would fall in love and create a happy otaku family.
He still hoped that it would happen someday, once the threat of the undead was over. That was also the reason why Anton was struggling to be more powerful. He hoped that with his little help, the powers that be of this world would finally awaken and destroy the Undead Coalition, and once that was done, his slice-of-life story would start.
Anton shelved that thought at the back of his mind because he knew that if he kept thinking about it, it might lead him to become depressed.
After he stored all that he had gained from the three rock giants, he dispelled all of his summons except the five Ravens who were working for him as his scouts and his five Spirit Wolves who were the ones that would trigger the traps, if there were any or the ones who would lure any ambushes that the monsters prepared for adventurers.
He commanded his ravens and his wolves to move ahead while he flew after them a few meters behind. While doing so, Anton was startled when the wolves suddenly disappeared. He stopped flying forward and commanded the ravens to investigate. When the ravens flew to the place where the spirit wolves disappeared, Anton saw through the eyes of one of the ravens that there was nothing there.
Anton commanded one of the ravens to land on the last place the spirit wolves disappeared, while he watched through the eyes of one of his summoned birds. When the raven landed, several hundred red ants as big as a fist came out of the ground like a moving carpet and buried the raven before the bird could fly away. He wondered how Anton could fight off something like those ants.
He flew on top of where the ants appeared and commanded another raven to land. When the ants appeared, Anton immediately cast the Inferno spell, trying to burn the ants. It worked a little, and about half of the ants that appeared were burned to death. The other half hid themselves in the ground.
Anton tried to lure the ants above the ground by creating some noises using his spells, but it didn’t work. It appeared that the only thing that could lure the insect monsters was living creatures, because when he commanded another raven to land, it was buried by thousands of ants again before Anton killed some of them with a fire spell.
That experiment showed him that only living creatures could lure the ants above ground. He tested another experiment, which was to cast the Fire Wall spell several times on the ground, then he commanded the raven to land. That didn’t work. The ants noticed the heat from the Firewall spell and did not come up.
He dispelled every spell and every summons and summoned a new batch of ravens. He commanded one of them to land without doing anything, and the ants came up and devoured the raven.
For such tiny insects, Anton was impressed by the red ants' power. Anton’s raven’s level was high, and that meant that even though they were the smallest summons in his arsenal, they still had massive defenses and attack power, but the red ants easily devoured one of them.
After that, he performed another experiment. He laid down five Wake of Fire traps, then commanded one of the ravens to land again. Once the ants appeared, the traps activated and destroyed more of the ants.
Anton now knew how he could kill all of the ants. He summoned his Shadow Master and controlled it using his telekinesis spell and commanded it to lay down the maximum number of Wake of Fire traps it could, which was the same as him, which was five. Then Anton laid down another five Wake of Fire traps. He then commanded another raven to land, and once the ants appeared to devour the raven, the Wake of Fire traps activated, killing the ants.
The fight was tedious because the only thing Anton did was lay down Wake of Fire traps together with his Shadow Master summoned that he was controlling using the Telekinesis spell to avoid the ants, and once ten traps were laid down, he would sacrifice his ravens to lure the ants out.
Anton had to summon several batches of ravens to sacrifice until finally, no more ants came up. He wanted to make sure that he killed off all of the ants because, just like with the giant worm, he didn’t want any monsters below ground suddenly ambushing him while he was sleeping.
To make sure that there were no more red ants, Anton summoned all of his minions and commanded them to jump and down all over the place. When no ants were lured up, then he was sure that there were no ants. Unfortunately, maybe because the ants were small, Anton didn’t find any mana stones or any other treasure that he could store. At least he earned experience points from them.