Azimuth: The Elden Throne (New Version)

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Still in the dark halls underneath the ruins of the city, Dale could currently be seen waiting in front of an old brick wall with his ears close to it as he tried to listen to the sounds produced beyond it.

/Click.../

/Clack.../

"... No… Not yet..."

"This is hard..." He mumbled in displeasure as he closed his eyes to focus

/Click… Clack…/

/Creech... Cronk.../

It was faint, but he could hear sounds of metal moving… Bumping against each other...

There was something there, beyond this seemingly normal wall.

"..."

'Patience... Patience... I've been here for 2 minutes already but I must wait...'

'If I lose my timing, I won't be able to do everything I want to within the time limit.'

'Or I would be cutting it closer then just...'

/CLANG!/

Suddenly, there was a loud snap of metal from beyond that wall.

"NOW!" He said as his body tensed

/BAM!/

/CRUMBLE!/

Dale punched the wall with all his power and it easily collapsed under his overwhelming strength, as if a train had hit it.

Still, the wall wasn't that thick either, around 4 to 5 bricks in thickness... But it crumbled to nothingness under his mighty fist.

His hand wasn't even hurt either as his sturdiness had already gone beyond that of a normal man...

What appeared behind the crumbling rocks was a bunch of giant metallic gears and cogs spinning around in harmony.

Normally, it would be impossible to pass through these cogs... But right now in front of him laid a perfectly clear path.

Though it wouldn't remain like that forever...

/Fwosh/

Dale started to run before the cogs moved again, and soon enough…

/Click!/

/CRACK!/

As soon as the first cog moved, the entire system of cogs started to crack and bend as it all collapsed behind Dale, blocking his way out.

"Phew, that was close." He said as a little bit of sweat fell from his forehead

'I don't think I would've died, but I might've gotten stuck, forcing me to complete the tutorial sooner...'

'I should be strong enough to force my way through the metal cogs, but if they all stuck to each other, I would need an incredibly perverse Level of strength to push them all at once.'

'And digging a hole through them would also take a lot of time.'

"Regardless, I got here…"

"A bit faster than I thought." He mumbled as he checked the time by opening a system window

As soon as everything broke down, Dale looked around and smiled.

/Fwoosh!/

Dale resumed his run... But he got faster and faster with each step...

"I am getting excited… Super excited!" He said with a large smile

'The hardest Dungeon in the Beta… I got inside it without any trouble.'

'To get inside this Dungeon, the players are first forced to pay a massive amount of money to the bank all the way on the surface of the ruins.'

'Yes, there is a bank in the ruins, this was once a city after all... But it serves no purpose apart from being the door to this Dungeon…'

'It may serve a purpose now as the game started... As in the previous game, it was a magical bank that housed many player items and services.'

'Albeit now, it is an abandoned building where all of its magical systems have either broken down or are malfunctioning… I would say it's impressive they are even working, but in the first place, I have no idea how much in the future we are... If at all.'

"At a certain time every day, all cogs will stop and align, allowing someone to pass through them, however, the moment the wall is broken, all cogs will break down due to the interference."

"That was how I got inside, a hollow wall that was used for maintenance…"

'It's a secret passage that gives you a one-way into the Dungeon. It was found by a player, however, when he found out about it he broke the wall at the wrong time and the cogs collapsed immediately, so the secret passage became useless.'

"I was planning to try it out later, but my stats are beyond what I expected to get, so I had a change of plans… I said this a few times before already…"

'Even if I lost 2 minutes waiting for it to open, I managed to make half a dozen.'

...

Dale continued to run through the maintenance corridors, avoiding any cogs or moving parts.

The traps might've been deactivated, but there is still danger…

Even if his body was much stronger than that of a normal person, Dale had no intention of testing out how durable it truly was by putting his finger between two gigantic metal cogs…

/CRUNK!/

/FWUSH!/

"Wow there!"

/BAM!/

As he moved, a cog suddenly broke and a piece of metal was swung in his direction, almost decapitating him.

Soon enough, multiple cogs started to break and fall like rain…

"This place is truly falling into pieces… If I had not ducked there… Urg."

'Perhaps I should equip some heavy armor…'

…

/About half a minute later.../

"This must be… The Boss room…"

'But the chest isn't here, fuck, did I lose my time?… Where is the promised loot…'

[Explorer Sense has activated]

Dale looked behind him, and that was where the Boss spawned.

"This Dungeon is a 'limited attack' Dungeon, which means its worth goes down the more people succeed in it... Or increase depending on the scenario."

"This Dungeon has a hidden loot pool, and every time someone beats it, a part of it is removed and dropped into a single chest so that people can collect the items."

"Following that the Dungeon resets and the process restarts."

'So considering how this game was made, these items must be coming from somewhere… And since we are in a bank…'

Dale looked at a vault door around 5 meters in diameter in the corner of the room.

It was similar to Earth vault doors, being massive in size and with a thick circular handle in front of it.

"It can only be inside the vault…"

As he approached the room he thought:

'In the Beta, the players tried to enter this room but it was impossible, the vault room was a single massive metal box, so it was meaningless to break the rock around the door to try and get inside…'

"But I don't know the code either…"

Dale stayed there thinking of a way to get inside before he just decided to force the door open and try his luck. That was better than wasting his time…

He was super strong after all, perhaps with his extra stats, the door can be forcibly broken through...

/CREEEEAK/

"Hupp!... It's moving!..."

The sounds of metal creaking assaulted his ears as he applied strength to it, but he still moved the handle without fear.

/Clack clack clack!/

"Come on... Don't break on me..." He said as he completed a full rotation

/CLACK!/

...

The door snapped several times more until…

/CLACK!/

"!"

The door opened slightly and a lot of dust was blown from inside the vault.

This greatly surprised Dale but he then smiled as he facepalmed.

"Of course it's open, the tutorial didn't even start, so everything is free real estate… Including the mechanisms of this door..."

'This door is quite light as well, lighter than I expected…'

Of course, this was because Dale wasn't fully aware of how monstrous his body strength currently is.

/Pull... Bang!/

Dale pulled the door, slamming it on the side.

/Shiiing!/

Glorious golden light illuminated his face as he looked at the pile of items scattered inside the vault…

"Haha... Hahaha..."

"MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Laughing like a villain, Dale collected everything into his inventory maniacally…

…

/Several minutes later in one of the many servers…/

A few players could be seen in a corner, there were 10 players in there.

(I should be making images of at least one of them in the future)

"How much time till the start of the tutorial?" Asked a player with red hair

"... 7 minutes." Replied another player laying on the ground, he had dark hair and a pair of thick glasses

"How about our teammates? Are they ready?" Asked the red hair dude as he looked at the crowd of players sitting on the ground

"Yes, everyone is ready, we went through the plan several times over, this should be fine." Said a guy with long brown hair

"Good, I don't want my brother to nitpick at me for making our forces weak."

The one with dark hair got up from the ground and asked:

"Speaking of that, where are the executives of our clan? I see no one here."

The one with red hair replied:

"Simple, they separated themselves into multiple servers in order to monopolize resources."

"While we are here with the lower forces, the others are out there getting the unique items in each server... We'll do that too so it doesn't really matter."

"Unique items?" Asked a tired girl with blue hair on the side with a curious expression

"Yup, each server has a few unique and special items, this means that in the entire game, there are only a few copies of it, and only one or a few are made per server if not a singular one."

"So if someone doesn't get it and the Tutorial server closes, those items are lost forever."

"Their value is immense towards the early game, we've mapped the most important ones so the executives may get them and get stronger." Said their leader as he checked a small virtual map, the guy with red hair

The blue-haired girl asked again:

"What about competition?"

"That is pretty hard on its own.."

"Look at the current player count, it hasn't been even 30 minutes and the current player count is already over 3 million, and since each tutorial server has 1000 players, this means there are over 3000 of them right now."

"The chances of them meeting any 'MEANINGFUL' competition is pretty low already. Not saying there won't be, for example, James was unlucky and he fell into the server of those Scarlet bastards…"

"He said he is going to try to get a few items but he also said they are onto him… He may even be killed once or several times… He may be forced to skip the tutorial altogether."

"How unlucky..."

...

"Hey!"

As they talked, another one of the players suddenly gathered their attention...

"Look, there is a new promotional video on the main forum!"

"What?..."

"Play it, there is nothing to do anyway…" Their leader said as he scratched his chin

The Title of the video read: First Tutorial Clear

"First? Is this a joke? The Tutorial hasn't even opened yet…" Said the guy with long brown hair

"Isn't it better to watch the video first before assuming anything Ygor?" Asked the blue-haired girl

"But still! Don't tell me you didn't think of this Riana?"

The girl shrugged.

"Everyone, calm down, Robert, play the video." Said the red-haired guy

Robert nodded and pressed the play button…

[Video will be available within 3 minutes, 12 seconds…]

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"... So we'll have 2 minutes to watch it before the Tutorial starts?" Asked Robert

"Well, the video is 1 minute long, so it should be okay…"

They all sat near each other as they looked at the floating panel, ready to play the play button…

…

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Notes

This is the end of another session of chapters.

Tomorrow, 5 more chapters, I think I'll be posting 5 chapters per day for now, though in case this ends up getting in the way of my progress with my other Novels, I'll return to the promised 2 chapters per day.

If we continue at this pace, we'll get to where we stopped in no time.

Thank you for reading!