While Conrad went up, he started getting ready for the battle.
He knew that if everything he found out were correct, all the creatures he saw until now would decide to attack him as he was trying to get up and leave the Ancient Deep.
In no time, he came to the area of big fruit flies; as soon as they had noticed him, they did not hesitate and started swarming him.
Conrad used his speed to take down many of them as they tried to swarm him.
With their numbers, not many people can fight against these creatures; considering that they are flying and swarming enemies at the same time, most nen users would have no ability to fight such enemies.
If Conrad was not able to fly and needed walls to climb up, the problem would be much worse than it would be right now.
"Thump!"
Conrad crushed one more of them and kept on attacking, swinging his cane more than ten times in just one second.
Each swing caused at least two or three fruit flies to die and splat like a balloon exploding after being pierced by a needle.
It was disgusting, but Conrad did not hesitate as he was about to leave the area; he killed one more of the flies without causing it to explode because of the force and took it with him and left the area of the flies.
"Okay."
"Now."
"I have to deal with those bats," he said.
Conrad got ready, and then secondly, he came to the area of Huge Bats, and a big battle started.
Hundreds of big bats started attacking from all sides; this behavior also gave some understanding to Conrad.
"It seems like attacking creatures that try to leave and go up from the Deep is more of a 'forced action' type nen ability than just a suggestion."
As he thought, he dodged the first one and then made a flicker of a motion to his cane, causing it to go up like a spring and kill the first bat by exploding its head; he circled as his cane was in the air, took it with his left, and then swung it from down to up to kill the second big bat.
Seconds later, as more and more big bats attacked, Conrad kept on moving, always making sure that he was not attacking and defending in the same way to not make it easy for bats to understand his rhythm.
"Fuck, it is hard," as he killed about fifteen bats, Conrad said and then felt something, back of left shoulder, slight bruise.
"So, when they attack with all they got..."
"They are able to harm me to some degree," he thought for less than half a second and then kept on swinging left and right.
Every time he took action, it was like the Grim Reaper took action; he did not just kill the bats but reaped their lives from them.
After about one minute, he finally killed one more big bat and got ahold of its corpse and left the big bat level.
He cut some parts of it and then dropped the body of the big bat and got ready for another battle.
"They will send hundreds, maybe even thousands of rocks at me."
"As long as I keep my nen, the rocks should not be that dangerous..."
Conrad thought as he thought of telekinesis-user eaglesnakes and then kept on going.
Fifteen seconds later, a huge amount of rocks started getting thrown at him from all directions; he dodged most of the rocks and broke the ones that he was not able to dodge with his cane.
"Weird..."
"I feel great as I fight against these creatures." Conrad thought as he kept on destroying rock after rock.
As he fought, he understood that every level, every race of beasts he encountered tested his different abilities.
It is something that is risky but also increases his capability.
There could be no better training than this; even fighting against nen users would not help him to increase his combat capabilities to such a degree.
"I got you."
Conrad destroyed some of the rocks and then located a close snake eagle and quickly went to its side; he destroyed five more rocks from his right side and swung his cane to the head of the creature, crushing it down, made some slicing actions to take some part from its body, and kept on going up without looking back.
The size of snakes was too much for him to carry and also continue to fight; he may be able to use the orb, but the orb, if targeted, can be easily destroyed in such a battle where attacks come from everywhere.
"I do understand why bats cannot go up and fight against these eaglesnakes..." Conrad thought as he left the area of the snakes.
He took a deep breath for a moment later and then stopped for a second.
"Right now, I should be at the passing point."
"Each level has a fifty- to hundred-meter passing point area where no beasts live and only pitch-black darkness exists."
"Here, I can try to rest a little before going up to fight against those octopuses."
Octopuses were a little more different than the enemies he would need to fight.
Compared to all the creatures, he never fought with them while he went down or knew how they may attack or if they had special abilities or not.
"If I feel overwhelmed, I can use Blink continuously to escape from any kind of attack or entanglement."
Conrad said to himself, after resting for about ten minutes, he closed his eyes for a moment and then continued to go up.
Ten seconds, five seconds, and one second.
He entered the area of the small, three-meter octopus he saw, and a second later, he felt his mind was dizzy.
He quickly located the three-meter-sized octopus and then noticed that it was using some sort of a nen ability of some sort.
"Fuck..."
"Octopuses, at least these three-meter ones, have some sort of a proper nen ability instead of just being beasts and using their natural capabilities."
"That is why they are at the top..."
Conrad thought and then started using his nen to counter the mental-based nen attack of the creature as much as he could.