I had been overly concerned. Compared to the first time I was down here with Jessica, things were incredibly easy, but I didn’t allow myself to get complacent. I just stopped worrying so much.
Also, I really wanted the Clean spell. There were water sources in the dungeon that I could use to clean myself, but having a spell do everything was so much nicer. Even the nurses at the Five Star Institute of Healing had the skill.
The chamber in front of me held the passage to the next layer. I was going to fight the champion monster and then descend to the 2nd layer. I had only been in the dungeon for two days, but the monsters of the 1st layer weren’t challenging.
The champion monster wasn’t a troll, but a large wolf and it had a pack of wolf minions with it as well in the middle of the chamber, guarding the passage. I kept my distance as I considered what to do. There were six smaller monsters and the Champion. In a fight it was normally advised to launch a costly but powerful spell at the start to get the advantage if possible, kill the lesser monsters, and then finish off the champion.
I got out my spear and bow. I didn’t trust my aim enough to hit the champion in a critical point, but I should be able to wound at least three of the lesser wolves with arrows, and possibly kill them. Then the tunnel would protect my flanks from a side attack, while the spear could be used to stab out and lodge in one of the monsters.
Setting my shield to the side near my spear against the wall of the left wall of the tunnel. My Shadow Vision didn’t reveal anything hidden, but I triple checked just to be on the safe side. I didn’t want any surprises for this fight. Nothing out of the ordinary with my other sensory skills either. I took careful aim and began to fire one arrow after another. It took the wolf monsters a few seconds to realize they were under attack and where the attack was coming from.
Two of the wolves went down and a third took an injury. I cast aside the bow and grabbed up my spear. The minions ran in first while the Champion hung back for a moment. I skewered one wolf my spear driving into its body. I was forced to let go and take a step back.
A wolf leapt at me, and I swung my blade while dodging to the side. Its neck was slashed open and I was covered by a spray of warm red blood. I made sure to turn my head away so it didn’t get into my eyes. The sixth regular wolf lunged right behind the previous one, but I had already transitioned into another slashing attack.
Before, that move would have been a struggle, but the training and increased skill levels allowed me to transition from one slashing motion to the next while maintaining the proper distance. The wolf collapsed and I took the next few seconds to pick up my shield. There was one wounded wolf and one Champion wolf left.
The Champion rushed at me and I felt a bit of danger coming from directly in front of me. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. It was going to try and run me down. The Champion had the stats of a legendary level 5 being, which meant 100 stat points. It appeared most had were in Agility, which made sense for a wolf type monster.
While this wasn’t always the case, most trends held strong in the upper layers of the dungeon. That meant its Strength was less than mine. For a larger monster and larger beings, stats were distributed across one’s body. A smaller person with a Strength of 10 would be able to match an adult with a Strength of 10. Stats were rated the same across everyone.
This gave me confidence along with my earlier practice the last couple of days, to stand my ground. The champion slammed into my shield and I skidded back slightly, but didn’t fall over. Its snarling teeth found no purchase on my shield. I brought up my blade and slammed it into the monster’s eye. I gave my blade a twist and then yanked it out. The Champion monster fell over dead.
The remaining wounded wolf was easy enough to finish off. After that I got to work collecting the cores. My mother had put the pouch I had collected with Jessica in my pack, so I added the new monster cores to my collection of red monster cores.
They were worth between 5 and 10 copper a monster core depending on the size. The prices for monster cores quickly went up the better the color. Orange was between 50 and 100 copper, with 100 copper equaling a silver, and the same for silver to gold and then gold to platinum. Yellow was 5 silver to 10 silver. Green 5 gold to 10 gold. Blue was worth over 1,000 platinum.
The price quickly escalated based on the rarity and demand. Since monster cores only went up in color every 50 levels, blue cores only started appearing with monsters at level 200, which meant the 20th layer of the dungeon and a Champion monster.
Anything beyond that was just a rumor at best and considered priceless. My mother had probably gotten an indigo core, maybe. She would have had to beat a Champion level monster on the 25th layer. I knew she was strong, but the monster would be level 250.
That was when I realized I had messed up. Seriously messed up. Regular monsters were level 5 on the first layer and the Champion was equivalent to level 10. Monsters had stats equal to legends on average, which was why the 20 stats per level benchmark was used. That meant 200 stats, not 100. I had been careless and stupid. I had won, but I had underestimated the Champion monster.
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Foolish, I was foolish. Doing math in the middle of a fight was incredibly stupid. I should have carefully thought through of all this before, if I was going to any math. It wasn’t a combat skill. I was kicking myself while I dug out the cores. Thankfully my Mana Sense had gotten much better since the last time I was here. Around level 10 versus level 80, which made a huge difference in using the skill.
There was a small pool of water in the chamber, which I used to clean myself and my armor off before the blood became sticky. That was really annoying to deal with. I also recovered my weapons as well. The bow and spear went back into my pack.
It would have been nice if the dungeon had just magically vanished the monsters and left the cores behind, but it never did anything where people could see. There had been attempts in the past, but the dungeon never changed while anyone was watching. Some said they were formless until our imaginations gave them shape.
No idea if that rumor was true, I had other things to focus on, like going to the 2nd layer and not messing up my math. My nerves had got the best of me and I hadn’t been focusing on my Mathematics. The skill had been mastered, it was there, just buried under Algebra and Geometry. It was a good reminder skill levels didn’t stop me from making mistakes if my assumptions were incorrect. I could do the math easily, but if I put in garbage numbers I would get garbage numbers back with my Mathematics skill.
Once everything was taken care of, I looked at the passage down to the next layer. It wasn’t a nice passage like the one from the surface to the 1st layer. Those passages the Adventurers Guild shaped into actual stairs for ease of use and to make it clear that those specific passages to the surface were maintained and not some random passage.
While many passages were made more climbable by the various people down here, the dungeon was constantly changing. Some claimed they saw the same place again, but there was no way to prove such a thing. Markings and other identifiers never remained unless there was a permanent presence at the location.
That was why the Last Bastion was famous as the only permanent place in the dungeon besides the passages from the surface inside of cities. With people guarding the entrances to the cavern the Last Bastion resided in at all times to ensure it never changed or disappeared.
The passage to the 2nd layer was a broken and crumbling staircase. Manageable, but difficult. This is also what made leaving the dungeon difficult. The lower one went, the more inaccessible the passages became, and it was easier to go down than up.
While highly unlikely, it was possible for a passage to be trapped or an Abnormal to be present, so I kept my sensory skills at full alert. That was key when moving to a new area, even if I thought it was safe, it was best not to treat the dungeon so casually if I wanted to stay alive.
The bottom of the passage was empty. Monsters rarely appeared at the bottom of passages. But rules had exceptions. They were more guidelines really. There were very few hard and fast rules in the dungeon.
I kept my sword and shield in hand as I looked at each of the possible tunnels. Five options this time. One led to another passage down, I could sense that. But the other four I had no idea. I picked one that was stone. I didn’t like the look of the two vine cover tunnels. The last one had a weird smell I didn’t want to deal with. I trusted my gut or intuition. Sometimes that was the most important thing one could do.
The first set of monsters I ran into were large snails that shot acid. A very annoying monster to face. I considered backtracking. While I could win, they would do too much damage to my equipment. The proper way to fight such monsters would have been magic, but I didn’t have the skills for magic spells. If I wasn’t going to stay down here for months, I would have fought them, but it was better to preserve my fighting ability.
Before I departed, I considered if there was a way I could kill them without damaging my equipment. This felt like an important choice. Turning back was the safe decision, the smart decision. I could pick another tunnel easily enough since the dungeon rarely reset the last intersection a person had been at.
However, I wanted to overcome this challenge. There were five snails about the size of a large dog slowly moving about a large bubbling pool of yellow liquid. Yellow and bubbly normally meant acid. Green and purple normally meant poison. Again, these were guidelines, not rules regarding monsters here in the dungeon.
I pulled out an arrow from my pack and slowly began to etch into the stone floor fire runes. The arrow tip would be heavily worn out after this and just carving runes wouldn’t do anything but I had a plan. If it didn’t work, the snails were slow enough that I could leave them behind without an issue.
After carving a bunch of runes, I got out the red monster cores I had collected. I began to grind them up using the pommel of my sword on the back of my shield. Once the cores had been turned to red dust, I carefully used a knife to sprinkle in the core dust into the very shallow fire runes.
My Danger Sense began to grow and I used my Mana Sense to bring them to the brink. One bit of Mana and they would go off. I cleaned off my knife, sword pommel, and shield. Raw monster core dust was very bad for a person. Monsters and people emitted a small amount of Mana.
The snails were magical monsters, which meant they were releasing more Mana than me, from what I could tell with my Mana Sense. It was a very precarious balance, and this was the kind of trap that would make Trap Master Enzo yell at how terrible it was.
There were many issues. Like the monsters could avoid it. The monsters could spit acid and activate it ahead of time. But I had a good feeling about this plan. I got my bow out and shot an arrow at one of the snails. It sank into their mucus, drawing a small wound, but not much. Snail and slime monsters were really resistant to physical attacks.
I backed into the tunnel as all five monsters came after me. I made sure to stay far away. While I wasn’t entirely sure they would spit acid, they had a greater concentration of Mana around their mouths. With their coloration and pool, it was a safe assumption to make.
Monsters in the 2nd layer were quite mindless and they all rushed towards me and towards the incredibly shoddy runic trap I had made. Of the five runes, only three went off, but that was enough. I had set them up in a ‘U’ shape to try and trap all the snails at once. Fire exploded outwards from the runes around the snails.
They spat acid and kept rushing at me, through the flames, but I was too far away and they were too slow. The fire burnt off their mucus and then their flesh. While the flames only lasted for around 10 seconds, that was more than enough to kill or heavily damage the monsters. I shot arrows at the ones still alive, killing them from a distance to be safe.
I had done it.