Chương 10: 1-9 Dungeon insights

Taking a deep breath, Josef prepared for another bout of pain as he reached the bottom of more grimy stairs. You have entered: Cradle of Pestilence, 6th Floor Things had been going smoothly for the dungeon delving duo, much like Cana had predicted. Alongside the usual rats, they had now also faced slimes and bats. Josef understood why the lycan wasn't concerned with the first levels of this dungeon. The monster variety was low, the creatures were weak, and there was absolutely no coordination between them.

Anything they crossed paths with would just randomly throw itself at them with wild abandon. Rats? Charge into a straight jump. Bats? Shortest route to the face. Slimes? They… tried their hardest, which wasn't much. Those poor things could barely get a little jump going before Dusty tore through them, ripping out their core. His bunny companion had developed a particularly vicious streak towards the gelatinous blobs. Maybe some sort of natural competitiveness between species that move with hops?

At least he got some practice in for his Discerning Eyes skill. While he hadn't found anything noteworthy so far, he had hopes that every use would push the skill a little further. Fortunately, while the difficulty was lacking, the rewards weren't. With every fight, Josef's understanding of combat increased. Not a large feat, considering he started at 'vague memories of a schoolyard brawl', but those insights were still substantial to him. Primarily, he had a weakness for facing multiple enemies.

Grabbing one enemy with his Water Prison was a simple matter. On some occasions, he could even double up and catch two for the price of one. But more than that? Even though Dusty could reliably take on opponents of his own, there were still times when Cana had to step in and cover him. While Josef had no issues accepting help from his friend, it wounded him to realize how weak he still was. He had made attempts to use more than one water spell at once, but the results were rather catastrophic.

The furthest he got was shaping a half formed sphere before his first spell lost coherence and fell apart. Turns out that truly splitting your focus is a lot harder than watching TV while eating lunch. The split in attention can't waver for even a moment, while intent must stay separate. Needless to say, he wasn't getting there anytime soon. A foray back into water bullets was met with a similar lack of success, as even with smaller spheres and avid imagination of supersonic movement, the speed just wasn't there.

He could get them faster than before, but not to a level where they would pierce skin. It was more of a rapid fire bruising. But what about a slicing beam of water? Just no. These enemies were the bottom of the barrel, in his opinion, so he had to do better than that. After all, what self respecting mage got run over by some small fry? It was during one of those moments, when a bat slipped past an already busy Dusty, that he reached enlightenment.

Instead of trying to produce another spell to intercept the creature, he decided to cast one of the oldest spells known to humanity.

"Ha!", he shouted, mana condensing in his hand, as he punched the bat with all his might. The effect was instantaneous and gruesome, as blood and entrails exploded along the hallway, painting the bricks red. Josef had unleashed the fearsome power of 4 Strength, all in a single cast of 'Fist'. He stared at his hand, dumbfounded.

"Huh, I didn't think you'd be able to do that." Cana sounded confused as she stepped up to him with a measuring eye.

"You don't look like your body has a natural refinement, but I can't imagine a spell-casting class giving you one of those either. What's your trick?"

"Uh, I just gathered mana in my hand and punched it?" Josef knew not what to say to her. He didn't understand why what he did would be noteworthy. Cana shook her head.

"That only works if mana refined your body, but you either need to be born with one that can do it naturally or get a class-stone that changes you."

"Just to be clear, is that about my body having its own rank when I look up my status?" He got his answer as a nod. Josef understood why he could do it then. The heartstone had most definitely changed him to allow for this refinement.

"I guess you are more closely related to the simian tribe than you look. You're a full member of the kin after all, huh?" She chuckled at the revelation, but her body belied a remaining tenseness. He read about that term the night before. The kin, or Beastkin, was an overarching term that loosely described the more animalistic races of Aurum. Most of which notably came from the northern wilds, though it wasn't limited to those groups alone.

That did, however, exclude the reptilian races of this world, who proudly traced their ancestry back to the dragons themselves, or so they would claim. Those were called Scalefolk, and there was an entire empire of them to the west. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Or, as the elves would say, animals and lizards. They really didn't like getting mixed with the rest of Aurum.

Josef suspected that she didn't fully believe her own conclusion, but he wasn't about to correct her. Even decades after their disappearance, dragons were still strongly revered, and he didn't want the attention that having one of their hearts would bring him.

"Yep, all monkey powered goodness." He tried to give a convincing cheer as he waved his fist. Despite the increased level of awkwardness, their dungeon dive had to continue. Looking for another group of monsters to test his newfound physical prowess, they initially came across another group of slimes. The encounter was a tad bit too weird to properly test his fists though. Dusty was being a little savage, and the monsters were a little small, forcing him to bend over as he punched one into the ground.

He only figured out that stomping the little blobs wasn't an option, as his sandals got in the way of applying his refined body. At least he no longer needed to ask why most of the non-elven people he met weren't wearing any shoes. Running barefoot wasn't just a lifestyle. It was like carrying an additional weapon. Not one he was planning to pick up though, he decided while looking at the ground covered in grime and chunks of slime.

Moving on from that awkward encounter, he finally found the perfect training dummies. Asking both Cana and Dusty to stay back, he faced the group of four bats with determination. In one hand, the round shape of his Water Prison began to take shape. The sphere was larger than his first attempts at the spell, as he had learned to add more mana to increase its size.

While he couldn't make it too big, as the mana cost was increasing at absurd rates and the speed of the sphere would plummet, he could still make it to about half a meter in diameter before things got out of hand. That is, if he had enough time to gather the mana. Instead of trapping the very first bat that came for him like always, he instead kept building the spell as he swung his fist at the monster. Unlike his last attempt, he only had some of the runoff mana he had corralled from his spell available.

This was the moment of truth. Could he reinforce his body with mana while casting a spell? Take a swing without dropping his focus? The result was positive. Even though the sphere did shudder as he took aim at the critter, it ultimately held and continued to grow. This time, the bat didn't completely fall apart as it impacted his fist, though the resounding crunch still marked it as decidedly fatal.

Its body, rebounding from the impact, even smacked another bat behind it hard enough to make it whirl through the air. With the first one taken care of and one being delayed, Josef now had exactly two bats right in front of him. As he swiped his arm across in front of his body, the ball of water he had shaped followed the gesture. Like the world's wettest flytrap, it embraced and submerged both creatures as their paths crossed. They wouldn't have to struggle for long as the magical water bore down on them.

Though that was still longer than the last bat had left to live, as it now encountered a more direct hit from his fist. Josef had done it, an encounter finished entirely on his own, with nothing but gumption and his own magical ability. Mana 39/88 And half of his mana. Can't forget about that. Big spheres equal big spending. Fortunately, his energy replenished plenty fast between groups. He was pretty sure it was even faster than outside the dungeon. Was it pointless for a summoner to fight without his familiar?

Off brand to punch stuff if he wanted to be a spellcaster at a safe distance? Absolutely. But he had proven that he could fight. That he wasn't just a background support who would have to wait for others to do the fighting for him. No, he was a mighty wizard, a spell-casting machine, a living terror of des-"Not bad," Cana interrupted his celebrations as she clasped her paw on his shoulder.

"Taking you further down into the dungeon might not be as bad an idea as I thought. Guess I'll have to seriously endorse you to the others when I see them next."

"So you are saying I am good enough for a little push into the deeper floors?" Josef tried his best to lead her on innocently.

"Nah, not happening. But…" she teasingly trailed off.

"Maybe we could go have a look at the floor 10 boss."

"Yes!" he immediately made for another round of celebrating. Ending his first dungeon run on a boss would be a great way to wrap it up. Maybe he would even get some proper loot out of it, as the tiny cores weren't really scratching the itch.

"So what can the boss do? Actually, what kind of monster is the boss?" He couldn't help but ask as they continued.

"Not gonna spoil the surprise. That would take fun out of it, wouldn't it?" She chuckled.

"If push comes to shove, I can solo it though, so no need to get worried. Believe me, my party had to do that fight often enough that we had time to experiment."

"You mean we have to make the whole track again every time we want to get down there? Please tell me you're joking." Josef despaired. It had already taken them hours to get this far. Or at least he estimated it to have been that long, as he lacked a clock to check.

"Please tell me there are shortcuts or something." The lycan was now outright laughing at him.

"Yep, a good dungeoner needs sturdy legs. But there are shortcuts to cut down on travel. I know a slide that goes all the way from floor 3 to floor 7."

"And why haven't we taken that?"

"Because… if you want to have shortcuts, you better open your eyes and spot them yourself." She nodded sagely at her own advice. Josef was almost getting upset when he realized the deeper implications. He had been so busy looking for monsters, planning fights and theorizing spells, he could almost not remember how the environment even looked. There was no awareness of the surrounding dungeon in how he acted so far.

Not only did he miss all shortcuts there might have been, he also would have missed any traps on his way. Either Cana had steered them around anything nasty, or he was lucky because there weren't any traps on the first few floors. And wasn't that a thought for the ages? He could have just stepped on some kind of pressure plate and gotten impaled by a spear. Or fallen down a pitfall, maybe gotten crushed by a boulder. That oversight needed fixing. From now on, no secrets shall escape his eyes.

It was time to use Discerning Eyes to sweep his surroundings. On top of that, he had a backup strategy.

"Hey Dusty, mind helping me watch for traps and stuff?" Four eyes would see more than two. Cana, for her part, was visibly happy that he had picked up on her hint. With a new perspective and more perceptive than ever, they continued on their way. Josef wouldn't be stopped until he got around to beating his first boss.