Chương 79: Onwards, Towards The Dungeon

Thankfully, it only takes about twenty minutes for the gaping hole in my thigh to stop being a structural concern. The flesh knits itself back together with quiet efficiency, the worst of the damage fading as if it had the decency to be embarrassed by its own existence. What remains is an aesthetically displeasing scar, jagged, uneven, and entirely unacceptable.

A quick glance confirms that Pride is already addressing the issue, smoothing the edges and pulling everything back toward my ideal with patient, inevitable correction. Highly convenient. My tail sways in quiet approval. The motion is somewhat compromised by my current position—flat on my back in what used to be a forest, tail loosely wrapped around my waist like a very judgmental belt—but the sentiment remains intact.

Tragically, now that my wounds are healed and my resources are restored, I no longer have an excuse to remain horizontal. I sigh. Deeply. Then sit up, brushing a bit of dirt off my shoulder as I tilt my head toward the sky, cutting into the conversation I've been only half-listening to for the past ten minutes. Something about ranking dramatic landing techniques by joint damage. The higher-tier ones are apparently the ones that do more damage. Mildly concerning.

"Alright, I am going to go bully the monsters in that dungeon now." I pause.

"… Also, the no knee-bend landing should be moved up to A-tier at minimum. I know from experience." There's a brief moment of silence— Then a flood of responses. A handful of genuine goodbyes, an image of a very serious-looking pigeon saluting me from the stars, and at least two separate voices dramatically collapsing into tears, begging me to stay like I'm about to vanish forever instead of walking a few hundred kilometers away. I roll my eyes. Then return the salute to the pigeon. Professional courtesy.

My Garden folds shut as I let the tear in reality seal itself, the noise cutting off cleanly. Peace at last. I pull up my status menu and skim through it, isolating the base values with a practiced glance. Twenty-three free stats per level. I consider it for a moment. Then nod. Eight into Vitality. Every level. The rest into Strength until I hit the next Milestone. Dexterity and Perception can continue to spiral out of control on their own. My class and race seem more than happy to handle that for me.

I distribute the points accordingly. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Stats Vitality: 347 [+58] Strength: 494 [+82] Dexterity: 1238 [+206] Perception: 898 [+150] Charisma: 132 [+22] Free Points: 0 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I nod again, more satisfied this time. Three more levels until Strength hits five hundred. Then I can start chasing the Vitality milestone. Efficient. Reasonable. And, most importantly— On schedule.

I stretch deeply—slow and indulgent, like a cat that just finished committing mild atrocities—before pushing myself to my feet and making my way over to the now thoroughly cooled stag corpse. It is… still very large. I give it a brief, evaluating look before storing the entire thing without hesitation. It takes up a respectable chunk of my spatial storage, but despite my many talents, I am, tragically, underqualified to butcher something of this size.

And by underqualified, I mean I would almost certainly turn valuable materials into a cautionary tale. Therefore, delegation. Future me can hand it to someone competent. Speaking of plans, the dungeon the stars so helpfully shoved into my brain is actually quite close, all things considered. Only a few hundred kilometers away, and roughly the same distance from the town. Convenient. I break into a run again, slipping back into motion with practiced ease as I weave through the forest.

Sometimes I stay low, darting between trunks and roots; other times I simply jump, clearing the canopy entirely and skimming above it in long, controlled arcs before dropping back down. The first stretch is quiet, almost peaceful, but that doesn't last long. Gradually, the forest begins to change. The density thins in places, and faint paths begin to appear, eventually sharpening into proper roads that cut cleanly through the greenery. Civilization.

At one point, I catch sight of a caravan and slow just enough to observe it properly. It is… not what I expected. There are wagons—technically—but calling them that feels misleading. Each one is closer to a small building mounted on reinforced wheels, large enough to comfortably house multiple people without feeling cramped. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. It's less a caravan and more a collection of mobile architecture.

More importantly, there isn't a single horse in sight. Instead, the entire convoy is pulled by massive, heavily built lizard-like creatures. They are thick-scaled, low to the ground, and built like they could drag a mountain if properly motivated. Inspect identifies them as Ironhide Lizards, which feels entirely appropriate. They're also fast. Very fast. I track their movement for a moment, clocking them somewhere between two and three hundred kilometers per hour.

Slower than me, obviously, but still impressive in both scale and execution. Nine out of ten. Points deducted for not letting me ride one. I pick up speed again, continuing toward my destination. As I move, I begin to pass more people, though most don't even register my presence before I'm already gone. One moment I exist, the next I don't. At best they spot a pale blur at the edge of perception. Some do notice, though.

A grizzled Dogkin overseeing what are clearly new adventurers tracks me with sharp, practiced awareness. A tired party returning from a hunt, dragging a makeshift wagon piled high with monster parts, their exhaustion visible even from a distance. A massive Bearkin in full plate carrying a greatsword on his back that looks more like a structural beam than a weapon. I run Inspect on them as I pass. Tier two, mostly. One exception, a Catkin healer still at tier one, tucked safely within the group. Their classes are…

acceptable. Rare at absolute best, nothing particularly noteworthy. Tragic. Still, it's a noticeable step up from what I've been dealing with so far, which means the fights ahead should finally start being consistently interesting. My tail sways lightly as I accelerate, the forest blurring around me once more. … Hopefully.

I close the distance to the dungeon quickly, only slowing once when a rather enthusiastic tier two slime decides to chase a party of terrified level thirties through the forest like it just discovered ambition. I intervene. Briefly. A vine punches straight through it, extracts the core with practiced efficiency, and I am already gone before any of them can process the concept of being saved, let alone attempt conversation. Free money.

I continue on, slowing only when I reach the exact point the stars marked in my mind. Then I stop. The ground is… wrong. A jagged tear splits the earth apart, as if something beneath it forced its way upward and then the ground simply decided to stay open. It resembles a wound more than a cave, a dark, uneven maw leading downward into a system of tunnels that swallow all light. Charming. I crouch at the edge, peering down into the black.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Dungeon Detected You have encountered a Local Dungeon. Size: Medium Recommended Level: 62 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I tilt my head slightly. Then, with a small, practiced motion, I open a tear in reality.

"…Hey, Older Sister. You said this was level sixty, right?" There's a faint shift, something like a frown.

"It was when I checked earlier. If I were to guess, the mana density in the area is increasing." I tilt my head a little further.

"Why?" A pause.

"From what I can tell, it just… happens." I consider that for a few seconds. Then nod.

"Ah. Another 'shake the snowglobe' function. The universe seems to have a strong stance against stagnation."

"That it does." … That agreement was entirely too immediate. I briefly consider asking why. Then decide I value my current level of existential stability.

"Noted. Thank you."

"You are welcome, darling." I close the rift and then, naturally, I hop straight down. The world darkens around me as I drop into the opening, the light above shrinking rapidly before vanishing entirely. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have entered the Local Dungeon: Stone Crawler Caves ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Stone Crawlers. … They sound durable. I have already deducted a point from my rating of this place, and it has been approximately three seconds. Not quite a new record. Close, though.

My tail flicks in mild annoyance as I adjust my gravity and land silently on the cave floor, boots making no sound against the uneven stone. The air is cooler here, still and heavy, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and something mineral-rich beneath it. I glance down the branching tunnels. Then pick one at random. Natural light disappears almost immediately as I move, swallowed by the cave's oppressive darkness.

The walls close in slightly, the space narrowing just enough to feel intentional, as if the dungeon itself prefers things close. Unfortunately for it, my vision does not care about pedestrian concepts such as darkness. The inky blackness might as well not exist. Edges remain clear. Detail remains intact, as though the concept of "no light" is merely a polite suggestion. I am still not entirely sure how that works. It is, however, extremely convenient. Therefore— I choose not to question it.

After a few minutes of walking, I encounter the first inhabitant of the cave system. It's… unfortunate. A jackal-like creature trudges along the path ahead, its gait slow but steady, stone scraping faintly against stone with each step. Its head is the most striking feature, if "striking" is the correct word for something that looks like it was designed by a game developer with poor taste. Its jaw dominates nearly the entire skull, splitting its face open from top to bottom. No lips. No restraint.

Just rows of jagged, uneven teeth packed tightly together, like someone tried to maximize discomfort per square inch. The rest of its head is encased in a thick, uneven stone carapace, smooth in some places, rough in others, with only a pair of crusted ears breaking the monotony. Its body follows the same design philosophy. Stone growths layered over it's muscle, shielding vital areas in blunt, practical plates. Inspect fires.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Stone Crawler (Level 62 | Tier 2) Species: Beast Aspect: Stone A jackal-like predator adapted for subterranean hunting. Lacks eyes and scent, relying instead on sound and tremor-sense to track movement. Its stone-hardened body allows it to endure heavy impacts while closing distance on prey. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ …? Tremor sense. Sound-based tracking. I blink. Then walk toward it. Closer. Then closer. Eventually, I am standing directly beside it. It doesn't react.

Not even a twitch. It simply continues forward, entirely unaware of the existential threat currently evaluating its life choices from point-blank range. … Right. Silent Star continues to justify its existence. My tail flicks in immediate, profound annoyance. So much for fun fights. Astra Nocturne settles into my grip, and I bring it down in a clean Horizon Slash across the creature's neck. The blade passes through without resistance, no mana armor rising to contest it. The head separates. The body collapses.

Instant and efficient. Tragic. For it. I store the corpse and continue forward, mildly disappointed. It takes nearly five of them before I level again, which I choose to attribute to one of three factors: reduced experience due to lack of effort, the species itself being underwhelming, or the simple reality that epic classes demand more to progress. … Probably all three.

As I move deeper into the cave system, selecting paths at random and removing anything that happens to exist along them, their numbers begin to increase. First pairs. Then trios. Still not enough to matter. I level once more before something finally changes. The tunnel opens into a large cavern. The space is wide, the ceiling rising high enough that even the darkness seems to stretch. Only four crawlers are present. They are clustered together. Feeding. I slow.

At the center of them lies the corpse of a Catkin woman. I wrinkle my nose. The smell is awful. Not the distant, muted rot I got used to in the tutorial, where everything was already long dead and conveniently sanitized by undeath. This is fresh. Immediate. The crawlers haven't just killed her, they've opened her up. The cavity of her torso is split wide, ribs forced apart, and what used to be neatly contained is now very much… not.

Half of her digestive tract is exposed to open air, torn loose and dragged across the stone in glistening strands that I am choosing to ignore. There are sounds, too. Soft, rhythmic tearing. The dull crunch of something that should not crunch. A wet, dragging noise as one of the crawlers shifts its grip. … I blink once. Then wrinkle my nose again, a bit more pointedly. That is going to linger. Unfortunate.

I approach without hesitation and remove the crawlers in short order, their bodies falling one after another with minimal resistance. Silence returns. I take in the surroundings. A backpack lies off to the side, torn open and trampled into the stone. The gear and food that used to be inside is scattered now scattered around on the ground. Most notably: lit lanterns. There are also scratches along the ground. And footprints. More than one person's worth. And— Far too many crawler tracks. Ah. An ambush.

Or perhaps simply an encounter with numbers they were not prepared to handle. I look away from the body and close my eyes, letting my hearing expand outward. The cave breathes softly around me. Distant scraping. Faint shifting stone. And— Something else. Far away. Sharp. Rhythmic. … Gunfire?