Chương 49: Champion Monster Of The First Layer

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 2 nd layer. I had only been in the dungeon for two days, but the monsters of the 1 st layer weren't challenging. The champion monster wasn't a troll, but an enormous 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.

If possible, one would usually launch a costly but powerful spell at the start of a fight to gain an advantage, 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 at 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 stab out and lodge in one monster.

Setting my shield to the side near my spear against the left wall of the tunnel, I looked around. My Shadow Vision revealed nothing hidden, but I triple-checked to be on the safe side. I didn't want any surprises in this fight. Nothing out of the ordinary with my other sensory skills either. I took careful aim and fired one arrow after another. It took the wolf monsters a few seconds to realize they were under attack and to identify the source. Two of the wolves went down, and a third was injured.

I cast aside the bow and grabbed 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 had to let go and step back. I drew my sword as I retreated. A wolf leaped at me, and I swung my blade while dodging to the side. I slashed open its neck, and a spray of warm red blood covered me. I turned my head away so that it wouldn'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, 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 only a 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 run me down. The Champion had the stats of a legendary level 5 being, which meant 100 stat points. It appeared most had been 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. A larger monster and larger beings had their stats distributed across their bodies.

A smaller person with a Strength of 10 could match an adult with a Strength of 10, not counting leverage or positioning. Everyone rated the stats the same. This gave me confidence, along with my earlier practice over 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 twisted my blade and then yanked it out.

The Champion monster fell dead. The remaining wounded wolf was easy enough to kill. 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 worth between 50 and 100 copper, with 100 coppers equaling a silver, and the same value applied to silver, gold, and then platinum. Yellow was 5 silvers to 10 silver. Green was 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 20 th 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 25 th layer. I knew she was strong, but the monster would be level 250. That was when I realized I had seriously messed up. Regular monsters were level 5 on the first layer, and the Champion was equivalent to level 10. On average, monsters had stats equal to legends, so they used the 20 stats per level benchmark.

That meant 200 stats, not 100. I had been careless and stupid. I had won, but I had underestimated the Champion monster. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Foolish, I was foolish. Doing math in the middle of a fight was incredibly stupid. I should have carefully thought through all this before, if I was going to do 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 vast 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 wasn't very pleasant to deal with. I also recovered my weapons. The bow and spear went back into my pack.

It would have been nice if the dungeon had just magically vanished, leaving the monsters and the cores behind, but it did nothing 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. With no idea if that rumor was true, I had other things to focus on, like going to the 2 nd layer and not messing up my math.

My nerves had gotten 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 that 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. After I took care of everything, I examined the passage leading to the next layer.

It wasn't a nice passage like the one from the surface to the 1 st layer. The Adventurers Guild built those passages into stairs to make them easier to use and to show that those specific passages to the surface were maintained, unlike other random passages. While the various people down here made many passages more climbable, the dungeon was constantly changing. Some claimed they saw the same place again, but there was no way to prove it.

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 and inside of cities. People guarded the entrance to the cavern that the Last Bastion resided in to ensure it never changed or disappeared. The passage to the 2 nd 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.

There 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 tunnels. Five options this time. One led to another passage down, I could sense that. But of the other four, I had no idea. I picked one that was stone. I didn't like the look of the two vine-covered tunnels. The last one had a weird smell I didn't want to deal with. I trusted my gut and 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. If I could win, it would do too much damage to my equipment. The proper way to fight such monsters would have been with magic, but I didn't have the skills for magic spells. If I had not stayed down here for months, I would have fought them, but it was better to preserve my fighting ability.

Before I departed, I considered whether 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 wise 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 typically meant acid.

Green and purple usually meant poison. Again, these were guidelines, not rules regarding monsters here in the dungeon. I pulled out an arrow from my pack and slowly etched fire runes into the stone floor. The arrowhead would wear out heavily after this, and simply carving runes would be pointless, 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 ground them up using the pommel of my sword on the back of my shield. After I turned the cores to red dust, I carefully sprinkled the core dust into the very shallow fire runes using a knife. My Danger Sense grew, 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 terrible for a person.

Monsters and people emitted a small amount of Mana, but core dust was a lot more concentrated and bad for a person's health. The snails were magical monsters, which meant they were releasing more Mana, 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 snail. It sank into their mucus, drawing a slight wound, but not much. Snail and slime monsters were resistant to physical attacks. I went back into the tunnel as all five monsters came after me, staying 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.

Monsters in the 2 nd layer were relatively 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 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 lasted only about 10 seconds, that was more than enough to kill or severely damage the monsters. I shot arrows at the ones still alive, killing them from a distance to be safe. I did it.