Cold nullification advanced to level 25

"Is that all you've got?" I taunted the demon I was fighting, something called a daemonium grando. A giant, horizontally slitted eye, set in the centre of a floating ball of blue flesh, surrounded by a ring of tentacles each with a mouth at the end. The mouths spat frozen air filled with tennis ball sized lumps of ice that made the spider queen look positively warm and cosy by comparison.

That was a funny thought. I'd dodged the spider queen flawlessly, and had got within range to fight back. If not for the fox-kin interfering, wouldn't I have won? In fact, I very likely would have won even with the fox-kin, if I'd fought back properly, and hadn't let Mi'taan distract me. I really had got stronger.

I felt my taunt would have been more effective had my frozen right arm not chosen that moment to shatter, though. That was rather embarrassing and attracted an even louder storm of jeers than normal. Added to the wing I'd lost earlier to the spider queen, the outcome of this fight was not looking good.

The demon could blast my arrows from the air, not that I'd be launching any more of them with only one arm, and had an angle of attack wide enough to prevent me getting close. This was a fight I needed to take at range. I took a deep breath and fought back against the frozen air with my flame.

For a few seconds, fire and ice collided between the pair of us as we each unleashed our breath attacks, before the ice suddenly gave way. My flame poured over the demon, and while the light was blinding, I could hear the cracks and pops as first the leathery skin and then the icy flesh burnt away. Apparently, this particular species of demon had no bones, and by the time my mana ran out there was nothing left but ash and a bubbling cone of molten arena floor.

Heat immunity advanced to level 32

Slight overkill, perhaps, but I was still annoyed, and was taking it out on the poor demons. Mostly it was myself I was annoyed at. I'd justified my accidental destruction of the fox-kin by telling myself that my actions had been necessary, but now I knew they weren't. My previous analysis had been based on a misunderstanding. If I'd done things slightly differently, the fox-kin civilization would have survived, and I'd have gained powerful allies.

I still believed that—given what I knew at the time—I'd made sensible choices, but that new knowledge changed how the whole incident felt. The fox-kin no longer seemed like monsters deserving of my wrath, but innocent victims, left in an impossible situation by So'layn. I wasn't sure I'd call what I felt 'guilt', but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. Things would be so much easier if they were as obviously fake as the demon I'd just been fighting. Or if they really had been irredeemably evil.

If I'd offered up a sufficiently powerful mana crystal when repairing the temple shrine, would it have restored the floor's biome, like what had happened to the carnes multiformis? Magically creating a new settlement.

I hobbled towards the arena exit. My frozen wounds weren't bleeding for now, but they'd thaw before long. I also had one knee that had been smashed by a lump of ice, and my throat was horribly burnt. I was in need of a respawn, but I had enough left in me to get to reception and back. With my last few minutes, I was interested in seeing just how far the arena difficulty level could be dialled up.

Malphasaunt, daemonium semideus

Living solitary lives in the deepest layers of the abyss, these highly intelligent demons possess unparalleled physical strength and magical power. With skin that can turn even a mythril blade and innate resistance to all affinities of magic, wounding one is all but impossible, but even should an adventurer manage it, they would find even apparently fatal wounds regenerate in seconds.

Health: 10000000/10000000

Mana: Unlimited

While it was nice that my enhanced appraisal showed a precise number for health, that number was a full three orders of magnitude greater than anything else I'd ever seen. And that mana was an outright cheat. Heck, the entire description was a cheat. From the reaction I felt through my perceive presence skill, I doubted it was an exaggeration. It felt far stronger than anything else I'd met, other than the pair of dragons.

Perceive presence advanced to level 11

The demon wasn't all that large compared to some monsters I'd seen, at maybe four metres tall. It had a lower body that was long and chitinous, with six legs and a trio of curved, segmented tails which each ended in vicious barbs, and I could see green fluid dripping from them even from across the arena. It looked similar to a scorpion, without the claws, and if scorpions had three tails, each filled with venom that dripped constantly and reacted with stone to release acrid clouds of smoke.

From the front sprouted a four-armed, androgynous humanoid torso, tanned bronze in colour, and wearing dark metallic armour. Demonite, probably, given how similar it looked to dupliKatie's sword. Each hand held a sword that to me would have been a heavy two-hander.

"You dare challenge me?" it called. "There are less painful ways to die."

"True, but my favourite way is still buried under tonnes of rock," I replied. I didn't like the ones that talked unprovoked; they sounded too alive. Still, it wasn't as if I'd be killing this one.

The announcer signalled the match start, and my mana hadn't regenerated enough to...

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Perceive danger advanced to level 11

Perceive danger advanced to level 12

Perceive danger advanced to level 13

Perceive danger advanced to level 14

I looked down at the fifty centimetre long spike that was embedded in my chest, then back up into the grinning, inhuman face of the demon. I hadn't even seen it move. One moment I'd been considering my strategy, and the next it had covered the distance and run me through with a tail.

I spluttered up blood as my red health bar rapidly drained, but I couldn't help grinning in turn. This would be my goal. The demon I'd need to beat before I'd consider leaving this time-accelerated world. How long would it take me?

I kinda wanted to do an 'I'll be back' line, but his tail had pierced... everything, as far as I could tell, which made cool one liners impossible. I couldn't breathe, my heart wasn't beating, and I was leaking something that looked very much like my stomach contents.

And then the poison kicked in.

Poison immunity advanced to level 35

Corrosion immunity advanced to level 33

Piercing damage nullification advanced to level 24

I woke back up at the shrine, the last moments of my previous life seared into my memory. The way my torso had liquefied, melting away around the demon's stinger as if it were a white-hot rod stabbed through a block of ice.

There had been no pain, though. For all I complained about inaccurately named skills, it took something special to actually hurt me now. Something that caused pain deliberately rather than as a side effect, or something that attacked my soul. I was very glad my pain immunity hadn't been handicapped by my wish like my fear tolerance had been, or I would never have been able to tolerate resistance training. This could have been a very different adventure...

Thankfully, that wasn't the adventure I was on; I had enough to deal with without inventing new problems. At least I had a plan. It was a boring plan—grind the arena until I maxed as many skills as possible and could afford to buy all the high end equipment—but it was a plan nonetheless.

I'd also located the passage down to the dungeon's sixth floor. In typical RPG fashion, it was locked away behind a fetch quest; the pair of demons guarding it refused to let anyone down it without a promissory note from the captain of the guard. Unfortunately, I had, after a careful search, determined that the captain didn't actually exist.

Plenty of people knew him, and told me his name and where he worked. I'd even found out where he lived. He simply wasn't there, and asking anyone where he was right now never garnered any useful information. They either didn't know, or pointed me at his office at the headquarters, which was empty. Stupid buggy game. Or perhaps there was some other action I needed to do that would cause him to spawn?

Unlike a real RPG, or at least the closed world style, I could presumably kill the pair of guards, or ignore them and push my way past, but that risked turning the town against me. I didn't want to block myself off from use of the arena or stores. For now, I would ignore the existence of the sixth floor, and continue advancing my skills.

What would the sixth floor even be like? Given how far this fifth floor had deteriorated from the realism upstairs, I was worried I'd be walking into a pixelated, two-dimensional realm.

I returned to the arena, selecting a daemonium brutum as my opponent. They seemed to be my optimal match up right now; I could win maybe three quarters of my fights, but still came out of most of them with wounds that required a respawn.

My opponent marched into the arena, a mace the size of me slung over his shoulder. The announcer signalled the start of the match, and I fired an arrow at his chest. With my skill increases, I felt confident I could aim at something as small as his eye from this distance, as long as he stood still. Obviously he wouldn't, so I aimed lower to make it harder for him to dodge.

He stepped to the side, neatly avoiding my first arrow, but having no time left to deal with my second.

Bow proficiency advanced to level 15

The arrow didn't penetrate far into his dense muscles, and appraisal showed only a small loss of health. He roared in anger and charged, making no attempt to dodge my third arrow but leaving me with no time to launch a fourth. I dodged to the side as he swung his mace in a devastating overhead blow, cratering the arena floor and showering us both with shards of rock. I leapt backward as he followed up with a kick, then pulled my stolen fox-kin spear from my item box and struck forward.

Master dodger advanced to level 26

Once again, the demon's dense musculature proved almost as effective as armour, and I failed to do more than scratch him. He swung his mace in a wide arc at my waist height, and I let the instincts from my skills guide my actions. I couldn't jump over it. I didn't have enough time to unfurl my wings. I could dive, but that would leave me prone, and I would fall to his next attack. It would take two backsteps to get out of range, but I only had time for one. It had far too much momentum to safely parry or block.

With all of my options being flawed, I picked the best of the bunch and summoned my shield into the path of the weapon. The mace struck it, but kept on going regardless, catapulting both me and my shield across the arena, the bones of my right arm shattering with a sickening crunch.

Master blocker advanced to level 24

Blunt damage nullification advanced to level 22

The jeering of the crowd intensified as the demon sauntered towards me, wearing a self-satisfied grin. I tried to stand, but my leg was having none of it. Apparently I'd broken that at some point in my tumble across the arena, and putting pressure on it resulted in a spike of bone stabbing out through my shin, before I crumpled back down on an extra knee I shouldn't have.

Drat... I should have gone for the dive. Now I was just as prone as that would have left me, but with the added problem of shattered limbs. This would be one of the quarter of fights I still lost, then.

The demon stopped outside of my range and raised his mace for another overhead swing, while I desperately considered what move I could make. I couldn't raise myself on my legs, but in the position I'd fallen in, my wings were outstretched. I used them to push against the ground as I summoned a spider claw into my still functional left hand.

Dagger mastery advanced to level 21

The jeering stopped. For the first time since I'd first set foot in the arena, the crowd fell silent.

The demon giant looked down, his face a mask of concentration as if he was trying to solve a difficult problem. Then he turned and looked at me, standing on one leg, the bloody claw still in my hand, and a rather sensitive bit of his biology on the floor next to me.

"That'll teach you to fight naked, with your manhood on full display," I snickered.

The mace moved so fast I didn't even have the chance to change my expression before it impacted my head, leaving it in a condition that would never be capable of wearing any sort of expression ever again.

Blunt damage nullification advanced to level 23