“Stay back you ugly things,” I say as I wave my saber at the three guardians while slowly moving backward. I casually throw my torch at the two guardians furthest away from me and I take a swipe at the closest guardian to me as it reaches its hand out to grab me. My saber is able to cut the fingers off the guardian, unfortunately for me though it isn’t enough to stagger it and it continues to lunge at me attempting to bite with full force. Afraid of being bit I raise my hands to grab the side of its head holding it in place, I watch as its mouth tries desperately to make me its lunch with saliva dripping down its face increasing in volume with each attempted bite. Remembering how I fought the last guardian and how easily its limbs were able to be detached, I grip the sides of its face hard and pull with all my might, and then after a few tugs, the head detaches from the rest of its body. I kick its body towards the other two guardians who now have a slightly charred ember glow to them, and while I’m still holding on to its head, I slam it to the ground and proceed to stomp on it until its nothing more than a puddle on the floor.
“That’s two down and now two more to go,” I say as I pull out a stone axe and a lit torch. I got to make this quick I don’t know how long these bindings will last; I think to myself as I begin to light my stone axe on fire using my lit torch.
“Bulls eye shot” I shout as I raise my burning axe over my head ready to throw it at full force at one of the remaining guardians. I feel the warmth of the skill flow through my hands and onto the stone axe and once I am satisfied the skill has taken hold I throw the stone axe but to my surprise, it feels lighter than it should be.
“Oh, shit don’t tell me the bindings broke,” I say as I watch the handle of my axe encased in fire flows through the air with no stone blade attached.
“Well, that didn’t work out as I planned,” I say as I pull out a stone spear.
“Burst of speed,” I say as I feel the skill course through my legs then I rush towards the two guardians and before they have a chance to react, I thrust my spear towards the abdomen of one of the guardians. Once I have the guardian impaled on my spear, I aim the guardian towards the remaining guardian and shove my spear as hard as I can which penetrates through the first guardian and impales the second one. Now that I have both guardians impaled on my spear it’s getting harder to hold them in place, however, I summon all my strength and shove them both to the floor. I then take out a lit torch from my inventory and shove it into the open mouth of the first guardian, the guardian shakes trying desperately to escape but it's too late as the torch has caused it to catch fire.
The fire starts to spread across its entire body as both guardians struggle to break free, but the matter of fact is that both of them are impaled on the same spear which makes getting free of each other rather difficult. I watch as the dark cave becomes rather colorful now as both guardians are now fully engulfed in flames.
“Wow they were really dry,” I say with a smile as both guardians become nothing but charred bodies and ash. I store all my equipment back into my inventory screen and I stand over the corpses of the guardians.
“Son of a bitch that sucked,” I say as I bend down and place my hands over the charred bodies.
Would you like to loot the [Cursed Guardian of the Dodola Cave]
Yes/No
Would you like to loot the [Cursed Guardian of the Dodola Cave]
Yes/No
I click on both of the yes icons and watch as both bodies are covered in the previous green cracks, and then after a brief period, they turn into red smoke. I raise my hand and let the red smoke enter my body, as it envelopes my hand I feel the calm sense of clarity course through to my head.
***2/2 Marked Monster has been consumed***
+2 has been added to your INT Stat
“I need to figure out what makes a monster a marked monster or what that even means for starters,” I say as I close out of the system pop-up menu.
[Undead Bone] x8 has been added to your inventory.
[Undead flesh] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Steel Saber] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Flintlock Pistol] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Leather Boots] x2 has been added to your inventory.
32 [Copper Coin] has been added to your inventory.
6 [Silver Coin] has been added to your inventory.
[Soul of the Undead] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Will of the Guardian] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Antidote] x4 has been added to your inventory.
With the two bodies looted I walk over to the remaining bodies and place my hands on their corpses.
Would you like to loot the [Cursed Guardian of the Dodola Cave]
Yes/No
Would you like to loot the [Cursed Guardian of the Dodola Cave]
Yes/No
I click on both yes icons, and once I do one body starts to develop green cracks but the other body cracks are bright blue. They both crack at the same pace and immediately turn into smoke, there is the familiar red smoke but now there is also a bright white smoke that almost looks like a cloud. The two smokes swirl together in harmony neither one fighting for dominance rather they both come together to form a white smoke with red parallel lines of red smoke. I raise my hands to welcome the new smoke, and once the smoke has gone completely into my hands, I feel the calming feeling like before but also I feel a sense of intense focus wash over me.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
***1/4 Marked Monster has been consumed***
***1/1 Marked Monster has been consumed***
+2 has been added to your MP Stat.
[Undead Bone] x8 has been added to your inventory.
[Undead flesh] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Steel Saber] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Flintlock Pistol] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Leather Boots] x2 has been added to your inventory.
32 [Copper Coin] has been added to your inventory.
6 [Silver Coin] has been added to your inventory.
[Soul of the Undead] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Will of the Guardian] x2 has been added to your inventory.
[Antidote] x4 has been added to your inventory.
“There is no rhyme or reason to this thing but if I was to guess the smoke has to do with a stat and it looks like the more I consume the more it takes to increase that stat,” I say while scratching my head.
“So red smoke is intelligence, and the white smoke is MP and the black smoke is just nothing,” I say as I sit down on the cold floor.
“I have way too many questions that I’m answering purely on speculation,” I say while holding the torch close to me to receive some of its warmth.
“I wish there was a how-to guide for this thing and not a bunch of guesswork,” I say while thumbing through my system menu randomly. I scroll over to the local map tab and to my surprise it's not of the island rather it looks like it’s of the cave. The map shows a layout of the cave with a great portion of it completed with a very small section of it grayed out in the top right corner and at the very top of it says “Dungeon: Dodola waterfall cave”.
“Oh, wow I’m almost done, here I come you sweet quest reward,” I say as I shoot up excited that this cave has almost been fully explored.
“But first I should probably make some more weapons there’s no telling if there are any more guardians or other monsters nearby.
Undead Bone Axe:
20/2 Undead Bone
121/2 Basic Stone
16/1 Bindings
“Let’s go with 5, that sounds like a good number three for throwing and two for knocking skulls,” I say as I click on the Undead bone axe icon five times. My system screen glows for a few moments and five bone axes fall into my hand. They look almost like my normal bone axes however these bones have a shade of green and blackness to them.
Undead Bone Axe
+7 ATK, +4 Axe DMG, +3 Poison DMG, +3 Curse DMG, 60/60 Durability
1-Handed Axe made out of the bones of your undead enemies.
“Eww these things look gnarly,” I say as I store four of the axes in my inventory and keep one in my hand.
“Now that all my crafting and looting are out of the way it's time to finish exploring this cave,” I say as I continue my journey.
I walk for roughly another thirty minutes and as I do I open my local map every once in while to see how my progress is going until I come to the very last portion of the map to be grayed out. I look up from my map and I now see that the cave has opened into what looks like a giant auditorium.
Quest Complete:
[Explore the waterfall cave]
Would you like to receive your quest rewards:
Yes/No
I press the yes icon and as soon as my finger releases from my system menu, I feel a sensation course through my veins that is almost euphoric.
“I could get used to this feeling,” I say as I open my stats menu.
STATS:
Name: Miles Egan
Class: Waste of Skin
Health: 11/11
MP: 14/11 (+3)
Stamina: 16/16
ATK: 11
DEF: 8(+2)(+5)(+3)
INT: 8
RES: 5(+1)(3)(+1)
HIT: 11
SPD: 12(+2)
RESISTANCE:
N/A
“Oh yeah it's all coming together,” I say in my best Kronk voice. I look all around the auditorium but it’s no use as all I see is pitch darkness.
“How big is this room,” I say while scanning the walls around me until I see an unlit torch. I could always use more torches I think to myself as I try to pull out the torch however it doesn’t even budge.
“That’s weird,” I say as I light the torch with my own. As soon as I do I see that the torch is attached to a mechanism in the wall. Once the torch has been fully lit it causes the mechanism to create a chain reaction in the entire cave auditorium by turning on various torches in the surrounding area. I watch in awe as the torches continue to be lit one by one until the auditorium is completely illuminated and right at the center of this auditorium are none other 15 boxes that look just like treasure chests.
“Oh, man please tell me that’s what I think it is,” I say as I walk slowly towards the treasure chest scanning the area for more boobytraps. Once I’m confident there are no boobytraps I open the closest chest and to my absolute delight, it's brimming with gold coins. I place my hands on top of the coins with a big smile on my face and once I do the gold coins disappear.
96,743 [Gold Coin] has been added to your inventory.
“Oh man now I’m in the money, too bad there is nothing I can spend it on yet,” I say as I loot the remaining 14 treasure chests. Once I’m done looting, I open my inventory screen and view my current currency.
Copper Coins: 168
Silver Coins: 27
Gold Coins: 1,450,371
“Now I can finally buy that pony,” I say with a chuckle, but that chuckle is quickly dashed away as I start to feel the cave start to shake and crumble. After a few moments of it shaking it quickly dies down, until I hear a groaning noise louder than anything that I have heard before. I continue to listen for the groaning and as I do I notice that it's not coming from in front of me or beside me but above me. As I look up, I see body parts fall and what started as a few here and there has now become a downpour of body parts. I watch in horror as the body parts start to reanimate into full-fledged guardians, I did a quick scan but it became apparent that there were too many to count but if I was to give a quick estimate it looked like there were over a hundred guardians and they are still rising in numbers.
I had a really hard time taking out four of them at once so I know trying to take down hundreds of them is going to be next to impossible. To my surprise though they weren’t walking toward me but rather toward each other at the center of the auditorium. I start to walk backward ever so slowly as I watch them pile into each other slowly transforming into one giant guardian. The giant guardian looks identical to the normal-sized guardians but this one looks to be about roughly 30 feet tall and has glowing red eyes.
TARGET: KING Cursed Guardian:
HP: ??/??
MP: ??/??
Stamina: ??/??
“This thing is going to kill me,” I whisper to myself as I start moving quickly toward the exit. As soon as I get within a few feet of the entrance to the auditorium I see the king guardian look towards me and then I see his glowing red eyes getting brighter. I rush towards the entrance but before I get a chance to enter it, I see a glowing red beam shoot over my head and hit right above the entrance causing it to crumble in on itself.
New Emergency Quest: [GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!!!!]
You pissed off the King Guardian so run like hell because there is no
way you can defeat that thing!!!
Objective: Escape the waterfall cave dungeon
Reward: New Skill
Penalty: Death