The lizard suddenly shot towards me in a zigzagging path. I just stood still, waiting for the inevitable bite. It was too fast for me to dodge, so I surmised the best strategy was to stab it when it jumped at me. Only the lizard did not jump at me. Instead, it bit my boot. My hard leather boot.

I lifted my other foot and stomped on the lizard, trapping it as it squirmed beneath my boot. I knelt down and stabbed my dagger through its chest, killing it.

Well… That was easy.

Not gonna lie, I expected that to be harder. I guess this was a tier 1 monster then. My boot had some indentations where the teeth had tried to penetrate, but that was it. So it wasn’t strong and was also pretty dumb.

I brought my left hand over the scaly corpse until I felt a twitch. So it's the eyes. I dug both eyes out with my dagger and put the pair into my pocket for later.

Moving on, I encountered more lizard monsters as I made my way through the maze. All similarly stupid. Except for one. This lizard had climbed onto the roof and dropped down on top of my head when I passed underneath.

I quickly grabbed the scaly bastard as it bit my gloved hand. I quickly stabbed it in the belly before it could do any more damage. I dropped it to the ground as it gave its final death twitches and inspected my hand.

Its teeth hadn’t done much damage, just a few shallow scrapes thanks to my gloves. I put my glove back on and knelt to harvest its eyes like normal, except something abnormal happened. The lizard seemed to collapse into itself, almost like a miniature black hole had appeared in its center of mass. Its flesh warped and shrunk, condensing. Then there was a slight glow, and a clear levelling stone was left sitting there.

“Eww! That’s what I’ve been eating?! Condensed monster? This fucking shit world!” I picked up the levelling stone, inspecting it, even licking it to confirm if it was one. And it was. I frowned and put the stone in my pocket. I couldn’t use it, but surely I can sell it.

It seemed that not every monster gave a levelling stone. I don’t know what the ratio is, but this lizard had been my seventh. Although none of the goblins I killed gave me a levelling stone either, so perhaps it was rare or uncommon.

As I walked through the maze, in a dead end I saw a small chest about the size of my hand. “Loot!” I rushed over to it and popped open the lid. Inside sat one copper coin… “Crap!”

I suppose that was a labyrinth for you. Shit loot.

…

I entered the second floor after passing the first floor boss room, where the boss was a bloody mess in the corner. It looked like a larger lizard, but it was hard to tell with it hacked to pieces. I had checked it for alchemic ingredients, but it was stripped of everything valuable, mostly. I still collected some of its blood to test.

The second floor was much more open than the first. I could even see other people on the floor fighting monsters. The monsters here were still lizards, kind of, although they more resembled snakes with legs. They were faster and stronger. In fact, a bit too strong for comfort.

One of them wrapped around my leg tight enough to make it go numb. And a single stab wasn’t enough to kill it. It took 12 stabs and a slice to finally make it let go, allowing me to unwrap it from my leg.

I gave my leg a few slaps to try and get the blood flowing again. Then I headed to the surface, done for the day.

What I needed to do was explore my skills more. Right now, they weren’t doing anything for me, I was just a normal human. I needed to explore the [Concocted Body] skill more and create some potions to be utilized by the skill. Perhaps some kind of strength boost.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

…

After one and a half weeks of monster hunting in the morning and experimenting at night, I had a working prototype strength booster. It wasn’t perfect, as when I take it I seem to get dumber for the duration of the boost.

When I get to the second floor, I take out the vial of sickly green liquid. I think I’ll call it Brute1. Without further ado, I down the vial. I feel the liquid seep into me as my body seems to drink it in. A shiver runs down my spine and the vial falls from my hands.

My thoughts slow down, as the muscles beneath my skin begin to rapidly grow. Unbeknownst to me, my vibrant green eyes begin to subtly glow.

There’s a snake over there. I’m gonna go kill it. Stab. Stab. “Hahaha!” Ooh, I see another one. Wait, wait. I’m supposed to grab something, right? Why is my hand twitching? Oh! Right, I need to grab the tooth.

Grabbing the tooth, I pull it out with my bare hands and shove it into my pocket. Then I’m off to my next target. The many-legged snakes try to coil around me, but I simply pry them off and stab them. I continue to do this until the boosting effects begin to wear off and a wave of weakness hits me.

This is one of the side effects. Unfortunately, it has only been 15 minutes, so I down another Brute1 and continue killing. By the time I’m done, my body is aching and I feel a fog over my mind.

I trudged up the stairs, pockets heavy, when I was stopped in the first floor maze. My mind was so hazy, that I didn’t even notice myself walking into a circle of men.

“Well, well, looks like the new girl had a good day.” The apparent leader of this gang had a mohawk, typical.

“You just got here recently, so I can forgive your ignorance. But in Rukuk, there’s a tax to pay. It’s for your own protection, we wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you, understand?”

I sighed. Seemed this was a classic protection money scenario. I pay them or get beat up. I could down another Brute1, although I don’t know if that would be enough to fight all of them off, and I am in a semi-enclosed space with a good amount of enemies in said space. Sooo…

“O-of course, sir.” I begin to rummage around in my pockets and ‘accidentally’ drop a vial which breaks against the stone floor. I take a deep breath, close my eyes and wait.

I can hear the surrounding men begin to move, no doubt displeased with my lack of fetching my coins. There's even the shlick sound of weapons being drawn from their sheaths.

“Hey. You gonna pay up or-” The man chokes on his words. “What the.”

He and the surrounding men bring their hands to their throats, I assume. I even feel a hand clutch at my shoulder and shake it. Then I hear the slow thumps as everyone around me is brought to their knees or falls to the ground. Eventually, the groaning and moaning stop, and all I hear is silence.

I fish in my pocket for another vial and pour that on the ground and wait another 10 seconds.

Then I open my eyes and breathe out a large breath followed by a large inhale that smells like chemicals. Thankfully it smells like the neutralizing agent, and not the toxic gas.

“Damn it. That was expensive as hell to make!” I would have been better off just handing over all my coin, it would have been cheaper. Although, now I get to loot these bodies. And I do not classify looting these bodies as stealing. I didn’t even kill them, that was all the gas. They may as well have just slept on their pillows face down and suffocated themselves. Plus, less scum in this scum world.

I only loot the coins, and leave the weapons and armour, lest they be tracked back to me, even though I’m 100% innocent. People might get the wrong idea if I sell their weapons. But that’s just how the world is, can’t even sell someone else's stuff without people suspecting you of killing them. Ridiculous!

When I get to the surface, I think It’s about time I visit the mercenary guild to sell some of these levelling stones, and see if there are any jobs. The only problem is locating it. It’s probably in an out-of-the-way place like where I registered, so it won’t be easy to find.

The sun is beaming down on me like usual in this sandy hellscape. I’m really starting to get sick of sand. It just gets everywhere, especially when you’re fighting. In the eyes, under your nails, in your mouth where it crunches whenever you bite down. That’s another problem, almost all the food here is laced with minuscule bits of sand. Meaning there is often crunchy in my soft, which is disgusting!

I walk around the empty city-sized village with my nose on high alert. Where there are mercenaries, there is booze. And after wandering for a while, I finally catch a whiff of the stuff and smile. Looking down an alley, I catch a sight of the red hand slapped on a metal door.

Looks like this guild location had a bit more security than the last.