Chapter 10 Smart Snails

Even though animal testing wasn’t high on her list of things she liked to do, this was a spawned monster. Thus she inflicted small wounds on the snail, which gave her the information she needed. The snails could heal themselves pretty quickly.

Armed with this knowledge she continued hunting on the first floor. She found several more pairs of snails, which she dispatched quickly. When she took down the third pair though, she felt like it was too easy. By now she had gotten used to the antics of the snails, and there was not much left to learn from fighting them one on one, or even two against one. The only challenge left on this floor were the bigger groups.

Up till now she had evaded the bigger clusters of snails, knowing that numbers were as dangerous as stronger foes. The third floor had taught her that. But now that those were the only challenge left, it was time to try her luck against one such groups.

Sam started to look out for a good group of snails to test herself against. Unfortunately, now that she was looking for them, the groups were nowhere to be found. Before she had to leave an area when those groups showed up, but now she really had to look for them.

Luckily it only took her half an hour, and seven lonely snails before she had found a group to her liking. This group was made up of five snails, which was easier compared to most other groups that mostly had around seven snails with them.

“Too bad that I don’t have a ranged attack. I could really use one of those right now.” She mused. It would be easier if I could take out one or two before I attacked. But I guess that’s why the legion works in balanced squads.

With nothing to be done about a ranged attack, she started her attack. First she got the attention of the group by hitting her shield with her sword. This gave enough noise that the snails noticed her.

Immediately they started moving her way. Sam though didn’t wait for them. The snails were really slow when they were not jumping, so it was faster to walk towards them until they were almost in range.

Soon the first snails were in range, but as she had noticed when fighting the pairs of snails, these did only attack when all of them were in range. The five of them couldn’t target five separate spots on her body at once, so they attacked right after each other. It was almost a burst attack from a rifle. First the first two attacked her the same way the pairs did, one jumped at her chest, and the other at her knees. Right after that the third one jumped at her head, with the last two once more at her chest and knees.

The fact that they attacked her right after each other made it so that Sam had to keep dodging again and again. She couldn’t manage to get a good enough hit on the snails to kill one in one hit. As she had found out, slicing them didn’t do squat. She had to lunge at them, but that would keep her in place too long. Thus she had to keep dodging the snails, while retreating all the time to keep them from surrounding her.

Soon though, the snails ran out of stamina. When that happened it only took her moment to kill all five of the snails.

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With the first of the groups of snails out of the way, she started hunting the other groups. She had to keep using the same strategy of exhausting them, but soon she had killed all the snails she could find.

“I guess that that was it. Should I continue on to the second floor, or call it a day?”

Feeling a bit peckish, she decided that she could always move on to the second floor tomorrow. Thus she made her way towards the exit.

As soon as she exited the dungeon, the notifications came. Once again she hadn’t gotten any while in the dungeon. This time, she didn’t even have time to check them.

Immediately after exiting, the side of her neck started to hurt like crazy.

“Got hit by one of those little snails, didn’t you?” one of the guards asked, “Are you new, or did it catch you off-guard?”

With a grunt Sam answered.

“I wanted to train the basics, but I didn’t know that this stuff would hurt this bad.”

“Well, they are called fire-snails for a reason. It only burns a bit while you are within the dungeon, as those things somehow suppress the mucus. When you leave though, the dungeon no longer does that and it hurts like hell.”

The man rummaged in one of the cabinets that were close by.

“Here you go, put a bit of this healing paste on it, and the pain should go away soon. How many fire starters did you gather from the snails? I can exchange them for contribution points for you.”

“Wait, what do you mean? Those monsters have something useful?”

“Well yes, it is mandatory to harvest the monster parts from each kill. Otherwise it would only cost you points to enter the dungeon.”

“That wasn’t explained to us! What do I do now?”

Sam started to feel like a cornered animal. The man was quite forceful about getting those fire starters.

Luckily the other guard came to her rescue.

“Jack, let it go. She is one of the new recruits, they probably weren’t told about the harvesting. I think they have Quincy as trainer this season.”

“Right, that would do it. He is never one to explain all that’s needed. Did he at least tell you about the monsters you will encounter on the first floors?”

“Well, not really. We were told to stay on the first two floors for now, as some of our squad are level ten already. Otherwise we were to just level up till level ten.”

Now the second guard started to curse silently, while the first guard who was called Jack started asking questions.

“Great, it’s even worse than not telling about harvesting. How many others of you squad are inside? And what levels are they?”

“Uhh, there were seven others that went inside. But they went to the second floor, so I don’t know how they’re doing. Last time we went with the whole squad to the third floor and our trainer had to help us get out.”

Now both trainers were starting to get agitated. Losing recruits on their watch wasn’t something they wanted to explain to their captains.

“And their levels?”

“I don’t know, I’ve only just met them. I think most of them are close to level ten?”

“Okay Carl, you stay here with her while I go get them. The second floor should only take me a few minutes to get to.”

Immediately Jack went into the dungeon. While they were waiting the other guard explained a few things to Sam.

“Okay, Jack should be back soon with your squad mates. As you were the only one working on the first floor, I will tell you that you should watch out for the bigger groups of snails. If there are more of them, they become smarter somehow and their attacks will be more difficult to deal with.”

“Yeah, I found out about that. I also found out that they could heal themselves when I sliced into them.”

“Correct, and you’ve already found out about their mucus as well. Another thing to know is that notifications don’t come while you are in the dungeon. They only come after you exit, or when you stay in a safe area for at least an hour. Those are every five levels by the way.”

“Thanks, that’s some good information. Would have been nice to know that beforehand though.”

“Yes, your trainer is supposed to actually train you before you go into the dungeon. At the least he should have told you these things about the monsters.”

“Can you tell me about the second floor? I plan to go there tomorrow.”

“The second floor has the fire toads. Those are a lot faster than the snails, as you can imagine. They also have a ranged attack with their tongues, so you should watch out for those. Mostly you have to watch for them jumping way further than the snails and they don’t get exhausted as fast.”

Then there was movement at the dungeon entrance, and Jack the guard came out with the rest of Sam’s squad. They were told to go back to their trainer, and tell him about why they had to be taken out of the dungeon.