Chapter 16 What You Should Do

The next day started out just like the last one. After waking and presenting herself to the trainer, Sam soon stood in front of the dungeon again. Today she promised herself, she would do what the trainer had said. She would take advantage of the weak points that she had found and rectify the faults that the trainer had told her she made yesterday. Today was going to be a better day than yesterday.

On the first floor she had to kill fifteen slugs today. So no problem at all. It took her only thirty minutes to get to the exit, but she only found eleven slugs on her way. This made her search for another ten minutes to find the other four slugs. After that she could go on towards the second floor and the toads.

The second floor started pretty much like yesterday. There was no toad to be found. This time though, Sam had thought of a different tactic to try. She had taken a small metal pot she had taken from the mess hall, and started making noise by slamming it against the rocks.

Soon there were two toads closing in on her position from what she had dubbed the north and west. It was something Kyla had taught her to do, to give the entrance of a floor a designation and work from there. It would give her a better feel for the floor and where she needed to go.

The toads were getting close enough to engage, and Sam readied her sword and shield. Before the toads got to her tough, she charged at the one from the west. When it spit its tongue at her, she blocked it with her shield. Then she kept charging until she was a bit closer. With an unpowered slash she cut off the tongue. Blood splattered all over her, as the toad recoiled from the pain. Since this was the only real weak point that she knew for certain, she decided to run after the second toad first and cut of its tongue as well.

A plan made, she rushed after the second toad. Only a few moments later there were two tongues on the ground, and two really angry toads hopping after a retreating Sam.

Now that she had taken care of the known weak point, Sam decided to experiment with other obvious points where there could be weak points. Having already tried the belly the day before, she decided to try the joints of the legs. Afterall, it’s pretty hard to jump and hop when you have a knee that doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, the two toads had teamed up and Sam needed time to try different attacks. Luckily the toads still had the same tactics as yesterday. The left toad was the one that jumped first, and Sam made sure to dodge away as far as possible. This made the second toad jump at her new location, and she had to dodge again immediately.

Now the two toads were about half a dozen meters apart, and thus far enough away that she could use one as a shield against the other. They wouldn’t use their hopping attack while there was another of their kind in between them and their target.

This gave her the time to attack the closest toad. She tried her unpowered slash attack against the first toads knee, having decided to keep her mana in reserve for when she needed it.

Her first attack was mostly stopped by the thick hide of the creature. Even though it now had a bleeding wound on its knee, it didn’t seem to be impaired at all. Her other option was a stab in the knee, but that had the danger of her losing her weapon.

Suddenly she thought of something else she could try. Because, why did she need to use her sword to stab? She still had two knives and those could be used to stab just as well as the short sword. They just weren’t as useful to be used for a slash attack.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Sheathing her sword, the took out her goblin knife. It was her first weapon, but also the worst in quality. The toad was still between her and the other toad, and because she was too close for it to use its hopping attack, it couldn’t do more than move to bowl her over. While it tried this, she managed to evade and use stab with her knife into the back of its knee.

Immediately the toad toppled over, having lost one of its strong hind leg. The second toad didn’t give her time to celebrate though. Immediately upon losing its partner, it attacked Sam with a hop.

She barely managed to evade it, and without thinking about it, she used a mana powered slash with her short sword while she unsheathed it. The attack killed it with one attack, and unlike the first time, now she didn’t fall unconscious. Looking at her mana, she saw that she had used about forty mana with the attack. Without her having put her points in intelligence, she wouldn’t even have had enough mana to use the attack.

Soon after that she had cut up the other toad as well, having tested several attacks on it.

“That could almost have been classified as animal testing, but now I know that I need to use a stab attack on those joints if I want to damage them. I may need to get some more knives though.”

A week passed with Sam going through the dungeon on her own. During this time she killed dozens of slugs and toads. Each day she got a different assignment from the trainer, with sometimes having to kill a lot of creatures, and other days only having to kill a few but with severe limitations on what moves and weapons she could use.

This had also given her quite a few levels in her class and skills. She was now a level five [Legionary Recruit], but she had also completed the ten levels once. This was a growth of twelve levels, which was pretty good. She did find out that even within the first tier there were massive difference in how much experience she needed to level up. The first levels were easy, but after that she needed exponentially more experience to level up.

Another annoying thing was that the creatures on the first two levels didn’t give her as much experience anymore as in the beginning. According to the others in her squad, this was both because of her statpoints and that she had become comfortable in killing them, giving her an easy time.

Of the twelve statpoints she had gained, she had given three to strength, and two to both agility and vitality, bringing most of her physical stats to twelve. The only one lagging behind was endurance, which had only gotten one, bringing it to ten. The last five points were respectively three and two given to intelligence and luck. This balanced her fighting skills, while the luck was advised by the trainer to push some extra points in when possible. It wouldn’t give a noticeable boost right now, but eventually it would really help with pretty much anything.

Today was going to be the first day since the very beginning, more than a week ago, that the whole squad would fight together. The last three days they did practice an hour or two per day with working together, but how much that would impact their fighting skills, that would have yet to be seen.

Their orders for today were to travel slowly towards the third floor, staying in formation the entire time. They were also forbidden to attack or retaliate on the first two floors, which would help them practice to stay in formation while under attack. Their fighters would have to defend the entire formation from the bashing attacks on the first floor, and the tongue and hop attacks from the second floor.

“Okay squad,” the trainer started, “which one of you youngsters will be the squad leader today?”

The twelve glanced at each other. None of them had thought about this, and the last week they had only trained as members of the squad, not at leading it.

“Well, last time I did it, so I could certainly do so again.” Jasper tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

“Yeah, cause you did such a great job, Jasper! How about I tell you what to do for a change?”

Apparently Lufir wasn’t going to let the guy have it that easily.

“Yeah that could have gone better, but we’ve learned a lot since then! This time we know what to do. Just give me the chance okay.”

With a sigh Lufir answered: “I’m not sure if that would be a good choice. I think I should be the one to lead us.”

The trainer eventually ended the discussion between the two men.

“Jasper will be the squad leader today. As an archer he has a better view of the battle. You Lufir need to stay in formation and you don’t have the time to step back and look at what’s happening. After today we will have some training exercises to determine who would be the best squad leader for you guys. Eventually you will all need to be able to take command if needed.”