If I had to guess, your greatest weakness is that you like to challenge yourself a little too much.

John

Sir Miki, it is good to see you safe,” said the prince when I had finally returned to camp. “Our scouts report a foul monster has been roaming in the area. Its smell alone made the knight flee its general location.”

“No worries, Prince Edward. I have slain the monster that created the stench, but unfortunately its foul smell remains.”

And the smell did remain even after I buried my dirty clothes. It had been over two days since I completed my breakthrough. The mana gems helped me through the bottleneck in record time. Most of my time since then was spent acclimating to the rapid stat increase in my body. Not that I was complaining. I was now fast enough to catch any arrow shot at me and strong enough to crush rocks in my hands. Learning how to rein in my strength and speed was not difficult, just time consuming.

“I see. And since you have returned, am I to understand that we will now be moving on to the new dungeon?”

“I am ready. Are you?”

“I reached level 11 just this morning,” the prince replied with a smile. “I have spent most of my waking hours rushing from monster to monster in the dungeon.”

“Good work. Gather the knights and we will enter the dungeon.”

As we walked through the beginner dungeon toward the six-star dungeon I gently steered the prince to the front of the group. Once we reached the hole in the wall leading to the new dungeon I grabbed the prince's arm and quickly entered with the 14 knights rushing after us.

Congratulations you have found a hidden dungeon.

Dungeon: Secret Monster Horde

Difficulty: ★★★ ★★★

Goal: Defeat waves of monsters. Greater rewards based on the number of waves defeated.

Monster waves defeated 0/15

Warning: You are currently in a party of 16 and the difficulty of the dungeon will be escalated for the increased party size.

New Challenge added: Inescapable. The dungeon can not be fled until challenge is completed.

New Challenge added: Boss monsters. Each wave will generate a boss monster.

New Challenge added: Neverending. Each wave will generate 10% additional monsters every minute. All monsters must be defeated to stop new monsters from appearing.

“Sir Hero this isn’t good,” said the prince as the opening we had just passed through disappeared.

“This will be fine.”

I hurried forward to meet whatever monsters were going to attack us. I had hoped increasing our party size would also increase the difficulty of the dungeon and I couldn't say I was disappointed. It is not like I was going to use the prince and his knights to increase the difficulty of the dungeon then just let them die. And if they did die, they were not real anyway.

I only had a second to observe the battle arena we entered before a large number of slimes appeared. In this case large was a couple of hundred slimes all around level 20. It was nothing compared to the numbers I had previously fought and I easily started taking out their cores. Near the back of the army of slimes I noticed a larger slime about my size.

Level 40 Large Slime

Even though its overall size was larger, its core remained the same size. To add to the difficulty the core was moving around in its body. I drove my hand into the large slime and managed to catch the core. There were clear advantages to having superior speed and strength. I wasted no time in storing the core and rushing to clear the remaining slimes. The knights had all rushed forward and managed to each slay a slime by the time I had cleared out the rest. Only a single wave of additional monsters were able to appear before we defeated all of them.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“See Your Highness, it will be fine.”

“I hate to think what would happen if you were not here Sir Hero,” said Sir Gregor.

Wave 1 complete.

The next wave started and I was surprised to see it was once more slimes. These slimes were different in appearance with a blue color. A second difference was immediately apparent as they shot ice needles at us. They turned out to be Ice Slimes. They were easy enough to defeat. So were the red Fire Slimes in the following wave and green Poison Slimes after that. My endurance easily shrugged off those slimes’ attacks.

No, the first problem was the yellow Lightning Slimes. Putting my arm in the body of the slime made it go numb quickly. My hand was too numb to grab the slime core. Using a sword was not much better as a jolt traveled through the metal weapon and straight into me. Thinking quickly, I started punching the cores out of the slime and called for the knights and prince to gather up the cores and place them in my storage bag. My arms continued to go numb with each attack, but since I didn’t have to physically grab the cores I was able to push through with only the uncomfortable feeling like my arms had fallen asleep.

As I made my way through the slimes, I turned to see how the knights were doing. To my surprise all of the knights were laying on the ground writhing in agony as lightning slimes had attached to their body and were electrocuting them. The prince meanwhile had decided to run away and was trying to avoid getting cornered.

Whoops, guess I should have kept a closer eye on them. Seeing as how the prince was doing fine, I hurried over to the knights and started punching the slimes off of them. As soon as one knight was clear I would move on to the next. Unfortunately I was not defeating the slimes quickly enough and more continued to appear in the room every minute. Deciding it was best to take out the boss slime and then focus on the little ones I hurried over and managed to punch out its core after a couple attempts.

I bent down and picked up the large slimes core. As I looked around I was surprised to see there were no cores laying on the ground where I had been fighting the slimes earlier. I also doubted the prince or the knights were able to follow my order and gather up the cores since they were so easily attacked. Using my skill I quickly found a few dozen slimes had increased from level 20 to level 25. Well that was not good. I quickly made my way over to the higher level slimes and started knocking out their cores this time taking the small amount of time to put the cores in my bag myself.

I wish I could have come up with a new strategy as I was only barely managing to defeat more slimes than what were appearing. The fight ended up dragged on for almost an hour before I was able to completely defeat all the slimes. To my surprise there was no notification and we had a minute to catch our breath. I looked around to check on the harassed knights and prince before the next wave started.

“Sorry about that,'' I said. “I didn't really know how to deal with their lightning and just tried to make do as best as I could.”

“It is no problem, Sir Miki,” said the Prince.

“I don't mean to be rude, Sir Hero,'' said Gregor. “But are you willing to make a small concession for me and my men?”

“Of course Gregor. All you need to do is ask? Do you want me to focus on defending your men and the prince?”

“Well that would be welcomed, we understand the need to clear up these monsters quickly. No, what I would request is that you stop singing as you fight. The other knights and I find the singing distracting and it is throwing off our ability to focus on the fight.”

"Was I singing?" Now that I thought about it, I always sang a song in my head while in battle. Music helped keep my tempo and rhythm while fighting, but I hadn't thought I was singing out loud.

“Yes Sir Hero,” said the prince. “And I have to agree with Sir Gregor. While your voice is quite lovely, I too would prefer to focus on the fight and not be distracted by your singing.”

“No problem. I didn't even realize I was singing."

Wave five complete.

To my great relief it was not slimes that appeared with the next wave but large bats. Each of the bats had a body the size of a cat and a wingspan of more than four feet.

I had cleared bats from the attic of my family's house in the past, but they never looked as sinister as these monsters. In the attic there was little to do except open a window and make noise and they would quickly leave. These monster bats were clearly not the skittish type as they flew directly towards me and the knights.

Luckily it appeared that their bodies were relatively soft and I was able to easily cut one in half with my sword. Two more bats tried flanking me as I was distracted with the first one. I quickly dodged their attacks, taking one of them out with a single swipe. While not strong or durable, these bats were damn fast. With all my stats I still had to focus in order to hit them while they attempted to dodge my strikes.

I looked over to the knights and they were getting swarmed. Each time a knight swung towards a bat, it would easily fly out of the wave of the attacks. I turned to go help the knights when I spotted a bat that was smaller than the rest.

Level 50 Sonic Bat.

It's almost like the bat could tell that I was scanning it as it turned its head towards me and opened its mouth. Immediately I felt like my head was being pierced by a hot knife. I fought through the pain and rushed the little bat. While it had a strong sonic attack it was as easy to kill as the other bats.

I turn back to help the knights. In the dozen seconds it took for me to deal with the boss bat, two of the knights were down with one of them missing an arm. I was actually kind of impressed that a bat was able to take off one of the knight's arms as the bats did not appear that strong. I hurried over and started pushing the knights towards a corner while defeating the bats around them. If the knights and prince were in a corner, I could more easily defend them. Sure some bats would slip around my guard but it would be better then letting them get torn apart like they were currently. Worse yet the knights were not helping at all as they were not able to land an attack.

Less than a minute later I defeated all the bats. I guess it was a good thing the bats tried to swarm me as I didn't have to chase them down.