Andaris stared in horror at the tough looking golem that stood up right from its originally kneeling position, having left a small crater where it originally impacted the ground. That thing looked way, way, too strong for the first floor.

Andaris’ mind raced, as he heard the snakes shifting, getting back up into their upright positions. Just like the snakes that big think likely had a glaring weakness. It had gotten up rather slowly and deliberately, hadn’t it? Of course! A monster of that size and strength, the obvious weakness would be its speed. It was slow and cumbersome.

What then? Chase down the snakes in the hopes of killing them off before that thing catches up to me? That could work, but was extremely risky. If one the snakes lands a crippling injury on me, unlike the snakes attacks which were certainly risky, that thing would simply out right kill me!

What other options? Andaris strained his thoughts, risking yet another precious moment to come up with a plan.

He made up his mind and instead charged the large golem. He would take his chances there and try to take it down while using it as a shield against the snakes attacks, since it had landed off to one side of them and was quite close to him. Hopefully he can take it down before the snakes manage to reposition themselves too much and hopefully the golem was slow enough for him to melee. If it wasn’t then it didn’t matter as in that case he would not fare any better with it chasing after him.

So Andaris charged it with all his might.

The winding sounds of the snakes was peaking as Andaris entered the golems melee range. It took a large, very telegraphed swing at Andaris’ head with its ridiculous club. But just as he suspected, it was slow. He was able to see the swing easily coming and ducked under it, getting behind the golem.

Andaris heard one of the snakes' darts impact the golem, not doing any real damage, with the rest of the snakes giving up their charge, with no clear line of sight to him. Using the golem as a shield would work. For now.

The golem began turning around, to bring Andaris back into sight, but he would not give it the chance. Andaris swung his sword with all his might, with intention to try and cleave through the golems right leg, or at least render it unusable.

The sword impacted the leg, but didn’t even bite into the stone at all, taking out only a small chip. The golems stone was almost as hard as most armours, not at all like the snakes. A sword would be useless against it!

The golem brought his club down with a slow but powerful swing. Andaris dived out the way as the club crashed into the ground with a resounding noise, kicking up dirt and pebbles in the process.

Shit, that thing would crush me.

Andaris' thoughts were interrupted by a high pitched sound. Looking up he saw a couple of snakes had come around the one side of the golem and were once more in attack range. He quickly went after the golem again, this time shifting to its other side.

How should I take this thing down? I’m running out of time here!

As he ducked under another wild swing, he noticed the joints were unarmoured and had glowing blue pipes running through them. Such an obvious weak point! How had he not noticed it before? He must have been too worked up, he needed to keep a calm mind. Panicking would only lead to death in a dungeon.

Andaris shifted out the way of an attempted stomp from the golem and slashed under one of the leg joints. He completely missed! Keep calm- huh, easier said than done! The sword once more bounced off the stone armour, the feedback rattling his bones and making his arm feel lame. He’s not going to be able to swing the damn weapon at this rate!

Andaris had spent most of his time training with bone shiv’s after all. He simply was not used to working with a sword. Both its size and weight felt incredibly unwieldy to him.

The wind up had begun again. This time snakes that had chosen to circle around the other side of the golem were charging up, now in range. Andaris backed off back around the right side of the golem once more. He was fast running out of hiding spots here.

The golem swung high once more and Andaris ducked under the swing, this time using the motion to get in close. He stabbed the sword into one of the leg joints successfully this time. Pulling back, while the golem fell over and hit the ground with a loud commotion. Even though he still had one functioning leg, he toppled over this hard. It seemed it was not only slow, but also rather clumsy.

Andaris heard multiple snakes charging up this time, they all had line of sight to him by this point, he needed to finish this!

The golem was not about to take it lying down though, it swung its club in a large horizontal motion, while laying on the ground, the result was the club kicking up a long arc of debri along the ground it scraped across.

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Andaris had no way to avoid it except for jumping over it, and so he did. It was a close one, but the club passed underneath him.

The snakes on the other hand were busy releasing their shots. Due to his unsteady jumping motion, most of the normally accurate shots missed him. One hit his chest armour, another scraped by his arm and a third even struck the golem on the ground. Fortunately nothing serious for Andaris.

Landing on the ground, Andaris revised his current strategy. He did not see any fatal weak points on the golem, yes the joints were weak points, but how long would it take him to actually kill the thing? No, rather now it had been crippled and would have a hard time chasing after him. The real danger at the moment is the snakes.

Having made up his mind, Andaris charged one of the snakes, leaving the golem where it was. Once again out of range of three of the snakes, he only had to do a little bit of lateral motion to avoid the other two’s attack range.

Andaris managed to take out one of the snakes before the others could get in range. He wasted no time and charged directly at the other snake, since it had been quite close to the first, having both circled around the same side of the golem. It couldn’t even finish charging a single shot before he reached it and struck it down.

The other three snakes however had all the time they needed and fired at him. He once more used his arms to protect his head and tanked the shots. Two struck his armour, the dual blow forcing him to stumble back a step; and one embedded itself in his left leg, causing him to wince in pain.

Andaris quickly ripped the spike out and set off running after the snakes on the other side. Normally you would want to leave an object like that in the wound to keep it from bleeding. But normal did not apply to him. He was for one, in a dangerous fight and did not have that luxury. Moreso, if the projectile was stuck in the wound his gift would not be able to heal it. Getting it out as fast as possible was his absolute best course of action.

He side stepped to try and break off the next volley, but only managed to disengage one of them. From the other two, one of the shots missed while the second struck the same damn leg again! Andaris pulled out the fresh spike immediately and closed the remaining gap to take out one of the snakes successfully.

With all the holes in his body, you would think it would be slowing him down. But Andaris was actually quite excited (there was some fear mixed in there too), but mostly excited. He was a delver now, fighting dungeon monsters!

He set off after the next snake. The wounds hurt like hell, and took a while to heal, but they did not slow him down. A slave was no stranger to pain and suffering after all. Honestly, this was nothing more than a minor inconvenience to him.

With only two snakes left, he managed to avoid all of their remaining shots easily and kill them off one by one.

At this point, Andaris was kneeing on the ground, trying to give his wounds a chance to recover a bit and to catch his breath.

That had been way too much running around, while wearing armour and carrying a weighty weapon. The golem had been dragging its already slow body across the ground in pursuit of him the entire fight, but at his speed, it had amounted to nothing.

Andaris rested until the golem reached him and then stood up. Carefully baiting a missed swing out of the golem, he dove in and attacked another joint, then backed off once more. He repeated this process until there really weren't any joints left undamaged and the golem was reduced to a useless pile of rock.

Still, even after that it was still alive. So Andaris drove his sword through one of its eye sockets instead. That seemed to finally do the job and the golem died.

Andaris let out a sigh of relief. He was exhausted already, even after just his first major encounter. The life of a delver was gonna be tough. As tired as he was, he was also enthralled. A mixture of emotions coursed through his chest as he took ragged breaths.

Andaris noticed that the monster had left a drop. It was a small glass vial containing a liquid that was the same color as the golems pipes. He picked it up carefully and activated his storage rune by feeding it the tiniest bit of his anima.

This process was designed by the rune crafters to be as simple and instinctual for people to do as possible. So even someone like him with no experience in runes whatsoever could still use them easily enough. The runes, once activated, powered themselves off ambient mana, something which was plentiful inside dungeons. As for the anima needed to trigger the rune, that was also only the smallest amount, as the rune designers couldn’t exactly have people passing out while using them.

There’s a reason runes like these were so expensive and it wasn’t just the cost of creation or complexity and expertise (well sometimes it was), but more just how useful they were. There were few knowledgeable in the creation of efficient runes like this and many that needed them. Couple that with yet another guild having a stranglehold on the market and bam, high prices.

The worst part was that this was all such common knowledge that even slaves like him knew all about it. Such blatant greed and corruption and yet nobody was able to do anything about it.

Andaris rested a while longer to catch his breath and let his wounds finish healing up. His gift was really working overtime and in the process really proving its worth. But the healing rate was a mere pittance compared to when he had fought that elite. Not to mention he had none of the other benefits at the moment. It was clear that his gift had a lot more to offer him if he could ever figure out how to unlock its full potential.

Gifts were surprisingly common amongst delvers, much more so than most other people. That being said there was a marked uptick in the number of gifts amongst people with either daring professions or faith based ones and in some cases, people who strived for greatness in general. Whatever caught the attention and the whims of the gods basically.

Despite this, very little was actually known about gifts beyond their functions, or about the gods that bestow them. Didn’t stop people from going all out theorizing though, or forming religions around those gods, imaginary, correct, or otherwise.

Andaris got up and dusted himself off. Enough resting for now. Time to kill some more monsters.