I sat there, vigilant. Waiting for the next attack. I didn't know if the lion was dead or not. I could not afford to wonder whether he was dead or not. After that fire storm, I was spent. I needed more time to heal.

The fire faded and his massive body came into my vision. Lying there was a two story building sized lion, whose fire had died off. After waiting a bit more time I moved my charred body toward him. 'I need to heal. Burning alive is not fun at all.' I needed his heart to heal myself.

After confirming the lion's death, I went to extract my spear from its head. His skull was broken, pieces of bone coming out from here and there. I searched where I left the spear only to find nothing. 'Did it fly off somewhere?' Searching a bit more, I found chunks of metal near the wound. I put my hand inside the wound and quickly pulled it back. I had touched something really hot in there. It was some kind of liquid. 'Did the spear melt? It was that hot in the center!!! Thank goodness I jumped off otherwise even my bones would have become ashes.'

I lost my only metal weapon. Feeling a bit sad I went to his chest and started digging with my claws. My claws had melted a bit too. 'Are my claws made of metal too?' I wondered. I didn't know anything about this world or it's animals anyway, so I did not think much of it. A few rest and a bit of effort later I found his heart.

The lion's heart was not like any other I had seen so far. It was greenish in colour, had four chambers and massive. Not like normal hearts at all. It was not collapsed either. It looked like someone had grown it after binding from opposite sides. Kindda like bell pepper.

"I don't even want to imagine how much it's gonna hurt."

The heart shape was interesting but I was wondering about how much pain a core from this powerful creature was going to inflict on me. Understandably so; I mean we are talking about the fire lion that was kicking my butt not too long ago. He was dead now, sure, but I don't even know what actually killed him.

I was afraid of the pain but between sitting on a burning oven and suffering eternally and sitting in a grinder for 5 minutes then being back to normal, the choice was simple enough.

I chowed down the core then sat on the floor supporting my back on the wall. As usual the violent pulse came first, then another, then another but there was no pain accompanying it.

'?'

My muscles started to bulge and shrink. Light sipped out of my skin. It felt like something was encapsulating every cell of my body. An empowering feeling. My whole body started to shake and got hot. Something wanted to come out from within. I stood up and let out a long shout. With the shout a huge burst of light came out from every part of my body. My mouth, ears, nostrils and eventually from every pore of my body.

The feeling was akin to shading oneself. Like the impurities you shade in some xianxia novels. After the burst of light my body ignited in fire but it did not burn me. Insted my burned skin fell off. My skin tone turned a shade darker, my hairs became burning red, the same as the lion. Slowly the fire subsided and my skin got back it's previous colour.

I felt light as a feather, if I jumped, I could jump all the way to the ceiling. Probably. I could feel that this was a qualitative change. If I had fought the lion in my current state I wouldn't have been burned so badly. My mana was diffrent now. It felt much more liquidy and easy to control. 'I did not get any of his special power though!!.. ah, right the blob, let's check it out first'.

Inside my mind space there were two blobs of light. One small , one huge. I touched the small one first. The blob shot into me and started changing me. As I was preparing for the pain to come, my whole body went numb. Slowly I changed, my body got covered in fur, my toe became hoof, a beautiful set of horns protruded out of my forehead then just like a video playing in reverse they vanished. 'I will think about it later'.

This place's logic is already fucked like a fisted asshole, so the bigger blob excites me more.

Same thing happened this time but I got a vision. In it, I was chewing moss and deer. 'Ok so the lion ate the deer and I got both their power. Noice.' The vision showed me how to use ice magic, a power boost so potent that it made the tigers strength look like child's play and finally how to set yourself on fire.

" How did I win against the lion with that kind of skill? Or did he not use it?"

After getting back my senses, I did some stretching, tried to set my hand on fire, sucidded then after opening the door ran straight toward my cave. 'Wooooaaaaaa I can run so much faster now. So so much faster.' I was really excited after getting my hands on some fine moves but before anything else there was something that needed to be done.

It hardly took me an hour to reach my cave. I didn't even break a sweat after running this much. I pulled out a whole deer carcass, cut it in pieces then removed 6 steaks. I lit my left hand on fire and started grilling the stake. 'Ahhhhh, the scent, it's bringing tears to my eyes. No no, I need to wait till it's cooked.' After a few minutes when the meat looked cooked I took a bite. I sat down, closed my eyes and wondered if I was in heaven!

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"This is so good, so good."

This was my first proper meal in this dungeon.

"Ahhhh how I missed the test of cooked foods. I don't even need salt. This is good enough. The tender meat, the cooked meat. It was worth the suffering."

I was over the moon. Compared to raw meat the prepared one was far more tastier. I almost felt like I knew what the caveman felt during their discovery of burned meat.

After eating my fill I felt satisfied. 'Now to see what else I got.' Starting with the ice magic. When I activate it, it did not grow real horns on me. Insted the mana just formed the shape of an antler atop my head. After that I broke off a chunk of it and threw it. The throwing part was kind of like binding a rope to a stone and swinging it. 'It will take me some time to get used to it.' But I was happy. It was my first spell. A real spell.

The second thing I tested was the fire body. It set my body on fire. As simple as that. It did not burn me or my clothes. It extended with the claw extension technique though. So that's good. 'I can make it work. I have a few ideas how to use it.'

The main skill was the third one. I call it herculean strength. With my current mana I could use it for around 2 minutes max. Though 1 minute use was more practical as any more than that will start to strain my body and full use will leave me fainted and vulnerable. I am talking from experience.

The Herculean strength increases all my stats except magic by almost four times. So it's a super great boost. Now I know how the lion flew after I destroyed his wing. The herculean strength works by making 4 copies of your body by mana then stacking them on top of one another. So, even if you get your hand severed previously you can use them in that state if that makes any sense!

After experimenting for a few hours I went to harvest the lion. Even if it tests badly I can still use it's teeths, bones and hide to make stuff that I will need. If the guardian was this powerful, I can only imagine what kind of monstrosity lies behind that door.

It took a long time to harvest the lion. I tested the meat. It was not good, as expected. He did not have any fur left on him so making a big carpet was out of question.

I can make strong lather though. Now for his bones. They are too big. I can't even grip them with both my hands, so I only took some small teeths and his nails. The nails are sharp. I can probably use it somewhere.

During his disassembly I finally found out how he died. I am not hundred percent sure but it looks like when he crashed into the ground the spear I left on his forehead penetrated through his brain then from the heat it melted down killing him in the process.

I took the molten mess of a spear out of his brain. After collecting a few smaller bones from his wings, even they were as big as the unga bunga hammer.

"I still can't figure out how he flew with those small ass wings though."

It's time to create a new hammer. I started with shaving off the hollow part of the teeth where the muscles were. Let me tell you something. It was not easy. His teeths were so strong that it took me a butt load of time just to cut that part out. 'Thank you god, for giving me these multipurpose claws.' Even though I had to buff them with fire, they worked great. Shaving the weak parts off I was left with a hammer head that was one and a half feet long.

After shaving it came the hard part.

I wanted to create an interlocking system. Cutting them was hard enough, now I had to make fine detail on them. I ate some food and hunkered down to work.

Inside this dungeon I actually love this kind of monotonous work. I can pass some time and take a rest without thinking too much. I have to keep myself busy somehow or some very creepy thing starts to crawl in my mind.

I started by taking a bone that was narrow in the middle, a little bent but that was ok; it was the small bone of his wing. I tested it's strength by swinging with full force of herculean strength around 10 times and it didn't even crack. No wonder I couldn't kill it with my hammer. I changed the bone and started to cut a channel on top of it. On the wall of the channel were downward shaped teeths.

The plan is to create upward curving teets on the hammer head and locking them together. That Way they will be harder to remove than if I just tie it together with some cord.

It took a looooooong time to curve out every small teeths on the side of the hamner head. After joining them they were locked for good but I was not satisfied. So, I melted the spear again and poured it on the joint. After the hammer was complete, I cut the handle bone to my chest level.

Now I have a massive hammer with a flat and sharp end. This will work just fine for now. By the way, I made it so that the handle is curved toward the flat head as I will probably use that side more.

I swung the hammer around a few times. It had a real good feeling to it. Now, it was time to venture into the new land. This time I made a few sets of actual clothes too. As I could make small holes with my claw, I could finally sew me some inner shirts, a lion leather jacket, underpants , pants and boots. The underpants and shirts were made from soft deer lather and the outer layer was made from tough lion lather. They were pretty rough in shape but much better than what I had previously. I took the hammer on my shoulder, put some meats in a bag and strapped it to my back and headed off to next floor

Arriving in front of the door, I took a deep breath and pulled the door open. Looked outside, then closed it back.

"The fuck's going on! It's a fucking pandemonium out there."

In that short time I saw a bird trying to eat a stone monster that was holding on to a snake's tail which was coiling around a tree and a crocodile with strange marks on its body watching them from a pond. Meanwhile a boar was charging toward nothing.

"Wait, wait, wait, there is too much information in that one scene."

So, there are birds, crocks, rock things, snakes, boars, trees and a pond. 'Trees and a pond?' I quickly opened the door and there they were. Trees and a big water body.

"Yeeeessssssssss, I can finally take a bath."

Before that though, there is a crocodile in the water and I need to kill its entire family.