It had been silent for a while now. No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. The last time Jessica brought up anything remotely related to the subject, Leo showed a drastic change in demeanor. How exactly was she supposed to broach the topic. Therefore, there was nothing but silence. No matter in which manner he asked, she didn’t say anything.
Luckily for her, Leo didn’t push, seeing her not answering. It was clear from the connection. There was something important about what just happened, only she was worried about him and kept quiet. “You will tell me in the future, right?”
“Yes.” Answering quietly, she made her way to the empty archway. Unlike the rest of the dungeon, moving in between the floors wasn’t the only means of a moment of rest. There was one last place she could rest as her mind, started to wind down and push out the stray and bothersome thoughts. She needed to remove any distracting thoughts, or risk making a mistake and creating disastrous results for herself.
In terms of size, this room was tiny. With the size to just barely fit, a party of maybe seven, it would be cramped. While fitting the description of a rest stop, this empty room didn’t offer any comforts. This wasn’t just in the case of size, even the mana in the room had been sucked dry. Being situated between a room and the dungeon leader’s room. In terms of mana, there was never a staggering amount to begin with. Dungeon might be a mana factory. This didn’t mean one could simply tap into that mana.
On average, a dungeon had more mana than outside. This wasn’t by a large margin. In fact, the minute amount over what could be considered normal for the location of the dungeon. It was a particularly hard amount to even sense. If not for exact measuring tools, most people like Jessica wouldn’t be able to access any excess. This room alone left much of this to be desired, she could feel the mana was lower than the rest of the dungeon.
Because of the short meeting between the two, she was in no position to face the dungeon leader. This creature would be a creature similar but not exactly a wolf. For this particular dungeon, the leader was a fox. Its size was monstrous, standing five foot tall. Coming in at a whopping ten to eleven foot long. The weight was enough that there wasn’t much difficulty in crushing its opponents by ramming into them. For one reason or another, this was the most common tactic used. Even if a creature was lacking intelligence, it was rare for a creature to not use normal means of hunting. Normally, there was simply a lack in follow up and simplicity in its actions.
Jessica, like many others, saw this as something to take advantage of. One of the top dungeons. While dangerous, in terms of prospects, it offered a large list of opportunities. Agile type individuals could either prosper or falter. For those that held the advantage for agile close quarters fighting, this was one of the best dungeons to seek a breakthrough in.
Not like most dungeons, the largest danger was not the leader, not one to be ignored. This fox was not something to be underestimated. Only, the biggest issue was not dealing with this creature. Instead, what one needed to fear was making it to the last room. Wolves were both easy and hard to deal with. For agility close quarter fighters, they generally focused on small maneuvers that would escape damage just shy of receiving an attack. In this sense, most of the large elemental wolves, the most common creature. Wasn’t a terribly difficult creature to deal with. Fighting at a knives edge meant that any mistake was more lethal, yet, extremely rewarding.
Ability wise, wolves in dungeons were more geared in offensive means. In defensive terms, lacking very much. For these reasons, for those that fought in a similar fashion, this dungeon was great. The hardest portion of making it to the last room was syntonizing your movements with the wolves. Dealing with a fast opponent wasn’t just having the reaction time. You needed to be able to follow their movements. In terms of speed, just being fast didn’t mean you were able to follow such speeds with the eyes.
If one wasn’t careful, going from walking to running gives one a massively different perspective. Syntonized with the speed, it became easier and less time-consuming. Adapting to speed was their bread and butter. This was also their secret to dealing with their own opponents, changing tempo and pushing from slow to fast. In terms, most believed this to be agility. Only, in fact, this was about their ability to be unpredictable. Only in a dungeon, this was not very useful.
Opening her eyes, a fair amount of time had passed. Fortunately or not, there was still a brooding feeling coming from her arm. Clearly it hadn’t been terribly long, either. Taking out her daggers, she had a frown. Reaching for her tools as she had to deal with weapon maintenance. Every so often there would be issues with the edge, most of which came from her carelessness. Bone, regardless of the maker, was a blade destroyer.
Only after an hour did she finally feel like she was ready. Taking a deep breath, she reached out and felt the door. A similar scene played out as the door opened. In the room she saw a large shadowy figure. The lights, that were usually enough, clearly lacked greatly. This wasn’t much with the lights, as much as it had to do with the room being special. Much larger than the standard rooms that had been seen up to this point. The dark lighting also gave one an uneasy feeling.
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Once she stepped through the door, was she greeted by the creature inside. As described, the sheer size of the fox was unreasonable. What could possibly be a great seller, had the smell that didn’t fit a stuffed animal. There was a great amount of malice coming from this gigantic being. The dimly lit lights had brightened. As for the rest of the dungeon, it was unknown where the lights came from. This room alone had torches that were in the four corners. Once entered, there were a few more that set themselves ablaze by some mysterious means.
Not being given much time to look around. The large creature rushed at her. With greeted teeth, she could do nothing but roll to the sides. Unlike before, she didn’t have her daggers drawn. After doing maintenance and attaching the fiber, she had put them back in their sheaths at her waist. The last thing she wanted to do was foolishly attempt to attack.
Even an expert can find it troublesome dealing with someone less skilled when they focus solely on defense. So long as the gap wasn’t too large. The fox was on another level compared to the wolves. In terms of speed, it was almost like a blur. She could follow its movements to a certain extent, and yet before she could get to her feet, she was forced to continue to roll on the ground. Compared to its size, not only was it fast, there were no issues in turning around.
This continued for a good few minutes. By the time she was able to get back on her feet, she was covered in dirt. She had sweat rolling down her forehead. Dissimilar to her, the vibrant reddish brown coat of the fox was as gorgeous as ever. With nothing to do but lament the fact she would never get the chance to keep the coat, almost no dungeon leader’s could be preserved. To do so, required a large team to strategically deal with the creature systematically as they exposed certain pieces they wished to keep before the killing blow was dealt.
By now she could still see a blur, only the blur was traceable. Now she was able to take her daggers out. Only as advantageous as agility style combat was, the alternative was fighting with an open plot waiting for you to slip up once. Going in with a plan allowed her to be able to coordinate her actions well. She continued to move between dodges and full out running to escape the fox’s charge. It was not very attractive looking, only who cared, so long as it achieved the desired effect.
Much like with the mutated wolf, she aligned herself with the wall. Only the fox would charge straight into a wall. It lacked intelligence, however it wasn’t what one would call stupid. Not in the general sense. First, she had to arrange for the wolf to meet the wall in a parallel fashion. In a matter of seconds, everything came down to a single moment. Watching desperately for the slightest cue, there was but a slight bend of the leg joint.
As if time had stopped, Jessica saw a blurry line of red mixed with a brown. Such a scene had an entirely new meaning when facing such a scene in a frontal view. This was not a sight seen from the sidelines, one that could be watched with little consequence. With just a single falter she would not just see a blurry red line, instead, if she messed up she would see a spinning room. Following which would be darkness that would overtake her, leaving nothing behind.
Listening to the prolong booming in her chest, she concentrated to the point it was no longer possible to hear. What was once no more than thirty feet, was now around ten. In what could have only been a matter of a few seconds, the blur allowed her to see certain aspects of the face. Unsure if what she saw was an illusion, only she could feel her eyes meeting a set of brown eyes that were cold and emotionless.
This wasn’t normal coldness, it was a type of machinery, cold and emotionless. These eyes just gave the one meeting them an unnaturally uneasily feeling. Promptly, the set of eyes followed her as she kicked off the ground. She had already given herself a large amount of slack. Once she kicked off the wall she wasn’t even given an opportunity, at that moment, she had to immediately throw the dagger in her arm as she desperately watched for it on the other side.
As the fiber met the drag brought about by the fox, it very quickly went taunt. Using all the mana in the dagger’s handle, she stabbed with as much force as she could possibly generate while in the air. As the dagger injected itself no more than a few inches, she grasps rapidly for the fiber. Filling with desperation, she did her most as she blindly grasps air as she slammed into the fox as she felt like she had been rammed by a carriage.
With little choice, she had to grab its short fur. Trying with everything she had not to be flung off as there was a ringing in her ear as she felt her insides quivering from the impact. Multitasking became that much more audacious. Little she could do, she tried her best not to get shook off. Feeling the knife slowly coming loose, she finally after a second recalled the dagger she had tried to throw before.
With one last attempt, she made a large throwing motion. Giving it some slack as she tried to time it as she held off adding more for a split second. The idea was simply, control the slack, so the knife could go taunt and start to curve before adding more so that the knife was able to wrap itself around the neck of the fox. She felt a large tug that pulled the dagger nearly completely out, she knew at that moment she had failed.
In a desperate attempt to try a third time, she felt a tugging from her wrist. She didn’t have time to think beyond the fact it was stuck… She could only watch helplessly as the dagger started to start to curve as it lost the last of its stability. With little choice, she forcibly had the fiber cut itself. There was a difference between this and unclipping from the fiber naturally. As she was falling off, the fiber was probably stuck in some way to the fox, this meant she couldn’t risk being dragged along, she had to forcibly cut the fiber. This was an emergency measure that would damage the fiber. It appeared to be going from bad to worse.