“I couldn’t say anything before, but I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you now. Are you trying to stay here forever?”
With her back against the wall, Jessica was sitting in a small hallway that had a dark archway to the left while to her right was a stone door. Staring at her was Leo standing to her left. He was looking at her with a less than pleased expression. As if to play dumb, she could only ask with a bit of an unfocused expression, “What are you talking about?”
With narrowed eyes, “When we talked about the dungeon before, you said you would slowly progress. While you will have no problems pushing through with the dungeon. This is after you stabilize yourself. Or are you trying to tell me you’re in a condition to look for a breakthrough right now?”
Her progression through the first floor was nearly unimpeded and while she was showing signs of faltering at the last room, she was struggling far harder than it appeared. Her use of mana was sloppy. He held back too long and by the time she made it to the third room she was showing signs of sore limbs. She spent ten entire minutes messaging her legs and arms. Because of the fact she had just been in a cultivation chamber, her use of mana was now placing a strain on her body.
By the fact he was sealed inside her body, he was able to see inwards. It wasn’t like she couldn’t stop him from being able to see her condition. During the fights she used too much mana causing the stress on her muscles to increase, her actions in turn were stronger, but there was too much wasted strength being used. This strength was overwhelming. She was cutting deeply, to the point when she went to kill she hit the vitals and the blade didn’t stop until she often came up against bone. The amount of maintenance she had to do went from around ten to twenty minutes after a series of fights, all the way to the point she was needing to do touch ups after every fight.
“I know, I know…” she was staring at the ground with a frown. Exhaling deeply, “I got excited. Since I was a kid and started to gather mana I have been working towards this goal forever. Even if the conditions had changed. Are you telling me when you were stuck in that room and started to gather mana you didn’t feel any excitement?”
Silent for a moment, “Alright, fine. However, if you want me to agree to the contract, you need to stop rushing. You proposed equal rights. While you are you, and I am me. You said your actions wouldn’t be able to dictate what I want to do. So now it is your time to prove what you said. For the next two weeks, I am going to work on the rune, I don’t want to come back or look out and see you are trying to progress again.”
Saying his piece, Leo disappeared. Jessica was left biting her lip. She had brought the contract brought up by the old man with Leo. For all intent and purpose, the contract was pretty useless. They were soul bound, and they couldn’t separate even if they wanted to. A large issue was they could feel each other's feelings. There was a large determinantal effect to constantly being in contact with negative emotions. With prolong exposure it would probably affect her more than it did him.
Leo, was a different type of being. A new one by even the old man’s standards. Though unquestionable, he was immortal. It wasn’t like he couldn’t die, in fact he said it a few times. He had almost died on numerous occasions. As someone that had experienced brushes with death, the prospect of having nearly no warning from physical harm brought by the damage to the body. The thought of damaging her soul, sounded awful. Then, thinking about what it would be to have your soul shrivel up and almost disappear caused her to shiver and shake like she was drenched in ice-cold water.
Closing her eyes, she sat in a cross-legged position and she slowly removed all the useless thoughts. Finally, when her eyes did open, there wasn’t any conflicting emotions, and she was calm and collected. Needing to repair her weapon after fighting the mutated wolf, she knew her weapons were good, only this didn’t stop her from giving them a once over to ensure there were no issues. Once this was done, with her hand against the hard surface of the door. Once open, she was greeted with a sight that caused her to frown deeply.
Inside were two forest wolves, one snow wolf, and two blood-red wolves. Volcanic wolves were magic beasts that lived around volcano’s or other areas with large spikes in fire mana. Like the other magic wolves, they had processed the mana in their bodies to produce an effect that caused their attacks and blood to show signs of the mana’s properties. Different from the rest was their hunting style. They were faster and stronger than most magic wolves, being the closest of the four types of magic wolves to the standards of normal wolves.
One of the strangest aspects, they were more methodical. They didn’t rashly attack randomly and lash out like all the other wolves. Similar to wolves in the wild, almost as if having intelligence, they periodically attacked when they felt an opening. Filled with patience and strength was similar to a spider in their methodology. In terms of danger, they were somewhere in the middle. Since they lacked intelligence, their methodology had been studied. The issue came with the fact they were akin to the mutated wolf.
Even if you knew what it was going to do, it became a question if you could react. She wasn’t exactly clear on her ability to clear a five group room. This also showed what Leo said was correct. She was far too excited and nearly got herself killed. If the last room had five wolves, regardless of their type. She would be forced into two solutions. First was a ticking time bomb. Stay in the fourth room and pray she would get multiple long timers so she was given time to rest. Instead of meditating, she would use a mana stone to make up for any lack of mana.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The second option, was to move back. This also meant she had to go through three rooms filled with a random assortment of creatures. This was on top of the psychological burden of knowing that beyond the fifth room was a rest area, while she needed to go three rooms to make it back. Once she retreated on any floor, any room. Jessica would be forced to retreat all the way back and exit the dungeon to once again progress.
There was a very clear reason why individuals didn’t normally challenge such high level dungeons. On the other hand, everything she said before still held true. She had made it. She could do it, what she needed to do now, was obvious. Instead of rushing into the fight, Jessica turned around and moved away from the door. Taking out her daggers, she clipped the fiber to the pommel and started to essentially play with them.
Her ability to use fibers to add a second layer of control and options, wasn’t one she came up with randomly. For five years, she had to practice. That was simply to move over to scrap metal. She started learning from the old man at the age of four. When she turned seven, she heard a story about an old elf that came from a previous epoch. Their name lost to history, all that was known was that they used flying swords. From the little records left behind, it was believed they did the same things she did.
The old man theorized that the materials used came from high level creatures or materials. Possibly something they made themselves. The few descriptions left behind, depicted that person using two swords that flew through the air like flying swords. Cutting down any enemies without taking a single step. It was said that they had their greatest moment recorded in history, to the point that it made its way to the current epoch. During a beast horde of hundred of thousands beasts, this person stood on the walls of the elven kingdom and with a single swing cut down the entire horde.
There was zero garnishing, with a single swing everything came to an end. It was impossible to know what exactly happened. Instead, the lack of garnishing caused her seven-year-old mind to explode in possibilities, and her imagination went wild. In the end, she used a practice sword and attached a swing. This ended with a large black eye as the wooden sword was too heavy and the string she used snapped as she twirled it around, causing her to get socked in the face.
After a grounding, Jessica was given two practice daggers. When the old man was around he would allow her to tie a string, he provided, and teach her to throw the daggers at a standing target. Only once she was twelve was she given free reign to practice on her own. Only when she turned thirteen was she able to really play with and practice with the daggers. Given the fact she didn’t stay in one place, it was rather amazing she practiced so hard, was a testament to how much free time she was given.
The hall she was in wasn’t very large. Therefore, she wasn’t able to extend her range by a large amount. With two to three feet of fiber, she started to twirl the daggers around. From one end to the other, she walked as she didn’t handle the daggers but spun them around her. When she turned around, she started to apply her mana, this caused the speed of the spinning to reach a level that the daggers couldn’t be seen any longer.
Jessica reached the starting point and took a sharp turn as she grabbed the left dagger with her right hand. Stabbing behind her, spinning around she was able to grab the right dagger in her left hand as it twirled around her, with a spin to stop the fiber from being pulled taunt she once again stabbed out in front of her. After each stab, she would release the dagger. While a dagger would reach the end of the three foot of string and dangle down, just as quickly, the dagger would start to be pulled and twirl as she continued to move in a set of movements creating a sloppy and unrefined looking sword dance.
There wasn’t anything impressive or glorious about the dance. It, in fact, looked ugly and forced. There was very little finesse, instead, every movement was direct without any flashy appearance. After the first stride from one end to another, her steps became less organized and her flow was slow and unsteady. She stomped around like some type of wild animal weighing a large amount. And yet, when she reached around her fourth cycle through the room, her steps started to slide as she started to connect her stabs as she started to throw the blades out as they tugged at her wrist at the end of their flight. Her movements would then pull them back as the spinning dagger would be grasp as she followed up with another stab or slice.
When she reached ten paces back and forth, she was almost running as her speed reach a crescendo. Her movements followed suit, as if before, some attacks had mana in between some of the movements. Every single one of her actions at this point was fueled through mana. As the speed reached a new height she started to move so fast it caused, to the untrained eye, to look as if her daggers were coming and going as they blurred in and out of eyesight. When she reached the thirteenth back and forth, her face was starting to become red as her breathing was reaching a new unevenness, there was sweat on her face as her hands started to falter as her speed slowed ever so slightly.
Finally, when she reached the fifteenth run, Jessica lost control and finally fell to the ground as she was covered in sweat and her lips had started to lose color with a slight tint of blue. Her fingers had a bit of blood on them as there were a few cuts. The sword dance wasn’t anything but something she randomly came up with when she was sixteen.
There was little grace, and the entire thing was filled with practicality. From the beginning, she could only move at a snails pace. For an entire week, she stayed in a forest as she came up with this training method to train her hand and eye coordination. Once she reached a decent speed at the end, she started to apply mana. All of this happened because she had no money to move into anywhere inhabited. In fact, she was kicked out of a human city for not having any money left to pay for a place to sleep.
Found on the streets, she was tossed out of the gate at night. Unable to cope with her inability, she trained for an entire year. She grew up in a forest, she could find everything she needed here. So she lived in the forest for a year, training. By the end she learned how to do this dance, it became the number one training method. She hadn’t done it in at least half a year. She forgot how calming it was to exhausting herself like this. Taking out a tasteless compressed biscuit, she chewed it before taking out a canteen from the storage bag and finally closing her eyes on the floor of the dungeon.