“Riiight… That’s not suspicious at all, huh?”

Jeofffff: the real dungeon begins?

Irid123: it’s another maze?

“Who knows…?” I murmured as I eyed the classroom without entering it yet. “Either way, the green arrow points here, so unless the map is wrong, this is how I can progress.”

I had no idea what awaited me. More of these demonic cooking zombies? I had beaten the last monster without any injury, but I had gotten hit. It had mostly been my own fault for misjudging how much room I had to swing my naginata, but still. If several of those were to swarm me, or if something stronger showed up, it might be a problem.

“You know, chat… as cool as this thing is, it’s pretty inconvenient to use in small spaces,” I concluded as I looked at the naginata.

I could still split it back into the sword and mop and try different fusions, although…

“Wait, hold on. Armsmaster is on cooldown for two days instead of one?! Why?!”

I hadn’t even noticed that in the heat of the battle, but now that I looked at it, it was quite annoying.

Jeofffff: because tier two skill?

GeorgeDoshington: double tier double cooldown lol

“That makes sense… but that doesn’t mean I have to like it,” I grumbled to myself.

Armsmaster was quite useful to know how to handle the naginata itself, even if it hadn’t prevented me from screwing up. Although overall, Flameguard was probably still better for direct combat if I wasn’t planning on fusing anything.

In fact, I would also replace Appraisal with Fire Breath and have both the old build and new build active at the same time. The main downside would be the lack of Appraisal, but…

Well, I could always do that later.

Now the question was: Should I keep going?

“Eh, it’s fine. I’m fairly tanky now. The knife barely did anything to me. Let’s keep going.”

I stepped forward, stopped, narrowed my eyes and the enclosed room in front of me, and decided to try something. The naginata went back into my backpack, and out came my fancy new Plasma orb handcannon.

An enclosed room was the best case scenario for this thing. I just had to keep the gun between me and the orb to reabsorb it if it ever bounced back into me. And if an enemy got too close to me, I could always summon my key sword. No naginata needed.

I nodded to myself and stepped forward into the classroom.

“Alright, chat! Let’s do this! Come at me, demonic cooking zombies!”

I glanced around once I was inside and saw a schoolyard outside of the windows. A schoolyard that definitely wouldn’t be there if I went back outside.

Typical dungeon.

Four steps in, the door slammed behind me and clicked again and I immediately tensed up and raised my handcannon, ready to shoot the threat.

The threat turned out to be another faceless demonic zombie jumping from behind a desk on top of it. This one was much shorter – a child? – wore a stylish black and red cloak, and wielded a crystalline shield in one hand and a fancy stick – a wand? – in the other.

“Hello! Can we talk about this?!” I screamed.

It was, of course, in vain.

The zombie gestured with its wand in my direction and it released a black fireball at me. I easily side-stepped it and immediately began charging my handcannon.

Three more black fireballs sailed in my direction and I deftly ducked and weaved through them until I felt like the plasma orb was big enough. I dug my heels in to counteract the recoil and let it go.

The orb went pwoof and lazily flew at my opponent. I’d made it small enough that I still had enough Ether to fire another one of these if I needed to.

The zombie swung its wand again, shooting another black fireball at the plasma orb. The fireball hit it, burst into regular orange fire, and quickly disappeared, while the orb continued on its path without a care in the world.

I couldn’t help but smirk as the zombie pulled up its shield to block the orb and the shield blew up as soon as the orb touched it. It served its purpose, however, because the orb bounced off to the side, even as the zombie staggered.

I rushed forward, jumped on top of the nearby desk, held out my free hand, and summoned my key sword before coating it in fire and flinging it at the zombie like a boomerang.

Surprisingly, the zombie managed to recover in time and dodged to the side while shooting another black fireball at me.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

But I was already jumping to another desk toward the orb, just as it bounced off the wall to me, and reabsorbed it with my handcannon.

More black fireballs flew at me and I did my best to dodge, but one of them managed to clip my leg.

It… kinda hurt, but not nearly as much as I thought it would have. I could probably survive even if I didn’t even bother dodging those, although it wouldn’t be very pleasant.

I hadn’t expected the ultimate armor build to already be working this well.

While I dodged the fireballs, I charged another shot of my handcannon and fired it off just as a fireball I couldn’t dodge flew straight at my center of mass. The orb extinguished it mid-air, doubling as a shield, and kept going toward my enemy. While the zombie scrambled to dodge, I quickly reached into my backpack and pulled out my water gun this time and aimed it at where I thought the zombie would land after its dodge.

Then I fed it Ether and fired.

The zombie had no time to react to the blob of water traveling at ridiculous speeds and exploded into pieces as it was hit head on.

I screamed a little while stumbling back from the recoil as the chunks of… something hit me.

Luckily, it all quickly turned into mist and the spot I’d shot now had a small black stone chest innocently laying on it.

The door to the classroom then clicked again to signify the end of this encounter.

“Ugh… Okay. Chat, if I ever actually meet real people in this world, remind me to never use this gun on them, Jesus Christ,” I said with a full-body shiver.

Getting used to killing dungeon monsters was one thing, but getting covered in their viscera before they could despawn was another.

GeorgeDoshington: first granny and now her grandson?

GeorgeDoshington: you monster!

JamieWasTaken3: ur so lucky you cant get banned for this lmao

trelipideliberitation: jesus fuck that was brutal

“Stop making up the backstory for this place, George! Ugh… Yeah, I know. I didn’t expect it to just explode like that. I gotta be careful with what I shoot with this.” I frowned at the water gun before glancing at my other weapon. “And this thing is actually kinda disappointing… It’s too slow and easy to dodge. Even if it's super strong, that doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Jeofffff: why not merge them

“Well, I wanted to, but… Uh… I think I just forgot, actually,” I admitted a bit sheepishly. “But then again, the regular Fusion limits the rarity or something, doesn’t it? I probably need to soulbind one of them to get the most out of this.”

And then I would become part gun.

Maybe I could just keep them separate. They were still useful on their own, right?

I shook these thoughts away and put both guns into the backpack before waltzing to the key sword I’d thrown and grabbing it as well.

Then it was time for everyone’s favorite ‘check the mimic’ segment as I approached the small chest with a frown and my key sword raised.

I slashed forward with a battle scream before stopping mid-swing and backing off.

“Hmm, didn’t fall for that one, huh?”

Jeofffff: wtf are you doing

“Shh, quiet chat. I’m trying to fake it out.”

Jeofffff: you can’t be fucking serious

JamieWasTaken3: lmfao

I walked around the chest, ignoring Jeoff, and did the same ‘faking out’ at the chest.

The chest didn’t react.

“Smart little thing… It knows my tricks…” I whispered.

Jeofffff: or maybe its just NOT A MIMIC

I walked in a semicircle around it again and then did the same thing… except this time, I didn’t stop and actually let my weapon hit the chest.

There was a clink as it did and the chest bounced in place from recoil, but otherwise remained unmoving.

“Hmm… Right, I think this one’s safe, chat. Not a mimic,” I declared confidently before putting away my key sword and going forward to open the chest.

Nobody could see my teasing smirk.

To be frank, I didn’t actually believe any of the chests would be mimics anymore, but at this point, it had kind of become a running joke. Not to mention, it was funny to annoy Jeoff.

The chest’s lid popped off, revealing… a paper notebook?

School notebook

A notebook made out of Chrystawood paper. Waterproof, fireproof, and erosion proof.

“...Huh. Cool, I guess? Hey, that actually pairs pretty well with the pen I have! Not very useful, but I’ll take it.”

Into the backpack it went.

After the chest disappeared into mist, I stood up and took a look around the classroom.

“Sooo… I guess this dungeon is just a boss rush…? Or is there more to it?” I wondered out loud.

Irid123: seems like it so far

GonguuH: there could be something else in other buildings

GonguuH: unless it’s all connected

GeorgeDoshington: I bet the final boss is the king living in that castle

I hummed and brought out my trusty bucket to snack on some life ooze.

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel as drained as I thought I would after using so much Ether. Had my reserves gotten bigger somehow without me noticing?

Also, the bucket was smaller than I remembered.

…Right. I’d had several months’ worth of growth, hadn’t I?

Wait, was that also the reason why I had more Ether now? If Ether was physical energy, then growing up and getting physically stronger giving me more Ether made sense, didn’t it?

Hold on, what about the Ether expansion tickets then? Should I save them until I grew up more if I get any more of them to be more efficient? Or would they have the same effect no matter when I used them?

More food for thought.

“Alright, let’s keep going, chat,” I said after refreshing my Ether and putting the bucket away. “What does the map say…?”

I brought out the map and narrowed my eyes at it. Once again, the map featured a big rectangle with a red dot inside it. Then there was a gap where the door I’d used to enter this place was and… both a green and a blue arrow pointing at it.

“Uh, what? I thought green was the way forward and blue was the way back? Why are they both on the same door? Am I supposed to go back to progress?”

GeorgeDoshington: the illusion of choice

Jeofffff: it splits off behind the door now probably

JamieWasTaken3: mb you can choose which you want

JamieWasTaken3: teleport nonsense like before

“Hmm… Well, let’s try it, I guess.”

I brought out my naginata once more and approached the door. I grabbed the handle, carefully creaked it open, and peeked on the other side.

The dining room from before was gone, replaced by… a porch next to a grassy yard surrounded by a living hedge and several colorful flower patches.

“Right… I think I’m starting to understand how this dungeon works. Let’s see what the next boss is, then.”

I walked out onto the porch, naginata in hand, and looked around. I belatedly noticed the bullseye archery targets lining the edge of the yard and realized that this had to be some kind of archery range.

Then the door behind me slammed closed and clicked.

I tensed up, gripped my naginata tighter, and prepared for battle once more.