The best part about this cave was the temperature. If not for the fact that I was basically in a freezer, the crab corpse right next to me would have rotten and stank up the whole place. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and I was able to recover in peace.

What was even luckier was the amount of training I could do at the same time. I’d been a little worried that it would slow down my healing, but if it did then I couldn’t tell.

My hand healed up first, letting me graduate to a proper bench, or at least as proper as you could get with a crustacean for a barbell. There was still nothing better to do and plenty of time left to kill, so I just kept pushing my numbers. The bigger issue remained though, no matter how many sets I crushed. Those people were probably still out there, waiting for me to come out and die on their arrows.

I didn’t like that. Worse, I’d been here for hours already and they might grow impatient. Sure, I was getting nice and strong, but I’d need to press further in if I wanted to avoid them. Hell, that might only delay the inevitable. Not that I could just jump outside and fight them. The one arrow that did get shot at me punched right through my armor, not unlike Mr. Crab here. If one of them could do that, then I’d be swiss cheese in minutes.

So I was stuck in the same situation as before. We push further in and hope for the best, knowing that I can at least take out a crab.

“Stats.”

Lawrence Schlager

Classes

Brawler: 17

Pugilist: 6

Ability Scores

Health: 987/1520

Strength: 142

Agility: 144

Resilience: 152

Awareness: 66

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Passive Skills

Infinite Scaling

Unarmed Combat: 29

Pain Tolerance: 19

Masochist: 11

Lumberjacking: 5

Wrestling: 1

Active Skills

Dimension Tearing: 6

Jab: 12

Straight: 1

There was just no substitute for the combat bonus, not to mention how fast numbers already went up in dungeons. Honestly, I just wished I could lay here and push this corpse around for a few days, but I needed to get moving.

I gingerly tested my leg, but found that it could hold my weight just fine. Then, I made sure to ditch all the debris from my armor and caestus in a corner, determined to ignore them for now. Amusingly, I hadn’t gotten any more points in unarmed combat likely because my caestus counted as being armed. As lame as that was, getting the wrestling skill was huge. Soon my dreams of becoming a sumo wrestler could be realized!

Wrestling and martial arts, a merger for the ages. Just you wait, crabs. You won’t see this shitstorm coming.

I grabbed my pack before turning to leave the room, feeling like I’d forgotten something. Looking back, the crab was just laying on the ground, not obviously dead unless you were really familiar with them. Putting down my pack, I readjusted the crab to be facing the portal, dragging it a lot more easily than last time. Once I was deeper in the cave, I’d go back to benching for sure. I’d only gotten around half a dozen points in strength and it was still this huge of an improvement. I needed bigger numbers.

With my scare-crab in place, or I guess it was technically a scare-human since it was people I was hoping to ward off, I carried my belongings further into the cool caves. It didn’t take long to find my next enemy, but this brought additional complications.

The first room I battled in was a nice large circular location with smooth ground, high ceilings, and only a portal for cover. It made it really easy for me to kite the thing laterally without giving it room to act, but now I was in a tunnel. Admittedly, it was close to fifteen feet wide, but it was still a tunnel barely big enough for them to turn around in.

At least this crab wasn’t any bigger than the last one, but it wouldn’t be easy to get around it. The creature charged towards me as I tried to circle strafe, but it was able to adjust its trajectory just enough to push me into the wall, giving me only a few options and all of them were stupid. Channeling my inner action movie hero, I ran into the wall, running along it for a couple seconds to get behind it. For a few glorious moments, I was in the air, not quite horizontal as my feet pressed forward along the vertical surface. Then gravity reared its ugly head and forced me into a sloppy summersault before slamming my back onto the ground.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Groaning, I got back to my feet in time to see the crab still slowly turning. That was all the opening I needed. Dropping my pack off my shoulder, I sprinted up to the crustacean and grabbed its tail around the middle, just past where its legs could reach. Then, I used my full body strength to pivot the creature off the ground and up into a suplex, slamming it head first into the tunnel floor. Fully bridging, I rotated and converted the move into a grapple with the crab writhing on its back to get up. Knowing how hard that would be without its tail, I mounted the creature and began raining my fists upon the middle portion of its underbelly. A straight and four jabs were all I could manage before it pulled out from underneath me and righted itself. Unfortunately for the crab, that still left me behind it.

Another suplex and grapple later, my chest was heaving from exertion. One thing was for certain, my previous fight with these things had given me a lot more time for resting. On the plus side, I was giving the crab less time to recover too. Still, I decided to slow for a moment, following the creature slowly and only going for a grapple right before I’d have to take to the wall to get behind it again or risk tangling with its tail. Brave as I was, there was no way I’d take my chances with that heavy, pointed limb in such narrow corridors. Sprinting onto it for a grapple was one thing, but shimmying behind it was probably just suicide.

Another bridged suplex left me with barely enough stamina to unleash a straight, the squirming monster escaping before a jab could find purchase on its sweet, juicy flesh. No matter, I’d just get back at it.

Standing slowly to begin my pursuit once more, I realized my mistake too late. Its tail was fast, lashing out in an attempt to right itself and escape from me, but it kept moving even after. Each time it clipped me slightly while I was on top of it, I took a small amount of damage that barely added up to anything. But with it free and having a dozen feet of leverage, the segmented limb could sweep me off my shaky feet.

Which was exactly what happened. My ass met stone before I realized what was going on, and I barely had time to process it. By the time the crab was turned most of the way towards me, I was still on the ground. Clearly, trying to power through the exhaustion of suplexing something this size was just stupid. An arrogant move like that would get me killed sooner or later, and I’d need to move fast to make it later.

Rather than stand, I got into a crouch, legs poised for a jump to the side. The tunnel wasn’t big enough for me to circle it properly, and I didn’t trust myself to handle the wall run again, not with how poorly it went when I was at my best. Clearly, I needed to leave the wire stunts to the professionals. With wires.

Once it was in front of me again, the crab charged. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I leapt to the side. Annoyingly, I was the one that slammed into the wall and not the crab. Tempted as I’d been to shout “Ole!” as it passed me, I was pretty happy about my restraint. That would have been embarrassing, taunting an enemy that you had to hurt yourself just to dodge.

The crab began to slowly turn around and my body was already repairing itself. Whatever magic was at work between my stat increased body and survival mode being off had been a godsend for exercises. Thankfully, that even applied to suplexing monsters. The burn in my muscles had gone down enough for me to display my strength again, even if my shoulder was still aching from colliding with the wall.

I pushed through it, charging up to the crustacean and bringing it to the floor once again. At the risk of tiring myself out, I gave every punch I could on that middle portion before letting it up. I could sacrifice a hand to go for a killing blow, but the stamina of a crab was hard to tell. Maybe I’d need to suplex it ten more times before it’d quit, and that would be hard to do with only one hand.

This time, I jumped backwards as it thrashed about, waiting until it had nearly turned halfway towards me before going for another suplex. Those required me to go at an angle, making them more tiring than the usual ones. It was worth it though, the few short seconds I had between wrestling moves were the only moments I had to breath and recover. How the hell did wrestlers do this for thirty minutes with normal people stats? Were they actually monsters?

I updated my strategy, going for a single straight on each mount before breathing for a second and dismounting. It gave me enough stamina to reengage a little faster and twist the suplex a little less. With that, I was eventually able to crack the middle shell of the crab, signaling the beginning of the end. One more suplex and straight later, the crab was dead.

With a sigh, I slumped to the floor and caught my breath. The incidental damage I took from all those tail slaps had dropped me only a couple hundred points in health, so I could keep going in theory. In actuality, I needed at least a few minutes before my breathing became regular.

Halfway through my break, I started looking around for my bag. Sadly, I found it exactly where I’d left it: on the ground right before my first suplex. The pack was demolished, including all the nice things inside. Thankfully, the coins were all small enough and the coin purse soft enough that the crushing weight didn’t really do much to them. People would still take the currency, even if it was a little flatter than most. Probably.

The knives didn’t fare so well. Both had been shattered into pieces, making it dangerous just to reach into the bag. Undeterred, I stuffed my hand inside and pulled back the coin purse along with a few embedded metal shards. I dispassionately noticed that the whole affair barely moved my health pool. Since I knew how sharp and strong the steel had been, that could only mean I was slowly becoming tougher. That was nice to know.

Whatever. I stuffed the coin purse down my pants since spandex had its own kind of pockets and threw the ruined bag back the way I’d come. It sailed through the air, reaching all the way to the first cavern. Between the ruined bag and the crab, I hoped that no one would follow me in.

But if they did, well. I’d figure that out if it came to it.