I ripped through some more sets of crab benching while waiting for my health to recover. I’d gotten cocky in the last battle, assuming that my numbers meant I could still fight. Sadly, stamina wasn’t tracked by the system, so I needed to remember to pace myself. Otherwise, I’d end up under a crab and not in the good way.
That was a weird thought. Perhaps all this time spent doing little besides working out, killing monsters, and pushing myself beyond human limits was making me less human. That would be as cool as it was worrying, but it was also a problem for later. The reality of the here and now was that my health needed to recover and this corpse needed to be benched.
It didn’t take long before I’d recovered to quadruple digits again. Probably. Time was as ephemeral as always, so I was really just assuming.
Knowing better than to focus on the numbers, I got used to my increased strength the old fashioned way: throwing a crab around. It was easier than before, but still got me tired at a similar pace. I was beginning to suspect that stamina wasn’t tied to my stats at all. While you’d think that it would be a function of resilience or maybe strength and agility, it didn’t seem to change as I got more powerful. I still ran out of energy after a personal record, same as I did on earth. The difference was the PR itself along with how quickly I recovered.
While my stamina seemed to basically be unchanged, my recovery rate was as insane as ever. I’d noticed it back in my little training hell, but the true power of it shined in battles of attrition like these. My first crab battle had been slow enough for both of us to recover, at least a little bit, but this one went fast and hard. By the time it was out of gas and dying, I still could have gone all day.
The biggest issue was the same as always. Recovering all of my health in two days was neat and all, but holy shit was it slow. Sure, it was magical compared to needing months to heal broken bones and regrowing fingers in an afternoon was quite the miracle, but I had crabs to kill! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed bench pressing carcasses on cold stone as much as the next guy, but I was in something of a time crunch here. Maybe that would change once those people outside braved the interior, but I somehow doubted my luck. No way in hell would I take a risk like that and just kill time here.
Besides, I could always spend a week doing dungeon benching once I knew the coast was clear. It wasn’t like this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Satisfied with my new strength and my rationalizations, I pushed onwards and upwards. The tunnel curved, taking me slowly towards another large cave area with even more tunnels splitting out from it. I got the feeling that getting lost was in my future along with a lot more crabs.
Sadly, that was a bit of an understatement. The sounds of skittering legs echoed down the tunnels, betraying just how many of these tanky shits there were in this frozen hell scape. Fortunately, the tunnel I was in was too narrow for them to attack me in teams. More importantly, only one of them seemed to notice me in the first place.
Handy, considering that there were four of them in the room. The crustaceans seemed to have patrols, and simple minded as they were they stuck to them slavishly. Each of four had taken one of the cardinal directions, taking my tunnel as south, meaning that only the southern crustacean was making its way towards me.
To stay on theme, I’d name him Crawfish.
The approach of Crawfish forced me to backpedal, just in case the yankees or coast dwellers got any bright ideas. Interestingly, he seemed to lose interest if I pulled too far away. Even if I punched the wall or yelled at him, he would just turn around and run back to his sentry point, ignoring all attempts to engage him.
Sneaking up this time, I decided to get a better feel for what was going on. My buddy Crawfish noticed me quickly but gave me enough time to learn some things. Each of the crustaceans had a spot where they’d stand, probably forever, until something entered its area. Then, regardless of how quiet or slow I was, they’d lock onto me and get aggressive. Once in that state, they’d follow me about twice as far as their initial aggro range before losing interest, no matter how close I was at the time. They’d then turn around and run back.
That gave me some ideas.
Once they were moving in a straight line, they were way faster than me. The only reason why I was able to get far enough away from this one to even learn about its range was because he didn’t start facing me. With how slowly Crawfish turned around, I had plenty of time to sprint away from him.
There was a brief opening when the crab was nearly fully turned around but hadn’t started to run away. After watching it a few times, I tried out my new strategy. I’d just baited my buddy Crawfish down the tunnel until he was turning around, set to return to his spawn point, and I closed the distance. Right when he’d fully turned around and taken just a single step forward, I was on top of him.
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With the crab going forward instead of sideways, the difficulty of lifting it skyrocketed, but I hadn’t been doing all that benching for nothing. With an enormous effort, I pulled Crawfish into the air before slamming it to the ground behind me. One straight and two jabs later, I jumped off of it and gave it some room.
I was now between it and its spawn point, but it was beyond its operational range. Sure enough, the creature slowly turned around before racing past me and towards its starting location.
I could feel a tingling in the back of my head, letting me know just how huge of a find this was. I’d complained about the durability and recovery speed of these crabs when I fought my first one. I’d also been plagued by my need to grind my stats up, particularly strength and resilience, while losing access to my favorite bee farm. My increased efficiency had made it difficult for them to hurt me even if I let them, which I didn’t like to do. That being the case, my resilience hadn’t changed in forever.
But every time I did my suplex followed by a mount, I was pushing my strength, resilience, wrestling, unarmed combat, and both primary active skills. Those same skills would determine how good my next class could be, and finding a way to farm them had been the very reason I came here. If I could just fight the same crab for hours or days on end, pushing these skills and stats to their limit, just how strong could I get?
Fuck the people outside. This was an opportunity too good to pass up.
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Luck wasn’t on my side, but that wasn’t a surprise. No one volunteered to enter the freezing death trap, and Jenson liked my original performance too much to choose someone else. If I didn’t fear an arrow in the back, I’d have made a break for it hours ago.
“Go on, then. Just see if the monster’s still there.”
As if that wasn’t the part that I was worried about, asshole.
Still, I followed my orders and pushed my head through the portal. Sure enough, there was the long, shelled monster right next to what looked like the shattered remains of a traveler’s sack. I pulled my head out as quick as I could, giving my report with haste.
“You,” Jenson spoke up again, thankfully pointing at someone else this time, Gnav if I remembered correctly. None of us had been all to talkative before coming here and even less so after taking our positions, so I couldn’t be sure. Still, it showed the quality of our leader that even he didn’t bother to learn our names. Honestly, we all preferred it that way. Less risk when this was all over.
“Check inside. Don’t pull back for a full second, or I’ll push ya through myself.”
For once, I was thankful for going first. No way would someone survive for long with that monster sitting there waiting. Still, Gnav did as he was ordered before pulling back, face ashen with fear.
“Same as he saw. Just the monster and the torn bag.”
“Did it move?” Jenson spoke slowly, emphasizing each word in hopes that it unsettled us. He’d gotten so dramatic since his whole team up and died on him, but it had the intended effect.
“No, sir,” Gnav nearly shouted, obviously trying to get this over with as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the opposite of what Jenson wanted to hear.
The larger man grabbed Gnav by the back of his leathers, pulled him into the air, and shoved him face first into the portal, kicking and screaming. Everyone in the area held their breath as we waited to see what happened. Eventually, Gnav’s limbs stopped thrashing long enough to tap the big man’s hand, getting pulled back out.
“It still didn’t move, boss.”
He didn’t need to say more. Some monsters wouldn’t engage unless you stepped away from the portal, especially the more dangerous ones. They couldn’t risk a fresh meal getting away, at least that was my theory. The alliance didn’t see fit to share such helpful information to nobodies like us.
Jenson didn’t let go and Gnav’s eyes went wide. With an underhanded throw, the larger man sent the scout flying through the portal and into the dungeon proper. It took a full four seconds before the man came out, face full of pale outrage rather than panic.
“You could have killed me!”
Jenson nodded, seemingly happy with the scouting report for the first time since getting here.
“Seems the newbie’s better’n we thought. In ya go, gents. We got monsterkin to hunt.”
Nobody wanted to hear that. I’d spent less than a second with only my face inside, and the cold still stung. Besides, if the monsters were as dangerous as Jenson claimed and this guy had killed one, what business did we have killing him? Could we even succeed? And for what?
Nobody here had the strongest morals, but we’d signed up for a mugging that might turn murder. If the coin was out, then what was the point?
Obviously, our leader had given this more thought than I had.
“Dumb asses. He dumped the bag. If it has no coin, then he’s carrying it. What, ya wanna go back empty handed?”
His words filled the air as one by one, the four of us slowly stepped into the portal, arrows nocked and ready. The inside was freezing and none of us had prepared for it. Every time I breathed out, I could see little white clouds in the air in front of me.
“No coin in the bag,” someone shouted from ahead while another kicked the shelled monster. It was definitely dead then.
Jenson stepped up from behind me to give the bag his own inspection, seemingly unbothered by the temperature. I doubted it was any more than a display, but it seemed to work on the others. Satisfied by what he found, or more accurately didn’t find, our fearless leader gave his orders.
“We go further in. That monsterkin is rich. Soon enough, we will be too.”
Jenson wasn’t much for speeches, but he’d still said all the right words. With greed warming us up, we stepped into the tunnel.