Sharp pain erupted in Marcel’s shoulder. He cursed and spun around, barely in time to see another kobold hurling towards him. It was knocked out of the air with a quick swing of his trident. The pressure on his shoulder increased.

Marcel activated [Water Tentacles]. The four tentacles erupted out of his back. One jabbed upwards, and cleanly impaled the kobold that had sucked itself onto his shoulder. The pressure eased as the kobold sagged to the floor. There was still a stinging pain though, as blood trickled down his left arm.

Now his [Water Tentacles] were buying him some time though. They slashed open scales and maimed his attackers with precise swings. Marcel was still lacking a little finecontrol with them, but with the goblins it didn’t matter. They were small enough that any attack was dangerous for them.

After the activation of his skill, the fight didn’t take long to finish. A few minutes later the floor of the cave was littered with bodies. There were only two dozen around, so few that Marcel wasn’t even out of breath.

He could feel the small trickles of energy entering him. He got only a single skill level notification. [Water Tentacle] had been raised by one.

It was the third group he had encountered that day. None of them had been as big as the first one, but still the frequency was getting more. It was going in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough yet.

Marcel had started emerging out of his psychological hole two days ago, and while he had made some progress since then, he wasn’t yet where he wanted to be. That was for multiple reasons.

Mainly, that he had spent most of the first day aimlessly wandering through the cave system without even seeing any kobolds. During his mad dash away from the kobold city he had lost all sense of direction. So there was nothing for him to do but walk into a random direction and hope for the best.

It had been maddening. After his realizations from the day before, Marcel had been looking for a way to work off his frustrations. It sounded harsh maybe, but he was looking forward to spilling some kobold blood. In a way he was a little concerned about how calmly he dismissed the creatures as nothing but leveling material for himself. Just a conduct to serve for his own greater good.

But then he remembered the glee in their eyes at the prospect of sinking their teeth into him, and the manic shrieking noises they made when attacking him. These beasts wouldn’t hesitate to tear him to shreds should they get the chance. And if he didn’t want them to get the chance, he needed to be the one tearing them to shreds first.

He stumbled onto another opening to the kobold city more by accident than anything else. Suddenly the cave had opened up, and he was looking out over the wide, gloomy lit canyon again.

This time he was even higher up. The lights stretched under him for at least a hundred meters before they were swallowed by the darkness. Sounds of scratching on hard stone carried all the way through the cavern.

Since then Marcel had decided to simply patrol around the kobold city. That led to him running into more and more kobolds. While the amount of experience he got from them wasn’t that much, it was better than nothing.

His days became a blur of wandering through the darkness, intercepted by occasional bloodshed. From time to time he found himself in the entrance of the city again. The lights from the kobolds fires being as close to natural sunlight as he got.

He didn’t trust himself to venture further into the den. Not with the threat of the dragon looming over him and the sheer mind boggling number of kobolds he had seen.

No, just cleaning up the small squads he found on the outside was enough for now. Marcel wondered if the kobolds would ever notice that some of their brethren were missing. Maybe it was just a matter of time until they grew suspicious and started looking for him. Gods knew that the masses of corpses he had left behind must be discovered eventually.

The question was how the kobolds would react upon seeing so many of their brethren dead. If they simply stopped going out, or if the dragon was involved, it could have come over for Marcel. Instead he hoped they would simply start increasing their numbers going out, since that meant more experience for him.

Over a single week he had managed to raise his Level by two. Under normal conditions that would’ve been quite an extraordinary feat. Only when putting himself up against monsters like the centaur and the ogre had Marcel even been close to resembling such a leveling speed. And that was earlier, when his levels had been lower and breaking through to the next one was still easier.

So by some metrics his cultivation speed was drastic. When he thought about the fact that he was in almost constant battle, sometimes spending more time in his day fighting then recovering, things started looking a little different again.

All in all he couldn’t complain though. This wasn’t the time to get impatient. Marcel took a deep breath and rooted himself.

The thought of fighting that monstrous dragon was still somewhat ludicrous to him. He couldn’t even fathom how that fight was supposed to go. The beast was not just much larger than even the ogre. It was more terrifying by far. And the ogre fight had already pushed him to his limits.

Marcel knew he needed a plan sooner or later, but he decided for later. No matter how he wanted to approach things, the key would be power. He needed levels to face that monster, strength behind him. And no matter how much he wanted to rush things along, Marcel knew that this needed time and patience.

That led to the interesting question of how he should attribute his latest stat points.

Before Marcel had mostly spent his stat points wherever he felt them the most useful at the moment. That had led to a lot of his points going into Perception since he had entered the dungeon.

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A decision he didn’t regret. During more than one occasion had his heightened Perception stat giving him a little forewarning. Once it had even saved him from a nasty surprise when a small group of kobolds had hidden themselves on the roof of the cave and wanted to drop down on him.

He had only managed to notice the ambush thanks to him picking up their barely audible breathing over him. Something he definitely would’ve missed just a few stat points ago.

Still Marcel thought he shouldn’t invest anymore into Perception. It was a skill that was always useful in a way, but also one that wouldn’t help him too much against the dragon.

That opened the question of what would help him though.

He could simply throw all of his points into strength, hoping that with enough levels he would be able to get enough power behind his attacks to seriously hurt the dragon. But there were also other things to consider.

His [Water Tentacles] for example scaled with his Wisdom stat. His [Aquatic Restoration] and [Rhea’s Boon] where also more effective the higher that stat went. All three of these skills could come in pretty handy against the dragon, but it was especially his [Aquatic Restoration] skill that Marcel didn’t want to miss.

He had already seen against the centaur that the skill could mean the difference between life or death. Literally.

The question was how effective healing would even be against a monster of that size. Marcel was under no illusion that he would be able to survive even a causal swing of the dragon's tail. Much less its flame breath.

In the end that led Marcel to decide to adopt a trifecta skilling strategy. From his six available points he put two into Strength, two into Wisdom, and two into Vitality.

Marcel wasn’t sure if that was the right way. He felt like his skilling had been a little all over the place before, with him wanting to level his Dexterity and Endurance. And then there was the Perception stunt he had pulled the last few days. To fight the dragon he had to start really getting some of his stats up, and that meant specializing. Even if the time in this dungeon was dilated, he couldn’t spend an eternity in here and wait for all of his stats to reach incredible heights. He had to make decisions.

Maybe going with three stats was still too much, but he wanted to not just max out his damage, but also his survivability. For now he felt satisfied with that decision.

He glanced over his character screen once again.

“Marcel Houst [Warrior of Rhea Level 16]”

Stats:

Str 19

Dex 12

Int 5

Wis 11

End 8

Vit 11

Per 11

His stats started looking promising, and his leveling speed was almost ridiculous. There was a tingle of excitement in his stomach as he thought about increasing his levels further. He couldn’t wait to see the heights he would reach. It was almost intoxicating.

As he pondered these thoughts Marcel let his gaze drift over the kobold city. He sat on a stone cliff high atop most of the other caves. Sometimes he could hear some faint scraping sounds around, and sometimes over him, as well, but he didn’t worry too much. If some kobolds stumbled upon him, he was confident in dealing with them before they sounded any sort of alarm.

His mind still had trouble accepting the sheer size of the kobold den sometimes. It reminded him in more than one way of his time in New York back in his old world. Back when he still cared about career and things like that.

Marcel remembered spending some of his lunch breaks in the office rooms of the high rising towers. He watched the people hurrying along in the streets, so small and so far away from him. It was crazy to think that all of these people were going after their own lives, with worries and dreams that were all theirs.

He just couldn’t fathom how so many people could live together and keep their sense of self importance. How they would race alongside each other like ants, living on top and underneath each other, but still had the urge to always one up their neighbors.

The antics of people were just even more surreal to Marcel now.

He was ripped out of his thoughts by a giant roar ringing out. The cavern walls reverberated with the barely contained power. A deep low thrum filled the cavities, shortly after followed by the periodic beating of wings.

Marcel could feel a sense of fear creeping up again. Just the sound of the dragon seemed to make his palms sweaty and his skin crawl.

The dark shape soared past Marcel and landed again on a giant stone bridge. This time Marcel was much closer and could feel a little pull going through the cave walls as the giant monster landed.

It let out another roar, ear deafening loud. Marcel gripped the stone edge as tight as he could, feeling it drill into his skin, trying to distract his body from the waves of fear that washed over him.

Like last time the lizard let out a giant pillar of flames. They licked out towards the ceiling, turning the stones orange where it touched them.

His heartbeat quickened, his instincts urged his legs to run to walk to crawl just to do anything to get away from that monstrous fire breathing lizard.

Marcel held though. With every ounce of his will he locked his body into place. He faintly felt blood running down his fingers.

He saw the kobolds doing the exact opposite. Out of every cave, every nook and cranny, the small reptiles emerged. Like an unending stream.

Marcel had only briefly noticed it the first time he had seen the dragon, his mind having been too preoccupied with something else. It was mind boggling to see though. He had known about their big numbers, but this was ridiculous.

It was like one giant fungus had crept over the cave floors and was inching towards the dragon.

The first ones arrived and gathered around their master. The dragon stopped his fire, and instead snapped his head down towards the floor. He gulped down a whole mass of the kobolds, swallowing them without hesitation.

Marcel's eyes went wide, he couldn't believe what he had just seen. Surely the kobolds must run away in a frenzy now. But it was the opposite. They stayed put, staring mindlessly at the giant lizard. A few shuffled forwards. The dragon got another bite in.

There was no screaming. No shock or panic among the kobolds. They simply continued forwards.

This continued for a while, the dragon swallowing seemingly endless amounts of kobolds. Still their numbers didn't seem to dwindle as dozens turned into hundreds.

It got to the point that Mackerel wondered if the dragon would burst, but then it finally seemed to have enough.

It let out another roar. This one less terrible than, less haunting than before. And it simply flew away again.

Marcel had watched the whole scene intently. It seemed he had vastly misjudged the role the kobolds played for the dragon. They weren't just servants, they were also food sources.

An idea started taking root in his head.