As it turned out, there weren't many hidden treasures in there per se, as most of the valuable plants, or at least what Jonathan assumed were valuable, had already been harvested by the troglodytes. It had been pure luck that had led him towards those mushrooms, and he suspected that the only reason they had still been there was because the troglodytes had been too dim to understand how valuable they were. One of them had likely taken a bit of a mushroom, and only registered the poison, rather than the actual benefit of the plant.
In any case, the only way out now was through, and Jonathan began to move towards the troglodyte village, wanting to survey it before he attacked. By the time that he reached there, he had avoided a few of the monster patrols going around the cavern, presumably prompted by his killing of the troglodytes earlier. That was fine with him. He doubted that even a group of the monsters would prove to be much of a challenge to him, In fact, if he ended up having to enact some sort of guerilla warfare against the creatures, then it would be more effective to take them out in groups than one by one.
Jonathan reached the village a few minutes later, and took a good look at it from behind a clump of thick moss. It was built like some sort of primitive hunter-gatherer village, with low houses made out of whatever was on hand, which in this case was moss. They had taken large clumps of the moss and dried it out, creating little huts that were structured around a central gathering place. Chunks of stone supplemented the moss in many areas, and the gate that blocked off the next part of the dungeon was mostly made out of stone. Because there was no wood in this place, the constructions looked a lot more primitive than they actually were. These monsters at least had enough intelligence to live in a society rather than alone, which was strange to Jonathan, seeing as all of the other evidence pointed to them being little more than animals.
Jonathan made his way forwards more cautiously from that point, and gradually edged his way into the village. He wanted to get a head count of how many warriors there were to deal with. He would have simply left the monsters alone, but seeing as they would likely follow him down into the bowels of the dungeon if he broke through the gate, as well as the fact that they were walking bags of essence, he had no choice but to kill them all, In the end, they probably weren't even real.
As far as Jonathan could tell, this dungeon was instanced, meaning that every challenger got their own private version of the main dungeon, in which all of the monsters were still alive, no matter how many times they had been killed by prior adventurers. In this case, it had been changed a bit because of his level, but that probably had only changed the levels of the actual monsters, not their species.
Jonathan shook his head, not believing that he had just been debating the morality of killing monsters with himself. That was what he did, and it didn't matter whether these ones had a village. Humans were often far worse than any of these creatures, meaning that a civilization was not a hallmark of moral superiority.
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Jonathan slunk between houses, and counted the monsters as he went by. Most of them were in a circle around the main gathering point of the cavern, looking towards what seemed to be some sort of chieftain feature, judging by their larger size and ornate decorations. Well, ornate meaning that they had a few mushrooms strung around their neck. There were a little over seventy five monsters there, and to his relief, they all looked identical. There were no children, simply oversized brutes that would gladly attack him if he went near them. Adding on the patrols that he had seen earlier, that meant that there were maybe a little below a hundred troglodytes in this village. That was a number that he could not fight in one go. He would have to take this step by step. The first of those steps was to wipe out the warriors, most of which were out within the mossy brushland of the cavern.
Jonathan quickly left the village, making sure that none of the monsters spotted him, and entered the main part of the cavern once more, searching for the hunting parties that he had avoided earlier. He found one a few moments later, seeming to be in the process of returning to the village.
Jonathan wove his way around to the back of the group and then struck, his mana infused gauntlets crashing down into the rear monster, crippling it in a single blow. As its leg broke with a satisfying crack, the other monster turned around, but didn't see anything there. Jonathan had already dashed back into the cover of the mossy bushes.
The monsters growled low in their throats, and Jonathan snuck behind them once more, this time behind the uninjured ones. He cocked his fist back and struck twice within the span of a second, breaking the back legs of the other two monsters. They howled in pain, which was the only chance they got before Jonathan was upon them. He laid into them with his fists, making sure to target their heads first so as to silence them. He didn't want to draw the entire troglodyte race down upon himself. The monsters died quickly, and Jonathan leveled up once more, bringing his level up to a respectable 42. He didn't bother opening his stat sheet yet, as it would be a waste of time while he had so many other important things to do. Such a thing could wait until he was ready. Besides, there was no point right now, seeing as he didn't want to allocate any points. Jonathan dumped the bodies behind a mossy bush, and waited for more to come looking for their fallen brethren.
A few minutes later, another group crossed his path, and Jonathan snuck up like he had last time, taking their lives with ease. This continued for a few more groups, and he leveled up again at that point, bringing him ever closer to the halfway mark for Tier 1. Well, the numerical halfway mark, seeing as the amount of essence required only went up with time. Jonathan was liberally coated in blood at this point, and his stamina bar was quite low. However, he was almost finished with the monsters that were patrolling the forest. After that, he would be able to start working on the village.