Chapter 11

Everything went fast. The sky exploded and a roar rolled over us. Fire burst and bloodthirst rammed my consciousness.

I froze, overwhelmed by murderous intent as fiery projectiles fell like rain in a pond on the bubble shield protecting us, a current of cold determination washing over me from above.

I reached for Lana’s hand but another explosion shattered our shield, throwing us apart. Nathaelle’s body was like charcoal yet her mind was calm as always and Lana was screaming in pain. She had been angry a second ago but now I only felt panic and suffering swelling around her, a large burn over her face where her eyes had been.

The smell of burned flesh invaded my nose. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

For a second nothing happened and then, from the ceiling, a creature arose, swimming out of the molten stone that slowly dripped down.

A long, serpentine body appeared, height thin limbs emerging from the magma and anchoring themselves on the ceiling. The head was a storm of rocks and fire with two blue dots as eyes, but I could still feel the same cold determination as it twisted its neck to look at us, mixed with hope and satisfaction. The head expended and Nathaelle waved a hand in protection, creating a spiraled cone to meet the beam of pure heat that the monster spat at us, turning it into many tiny rays that scattered all around.

Nate coughed blood and turned her head toward us, anxiety and urgency flowing from her, then she waved her hand again and I felt like I was hit by a rock.

***

I was alive, or I dearly hoped so because death shouldn’t hurt like that. The air felt heavy in my lungs, as if I was breathing lead, and lights were flickering on my closed eyelids.

I tried to move but my whole body screamed at me to stop.

An unknown place, a broken body... I was doomed.

Another second and I remembered I wasn’t the weak kitten that was teleported down the dungeon so many cycles ago. Nathaelle’s teaching came back to me and, my eyes still closed, I started casting Minor Heal on my body repetitively, until the pain recessed and I could move again.

The air seemed to press more heavily on me afterward, but at least now I wasn’t hurt anymore.

I opened my eyes and was greeted by the fluttering of distant leaves filtering the sun, source of the flickering lights that annoyed me so much when my eyes were closed.

I was surrounded by giant blades of grass, and the ground was dirt under me.

I took a deep breath and sat down, looking around me. Giant twigs and leaves littered the ground, alongside other less savory things.

Many drops of water as big as beach balls covered the plants around me. One was hanging from a grass blade and fell on the ground beside me when the wind disturbed it, maintaining its shape as it crashed against the dirt.

Wait. Curiosity and interest were flowing from the giant drop of water, so I stopped and looked at it again and, sure enough, I saw a tiny white ball float around in the water. Suddenly.

“Puyong.” Made the slime went it jumped up and down. It was entirely transparent, that’s why at first I mistook it for just another water drop, but since there were emotions coming from it it couldn't have just been water.

“Puyong.” It jumped again, but didn’t show any sign of aggressivity whatsoever, nor did I feel any coming from it. I knew that some slimes were peaceful, so I stopped paying attention to it, particularly since I could feel menace rolling from a nearby blade of grass, alongside wariness and battle readiness.

I jumped on my feet and quickly injected mana into the matrix of my items, to repair the tiny damage they had been subjected to, and not a second later a large creature appeared.

The head of a giant ant poked out at the turn of a grass blade and stopped to look at me, its antennas moving a little before it suddenly charged at me!

I was startled and took a step back in panic, tripping over the slime and falling on my butt. My heart was beating hard and I was breathing fast.

What am I doing? I had trained so hard! Why was I reacting like this to some ant?! I had never battled a monster, sure, but I knew my skills!

Fuck this, I thought. My sister wouldn’t be sitting on her butt if that happened to her, she wouldn't be panicking like the coward I was!

I swept the slime aside to get it out of my way but before I could go back on my feet the ant was already on top of me.

Taking Azurfall out of my shadow in daggers form I violently blocked its mandibles, my arms trembling under the strain, then quickly wrapped myself in a water cloak, using its liquid flexibility to extricate me from under the monster.

A high-pitched scream exited the insect’s mouth as I freed myself, but I couldn’t yet catch my breath, it was already charging at me again without a break.

I left my heavy liquid cloak behind me, the monster crashing against its remnants, and I jumped out of its reach, stabbing the side of a grass blade with Azurfall to stay in place.

From my vantage point I had a good view of the ant, and I quickly summoned lighting, electric arcs rolling over my arm and lashing out from my extended finger, linking with the monster in a thunderous sound.

The bright lightning strike ran along the ant’s body, helped by water, making it seize as electricity messed with its muscles but I was disbelieved when it kept moving, baffled that it wasn't enough to stop it.

How tough is this thing?! I had used a noticeable chunk of my mana in that attack and, having an elemental affinity with lighting, I knew it was quite powerful.

However, my assault just now hadn’t been totally ineffective; the ant was now moving slower than before, burn marks all over its chitinous armor, its pain strong enough that I could feel it infect its stubborn determination to fight.

Relying on my training with Lana, I took Azurfall out of the grass and let myself fall toward the monster with a very obvious trajectory.

The insect screamed again and raised its head, mandibles wide open, ready to catch me mid-flight, but I used my lightning dash at the last second to appear on its side.

I struck at its legs and cut one clean, but another leg struck at me and made me fly away, crashing against an oversized twig.

The attack had been powerful and I coughed blood, one of my ribs clearly cracked from the strike just now.

I avoided the next attack by jumping again, but this time the ant was ready and caught my legs. Panic-stricken, I discharged a powerful lightning strike along my armor, but not before it pierced my muscles. From the burn in my veins, I knew the monster had injected something, but I didn’t know what.

Thankfully it didn’t seem to be that effective as the pain faded nearly directly and, putting some distance between me and the monster again, I quickly chain-cast minor heal until I didn’t feel pain anymore.

The ant was now bleeding, with a missing leg and a mandible burned to a crisp by my lightning and that gave me hope, even though I could feel the ant ready for another round. What a stubborn creature, I would have fled already instead of fighting a losing fight, but I was ready if it wanted to go all the way.

I was still in pretty good shape after all since I kept my health topped off, and my mana regeneration was quite good now, so I could already feel my pool filling back.

I didn’t feel any effect of mana poisoning yet, too, but I started to realize that this floor was more mana-dense than the previous one, just like Nate said, and the poisoning was building faster than what I was used to, though not at a problematic rate for now.

Pace yourself, don’t rush. I tried to calm myself down but my heart didn’t want to. A real fight was nothing like the training we did, even though I was still alive thanks to it.

I jumped and linked two lightning dash, since it didn’t have any cooldown like most class abilities did, appearing first on one side of the ant, to bait it, then behind it.

I tried to wound it with deep, long gashes, but its flesh was too tough, I couldn’t move my daggers once they were stabbed in the ant, so I pulled them back as fast as I could, leaving two bleeding holes as I restored the tiny bit of health I hadn’t healed on purpose.

Using its many legs it took a fast step forward to create some distance between us before turning around, but it was met by a large wave of water before it could do anything else.

The ant was too heavy, of course, and it wasn’t washed away, but that wasn’t my objective. Instead of letting go, I held the water around the monster and I dived inside, using my superior ability to move in water to swim around the ant as it fought against the liquid.

I attempted to strike at its head or neck multiple times, but even underwater the ant was able to forcefully move and avoid my strike, so I attacked its legs instead, all on the same side, and avoided the counter-attacks by swimming away, helped by how sluggish the monster’s motions were underwater.

It was getting frantic as it lost more legs and started to lack oxygen and I could nearly taste its despair, kicking and struggling to get out of this water prison, to no avail.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I was in the water and I controlled it to stay around the ant; it could still move around, it was still walking on the ground after all, but the water followed wherever it went.

Some of its strikes connected but I didn’t care, what I lost from its attack, I recovered by healing myself or when using the daggers, feeding the monster's life back to me through Azurfall.

I quickly backed off once I cut the last leg of its left side, letting the water go as I put myself out of harm’s way. The monster couldn’t move properly anymore, not with its butchered left legs, and I didn’t want to expose myself to useless danger; the battle was finished anyway, and as Nate said, the objective wasn’t to kill the enemy, it was to walk away from the battle.

On the side, the slime had already gobbled the discarded legs and it was now turning around the bleeding monster ant.

It stopped and seemed to turn toward me.

“Puyong.” It jumped up and down once or twice, and I didn't need my newfound ability to read emotions to understand what it wanted.

“Knock yourself out,” I said, waving at it, catching a breath before fleeing from this place.

The fight made a lot of noise and I didn’t want to be here when other monsters would arrive.

“Puyong.” The slime jumped again, before starting to circle around the wounded ant.

I scoffed. Now I was answering a slime. Fighting sure was quite stressful if I needed that to unwind.

***

That first fight went down pretty well and, at one point as I was fleeing from the scene, I felt power rush through my body as my classes most likely leveled up, pushing my stats higher and giving proficiency to my skills, albeit I didn’t know the details since I couldn’t identify myself yet.

However, the smile on my face was quickly wiped away when I heard a buzzing noise approach me.

As I went away from the ant, I stayed as far away from the ground as possible, fearing more monster encounters, but in my rush I entirely forgot about flying monsters.

And there it was, a massive wasp, at least twice my size, rushing at me, wrapped in hurry and hunger.

I clicked my tongue. I had physically recovered from the previous fight, but I was still twitchy and mentally exhausted.

I took out Azurfall in bow form, but I was taken aback when I didn’t have the time to actually do anything.

One second I was looking at the monster, the next one its massive stinger was piercing my guts, pouring venom inside me.

Once. I had blinked once. that’s all it took for the monster to reach me. It was on another level than the ant I just fought, and I realized with horror, that this floor wasn’t going to be easy.

Or at least I would have, if the pain hadn’t blanked my mind.

I screamed and lightning exploded from me by instinct, burning the wasp enough that it let go of me.

I fell on the ground, maybe twenty meters lower, frantically casting minor heal as fast as I could while I used my hands to keep my guts from spilling out of my opened belly, but it wasn’t enough, I-I just couldn’t close that big of a wound!

However before I could take a healing potion out of my storage the wasp was on me again and I panicked, madly chain-casting lightning dash just to get away from it.

This barely gave me the time to drink my potion, but I still needed to hold my belly with a hand as it was working. I took a breath but the wasp found me again nearly instantly, nearly impaling me once more, its stinger making a “thud” sound as it missed me and stabbed the ground.

Flee, I had to flee, that’s all I could think about! I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t even follow its motions, and so I fled, dashing and dashing and dashing as much as I could, burning my hair and singing my skin from my own panicked and unchecked use of lightning.

I thought that I was afraid already, but it's when it didn’t work that I really started to feel terror. The giant wasp just kept following me, flying heavily between the oversized plants surrounding us and in my panic I just forgot everything I was taught; I never felt fear like that and didn’t know how to react.

In the end I started dashing less often as I didn’t have the resources to keep running like that, my mana starting to run dry. Mana poisoning was getting to me and, finally, I didn’t have the strength to move anymore.

I crashed on a massive root, in the shade of what looked like a rosebush, more than a hundred meters tall, a trail of residual electricity slowly fading behind me, and the wasp followed.

I was lying on my back, broken from the fall, my breathing was ragged and my heart beating so fast that I felt like it would explode any second, but I had no strength left anymore, all I could do was look upward at the flying bug coming for me as it stopped near.

The monster tilted its head, hovering above me for a second, its hunger even stronger than before, sharpened by the hunt, but I couldn't really pay attention to that, all I could see was its stinger dripping with poison and some of my blood.

The peaceful moment was suddenly broken when it rushed at me, and I closed my eyes in fear, waiting for the pain, for my death, but... it never came.

A second or two later I nervously opened my eyes again, not understanding why I wasn't yet dead.

The answer came from the frantic buzzing of the wasp, stuck a few meters away from me. What my panicked self had thought was maybe a blade of grass turned out to be a twenty-some meters tall green praying mantis, gushing with the aura of a predator while the wasp was struggling in its grasp, its wings flapping uncontrollably as it screamed in pain and fear.

The massive camouflaged monster wasn’t even looking at me, too interested in its prey as it dug into the wasp’s head to eat its brain alive. Purple blood was already dripping down from the body of the hairy bug, flying everywhere because of the frantic motion of both monsters.

Tears swelled in my eyes as nausea gripped me from the horrible sight of the wasp screaming, chunks of its flesh flying away until it stopped moving altogether, the praying mantis’ mandibles digging into its brain with visible delight.

Unable to move, I witnessed how the praying mantis slowly devoured the whole body of the flying bug, finally discarding the stinger once it was finished with it all.

It then slowly turned its terrifying head toward me, its two big multifaceted eyes looking at me without any emotions, and walked closer, arching its back to get its head near me. I could feel its curiosity, but also its bloodthirst.

My whole body was burning from Mana Poisoning but, terrified, I still tried to move, yet my lack of mana and stamina grounded me as surely as if I lost my legs.

“Puyong.” a slime suddenly fell at my side. The head of an ant was slowly being dissolved inside its transparent body.

The praying mantis stopped for a second, surprised, and the slime suddenly shoved me away.

I fell between oversized roots and I saw the slime jumping after me and felt how pleased it was bout itself, narrowly avoiding the angry insect’s scythes.

The air roared around me for a few seconds as I was free-falling before I crashed on the ground once more, pain exploding at the back of my head.

***

I woke up faster this time as I could feel myself slowly bleeding out from the wound on my belly.

I was the bottom of a root system, on the dirt in which said roots were sinking. The air was wet and cold, it smelled of dead things and rich dirt.

There wasn’t much light from the sun, a few rays at most, sparse, difficultly piercing the dense structure of wood rising far above me.

Everything was calm for now, and I quickly took another potion out of my dimensional storage, pouring it directly on the wound this time since no enemy was around.

My wound closed slowly and I stopped bleeding to death, but it wasn’t enough, and I layered minor heal on minor heal to try and control the damage done to my body, even using some of Azurfall’s Blood Bank blood to add another source of healing, in hope for it to be different enough that it would fix whatever wasn’t being fixed by my other source of healing.

Finally, once I felt that I was out of danger, I let myself fall back on the ground, exhausted.

My whole body was aching from Mana Poisoning and lack of stamina, and my healing belly soon rumbled for food.

I dragged myself closer to a root and put my back against it to support my body, staying put for a few seconds to recover my breath and try to let my heart slow down.

It worked, a bit, but the stress and fear from what had just happened wouldn’t leave me that soon, so I decided that I would eat even if my stomach felt tightly closed.

Being hungry but unable to swallow anything, that's really horrible.

I took one of the rations Nathaelle prepped for us, still hot, and put it back after a few seconds, nauseous. I couldn’t handle something that hot or heavy.

Instead I took out some tiny fruits and started to slowly snack on them, forcing myself to swallow them.

It got easier after the first few, and in the end I was able to alleviate some of my hunger.

“Puyong.”

I turned my head to follow the sound, warry but tired, and found… the slime.

The ant head was mostly dissolved now.

“How did you follow me.” I wondered, my voice flat, too exhausted for this shit.

I took another fruit from my storage, and brought it to my mouth.

“Puyong. Puyong.” The slime went, up and down and up and down, and I stopped my motion when I felt its interest.

I slowly moved the fruit and the slime followed it slowly, “Poyoyoyoy”, cutely rolling on itself left and right.

“You want it?” I asked, then scoffed at myself. Here I was, talking to a slime again, but it didn't hurt to try, even if it turned out that I was just projecting on it.

“Puyong!” It jumped and I could feel the exclamation mark.

So it did understand me! What a surprise. Normally, only stronger or very evolved monsters had some kind of intellect, but I didn’t have the energy to pursue that line of thought for now, and ended up stowing it to the back of my mind.

“Here you go.” I threw the berry at it and it jumped, gobbling it. I looked at the fruit while it sunk inside its transparent body, slowly dissolving.

My heart was slowing down, my breath getting more peaceful. Okay, good.

I kept feeding it, one berry for me, one for the slime. I welcomed the distraction, that way I could avoid thinking about, well, reality I guess, for five minutes at least.

During those five minutes, nothing jumped at me, nothing attacked me nor tried to kill me, and this peace then gave me time to start thinking.

I was lost in what was most likely the 138th floor. I didn’t know where Nathaelle was. Worse, I didn’t know where Lana was.

I didn’t know Nathaelle’s plan for us, either, or if she had a plan to start with. We just trained non-stop until now, I never even set foot outside of the cave.

I’m pretty sure Nathaelle had at least an inkling of what she was going to do with us afterward, maybe climb floors, maybe start to kill monsters to get levels, or any other possibility I didn’t think of, but now I was alone and I didn’t know what to do.

Stay put and wait for Nathaelle to find me? Try to level up on my own? A third option that would reveal itself?

Those thoughts brought back the very recent memory of my last battle, if you could call it that way, and pushed the pain I was feeling from my belly back to the foreground of my mind.

If it hurt that much with the level of Pain Resistance I had, I didn’t want to think about how it would have felt without it.

I guess Nate didn’t put us through her training for no reason then, eh?

I smirked and realized that I had a hard time thinking straight, my body needed rest.

I gave one last berry at the slime then quickly washed without stripping, running water through my cloth and armor, unwilling to undress. I pushed mana in the matrix of my items once again, my armor starting to fix itself, albeit quite slowly, seeing how big the hole was over my belly. I took the opportunity to look at the damages, and realized that the armor had most likely stopped the stinger from entering deeper.

I would have been punctured side to side without it. Dread flooded me once more.

I slapped myself, pushed the thought back and took a sleeping bag out of my storage. I rolled under a root, into a space just big enough for me, and tried to sleep.

It didn’t work, but at least I was giving my body some time to recover and purge the Mana Poisoning.

“Poyoyoyoy.” The slime rolled under the root and stayed there, motionless.

I really didn’t know exactly why it was sticking with me, or even how it followed me, but I did feel that it was not aggressive, and helped me control my emotions earlier, so I shrugged it off and focused on recovering.