While heading into the dungeon he inspected the green, swirling portal with grass standing behind it as tall as his neck. Due to the presence of the dungeon entrance the grass up to here had been reaped regularly but there's not enough cows to eat even that little grass. Perhaps that's why the fields beyond aren't well kept. Lauri wondered what happened to the wild animals which should be eating the excess grass, as he drew his sword and stepped through the portal. "Don't horses eat grass as well?" he wonders just before something smashes into his side, [Received hit, caught off guard, 2x, lost 24HP]. Sprawling onto the ground Lauri cursed himself for not staying focuses. Looking at his attacker he recognised an Ankheg, a creature like a giant prey mantis that grapples its foes and crushes them while trying to bite their head off. It must have swung outwards the moment it saw him, so he considered himself lucky not to be trapped in its claws. Using System Vision Overlay he could see it is level 5 and a full health bar but not the numeric value of its health. Getting to his feet quick he swivelled his head around and, with no other monsters in sight, took a leap backwards. In his mind he'd imagined barely dodging the next attack but as he straightened up he was a little disappointed that it hadn't even attacked. For some reason its claw was instead imbedded in the ground, that was now cracked, where he was just standing... Lauri almost shit himself as he realised that it had indeed attacked and he hadn't even seen it. This fright caused him to leap backwards again and he's glad he did as the the Ankheg swivelled quickly and its other claw struck where he just was. Its first claw ripped its way out of the ground using the same momentum from the attack.
Lifting his sword up towards the Ankheg the combat seemed to freeze for a moment. Gathering his wits he decided to get a little range before trying to drain its level. Relaxing his arm to regain the balance to move, Lauri took two quick steps backwards, barely missed by two more attacks. The attacks kept coming and all he could do was keep taking quick withdrawal steps. Despite feeling incredible pressure he fixed his feet and tensed his arm, prepared to try an attack. "What am I doing with a sword? I'm not a warrior," he pondered as the battle paused just long enough for his brain to have a thought. A wasted thought, his gut instincts unconsciously felt. Lauri thrusted his sword at the insect only to have it parried and to see another attack coming, moving his left food behind him and to the right, he shifted his body out of the way enough to only be grazed, [lost 4HP]. With his angle of movement changed, he took another step back, then another, as the attacks kept coming. By now he was starting to figure things out and with merely the stiffening of his sword arm he presented a threat once more. The Ankheg froze. It seemed the creature had the combat sense to understand a presented threat, try and avoid it and even to take advantage. [Drain Level], Lauri used this moment to activate his skill, over the Ankheg he saw [-2 Levels] and in his logs appeared [+2 Levels]. The next attack happened so quickly that Lauri only noticed that his arm felt sore, as it was jerked to the side with the Ankheg knocking his sword out of the way, before it stepped forward and grabbed Lauri within its claw, [Received clean hit, 2x, lost 40HP, Grappled]. He checked his HP, which has been at 320 at the start of this combat, but after all those hits was now at 412. "Huh? Must have gone up when I stole levels." The Ankheg pulled Lauri towards its mouth faster than he'd expected but not faster than he could react, at least not when he was expecting it. He swung at the creatures neck with all the strength in his arm, thanking the goddess that he hadn't dropped his sword. [Received clean hit, failed to put body into swing, hit weak point, 2x, 60HP damage] the creatures health bar decreased by just over half. "Damn, not enough to kill it!" As its mandibles slammed shut around Lauri's neck he knew that he was dead. His final thoughts were "a dungeon is not an adventurers best friend" and then he was desperately swinging his sword again. [Received clean hit, vulnerable, hit weak point, critical, x8, lost 192HP], [Dealt clean hit, failed to put body into swing, hit weak point, 2x, 70HP damage, killed Ankheg, -2 Levels, EXP reduced to 110 due to 50% level penalty]
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Lauri looked around for other enemies. Seeing none his mind started to spin and his eyes started having tunnel vision. Sitting down he took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. He figured he should have 220HP left and checked his health, seeing that he had 148HP left. "Did it do less damage because I had decreased its level?" Checking his System logs it didn't explain what had happened but Lauri soon reasoned a few things. "I got EXP for a level 6 killing a level 3 monster. Also, since I then lost two levels... four sixths of 220 would round up to 148." Another way of saying dividing his health by the previous level of 6 before multiplying it by the new level of 4. On that note, it seemed to Lauri that all his stat changes so far had followed that same pattern of dividing them from his prior level and then multiplying them by his new level. "I'm still alive," he took a moment of reflection. Next he noticed that when he killed a target of 'Drain Level' the skill ended, so he'd better kill the drained enemies last, if he could help it. Seeing a silver disk on the ground he picked it up and inspected it. One side read "1" and the other read "SP" so it must be a System Point. Consuming it he saw [SP: 1] added to his status screen. He considered quitting now but at a converted value of 1 gold 86 silver he'd be at a loss. He should have gained a level at 100exp but for some reason he hadn't, so he couldn't even say he'd gained a level from this. The thought of another Ankheg in the next room made his shudder. Also he considered "aren't dungeons supposed to get more dangerous the further in?"
Suddenly Lauri realised that he had intended to try out his Protection Bubble skill. Activating it the Shield Points that had disappeared from status window when he minimised the details came back.
{
Class: Ritualist
Profession: Level 1 Sealer
Effective Level: 4
HP: 148/320, SP: 1240, PP: 100/400, MP: 12
Strength: 48, Toughness: 32, Agility: 12, Memory: 56, Reasoning: 32, Charisma: 124
Skills: 4
}
"So high," Lauri remarked in his head about his shield points, "is it a factor of my Charisma score, multiplied by 10?" Considering this he tried to compare other attributes and figured "health seems to be Toughness multiplied by 10 as well. Manna directly matches Agility but I seriously doubt they're related. Power is a bit of a mystery. Maybe it's level multiplied by 100? How have I spent so many power points?" The skill also had a visual effect, with a transparent blue bubble shimmering around him. "The bubble seems large enough to fit 6 adventurers with enough room to swing an axe or cast a spell. I need to try this in a party." With this new buffer to protect his life he found the courage to continue. First he changed the Systems battle popups to show less details, which he hoped would make things easier to track during the heat of battle. In case he came through again he checked this rooms size and estimated it to be a 5 meters by 5 meter smoothed stone room with the dungeon entrance and an archway with no door. Finally he walked through the archway into the next room, looking around as he went, alert for danger.