Heading into the second room of the dungeon, Lauri tried to peek around the room before he stepped across the threshold. It's darker than the last room and he was on edge until his eyes adjusted. He wondered "is this change in lighting another way that dungeons try and mess with us? Don't they want to be explored?" The next room had smoothed stone floors and walls like the last and was four times the size at an estimated 10 meters by 10 meters. Lauri saw 5 skeletons, 5 zombies and a ghast at the back, all level 5. Far too many for a solo adventurer to take all at once. That meant drawing in only a few at a time and dispatching them in waves. Except they were all grouped in a close military-like formation and would surely all come at once. He pondered the situation, "retreating to the previous room would be a death sentence so only those who panic would do that. Circling in the larger room seems a good idea but those zombies are effectively there for anti-kiting, as they move so slow you'd bump back into them while fleeing the skeletons. The ghast can paralyse and that can easily become a death sentence. This dungeon is seriously trying to kill me. Are they all like this?"
One must have noticed him as they all start marching towards Lauri. The zombies were actually more dragging their legs than marching and definitely proved themselves slower. Without more time to think Lauri decides he's going to use Drain Life on a zombie and try to leave them for last, [-50PP]. Checking, he has 50PP left, [-2 Levels] pops over the first zombie as it drops to level 3, [+2 Levels] appears in his logs. Checking again he now has 75PP. He really wished that his current power would increase by the amount max power increased by but it seemed he's going to be facing diminishing returns. 'Drain Life' had a 30 second cooldown so he rushed in and towards the leftmost skeleton, planning to strafe clockwise. He had to dispatch them quick or he was screwed and his shield was now at 1,860 so he decided to just tank the hits. Lifting his sword high over his head Lauri charged in, the skeleton lifted its own sword to block it, so Lauri lowered his sword toward his right, at the last moment, and swung it like it was a baseball bat. [-56HP, 30EXP] over the skeleton as it shattered into pieces and a silver coin dropped. [-40SP] to him as the adjacent skeleton smacked its mace against his magic shield. "The audacity of that Ankheg, dropping the same 1 coin as this chump." Swinging his sword again, in a blunt manner that swords are not supposed to be used, he dispatched a second skeleton, [-64HP, 30EXP] and another coin drops.
The ghast was closing in quickly and the formation was still tight so Lauri starts strafing left. He discovered that the ghast was faster than the skeletons by a good margin. He practically had to be running to maintain distance but that was partly because of the angles involved in his circling. Even then the ghast caught up while he still had 5 seconds left on his Drain Level cooldown, at least leaving him with no difficult decisions to make in that regard. He turned and lunged at the ghast, thrusting his sword at it. He was aiming for its mouth but his sword instead plunged into the monsters right eye, [Crit, -112HP]. "Nice, I killed it in one..." the ghast lifted its right claw into the air, "shit, not dead." Lauri tried to yank the sword out but the whole ghast was yanked forward instead. Thankfully this caused its attack to land too far back and Lauri only received the blow of its arm against his shoulder, [-8SP]. With the ghast so close, Lauri was able to position and kick it while gripping his sword hilt and leaning back. This fails to dislodge the sword, causing him to start to panic... [-8HP, 240EXP] appeared over it from the kick and the ghast vanished, dropping a skill-book. [Failed stun resist] "Phew! I'll have to pick that up afterwards," he thought as he went to move but couldn't, "... What?" Checking his status he sees a 3 second timer on a stun effect, short enough that he hoped the skeletons won't close their current gap in time. He noticed in the logs that there was no EXP penalty when he killed the ghast.
As the closest of the skeletons arrived Lauri closed the Status window and focused on swinging his sword. The skeleton was closer than he'd hoped and the stun hadn't worn off as he took a hit, [Crit, -80SP]. Checking, his shield still at an impressive 1,732. He knew the stun on him had expired before he saw so as his frozen sword now swung at the skeleton with all his might, [-56HP, 30EXP], it shattered and another coin dropped as its parts disappeared. "Do they drop a coin every time?" He silently asked himself as he swung at the next skeleton, managing to land his hit first. [-56HP, 30EXP] a coin dropped as it disappeared. The last skeleton, a mere step behind it, smashes its mace into Lauri's shield, [-40SP]. Lauri's swinging arm is getting tired but with the zombies being so slow he tells himself "this is the last good swing I need" and put all he had into it. [-64HP, 30EXP] another coin and the final skeleton was dispatched, making the room feel much less threatening. With a sigh of relief he looked over at the slowly shambling zombies and decided to kill one to see what it dropped.
Circling round until he could catch a single zombie, he got only just within reach of his sword and hit the zombie without risk of it reaching him. Retreating as he landed multiple smaller hits the zombie eventually died, [10EXP] but no loot drop. "Huh, even as a level 5 monster their experience is nothing." He picked up the 5SP in the room and the skill-book, which turned out to be Hold Monster skill for his Seals profession. [Would you like to consume the skillbook now?] the System prompted but he quickly answered "no." He would follow his family tradition of reading the actual book before it was consumed, unless he desperately needed the skill before completing this dungeon. Changing position to avoid the shambling zombies he considered if he should Drain Level another of them. He'd never tried Drain Level on a creature lower than his effective level and was curious of how that would work. He calculated that even if he gained 2 Levels his adjusted PP would only be 34. The attributes might be worth it but he'd have EXP penalties if future monsters were level 5, provided the skill was even effective. Kiting the zombies back to this rooms starting position he decided to move on without dealing further with them. Rushing around he left them at the opposite side of the room and peaked into the next.
This was another 5 meter by 5 meter room and had an Ankheg hiding to the right of the entry. He spotted it easily thanks to specifically looking there, though this made him suspect there could be multiple in this room. Looking around as hard as he could it seemed he could only spot the one before he had to circle his current room due to the zombies. "What if I'm fighting the Ankheg and the zombies catch up? Should I deal with them first?" He soon decided to kill all but two and took his time killing them while staying outside of their range, gaining 10exp each, no drops. Steeling himself he rushed back round to the other side and then charged through to deal with the Ankheg. He dodged its first attack, predicting it easily, then charged in close as he could to try and not be in the efficient swinging range of the giant insect. He then started hacking at the Ankheg with his sword, [-140HP], [-112HP], [-112HP, sword broken], his sword disappeared as its endurance ran out, "what? already?" [-60SP, Grappled] before he realised he was already raised into mandible striking position, [-240SP] the mandibles snapped shut on his neck. In half a panic he activated his Sleep skill and the Ankheg fell to sleep while still standing upright. Forcing the claw open Lauri dropped to the ground and quickly checked his shield seeing he wasn't actually in an immediate danger, at 1,392SP. "Huh, Shield Points and System Points are both displayed as SP."
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{
Class: Ritualist
Profession: Level 1 Sealer
Effective Level: 6, EXP: 530/2900
HP: 222/540, SP: 1392/1860, PP: 50/600, MP: 20
Strength: 72, Toughness: 48, Agility: 18, Memory: 84, Reasoning: 48, Charisma: 186
Skills: 4
}
He spoke in his own mind to himself. "MP no longer matches Agility so that's something. The Sleep skill seems to use 25 power. I can see why I haven't received a level up yet. But how am I going to kill this sleeping thing?" He tried to access the System Market but it was locked while inside a dungeon. "Hmmm." He gets out his 15.24 meters of rope and, while he did wonder why it wasn't cut to a rounder number, spotted a light hanging from a ceiling chain. Climbing on top of the Ankheg he looped the rope through a fish-eye planted in the roof and tied a noose around the Ankhegs head. Deciding it's not enough he made a loop in the rope then feed rope through the eye and loop until he had the leverage of a caravaners hitch (or truckers hitch, except there's no truckers in this world). Wrapping the rope around his arm he leaped from the Ankheg and pulled downwards, taking the Ankhegs head right off. [Crit, -224HP, 220EXP] the Ankheg disappeared and left 4 coins behind. "So you can drop more than a skeleton? Did your friend drop less because I lowered them to level 3? Also is everyone facing this many monsters alone?" He couldn't help questioning in his head as 2 zombies came shambling into the room. "Sigh, time to kite them out of the way again."
Once Lauri had shifted the zombies out of the way and retrieved his rope he peeked into the next room to be conquered, finding 12 Ankhegs. "Well shit. I don't even have a weapon. If this is a tutorial dungeon then surely the lesson here is to know when to quit. But..." Out of curiosity Lauri activated Sleep again, targeting the centre of the army of Ankhegs. To his surprise they all fell asleep. "That seriously worked? OP. Maybe this room is more about making use of AOE skills?" Wandering in he estimated the room at 10 by 10 but this one had vines over all the walls and no noticeable other doorways. Reaching the opposite end a portal opened to return him back outside the dungeon. "Would be a shame to leave without even trying to think of a way to kill some Ankhegs." He noticed an illusionary wall and mumbled "please be a treasure room with a weapon." Touching it he winced at a sudden pain to shoot through fingers and he held back a cry. Withdrawing his hand he inspected his fingers and concluded that this pain was also an illusion. Through force of will managed to walk through the barrier of pain and reach the other side. "What's the difference between the illusion of pain and real pain? None I reckon."
He was both surprised and disappointed to find that this was not a treasure room but in fact the dungeon core room. A large gem was imbedded into the wall to the left and to the right images of 80 screens could be seen. Speaking to the core he greeted it. "Hello, I'm Lauri. It's nice to meet you." When there was no reply after several seconds he took a gander at the other wall, where each screen was an active floor map. Suddenly he felt silly to have thought that this dungeon only had 1 floor. He'd given it little thought but had assumed there was 1 floor and everyone magically experienced that same floor separately. From here, though, he could count that this dungeon had 80 floors and each person was randomly transported into one of them. Not completely randomly, as the other level 1 adventurers had far easier floors, with only a single level 3 Ankheg at the very end. "I really need to get a handle on the pros and cons of Drain Level." One of the participants was reaching their Ankheg at the end and Lauri tried tapping the map.
A screen came on showing a woman debating to herself whether to turn back or challenge that monster. Recalling, Lauri mused "I think I heard her call me a loser outside. My guild really has a bad rep. Maybe I should change guilds before it's too late." She headed in and fought valiantly with shield and sword, doing a much better job than Lauri had. "She's only doing so much better because she's a Warrior Class." Then she messed up her distance for a split-second and found herself grappled, her sword arm locked to her side by the pincer and she struggled to get it out. "Been there, more or less. Let's see what skill she uses." The mandibles slammed shut around her neck but she survived it. "Ouch, I feel your pain." They opened and slammed shut again, then again and again and her head went flying off, blood splattering before the screen returning to a floor map. "No way! Those attacks are too fast! It wasn't even at level 5." He shivered so hard that his shoulders jerked slightly. He had known he'd come a hairs breadth from dead but this was his first knowing how quickly the follow up chomps would have come. Looking at the other maps he also noticed that no other map came even close to being as deadly as the one he was in, even the other floors balanced for the level 4 to 5 range.
The core hadn't answered and probably wouldn't but he spoke to it none-the-less. "So, there's only a 1 in 80 chance of someone ending up within this floor that your core is on? That's one way of defending yourself I'll admit. Then if they do it's designed to try and drive anyone off. You want adventurers to come, just not to here? I guess it's destiny I happen to be here now." [+1 Potential Destiny, +1 Destiny Attribute]. There was no response still and he decided to test the System, "Seems it's luck that I ended up here." No System prompt in response. Focusing back on the core, "with what you put me through I'm far more likely to want to kill you than if I had gone through a level 1 to 2 floor. Seems people in those either win and are happy, leave and get locked into higher level floors or die. Either way, me being here now is a very compelling reason you should have your core at a low level floor. They'll have less tricks up their sleeves, less opportunities to enter before levelling out from that floor range, thus less change to gain an actionable grudge and finally less Charisma to force their way through your pain illusion." A little light in the crystal expands and starts pulsing like it is thinking. "Can't talk but can understand? Or maybe you're getting nervous because I'm looking at you for so long. Okay, I'm off, I'll let you think about that if you're able."
He exited the core room feeling no pain on departure, then quickly used Sleep on the Ankhegs, as they had woken up. "Now I'm at 0 power." Thinking of no way to kill them he used the exit portal and found himself back outside. His level immediately dropped to 4, either the skill deactivated on the zombie or Rebecca just died. Considering the timing it was probably the former. He reasoned only now that retreating to the first room wouldn't have been a death sentence, like he'd thought, as he could have exited the dungeon from there. Most likely what the dungeon wanted considering that floor. The man stationed beside the portal asked "how'd it go?"
"Hell. Those Ankhegs bite hard and fast."
"Ankhegs within the low level floors?"
"Just one at the end for low levels but yep." While he wasn't personally on a low level floor he'd seen this to be the case.
"Even the tutorial dungeon has become blood-thirsty. Goddess save us. Lets just hope the others are smart enough to make it out alive."
With a wave he started the decent distanced walk back to town.