Before we could let this mana collection system I devised run, there was one other thing I needed to discover. I needed to know what monsters were on this level. I didn’t know how deep we were, but I would be shocked if it was under 150. I knew that the space in dungeons didn’t necessarily always reflect the space outside of dungeons, so it was really hard to say when it came to this dungeon. I didn’t know its shape or how it was organized, so we might not even be at the bottom of the dungeon, but somewhere in the middle.

I had read in a book once that a larger dungeon could take a branching path. The lore behind them became so complex that it became like a choose your adventure, sending people down different paths to follow the story from different points of view and different directions. I had never experienced such a thing, but I did recognize that this could just be one of the paths of a much large complex. Well, considering that I dug south from Esmore, and with only a few weeks of walking I ended up under Hell’s Dungeon, which was supposed in the Demon’s land nearly six months travel north of Esmore on the other side of the continent, one could understand just how strange space was in the deep.

Either way, what animals existed on this level would influence how successful my plan would work, so before I started summoning them down my trap, I needed to be certain that the trap would work. Thus, I had my Map out and was using sense life to try to find a monster. It didn’t take long before I located one.

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“A squirrel…” I spoke in disbelief.

After seeing a monster around the corner, I had carefully tried to catch a peek at it, using the reflection of my sword just in case. I wasn’t using Alysia for that. She was too large, and it would defeat the purpose of being sneaking if I was sticking out a massive blade from the corner. Ultimately, after taking every precaution, all I saw was a fiery red squirrel. It was different, the tail was a blazing fire, but at the end of it, this was just a squirrel.

“M-maybe… this is what the main monster of this level eats?” Alysia offered.

Technically, a dungeon monster didn’t need to eat as long as it was provided miasma from the dungeon. However, that didn’t mean there weren’t instances of ecosystems being set up with prey and predators. It allowed the predators to be even stronger since they got to practice against the prey and consume their miasma.

As I was thinking about it, the squirrel suddenly turned its head around, its eyes immediately locking on my blade. It had seen it? A moment later, the squirrel disappeared. It was just there and then it wasn’t. Was this one of those invisible creatures that could only be detected with Sense Life? It made sense. I was just about to bring up my Map to track it when my arm felt a thud, following by the banking of metal.

I looked at my arm to see that the sword, made from deep dwarven steel, was broken in half. The top of the blade had uselessly fallen to the ground like it had been cut in a second.

“Master!” Alysia warned.

I looked up to see a squirrel hanging from the wall. It was chewing on a small fragment of metal, and it was staring at me with glowing red eyes.