“AAHHHHHH!” Mia shouted as she put as much power as she could on her attack. A downward slash, going straight for the monster head.

“GRRR!” The monster, for its part, defended itself with his own blade along with his free arm. It managed to defend it’s head but still took damage as the sword in Mia’s hand activated it’s special ability.

Mia didn’t notice it on her first slash after putting mana on the blade since the monster didn’t defend itself. But as long as the blade had mana on it, it would have a cleave effect that would ignore a few layers of physical protection on a target or deal more damage if there was nothing in the way of the attack. The only problem was that Mia was on a shit timer. She could attack maybe 6 or 7 more times before she ran out of mana. At least defending wasn’t taking more mana from her.

The monster began to trash around and managed to send Mia flying in the opposite direction of the invisible wall. Mia’s landing was far from perfect but did its job of reducing the damage she could have taken. The small spells she could weave around her body did enough to soften the impact too.

Before Mia could really go on the offensive, she had to test something. As the monster dashed towards her, she positioned her O katana to stab it and waited for what would happen.

What happened was that Mia wasted an attack. Stabbing would indeed have the same cleave effect as a slash but Mia couldn’t put as much strength in a stab as she could in a slash. Besides, her blade wasn’t made with stabbing in mind it seemed.

5 slashes. Mia had to finish this fight in her next 5 attacks. The only way for her to do it was to slash the head of the monster off. Its chest was too thick for Mia to be able to slash through so the only vital area left was the head.

The monster was getting angrier and angrier. Mia didn’t know why, but it looked like the creature was slowly losing any intelligence it had and startd moving solely on instinct.

The monster did a mad dash towards Mia with the intent to slash her with its sword along with a tackle. It wouldn't matter if that failed since it's body would just continue forward if Mia herself didn’t stop it.

Seeing a small chance, Mia also dashed towards the monster. For a brief moment, there was an opening. The monster, as it was dashing, lifted its right arm to do a downward diagonal slash with its sword, leaving part of its chest, neck and face unguarded.

Mia closed in and with as much power as she could manage at the moment, she did an upward slash. That just didn’t finish the fight int that moment only because the monster managed to slightly change the trajectory of the slash by guarding with its bicep. That also made it change the direction of its own dash, which now completely ignored Mia.

Mia didn’t finish the fight but managed to reduce what the monster could do. Its right arm was out of commission. The monster took its sword with its other hand once it managed to stop dashing.

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If Mia had a suspicion before, it was now confirmed. The monster was getting dumber by the minute and more driven by instinct. Mia knew the difference between a smart monster and a fully savage monster and the thing she was fighting went from one to the other. The feeling she was getting from it couldn’t be faked.

Bleeding and angry, the monster did another mad dash toward Mia. It was faster now so Mia couldn’t try to position herself in a better spot to try another attack. The monster basically flailed itself unto Mia, trying to attack her in any way it could. Mia did her best to dodge and block any attacks coming her way but the erratic and seemingly random attacks managed to hit her, even if lightly, causing some damage.

Part of her clothes was torn apart, but that was not too bad. She was pretty sure she had a broken rib and a few scrapes on her cheeks.

Without time to even curse, Mia formulated a plan to stop this madness before she got too hurt to do anything. Once she saw a particularly powerful blow coming her way, she got hit in just the way to send her flying a few hundred meters backward. Driven by instinct and fury, the monster didn’t even notice that Mia wasn’t near him for a second or two, which was more than enough time for Mia to prepare her next attack.

Mia had 4 attacks left but she didn’t intend to use all of them. She didn't know what would happen after she dealt with this monster. She also wasn’t looking for a final confrontation with this thing where they were both on their last legs and in a final clash one of them wins. Mia wanted to be done with this already.

Once again the monster dashed towards Mia. But this time she didn’t move. She got herself in position. She was going to cut the head of the monster in a single slash. Holding her blade somewhat like a baseball bat and with her legs ready to jump, she waited for the monster to get near enough her.

30 meters, 20 meters, 10 meters, 5, 3, 2, 1, the monster was in range. The monster had its own sword ready to do something but Mia ignored it. She jumped forward while doing a horizontal spin. She put as much power as she could on her slash. The monster, as it dashed forward, cut its own head as much as Mia did.

Once she got on the ground, Mia stood battle ready for a minute or two just to make sure nothing was coming her way. Once her blade stopped trying to absorb her mana by itself, Mia just collapsed on the ground as all the tension just vanished.

“I don’t have a pure physical build. I hope to never have to do something like this again.” Mia said to herself. It might have been the fact that she was now a girl or that she just liked magic that much, but the prospect of having to fight only using weapons and her body was not something she really found any positives in.

After several minutes of resting and eating, Mia walked over to the body of the monster. She still had to destroy the dungeon core to finish her mission.

As she approached the body, it began to rapidly turn into dust, leaving behind a big purple ball that looked like it was made out of glass. It emanated a lot of mana and was just around the size of her head.

“Good thing the core changed to something like this. I don’t think I would be able to destroy anything bigger than that.” Cores could be pretty much anything, from weapons to a random rock on the wall. It all depended on the monster in charge of the dungeon. But in case a monster didn’t think much about it, the core would become a ball of mana, like the one Mia was seeing.

“A small kick should be enough. Those things are surprisingly fragile when in their basic form by what I heard.” Mia said to no one in particular.

As she tried to kick the core, a dozen of black tentacles made out of mana came out of the core and grabbed Mia.

“Well, fuck!” Mia said as she noticed something she really didn’t like. Something was trying to have a soul-to-soul talk with her and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the core.