With renewed vigor, Victor crept through the forward through the frozen passageways, dagger in hand.

He was still cold, overall, but the cloak prevented him from outright shivering, and also helped keep the numbness away. It also couldn’t be understated how cool it made him feel — even if it were a bit silly.

So far, he had yet to see any signs of other monsters — though the memory of the recent ambush was still quite fresh in his mind, and thus he kept his eyes peeled. That was also one of the downsides of the cloak — it narrowed the range of his peripheral vision slightly.

Once he passed the spot of the ambush itself, his level of alertness rose even higher. It really seemed like the cloak was somehow making everything more vivid — it wasn’t as if he could actually see or hear better… he was just more acutely aware of his own senses.

On one hand, he thought the idea seemed a bit silly — perhaps he was just imagining it. But on the other hand, here he was, delving a dungeon after enchanting a fur coat with a harvested soul.

Who knew what was and wasn’t actually possible?

Something bounced above the icy fog a dozen paces ahead.

Victor froze. Creeping forward slightly, he prayed for the mists to clear — and clear they did, if only slightly, revealing a jiggling pale blue blob about the size of his own head. Victor continued to creep closer, only stopping once he was about half a dozen paces away.

The blob squished itself to the ground, quivering — and then sprung upwards, launching itself to the height of Victor’s waist. Landing a couple paces closer, it jiggled from the impact, and a patch of frost spread outwards.

Victor frowned at the slime. It was obvious what it was, and he was a bit… well, not exactly concerned or alarmed, but a bit hesitant about engaging it.

As far as common types of monsters went, slimes were often joked about as weak, pathetic monsters, but Victor knew far better than to assume it would be an easy victim.

First, he had worked with plenty of slime remains as an apprentice butcher, and even their leftovers could be a hellish nightmare to work with.

Second, he also encountered a fair number of different delvers at the imperial academy in the course of his own education, and while they were rarely particularly friendly with him — well, he picked up enough.

They didn’t like slimes.

Messy, infuriating, and sometimes legitimately hard to kill. Also, if you were to fall victim to one — not only did it typically hurt like a bitch the whole time — it was viewed as a pathetic and inglorious end by the vast, uninitiated majority.

For those reasons, Victor legitimately considered just leaving the slime behind. It would be easy enough to avoid, even if it were after him — and he didn’t think it had actually noticed him yet, though that was kind of hard to judge.

On the other hand, it might cause trouble for him if he were to need to flee from something further ahead, and he also could use the soul for arcane energy if he needed to boost or reanimate his fiendfire summon.

Circling around behind it — well, to the other side of the passageway, as the spherical blob didn’t really have a front or back — Victor adjusted his grip on his dagger so that his fingers were as far away from the tip as he could manage.

He absolutely did not want to come into contact with any part of the creature, dead or alive.

Satisfied, he waited for the slime to jump again. While he didn’t know if it had a pattern to its movements, it seemed sensible to attack right after it made another leap.

He also made sure to keep paying attention to the rest of his surroundings, just in case. And besides, it would be an important habit to form if he were to survive delving for any considerable length of time.

The slime jumped.

Victor began creeping forward as it was still airborne, then rushed forward as soon as it landed.

The dagger strained against the slippery surface of the translucent monster — finally breaking through with a faint wet squelch. The slime shook violently, and Victor pushed the dagger deeper before rapidly yanking it out and jumping back.

As he watched with mild curiosity, the slime began to sag, flattening out. A moment later, it seemed like whatever sort of invisible structure was holding it together collapsed, and goopy gel seeped out in all directions.

Soul harvested!

Harvested souls: 1

It was no longer a blob. It was a puddle.

Creeping forward again, Victor studied the thick, pale blue liquid. The edges appeared to be hardening, turning whiter and mostly opaque, while slowly spreading inward.

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With unrestrained curiosity, Victor poked the edge with the rat fang. It was hard and slippery. Digging harder, he found he could barely scratch it.

Sticking the dagger into the middle, Victor swirled around the gel. It felt vaguely like glue. Pulling the dagger back out, Victor watched as the gel sizzled and flaked off of the yellowish surface of the enamel — likely due to the rotting enchantment.

Victor grimaced at the hardening puddle. Yeah, definitely not something that would be good to touch. At the same time, it seemed like something that could be useful…

Standing back up, Victor returned his attention to the remainder of the corridor. No way out but forward, he supposed.

After rounding another bend, Victor caught sight of another small, roughly spherical creature slowly making its way towards him. It wasn’t a slime though — no, this appeared to be some kind of tortoise.

The dark blue creature wore a pale, icy shell, which was in turn covered in spikey, outward pointing icicles. It was faster than most turtles and tortoises Victor had seen — though that hadn’t been many. Nevertheless, it was still slow…

…Which only made Victor wonder just what kind of threat it posed.

Time to find out, he supposed. Circling around behind the slow moving monster, Victor waited for it to do something — and was left disappointed. Had it seen him? Frowning, Victor clapped his hands together loudly.

This time, the monster turned around at a glacial pace, finally making eye contact. Victor stared, and the monster appeared to shiver.

He frowned. Neither the slime nor the tortoise had noticed him — and the cloak included the phrase Assassin’s Stealth. The cat had fooled him, as well…

Victor thought back to his odd experience where he thought he saw the ambush but then decided that he was just imagining things. Perhaps that was exactly what the cloak was doing for him…

And come to think of it, he felt like his footsteps were softer and more deliberate than usual, even for how cautious he was trying to be.

That had to be it. The cloak helped him be sneaky, and also had some kind of magical effect that played with the perceptions of the creatures around him. But what about the friendly fiend? Did it somehow apply to his summon as well?

Realizing that he was getting lost in his own thoughts, Victor snapped back to reality just in time to see that the tortoise had tucked itself into its shell — and not only that, the long, sharp icicles were quivering and glowing with crackling blue energy not too dissimilar to the attack that the crab used on the fiend.

Fuck.

Victor turned and sprinted — and not a second too late, as a sharp crack resounded through the corridor just as he rounded the next turn. Glancing back, he watched as icy shrapnel from the blast ricocheted off the walls.

Cursing under his foggy breath while scanning for other threats, Victor crept back around the bend.

The tortoise was still tucked into its shell, but its icy spines were now gone. Victor frowned. How long would it take to regrow them? Furrowing his brow, he considered what to do next. The shell looked pretty thick — he doubted he would be able to inflict meaningful damage with just the dagger — as unlike normal tortoises, plates had somehow covered all of the openings, completely encasing the creature within.

Victor sighed, turning his back to the fearful monster. He doubted it was worth bothering with it.

One more bend, and Victor stood at the entrance of a wide, and even longer chamber. The space was crisscrossed by beams, fragments of walls, and various terrain obstacles. He couldn’t even see the exit.

The whole thing was crawling with slimes, tortoises, and bats.

Fuck.

----------------------------------------

Victor had an idea for how to continue progressing, but it would require both another slime and something long and straight.

Fortunately, there were plenty of slimes back in the big obstacle chamber, and the dead cave cat’s skeleton was still undamaged. It had some decently long bones.

Standing over the ashen corpse of the cat, Victor ran over the plan in his mind. It should work like a charm — as long as he didn’t slip up.

Yeah, that’s the thing. Momentum is key, and don’t fuck up.

Well, there was no point wasting time and working himself up to unnecessary nervousness. Grabbing a matching pair of the largest, straightest bones from the skeleton, Victor set off back down the corridor to the obstacle chamber.

As he passed the lone tortoise, he glared. The monster was still in its shell, and he noticed that the exterior surface was now covered in small, icy nubs.

So they do regrow. Noted.

Rounding the next two bends, Victor surveyed the crowded chamber once more. Picking out the closest slime, Victor looked around to see which other threats were nearest and most likely to cause trouble — which turned out to be a cluster of five bats.

Turning to his summon, Victor pursed his lips. “If the bats start attacking, I need you to do your best to keep them away from me.”

The situation was definitely far from ideal — he would have to do his crafting surrounded by several dozen living monsters — but he was solo delving a dungeon, after all. A little inconvenience was to be expected.

The fiendish flame bobbed up and down, and Victor snuck forward, dagger in one hand, bones in the other.

The slime died before it realized there was even a threat.

Soul harvested!

Harvested souls: 2

Kneeling down quickly, Victor dipped the tip of one bone in the center of the goopy gel — only to be interrupted by several painfully piercing shrieks.

Cursing, he continued his work while merely hoping that his summon could hold them off for long enough. He didn’t spare a glance to look — it would only slow him down. He did, however, unravel one of the slime souls and push the resulting arcane energy straight to the fiend.

Joining the end of the other bone to the goopy end of the first, Victor pressed them together, praying for it to set quickly. The gel began to turn opaque white, but not rapidly enough for his liking.

Something bit at his ankle.

Ignoring the sharp pain, Victor dipped the blunt end of the dagger into the center of the slimy puddle as well, then stuck it to the end of the two newly connected bones.

And then he stood up and ran.

Without looking back, Victor hurried back down the corridor. Several shrieks followed him, as well as the ambient crimson glow. Rushing past the lone tortoise, Victor yelped as something tugged down his hood and then something else clawed at his scalp.

Fucking bats.

Glancing down, Victor breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that the joints on his improvised spear had set. Now, he just had to hope that the substance was as strong as it had first seemed.

The bats continued to assault him and his fiery summon continued to do its best to protect him — all the way until he entered the chamber where he knew the colossal crab was waiting.

Victor would have preferred to have a bit of time to assess the integrity of his new weapon as well as scope out the situation with the crab — but clearly, the bats weren’t going to give it to him.

The crab turned out to be directly opposite the archway, and it was already preparing a swirling vortex. But Victor rushed forward, leveraging the spear with both hands. Before, he had been limited by reach.

But not anymore.