The second he came through the teleportation array, practice making him capable of assuming a standing position after the warp, Jaune threw himself to the left in a roll and came up sword held before him and arcane bolt crackling over his left shoulder.
Only to find no sign of life, no matter how much he strained his eyes to look into the nooks and crannies of the cave.
"Option three it was then, not that I'm surprised. "The sound of his muttering echoed through the small cavern louder than one would expect. "Look at me, a few days without human interaction and I'm already talking with myself."
Jaune started creeping towards the unexplored gateway to the place, where formerly almost a dozen of Fishmen had come out. Keeping to the shadows, going slowly making sure no sound whatsoever was made.
One thing he had learned in the series of battles he'd barely survived was the fact fishman had really shitty senses, which made sense when you actually thought about it, their sensory organs, eyes, ears and so on. Were all that of a fish. A fish lived underwater, eyes that were made to see underwater and ears that were made to receive sound waves through fluid probably weren't as functional on dry land.
Another thing he had learned was also the fact that the more human traits a Fishman had, the more intelligent they were.
The ones with slightly more human skin were always just a tad more competent, not something you would notice in one fight. But Jaune had fought eleven and had then spent time in an enclosed space with their corpses, their previous fights traumatizingly raging through his adrenaline ran mind, yeah...
Once he came to the other side Jaune couldn't help but gasp at the sight before him, of course only after he'd discerned there were no enemies nearby, yes-sir.
He stood on a cliff overlooking a cave of truly monstrous proportions, on the walls what must have been millions of softly glowing blue shrooms gave it an ethereal light, majestic almost. If not for what was to be found below the cliff.
A sprawling city of tents, Fishmen bustling fro and about with a lake in the middle, Fishmen of all colours, light reflecting off their scales.
Jaune couldn't help but curse, "Fuck."
On his left and right the cliff extended to about half of the cave system, he was able to discern a few distant moving specs, probably fishman camping before other tunnel systems. There was no way leading down to what you could almost call a city, only a steep drop of about a hundred meters.
There must have been a teleportation array leading down there somewhere up here. Not that Jaune was going to go looking for them anytime soon.
There were generally two ways to escape a dungeon, either to defeat the boss in his boss room or to find a secret exit. Suffice to say Jaune wasn't about to go look for the Überfish, the weakest ones were already enough for him.
The only thing left for him to do was to decide which direction he was going to go in. Hehe, only thing left for him to do, left, left it was then.
Jaune turned to his left looking towards the seemingly endless expanse of cliff that only spanned half the actual cave, a few dots marring the otherwise beautiful scenery and started lurking.
He didn't encounter any of the aquatic monstrosities hiding in some crevice just to suddenly jump out and try to kill him, but what he did encounter were some teleportation arrays, all identical on the ground.
He didn't step on them of course, the fact that they had a cooldown period and could possibly deposit him directly into the middle of the fishman city turned him off the idea.
The sand at least was pleasant to walk on, he was getting thirsty though, he was going to need to find some more of his walking blood bags, ironic considering there was a lake under him, not that he knew if the lake was safe to drink from.
What he wouldn't do for a rope, bottle and a way to make fire.
Just as his thoughts started to drift towards the unproductive he was able to make out one of the dots. A seemingly random fishman serial number #42147. There was only one difference, this one had a bow.
Thankfully he was just patrolling peacefully along a strip of the cliff wall that appeared to have some holes in it. Supplies maybe? And more importantly, it was alone, with the nearest dot still indistinguishable almost a mile away down the road.
The young mage plopped himself on the ground after looking behind to confirm there was nobody there and waited, trying to discern if there was any sort of pattern to the things movement, and after maybe an hour of watching, lo and behold, he found one.
Every now and then, the fishman would grow fidgety, when he did that, he patrolled until the end of the line he patrolled along, and then, he would pull out a blue mushroom and squeeze it over his head, releasing what looked like a bunch of fluid over him, almost looked like a shower Jaune had heard some rich people in cities had.
He waited until the thing started growing fidgety with its back turned to him, his theory being that it would be too distracted to use its subpar senses in its water depraved state to even try to prevent and ambush.
He then slowly closed the distance between them, his feet occasionally making scuffing noises on the sand, and his heart beating in his chest so loud he was sure the thing was going to turn around anytime soon.
He came close enough, and with one stroke of his newly acquired sword Jaune was able to kill the thing and secure himself something to drink.
He furrowed his brows, was this what being an Assassin felt like, born in a family of Knights he had been raised to, if not despise, then at least strongly dislike the Class.
Not made better by the fact he was a Mage. Mages at the later levels were capable of doing incredible amounts of damage to a battlefield, the ones most often sent to assassinate them were, well, Assassins.
He could understand the unease most people felt against the Class, people were afraid because bakers baked, farmers farmed, and Assassins killed people, they were often referred to as cowardly, Jaune, however, had grown self-aware enough to know it was simply easier to survive if your enemy never saw you coming.
A fight with a monster or Grimm, no matter how much stronger you were, always had a chance of death, it might be minuscule, but it was there, and like the old proverb went.
If you keep doin shit, that has even a small chance of killing ya, someday, you're gonna get killed!
Wise words, truly, grandpa, you will be missed.
Jaune decided that he quite liked assassination, no matter how much the act probably made his ancestors turn in their graves.
But now it was time to look into the things the Fishman had been patrolling, he hadn't dared to while stalking the now corpse simply in case the thing had randomly turned around.
Before that, the bow, a bow would be pretty useful, his mana wasn't limitless, just that it wasn't a bow, but a stick with a rope bound on it, damn.
Whatever, he walked up to one of the holes in the wall, they were releasing a horrible stench. Maybe a corpse depository, but when he took a look inside he had to blink, no, not a corpse depository, the opposite rather.
Eggs, big, fish eggs, submerged in murky and stale looking water, reeking of rot and other gross stuff.
Jaune wondered if he would get any Experience from killing the things.
Jaune threw an arcane bolt. Yes he would, one egg probably gave him the same amount of Experience reading a book gave him as a mage, in other words, he would need about a million to get one level.
But he was pretty close to level nine.
Not that he wouldn't have done it if he hadn't gotten the small amount of Exp, a hero was obligated to kill all dungeon spawn, lest they reproduce too much, escape the dungeon and start killing humans.
Not that Jaune was a hero yet, more like, aspiring to be one, he was starting to see the bad parts of the job in this dungeon, but not enough to make him stop wanting to follow in the footsteps of his family.
He was going to need to find something he could kill the things with though, it wasn't economic to use arcane bolt due to the mana cost and using the sword just felt wrong.
The mage looked behind himself, his eyes falling on the rope stick with a rope lying abandoned on the ground, that would do.
After he was done with the cauldrons of children he had brutally murdered before they ever had a chance to enter the world, wait, Jaune thought to himself, that sounded really wrong.
After Jaune had committed the first ethnic cleansing of his life he decided after reaching Level nine off of it, that the experience in itself was an 8/10 would do again.
Two points detracted because of the disgusting smell and the horrendously high-quality graphics that weren't really needed when depicting a scene of such horrendous ewwwwww.
The Experience made him think a little, he had already decided that he needed to be strong, out of necessity to be able to keep his freedom if others ever found out about his capabilities and simply because having strength was an old adage of the Arcs, a weakling wasn't going to save anyone after all, especially not themselves.
But here he was, in a dungeon that he decided, wasn't as overbearing as he first thought now that he had a sword and some experience actually fighting the inhabitants. Hell, he'd defeated a dozen of them. Sure they'd come at him in waves of three and he'd assassinated one of them practically every time before the fight even began. But he was confident he could survive in his present environment.
And while he was at it, gain many, many Levels, he let his gaze sweep about in the seemingly endless cave and the lone guardsman patrolling the half as endless cliff, many, many, many Levels.
Jaune decided he regretted his decision approximately a week later while hauling ass away from what must have been hundreds of Fishmen chasing him with what must have been the intention of brutally murdering him.
He guessed they didn't really appreciate him killing their yet to be born children, expected true. He interrupted his thoughts to concentrate on jumping over another fishman corpse, one he had killed on his way to the left end side of the cliff, but he hadn't thought they would catch up so soon to what he was doing.
From his observations all the monsters were quite isolated from one another, only needing the blue mushrooms that provided fluid to survive and continue their seldom anything but exciting tasks for at minimum of a week.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Minimum of a week because after a week of his genocidal crusade they had apparently sent an elite taskforce of Fishmen after him that compensated for their expected retardation with sheer numbers.
He didn't know how this many had been able to enter the cliffs with him unaware but he suspected a gigantic teleportation array that was meant to transfer the newly born children from the cliffs towards the city of tents down by the lake.
His goal was coming nearer, his body not necessarily faster than then Fishmen but they were just running each other over in their haste to drink his blood for once, as a sort of poetic revenge.
Jaune hadn't been stupid enough to try and drink the fluid the mushrooms expelled, blood was fine, something that had already proven to be safe to drink, he wasn't going to sacrifice his well-being for mere comfort.
As he came to a cave just before the one where he had entered his heart dropped, from the other side of the cliff another frenzy of fish were approaching.
They would cut him off just before he reached the place where he could whisk himself into to do a repeat performance of Jaune vs a dozen fishman, but this time against what now appeared to be 200.
As the only choice left to him Jaune jumped to the unexplored cave approaching from the right.
As he entered it he remembered why he left it unexplored, a dozen pairs of eyes blinked at him, and probably at the angry shouts coming approaching behind him.
He ignored them, hoping that the appearance of a human was too shocking to actually make them attack him, he ran past them at full speed, through the corridor, into another cave, guarded by two Fishmen just like last time and threw himself into the teleportation array at the end of it before they even readied their weapons.
Just to find himself in a shed eerily similar to the first one he'd entered in this dungeon. His body slumped against the wall, his heart beating faster than a nevermore could fly and his hands shaking, almost vibrating against his thighs as he gripped them to recover his breathing.
He had been stupid, risking his life for Levels, he had only gained one in the end, every time you leveled up the next one would require more experience. Depicted in graph it would be the simple function of an upward concave, just that it would rise sharply after every nine, it was, theorized, that from Levels nine to ten you needed the same amount of experience you need to rise from one to nine.
It didn't matter if it was right or wrong, it was definitely close enough to not matter.
His time was running out though, the teleportation arrays he had encountered before had a reload time of a few minutes, and this cave system appeared to be identical to the one he had come through, so hopefully, there would be an exit at the end.
Calming himself, he took a look around, there was food, he took some of it, he had been forced to drop what he previously had with him when he noticed the fishman coming at him.
The tranquillity of his mind, that he liked to compare to a calm sea was raging at him like a storm, what he would find on the other side would decide his fate.
He wasn't arrogant enough to think he could defeat 200 Fishmen even if they came in waves of three, he called himself a greedy fool one last time and stepped onto the teleportation circle.
The other side was empty, narrowing his eyes he looked around to confirm it was really empty, it would be fairly ironic if he was the one to be assassinated this time. No, it was empty, he crept forward, then stopped, looked at the teleportation array.
If there wasn't an exit and he was forced to fight the ones after him, he would die, better to die on his own terms than to be captured and probably tortured by the retarded species.
He raised his sword and brought it down as powerfully as he could.
The teleportation array cracked, it flashed a sickly purple and expelled what appeared to be pure energy, it slammed into him and threw him back into the wall.
Groaning he managed to right himself, nothing seemed to be broken, but after his ears stopped ringing from the sound of the explosion, e heard a different kind of sound, a familiar screeching. Just, slightly different?
It was coming closer, fast, he struggled to his feet and readied his sword.
When the one making the sound came through the tunnel they both stared at each other, both armed with swords, one dressed in only pants the other dressed in what looked to be pants and a mesh shirt covered by a coat. One of the parties was decisively female.
And way more human looking than she had any right to be, the only thing revealing her aquatic ancestry being the fact she was even shorter than Jaune who was twelve, the gills on her neck, and the fact her hair wasn't hair, but fine tentacles.
Jaune didn't care, chivalry was dead, survival the only priority, he threw an arcane bolt which the enemy swiftly dodged, not even letting him graze her.
"So I was right, the more human you are the more competent and intelligent you become." His voice was raspy and unused, it wasn't like there was anybody to talk to around here.
She simply tilted her head at him and attacked, a fast downwards swing towards his unarmed left arm, as expected, the victory condition for Jaune wasn't to win this fight, they were to escape as quickly as possible.
He stepped into her guard and tried to shoulder check her away, only to be repelled by the sword, it changing directions towards his head making him back off.
A thrust of his sword was dodged, the consequent arcane bolt into the stomach was not and as she was forced backwards to regain her footing Jaune ran past her into the tunnel.
As he ran he heard fast steps catching up to him, after what seemed like an eternity he emerged to the final cave, to find, absolutely nothing.
No teleportation array, no exit, no hope.
This didn't mean he was just going to lie down and die though, he rolled to the right avoiding the thrust that would have clearly severed his spinal cord. As long as he stayed alive there was always hope someone would come rescue him and he thought he saw a small silhouette of something in the corner of the cave, just that the circular cave didn't have corners.
And he wasn't going to let himself get killed, and definitely not by this human looking bitch who was descended from same retarded species he had been fighting for almost two weeks now.
Her eyes locked firmly onto his as they clashed swords, to a master swordsman this would be just another two amateurs waving sticks at each other but to them, this was a life or death battle.
They were evenly matched, but Jaune had one advantage, he had magic, an arcane bolt sent to stagger her made her dodge into the direction of his sword, but at the last moment one of her arms wrapped itself behind his head, her other one dropped the sword she was holding and quicker than it should have been possible to draw a dagger from somewhere, as they both fell Jaune rammed his now misplaced sword into her head, sadly only the broadside, and she stabbed him straight in the stomach.
The pain was, oddly dampened, his head was spinning.
Laying on the ground, Jaune on top like some twisted lovers embrace, both felt darkness take them.
When consciousness found him a few moments later Jaune felt an incessant throbbing in his stomach area, then remembered, that yes, he had been stabbed.
"Fuck. "He was also pretty sure that the flecks of blood that came up as he tried to speak were not a good sign.
He untangled himself from the flurry of limbs he was lying in, ignoring the faintly breathing body beneath him, she would bleed out from her head wound anyway.
He staggered to his feet, dagger still stuck in his body and looked around, yes there it was, he had caught the brief silhouette of something lying on the ground before being drawn into the fight, as he came nearer and his vision swam he noted it looked suspiciously like a treasure chest.
His legs gave out under him, and suddenly the chest looked further than he could ever reach, but humans were geared to never stop trying to survive and Jaune was no different.
Now entering a sense of tranquillity, maybe because of his impending death, the mage heard the pinging at the back of his mind, that he had an attribute point to spend and two new skills he could acquire.
He didn't know if the one point he put in constitution was the turning point but he managed to drag himself to the treasure chest leaving a trail of blood behind him, the dagger tearing up his insides even further.
He couldn't think, opening the chest he found a phial filled with a green liquid and some greaves, damn nice ones, but items didn't heal one unless they were legendary class, and anytime you looked at an unclaimed legendary item you would immediately be mentally assaulted by its statistics and special effects.
Jaune focused on the phial, definitely not a healing potion, he uncorked it with shaky fingers and drank it anyway, it was his last chance if he did nothing he would die for sure, if he drank there was hope.
You have gained the statistic regeneration, it has been set to the value of 1, your healing factor is now twice the healing factor of others with the same stats but without regeneration would have.
Lucky.
Now came the hard part, Jaune gripped the dagger still stuck in his stomach, having turned himself onto his back and after a heavy breath ripped it straight out, the pain making him black out again.
He awoke in a manner of seconds, one thing still left to do, the fact his stomach wound hurt to the high heavens had nothing to do with it.
With reaching Level ten he had gained access to two skills, inventory a skill that let him create a pocket dimension where he could store objects, he almost salivated at the description.
The fact it would be his second piece of activatable magic only making it sweeter.
Sadly, inventory would not help him in his situation, he was still stuck in a cave with a destroyed teleportation circle the only thing waiting for him if he somehow managed to repair it a hundred angry Fishmen.
It had a 0% chance of helping him escape.
The other skill however.. it was risky. Shared dreamscape, it would allow him to go to a place while dreaming, a place, where beings, occasionally people gathered.
The fact that the skill information said half of the people died due to interacting with these beings wasn't particularly encouraging. But no matter how minuscule, the skill had a slight chance of bringing him in contact with someone who could help him.
He picked shared dreamscape.
Something in his mind clicked making him exhale, he didn't think he could have handled any more pain plus the throbbing of his stomach.
Now he knew, with a certainty, that if he went to sleep, he could decide to visit the shared dreamscape.
But first, he would inspect the greaves he had ignored to get to the green potion that he was pretty sure saved his life. If they were in the same chest as a Stat giving potion, an elixir, of all things they must have been pretty valuable as well.
No, he was only scared of going to sleep. Afraid of what he would find there.
"Or what will find me. "The whisper was barely audible, followed by a sigh of resignation.
Jaune tried to make himself as comfortable as possible on his back, an unused sleeping position and went to sleep while activating his new skill.
Colours swirled in a whirlwind leading upwards picking him up and carrying him along, he tried to scream but he didn't have lungs-"The blood fool, use your blood." He didn't understand, who was he anyway?
The word sounded to restricting, he wasn't he, he was everything,"THE BLOOD YOU FOOLISH CHILD, SPREAD IT ON THE WALL." What was this voice to tell him what to do, did it think it was better than him just because it could come from all directions and was very loud.
"You owe me one, use the blood." A shove went through his form, that wasn't really a form, but something else. And Jaune jumped upright into a sitting position making his stomach erupt into agony with a scream.
Panting hard he spun around frantically to make sure there was no person about to jump him to tell him more about how he should use his blood.
Nobody there, just the corpse of the Fishwoman. He calmed down, apparently, the skill had worked, advice had been given, he should smear his blood on the wall? But which one?
Probably the one where the entrance would have been. Jaune righted himself up laboriously picked up his discarded sword and walked towards the wall that looked the same to the one that had been erected behind him as he's entered the dungeon.
"Blood huh."
He looked down at his sword and grimaced, the thing was covered in blood, guts and who knows what else, not a smart idea to cut yourself with that.
Jaune brought his left hand up to his mouth and bit into it. The familiar taste of blood burst onto his tongue in an explosion of flavour. He wanted to just drink it all, but reluctantly he pressed his now bleeding palm onto the wall.
Only for it to go right through, as the wall disappeared the instant it made contact with his hand, or rather, his blood. Behind the place where the wall had been but a minute ago was a depression that led to a hole in the ground filled with water.
The exit.
Jaune started breathing heavily, in and out, as he walked back to the wooden chest and looked at the greaves, a clear ping sound resounded as he tapped it.
Steel greaves:
Condition of item will not deteriorate, User is able to run slightly faster.
An artefact. This meant he could wear it even if it was metal.
Definitely high quality, the inner part of it was padded which meant he could put them on even while barefoot. During his deliberations, if he should take these things for a swim he never stopped breathing.
In the end, he pulled them on and without looking back, looking to forget that this dungeon had ever happened jumped into the water head first.
The swim wasn't long, a few seconds downwards, the water surprisingly warm, approximately fifteen seconds to get to the surface and then maybe a minute to get to the sandy shore.
Wait, sandy shore, Jaune looked down, yes, the shore was very sandy. A frown crossed his face, he didn't know any sandy lakes near Aschen.
And he doubted such rich yellow sand was found anywhere in Vale, it being more of a tropical climate.
He looked up but was immediately blinded by the harsh sun, then he saw where he was. The small fleck of green surrounding him, with sparse trees here and there, the lake in the middle was being swallowed up by a desert.
A seemingly endless monstrosity of sand, sand and more sand. Glinting in the sun, it being the first real light he had seen in weeks probably, the mushrooms not counting, it almost blinded him.
Jaune only knew of one place that had a desert.
Vacuo.
He let his head crash onto the sandy ground beneath him.
"For fuck's sake."
And his eyes were watering up from the heat as well.
Great.
Jaunes ears suddenly twitched as he heard a scuttling sound. Like the sound a spider would make when walking on crunchy leaves, where was it coming from?
The right, he got up and spun in that direction despite his protesting body, only to find himself facing a Deathstalker that had somehow snuck up on him. It's ten eyes looking at him menacingly.
His face only reached the upper part of its legs that's how huge it was.
"Hey, no matter how you look at it, isn't this too unlucky."
The thing opened its mouth revealing rows upon rows of sharp serrated teeth.
That was the point where his body decided it had enough and shut down.