When Daniel arrived at the forking tunnels, he choose the one where the goblins had come from. To his surprise, all signs of the dead bodies on the floor were gone. Either some other predator or the dungeon had disposed of them.
A bit into the tunnel, he spotted another cave and saw a few goblins sleeping together in a pile. He smiled, started to cast his Air bomb and sent it on its way. For some reason the goblins woke up immediately, but they were too late and the bomb impacted. The explosion produced a loud bang and goblin blood and gore splattered around the cave.
Daniel stepped into the cave with a dark smile on his lips and disposed of the only surviving goblin. It was laying on the floor in agony, holding the stump of its missing leg.
This went as ideal as he could've hoped for. He dispatched four goblins in a moment, without an injury and he used only 11% of his mana reserves. Daniel smiled when he spotted the level up notification again. He opened his status window and distributed his points as usual.
Status Daniel Krieger
Level
XP
3
1036
Looking around the cave, he found nothing that was of any real interest and there was only one other tunnel connected to the cave. So, he moved on. It didn't take long and he saw a group of three goblins coming down the tunnel. As soon as they spotted Daniel, they screamed their battle cry and started to run in his direction.
He hesitated a moment. He could use the Air bomb again, but in his opinion he could only use this spell at a start of a battle because of its casting time. He decided it would be best to improve his close combat skills as long as he only met such small groups and was at perfect health.
He only activated Windcutter and started to run at his opponents. He slashed at one of the goblins. While at the same time, he sidestepped the attacks of the other two. His now sharpened saber, together with his spell cut through the first goblin like it was made out of cardboard. He was able to dispatch the second enemy before they were ready to attack him again. When the attack of his third opponent came, he just made a fast step back to evade it and then he pierced its throat.
While he cleaned his weapon on the rags of one of the goblins, he analyzed the battle. The goblins were the same level at those of his first encounter, but the fact that he already experienced their goblin wave fighting style, the increase in attributes and his now sharp weapon fundamentally changed the fight.
Just as he finished cleaning his saber, he saw another group of goblins coming at him. This time there were five of them. Daniel smiled, activated Windcutter again and started to move in their direction. This time, he attacked the one most to the left while at the same time he used a small Air wave to throw the two goblins next to his victim to the ground. Then he repeated the tactic from before and killed the two that fell onto the ground after that. Just as he was finished, he heard goblin battle cries again.
When he looked up, he saw another group of eight goblins coming down the tunnel and around 50 meters behind them he was able to spot another ten goblins.
"What the heck, is there a nest or something" Daniel cursed and started to compress air and then fired an Air bomb at the first group. Again, goblin parts flew through the air and only three of the first group remained standing. All of them were injured to some degree, bleeding from their ears and looking wobbly on their feet. Probably the pressure wave busted their sense of balance. He ran at them, dispatched the three without problems, but then he saw that the next group was already closer than 15 meters. He moved backwards while he created another Air bomb and shot it at them just when newcomers met the injured ones laying on the ground. This time it was less successful and only four goblins of the new group went down, while two were injured and the other four seemed fine. He had a look at his mana reserves and saw that he was down to 68%. He decided against using another Air bomb, even if he had the time, created by the chaos of the first explosions, because there were 13 more goblins coming down the tunnel. Daniel was starting to get worried, if this kept going, they would probably just grind him down with pure numbers. His Air bomb explosions could probably be heard a long way into the tunnel system.
He waited for the standing goblins to pass the ones laying on the ground. It wasn't clear which of them were dead or only injured and he didn't want to be attacked at his legs by those that were on the ground, while he was concentrating on the standing ones. To conserve his mana reserves, he decided against Air wave and he was not able to evade every attack while he killed the first goblin. He had to use his left arm to block an attack. While his gear held, the attack would leave a bruise. Before the goblins could attack again, he killed another one. After that, it wasn't very difficult to stay out of range of the remaining two and a few seconds later they accompanied their brethren in the afterlife. Following that, Daniel used his Air bomb spell to create a static vacuum at the location of the wounded goblins.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The goblins that were still alive panicked when they tried to breathe, but they only destroyed their lungs by exposing them to the vacuum. Meanwhile, Daniel stepped backwards slowly , waiting for the result from the next group when they had to pass through the area without air in order to get to him.
They didn't seem to be complete morons. While a few of them went down, more than half of them were smart enough to hold their breath and pass the 5 meter length of the vacuum field. The bad news for them was that this, the obstacles of all the dead goblins and their body parts on the ground, made them come at Daniel only in groups of one or two at the same time. It felt a bit like an assembly line that transported goblins to him for slaughter. Only once, he was not fast enough with the killing and he had to slow down the next group with an Air wave.
When the last goblin fell and he spotted no new group, Daniel sighed in relief. His mana was down to 41% and while all the dead goblins made the fight of new groups a lot easier, he shouldn't become arrogant. Without mana, he saw no way to beat a group of ten goblins without getting seriously injured. He withdrew from the tunnel and moved back to the last cave for the moment.
There he noticed that he had leveled up again. He put three points into agility and mana capacity and four into regeneration and had a look at his attributes.
Status Daniel Krieger
Level
XP
Free Attribute Points
4
3338
0
Attributes
Strength
Agility
Vitality
Endurance
Mana Capacity
Regeneration
Mana Regeneration
Toughness
27
32
13
22
34
33
11
11
With this, he was now above what a human could achieve on earth. He had more explosive arm strength than a heavyweight boxer, was faster than Usain Bolt and more agile than Lionell Messi in his prime. In addition, he could lift as much weight as an olympic power lifter. A normal human would need to set priorities with his training goals. Gaining more muscle for strength normally meant losing speed and agility. Here this didn't seem to be the case. When Daniel looked at his body, he looked like a very trained athlete, but he had nowhere near the muscle normally required for this amount of strength. Probably the answer was beyond science and in the supernatural. But, it was good to know that in this world, the appearance of a person didn't necessarily correlate with his physical abilities. He chuckled when he imagined a small skinny dude throwing a tank at someone. Finishing this thought, he took look at the current state of his body.
Life
Stamina
Mana
95%
86%
44%
He had lost a bit life from some bruises, but the good news was that his stamina regeneration almost kept up with the requirements of a drawn out battle. Daniel smiled and sat down to meditate to regenerate his mana.
20 minutes later the stamina and mana were full again, while his life stayed at 95%. He should probably keep an eye on it to get a rough estimate how long it took to regenerate.
Daniel stood up again and moved back into the tunnel of his massacre. He was curious why there were so many starving goblins coming from the tunnel. While he passed the dead goblins, he looked for useful drops, but he only found some rusty iron knives and even some stone weapons.
A little later, he arrived at a large cave with two additional tunnels coming into it. All the goblin trails came from the left tunnel and Daniel had a huge grin on his face when he looked at the right tunnel. It wasn't very long, but it had a steep incline and he could see daylight at the end of it. After checking that there weren't more goblins coming from the other tunnel Daniel entered the right one.
Warning you are leaving the dungeon aid34523fj34k without clearing this level. If you continue, you will lose everything you gained in this dungeon level.
Daniel stopped immediately. This was unexpected. He wasn't sure what everything meant, but it didn't sound good. In the worst case, he would lose everything from his apartment and even the system. Technically he had gained that while he was in the dungeon. There wasn't really a choice, he didn't know where this exit led and he wasn't able to see the outside despite standing right in front of the exit. It was like looking through a very milky window. He knew that the dungeon hasn't been visited for years and that was why he and others had been summoned to this world. So, for all he knew, the exit could lead him into a monster infested jungle. He didn't think he'd have a chance of survival in a situation like that and he didn't want to risk losing the system. At least, as long as he didn't encounter an impossible situation in the dungeon. One where he saw no way of mastering it.
Having no real other option, Daniel turned and went into the tunnel where all the goblins had come from.