Celia brought her blades down in a brutal arc cutting through the back of the mountain cat’s neck with ease. Flexing her arm slightly, she nodded in satisfaction, she had still injured herself using her chakra but at least this time the damage was less severe. There was deep bruising throughout her arm that was already healing but no cracks or breaks in her bones, she would be ready to fight again in only a few more minutes.
Starring moodily at the crumpled body of her kill Celia reflected that finding a new fight was going to be the issue. She had been here for weeks but still hadn’t been given a chance to explore the dungeon. There was no tax on entering, yes but that only meant everyone wanted to dive the dungeon, even if there wasn’t that much loot. The problem was that the dungeon couldn’t take everyone exploring it constantly, especially the upper floors. One of the dungeon bosses had even driven out or killed a good number of adventurers on the upper floors. That had slowed down the pace of teams entering the dungeon significantly and sparked a huge debate over whether or not dungeons were intelligent.
Personally, Celia could care less, but a collection of caves being alive and smart seemed rather far-fetched to her. Carefully wrapping her kill in a tarp Celia began her trip back to the dungeon town dragging the carcass behind her. Another problem with too many adventurers being around the dungeon was that they were all bored waiting for their chance to enter the dungeon. Bored adventurers in her experience, more often than not meant drunk adventurers, burning through their limited supply of coins rather quickly. This led to all of them wanting jobs at the same time and making her competition much more numerous.
At least she was tier two now, the tier one jobs were even more picked clean, at least she could usually find work as a tier two. Anyway her turn to delve into the dungeon was coming up soon, at least that’s what she had been told the last three times she had asked. The mage guild were the ones running the dungeon right now and they were supposed to be trustworthy enough. Not that she had ever really interacted with the organization much. She had also noticed most people entering the dungeon went in small groups, she didn’t have anyone she would really trust to watch her back right now. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal just to go by herself, right?
Tapping her foot on the ground impatiently, Celia waited to finally be let into the dungeon. The young rogue was tired of taking hunting jobs that took days or weeks because the local monster population had been picked clean. She wanted more levels, and if she was frugal enough Celia bet she could live off the loot from the first boss for a while.
“Are you the adventurer Celia miss?” She nodded bouncing from foot to foot in anticipation. “Alright, then I don’t suppose you have a party then?” She shook her head impatient to get this over with. The clerk sighed heavily and tapped his desk, waving her forward. “Alright then good luck to you adventurer Celia, the only rule is to not touch the core. If any damage to the core happens while you are inside the dungeon, you and every other person inside will be held accountable.”
That wasn’t ominous at all, the last thing she wanted to happen was to be killed because someone else couldn’t keep their hands off the core. She shook her head as she made her way into the dungeon proper, why would anyone even consider killing a dungeon core? Even with how little she knew about dungeons it was obvious that keeping one alive was much more beneficial than just killing it outright. People were just idiots sometimes she guessed.
Looking around the dungeon floor she was on Celia was a little surprised, despite how many stories about this dungeon she had listened to it still took her by surprise. It just didn’t fit with what she pictured a dungeon should look like. Instead of winding narrow halls filled with traps, there were trees and wide-open spaces. Instead of murky dimly lit tunnels, there was bright sunlight streaming down from above almost as if there was the sky above and not a layer of stone. At least her walk would be pleasant, and she would have a long walk before she managed to get to the tenth floor.
There was a rustle in the bushes and the rogue jerked back in alarm, deep breaths Celia it's just a bunny. But that was a good reminder, this was still a dungeon and without anyone else to watch her back, she would need to be extra careful, even if there were only tier one monsters on these floors.
Slowly and carefully Celia picked her way down through the floors. She avoided the larger predators of the floors whenever possible. There was no real point to fighting them, she wouldn’t get any experience from them so it was just an unnecessary risk. She slept in a tree for one night when the soft light that filled the dungeon faded. It was quite convenient actually, this way she wouldn’t have to mess up her sleep schedule. That being said she didn’t sleep very well that night, even though she hadn’t seen or heard of any monsters that could climb being in the dungeon. Every little noise woke her, her senses hyper-alert for the slightest hint of danger.
After an incredibly rough night and fighting with her snarled black hair in the morning, Celia set off further into the dungeon with an important goal in mind, breakfast. There had been all kinds of little critters running around yesterday, and one of them would do just fine for a meal. That way she could conserve her rations and not have to eat jerky and crusty bread, again.
Two hours and two surprisingly plump rabbits later, Celia was full and in a much better mood than before. It was actually a little surprising how easy things had been on these first few floors. Sure she had bumped into some monsters but compared to what she had heard from other adventurers, this was nothing. Maybe the population of the floors was declining over hunted just like the surrounding area, but that didn’t make much sense, dungeons never ran out of monsters.
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She had gotten the impression that there were more monsters around than she was encountering. She kept hearing scuttling in the bushes like something was hastily moving away from her. The first few times it had happened she had suspected an ambush of some sort, but nothing like that had ever happened and she was left wondering what was going on with the dungeon monsters.
Regardless, she was here to challenge the first boss and enter the tier two section of the dungeon, not play around with tier ones that would give her no experience. Since she was already pretty deep in the dungeon it didn’t take her long to find the boss room, and it looked just as ominous as she had imagined, a gaping hole in the rock that seemed to swallow all light. Suppressing a slight shudder Celia gritted her teeth, come on you can do this it's just one monster and a rather squishy one at that. Taking a deep breath the rogue slipped into the darkness, shadows had always been her friend even at a young age, a place to hide when the older children fought, a place to escape when thieves chased her. She felt safe in the darkness with no one to see her, even if she knew that safety was an illusion especially in a dungeon of all places.
She had done quite a bit of research on this boss, asking those who had made it this far and lived to tell the tale. She would be facing an unusual monster, a fairy one of the Fae kin. Most adventurers of her power would have trouble with the ranged and tiny fairy but she was hoping that she would have less of a problem. All Celia needed to do was take the dungeon boss by surprise, one quick stab, and the squishy fairy would be practically helpless. That was the plan at least, if things didn’t work out that great she had spent quite a bit of silver on throwing daggers. She didn’t have that much money to spare, but it paid to be prepared and with a ranged enemy it would be foolish not to have a ranged weapon handy as well.
Slowly creeping into the main boss room, Celia carefully picked her way through the trees, eyes alert for the slightest bit of movement. Most adventurers would just charge into the center of the room and open themselves up to a free shot from the fairy. She was hoping that the fairy wouldn’t expect her to stick to the trees and she would be able to catch the dungeon boss by surprise. All that depended on her remaining silent though and the rogue carefully and slowly picked her way over twigs and past bushes. The room was so quiet it was unnerving, no birds chirped, no insects hummed, no rustling in the underbrush. Even in the dungeon, these sounds had pervaded the floors, but in here it was like the world was holding its breath, silent as a tomb.
Celia spotted a small glimmer of light between the trees, she had been right, fairies weren’t the stealthiest creatures around, with their glow and all. Approaching as quietly as possible the rogue positioned herself right behind the fairy who was impatiently bobbing in the air while watching the central clearing. Chakra burned through her arm and her blade raced forward, she had been trying to get better about not hurting herself using her power but she abandoned any such attempts now. She needed to put the fairy down fast and hard, her muscles scream out in protest as her bones creaked dangerously. However she must have made some slight sound because the dungeon boss lurched to the side, not quite avoiding Celia's attack, but a potentially lethal injury was mitigated to a large gash through one wing.
The fairy fluttered clumsily in the air, obviously disoriented by losing part of its wing, Celia tried to capitalize on this moment knowing she was in trouble already. Unfortunately, the boss wasn’t as off-balance as she had thought, a blast of wind sent her head over heels crashing hard into the trunk of a nearby tree. Thinking quickly the rogue ducked behind the trunk of the tree, there was a large crack and a jagged cut appeared on the tree right where she had been before. Grimly taking stock of the situation Celia realized things could have been a lot worse, her dominant arm was practically useless, and she had lost one of her daggers, but she could still run and she could still fight, this wasn’t over yet. Drawing another dagger, she reflected that it was a good thing she had only used chakra on one of her limbs.
Another water spell took a chunk out of the tree at a slightly different angle and Celia poked her head around to see the fairy trying to fly around the tree to get at her. Unfortunately for the dungeon boss, her injured wing was keeping her from moving around much at all, it seemed like it was all the fairy could do to not fall out of the air at any moment. Celia grinned at her mostly crippled target and flung a throwing dagger around the tree, racing around the other side of the tree. The fairy dodged the flying blade, but the move didn’t seem to agree with her injury, falling heavily to the ground.
Knowing this was probably her last chance Celia drew deeply on her power, chakra flooding every cell of her body. Time seemed to slow as she rushed forward, she could see another blade of water forming before the fairy and she knew that this time there would be no dodging. Quick as lightning, her blade flashed down driving through the fairy’s skull, but she was just a fraction of a second too slow.
A line of fire tore through her side and Celia fell heavily to the ground beside the body of her defeated enemy. Painfully lifting her head she saw a chunk missing from her torso, and paled even as blood pumped sickeningly from the wound. She wasn’t sure if even her uncanny regeneration would get her out of this one, she needed to do something and fast before she bled out.
Forcing shattered limbs to obey her, the young rogue cut away what little remained of her shirt beneath her leather armor and wadded the mass of torn fabric around her wound. It wasn’t a very good bandage and it was soaked almost immediately with blood but it was the best she could do. Before her addled mind could start searching for other ways to improve her situation, darkness started to creep across her vision. Desperately she fought to stay awake knowing that if she fell asleep she might never wake up. But she was fighting a losing battle and slowly blood loss and the pain of her many injuries dragged her into unconsciousness.