The smart thing to do would have been to wait until she was fully healed to start practicing her new technique, but Celia just couldn’t wait that long. This was the first real technique she had found, and the rogue was excited to have a way to use her power that didn’t leave her partially crippled afterward. Guiding her chakra in the pattern shown on the scroll, Celia slowly started to get the hang of what to do. It seemed like a rather basic technique focused on boosting her speed and sneaking up on enemies. That suited Celia just fine, killing an unaware opponent was infinitely easier than one that knew you were coming.

She had been hoping for more of an attack technique, but beggars can’t be choosers and she was frankly surprised she got something so good. Then again the whole, soloing the boss and nearly bleeding out afterward might have influenced things. Returning to practice, Celia bit back a curse as she failed to properly control her power again and it raced unchecked through her body causing even more damage. Fortunately, the technique used very little power, at least compared to her normal usages, and there wasn’t that much damage done whenever things got away from her. Otherwise learning how to use the technique would have taken Celia a lot longer, it also helped that the technique seemed geared towards beginners.

Healing was slow going given her injuries and her chakra practice, but sure enough, Celia eventually made a full recovery. She had eaten through all of her rations by that point and was feeling very smart for hunting on previous floors and conserving her meager supply of nonperishable food. She was also having a bit of trouble keeping track of the days, the lights throughout the dungeon should have made things easy, but there had been a few occasions where she had passed out again from her injuries and exhaustion. That messed with Celia’s sense of time, but if she had to guess she would say she had been in the staircase for at least three days but no more than a week. In all that time not one other adventurer had passed her on the stairs, she wasn’t sure if she was grateful for the solitude or not. On one hand, some help would be welcome, but on the other, she had some rather valuable things on her at the moment, and she wasn’t in any real shape to protect them. Her new technique scroll alone could probably sell for quite a bit of money to the right person, even if chakra users weren’t all that popular.

Celia gave a small shrug as she stretched luxuriously reaching her arms high above her head. Spending so long sleeping and sitting on the stone stairs had made her really sore, it was good to be mobile again. Celia checked her injuries and was pleased to find that even her side had healed over for the most part. Her leather armor on the other hand was not in such good shape with a gaping hole torn out of it along with her mangled shirt which she had used as a makeshift bandage. She still had most of her knives, only having lost one of her throwing daggers in the boss fight, stashing her new technique and gold coin in the bag on her back Celia decided it was time to move out. The rogue wasn’t quite fully healed yet, but she was mostly better and if she didn’t get a move on soon she was going to run out of food.

Celia was more than a bit curious as she made her way to the bottom of the stairs, the entire time she had been here she had been barely able to move much less come down to check out the next floor. She was pretty sure it was just going to be another forest again, but that was fine there would be plenty of food for her to hunt while she finished recovering the rest of the way. She was going to have to be careful of any tier two monsters down here, but they were kinda the whole point as she needed to fight them to start leveling again. With a dissatisfied grunt she checked her level, she was still a level three pupil, she hadn’t been expecting any experience from the boss she fought but still, it was rather annoying that she had gone through that dangerous of a fight for nothing. Well maybe not nothing, as she thought of her new technique but still it would be nice to start leveling again.

Striding out of the staircase the first thing that hit Celia wasn’t a monster it was the air, hot and sticky it seemed to cling to her skin like the hottest and most miserable days of summer. Looking around the rogue groaned aloud, this floor was apparently a swamp. It was like the dungeon had heard all of the people complaining about its forest and went fine; you don’t like the forest, you can have a swamp instead, happy? She shook her head that it was ridiculous a bunch of monster-infested caves couldn’t have something actually controlling it that was just a ridiculous superstition.

This was still going to be a pain though, as she examined what little she could see of the floor she noted how the shallow mud gave way to deeper waters hidden in the reeds. There was no way she was going in there, she could doggy paddle if she needed to but she wasn’t the best at swimming despite growing up in a port city. She had made an effort to stay away from the docks as a kid, she hadn’t liked the smell. Celia also noticed the sinuous form of what looked like a snake swimming its way creepily through the water, yep she was definitely not going in there.

Fortunately, there were quite a few trees around, and if push came to shove she could just make her way from tree to tree across the floor. The trick would be not falling out of the trees, other than that it should be relatively safe. Not many creatures could get at her when she was up a tree, all she had to really worry about were the stupid birds that sometimes harassed her. The goblins too she supposed but they weren’t smart enough to actually sneak up on her.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Speaking of goblins, Celia watched as two of the little green menaces were pushed out into the water by a third rather large goblin who remained on the shore. She squinted at the larger goblin, it was probably a hobgoblin she was on the tier two floors now. The hapless goblins went sailing out into the middle of the water and Celia watched with interest wondering what they were up to. It looked like they were moving towards a rather large log but other than that there was nothing around.

There was a sudden flash of movement too fast for even her to see and then the log carrying the two goblins was brutally snapped in half. The two screaming monsters fought to stay above the water, but the massive reptile was having none of that, its massive jaws came down a second time, pulping the skull of the goblin on the left. The other goblin took the opportunity to swim away as fast as it could, unfortunately for the green monster, its fastest was not fast enough.

Gliding through the water so effortlessly that she could have sworn it was magic, Celia watched the desperate goblin get chased towards the shore. The hobgoblin had a long branch with a sharpened tip and was yelling at the goblin in the water. The rogue was slightly impressed that apparently, the hobgoblin had come up with an actual plan, she might have to be more careful when picking the tree she slept in.

To its credit, the fleeing goblin almost made it to dry land but the larger monster had finally decided to stop playing around. Celia watched in disbelief as the sedately moving reptile suddenly launched itself forward in a blur of speed. She might be able to dodge that maybe, if she was paying attention, and if she got lucky, it might be best to avoid water as much as possible on this floor. Looking around she sighed to herself, easier said than done, the entire place was practically flooded. Jaws like steel closed around the goblin's leg and with a sickening crunch and pop the massive lizard began to roll in the water. Celia gagged as the entire like ripped partially off the rest of the body, the hobgoblin however had finally decided to make its move.

With its branch spear in hand, it charged at the lizard intent on killing the opposing monster before it could finish off its bait. Celia applauded the logic of not wanting to face the water monster in the middle of the swamp, at the same time it was a bit cruel to use fellow members of your species as bait though. The hobgoblin swung its improvised spear and hit the other monster right in the back of the head, and the branch properly shattered in its hands. Celia sighed as she watched the hobgoblin get dragged kicking and screaming back into the water, she once again reevaluated her opinion of the intelligence of the green monsters. Goblins were still really dumb, letting themselves be used as bait, but hobgoblins were only marginally less dumb.

With a shrug she moved on deeper through the floor, taking great pains to either stick to the rare dry sections or stay in one of the trees. She was here to level but trying to hunt something in the water just didn’t seem worth it, the rogue decided she could pick off any lone hobgoblins she stumbled upon a lot easier. It would be a good way to test out her new technique too.

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Humm. Valens watched as the interesting human used the technique she had gotten as loot to sneak up behind one of his hobgoblins. The technique was the same one he had seen a few weeks earlier, he remembered only because it was the only other chakra user who had entered his dungeon. It was interesting that the same technique was showing up again as loot, maybe it was because his subconscious somehow understood it better than he did? That seemed a little off to him, maybe the looting function of the boss room however it worked, had translated his observations about the technique into something usable? The core watched dispassionately as his monster was brutally stabbed to death from behind, the technique still seemed to work the same, functionally giving the user a brief boost to speed and agility to ambush an enemy. He had noticed that the adventurer wasn’t quite as proficient at the sneaking part as the other chakra user he had seen, it was probably just because she was new to the technique.

I see you did a bit of remodeling Valens.

Shaken out of his drifting thoughts the core looked up at the drake sprawled out as ever on the floor of the core room. Yes, I wanted it to seem a little more uniform. Now I have floors eleven through fifteen as swamp floors and floors sixteen through twenty will be ice floors.

You’re planning on changing the environment again for the twenty-first floor aren't you? The core gave a brief mental nod, that was the plan after all. Right well in most dungeons when creatures get strong enough they move deeper into the dungeon and start living there. Not that I don’t like the different environments you’re creating but they are making it rather difficult for your own creatures to move to the stronger areas of the dungeon. For example, the few crocodiles who have left the swamp floors were all killed on the ice floors because they just can’t handle the cold. The aquatic snakes also just can’t change floors anymore because they can't leave the water.

Valens sighed, why did running a dungeon have to be so complicated? Thanks for pointing it out to me Magnus. I’ll try to come up with a solution but frankly, nothing comes to mind right off the bat. Maybe I can add small rivers that travel between floors as well? I do kind of want more water-based monsters. I’m not going to stop making new environments though, even if it does isolate my floors from each other a little bit. The drake nodded at that, seeming satisfied that the core would look into the problem. Valens turned his attention back to the lone adventurer, still deep in his dungeon, he hoped she made it to the sixteenth floor, he really wanted to see someone’s reaction to the icy landscape.