The ogre screeched horrendously as the stalactite struck at an impossible speed.

Just as suddenly as it had screamed, the monster went silent.

[You killed Gray-Skin Ogre Lv. 25. You gained 1300 exp!]

Really? Just like that?

Though the System’s alerts had never lied to him yet, it was a little hard to believe.

For one thing, the creature was still standing.

James had been prepared to wait a few seconds to be certain that the blow had impacted at all. The point had definitely struck its target, but the monster was so far away that he wasn’t certain how deeply the stone weapon had penetrated the body.

Well, its posture definitely changed with that hit. The creature had slumped forward a bit, clearly damaged by the blow to the center of its chest. I see some liquid seeping from a wound in the chest, there, though it’s not the color of human blood. There was a gray stream oozing from around the entry wound.

It occurred to James that not only the System, but his basic understanding of biology was inconsistent with the idea that the ogre remained alive. If it was, it would try to get out of the way of further blows or tend to its wounds—or even rush into the tunnel where James still stood.

So, it’s really dead. Why is it still standing? Maybe it has some sort of last stand ability, so it hits you once after death. That would be a good Skill for a Dungeon monster to have. It would keep someone like me from just speed-running the whole thing. If that’s the case, I need to be careful once I get near the body.

Another couple of alerts popped up on a slight delay.

[Sufficient experience accrued. Silk Production leveled up!]

[Required conditions met. Skill evolved: Silk Production became Proficient Silk Fabrication!]

Neat, but is the monster going to do anything else? James wondered. He wasn’t going to pay attention to the new Skill until he had confirmed the area was safe.

Master, you are aware the creature is dead, correct? Roscuro asked.

I am, thank you, Roscuro, James replied. How did you know?

I felt the soul leave the body, he replied.

“Well, how the hell is it still standing up?” James muttered.

He advanced toward the ogre, no longer as concerned about caution. Even Roscuro was clearly wondering why he was holding off advancing into the Dungeon proper.

As James moved a bit closer to the creature, he saw the telltale signs that the ogre was truly dead. It made no reaction to his approach, its whole body appeared to have gone limp, and its feet were not even firmly touching the ground.

He finally stepped into the expert level of the Dungeon.

After staring at the body for a moment, he realized what had happened.

The ogre’s corpse had slumped forward but not fallen, because James’s thrown stalactite had stabbed straight through the monster’s spine and now held it pinned to the rock wall of the Dungeon.

Simple. Why didn’t I see it sooner?

It was probably the dim lighting in the area. That single torch was guttering now, and James saw it was almost to the very bottom of the wood.

I guess Evangeline was here before me, and Carol left the torch burning when she left.

As James looked at the flickering flame more carefully, he heard a sound of rock crunching, and he turned to see a half-dozen ogres moving toward him from across a rather large cavern. He could barely make their shapes out in the bad lighting. They were almost naked, wearing only loin cloths. The creatures did not appear to have weapons. Their eyes gleamed yellow, reflecting the torch light—almost glowing in the dark.

Maybe the darkness is the point of this level, he realized.

As the torch approached going out completely, the ogres hung back.

They were waiting for the light to go out, he recognized. Those yellow eyes were cat-like or owl-like. James guessed the monsters could see in the dark.

This really would have been a dangerous place to take Mina. Carol’s done a damn good job with this Dungeon.

James rushed forward, charging the nearest ogre before the light could go out.

As he neared to within lunging distance, the target ogre took on a defensive stance, a bit like a boxer.

It was then that James let loose an Otherworldly Shriek—the Skill he’d taken from the Bat Queen.

In the instant the ogre reflexively raised its hands to protect its ears, James struck. The ogre’s gray snub nose snapped with a loud crack as his fist made contact with the hideous face.

Then the ogre was stumbling backward, off balance, arms wheeling in front of its body, trying to defend itself and regain its footing at the same time.

James hit it with another Otherworldly Shriek and felt that this attack was more powerful than the first had been. He saw the ogre’s ears begin to leak gray blood before one of its fellows blocked James from following up on the opening the shriek had made.

The big ogre stepped in front of James and threw a heavy haymaker blow. It looked powerful, but compared with James’s moves, it was oh so slow.

Bad move, he thought. Then, Wait, where did the other one that was by this guy go?

That was when the torch light was snuffed out completely.

James’s instincts told him where the blow was coming from, and he sidestepped without needing to see it. As the breeze from the blow gusted past his face, he heard feet crunching around him again—much closer than before. Something was sneaking up behind him.

He let loose another Otherworldly Shriek, but a blow struck him in the side, knocking the wind out of him and cutting the shriek short. It was a direct, full force hit, and it smashed a hole in the armor James wore. James felt more of a sting than he’d expected, given the gap in levels.

Wow, I think that might have cracked a rib.

He could tell his body was already recovering, reallocating calcium to reconstruct the bone—but then, there were also already more crunching footsteps, to his left.

James dropped onto his back, let loose another Otherworldly Shriek aimed straight up, and then opened his right fist.

Hand of Glory.

Little particles of light that only James could see appeared in the palm of his hand and then scattered to all corners of the room.

The ogres’ forms that had been only very faintly visible in the near complete darkness suddenly sprang into sharp relief.

He saw one of the creatures leaning in to grab him, squinting to see in the gloom.

Air Strike.

A blade of air slashed right through the leaner’s eyes, and it let out a surprised cry of pain, then stumbled backward.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

James launched another Air Strike, and the ogre clutched at its throat, a gushing fountain of gray erupting beneath its hands. Then its fellows had shoved it out of the way and were pushing their ways forward, competing to reach James first.

He let loose another Otherworldly Shriek, and it brought them to a stop for just a moment. That was enough for him to throw himself back to an upright, standing position.

Meteor Strike! He struck the closest ogre in the face with a flaming fist. The big brute went down like a boxer with a glass jaw.

The next nearest monster had drawn back its fist for another haymaker, but instead of throwing the blow, it covered its eyes with one hand, apparently blinded by the firelight. James raised a fist to hit the creature while it was off guard, but a hand grabbed around his waist—one of the ogres slipping in at the edge of his range of vision.

James reached down to grab hold of the creature’s wrist, but it was already throwing him bodily across the room.

He struck the wall of the cavern lightly, barely fazed by the impact.

What was the point of tha—

Five hundred pounds of ogre instantly tackled him into the wall. There was a horrible sound like a thousand spiders being crushed at once as the entire chest portion of his armor shattered, and James counted three broken ribs.

Motherfucker!

He could resist the effects of pain, but it still hurt. The creature didn’t move, apparently satisfied to try to keep him pinned down with its bulk while its allies recovered and tried to surround him.

Lightning Strike.

An electric current ran through James’s body, and the ogre writhed as it took the full force of the lightning Mana. James was able to free one of his hands, and he used it to deliver a punch of his own.

Predator’s Strike!

James’s fist moved faster than it ever had before and burst the ogre’s head like an overripe watermelon. He found himself coated in brains and gray blood.

The body tumbled away from James, and the three surviving ogres stared at the fallen one with open mouths. James could have counted their ugly, jagged teeth.

His nostrils twitched slightly as he inhaled the odor of fear. There was an impulse in his mind to make the fight last longer, but he crushed that ruthlessly. There would be worthier opponents deeper in the Dungeon.

He lunged at the nearest ogre, hand extended in a claw-like shape. Predator’s Strike turned his nails blade-like, and he opened the ogre’s neck and half decapitated it before it could raise a hand to defend itself.

One of the monsters grabbed him from behind before James could land on his feet again, and he butted the creature in the nose with the back of his head.

It dropped him.

James fell, landed, spun, and threw himself onto the only uninjured ogre, which had stepped in to support the grabber.

The creature seized James’s wrists, but that left James’s mouth within striking range of the ogre’s neck. He sank his teeth into the neck and tore a huge hunk of thick, rubbery skin out. A fountain of rancid gray blood came pouring down onto James’s face.

He threw himself off of the stumbling, dying ogre and rolled into a crouch, bracing himself for the next blow from the ogre whose nose he had broken.

It didn’t come.

James raised his head and saw that the monster was running away.

He swallowed the hunk of chewy gray ogre meat and chased after the last one.

The ogre reached a downward-sloping staircase and took the first step.

That was when the Air Strike hit it in the back. James saw it flinch with pain as the attack cut a long gash into the thick flesh of its back. Then it took another step, not looking back, determined to escape James or die trying.

He almost felt bad for it as his flame-encircled hand ripped through its back and tore out its heart.

Almost.

“At least you got a quick death,” James muttered as the ogre crumpled onto its back in front of him.

He glanced back at the room. Nothing moved. The monsters all lay in varying amounts of blood and gore from the grievous wounds James had inflicted when he’d killed them.

The whole cavern was visible to him now, with no monsters to obstruct his sight and the sparks from Hand of Glory still clinging to every surface.

It was a very stark place. All stone and flesh. No furniture, no cave paintings, nothing signified it had ever been deemed fit for a living thing’s habitation but the burned out torch. A little tragic to think of any semi-intelligent life form living out its whole existence in the bounds of this cave.

James looked down at the whole heart that smoldered in his still-burning hand. The organ was roughly twice the size of his fist—and an ugly gray-green color that reminded him of their strangely pigmented blood. It was obvious the heart had not belonged to a human.

He took a bite of the freshly cooked meat.

This had become something of a habit in Orientation, back when he first gained the ability to grow stronger by eating the flesh of a defeated enemy. Omnivore continued to pay dividends.

The meat was tough, gamey—but the flavor was not bad.

This is pretty good compared with those giant centipedes, at least.

And it seemed especially nutritious. James felt as if the creature’s life energy had been concentrated in this particular hunk of meat. His body seemed to be healing more quickly in response to the nutrition.

Naturally, he wolfed down the heart and began harvesting the hearts from the other bodies and cooking them with Meteor Strike. Consuming the ogres’ hearts replenished his Mana faster than using Meteor Strike consumed it, and James found he was regaining not just the power he had consumed in the Dungeon but what he had still needed to regain after using Curse of the Fisher King too.

After he had finished the hearts, he drew one of his Wolfbone Daggers from his magic satchel and began hacking open bodies, experimentally cooking and eating additional organs.

It was time for James to return to his perfect condition.

The livers seemed to be just as energy-dense as the hearts, he found. The lungs were not quite as good in terms of either taste or nutritional content. The small intestines were chewy and stringy, but he thought perhaps if they were breaded and fried, they might be decent. They would need some strong spices, though, and sadly he lacked equipment for any fancy cooking methods.

It was as he was experimentally frying up some ogre skin—naturally using Roscuro as a frying pan—that Carol’s voice came in through the ceiling.

“Oh my gosh! Um, I mean, aren’t you going to just Pillage the corpses—I-I mean, I’m just saying, that’s another way that you could get the meat from the ogres if you’re, uh, hungry. Instead of dissecting and flaying the bodies. Just—just a thought.” She sounded queasy. James wondered if it was possible for a Dungeon Core to be physically ill.

“Sorry about that, Carol,” he said, slightly embarrassed.

I’m definitely glad Mina can’t see this.

“No, it’s not your fault,” Carol replied immediately. “Once I decided to check in on you, I couldn’t look away. You know, I create those guys, and in between challengers, sometimes I try to improve them, but I don’t think of them as like, my kids or anything. But, like, how do you improve them to survive something like all that stuff you did to them?”

James shrugged. “I thought they performed very well. I’m eating in part because their bodies are pretty strong, and it helps me recover my energy to eat strong enemies. I wanted to be tip-top shape for the next floor.”

He was in perfect condition now. His body was significantly stronger than it had been when he entered the Dungeon. Everything but his armor was in the best shape it had been in for weeks. Even the Royal Exoarmor had mostly healed itself, though there was still a large hole in the center of the abdomen where James’s stomach was now unprotected.

“Implying that you weren’t in tip-tip shape for this floor?” Carol asked, flabbergasted.

He shrugged again.

“How many floors are there in expert mode?” he asked.

“Three, including this one,” Carol said. “Each one will have more enemies, and they get stronger.” She sounded very proud. “But you’ll be the first one to make it past this floor. Evangeline has just come in here, barely survived, and left. That’s what happened each time she visited expert mode. The first time, she got a broken wing, and I thought it would put her off coming back. Two days later, though, and she was at it again!”

“Sounds like I need to get to know Evangeline better,” James said.

I think I’d like her.

“So, are you going on to another level, or calling it a day?” Carol asked.

“What’s Mina doing?” he asked.

“She just cleared her first level on hard mode,” Carol said. “While you were, um, eating.” She paused a few seconds, then continued, “She says she’s going down the stairs to level two in just a minute. And she sends her love.” Those last words were spoken in a soft, sweet voice. James guessed that whatever emotion was in Mina’s tone when she spoke, it had slipped into Carol for a moment.

He smiled. If he’d had a blushing skin tone, he would have blushed.

I miss you, too, he thought.

“Sounds like I keep going, then,” James said. “I just need a minute to figure out all my gains from the fighting.”

He went around and quickly Pillaged the bodies.

He took a Talent from one ogre and got “Ogre Constitution,” which came with the Skills “Thick Skin” and “Dense Bones.” James felt his body changing in response to those new abilities as soon as he had Pillaged them. Mainly he noticed that he was heavier.

He Pillaged Stats from the other bodies, assuming that these ogres would have essentially identical Skills considering that he had not seen them demonstrate any impressive traits.

And he finally took a look at the Skill he had acquired as he entered the level.

[Proficient Silk Fabrication: Enhances the organs that naturally produce silk, permitting the production of more powerful and magical silk substances. Permits the creation of silk outside the body, using Mana as a substitute for the silk-producing organs. All crafted silk can be manipulated via Mana. Silk quality can be improved by the infusion of mana or other energies. Silk can be infused with Skill effects. Consumes caloric energy. Consumes additional forms of energy if the user attempts to produce silk beyond a certain threshold without a break. Silk can be infused with life energy for additional effects.]

Very interesting.

He could easily think of many ways that could be useful. Rather than taking a long time to reflect on his new gains, however, James turned and descended the stairs to the second level.

He didn’t want to keep his wife waiting.

I wonder how Mina is finding the Dungeon.