With a woosh, the spear pierced the air. Dren thought it looked like a proper spear thrust but the weapon still felt odd in his hands. Even after almost an hour of practicing with it. Unlike when he picked up his dagger or even the short sword the spear just didn’t feel right in his hands. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stab someone with it. But it lacked that sense of familiarity and just rightness the other weapons had. Where he could handle and manipulate the dagger or sword with natural ease. The spear just felt clunky.
“Must be the innate weapon skills at work. I can use whatever I want. But it will rely on my own skill with them. Not whatever the system did to make me an expert with them.” He twirled and danced the dagger over his knuckles with impossible ease. Checking his mana he saw enough had regenerated for his needs. His dagger had finally reached its limits of refinement. Gaining an additional twenty percent capacity. It wasn’t enough to add a whole extra rune but it would allow him to almost completely fill the now refined mana veins with three runes added or do a basic level of vein filling with four runes now. Either way, it was a sizeable bonus. Just one that cost a ton of mana and time.
Instead of grabbing his dagger to enchant he focused on the spear still in his hands. The item had a mana capacity of two hundred. He could refine it for a bit more but that would take a lot of mana and time. An investment that would be pointless if things worked the way he hoped. For the first time, he grabbed his new lesser explosive rune and placed it right on the stone spear tip. Filling it to capacity he just let the mana overflow to flood all the rather crude mana veins within. Once all two hundred mana had been pumped into it. He took a look at his work with identity.
Explosive Muskin Spear
A Muskin’s crude spear that has been enchanted with an explosive rune. Will detonate on impact causing explosive damage. Warning: Due to low quality. Item will be destroyed upon explosion.
Grinning like an idiot he turned towards his backpack. “Nice eh?” Pausing he sighed. “I’m talking to my luggage. What is wrong with me.”
Gathering up his stuff and the freshly enchanted spear he activated sneak before heading back into the dungeon. He had a new toy to test out.
*****
“This is stupid.” Sam said. “Look my criminal status has timed out. I say we go back to town. That psycho is obviously dead by now.
Charles glared at him, he had been growing impatient as well. But stubbornly refused to budge. “He killed Mike. I’m not letting that bastard get away.”
“He is probably dead.” Sam argued.
“But we don’t know that!” Snapped Charles.
“Nor can we know for sure.” Their healer added. “Dungeons are instanced. No one can join their instance now that they are in. We can only watch for them to exit and nothing more.” When Charles turned his glare on her she held up her hands. “I’m not saying to stop waiting. Just that it is all we can do. But I have to agree with Sam. He is most likely dead. They were unusually strong for their level but, I don’t think they can handle that dungeon. We almost died to the first pull. Those Muskin things are damn durable not to mention the poison bite of those lizard mounts. Without a healer, they will have little chance of survival.”
Charles glared at her and then at the dungeon entrance. He remembered that Muskin monster. Cleaving entire sections away even with his Death Strike active had seemed to do little. The healer with their ability to see life percentage hadn’t even seen a noticeable reduction in its health from any attack. They eventually had to retreat as the lizard’s bite kept refreshing its poison. Combined with the near-unkillable durability of its rider, the fight seemed unwinnable.
Blowing out a breath he relented. “Fine. John.” He addressed the archer sitting in the shadows of one of the nearby trees. “Go back to town and get a group together to sit watch here. I want someone watching in case that bastard comes out.”
John frowned. “Who do we send? To be honest, that guy was a real monster. We would need one of our strongest groups to have a chance against him. Even if he was outnumbered. I don’t see any of our more driven groups willing to just sit here doing nothing.”
Charles growled in frustration but couldn’t argue with the logic. He hated all the time they had already wasted. They still had their daily dungeon clear to run out of the forest lair. Then they normally hunted the few roaming monsters, even fighting packs of wolf monsters.
“Fine. You are all probably right and they are dead. We will give everyone a warning to watch out for them just in case. And if they show up again we will deal with them.” Charles finally relented.
“They aren’t dead.” Jen spoke up for the first time in hours. Charles glanced at the healer guide and saw she was still clutching that enchanted dagger. Charles had identified it to find it had an Empower and Bleeding rune on it. Making it a rather nasty weapon. It just made him annoyed there weren’t any enchanters in the town yet and he hoped someone that came along soon would have the profession. Oddly enough he didn’t even remember it being an option before. So he wasn’t sure what all it could do.
“Maybe. But like they all said. We don’t have a choice. We can’t just sit here forever. For all we know they are cowering right at the entrance waiting us out. We need to keep leveling. You’re the one who said there is some big alien invasion coming eventually. We need to be ready when they show up.” Charles didn’t sound happy about the situation. But his mind was obviously made up. “But I hope you are right. Cause I want to kill him myself.” His hate-filled gaze was so intense it even snapped Jen out of her stupor, a little at least.
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With one final pensive look at the dungeon entrance. Jen stood up still clutching the dagger. “Not if I get ahold of them first.”
*****
Inspecting the scene of the fight, Dren frowned. The body of the Muskin had turned into a humanoid outline of unraveling fine threads and was already breaking down. But more importantly, the skinned corpse of the lizard was missing a few chunks. As if something had taken a bite out of it. In the hours he spent near the exit something had come by. Stealth active he crept down the hallway towards the crossroads. His ears strained for any sounds but he heard nothing. Glancing down each hallway he saw nothing. For a bit, he debated before moving down the one the previous Muskin Rider had come from. He considered that they were patrolling and he might be able to sneak up on one if he went down one of the other tunnels. But that also meant one might come up from behind while he moved slowly down the tunnels. He would rather meet one head-on in another ambush.
Slowly creeping down the tunnel from one shadowy patch to another, darting thru the flickering torchlight. Dren made his way down the halls. Fifty meters or so down a doorway appeared in the side of the wall ahead. The ancient rotting wooden door hung off what looked like mostly decayed leather hinges. Pausing to listen he slowly crept forward and peered in. The room was empty and Dren instantly thought of the room he had spawned in. It looked very similar and was just as empty as his spawn room. With nothing of interest, he moved on. There were several other doors at random intervals. Each as empty as the last. Nor had he seen any signs of more Muskin. The hall hadn’t split, turned, or deviated in hundreds of meters.
Finally, he saw movement coming down the hall as another Muskin rider came into view. Its lizard mount’s body swished side to side as it scurried along at a decent pace while seeming to make almost no sound. Considering how slow and lumbering the Muskin had been once dismounted Dren understood why they used mounts. Hidden in a patch of shadows he gripped the spear with both hands while watching it rapidly approach. Some thirty meters away the mount suddenly slowed. Dren could just make out its tongue flittering out to taste the air rapidly. Like the last one, the Muskin riding it showed no real response. Its featureless face a well unreadable mask.
Slowly the lizard crept forward as it tasted the air. It seemed it could tell he was nearby but not yet narrow down where he was. That was good at least. Using his Assassin’s Eyes he found all the expected critical spots on the lizard. But when he used it on the Muskin Rider the glow of its critical spot wasn’t in its lower stomach. Instead, it was up in the upper right of its chest. Did that mean the weird nucleus thing was in different places on each Muskin? That would be a real pain for any group without an Assassin to identify their location. Dren was glad he had taken the class. If he had been any other class he wasn’t sure he could have killed the first one. It was almost a cheat level of an advantage against these enemies.
With the lizard now just ten meters away he abandoned his train of thought. Slowly and silently he stood up. Activating his Battle Focus he focused on the glowing critical point in the Muskin’s chest before hurling the spear with all his might. Even without any skill with spears, it shot forward with incredible speed. But not as accurately as he would have wanted. Instead of flying right to the critical point. It hit closer to the center of the thing's chest. A blast of raw kinetic force erupted from the spear upon impact. Blowing the crude weapon into tiny splinters.
Despite missing the mark by a bit, the blast ripped up the chest of the monster and sent out a plum of blue dust that showered the Muskin and its mount. With a hiss, the mount surged forward seeming unaffected by the spore cloud.
“Damn it. Fail your resist checks.” Dren cursed as he drew his weapons. To his surprised pleasure, the lizard gave a spasm a moment later. “Nice. It failed its poison resist at least.” Rushing forward to meet the charging lizard Dren focused on the partially exposed nucleus. More of those bright blue spores were spilling out. But it was already emptying out.
As he closed the gap with his mounted enemy the lizard lunged forward its mouth open wide for a bite. Dren jumped up avoiding the bite before stomping his food down on its head. The beast’s maw snapped shut violently, biting its own tongue off. Even as the lizard went into a pained frenzy Dren parried the powerful spear thrust. The strength behind the blow was too much for him to fully deflect but he redirected it over his shoulder. Slamming his dagger into its chest to anchor himself he dropped his sword. Reaching into the already healing hole blasted in its chest he grabbed the nucleus.
You have been poisoned by Toxic Spores (Blue).
Ignoring the debuff he started wrenching the nucleus out with all his might. Grunting in effort he tanked several heavy blows from the Muskin as they both struggled to stay on the flailing lizard beneath them. But in the end, just as before his strength won out. With a final snap, he launched away from them, the nucleus in hand. Like the previous one, this Muskin dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Dren took a moment to bask in the glory of the easy fight. But while he let his guard down doing so. The lizard suddenly surged forward to clamp down on his leg.
A second poison debuff appeared. Also starting at thirty. “Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck.” Dren shouted as he stabbed the lizard at every critical point he could reach until it let go of his leg. He even kicked it in the side of the head with his uninjured foot. Doing little damage but making him feel better. Dancing away as it tried to bite that foot he gained a little distance then surged back in. He needed to finish this fight fast. Before the two poisons and his wounds could kill him.
A short brutal fight later he was standing trying to do the math rapidly as spasms of pain wracked his body every few seconds. Could he live without healing? Maybe use his Calm Respite to offset some of the damage? Sitting down he waited out several poison ticks. It seemed his passive regeneration boosting skill helped some. But it almost seemed like it only got one tick in between the poison ticks before another came along to interrupt the skill. Again, he went to do the math before giving up. It wasn’t worth the effort to save a single potion. He had plenty for now.
Instead, he resolved to use a potion as soon as he got low enough to get the full effect. But would still try and use his Calm Respite skill. That settled he turned to the all-important level-up message. Four kills in this place had gotten him a level up. Not bad. Even if overall the level up was rather unimpressive. Just more attributes. Still, that would make the next fight a little easier at least.
With each tick the amount of damage he took lessened slightly. The difference his Calm Respite made started to count for more. So he resisted the urge to drink a potion right away and instead allowed his health to keep ticking down. It became clear when he was down to about a quarter of his health he would still need to drink a potion. Just as he started to drink one, the system chimed merrily.