“Left, Right, and then back.” Dren breathed out the rhythm of his dodges. The Urnik Gardners were incredibly powerful monsters. Their slashes were so fast he could barely see them even with his Battle Focus active. In his first fight, he had been impaled right through the chest, missing his heart but destroying a lung. He was so badly damaged it required him to retreat and nearly triggered his Life Surge automatically. He still needed to use the ability to recover from the grievous wound, but it hadn’t auto-triggered. It did show the staggering increase in his health pool, such a wound would have definitely been fatal early in the days of the integration. But, that was a day and a half ago and now he had figured out their weakness. Those huge slashing blade limbs were indeed terrifyingly fast. But at the same time, it could only make attacks in a single simple pattern. A downward slash that was heavily telegraphed. Even then, each attack came off set, meaning if you dodged the first the other was right on its tail. Once you dodged both of them you had to worry about the skeletal hands and the proboscis. The monster would attempt to grasp you with surprising strength to hold you for another attack. The proboscis would be jabbed down trying to impale you. If that missed, the stupid arrow sized spike could be fired from the thing's head with surprising force. A new one simply popped into place from within, like a shark replacing its teeth.

Still, while they simply repeated the same attack pattern each time he faced one it didn’t make it easy. Just getting to the simple attack pattern was hard as their first attack was a charge at surprising speed using their bulk to just bowl you over. Then stomp you with that huge trunk of a front leg.

Dren had just shifted to avoid both slashes and the follow up grasp of the monster. Ducking down the projectile proboscis sailed right over his head. Lunging even as shuffled back to reset their attack pattern, he stabbed his blade into the crimson line where the trunk leg met the body. Avoiding the counterattack combo he made some space as translucent slime gushed from the wound.

“Ren now!” His companion dropped down from the ceiling to land on the things back. Silk threads already looping around its torso as she spiked her lower spider legs into its back. More translucent slime appeared on its body as the threads started cutting into it. It paused just like the others, seeming unable to adapt instantly to the change in opponents. When it started moving again, Dren dived in. Both his blades shimmered with the pearlescent shine of Profane Blade as he thrust into multiple critical spots in rapid succession. Again the monster paused before resetting back to the attack pattern it used on a foe in front of it. Dren avoided them with the tiniest of margins while Ren continued shredding them with her threads.

This pattern repeated until he wore the thing's incredible health pool down. Once it toppled Dren finally had a moment to catch his breath. He was covered in sweat and his body trembled slightly from fatigue. But together they had finally cleared one of the oases. Even if he had managed to pull the seemingly blind creatures away one at a time. The fights had been hard fought. Stretching and steadying his breathing he moved over to examine the pool of golden nectar with identify.

Ambrosia: Can be consumed raw or used as an ingredient for several crafts. Most notably used to produce uncommon quality healing potions.

“So this is the hard to get ingredient they mentioned back at Little Garden.” He eyed the pool. It was far shallower than he at first thought. Maybe a centimeter in depth and half a meter in diameter. Pulling off his glove he cautiously dipped a finger in then when nothing bad happened, tasted it. The nectar was mildly sweet and more liquidy than he expected. He was expecting thick and overly sweet like honey. Ren came to crouch next to the pool before reaching out to take her own taste. She made a pleased mmmm sound.

“What do you think? Can you cook with it?” Ren just looked up at him and tilted her head. After a moment she nodded. “Well good. I think we have some containers we picked up in storage right?” She nodded. “Ok, the next pool is yours.” Dren gave the confused Aranea girl a smirk before leaning down and willing all the nectar into his mask’s storage. Ren gave a small pout of annoyance. “Hey, there are at least a dozen of these little ponds. You will get plenty.” Standing up he eyed the beast’s corpse and their thick hide.

*****

Dren pulled away the leather plate from the last corpse and stood up covered in translucent slime. Within the beast, their flesh was a moist jelly consistency that was most unpleasant as it seemed to melt into slime when touched now that the monster was dead. When he asked Ren she even denied wanting the flesh to cook with. So, it was just up to him to skin the beasts. Between the work after the monster surge and the experience bonus within the dungeon, he had already hit level eight in skinning.

Shunting the last of the hide into his storage he turned to find Ren uprooting the last of the weird lotus flowers from the pond. “Uh, what you doing with those?”

Ren turned to him with the last flower in hand and smiled before miming eating the flower. “Oh… is it tasty?”

She looked down at the flower in her hand with a pensive look before taking a bite out of it. She chewed for a moment before shrugging. She still stored it in her pouch. Having finished scouring this pond of all resources, right down to the roots of the flowers, they turned towards the next one.

*****

Dren gritted his teeth as they vibrated painfully while his ears bled. His whole body trembled from the pain caused by the intense sonic vibrations as the waves washed over him. Slowly he forced his body to move through every one of his nerves felt like they were twisted into knots. Finally, his numb fingers found the butt of a throwing dagger in his bandolier. Gritting his teeth so hard he felt as if the vibrating things shattered, he drew the dagger and flung it upward at the enemy. A bat nearly as big as Ren dodged to the side yet never stopped its bone piercing shriek. The dagger detonated against the root covered ceiling the moment it struck. The shockwaves produced enough force to stop the monster’s attack while sending it hurtling toward the ground.

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Without hesitation, Dren flung another dagger that impacted the bat at the same time as a weave of silken threads. It was hard to say which attack actually hit it first, but the end result was the smallish monster being turned into little more than a bloody mist.

Dropping to his knees he held his head as his teeth still felt like they were trying to vibrate out of their sockets. Groaning in agony as the system chimed merrily as he leveled up, for the first time ever wishing he hadn’t leveled up from a kill. Ren was curled up in a ball near him in much the same state. Her white hair was stained with blood seeping from her ears. Seeing her miserable state helped him force away his own agony enough to place a hand on her shoulder. Her writhing slowed under his calming touch until she grew still. This new enemy was a real nightmare. Until now they had managed to kill them all in ambushes.

The bats were small and fast, but normally roosted tightly together hanging from the ceiling. A quick barrage of explosive dagger had ended them all at once with no real issue. Only he had gotten greedy and thought to create fewer duplicates to save mana. Feeling he could clear out these monsters in one go if he just cut back a bit. Only one of the trio of bats had at the last second flung itself at the attacks. One was vaporized by the blast while another was knocked to the ground to be easily killed. But the third had gotten airborne long enough to start its attack.

Until now he believed between his high toughness and vitality, he could weather almost any attack from the monsters in this dungeon. But it seemed his toughness did little against the strange sonic attack the bats used. It felt like the waves of sound the monsters produced were vibrating his very cells in a way meant to break them apart. Perhaps his toughness just let him endure longer and extended his agony. Either way, it didn’t look like the small annoying bat monster was going to stop anytime soon.

Ren sat up next to him, even more pale than normal, giving him a pleading look. “Oh don’t worry. I’ll not be holding back anymore. In fact, I’m going to add a few more duplicates to the barrage.” Ren nodded in agreement and then winced from the quick movement. “How about we go back and I finish the last level to hopefully evolve my enchanting before we push any deeper? I am getting a bit tired again. Clearing the lotus pools took longer than I expected.”

Ren nodded before slowly shuffling to her feet. Dren did the same and winced as his brain felt like mush that sloshed around in his skull. In a way, the Urnik Fruit Bats were perhaps the weakest and strongest monster he had faced in a while. Physically they had no real defense and were quick but not the fastest he had faced. Nor did it seem to have any other attacks than that shriek. But as effective as it was he doubted the flying rodents needed anymore. If this dungeon held the normal pattern, he would find one more type of monster. Before having to fight groups made of a mix of them. When that happened unless the last monster was a real, well, monster he would definitely kill the bats first.

Once back at the entrance he sat down and summoned one of the several starter weapons he had collected. A short sword this time enchanted with the basic bleed enchant. Dren focused on it and his eye twitched as a sharp pain stabbed his brain. Perhaps working on enchanting while his brain felt like mush wasn’t the brightest idea. Still, he had started on this one. Might as well finish it up. Focusing his will on it a little longer the sword suddenly turned from shiny steel to rusted metal before crumbling away to nothing. With a sigh, he dusted his hands off. “Another failed disenchant.”

Dren really wanted a higher tier of runes without having to use his once per five level perk to get a new one. Or if he was going to do that, he wanted to upgrade one even higher than what he already had. So he had started enchanting all the basic backup weapons he had picked up and then disenchanting them. Four out of five were destroyed just like the short sword had been. So far he had gone through nearly twenty of the weapons already leaving him very few left. What did he have to show for that so far? Nothing. None of his basic runes had been upgraded yet.

Disenchanting did seem to give a decent amount of experience though. While the system was always vague with experience gains or how close one was to level. If you paid enough attention you could get a feel for both. Disenchanting didn’t refund mana and almost always destroyed the item. But it did feel like it gave a lot of experience. Although, perhaps it was just that the skill was meant to learn completely new runes and the chance to upgrade was really just a bonus. Or maybe he was just missing something.

With a sigh, he pulled out another weapon already enchanted, this time with his rarely used frost rune. A second later it crumbled to dust in his hand. Yet, Dren felt a surge of excitement as a system message chimed. Quickly opening it he was both disappointed and excited at the same time. He hadn’t upgraded the frost rune. Instead, his skill had ranked up to level two. Ignoring his headache he summoned another weapon.

*****

Dren sighed heavily as the last of the junk weapons he had crumbled to dust in his hand. Opening his menu to read the last system message he had gotten. It was probably another rank up of his skill. After the first rank up the items were destroyed just three out of four times. A sizeable increase in success. Each time he succeeded in disenchanting without destroying the item he could reenchant it and try again. Also, it felt like he got way more experience for these successes. Which in turn meant his rate of ranking up increased. By the time he was out of items to use he was rank four. This one would make for rank five. Yet, despite all that. Not once had he upgraded a rune.

Dren was ecstatic to find that ranking up his disenchant was just the beginning. Not only had that hit rank five but gained a new ability. But he had actually hit level twenty five in enchanting. Even better he had an evolution choice for the profession. Unlike with his class, he only had one option for evolution. Either remain a basic enchanter or become something called a Profane Acolyte. Dren was less than surprised to get a profane enchanter class. Still, he was excited. What would he get with this one?