Something dove at Levi with an angry screech as they stepped inside the dungeon. Levi caught the flicker of movement and jumped aside to evade it.
Level 1
(Dire Turkey)
Health 100%
About the size of a chicken, but a bit leaner and a lot more vicious. He snatched it out of the air as it flew by and slammed it to the ground with one hand as he drew his shortsword with the other, then decapitated it in a single fluid swing.
Three more dire turkeys flew right behind it. Gremlin Two launched himself into the fray, slashing about with his dagger. Levi joined in, beheading two of the fowl while Two finished off the last.
Unlike every other type of dungeon, Beast dungeons offered a more open floor plan. They didn't have treasure rooms, but rather, treasure areas out in the open. The boss didn't live in an enclosed arena either; it roamed near the exit door instead.
The whole place was a vast terrarium for all intents and purposes. The crystal ceiling resembled a clouded sky, the white luminance diffused enough to seem almost like daylight.
This dungeon was a field. Thickets of brambles, a few stands of thin trees, and ubiquitous tall grasses were scattered throughout the dungeon floor, providing places for creatures to hide and launch their ambushes from. Levi could barely make out the dark lump of the boss at the far side of the vast room.
A stand of trees by the entrance was the domain of the Dire Turkeys; Levi saw a whole flock of the pestilential creatures perched on their branches, looking down at his gremlin as though they'd spied a particularly tasty treat.
Levi tightened his grip on the shortsword, wishing it had a power stone so he could activate its blade. That'd show the foul fowl their place.
Still, experience was experience. He needed to kill a lot of dungeon creatures if he'd have any hope of leveling up tonight. So, he set off toward the stand of trees, ready to start swinging once the turkeys descended upon them.
The birds waited until Levi and Gremlin Two were right below their trees, then a squawk from one served as a signal. They all attacked, nearly a dozen at once.
Levi burst into motion, his shortsword a blur as he spun and slashed, pushing his body beyond its limits. His stamina dropped rapidly, but he was getting used to the strain. He only regretted the lack of a second sword, and the barely acceptable reach on this one, though he’d still take the shortsword over a dagger any day.
Turkeys scattered as they were cut down, their beaks and claws tearing into his layered shirts as they descended. He was glad for the new leg armor. He took a few scrapes to the backs of his hands, but nothing more.
He whirled in a flurry of slicing and stomping, kicking the monsters away when they grew too numerous, cutting them down one after the other.
One dropped almost on top of him, claws extended toward his vulnerable face. Levi punched it hard, sending it flying in a puff of feathers. It slammed into a nearby tree, health dropping to almost half. Gremlin Two gleefully finished off the disoriented bird.
And then they were alone, the swarm of turkeys dispatched with relative ease. Gremlin Two walked from one to the next, checking each body. If any so much as twitched, he slammed the dagger down to finish the job.
“If they’re at 0% health, it means they’re already dead.”
Gremlin Two gave him a puzzled look, then jumped on the next already-dead turkey with a gleeful squeak. If Levi wasn’t mistaken, he hit the creature a little bit closer to dead center than the previous one.
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“Are you… practicing?”
Two nodded, and Levi left him to it. He'd found something else to occupy his attention. An opportunity for a better vantage.
One of the nearby trees, now it was no longer infested with dire turkeys, looked sturdy enough. He grabbed the lowest climbable branches and scrambled his way up. His level 4 body was less capable of proper climbing than he'd have liked, but it got the job done with only a few near misses. Much better than the embarrassing previous attempt.
From his perch atop the tree, he could see for a good distance. The tall grasses and bramble thicket hid most of the details of their future adversaries but didn’t conceal them entirely.
He might not be able to tell what they'd be up against, but he could certainly see where and how many they were from the shifting and rustling of grass in the windless plain.
Three somethings over by the brambles, small enough to conceal themselves but large enough that their movements disturbed the nearby vegetation. One large and hairy something at the center of the room. A larger group of smaller creatures — more turkeys, probably — off to the left. Another three of the medium-sized somethings behind that. And a single dark definite boss at the far wall in front of the exit.
Treasure rooms might not exist as such in the vast open floor plan, but he saw a flat area by the large central creature that looked awfully like a treasure room in its layout. It could be a decoy, but he suspected it would be legit. Low-level dungeons rarely set up fake treasure spots.
Rifts split the ground in places, hard to see except from above, deep cracks that were probably the closest the Beast dungeon would come to traps.
“Be alert,” Levi said as he dropped to the ground. “There are trap rifts all over the place. Some are big enough to map out, but with the undergrowth as thick as it is there could be smaller ones we aren’t seeing. They’re going to make things interesting.”
Gremlin Two nodded seriously, drawing his dagger and holding it ready.
Levi smiled at his minion’s determination, then set out. He angled toward the flock of dire turkeys first. Swarm-type creatures were always the most likely to roam, while the other groups were settled in their own regions.
It would be best to get the roamers out of the way before taking on the unknown hiding creatures or the big fuzzy thing in the middle, which looked to be a Spider Skunk. If he wasn’t mistaken, so was the boss, though it was harder to tell at this distance. The boss looked dark with white accents, the inverse of the predominantly white crouching something at the center.
Levi grimaced. He’d faced spider skunks once before in another Beast dungeon. They were cunning and vile creatures, laying traps of enervating web and emanating a seeping miasma that grew stronger the longer the fight went on. It should be easier to deal with one on its own, rather than roaming packs... though he didn’t have two dozen allies at his back this time.
First, he had to clear out everything else. He did not want to risk getting into a fight against a spider skunk and something else at the same time. To counter the monster’s ability to restrict and control the battlefield, Levi needed room to move.
He and Gremlin Two successfully evaded the rifts on the way to the next turkey flock and launched their attack.
The turkeys, though not dangerous individually, could be a serious threat in a swarm. Gremlin Two was clawed to within an inch of his life in the first moments, and Levi had to dive into the thick of the fray to extract his minion safely and finish off the front of the flock. The remaining dire turkeys swarmed them, pecking and flapping, but once Levi had his stance set and his sword in motion, they didn't stand a chance.
He might not be a Swordsman class any longer, but he still had years of combat experience against everything from swarms to behemoths. He still missed the long blade he was used to, but he hadn't come this far without being adaptable.
With the swarm thinned out, he smacked a turkey from the air with a fist, then stabbed the blade down to finish it before it could do more than squawk in distress.
Another dire turkey flew at Gremlin Two. The minion crouched and aimed both his dagger and his horn at it, skewering it mid-flight with a squeal of triumph. In a quick jerk, he tore it almost clean in half by twisting his head up and the blade down. The bisected turkey fell to the ground, twitching.
There were perhaps twenty turkeys all told. Soon enough they lay in sad little piles of blood and feathers, slowly fading back into the dungeon. Levi flicked the blood off his shortsword and returned it to its sheath.
He gave Gremlin Two a health restorative to get him back in fighting condition as soon as possible; he wouldn't need it himself at the moment, and he didn't want to wait around for an hour while his minion's health slowly returned.
Levi waited for his stamina to reach a decent amount, then set off for the first set of bramble-lurker creatures.
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