Few hours prior...

The first Troll was almost on them when Jay fired the three consecutive shots. The three shots hit the troll square in its head, heart and its gut. The shots could do nothing more than leaving a small scratch.

But it was enough. The Troll fell down before it could take another step. The poison was uncannily effective. The dead Troll's body rapidly turned charred black around the areas where the bullet struck.

Rick exhaled, not knowing he was holding his breath.

But before they could enjoy their short respite, they recalled that there was another Troll. They needed to first take care of the other Troll. The second troll was now furious and came charging forward, swinging its arms around as if ready to take revenge for the death of its comrade.

Jay took aim and took the first shot

Pop!

It hit the Troll squarely in its gut.

Huwaawuuu…

The troll howled in pain. But it did not stop from charging forward. It was as if committed to taking down the invaders with them.

Pop

Jay took the second shot aimed at the Troll's chest.

But this shot did not hit, the Troll blocked the shot with his massive fists.

Pop Pop

Jay fired again.

Thankfully, the last two shots hit the Troll on target and the Troll came crashing down.

Ding

All three of them received the notification at the same time.

[Quest Completed!]

[Congratulations on conquering the Arihant Supermarket Dungeon]

[Quest reward: Two Troll's Gauntlets]

They had done it! One moment they were staring at death's door and the next moment the bloody ordeal was over. They had cleared the dungeon. They had finally cleared the dungeon.

Ding Ding Ding…

A string of other notifications rang, but Rick decided to put off checking the notifications for later.

He quickly rushed to Samira to help her out. Her leg was stuck below a pile of shelves. Rick removed all the shelves one-by-one and carefully removed Samira's leg. Her ankle was swollen. But thankfully it was not fractured. Samira checked it out and reassured Rick that it was nothing. She had suffered worse injuries during her martial arts training mishaps.

Rick took a sigh of relief. He had kept her in the dark and this had caused her to almost lose her life. Rick decided to tell Samira about the Lemegeton after they got out. They sat down together for a moment. There was a silent pause where all you could hear the buzzing of the lights above.

"So what now?" Jay muttered. The fight was over and they had come out of it alive. But none of them knew what to do next.

Rick only then recalled about the quest reward.

[Troll's Gauntlet]

[The bone gauntlet worn by Trolls. It has been blessed by Bhim, God of Strength. It is nearly indestructible and possesses immense power.]

[Requirements: Strength 20, Agility 11

Strength: +20

Agility: -10]

"I do not want it. You two can decide on it." Rick decided to forgo taking part in the distribution of the quest reward. He had not contributed much to the fight anyway. And besides, he did not have the stats to use the weapon anyway.

"You cannot back out like this. We all fought through this together. Without you, we would not have been able to do this anyway." Jay objected.

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"It's fine. I will find something useful for me around here." Rick replied.

"It's fine. We will just have to find something for him too." Samira spoke, she knew her brother's personality. "How about this, you keep one and I will keep one."

"Okay. That's acceptable" Jay conceded.

Jay was not in any sort of denial. He knew perfectly well that the only reason they were able to take down the two trolls was that of Rick's meticulous strategy and whatever he put on the blades and the bullets that poisoned the Trolls.

"We should take the Troll's corpse as well, you know, to see if we can cook something from it" Rick suggested. Obviously what Rick wanted to see if the Troll blood also had certain properties.

Samira and Jay nodded.

Rick helped Samira up. He helped her walk toward a counter to sit and then went ahead to collect the Troll Gauntlets. Since this was the quest reward, this was definitely going to be the most precious thing in the Troll's possession.

When Rick checked the body of the Troll, he saw that the troll's body had turned black with cracks all over it, as if it had been burnt to cinders. Rick barely touched the Troll's corpse when it suddenly collapsed and turned to ashes. The only thing that remained was its clothes and the gauntlet. The same had happened to the other Troll as well.

Only now Rick realized how potent the Winged Serpent's Blood Essence Poison was!

Rick immediately picked up the gauntlets and handed over one to Samira and the other to jay. To their happy surprise, the size of the gauntlets immediately reduced to a human size which could easily fit their arms.

Next Rick and Jay scavenged through the supermarket for anything useful they could find. They filled up on all the essentials and put them into duffle bags along with the gauntlets.

Finally, they were ready to leave.

With Samira, walking between Rick and Jay, the three walked toward the building exit.

"Are you going to stay around?" Rick addressed Jay.

"At least for the night" Jay nodded

"Good. I need to talk to you. I will meet you at your shop tonight at nine." Rick said.

As they walked out they noticed the sun was already up. They had gone into the building a little after four in the morning. That was more than three hours ago.

Rick had been expecting a crowd of people congratulating them on their win. But the reality was to the contrary. There was nor a single soul anywhere around.

Rick let out a sigh of relief. He did not want that sort of attention.

Rick and Samira bid their goodbyes to Jay with the promise to meet with him afterwards.

Rick helped Samira walk back to the pick-up truck. He put Samira into the back seat laid her there to rest.

Rick then jumped into the back of their pick-up truck. The carcass of the Winged Serpent was still there covered with a cloth. But he did not bother checking it out. Instead, he sat down on one corner of the trunk and checked his stats.

[RICK HANIQUE]

[Strength: 12

Stamina: 11.6

Perception: 5

Vitality: 2

Agility: 12]

There was an overall increase in his stats. Apart from his [Strength] stat, all the other stats had increased by a lot. The greatest increases were in his [Agility] and [Perception] stats. His [Agility] had increased by nearly five points while his [Perception] increased by more than two-fold.

Rick had also unlocked another stat.

[Vitality- One of the five basic stat among humans. It allows the host to recover from injuries quicker. If the stat falls below "0" the body of the host starts to deteriorate. Increase in the stat allows the host to sustain and recover from greater injuries.]

What this meant was that the [Vitality] stat was not connected to the person's life. If the [Vitality] stat fell to zero, Rick would not automatically die. Lower the [Vitality] the easier he would get injured and longer it would take him to recover from the injuries. While an increase in [Vitality] would allow him to recover from injuries faster.

Apart from this he also received another skill.

[Skill: Weapon Enhancer has been learnt]

[Skill: Weapon Enhancer (Novice)]

[Proficiency: 1%

It gives the user the ability to increase the efficiency of any weapon, even if the host is unable to wield it himself.]

Rick now had a brief understanding of how skills were received. If you performed an action which was deemed to be a part of a skill tree, you would acquire the skill. The more uncommon the action, the more unique the skill would be. For instance, anyone sneaking around would probably get the [Stealth Walk] skill. But because walking was not recognized as a part of any skill tree, no skill was received from walking.

Rick received the [Weapon Enchancer] skill because he had in had applied poison to three different kinds of weapons, knives, bullets and Samira's javelin.

'If I increase the proficiency of the skill, I will have the best over-geared team with me.' Rick imagined.

The rewards Rick got from a single Level 1 Dungeon was astounding. The last time he had tried to increase his stats was by sparring with Samira and it had increased his stats by only a decimal point. And this was in spite of him only acting as a support for his sister and Jay. He could only imagine the extent of the increase in their abilities.

But this was not the only thing he got from the Dungeon. Among the flood of other notifications, one really caught his attention.

Rick reached into his pocket and took out two pieces of stone. Although these things looked like ordinary stones they were definitely not. Rick had found the first one under the body of the Troll when he had gone to take the gauntlet off.

Although it looked like an ordinary stone from a distance, on closer inspection you could see a complex array of markings on it. Rick did not know what it was until he picked up the second stone from the body of the other Troll. as soon as he picked up the second stone he had received a notification.

Ding

[Congratulations!]

[You have acquired a pair of Low-Ranked Communication Rune Stones]

Since the mutation, all the communication channels from the internet to telephones were slowly becoming redundant.

The mutated beasts had been tearing apart anything in their way. Be it telephone lines or underwater cables. And worst of all, the evolution had changed the atmosphere to such an extent that the satellites in high orbit could not send through any signals back to the ground.

As such, the world was slowly disintegrating into a pre-electricity era.