Katie was beginning to regret ever entering this damn dungeon.
She had joined the dungeon raid more out of curiosity than necessity, as though she definitely fancied killing the [Bronze] ranked monster and begin ascending up the system ranks, she knew that there would be plenty of opportunities for that kind of stuff in the near future regardless.
Instead of that, what had made her curious was the fact that she did not remember ever hearing about there having been a [Copper] ranked raid dungeon near where she had grown up, but now she was starting to have a sneaking suspicion as to why that was.
Firstly, there were far too many monsters in this dungeon – making it very likely that the party that had entered in during her old timeline had all died out due to the relentless onslaught from the seemingly endless monster waves.
Secondly, every single person that she was being forced to party with seemed to be dumb, arrogant, pricks. Except for maybe the leader of the whole group, Elizabeth, who seemed reasonably competent, most of the people who surrounded her basically asked for death every day just in the way in which they comported themselves.
Now she was also pretty sure she could add being a whole load of murderers to the list of pejoratives she would use to describe the company she found herself in as she couldn’t seem to locate the boy that she had entered this dungeon with anywhere and that made her furious.
She had spent months of her precious time educating that kid and for all of her hard work to be wasted just because some sadistic moron had had it out for the kid made her want to kill the guy in return. And yes, she was pretty certain that it was one of the men in the camp who’d done it – though she would still punch the ever-living shit out of the person who’d done it if they ended up being a woman.
A loud cry called out “Incoming!” and suddenly the whole atmosphere around Katie changed as the morning people took up their positions on the wall – their weapons ready.
Katie had no doubt in her mind that many of the defenders would die this morning, as their grips seemed shaky and their energy all but non-existent.
Thus, she readied herself and her weapon as well as she was pretty sure that she would need to help out the defensive effort or risk the whole fort being overrun and everyone else dying – which would be a pretty shady story to tell the adventurer’s guild and probably end up with her getting a bad reputation again, making her salvific mission far more difficult.
So, with her divine mission driving her forward, Katie flooded her body with mana in preparation for the battle to come. And come it did.
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Peter panted heavily as he lay, bruised and bleeding everywhere, the bodies of 5 Baby Furies surrounding him on each side. However, despite knowing that he’d made a pretty big gamble in picking a fight with a group of 5 of the emu-like monsters at the same time, the fact that he had ended up emerging out of the exchange as the victor made Peter almost want to smirk, but he had so far refrained from doing so. After all, any movement of his facial muscles somehow made his broken nose pulse with excruciating pain so avoiding moving his muscles in general seemed like the best plan to Peter.
3 further days had passed since he had reached level 6, and he only had a few more hours left until he would reach level 7 thanks to a combination of his bot’s hard work and his own efforts in slaughtering the baby furies on a much grander scale.
However, this effort had grown much more dangerous as it seemed that the Baby Furies had wizened up to the fact that the weaker scavenger members of their group were being picked off and now no scavenger hunted without a number of their fellow monsters by their side.
This had made each fight far more difficult for Peter, and he was now regularly in need of rest and healing after each fight, but all of the intense fighting he had been doing had also done him wonders. As it had granted him leagues of valuable combat experience, as well as new combat related skills such as the [Evasion] general skill that he had gotten after the fight he had just had.
Plus, although he wasn’t keeping an exact count, Peter reckoned that he had killed at least 120 of the monsters since entering the dungeon, and that meant that probably in the next day or so, he would see his sole title receive another upgrade as it seemed that alongside traits and his reading and writing skill, titles didn’t require a bot to be upgraded.
Time passed slowly as Peter’s body recovered over the course of the next few hours, and, as he tested whether or not he could stand again, a system prompt appeared in his vision, and he felt a rush of nourishing energy flood through his body and he smiled as his body fully healed, and his hunger and thirst were once again satiated.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
You have levelled up!
Reward:
* +10 HP
* +10 MP
* Your HP and MP have been restored!
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Peter felt on top of the world as he dragged the body of one of the avian monsters he had just killed away from the location of their fight, and further away from the spot of the oasis.
He had just received the prompt telling him that his [Luck] stat had reached the [E] grade, and that had boosted his already high spirits. As, for perhaps the first time in his entire life, Peter felt powerful and in control of his own fate as well as his quality of life.
There was no Sadi or Katie ordering him around as if he were their slave. Out in the desert, it was just him, his system, and his intoxicating need to survive, and Peter felt as though he had finally found where it was that he belonged.
Him feeling that way had made him realise that he’d been too harsh on the group of adventurers that he shared a squatting spot with. Dungeon diving was just simply… incredible, and it was only now that he had actively been forced to try and survive in one that he understood their previous passion and drive.
With his level already being slowly upgraded to 8, Peter briefly wondered what he should do with his newly freed up bot. That was until he reminded himself that his “level to satiate your thirst” trick would soon become impossible as he would reach the peak of the [Copper] rank, and thus he needed to strength to allow him to drink from the oasis or his situation would quickly return to being a miserable one.
So, he assigned his bot to increase the level of his [Mana Bolt] skill to level 3 – hoping beyond hope that the upgrade would reduce the mana cost somewhat as that would mean he could engage with larger and larger groups of monsters and yet still come out on top.
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A week had passed, and Peter’s heart was beating loudly in his chest as he once again peered over the sand dune he was hiding behind and took a look at all the Baby Furies drinking from the clear blue water.
He was level 9 now, and his [Mana Bolt] skill was level 4, and thus Peter felt that it was time to try and test himself against the currently resting group of Baby Furies that sat leisurely on the shores of the oasis.
The [Bronze] ranked goliath was in the previous group, and so wouldn’t return to the oasis for a while – he hoped – and so with only a hundred or so regular Baby Furies to deal with, Peter felt that this was probably his best shot at being able to drink from the water that he would get.
So, steeling his mind away from at least some of his nervousness, he began sneaking towards the closest small group of Baby Furies and once in range, he let off a [Mana Bolt] at them.
In seconds, the bolt of mana collided with the ground near the group – and the powerful explosion of mana that followed blew the monster’s limbs from their bodies and covered each of the 5 or so monsters in the group in a large amount of searing hot sand that caused them an immense amount of pain as it touched their newly exposed flesh.
Peter ignored the system prompts he was receiving and focused his attention on trying his best to hide once again from the now very much alert pack of 90 or so baby furies.
His heart pounded as he snuck around to the other side of the dune and saw a group of baby furies and let loose another [Mana Bolt], killing at least 3 more of the monsters, before his [Foresight] passive skill just barely allowed him to dodge a Fury that had gone over the top of the dune and was now trying to peck him to death.
Peter, panicking, shot a [Mana Bolt] at this new attacker, killing it instantly, but also draining his own mana pool by another 20 MP for very little relative benefit.
Realising that he had just made a seriously wasteful mistake, Peter infused his legs with his mana, and began running in the opposite direction of the oasis – his mind racing thanks to both the incredible amount of adrenaline coursing through his veins and a deep need to constantly criticise himself for being an idiot.
Whether by sheer luck, or due to the monsters’ sheer stupidity, Peter managed to get far enough away from the oasis to feel somewhat safe to sit still and rest his legs.
His attempt at storming the monsters’ head base and taking what he needed had failed, primarily because he had been wasteful with his mana, but he was still alive – which, considering that he was a weak kid less than a week ago, was a feat in and of itself, and honestly, Peter was amazed with himself.
He’d just have to try again tomorrow – unless the [Bronze] rank was there, of course.
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Katie dropped to her knees, the pounding in her skull having now reached a truly unbearable level – she had well and truly run out of mana after she had been conscripted to function as a healer for all the morons who had gotten themselves injured “defending the walls” today.
She scoffed at the jokers who lay barely alive with her in the infirmary. They had all thought themselves capable of fighting against a [Bronze] rank, and now look where they are.
This morning, for the first time since entering the dungeon, the remnants of the raid party had caught a glimpse of the behemoth that was the boss of this dungeon.
To say that some in the fortress had very quickly jumped over the walls to “defend” the fort was to understate the level of idiocy that had been displayed by the raid party’s veteran members. In fact, Katie was pretty sure that some of the wounds she’d been healing with her magic had been caused by other notable members of the party.
However, the sight of the [Bronze] rank monster had lit a match in Katie that she honestly hadn’t imagined such a relatively weak monster would be capable of lighting.
It had made her excited due to its clear and obvious strength, and the only way she knew to satiate this feeling inside her was to conquer that monster. Plus, given that most of her competition for the privilege was now half-dead, she would be able to go full out and honestly, she couldn’t wait to fight something that she didn’t need to hold back against as so far nothing in her new life had given her any challenge.
She prayed to her divine patron that this [Bronze] rank beast would change that fact.