The Bugbear didn’t drop anything besides a magic stone, of course, because things could never be that easy. After vanquishing this new opposition, Tim moved down the fastest route towards the 24th floor. He ran into all sorts of new and freakish creatures along the way. There was the Mad Beetle, a medium sized bug monster that walked on two legs but could also fly for short distances. They made a low-pitched whirr when they did so, moving to obstruct the adventurer, but he would not be denied. Mad Beetles relied on defensive prowess and their movement abilities to close in on a target and gore it with their powerful horns. That strategy fell flat a little when Adama casually lopped off their leader’s horn.
The hardness of the Beetle’s carapace was a key part of their strategy, but Adama had a high-quality, razor-sharp weapon that he swung with great force. He couldn’t cut through everything, but Adama also had the skill required to aim for the weak points in his opponent’s armor. They tried to move around and confuse him, but Tim tracked them with ease, and this obstruction was soon left in pieces.
Adama tore through nearly everything the 19th, 20th and 21st floors had to offer. He was in no mood to waste time, so most of the monsters that dared to stand in his way met a swift and gristly death. The only exception was when he was nearing the exit of the 21st.
The large room was an entirely open field, with nothing but a small gang of monsters to populate it. A group of Lizardmen snarled at Adama from the other end of the room. The red scaled creatures brandished their weapons, sword sharp flower petals with green handles, as they blocked the exit to the 22nd floor. As if they were waiting for the adventurer and understood his goals, the lizard warriors held their position and stared him down, as Tim sprinted into the open space. Heedless, he charged the group in a straight line, grinning as he did.
Their first trap was unleashed before Adama. Taking flight and hovering above the melee fighters were enlarged dragonfly monsters. Known as the Gun Libellula, these aerial fighters earned their names by shooting spikes out of their long abdomens. They circled above the Lizardmen and did just that against Adama, taking advantage of his lack of cover in the wide-open space.
A normal Level 2 would have had no choice but to just dance around and hope not to get skewered. Perhaps a heavy fighter would have held up a shield and tried to hold out. Adama didn’t even slow down as his sword blurred into motion, cutting through every projectile that threatened to hurt him. He kept moving as the swordsman turned his defense into offense, shooting out Rippling Swords with nary a peep. These flying insects were physically fragile, such that even a single low-power spell could kill or cripple them. They fluttered around to try and avoid Adama’s counterattack, but his aim was true. Even the Gun Libellula that weren’t hit directly often had half of their wings sheered off. The adventurer beat them at their own game, killing off the long-ranged enemies with his own long-range ability. The last of the fliers crashed to the ground, flapping their one remaining set of wings helplessly, as Adama crashed into the Lizardman front line.
He was a wolf among sheep as he gave these wannabe swordsmen a fatal lesson in the art of the blade. They only managed to hold his attention by trying to crush him with their superior numbers, but Adama’s superior strength allowed him to cut through them steadily. Then, the second trap struck.
Into the melee scuttled two diminutive figures. They only came up to Tim’s knee, and they scrabbled carefully through the legs of the menacing giants above them. These midgets looked harmless, but they did have one asset. While their bodies were mostly white, their heads and fingers were capped with black mushroom tops. When they closed in on Adama, they took advantage of his distraction to point their caps toward him and fire off their payload. These menacing mushrooms spewed out a fine black mist towards the occupied swordsman, and the area around him was soon suffused with the substance.
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Tim didn’t mind the lowered visibility, but he quickly recognized the danger and leapt out of the fog. The damage was done, however, and he had inhaled several large breaths of the ominous cloud. He felt the negative repercussions immediately, chest tightening as his breath grew more labored. Poison. The Dark Fungus could spread poisonous spores into the air, targeting the vulnerable lungs of any adventurer unfortunate enough to breathe it in. The dosage that Adama had just taken was potentially fatal, and it weakened his movements as the Lizardmen came after him.
Adama wasn’t the only one weakened, however. He had reduced the Lizardman gang by more than half, and the remaining monsters were still no match for him. Tim kept an eye out for any further encroachments by any Dark Fungus, squashing one of them when they tried to get close. Eventually, he cleared out the last of the warriors and scanned for any additional threats. The only enemy he could see was the final Dark Fungus as it dashed away from him. It zigzagged on its tiny legs as it pattered towards the exit, but Adama just gave it a lopsided smile as he fired off a final Ripping Sword. The mushroom creature puffed into smoke as the spell passed through it, likely cutting right through the beast’s magic stone.
Adama studied the mildly comical sight as he sipped on his antidote potion, which he had immediately brought out after the fight ended. This poison would be one of the most serious threats that this neck of the Dungeon had to offer him. If he ran out of antidotes and ingested a lethal dose, Adama would have to run into Rivira and see if anyone had an antidote. They probably would, as no sane adventurer explored the Dungeon without a couple antidotes, but they would certainly extort him for all he had when he tried to buy one off of him. He could always run up to the surface if he needed to, but that would be tantamount to giving up on the expedition. After all the effort he had put into this, that would be a true tragedy. He had an alternative solution to the problem brewing in his mind, but right now he was on the clock.
With the way clear and the poison out of his system, Adama made his way into the 22nd floor. Things would get a little harder moving forward. Many of the monsters he had already dealt with, like the Lizardmen and Dark Fungus, were also present here but their spawn rates were increased. But the real threat were the new additions.
One of the first rooms Adama entered was populated by a swarm of Deadly Hornets, buzzing in the open air above the trees. These large and deadly creatures moved at surprising speeds, swooping down at unsuspecting fighters, and stabbing them with their long and deadly stingers. They struck with blinding swiftness and with enough power to puncture heavy armor, making them earn their name with ease. They were one of the primary reasons Level 2 adventurers feared exploring these floors without partying with higher Level company. But even one such party would likely turn around and try to find another route when faced with a swarm of this size.
This was the fastest way down, however, and Adama barreled into the forest without pause. The bugs quickly recognized the intruder and began hovering angrily around him. Individuals bugs began diving through the trees toward the intrepid adventurer, stingers gleaming with lethal intent. Adama twisted to dodge these incoming strikes, shifting to allow the insects to pass by him, narrowly avoiding the deadly strokes. As he grew more familiar with their timing, he began counterattacking, cutting through the hornet’s abdomens as they passed by him.
One particularly dramatic moment happened when a hornet came at him from the front. Adama was off balance, having just cut through a particularly fast enemy coming from his left, so he was forced to stand his ground against this new threat. With a sharp intake of breath, he held his ground and swung his sword overhead. Adama got the timing perfectly, striking the tip of the monster’s stinger as it whistled right towards him. With the quiet scrape of metal on bone, the stinger, and the hornet attached to it, were bisected. The beast’s own momentum was used against it, as it threw itself on Adama's sword such that its entire body was sliced through vertically.
The gore was so prodigious that Tim was temporarily blinded by insect blood, which was extremely dangerous considering the precariousness of his situation. Several more hornets were closing in on him, he could feel it, but Adama was blind. In that split second, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He didn’t have the same supernatural senses he’d had in the past, but he could still feel the flow of battle without his vision, if he focused. In a flurry of motion, he regained his balance and weaved through the attacks from all sides, ducking and dodging and countering whenever he could.
A few minutes of focusing later, and the last of the hornets were crippled or dead. Adama had been running and fighting non-stop up to this point, and that scuffle with the Deadly Hornets had left him breathing heavily. He popped a physical recovery elixir and kept running. If he only found the corpses of those stupid kids, it wouldn’t be because he hadn’t tried. He had even forgone most of the magic stones from the enemies he had killed so far.
If anyone had asked about that, he would have told them that the money from the quest reward meant that the stones were a calculated sacrifice. This was a very debatable explanation, given that his quarries were likely all dead already, given how deadly the 24th floor was. Adama knew this, but he forged on headless. If he were trapped in the Dungeon like they were, he’d want any rescuers to do the same.
Moving at that breakneck pace, Adama soon arrived at the 24th floor. It was large, to the point that it had many uncharted locations. Luckily, the team had made detailed plans ahead of time and had shared them with their divinity. Adama had a good idea of the path they had intended to take, so he would have to hope they had stuck to the plan. He checked his map one last time to burn the route into his memory, and set off to find some lost sheep.