I dove to my right, landing a little awkwardly. A large SMASH erupted from my previous position, and I could see that the impact had left a small crater. While he was still picking back up his club, I threw the torch forward and pulled out Lament. The torch fell short of the hobgoblin, but it still outlined its body enough that I could see.

I dashed forward, then did a [Heroic Slash] at its leg. The cutting power of the katana was insufficient, and the sword barely made it to the bone before getting caught, so I abandoned Lament in the leg, drawing the small dagger from my pack instead.

He raised the great club once more, prepared to bring it down on me. However, I was too close to him, so I weaved between his legs, his frantic smashing resulting in the stone slashing his own feet. My footing was getting treacherous, so I made my way over to another part of the cavern, trying to get him to follow. It worked, but if this continued the fight would take too long.

Suddenly, a thought struck me. Maybe I should try to trip him up? I redoubled my efforts in the smashed part of the cave, trying to make him step in the deeper crevices and slashing lightly at his disgusting feet.

After a few minutes of dodging around his club, weaving around his toes, and dragging my dagger along his ankles, eventually, I got my chance. He stumbled, just a little bit, but that gave me the opportunity to tackle his leg. I smashed into it with my whole body, but then the hobgoblin began to pinwheel his arms in an effort to keep balance. His efforts were proven futile when he crashed into the hard stone. I sprang up onto his body, running along his stomach as he started whacking himself, narrowly missing me every time.

I made it up to his face and began hacking at his eye. The hobgoblin shrieked, covering his eyes with his hands, and shook me off. I fell back to around the midsection but responded by planting my knife into his stomach. A sickly groan slipped past his lips, warm blood gushing to greet my hand.

He still had a little fight left in him, weakly waving his club above his already downed body, but there was very little he could do without injuring himself further. I strode back to his ankles, wrapped my fingers around Lament, and pulled until I ripped it free from his calf.

Calmly striding up to his head, I swiped at his neck to sever it.

KrrRrRK

Lament stopped at the spine, caught in bone again. I’m going to have to do something about this soon, can’t have my main weapon getting stuck in enemies now can I?

A prompt appeared in front of me that left me completely astounded.

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Congratulations on defeating the Secret Boss!

You have been awarded the skill, ‘[Enhancement Magic]’

Job: [Hero] level up! (3 -> 4)

Well, I’ll be damned. Guess ‘The Animal’ was a dirty liar after all. So that’s how the upper echelon gained its strength.

‘The Animal’ was a woman in my past life that claimed to have innately had access to Enhancement Magic, previously only known to the practitioners from beyond the portals. It appeared she had actually killed this dungeon boss - wait, Secret Boss? This wasn’t the dungeon boss?

That threw me for a loop. Yes, it seemed slightly easier than I would have expected, and it meant that I hadn’t been lied to.

I pulled up my skill list.

Skill List

Name

Level

Type

Heroic Slash

II

Active

Heroic Perseverance

I

Passive

Last Stand

I

Passive

Enhancement

I

Magic

[Heroic Slash] had leveled up since I had last checked it, likely when facing that secret boss. Every level increases a skill’s ability by a decent amount until it reaches the maximum, level 10, represented by an [X].

My stomach suddenly let out a large groan, making me chuckle. ‘Of course, after one of the tensest moments of my life, I need to eat’. I took off my bag and grabbed a bar. It wasn’t terrible, one of those Nutri-grain bars, but it was nothing to write home about either. I fished out a bottle of water and gulped it down, swallowing every last drop. Satisfied, I put the trash back into my backpack and shrugged it back on.

I retrieved the torch, vaguely annoyed at the lack of lighting in this dungeon. I picked it up, made sure it was still burning and searched for a door.

It took me an hour to find it, concealed in the walls of the cavern. It was just an empty archway, but above it read, ‘Floor 2’. ‘Probably the second floor, believe it or not.’ I chuckled to myself.

I stepped through the frame, prepared for the worst. Instead, I was met with another empty room.

‘Why can’t there be any originality in this dungeon?’