A Dungeon’s Survival

Flur

A wide grin plastered itself across my face as I threw the bottle. At long last, it was time to give that green Horned Draco what it was owed. It had narrowly escaped death too many times now.

In the next moment, the glass connected with the wall and shattered. Wind burst forth with terrifying force. I immediately felt myself being pushed downward and scrambled to brace myself.

This is gonna hurt.

Even a day prior, I wouldn't have taken such a risk, but now, not only was I willing to suffer the landing, I was able to endure it with only a bit of pain. That was what an extra eleven points in fortitude and endurance could do for a person, and with the permanent enhancers old man Gyle had finally managed to prepare for us, those eleven points were across the board. Sure, one point in each stat was because of my Limitless title, but even without it and for the others, that was a total of one hundred extra stats, ten levels worth of growth all at once, and now, we had the chance to put that new power to the test. It felt amazing.

Adrenaline coursing through me, I dropped the rope I'd been carrying as soon as I landed. Then, I tossed the spear I was borrowing back toward its owner and grabbed for my daggers. If the last time I'd tried to get up that hole was anything to go off of, the two-headed snake was likely to show up anytime now. Once that happened, things were going to get difficult. It would be for the best if we could end this before then.

With that in mind, I threw one of my blade as soon as the wind pressing down on us from above petered out enough for it to fly straight. Predictably, it missed. As good as my aim was, the lizard's ridiculous speed and minuscule size made it a near-impossible target to hit.

Seriously, I've seen second tier rogues move slower than that!

Fortunately, I wasn't alone. A sword cut off its path a moment later, and it was forced to dive out of the blade's path. Following that, Dan, having seamlessly caught the weapon I'd tossed back to him, thrust his spear at it. That attack also missed, but it did give our ranged fighters the opportunity they needed.

Boom! Boom!

An explosive concoction and an arrow treated to have a similar effect, the two items impacted the ground in front of the reptile. It was quick to react, though. With a leap, the lizard lifted off once more and flew out of range of the bottle. The arrow, on the other hand, though weaker in its explosion, still caught the monster in its blast. Somehow, the direct hit didn't kill it, but it did manage to sent it tumbling across the room, if nothing else, and it wasn't doing so in a controlled flight.

“Nope, I don't think so,” I muttered as I threw another dagger at it.

The blade was on the perfect trajectory, and the monster was unable to dodge in its current state. A mere moment was all it needed to pierce straight through the thing, finishing it off, potentially for good. Then, right before it connected, my weapon shot back toward us. At the same time, I felt a gust of wind hit me with more force than even what had come from the concoction old man Gyle had provided us with.

I staggered momentarily, my light body not easily able to resist the wind. I tensed, reaching for but not activating any of my abilities just yet. I was about to use one, but then, with impressive reflexes, Dan pushed through the gust, stepped forward, and knocked my reflected blade away with his buckler, shielding the rest of us from it.

“Nice save,” I called out as I stepped toward the monster and activated Dash.

It only took a second for me to reach the lizard, but in that time, it managed to stabilize itself. Still, I lunged toward it with my blade, unwilling to give up the momentum we had built so far. It mirrored my motion, flying toward me. As I traced its path with my eyes, though, I could tell it wasn't aiming for my body. It was aiming for the weapon I was trying to slash it with.

Oh, no you don't!

I'd seen this before. I knew it could deflect attacks with the same ability so many of its kind down here seemed to have, and whatever method it had just used to reflect my dagger was not that. Prepared for what was to come, I wasn't about to give it the chance to use that trick on me at such a close range.

Instead, I pulled back with the dagger I was stabbing with at the last moment. At the same time, I thrust three others toward it from different directions. Immediately, it abandoned its charge in favor of a tactical retreat. This exchange had ended in my favor the last time I'd fought this thing, but unlike back then, I wasn't stuck on the defensive this time.

Still, it wasn't the kind of monster to just roll over and accept defeat, and worse, its ability to adapt quickly was irritatingly acute. As it spiraled up and away from me, I could see it beginning to loop back down for another pass. In response, I threw two of my blades at it with no intention for them to hit it. Instead, I just wanted to stop the flying terror from descending. Then, it happened.

Boom!

Another exploding arrow impacted the ceiling next to it. Sadly, in spite of my best efforts to keep the lizard near enough to what I knew would be the impact zone, the projectile's blast was still too far away to outright finish it off. It did disrupt the air flow it was relying on to fly, though, causing it to stutter midair, and that was all I needed. Taking the opportunity afforded to me, I flicked another dagger toward the Horned Draco. There was no way it could evade that one in time. Apparently, it didn't need to.

As the blade was still leaving my hand, it, realizing it couldn't rely on the airflow in that moment, took a nose dive to lose altitude instead. I saw and accounted for that with a last second correction to my aim, but what I didn't account for was it lashing out at my blade with the tip of its tail as it fell. Metal and scale touched, and my blade quickly shifted in direction enough for the lizard to effectively slip past it, its momentum fully halted as it momentarily froze midair. Somehow, against all odds, it had done it.

I didn't let that slow me down. I took a step toward it as I reached for my extra weapons. Then, a voice, Lawrence's, called out from behind me, “Snake!”

I turned on the spot. We hadn't finished the lizard off in time. Its reinforcements were here.

“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath.

I was pretty sure the lizard's abilities were on cooldown now, but it was still alive. That meant it was still a threat. It seemed like I was going to have to keep an eye out for it while we handled the more pressing issue, which wasn't ideal. It was what needed to be done, though, so do it I did.

Making sure the draco never left my sight completely, I turned to take in the scene back where the others stood. In the middle of my group was the two-headed snake. From the looks of it, it'd come down from the shaft. Strangely enough, rather than immediately attacking, it was just slithering around in a circle. I was about to consider it an easy mark, but then, black fire erupted from it in a blazing wall that obscured it from view and forced my allies back. I immediately recognized it as the same type of fire the Crystal Puffers here used, the stuff that didn't extinguish naturally.

Seems you've picked up a few new tricks, too, huh?

Unfortunately for it, the three newer members of our team had come a long way in the short time they'd been under our tutelage, and they were quite capable. Lawrence was on it before the snake could follow up on its initial attack. Cutting off any hope of it carrying out what it had planned, he grabbed a handful of beads and chucked them into the column of fire the two-headed reptile was producing. Seeing this, I turned away well before they touched the dark flames.

It was on rare occasions like this one that I actually envied the other mortal races their eyelids. My lack of them was a hindrance at times, but as long as I knew a bright flash was coming, I could usually work around it, much like I was doing now. Still, the light released by his beads stung at my eyes, even as I faced away from them.

I tried to ignore that, instead watching the lizard as it crawled up into a hole in the ceiling. A moment later, I turned back around to see the dark fire abated and the snake reeling. The beads had done their job.

Following that, sword and spear came down on the static monster. Things weren't about to be so simple, though. In the next moment, a blaze of those same dark shadows shot out of the circle, igniting Dan as they passed by him. I payed them no heed. Lawrence could handle that.

The snake's movement ability, which had seemingly gotten a flashy upgrade since the last time we'd fought it, was another matter entirely, however. Through the use of it, the beast was freed to move around as it pleased now. I couldn't allow that.

With a flick of my wrist, a dagger flew toward it and was promptly deflected by a burst of shadowy fire. This thing had gotten some serious improvements since we'd last seen it. Not only were its abilities barely recognizable, its speed was nearly on par with my own, and that was even with my own recent gains. It was no wonder the rest of the Dungeon was remaining stagnant for the most part. Just how much power was this thing siphoning from it?

“Wow, that was pretty good,” I called out to it, a grin on my face and mock friendliness in my voice, “Remember back when we used to just treat you as daily experience? What ever happened to that?”

I knew this thing had some level of intelligence, and from how viciously it had come after us with renewed vigor every time we used to fight it, I would have been willing to bet it held a grudge; in fact, I was betting on it. With my speed, I was the only one of us who could reliably keep up with the thing in a fight, so we'd planned for this. As the strongest member of our group, I was to try to hold its attention and handle the bulk of the fighting while the others provided supported. That was why I needed to taunt it.

“That's why we came here, you know? We just want things to go back to how they were! You've been hiding in that hole of yours for ages, letting all of that perfectly good experience go to waste! We're going to start dragging you out of there one way or another, so you might as well make your daily deaths easy on yourself!”

The results of my goading were mixed. Of the two heads, one glared daggers at me and hissed. The other, in contrast, seemed relatively unbothered and, if anything, marginally concerned about the other head.

What a weird monster, I thought, but I didn't stop to question it further.

Instead, I charged at it. Its response was to put distance between us and to throw out another wall of black fire in my direction. I would have loved to lob daggers at it in response, but sadly, I was running low and didn't want to risk disarming myself completely, so rather than doing that, I found myself in a game of cat and mouse with the creature. Since my main goal was to keep it locked down and away from the rest of my team, that wasn't too bad of a thing, but it did limit my options.

Boom!

I didn't need to worry about that too much, though. I had support. I only needed to pay attention to my opponent and surroundings. As long as I did that, I'd have the advantage.

Crack!

Especially with the puddles of magical acid Lawrence was spreading around the place. I had the benefit of not having to drag a long body across the ground everywhere I went, after all, and I intended to make my nimbleness work for me. As far as I was concerned, the more hazardous the battlefield was, the better.

Like that, I danced with the snake for a short time. Eventually, it lunged for me, and I brought up a dagger to counterattack. I was primed to sever a head or two, and I felt good about my odds of doing so, but it wasn't meant to be.

“Behind you!”

I rolled on instinct at Lawrence's warning. That put me in a worse position for dealing with the snake, but it did get me out of the path of the Horned Draco. It wasn't ideal, but it was fine. Everything was fine. So long as nothing unexpected happened, I could keep track of the two foes and maintain pressure. I felt good about our odds against the static and probably static monsters. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than something unexpected happened, though.

Slam!

A faint reverberation ran through the floor and into my feet.

What?

We were in a Dungeon. Dungeons didn't shake easily, even if it was only a light shake. For that reason, I wasted no time in snapping my head in the direction of my party. As soon as I did, I froze for a precious second I couldn't afford to.

In that instant, faces flashed before my eyes: Randy, Muriel, and Chris's, my friends who'd died at the hands of the Tarnished Blades and the rogue from Oct's group who'd died fighting the Troll Tusk Bandits by my side while that'd happened. Then, came the face of one particularly ugly human man who'd wielded a massive, spiked club, one of the bandit group's strongest individuals and a second tier warrior that I'd killed with my own four hands. It was his fault that I'd lost half of my party, and I wouldn't soon forget either that twisted face of his or that weapon he'd wielded. It just so happened to be that that exact same weapon was the only one of the things flashing before my eyes that was really there.

I hadn't been able to recover the oversized chunk of metal after the fight. I'd just assumed the Dungeon had absorbed it. Apparently, it was still around because it had just crashed to the ground from the hole in the ceiling, sending a spray of Dungeon-reinforced debris flying around it. That had several implications, none of which I had time to think about as two large sets of came jaws clamping down at me.

Regaining my senses the moment the first pair of fangs tore into my arm like paper, I ducked the second head and stabbed into the two-headed monster's body with a dagger. It didn't kill it, but the maneuver did buy me distance, distance that I immediately allowed my arm to be shredded apart to increase.

A moment later, I could already feel the burn of powerful venom coursing through me. Also, my upper left arm was by no means left in a unusable condition. As this happened, one thing became immediately clear to me. I needed help.

“Lawrence!” I called out, “Purify! Now! Please!”

That was when the second crash sounded as something else fell from the hole. Unlike the first, it didn't cause serious tremors to spread throughout the room, nor did it produce a cloud of displaced dirt around it. What it was accompanied by, though, was something that struck far more fear into my heart. It was laughter, deep, booming laughter with a jovial quality to it that sent chills up my spine. Slowly, I turned my head in such a manner that I could see what had just arrived while also keeping the snake and lizard in sight. What I saw and, more importantly, heard inspired terror.

“Ho ho ho! I may not be much of a fighter, but I believe this will be ending poorly for the lot of you, for the mistress of the stone demands it.”

What stood there at a height unbefitting of a goblinoid was a massive Trenti. It hefted the club over its shoulder with far too great of ease, and it spoke. Monsters in Dungeons that could speak were incredibly rare, but all of them were static monsters. That either meant that the Horned Draco wasn't one, or this Dungeon was a lot further developed than we'd been giving it credit for. I didn't know which option to was more concerning.