The Strongest Spellblade

I eventually passed out and when I woke up, I was feeling a lot better. I didn’t want to pass out like this, but my body felt miserable. With no threat nearby, I could only drift off to sleep.

That soul attack was definitely a move of last resort. Since I had been left with a crippling weakness afterwards. A soul was not meant to be used as a weapon. I wondered if I had gotten a skill, and it felt like I had. But I didn’t use it again.

I needed to get advice from my mother or a Healer. New skills weren’t meant to be rushed into. I had been warned about this, because it was too easy to develop bad habits, that would be harder to correct in the future.

One of the explanations for my smooth leveling I had so far, wasn’t just the soul fruits, even though they helped immensely. It was the training I got from my various instructors and tutors. While someone couldn’t learn a skill improperly, there were dead ends in terms of movements and leveling.

Like with a sword, knowing the basic strikes and stances was important before learning anything else. Getting the fundamentals correct at the earliest levels of the skill and imprinting that knowledge into my soul, rather than more difficult techniques and struggling to level up the skill once it got to a higher level.

I didn’t want to get up, since there was a lot of cleaning to do. I let out a sigh and slowly came to my feet. The first thing was my sword. I wiped it down with a wet rag using my saved up water and then applied a very small bit of oil to it and wiped it down with a second rag.

It had a couple of nicks in the blade from where I had hit the bug monsters’ shells. I then took off my armor and did my best. A lot of my blood had soaked into the leather and dried. There wasn’t much I could do at this point.

I then went to the two bug monsters and collected their cores. They were red and quite large. So not past level 50, but up there somewhere.

Next, I checked my face and neck. The wounds had healed but still felt a bit tender. I would probably avoid any scarring. The physical damage wasn’t that deep, only surface level. Healing points were consumed a lot more when injuries went into one’s muscles or important body parts. I touched the scar from when I had almost been decapitated. Only if wounds were deep or lingered would leave behind a lasting mark.

Putting my armor back on, I collected my pack and made my way to the hole in the wall. Taking a careful look inside there was a singular wooden chest sitting in the middle of the hidden chamber. I broke open more of the wall and then entered, double and triple checking everything for traps and monsters.

Once I reached the wooden chest, I repeated the process. While it might be tedious, I was in no mood for a second brush with death. There were no traps or anything else near the chest. I stood to the side and used my spear to flip it open from a distance. Nothing jumped out at me.

I approached and checked inside. Resting all alone at the bottom of the chest was a small metal ingot. People had tried bringing things out of the dungeon, like weapons, but they broke down after the monster was killed. The minotaur’s club was already heavily cracked and falling apart. The same thing happened with material from the dungeon like the torches. Only natural treasures like soul fruit or this piece of metal could be brought out.

The bugs’ shells would be breaking apart as well. The equipment was tied into the monsters by the dungeon when they were created. The only exception to useful items besides monster cores was either stuff other people had left behind, normally when they died, or a natural treasure like this.

The only way a monster part could be taken away was if their core had fused with that part of their body. It wasn’t rare, but it wasn’t common either, especially in the higher layers of the dungeon. Such occurrences often occurred with more powerful cores.

My Tutors weren’t sure why this occurred, but Damian had mentioned that the College of Advancement likely had a guess since they had guesses about everything else. They researched everything about the System and the dungeon, trying to unlock secrets using math and data.

I didn’t know enough about metal to know what kind of metal it was. I carefully collected it and put it at the bottom of my pack. Maybe a nice sword could be made from the stuff. Since I had found the material, my mother would have a hard time objecting. A basic steel blade that was only tier 1 was decent, but it struggled against stronger monsters that had defenses to protect them.

With my looting done, I made my way to the passage down to the 3rd layer. The passage was more of a shaft with handholds jutting out of the stone that I had to carefully descend. Getting back up was going to be a huge pain, but I had confidence in myself.

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I was going to spend the next two months, probably a little bit less, clearing out monsters of the 3rd layer. I was going to come up early for a day’s break before the deadline to check out the city some more and recover before having to deal with my mother.

Knowing her, she would just send me back into the dungeon or do some more training. After the last fight, I wanted a small break from this hell and to look about a city on my own. Before I had always been accompanied by someone. Now was my chance to see things for myself.

And some chocolate. My secret weakness, sweets. If Bastian took baking to the next level, perhaps I could take sweets to the next level? But I liked eating them and didn’t care for how they were made. Well, I was going to try out the sweets in Monolith.

My mother had given me several silver coins in my pack, so I wouldn’t be short of money. That shiny metal should be worth a lot. I had seen platinum before and it wasn’t platinum. Even then I wouldn’t sell it. Natural treasures were meant to be used, unless one was retiring or giving them to a close friend or family member.

The fact that my mother had given me, not one, but two green soul fruits was not something done lightly. I could understand why she would want to make sure I could handle the pressure of the dungeon before giving me more resources.

While the fight wasn’t the best, I had won and lived to fight another day. That was all that mattered. Reaching the 3rd layer, I looked around and smiled. Another two months of being down here, but I could do it.

There were four tunnels this time. None of them lead towards the passage to the next layer down. Looking around, each tunnel was wildly different. One had roots and glowing crystals. Another had trickles of water running down stone and disappearing into cracks on the floor. The third had a stiff breeze blowing out of it. The fourth had a sand floor and intricate stone walls that almost looked like runes but wasn’t, since there was no gathering of Mana in the random lines.

The dungeon became more complex with increasingly varied environments the more one descended the layers. The best option was the one with a stiff breeze in my opinion. It was the least likely to have any really weird environmental effects in the next chamber. Plant life was a bad choice, without fire magic. The glowing crystals were also concerning. I didn’t want to face a golem or something with magic. I wanted to face physical creatures if possible.

The water one had a similar problem. A large water filled cavern would be a massive headache to fight in. I didn’t fancy facing any water based monsters. The sand one seemed less concerning, but it was the perfect tunnel for traps or hidden monsters under the sand.

I preferred to see my enemies approaching if possible rather than depending on sensory skills. This wouldn’t always be possible of course, but I wasn’t going to pick monster fights I didn’t like if I could help it. If I did get a bad draw, I would try and figure out a way to win, but backtracking if it was impossible to win was an option.

After my previous fights, I felt a lot less pressure to prove myself, even if my mother was watching. I had reached the 3rd layer, defeated Abnormals, and found a natural treasure. The only thing left was to keep up a high rate of progress each day here in the 3rd layer. That meant an average of 12 caravans a day if possible.

As I made my way down the chosen tunnel. I barely avoided stepping on a pressure plate on the floor. I had constantly been scanning and expecting something like this. I took my time to carefully inspect the trap and all possible triggers. It seemed to unleash something from holes. Probably some corrosive mist to be pushed by the wind coming through the tunnel, melting adventurers.

Blindly triggering it would have led to issues as well. If you weren’t fast enough, the corrosive mist would flow through the tunnel using the wind. That was why Trap Detection was better than randomly activating traps. And a trap could trigger the activation mechanism of other traps, leading to secondary effects. Something I had a lot of experience with when learning from Trap Master Enzo.

I also checked for better hidden traps. That was a horrible technique, but Trap Master Enzo had told me the dungeon did it occasionally. Have an obvious trap and then place a better hidden trap behind the first, luring adventurers into a false sense of security.

While it was unlikely this high up, I preferred being extra careful with traps. Unlike a monster, I couldn’t just stab them to death. There was only the one trap and I moved around it very carefully. I made a strong mental note of its location if I had to rush back down the tunnel.

I then continued forward to the next caravan. Looking up, there were 10 great big crow like birds, that were the size of horses. Flying monsters, of course. They were perched on outcroppings around the chamber. This was going to be a tough fight. I got my spear and bow ready.

Each of these monsters was around level 15. That was higher than a Champion of the 1st layer but less than a Champion of the 2nd layer. It would be a difficult fight, but I felt confident as I began firing arrows.

They didn’t kill the monsters but wounded them enough, to make attacking more difficult. Flying monsters tended to have higher Agility, but their flight ability was easily disrupted once wounded. The spear would keep them back if they tried to rush my position. If necessary I could run into the chamber and use my sword and shield, but I preferred whittling down their numbers first. My goal was to get them down to 5 before being forced to change weapons.

The giant crows were fast, but they hesitated when flying at the entrance to the tunnel, allowing me to easily poke them with the spear. If they landed they were slow and didn’t have any kind of ranged attack.

While they were physically tough, I could win this fight. Another 50 days of this at the very least before I tried finding my way back. Just another 599 fights to go after this one. I couldn’t help but grin. I was curious what the dungeon would come up with next.