The Strongest Spellblade

This was going to be a hard fight. The minotaur had a large club in one hand and based on its appearance had a high Strength stat. Its longer reach would make it a pain to fight. There were no traps or other monsters in the large chamber, but there were thick stone pillars with magical torches on their sides.

The dungeon did have a sense for dramatics adding in light like this for the Champion’s chamber. A bow would work best and then switching to my sword. My shield would be useless. I needed to dodge not block. I changed around my equipment and set my pack to the side at the entrance to the tunnel.

Steadying my breathing, I took aim with my first arrow and fired. It sank into the monster’s thick neck. It was twice as tall as me and seemed mostly made of muscle. It let out a roar and spun to face me, but I had already ducked behind a pillar. I used my sensory skills to track its movement while it spun about looking for me. I nocked another arrow and stepped out from behind the pillar. I fired a second arrow. This time it sank into the monster’s rear right shoulder.

It was already spinning towards me, and I managed to get off a third arrow, which sank into its gut. Casting my bow aside, I drew my sword and raced forward. A shield would only slow me down for this fight. The minotaur swung its club. Instead of backing away like I had with the troll, I had learned what to do in such a situation.

I forced myself to slow down and juke to the side. The club missed me. I was ready to rush forward and took the opening that had just been made. I ran past the monster, cutting at its leg with a deep slash and kept moving.

It roared again and spun around, but I had moved out of range, and it had taken a heavy wound to its leg. It would heal in time, especially since it looked like the Champion had a lot of vitality as a physical monster.

It rushed towards me again and this time it hesitated swinging, trying to adjust to my dodge from last time. I didn’t hesitate and kept running forward more quickly and juked to the monster’s left while it tried to turn. I body checked it, sending it stumbling while leaving another heavy gash along its side.

“RAWR!” It madly rushed after me and I kept running for one of the pillars, an immense sense of danger coming from right behind me. Just before I would run into the pillar, I stepped to the right in a feint and then dove left.

The monster tried to adjust but was too late and slammed head first, or horn first in this case, into the stone pillar. I quickly came back up to my feet and rushed in delivering several slashes. While a stab might have done more damage, the risk of my blade getting trapped in its body was too great.

The minotaur freed its horns from the stone pillar and took a couple steps towards me. It then fell on the ground. I stabbed it in the head to make sure it was dead and let out a sigh of relief. I had won. I had beaten a Champion of the 2nd layer.

I made sure to keep my breathing under control even while I smiled. I had beaten a level 20 monster with around 400 stat points. I also knew this was my limit. I would go down to the 3rd layer of the dungeon, but I wouldn’t be facing another Champion monster there.

While I had won, the dodges had been far too close for comfort. There was no room for error. My shoulder was also sore from the body check I had done on the monster. Already my healing points had dropped by a quarter from such a minor bruising.

It would be nice if I could regulate them better, but I didn’t have the skill for that. They would kick in immediately regardless of the injury. A sore shoulder wasn’t the worst. But healing it wouldn’t keep my combat ability at its peak.

Fighting by myself was a lot different than the time I had come into the dungeon with Squire Jessica. Back then, it had almost seemed like a game. Methodically picking the best way to deal with each monster. But it was fake, there was no real risk.

This was real. While my mother was watching me, I had no doubt about that, there was no way to teleport between layers in the dungeon. She could be hanging back at a distance where my sensory skills wouldn’t reach, but I had backtracked a couple of times, and the tunnels and chambers had changed.

So, it didn’t appear that she was following me, and I was down here by myself. I had honestly thought she would have someone keep an eye on me. I would look around with Shadow Vision but didn’t spot anything hiding. Before I got the minotaur’s core, I looked around once more.

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Hmm, there was something off about a portion of a wall on one side of the chamber. Perhaps a hidden room with a natural treasure? Now that would be amazing. Perhaps a red soul fruit even? For any other new adventurer it would be priceless, for me, my mother had given me far stronger soul fruits. It would feel like a step backward to consume a red one.

I guess I was truly spoiled. After dealing with the monster corpse and cleaning off my equipment and armor, I went over and got my pack. Only after doing all of this, I carefully approached the section of wall that was off. Using Mana Sense, there was an abnormal flow of Mana in this area.

The first test I did was poking the area with my spear. Nothing, no reaction. I poked it several more times and the surrounding area. Still no reaction. I stepped closer to get a more detailed look. Mana would normally flow through the walls and other structures, making them more difficult to damage.

But here the Mana was flowing inwards, like a sideways hole. It was a minor disturbance, so not a large hole, but there was something there. I poked it several more times with my spear and focused all my senses on the location, still nothing.

It could be another oddity of the dungeon, but I wasn’t about to just walk away when there might be a secret room with a natural treasure. There was a reason they were hard to find. Most people lucked out stumbling over one during the course of a battle. But if you had the right skills with enough levels, then it was possible to detect something like this. There was a reason my mother wanted me to get the specific skill Shadow Vision.

Poking the wall some more. I wasn’t sure what to do. I put my spear away and got the minotaur’s club. I hit the spot on the wall several times. There was some minor cracking, but the damage didn’t go deep into the stone or break open a secret passage. This was annoying me, but I wasn’t about to let a natural treasure of the dungeon slip through my fingers.

I kept swinging the club. Every couple of minutes I would take a break and check my surroundings to make sure nothing was sneaking up on me. Slowly, the wall was broken more and more.

After an hour of work, there was a crumbling hole that was about the size of my head, just wider than it was tall. Based on the changes in sound from hitting the wall, there was clearly a chamber behind this section.

I had a meal of salted jerky and think dry bread. It was nasty, unlike the nice food Squire Jessica had in her spatial storage the last time we came down here. While it wasn’t something a noble would eat, it was better than this nonsense. I didn’t need to do anything to prepare it.

Cooking was going to be something I learned for sure. While I didn’t mind pushing myself, there was no reason to be miserable the rest of the time. Misery did not make skills level up faster. Focus and the threat of death improved their leveling speed. I guess misery might be a form of death. I would have to double check with mother once I left the dungeon.

After being down here for a month, spending the last two months on the 3rd layer felt like a good idea. The regular monsters would push me to new heights and the dungeon would pull out more tricks. I had only encountered one trap so far, a pressure plate, which I had carefully gone around.

I just didn’t want to face spiders again. They were the absolute worst. Those ice spiders had been a massive pain to kill since they kept staying at a distance and shot frozen webbing at me, trying to entrap me. At least they were slow and weak. Still incredibly annoying even if I had managed to win.

I preferred monsters like the minotaur I had just fought. Stright forward, no other nonsense to deal with. The one nice thing I could say about the dungeon was that it was never boring and always changing. Trying to spot the tiny differences in similar biomes was a way to keep my focus on my surroundings to check for hidden traps or something like this spot I had just discovered.

Once I was done eating my cold, sad meal, I got back up and began swinging the oversized club several more times, slowly breaking down the wall. My stamina reserves had recovered, another reason for frequent breaks, making sure my reserves never ran low in case of an emergency.

That was how more experienced adventurers died. Not in battle, but the slow grinding down of their reserves by the monsters, until they had nothing left and were overwhelmed. That was why it was important to always keep an eye on them. My skill System Sense helped with that, letting me more easily feel what my reserves were at.

The constant checking of just my reserves had unlocked that skill previously. Now it was something I was constantly working on just like my breathing.

Finding a natural treasure of the dungeon wasn’t easy. People were more likely to find other people or lost gear than natural treasures. I had already come across a couple of packs and corpses. The adventurer’s plates were put away in my pack to return to the Adventurer’s Guild so they could be marked down as dead. The fact that my mother had found two green soul fruits and hadn’t used them herself was incredibly impressive. I would have to ask her how she had done it. Perhaps there was a treasure sense skill? If there was and she had it, that would be incredibly powerful. Or perhaps some upgraded version of Depth Sense.

Or it was Shadow Vision. She had specifically gotten me this skill. While it was to look for hidden enemies and traps, it also gave me a chance to spot locations like this one. Seeing the difference between the flow of Mana and the physical world where there were disruptions.

It was distracting to use during a fight, but I was getting used to using it down here in the dungeon to check everything.

I noted that the wall was weaker where there was less Mana flowing through the couple of times, I had missed that general location. I hit the wall again, and this time a large chunk gave way and fell away from me. I had gotten to the secret chamber.

I lowered the club and looked into the dark hidden room. I couldn’t see anything. That was when I felt an overwhelming sense of danger.