Sarah's Story Chapter 056 - The First Floor

Sarah squatted down, examining the trap as closely as she could without triggering it, and found herself distracted by an intrusive thought.

Finder Class Skill [Trap Detection] has been acquired.

Sarah inhaled sharply.

All that time struggling before she got her second Class…

If she had known Finder could get that Skill, she would have visited a Dungeon sooner.

She stood up, now confident that she could simply leap over the trap without activating it. And looking out, she could see an overgrown, misty forest, and sheer hillsides forming narrow gullies and small valleys.

Focusing on her [Trap Detection] Skill, Sarah could identify even more clearly where other traps were located. She crouched, and flipped over the monster caller, and then paused, expanding her senses, checking for monsters.

She whirled, fist slamming down on top of a Razorwing Hawk that had been swooping down on her silently and quickly. It cried out in pain for just a moment before she finished it off with a stomp. The monster was like a normal hawk, but thrice as big, and the front edges of its wings were razor sharp. The creatures could slice through unarmored human flesh and bone like it was nothing, and like most other monsters in this Dungeon, it specialized in sneak attacks.

The only nearby, immediately threatening monster dealt with, Sarah looked around again.

She needed height.

She had memorized the map as best she could, but she wanted to check the landmarks. Behind her was a sheer stone cliff, lacking any handholds whatsoever, the only notable feature on the wall being the tunnel leading to the staircase and Dungeon exit. Ahead of her was only hills and trees. According to the map, there should be a high hill forward and to the left…

Sarah leapt forward in a zigzag pattern, avoiding traps, and caught a tree branch with her hands, swinging herself up and kicking a Drop Bear out of the way, stealing his perch. The large, dog-sized bear, with sharp claws and venomous fangs, fell to ground below with a pathetic squeak. Their brownish-grey fur blended in with the tree bark and the shadows among the tree branches, but they couldn’t escape Sarah’s sight. Higher she climbed the tree, and then she leapt from branch to branch, avoiding the traps and monsters below. The only monsters to worry about here were the Drop Bears, primed to fall on unsuspecting travelers traversing the ground level, and Stone Squirrels.

Thock!

Sarah tilted her head and a pebble, thrown incredibly fast by a Stone Squirrel clinging to the exposed rock of one hillside, slammed into the tree bark behind her. But she ignored it, and continued on, eventually flinging herself out of the tree branches and onto the hillside below. She scrambled up on all fours, avoiding toxic mushrooms and traps, and eventually reached the highest point of this part of the dungeon.

The view was hauntingly beautiful. Hills and ravines cloaked in shifting mists and overgrown undergrowth were visible between the massive tree trunks that were the main feature of the Deep Woods Dungeon. Drop Bears crawled almost invisibly along the tree branches, Mist Sprites were barely discernible among the shifting mists, Razorwing Hawk nests crowned the treetops, and here and there Psycho Moths fluttered about.

And then it clicked in Sarah’s mind.

[Exploration] correlated the map she had studied with the landscape she could see below her. She got her bearings, and her internal sense of direction locked onto the Dungeon Exit behind her as an anchor point.

Her gaze focused, and she looked off into the distance. The door to the first floor boss room should be only three miles ahead, embedded into the trunk of a large tree shrouded in mist.

The Deep Woods Dungeon was devious.

The first floor expanded massively farther than that. Estimates put it at twenty five miles across.

The second floor was even larger, but the boss room door was at the far end.

Thankfully, Sarah wouldn’t have to go that far. She took a deep breath, and concealed her presence. Her breathing softened, she shifted slightly into the shadows, and her footsteps were perfectly silent. She dashed, leapt, and flipped through the forest, bouncing from rocks to tree trunks, into the branches and then back down to the floor, avoiding as many fights as she could and ending those she couldn’t with a single surprise punch.

At one point, towards the end, she was forced into a fight with a Psycho Moth. It was directly in front of the door to the boss room. The rest of the area nearby was blocked by a Fog Warden and several Mist Sprites, both incorporeal creatures that she had no real way to damage. This would have been a problem, but Fog Wardens were slow, hulking ghosts that attacked the spirit directly; they could simply be outrun, so long as one didn’t get turned around and confused in the fog. Mist Sprites simply spread more fog that made it easy for Adventurers to lose their sense of direction, and could also be outrun.

Sarah could have tried to just race through the fog, trusting in her Finder Class and Skills, but time was of the essence, and the door to the boss room was just beyond.

She chose the sure path.

The Psycho Moth was enormous, almost as large as a person was tall, and with a proportionately large wingspan. Its large eyes glowed, and once it spotted Sarah, the attack began immediately. Sarah felt a headache come on suddenly, and her eyes hurt, and she was tired from running, and she really needed to take a break, just rest a moment…

She put those thoughts aside and slammed the Psycho Moth to the ground with a roundhouse kick.

[Technique: Earth-shattering Stomp]

And with that, the assault on her mind and Willpower ended.

Sarah breathed a silent sigh of relief, rolled her shoulders, and looked up. The tree trunk before her was massive, and embedded in that tree trunk was the metal door she had been looking for.

Finder Class Skill [Exploration] has reached level 9.

Sarah reached into her magic bag and withdrew one of the spare weapons. A sharpened longsword, the type the Immortal Sword School used. She took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Her first Dungeon Boss fight.

Normally, this was unthinkable. Dungeon Boss fights were fights to the death, trapped in an enclosed arena, and were only attempted with a full party. A Tank to keep the Boss occupied and defend against its attacks. A Mage to target elemental weaknesses. A ranged attacker to pile on damage from the back row, and defend the party’s Scout and healer, if one was present. Finally, one or two close range attackers, to pile on damage and work with the party’s Tank to keep the boss pinned down.

Everything Sarah had ever learned as an Adventurer confirmed that trying to fight a Dungeon boss solo was beyond absurd: it was suicidal.

But, this was an emergency.

And Sarah knew what she was facing.

She stepped inside and looked down the steps into the arena. A meadow clearing surrounded by trees shrouded in thick fog, so thick that even with her [Visual Acuity] she couldn’t see through it. But she already knew what lay beyond the mists: sheer stone cliffsides.

At the far end of the meadow, some hundred yards across in an oval shape, was the Boss. A giant Brute Ratel. It was a badger-like creature, its haunch rising to the height of Sarah’s shoulder, and it was, she had been told, extremely aggressive and mean.

It was currently curled up, sleeping. But the second Sarah stepped down from the last step, it would wake up and charge straight at her.

Sarah paused, and readied her grip. It had to be just so.

The Brute Ratel boss had incredibly tough fur and skin, making it supremely hard to slice or even damage with blunt strikes. Her punches, even with the techniques she had learned from her mother, wouldn’t be very effective. The Adventurer’s Guild suspected the Boss monster couldn’t feel pain at all. It ignored poison and most stunning spells. It shrugged off intense heat and bitter cold. It climbed out of earthen traps like they were nothing. It was utterly resistant to the Air element and all its derivatives.

It was the bane of Pugilists and Martial Artists.

The Guild recommended strategy was piercing attacks, with lances and spears. But even those, unless precisely aimed with great strength, would snag on the beast’s loose skin and the thrusts would be diverted, leaving the attacker vulnerable to immediate counter attack.

Sarah stepped forward. The metal door closed behind her. The Brute Ratel leapt to its feet, hissing and snapping and snarling, and charged. The way it waddled would have been amusing if it hadn’t closed half the distance already in just the first second.

Sarah held the sword in a two-hand grip and raised it above her head, perfectly straight and vertical, and then without pausing, for the monster was almost in range to strike, her blade descended.

It was a beautiful, perfect crescent, a flash of steel following the precise path to maximize strength and cutting power.

[Technique: Immortal Overhead Sword Strike_Crown Splitter]

Shing!

The monster, carried along by its awkward, chaotic momentum, split in two and the two parts fell to the side, sliding past Sarah and bouncing off the stairs behind her.

Finder Class has reached level 9.

Brawler Class Skill [Swordsmanship] has reached level 12.

Sarah swung the blade, flinging the blood coating it to the floor in a spattered line, and returned it to the magic bag.

She ignored the treasure chest, merely noting it was triple-trapped, and raced down the stairs to the second floor.

It had already been five hours since the Treasure Seekers party fell through the pit-trap, based on the Guildmaster’s estimate.