Flur
I took the lead as we began to march down the path into the room that laid before us. To my surprise, we made it halfway across the dirt and stone bridge without incident. No monsters attacked. No traps activated. Nothing happened. If it weren't for the fact that we were in a Dungeon, the short walk might have been calming, but as it was, every step we took without anything happening only served to feed our collective anxiety.
Then, as soon as we hit the halfway point, the false sense of peacefulness the walk had instilled in me shattered. My allies had to have been on full alert and filled with adrenaline since I wasn't the first to react, an uncommon occurrence. A bolt of electricity shot from Randy's staff at a green vine that had suddenly appeared to my right.
I fell into a fighting stance as I turned toward its fried remains, but before I knew it, something struck me from behind. I was sent tumbling from the safety of the pathway and down toward the field of stone spikes below. To make matters worse, I felt something sharp stabbing into my back from the impact. With the stalagmites rapidly approaching, my body reacted on instinct.
My two upper hands fluidly sheathed the daggers that they had been holding, and my lower pair attempted in vain to slash at whatever had struck me. Then, I came face to face with a sharp pillar of stone rising from the ground. My feet caught purchase on either side of it, and my free pair of hands did the same.
I let loose a loud, “Eep!” as I landed, my muscles buckling slightly under the strain of catching myself, but even as the stalagmite's pointed tip made contact with my stomach, I remained unspeared through.
In that moment, I was fine. In the next, I began to panic as a loud rumbling sound met my ears. I looked up and to the right to see a massive, round boulder rolling toward me.
“Not good,” I voiced my panic and quickly scrambled to fling myself from the stone spike that had nearly impaled me.
In the process, I ended up ripping a large gash open in my stomach, but it was a necessary sacrifice. I impacted with the stone and brush below me a moment later, and the enormous hunk of stone passed by overhead. It rolled atop the stalagmites as if they were tracks guiding it. Had it collided with me, I wasn't confident in my survival. I was built for quickly and efficiently killing things, not taking hits.
“How do we even target it?” I heard Lance's voice ring out from above.
I turned to try to look up, but as I did so, my vision filled with a large vine covered in thorns. It was on a collision course with my head. I rolled, and it impacted the ground less than a foot from my face. I had avoided the blow, but the process wasn't painless. Whatever had been stabbed into my back also ended up digging its way into my side and thigh.
In that state, I couldn't move freely. That problem was exacerbated by what the vine did next. It snaked its way around my ankles, stabbing thorns into them in the process. Then, it lifted.
I let loose a less than dignified shriek as it lifted me into the air.
“Boss, what are you doing? Blast that vine, and get her down!” Lance's voice echoed.
“I can't. She'd fall into the spikes,” came his response, and I suddenly didn't know which fate would be worse: being impaled to death or whatever the thing dangling me from my legs had in mind.
My eyes traced the vine that held me, and I located its source. On the underside of the dirt path, there was a crevice. Tucked away in there, there was a large crimson flower that the vine was extending from. There were also the stumps of two other severed vines writhing around at its base and a charred one hanging limply from it.
Before I could think better of it, I threw one of my daggers. The blade flew true and pierced the flower at its stem. A moment later, I found myself plummeting downward once more.
[Bloodthorn Vines (Level 1) slain! No experience gained.]
“Seriously?”
I only spared an instant to glare at the message as I fell. Redirecting my attention, I found myself wishing that I had a movement ability other than Dash. It also would have been nice if I wasn't still bound by the vines, but I had to work with what was available to me in my current state, one third of my limbs not included.
I shifted my center of gravity as I fell, barely placing myself between two stalagmites. Contorting my arms in a painful way, I braced my hands against them as I slid down. The action hurt quite a bit as my hands were torn up by the stone's rough surface, but it lessened the impact of my fall. It didn't lessen it to the point of me not squealing in pain as I landed, but I'd take what I could get.
“Flur, are you okay?” Randy called down.
“Right as–huck ack ugh– rain,” a coughing fit interrupted my words, but I eventually finished.
“I'm going down there!” I heard Muri shout.
I began to clamber to my knees as I called out, “Don't! I'll find a way back up. Just give me a minute, maybe a few.”
A wave of dizziness hit me, and I looked to the vines I was tangled in.
Is it poison? I questioned, but I didn't want to voice the thought.
As I went to use it, I quickly realized that I had dropped the one dagger I had left drawn during my second fall. With a sigh, I unsheathed my remaining two and began to cut away at the plant. As I sliced into it, blood flowed out.
“That's not right,” I mumbled to myself.
Plant monsters didn't normally bleed. I paused for a moment as I questioned that. Then, it hit me, and I rapidly picked up the pace.
Bloodthorn. It was called a Bloodthorn Vine. It's draining my blood.
I spared a quick glance at the end of the severed vine that was still stuck in my back, and my worries were confirmed. Blood was pooling from where it stopped. The monster's death hadn't halted its blood draining effect. I redoubled my efforts, and by the time I had removed the last thorn and wrapped all of my wounds in fabric cut from my cloak, I found myself shivering.
Level seventeen, and I nearly died to a level one monster. Just what is with this place?
It was a reminder not to get overconfident. Yes, I was quick and deadly, but I wasn't durable. A surprise attack from a monster that clearly had too many stats for its level and some rare abilities could still do a number on me, especially after knocking me into a pit full of spikes and traps.
Somewhat unsteady on my feet, I began to slowly make my way to where the boulder had crashed into the end of the room. I carefully observed my surroundings as I moved, not wanting to end up in another ambush or accidentally trigger another trap. Then, as I neared the end of the room, I balled all four of my fists, started flailing them in anger, and shouted, “Another one? Are you kidding me?”
“What is it?” I heard my leader's voice come from above and back a ways, but I didn't respond.
Instead, I focused all of my attention on what I had noticed. There in the path above me, there was another crevice, identical to the first.
I've had about enough of this.
With my blood loss, I was less confident than I would have liked to be, but I moved regardless. I activated Dash to temporarily increase my speed for two seconds as I moved toward the boulder. Two vines shot toward me, sluggish and slow. As long as I wasn't caught by complete surprise, I couldn't imagine getting hit by them.
I jumped and grabbed onto one of the stalagmites before pushing off of it. I didn't worry about breaking it with the force I produced. As far as I could tell, it wasn't a trap, and the environments inside of Dungeons were remarkably strong since they were reinforced with mana.
I twisted my body in midair to avoid a vine. Then, I caught hold of the boulder. For a moment, I began to slip as my torn hands refused to grip as hard as I knew they could. I was quickly able to recover and pull myself up. Rolling to avoid two more incoming strikes, I sprung into another jump.
As I sailed a few feet through the air, the corner of my mouth rose into a faint smile. My body didn't feel as responsive as it normally did, but it was still far easier to control without a massive hunk of thorns stuck in my back, Another strike missed me as I sidestepped, and I threw a dagger at my target. The vines writhed as it impacted their base, but the monster did not go down.
“Flur, stop! You're injured! Wait for us to back you up!” Randy yelled to me, but I ignored him once more.
I puffed out a cheek as I glared at the monster before me. There was no way I would allow myself to lose to a mere level one.
I jumped backward as another vine whipped through the air in my direction, and I tossed my last dagger. The monster tried to deflect it with its other three vines, but while its control over its movements was precise, it was far too sluggish to keep pace with me or my attacks.
[Bloodthorn Vines (Level 1) slain! No experience gained.]
The message struck a nerve. The thing wasn't even worth experience to me, yet I had nearly died to an identical one.
“What ever happened to the System rewarding difficulty?”
I grumbled as I pulled myself up the rest of the way out of the hole.
“What were you thinking?” the Randy reprimanded me as he and the rest of my team reached me.
“That I'm suffering from blood loss, need immediate healing, and was the only one in a position where I could safely target it.”
I respected our leader greatly, but I was not in the mood to be berated.
“Randy, please, save it until we're back in town, and Lance, give me your knife. I'm out of daggers.”
The stark difference from my normal attitude was enough to silence any objections. That is, it silenced any objections except from Muri's. She practically grappled me and forced me to sit before casting several healing spells on me and forcing a potion meant to help with blood loss down my throat.
I sat for a while as we regrouped. Randy stood guard, Muri continued to fuss over me, and Lance struggled to extract the monstrous plant from below us. Normally that would have been my job, but I was in no condition to manage that level of acrobatics, or at least, that is what Muri insisted to be the case. Eventually, we moved on.
At the end of the path, there was a single small room after a turn to the left. There sat the Dungeon Core, shining in all of its stupid glory, and, standing protectively in front of it, there was a lone Trenti with a staff. Randy made quick work of it with a couple of spells and let us know that he didn't get any experience for it. Then, with our mission completed, we began to make our way back to the entrance.
“I know Dungeons are said to get more difficult the harder they are pushed, but this isn't how a new Dungeon should be,” Randy complained with an expression clouded by deep thought as we ascended the stairs to the outside.
“You're telling me,” I grumbled in agreement.