The air inside the entrance of the abandoned iron mine was damp, heavy, and smelled strongly of rust and copper.
Arthur stood just beyond the collapsed wooden beams framing the cavern mouth. Outside, the afternoon sun beat down on the rocky mountain face, but three steps into the tunnel, the light vanished completely into pitch-black gloom.
Arthur extended his left hand.
[Fire Magic: Lv 1]
A small, intense sphere of crimson flame ignited a few inches above his open palm. Instead of flaring wildly, Arthur focused his mind, shaping the magic until the fireball detaching from his hand and floated gently three feet above his right shoulder. It cast a warm, steady illumination down the dark shaft, turning the jagged stone walls a glowing amber.
Skill mastery is going to matter just as much as raw levels, Arthur noted silently, observing the faint trickle of mana leaving his pool to sustain the floating light. The more I cast these spells and manipulate the mana, the more natural it feels. With enough practice, the activation time and energy cost should drop significantly.
He unseated his iron blade, the steel reflecting the floating firelight, and moved deeper into the main shaft.
The tunnel sloped downward at a sharp angle. Old iron mining tracks, choked with dust and broken rubble, stretched off into the darkness. After two hundred paces, the main shaft opened up into a massive underground cavern.
High above, natural stone pillars supported the ceiling, but the floor was covered in sticky, thick webbing and deep mounds of excavated earth.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
The sound echoed from every corner of the subterranean chamber.
Arthur stopped, his dark eyes sweeping the cavern floor. From the shadows surrounding the base of the stone pillars, dozens of dark, armored bodies emerged.
Subterranean Crawlers.
The monsters were five feet long, resembling grotesque, low-slung centipedes covered in hard, obsidian-colored chitin. Dozens of barbed legs scraped against the stone, and their pale yellow mandibles snapped rhythmically, dripping greenish, corrosive acid onto the ground.
Within seconds, over twenty crawlers surrounded Arthur in a tight, skittering circle.
A full swarm, Arthur thought, taking a solid combat stance. Good. A perfect place to push my magic control.
Three crawlers on his left lunged first, their heavy mandibles opening wide to bite through his legs.
[Body Reinforcement: Lv 1] This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Arthur’s muscles surged with golden power. He stepped forward into the attack rather than dodging, sweeping his blade in a low, swift arc.
CLANG!
The edge of his blade slammed into the head of the leading crawler. The heavy chitin cracked under his enhanced physical strength, splitting the beast open. Without pausing, Arthur raised his left hand toward the other two lunging beasts.
[Mana Barrier: Lv 1]
Category: Active / Defensive
Mana Cost: 30 MP to deploy (10 MP/sec to maintain)
Description: Projects a localized, semi-transparent shield of raw mana around the caster or weapon to absorb kinetic impacts, magical projectiles, and elemental damage. Shield durability scales directly with INT and remaining MP, though heavy physical blows bypass a fraction of the kinetic force into stamina exhaustion.
A faint, translucent shield of dense blue mana expanded in front of him.
THUD! THUD!
The two crawlers smashed headfirst into the invisible barrier, their momentum halting instantly. Simultaneously, three more crawlers in the back hissed loudly and spat globs of steaming, bright-green acid across the cavern.
The acid splashed harmlessly against the shimmering surface of the Mana Barrier, sizzling and evaporating into toxic vapor without touching a single thread of Arthur's clothing.
"My barrier holds up easily against ranged acid," Arthur observed calmly.
[Flame Blade: Lv 1]
Intense red fire engulfed his iron sword, the heat radiating so fiercely that the air around him rippled. Arthur deactivated the barrier, thrusting his burning sword directly through the head of the left crawler before swinging back with a brutal horizontal cleave that severed the second beast in half.
SCREECH!
The remaining swarm, enraged by the swift deaths of their nest-mates, surged forward simultaneously from all sides.
Arthur didn't panic. He moved like a whirlwind in the center of the cavern. His sword flashed in wide, fiery arcs, leaving bright red trails in the darkness. Every strike was precise, taking full advantage of his boosted agility to step inside their guard and slice through the gaps in their dark armor.
SLASH! CRACK! BOOM!
Flame-infused slashes cut through Chitin. Reinforced kicks shattered mandibles.
As the battle raged, Arthur felt a subtle shift in the way his mana circulated. Channeling Flame Blade while keeping Body Reinforcement active was becoming smoother, requiring less concentration than it had during his fight with the bear just hours earlier.
Skill Proficiency Threshold Reached!
Skill Upgraded: [Fire Magic: Lv 1] ➔ [Fire Magic: Lv 2]
(Mana Efficiency Increased by 10%. Spell Density Increased.)
Arthur’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction. Using the spells in high-intensity combat actually levels them up.
With a sudden surge of renewed power, he willed his flames to expand. The fire along his blade flared twice as bright, burning with a deep orange intensity.
With one final, full-circle sweep, Arthur released a wave of fire outward in a ten-foot ring. The remaining half-dozen crawlers were engulfed instantly, their dark carapaces scorching as they collapsed to the cavern floor.
Silence returned to the iron mine, broken only by the crackle of residual flames and Arthur's steady breathing.
Across the chamber floor lay the charred remains of twenty-four subterranean crawlers. At the far end of the cave, near a mound of glittering, unrefined iron ore, sat the pale, bloated form of the nest's brood queen—dead from a stray blast of flame.
Arthur lowered his blade, letting the fire die down into thin trails of grey smoke.
[BATTLE RESULT]
Monsters Defeated: Subterranean Crawlers x24, Crawler Queen x1
EXP Gained: +110 EXP
Skill Mastery: [Fire Magic: Lv 2] Unlocked!
Arthur stepped over the fallen monsters toward the brood queen's nest, pulling out his skinning knife.
"Twenty-five crawler carapaces, a queen's core crest, and a pile of high-grade raw iron ore," Arthur said, a confident smile touching his lips. "Elena is going to have a lot of paperwork to log."