My Shadow Vision caught a bug like monster scurry out of the hole. It was hard to properly see, blending in with the background. I quickly backed away and drew my sword. The bug like monster was shaped like half a sphere, with a shell and lots of tiny legs, about the size of my head. It had barely fit through the hole I had made in the wall.
Despite its small size, I could see a tremendous amount of Mana coming off of the monster and my Danger Sense was practically screaming at me. This was an Abnormal. A monster that broke the guidelines of the dungeon. It was far more dangerous than the Minotaur and was not a 2nd layer monster or even a Champion of this layer.
It moved quickly, very quickly. It moved behind a stone pillar climbing up towards the ceiling. I lost sight of it as I circled the pillar and I looked around everywhere including upwards.
Monsters would always attack beings not from the dungeon. The monsters in the lower layers were smarter, but they still attacked. They might hide or stalk, but they never ran away. The blaring warning in my head from Danger Sense wasn’t going away as I frantically spun about, looking everywhere.
I slowly moved to the middle of the chamber, constantly looking everywhere. Running wasn’t an option. It would only attack when I tried to fall asleep. Not like I could with my Danger Sense skill going wild.
Making my way back towards my pack, I planned to get my shield. It was a smaller monster. So having a way to block was important. Just as I was picking up my shield, I heard something move behind me. I spun and swung my sword. My sword passed through the monster.
It was immune to physical attacks!
The bug leapt at my face and I was completely overextended. It physically reappeared as hundreds of tiny suction feet latched onto my face. The monster then lowered itself, its shell snapping into place around my face.
I was frantically hitting it with my sword, but I couldn’t get a proper angle on it and its shell was too hard. Each hit just bounced off. I was rapidly losing air. I needed to think of a way out of this. The tiny feet digging into my face, didn’t help. Think!
Bringing up my sword I tried to wedge it in between the monster’s shell and my face to pry it off. I just ended up cutting into the side of my face near my ear and jaw. I couldn’t breathe. The most dangerous thing was to keep panicking.
I stopped slamming my sword against the bug monster and sat down on the ground. I could feel its hundreds of little feet wriggling against face. I tried to open my mouth to bite down on the monster, but it clamped around my face enough that I couldn’t move my facial muscles or jaw at all.
There was no time to use runes. I couldn’t pry it off. It had far too many stats and the shell was impenetrable to my sword. Slamming my head into a wall or the floor, would break my head before the shell broke. But it might stun the monster.
Bringing my head back, I slammed the shell part of the monster down on the floor as hard as I could. For a single moment it loosened its grip, and I tried to pull it off. I was able to draw in some air, before it clamped right back down on my head. I slammed it down on the floor again, but it didn’t budge this time. My head was spinning and while I had gotten a few more moments, my time was quickly running out.
I refused to die!
If my mother was capable of rescuing me she would have already shown up. This was it. I had to do something. As long as I lived everything could be fixed after that. But I had to live.
There was one idea I had if I was ever in a really desperate situation. I said a mental apology to Healer Castelle as I focused on my Soul Sense. I could sense the monster on my face. Its soul pressing up against mine.
Focusing on my soul and the monster’s soul I brought my hand back and then slapped the monster’s shell with my soul extruding slightly from my hand. This hurt an immense amount. Like pulling out a tooth with my bare hands. Everything was screaming at me not to do this, but I refused to die.
As my physical hand struck the shell of the monster, my soul pushed into the soul of the monster’s. They didn’t merge or combine, but my soul force the monster’s soul away from its shell. The monster froze as I felt its soul ripple as it rebounded. My soul was already chaotic, after everything I had been through, so I barely felt the side of the effects of what I did. I struck again and again, the oscillations in its soul grew.
Just as I thought as I would pass out from the pain or the lack of air, the monster went completely limp and fell off my face.
“Ahhhhh!” I sucked in a deep breath of air.
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Looking around, I saw my sword, I quickly picked it up. I then stabbed into the bug monster that was laying on the ground with its shell facing downwards and its tiny little feet exposed. My blade only went in a few inches.
“DIEEEE!” I screamed in rage and pushed down with all my might. The sword slowly sank into the monster. It began to squirm. I kept pushing, pinning it to the floor. I wasn’t about to give it a chance to recover.
Even with it being upside down and pinned with my blade in its center, it still kept trying to flip and throw me off balance. Its Strength stat was quite high, enough to contest me even in a disadvantageous position. Blood trickled down my face and onto the ground from where I had tried to pry the monster off and where its feet had dug into my flesh.
That could be dealt with later. The first thing was that I had to win. “DIE!” I shouted again. I was not going to be monster food in the dungeon. I was Justin Burnstock, future legend. My story wouldn’t end here!
That was when I felt an overwhelming sense of danger coming from above. I brought my arm above my leapt forwards and to my right, letting go of my sword still in the bug.
A second bug landed on my upraised arm and quickly began to crawl towards my face. I brought my left hand up and over my mouth just as the bug reached my face. The second bug clamped down on my face, but my hand allowed me to breathe and I knew what to do.
I brought my right hand back and focused on soul. Forcing it outwards. The pain was immense, but I wasn’t going to stop. I was going to win. I swung and struck the second bug with my palm over and over, just like the first.
After six hits, it finally fell off my face stunned. Looking around I saw my sword on the ground and the first bug had disappeared, but there was a green blood trail. I kicked the second bug over towards my sword as I raced for it. The second bug skidded across the floor on its shell.
I scooped up my sword and drove it down, putting all my weight behind it. You wanted to fight, then let’s fight. I kept pushing down and moving around in a circle with my blade as a pivot point, digging into the underside of the bug monster.
Bringing my blade up a bit, I then slammed I back down while leaping up slightly and pushing down. I needed to keep the bug pinned so it didn’t run away while trying to kill it. That meant increasing the damage by moving my sword while it was in its body.
The monster didn’t make a noise as it thrashed about. If it could, it was probably screaming in pain. I felt no sympathy. It had tried to kill me and was a monster. Nothing in the dungeon deserved any sympathy.
I leaned to the side and pushed the bug across the floor on its shell into a stone pillar. I reached up and grabbed the magical torch on the pillar. Once it was disconnected the flames began to quickly die, but they were still going which was enough. While I kept one hand on the blade, I shoved the burning end of the magical torch onto the underside of the monster.
The flames only lasted for half a minute before going out, but the monster was struggling less now with several of its tiny legs burnt up. I cast the exhausted torch to the side and moved onto the next one. I used up three of the eight troches on the various pillars throughout the chamber, slowly burning the monster to death.
I made sure not to target the wound that my sword had created, so it would keep bleeding out. After the third torch I quickly brought my sword back out and then stabbed back down. The monster wasn’t quick enough to flip over so I would strike its shell. I struck again and again. The entire underside was a burnt green slurry by the time I was finished.
“Now to find you friend,” I muttered and went back to the blood trail from the first monster.
It had retreated to a corner of the room and was clearly trying to recover. Hiding from pursuit wasn’t one of its strengths. I raced over and slapped the top of its shell with my hand, using my soul as a weapon. The pain was immense, but I was hoping to stun it. I slapped it five more times just to be sure it was disabled before grabbing its shell and tossing it back on the ground upside down.
Bringing my sword up I stabbed down over and over. After the third stab, it spun and flipped over again, and my sword deflected off its shell. It tried to quickly scurry away, but was bleeding out over the floor.
It was moving a lot more slowly than previously. “Think you can get away? After trying to kill me, think again,” I said with feral rage coming out in my voice. Out of all the ways to die in the dungeon, being smothered by a bug monsters and tons of tiny legs all over my face was not how I would pick to die.
The monster had a gimmick and I had beaten that gimmick. I slapped its shell several more times before flipping it upside down again. I began stabbing the softer underside of the monster. It tried to flip back over but had become too weak as I turned its flesh into green slurry and chopped up bits.
When its legs finally stopped wiggling around, that was when I knew it was dead. I had a new monster that had gone to the top of the list of what I hated fighting. These shell face bugs were the absolute worst. Once I knew their weak point, I could beat them, but it had been close, too close. Using my soul as a weapon, was a move of complete desperation.
Thinking back on it, I could have raced over to one of the torches and heated up the outside of their shell, forcing them to let go or cook. I had been in too much of panic to think clearly.
My face, neck, and jaw wound had stopped bleeding, but my healing points had bottomed out. There might be scarring as I felt the area where I had cut myself which had scabbed over. Another foolish mistake. I shouldn’t have tried to cut my own face off.
That was stupid. Really stupid. I didn’t want to know what my mother thought about what had happened. I couldn’t even take a healing potion, I would just need to rest and hope my healing points recovered fast enough to prevent any permanent damage or scarring.
“Urg,” I let out a groan and knelt over as my gut clenched up and a massive headache hit me. Note to self, don’t use my soul as a weapon, it has consequences. It wasn’t as miserable as before, when I had the second soul fruit, but I felt terrible.
Each time I tried to move or do anything, my body felt terrible. So, I just lay there on the floor. My head turned towards the secret chamber I had opened up and which the bug monsters had most likely come out of. I wanted to keep an eye on it, in case anything else came out. My Danger Sense wasn’t triggering, but I had missed that second monster completely.