13 Practicing 'Smash'!

Axel failed to gasped for air as he kept on blocking the White Spider's rampage. In a split second, Max took a combat stance and released a few slashes in mid air. The slashes converted into azure cresecent shaped blades that bombarded the spiders.

"Sssshiiiii! Sssshiiii! Ssssshiii!"

3 of the White Spiders were sliced in half like fruit pieces. The remaining spider that had been still attacking Axel noticed that he was the only survivor left. It suddenly stopped its arms from poking at Axel's dagger, and turned its attention from the direction from where the sudden attacks had originated from. The extremely powerful human who had been observing the fight had taken action, and it resulted in the brutal deaths of its comrades. The lone White Spider stepped away from Axel and was scrawling around the room, ready to flee from the danger upon it.

Axel was shocked by the long-ranged magic blade attacks that Maxed used.

"What the hell was that!" he thought as he kept his guard up in accordance. He had never heard of a long-ranged magic blade attack that could attack monsters from at least the range of an elementary bolt magic back in the game of Mabinogi. This skill was an unforeseen change that Axel had never thought of before.

"Looks like I have yet to learn of all the knowledge in this new world." Axel contemplated in awe.

"Now's your chance to use 'Smash'! Run towards the White Spider and stab into its abdomen and pull back from stab with one of your feet and spin your body backwards!" Max exclaimed.

Hearing this, Axel immediately recovered from the disposition of being in defense the whole time, and rushed towards the White Spider in motion. Before he reached the spider, he planted his right foot on the floor and lunged a deep stab into the spider's abdomen. The spider that had been focused on running away did not notice Axel coming, and was completely unguarded. With the dagger in its body, Axel mounted his left foot on the spider's body and pushed it back, with his dagger ejecting from the spider. Upon the backwards momentum of using his left foot to spin backwards, he noticed that his balance had fallen apart, and the force of using the 'Smash' skill for the first time had surpassed his expectations. As the spider flew in the other direction, lifeless, Axel also bounced backwards like a bouncy ball, and smashed his right shoulder and forehand on the ground, and his body kept on rolling continuously like a sushi roll.

"Oh boy, that must hurt." Max said as he shook his head as if his student had done something wrong with the skill.

Axel finally stopped rolling on the floor with his face to the ground. It took him a few seconds before he could get on his knees again and stand up.

"Sh*t, that was a huge blunder!" Axel thought to himself.

His shoulder and face had cuts and rips all over, with fresh blooding flowing out of it. Although the damage was self-inflicted, it had hurt more than he had imagined! He had not suffered this much damage since his fight with the black wolves during the Field Boss Summoning! The pain almost affected his line of vision, and his eardrums were ringing back and forth. By the time his consciousness had stabilized, he noticed a new wave of monsters had spawn right after. Upon looking above him, he saw that 3 black bats had appeared in the room.

"You're in luck. These don't multi-aggro you unless you unleash an large area attack of some sort. Think of a way to use 'Smash' on these bats." Max said as he went back to lean on the dungeon walls.

Axel who just gotten up from the badly executed 'Smash' sneered at Max and thought,

"Use 'Smash' on the bats? Do you enjoy torturing me to death!" One had to know that bats were flying-type monsters, and it was extremely difficult to land even a normal hit on them. Not to mention, using a weapon with a small hit range like a dagger was like multiplying the level of difficulty that already existed. If this had been the Mabinogi game, it would be as easy as just using auto target with the tab key and using a hotkey to use 'Smash' automatically.

After finishing up with his inner complaints, he threw a rock at the nearby bat and lured it to the corner of the room. He did not want to risk being ganged up on like the White Spiders in the previous wave. The bat screeched and quickly flew over to where Axel had positioned himself in the corner of the room. As if it had been enraged, it rapidly attacked Axel like multiple rocks flicking at Axel all at once. However, the bat having a small figure, was only able to hit the blade of the dagger, which Axel kept on moving in order to block its blows.

After about half a minute, the bat seemed to get tired from the continuous attacking. It slowly flied afloat in mid-air and took a breather. This had been its worst moment to take a break. Axel, who saw this, did not dare to not utilize this golden window of opportunity to attack. He ran up to the Bat and activated the 'Smash' skill. Since the bat was so small in size, he could not push his foot back on its body, but instead spun his body with more force to match the backwards force he had exerted by pushing his feet back on the White Spider previously. The bat flew back as if it was a light yarn ball and perished upon falling on the ground.

"One down". Axel said to himself as he made a slight smile. This time he had also lost his balance, but he did not fall to the ground like his first time. He was struggling to keep his body straight, but he knew that this would improve with more practice with the skill.

The next 2 bats were taken down in a similar manner. His 'Smash' was still somewhat unstable but he was able to use it successfully each time. As he was about to take a breath, another wave spawned suddenly. Three country rats appeared in the room.

These rats were the one of the easiest mobs in the game of Mabinogi, and did not have the quick aggro ability like the White Spider or the flying mobility like the black bats. While all 3 types of these monsters were all in a sense very easy mobs to kill, the rat was by far the easiest monster for Axel to kill now.

Axel realized that his stamina was running low from fighting the 1 White Spider and 3 Black Bats consecutively. His legs were limping a bit, and his breath was shallow as well. Instead of using 'Smash', which was a condensed strength attack skill that consumed several times more stamina per usage, he decided to just normally attack the rats, one by one.

With the last ounce of energy he had, he ran up the first country rat and did a 2-hit slash on it, which quickly ended its life. Similarly, the remaining 2 rats were slain with lightning speed and all their corpses were flown with their stomach facing the ceiling.

"Clunk!"

The dungeon walls to slide up as a chain pulled away at the locks. The first room had been cleared, but Axel had been in a sorry state already.

"Kid, now you know how hard a dungeon can be for a newbie like you! Normally you would only run this dungeon with at least three level 10 Iron ranked adventurers, but since you have such a high potential in addition with me being here to help you train, be grateful that you get to experience dungeoning at your current level and rank!" Max mouthed off like nagging mother.

"Thanks... Master...Can we rest a few hours before going to next room?....I'm going to faint at this rate." Axel whispered silently.

"I was planning on doing that too. Don't worry about all the mistakes you made earlier. You have to know that it took me almost a year to learn the 'Smash' Skill, not to mention it was a good 3 months before I could even use the skill properly. The fact you can already use the skill after 1 room in the dungeon with a few balance problems shows that you were born to be a warrior!"

Barely being able to follow his Master's words of praise, he made a faint smile before collapsing to the ground in a deep slumber.