3 HOLY BALLS
Sizzle!
A young girl is sitting down on the dirt as a lively campfire burns in front of her. On it, she has strung up two pieces of juicy pork. The juices dripping down the fatty pieces of meat looked very appetizing to little Nina who could not wait to chomp down.
"Only a minute more and I can savor pork again. For the first time in 25 years." Nina reminisces her very blurry moments with her family where they could eat meat on an occasional basis. 10 years out of that 25, she had spent eating nutrition bars that tasted like cardboard.
After she had left the lab, she spent 2 years hunting down the perpetrators and the other 13 fighting against the demons. Her taste buds were permanently ruined after the lab experiments and even after holy cleansing by high-level healers, her brain was too damaged to process taste.
"It's done!" exclaimed Nina in a very childish and sweet voice that would make anyone think of her as absolutely cute. Her big red eyes and small yet rosy lips perked up with absolute delight she took her first bite.
"Mhmm." She let out a soft moan as her mind was enveloped in an otherworldly flavor. The tenderness of the meat and savoriness that came from being cooked with ghost wood made for a mouth-numbing sensation.
She had tried eating this same dish in the past dungeons but could never relish the feeling that her party members showed off every time they ate.
"Is this what happiness felt like?" Nina questioned her own emotions as she had felt something she thought was lost to her.
Drip! Drip! Tears had started to fall from her face and lands on the meat. Nina was about to breakdown down emotionally as all the years of keeping her issues suppressed had started to tear at her soul.
"No..no...no. Now is not the time. If I can find a way to get myself a normal life, I will dwell on it then. If I cant get a somewhat normal life, I would rather die than face issues that will only lead to a sorrowful death."
"I've already died once and had already given up on all this bullshit about a peaceful life in the countryside. But now that I am dead to my enemies, I can give it a try."
Nina put a temporary lock on her thoughts of her pre-lab life. She currently had a goal for her life and those emotions of her would only get in her way.
For an actual peaceful life, she knew that she had to achieve a balance between being strong and being low-key.
She didn't have enough experience or information of what a normal life is to make a plan as she usually did for her fights.
"Haa, let's get out of here first. I need to know where I am so I can decide the route I take for a peaceful life. It may not turn out how I want but I don't care."
.....
After eating whole cut pork in 5 minutes, Nina decides to spend the rest of her time resting up. She wanted to speedrun this dungeon's remaining three floors but that would require quite a lot of stamina that she does not have.
She decides to assign some of her blank stat points to what she thinks would be useful to her. As people level up, they receive stat increases based on their class. Usually, only two or three stats are actually raised.
As a mage class, Nina only receives free increases in her intelligence and agility. Intelligence is for increasing mental capacities such as memory and knowledge retention so one can learn spells and recall. It also directly affects your total mana.
Agility makes one faster. According to the system, a mage should rely on themselves or escape when necessary. Not always will a tanker be able to save them and that's why they have high agility as a trump card.
[ Name: Nina (Changeable)
Race: Inferior Spirit (Evolution Requirments Unfulfilled)
Class: Spirit Mage, Demon Queen(LOCKED), Ethereal Weapon(LOCKED)
Level:10
HP: 300/300
MP: 750/750 > 940/940
STR: 9 > 20
AGI: 27 > 30
DEF: 6
INT: 71 > 90
VIT: 19
STM: 6 > 18
Assignable Points: 45 > 0
Currency: 140 USD ]
Being someone with a mostly physical/melee build in the past, Nina could not stop herself from investing some stats in strength as she doesn't want to be useless when she ran out of mana or wanted to conserve it.
She was going to need some more speed and a lot more stamina to speed run the dungeon so some were sent there.
"Ding! One minute remains until the rest period is over. Please be ready to enter Floor 3."
The system's voice rings in the dungeon once again and so Nina gets up and dusts herself off very lightly.
She looks around and sees a black, cylindrical pillar that is a meter tall and about a foot wide.
"The Pylon looks the same as usual. A massive dildo." The Pylon is a teleportation device managed by the system. It teleports people from outside to dungeon to the inside. It used to travel from one floor to the next. It can also be used to travel around the whole planet.
The reason Nina calls it a dildo is because there was once this adventurer group who had entered an A grade dungeon and saw a dragon using the pylon on its behind. I don't think describing it is necessary.
Nina touches the side of the obelisk and a system message pops up.
[ Are you ready to enter the 3rd Floor. ]
"Yes."
Vwooom! Zwiiing!
A white light blinds Nina for 5 seconds and she opens her eyes to enter the same environment she was in earlier.
A forest with tall, wilting trees with no leaves and thin branches. The sky was gray and a very light fog covered the entire floor.
ROAAR!!!
The growl of what seems like a very powerful bear is heard the moment Nina enters the floor.
"GRRRRR!" In front of Nina, two 4 meters tall bears look straight at her. They are not normal bears as they a somewhat see-through and pale white in color.
[G RANK Low-Grade Spirit Bear ]
Level 10
HP: 380/380
MP: 90/90
"The warmup is over. Shits about to get real." Dungeons were not meant to be really run solo. It was usually in at least parties of 5. The first 2 floors of 5-floor dungeons are always meant as just a warmup for teams as it gets real serious afterward.
That is why Nina could beat the 2nd floor without much trouble as it was designed to be for teams to lightly prepare themselves.
With Nina's experience, she could handle soloing the boss as it was not something very hard in the first place.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The bears started to pounce towards Nina as saliva started to drip from their mouths. It was not real saliva as they are ghosts.
"Borhem bo bo braten, Ice Spike." Nina chanted in her mind once again.
Swish!
An ice spike about the size of a ruler formed above her left shoulder and flung towards the bear on the left.
Puchi!
The spike originally aimed for the bear's head swerved just as the bear was about to dodge it. It pierced its front right leg. A second later, the same thing was repeated on the bear on Nina's right side.
Nina then started to withdraw and run backward while keeping her attention on the two bears at the front.
They might have been with magic in the legs but not having physical forms made it to where such inconveniences did not make them much slower.
"I just need to make more space between us and keep on cutting away at their health." Nina's thought process only looked for the most effective way to win while keeping all emotions out of the way.
It may seem dull and computer-like but it's what keeps people alive in dungeons of higher rank. She doesn't have many emotions to work with anyway.
"Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!" Nina kept on casting and controlling her ice spikes very precisely to make sure her projectiles did not miss or she would be in serious trouble.
Most mages that saw her control over her ice spikes would start pulling their hair right. Very few mages, excluding high-level ones, did not have much control over their spells once launched.
Only people with a high degree of control can do so. This control can be trained for some and natural for others.
For a majority of mages, guiding their spells after casting was like trying to eat breakfast while doing a handstand with a broken hand.
For the rare cases of talented mages, it was as easy as swinging their arm. It felt natural. Just like thinking or breathing.
Nina was one of those 'naturally' gifted ones. A natural gift provided artificially would be the better phase as it came along with the experiments done in the lab. She didn't have much mana control when the lab originally had tested her for it.
Nina also was used to controlling mana well as she used to reinforce her weapons and body during fights, not for spells. It didn't feel much different though.
[Low-Grade Spirit Bear ]
Level 10
HP: 130/380
MP: 0/90
She was close to finishing off the two bears as she had more than enough mana left and they were three shots each. The bears were in wretched condition as they looked like they would become nonexistent in a couple of seconds.
Average parties at around level 10 would not have much of a problem with the bears as long as the mages were protected by everyone else and they kept slowly retreating after hitting the bears.
They would take a while to beat the bears though as they would casually dodge some of the spells.
This wasn't an issue for Nina with her fast casting speed and mana control to make sure she would not miss.
"What's my mana lookin like?"
MP: 640/940
"Alright, I'll finish these two and then hide till I recover a bit more of my mana for safe..."
Nina's thoughts were cut short as she heard another set of growls from behind her.
"ROAAR!"
"4 MORE! You gotta be kidding me. Which goddess did I piss off today?"
There were four more of the same bears. 2 behind her and one on each of her sides.
"And here I was, thinking that bears are not social animals. They didn't teach me this in school!" She didn't go to school.
There were very few instances in dungeons where Nina had fought bears in the real and dungeon worlds. even if they did, they were usually boss monsters that sat their solo.
She may have had lots of experience but that did not cover everything. This dungeon ended up hitting her blind spot.
Right now, Nina was surrounded and outnumbered by a lot. She could not take on this fight. She might have had a chance if one of her original classes were unlocked but that was impossible at the moment.
"RUN!" That was was the plan. The only plan. As Nina could not face all directions at once, she had to keep her senses stretched to the mask as bears still made noise as they moved. They are not high enough in evolution to be completely silent.
"Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!, Ice Spike!...." Nina summoned 12 ice spikes and formed a circle formation around her. They were floating by her side, like missiles waiting to be launched at the click of a button.
SWEEEEEESH!!
Once the bears were with a meter of her, she launched them out at incredible speeds to hinder them for even a second, whether that was by hitting them or making them dodge. She did not have time to control so many ice spikes at one.
She was already straining her mana veins by maintaining so numerous ice spikes at once.
Nina didn't wait for the spike to hit as he was already casting a spell.
"Liata morfin so mo tarco eite, HOLY BALLS!"
