Dungeon exploration (2)

'I hope this is the last floor before the boss's room, otherwise, I doubt we will emerge unscathed from this dungeon,' Alex thought with a grim expression.

Right now they were on the fourth floor of the dungeon and the monsters they were facing were all peak level 4. The monsters on the previous floor were all peak level 3 and those on the second and first floors respectively were all peak level 2 and peak level 1.

Following that pattern, there was a good chance that if there was another floor, the lizardmen there would all be peak level 5. If that was the case, then the group was in deep trouble as Alex had no illusion that they could clear this floor.

Currently, Alex might be able to kill level 5 monsters like he had done in the forest where the Night base was hidden, but he could only kill low or mid level 5 monsters. He could perhaps kill a high level 5 monster if he pushed himself and went all out.

However, facing peak level 5 monsters was an entirely different challenge.

As previously explained, those at the peak of a level were beings just a step away from the next level. Their strength compared to others tiers within the same level is significantly higher. This statement becomes even more true the higher the level.

What this meant was that the growth and the strength difference between low level 6 and peak level 5 was completely different from the growth and strength difference between a peak level 4 and a low level 5.

Alex wasn't even certain of defeating a peak level 5 monster alone, so the thought of fighting a horde of them was enough to wipe the easygoing smile Alex had been wearing the whole time.

The worst thing was that entering a floor teeming with peak level 5 monsters was not going to be their last ordeal!

Usually, each dungeon had a boss' room that came up after you had cleared all the floors, and this boss was usually at least a level stronger than the monsters on the last floor, which meant that if there was another floor besides the fourth one, Alex and his two companions would have to go against a monster at level 6!

Just thinking about this possibility, Alex felt dread. He was confident in his strength and his sister's, but there was no way they could defeat a level 6 monster at the moment.

'Let's hope it won't come to that,' Alex thought as he expanded a thick milky white smoke, forming a cloud.

Controlling the cloud of smoke, he sent it towards the dozens of lizardmen preparing to charge at them.

This white smoke had a sleeping attribute only made more potent by Alex, yet it still wasn't enough to make the lizardmen lose consciousness, but it did make their movements sluggish.

Taking advantage of their sluggishness, Alex charged at the group of lizardmen!

He deflected a lizardman's tail, sidestepped to avoid another sharp claw, grabbed a third's head, and smashed it against the head of another lizardman trying to sneak up on him before punching the first lizardman that attacked.

Alex agilely weaved between the attacks targeting him, striking and dodging with precision.

Although fighting the lizardmen wasn't too troublesome for Alex, dealing with dozens of attacks simultaneously was quite annoying. Moreover, he had to make himself visible to the lizardmen in the smoke cloud so they wouldn't target the two women behind him.

'Never thought I would cancel my invisibility in a smoky environment,' Alex mused as he manipulated the white smoke to dodge an attack from behind.

As seconds passed and exhaustion began to overtake the lizardmen, more of them dropped to the ground. In contrast, Alex wasn't breaking a sweat. In fact, he seemed to be accelerating, becoming more adept at slaying the lizardmen.

While before it took him around a dozen seconds to eliminate a few lizardmen, he now only needed one to eliminate that same number of lizardmen. In barely a few minutes, Alex had completely wiped out the whole group of lizardmen that attacked them.

Yet, despite his crushing victory, Alex stood amidst the pile of mutilated corpses, a frown on his handsome face.

'I was moving strangely by the end,' he thought to himself, 'it was as if I was on...autopilot?'

By autopilot, he didn't mean that he couldn't control himself. He was still the master of his movements, but at the same time, it felt as if his body was deciding how he moved, calculating the best path to take to eliminate the lizardmen.

'Come to think of it, this is the second time it has happened. The first time was when I sparred against Lilia,' Alex recalled.

At that time, he noticed that as the number of times they sparred increased, it became easier for him to read and react to his wife's attacks. He didn't dwell on it too much then, mostly because excessive contemplation during sparring with Lilia usually led to receiving a thrashing, but also because he believed it was just his own progress. After all, he was already a skilled fighter, thanks to Jack's experience on Earth.

'But was it only because of that?' Alex wondered.

If Lilia had revealed her observation that his body seemed to always adapt to his opponent's movements with him, he wouldn't be pondering what was happening with him right now. However, at the time, Lilia didn't want to risk telling him that, fearing he might become arrogant and not take his training seriously.

"What are you thinking about so deeply?" Someone next to Alex inquired.

Turning slightly to look at his sister, Alex smiled, "nothing too important."

"You can tell me if something is wrong, you know," Amelia replied.

"Of course I know, sis," Alex said, planting a kiss on Amelia's forehead. "Anyway, we are done here," he added, glancing at his surroundings.

"Yeah, about that," Amelia cast a glance around her at the pile of mangled corpses around them and sighed, "couldn't you have killed them less brutally? Their corpses have lost some value now."

"Haha, sorry," Alex chuckled before turning to Maya, who was busy collecting the lizardmen corpses and placing them in a space ring Alex had given her. "Hey kiddo, hurry up."

"Okay," Maya nodded, accelerating her work.

Minutes later, the trio continued on their way. The further they went, the more lizardmen attacked.

However, Alex, all alone, took care of them. The girls, meanwhile, stood behind him, gazing at his back in awe as he obliterated his enemies.

One thing the girls hadn't noticed about him when he fought these lizardmen, though, was the fact that he had an unfocused expression on his face. The reason for that was the fact that he was trying to comprehend what this 'autopilot', as he called it, was.

After several encounters, Alex finally came to understand what was going on with him.

'My body has completely adapted to their fighting style,' Alex noted. 'That's why evading and counterattacking had become so much easier.'

He didn't understand how he could so easily adapt to the fighting styles of the lizardmen or Lilia, as neither the previous Alex nor Jack had possessed such an ability, but he welcomed it.

Beside learning that his body could adapt to his opponent's fighting style, Alex also came to realize that he needed something crucial: a movement technique.

He had realized so when he remarked that although he could easily evade the lizardmen's attacks, it was mostly because he was much faster than them. If it weren't for this advantage, even if he had completely adapted to their fighting style, he would still have suffered some wounds.

Unfortunately for him, although Lilia had trained him in how to fight, she never went into too much detail like footwork. Thus, he needed to find a movement technique, and a versatile one at that, if he intended to take advantage of his body's adaptability.

'The more important thing, however, is that with this adaptability taken into account, I can maybe defeat a peak level 5 monster!' Alex thought excitedly.

However, soon, his excited smile dimmed. 'Well, I can maybe defeat a peak level 5 monster... if I don't get one-shot by it.'