Dugeon Diving

Looking around the corridor at the bottom of the stairs, I couldn't believe my luck. The entrance was a bit strange, but the interior looked just as described by the adventurers I could occasionaly hear walking past my house. Made completely of stone bricks, with a scattering of moss and cracks, and the occasional small cluster of glowing green crystals, which dimly lit up the interior. At the end of the corridor I saw it branched in two directions. Stopping at the split in the path, I stretched my senses to the limit to decide which way I should go. Hearing faint noises from the right side, I started walking.

After following the same corridor past a few turns, I saw my first group of monsters. They were a group of three goblins, sitting against the wall of the dungeon, weaing only a loincloth. There were three branches scattered around them on the floor, probably their weapons. They looked extremely weak compared to the previous group I fought. Placing my bag on the ground and making my steps as quite as I could, I approached the goblins.

Once I was close enough, I leaped towards the goblin closest to me, my claws slicing in front of me. As I reached it, my claws cut through the goblin's neck with ease, leaving small, white marks on the wall of the dungeon. The other two goblins were frozen, looking at their now-dead companion. Before they could react, I killed the middle goblin as well in the same way. However, before I could kill the final goblin, it screamed at the top of its small, probably deformed lungs. The shrill noise felt like it stabbed into my eyes, making me dizzy. Luckily, the goblin was too busy screaming in fear to make the most of my momentary pause. Stepping forward, I ended the horrific scream, before shaking my head to try and return my senses to normal.

After extracting the mana stones of the goblins, I sighed. They were even worse than the ones I had taken from the previous group, and most likely wouldn't help me at all. However, I didn't have any other immediate uses for them and didn't want to waste space in my bag, so I absorbed them. After I finished, I picked up my bag and started walking, only to turn around again when I heard a strange fizzing noise.

At first I didn't notice anything, but then I saw that the eyes of the goblins were shrinking, no longer filling their sockets. Then I noticed that all the skin on them was drying out, showing their bones in sharp relief. Their loincloths and branches also withered, until all of it turned to dust. Then, the small pile of dust slowly shrunk, seemingly absorbed by the dungeon, leaving nothing of our fight behind. I shivered, thinking of that happening to me, before turning around and continuing my journey. 'So that's why this dungeon doesn't smell terrible' I thought, trying to distract myself from the image of the goblins' decaying decapitated heads.

After killing my way through the dungeon for an hour, I found a large wooden door at the end of the corridor. Guarded by the largest group of goblins I had seen, I wondered about what was on the other side, and how lucky I was. The only way I navigated was that if I came across a split in the road I would choose the path that had the most noise - and I hadn't ran into a single dead end and I had even made my way here to what was most likely the boss room. As I watched the group of 20 goblins in front of the door, I noted their equipment. The further I travelled on this floor, the more armour the goblins had. It was still only leather, nothing that could stop my claws, and none of them had any more than one piece of armour, until now. The group in front of the door had two goblins with two pieces of leather armour on 'Oh no! How could I ever win?' I sarcastically said to myself, before thinking about how I was going to kill all of them. But, before I could formulate any plans, four of the goblins broke away from the larger group, and started meandering down the corridor towards me. A grin appeared on my face. If they wanted to die this badly, why would I refuse them?

Once I saw them coming, I moved back to the next bend in the corridor. I still wasn't far from the door, but our fight would now be out of sight of the rest of the goblins in front of the door. Listening to the approaching footsteps of the goblin quartet, I readied my claws. As they turned the corner, I jumped over them, and killed the two goblins closest to me by cutting through their spines. Not waiting for the rest of the goblins to start screaming, I killed another two goblins in the same way. Finally, I cut the final goblin in half by slicing its chest horizontally before it even turned around. It was completely unnecessary, but I had recently discovered that cutting monsters in half was very good at relieving stress.

Not wanting to see their bodies decompose, I skipped towards the corner in front of the door. I didn't know what those goblins left to do, or how long they would've taken, so I decided to attack the larger group before they get suspicious.

Readying myself, I stepped out of where I was hiding and stood in the middle of the corridor. I could run towards them and try and surprise them like I did to the previous group, but they would notice before I got there, and I would have to face multiple attacks at once, and they might even surround me. Their attacks wouldn't hurt me, but I wanted to practice strategy so that when I fought enemies that were more dangerous I would have a better chance of winning. Because they had terrible teamwork, they would get in eachother's way and slow eachother down as they tried to approach me. If I was lucky, they would end up being in single file when coming towards me which would make my work much easier. My mother once read me a book about a person who slew exactly 193 soldiers, who were each as strong as him, in a single battle, one after the other; ending the battle on a hill of corpses. '...She read me some very innapropriate things, didn't she?' I thought, before focusing back on the goblins scrambling towards me; now was not the time to reminisce.

Luckily, the goblins obstructed their own path enough so that they attacked me only two at a time. Killing each of them with ease, I butchered my way through the group. The worst thing was that the goblin blood that landed on me didn't turn to dust like the blood on the ground, so I was covered in blood, and smelled quite bad. I wanted to check the time, but I couldn't see the sun, so I decided to explore the room in front of me before having dinner.

Little did I know, someone was watching my every move.