CH19

"Burst," I punched an undead and elbowed another, dealing double damage. A buff hit me, increasing my movement speed by 50%, and I tore through the undead.

I acted as the spear, Hati hit any distant undead that looked like trouble, and Azizi maced any that tried to flank me. We were charging for the second floor and avoiding other teams. A party increased the number of mobs. The drops had been crap after joining the team. Unfortunately, I couldn't show off Double Helix until I was strong enough to make stealing it a terrible proposition. We aimed to settle party symmetry and find a way to the second floor.

"Are we almost there? I'm running low on mana?" Zeff asked.

Hati grunted while launching arrow after arrow into the knees of the closest undead. Thanks to my gauntlets, my fists were enough to take down most zombies with one blow. I was informed that the dungeon could drop gauntlets with damage ratings if I did enough unarmed damage. They were normally hesitant to do so because those same gauntlets had a secret effect. They could boost the damage of held weapons by percentages based on gauntlet rarity. Common boosted 5%, but legendary boosted 60%, doubled if the weapon had the same rarity as the gauntlets. Dungeons were hesitant to equip adventurers with such weapons in the early floors.

Azizi opened the map, and I moved to guard her while Hati shot incoming mobs. An adventurer stumbled out of a tunnel with a head that didn't match its body. It was an ox head atop a wolf. The adventurer's body looked emaciated, and the head of the adventurer pulsed.

"Hello friends, I found a treasure chest. Come, one of you, I need help carrying the loot."

I didn't know why, but I hated the creature from the moment I saw it. There was something so familiar about it, but I couldn't put my fist on it. With 5 seconds of burst left, I crossed the distance and punched it. Its ox head snapped back, revealing the head of a tick. The pulsating head lit with light DMG before exploding with small head-shaped ticks. I moved swiftly and started stomping.

One jumped, aiming for my neck too fast for me to catch it in time. An arrow from Hati caught it midflight and pinned it to a wall. We killed the remaining abominations, and Zeff hit us each with a cleanse.

"The dungeon must be gearing up for its event. We all have heard horror stories of adventurers leaving alone to take a piss and return impregnated with monster parasites." Zeff said.

"They didn't seem experienced in dealing with adventurers. The head was wrong." Azizi picked up a glowing blue mace and tossed her old mace into her bag of holding. "We need to take a vote, go further, or retreat and inform the guild," Azizi said.

I searched through some of the armor, but there wasn't anything special. A scarf with metal plates or something to protect my neck would have been great. The thought of one of those things snipping off my head and replacing my head freaked me out.

A few more kills would put me over the edge to lvl3. Another 0.1 to my modifiers would be great. Grinding more stats while we could was the thing to do.

"It's not like we can prepare for those things with our funds. They will only get craftier and better at stealth killing with time. We are better off going for the banshee queen while they don't know to match bodies with heads." I said.

"With the banshee queen taken care of, drops will return to normal, and we can better equip ourselves and get coin. The dungeon will also continue to double our stat gains." Hati said.

"From what I saw, the creatures go for the neck. Will the dungeon even drop something to protect that region, or will we need to commission special equipment for the first floor?" Zeff said.

Azizi laughed, and that wasn't a good sign. These monsters must freak her out more than normal.

"They seem more of a threat to the unwary than a direct threat to us. We should stay together at all times." I said.

"We already went over that," Zeff said.

"It's worth stating twice." Azizi groaned and pissed in front of us on the victim's corpse. The rest of us joined her as a kind of send-off of the dead adventurer. "Dungeons really are slaughterhouses," Azizi said.