I entered the dungeon with no issues. It was a D ranked dungeon. The environment was familiar, and when I encountered my first opponent, I confirmed my suspicion. The instance I had entered was one I had previously cleared with Hylia. The opponents were the ants with an extremely hard Carapace.
Their shells were as hard as I had remembered, but they were much easier to kill than before. With my sneak attack and strike kills I was able to kill them in a total of 3 shots. It was a reminder of how much I had grown between then and now.
The first floor was killed pretty easily, and as I moved onto the second floor; I had an almost relaxed feeling. This level of opponent was nothing to me now.
The flying ants were even less of a problem then the ground ants. Their carapace was much thinner, and I was able to take them out with a single shot. The only real benefit I was getting from the instance was a small but steady improvement to my firearm proficiency skill.
The skill itself was rather weird. It had 100 levels, and I would have to upgrade it all the way to 100 before I obtained Beginners firearm proficiency. I received no bonus from the levels, but I could tell that my understanding of the weapon was slowly increasing. Not by a lot, the words of the technique book I had purchased were still nothing but a blur. I would need advanced firearm proficiency before I could even understand a little of it.
The boss was a weak version of the ant queen we had killed previously. It was not as large and could move around a little. This meant that it was able to do some small scale aoe attacks caused by its movement, as well as spit out its acid. But it also did not have the vitality of the previous queen, and its regeneration was much slower.
I only had to battle it for a total of 5 minutes before it fell. Any wounds I received from its attacks had been healed by my vampiric magic.
The rewards from the instance were rather meager. I received 2,000 coins and 50 silver. All in all, was not bad for around an hours' worth of work. My firearm proficiency had leveled up to 10.
Unfortunately, I would be unable to enter again until tomorrow. Based on this it would take me quite a while to gain any progress, but it was something I would need to do.
I spent the rest of the day studying the books I had obtained in my library. The most interesting of them was the experiment results of the lich which blended well with my monster encyclopedia.
That night Hylia came to my little shack. She gave it a questioning look before coming in. The shack was a far cry from our previous home, but unfortunately it was all I could afford. It had four walls and did not leak. That is all I really needed.
She was rather unsatisfied with the house, but that did not stop her from staying. She drugs me out shopping and ended up using her own gold to purchase us various furnishings for our new home. Unfortunately, the store would not deliver to our location, so we ended up having to place the items in our inventory.
This is not something that people normally did. Unlike the inventory in most novels, the items you carried actually had physical weight. It was only around half of what it actually was, but they weight would still add up. Because of this Hylia ended up carrying most of the burden.
With the new furnishings the shack did not look as bad as it had before. We ended up getting a little too much for the small shack, making the area feel a little cramped. But with only the two of us it would be fine.
We had worked up a sweat decorating our new place, so we ended up going to the public bath. We received a poor reception there, well me more than her. They were quite cordial with her, and even took her to the section of the bath specifically designated for the followers of the goddess of war.
The bath was mostly empty, and unfortunately it was coed. Despite this none of the other bathers bothered us. Hylia had the body of a child, and I was a "disgusting" dark elf. From a physical standpoint they would not find us attractive. Besides that, my title was enough to prevent incidents from the members of the Goddess's church.
After the bath we returned to our small shack. She spent the night there, holding my body in our new home as she dreamed of whatever it is her new race dreamed of.
I on the other hand was having a hard time falling asleep. My mind raced with all that had happened recently. I began to realize just how much my mother's influence had shielded me from the truth of this world. How different the outside world was compared to that small city I had originally been living in.
I could not help but sigh as I thought about it. With a sense of dejection, I finally fell asleep. I dreamed that night of my beginning in this world, and most of my mother's disappointed face when I found her in the goblins breeding room. The image would haunt me for years to come.