A few days later, James was grinding on the 2nd floor of the dungeon.
He wiped the blood off of his knife, and picked up some magic stones.
All of a sudden, James picked up a mana signal coming from down the hallway. He concentrated and tried to sense how many enemies there were.
"5 of them. 3 of them are flying, and 2 of them are non-flying."
There were indeed 5 of them, but 3 were non-flying imps, while only 2 had wings.
"I'm a lot more comfortable with detecting the number of imps, but I can't really tell the difference between the flying and the non-flying imps."
To find out the number of imps, James could just count the number of magic signatures he was feeling. However, detecting the exact type of imps was much harder. Each imp had their own wavelength, which gave James a hard time distinguishing between. He got better through practice, recognizing what type of magic patterns were present in all the flying imps, or which weren't present. It would take a long time before he got better.
If goblins and imps were present, James was pretty sure he'd be able to tell the difference between them through their mana presence. Imps were low level demons, so their mana was different from goblins. But, it would be harder to distinguish them from other demons.
For James, this was just practice for his detection skills. He didn't need to use this on the 2nd or 1st floor, but he decided it would definitely help him later. So, he trained while he could. He didn't really have anything better to do with his time when he was crawling through the dungeon anyways.
All 5 of the imps saw him and rushed towards him, as they usually did. However, before they could make it to him, the two flying imps suddenly dropped, shrieking. They hit the floor and skid forwards before coming to a stop, leaving a blood trail. A closer inspection would reveal throwing knives embedded into their guts.
James didn't bother using the spear. He moved forwards and stabbed the first imp that made it close to him in the eye. He then pulled out the knife and repeatedly drove it into the imp. James saw the next imp incoming and lifted the corpse of the imp up. The imps' long claws sank into the body, but didn't reach James. While the imp's claws were stuck in the body, James threw the corpse to the side. The imp's arm was forced to the side with the body, which was exactly what James was aiming for. James slashed the imp's gut open. The final imp tried.
James sat there, checking on all of the imps. He had to finish off some of the imps which were wounded but not dead. Then, he collected the drop items.
"Nice, another orb."
James had collected a lot of orbs over the past week. At first, he was collecting them at about the same rate as he did on the 1st floor. Even though it took longer for him to clear the 2nd, there were more monsters, which meant a larger chance of a dropped orb. However, as James' speed increased, and he got used to fighting multiple imps at once, his clear speed increased.
James was very careful at first, since the fights had been hard, but now, he was much more confident in his abilities. When cumulated, the boost the agility orbs gave to his mobility was nothing to scoff at.
James consumed the orb, and then picked up the magic stones and his throwing knives. Then, he readied his weapons and pushed the door to the boss open.
3 imps met him, with the middle being a higher tier than the other 2. The main difference between tier 1 and tier 2 seemed to be, for goblins and imp at least, a modicum of intelligence, and an increase in strength. The strength boost wasn't much. James, who'd been buffed by the orbs of strength, still had more physical power than it, despite him not being able to use his full power due to his low defence and endurance stats. The scarier thing was the intelligence. If a group of monsters launched a coordinated attack on James, he wouldn't be able to escape. However, there was only one intelligent imp, and it couldn't coordinate very well with the tier 1 imps which launched themselves at the hostiles immediately.
THe tier 2 floors would be a pain, but James would cross that bridge when he got to it. The two tier 1 imps charged at him and dropped one after the other.
"Huh. I had to use 3 knives this time."
James was throwing knives faster than usual, which allowed him to hit more imps before they reached him. However, he sacrificed some accuracy for this. He didn't get the usual 1 hit knockout, and had to throw a second knife for one of the imps.
However, James had moved both tier 1 imps from the equation. He pulled his spear out of the bag and pointed it at the tier 2 imp.
====================
James was sitting at the shop.
{James Lu: Dungeon Explorer – Status Monitored
Cleared 1st Floor
Points: 1207
STR: 58
DEF: 3
END: 3
AGI: 27
INT: 43
LUK: Error
Skills: Advanced Knife Throwing, Monster Taming, Basic Spearmanship, Basic Knife Combat.
Tamed Beasts: Leonardo the Bear (Leo) }
"Oh? Intermediate Knife Throwing turned into Advanced Knife Throwing?"
James was pleased. He felt that he was pretty good at throwing knives, for some reason. Apparently, he'd also stabbed things with pointy sticks and pointy metal enough times to get Basic Spearmanship and Knife Combat.
"How does the dungeon measure skill levels?" James wondered. "I don't think it has levels like you'd see in a game. It's not like I felt a sudden increase in my accuracy when I leveled up from Intermediate to Advanced Knife throwing."
He wasn't quite sure if his knife throwing was that much better than his ability to stab things with a spear, but he decided to just accept his status.
It was another mystery of the dungeon.
Maybe James was too used to his fast progress through the dungeon. He'd grow as much in a week as another explorer would grow in months. So, he didn't realise that most people wouldn't stab a few things and learn spearmanship. Or that most "advanced" knife throwers took years to hone their skills.
"I have a bit over twelve hundred points. That's pretty good."
James had been keeping about half of the magic stones and. Leo the bear had a bit less to eat during this period, but he would have to deal with it. For some reason, James felt compelled to keep 1000 points, and convert the rest to cash. But, the 200 extra points he had would be 20 thousand dollars. He felt he was good for now. He'd keep saving, but he really didn't need that much money.
If James made it to the 6th floor, each monster killed would be 10 times more. Granted, they would also be a lot harder to kill, but that was the trade off. But, his seniors, who were on the 4th tier floors, would get 1000 points per kill. 100 grand from a single monster! At that point, the money was just numbers. James couldn't even fathom how one would spend so much money.
James relaxed a bit, feeding Leo a magic crystal as he sank down into his chair. Across the room, he spotted John. John looked over and met James' eye, and shook his head. "Not yet," was his message.
James was waiting for news about his relic. For some reason, he was the only explorer he knew who hadn't gotten one early into his dungeon exploration. The relic would help. James had survived so far without the relic due to his broken luck stat and drop rates, but he wanted to know what was going on.
The only person he could contact was John, the dungeon shopkeeper. He'd told James he'd contact them, and was still waiting for a response.
James was also waiting for a response from Leah. She'd disappeared from the dungeon 3 days ago, after telling him to work at her company. James didn't know what she was planning, but hoped it wouldn't be troublesome.
He was sure it would be troublesome, though. He had a gut feeling. He could detect danger by sensing mana now, and he was detecting a lot of it.