He went down to feel the ground and try and find what he swore he saw.
"What are you doing down there?" Amelia asked.
"I think it dropped something" Neil responded to her. Neil couldn't believe his luck creature drops were extremely rare within the game and was typically considered to be overpowered even if they dropped from weaker creatures. Normally one would have to kill thousands of creatures to gain these benefits and yet he had luckily stumbled upon it in his first large dungeon.
"I see" Amelia responded understanding the situation.
Neil was able to find the drop, it was a small heart of rock that faintly glowed green.
"Analyze," Neil said quietly to keep Amelia from hearing.
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Heart of a Rock Crusher
Consumable
This incredibly rare item has a low chance to drop from rock crushers upon their death, it can be ingested for a myriad of stat bonuses, mainly health and strength as it reflects the powers of a crusher. The creatures are known for their large size and thick skin, along with their strength as they fling their fists as enemies. Ingesting the heart will also give one skill that a rock crusher normally has, multiple ingestions will give different skills. The heart type items can be found in almost all living enemies with each of them having an extremely low chance at leaving it behind after death.
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"It seems to be the heart of the second crusher that I killed" Neil said to Amelia who had now gotten closer to him as all of the enemies were killed.
"I see, that is a good gain then. You should ingest as soon as possible" She said to him in a consoling voice.
"It's mine then?" Neil asked back to her.
"Well of course, you were the one to kill the crusher who it came from" She responded looking down at him kindly.
'What a wonderful women' Neil thought to himself looking up at her. For now he would put the heart in his bag and eat it once they reached the next staircase. They did have one more split in the path before they were done with the second level. Neil stood up smiling
"Let's continue on then" He said happily.
Amelia seemed to find this amusing as she chuckled sweetly at him happiness and agreed to continue on. When Neil looked back at her a few minutes later she had returned to her normal stoic face.
'I truly can't understand her' He thought to himself. But it wasn't like he was angry about that, only a little confused.
After some more walking Neil could hear the final group of attackers approaching them. This last group showcased a new monster that the two had yet to see within the dungeon.
"Four crushers and one crystal crawler in the middle!" Neil yelled back
"I'll take out the two crushers in the back first then go for the crawler, hold out until then!" She responded to him.
The crawler would be the first true challenge for Neil as while it was weaker than the crushers it was many times faster and also had a harder outside shell that would be very difficult to pierce.
Neil approached the situation as he normally did and was able to quickly take out the first crusher. It was after this first kill that he first noticed the difficulties of his class and it nature of calling in enemies. As immediately after his kill of the first crusher both the second one and the crawler attacked him at the same time. The damage from this combined attack caused Neil to begin bleeding for the first time within the dungeon.
He was in pain after being plastered to the wall by the two of them but he was able to quickly get up and resume his fighting, he decided to take out the second crusher first as it would be a lingering annoyance if he didn't. He was able to dodge an attack from the crawler and used the opportunity to get close to the remaining crusher and plant his axe into it.
After this second kill he swiftly turned around to see yet another attack from the crawler which he was again unable to dodge. Even with taking this second hit he still only felt mild pains and was easily able to recover. He noticed that while he was getting back up from the ground it seemed Amelia had planted an arrow in the crawler. She had done so in a way where it didn't kill the creature but instead just greatly hurt it.
"Finish it off if you can, I've greatly weakened it" Neil heard Amelia ell from behind him. He nodded and began quickly dashing towards the crawler.
Looking at the crawler more he now better saw what it looked like. It was a large insect like creature that had six crystal legs that it used to quickly sprint around. Being held up by these six legs was a thick crystal covered body that shimmered in the dungeon. Its head protruded some from the body and looked similar to the head of a beetle.
Neil tried an overhead slash against the creature but was too slow as it was able to easily evade his attack.
'So downward won't work, then how about sideways!!' He thought to himself as he prepared to do a two handed horizontal slash. The crawler responded to this in a way he hadn't expected as it jumped into the air to avoid his attack. It truly was on a different level than the prior monsters he had faced.
He had unintentionally left himself open after this attack an the crawler was able to use this to it's advantage as it quickly rammed itself into him. Instead of worrying in this situation Neil began to think like a true tank and realized he could attack the crawler as it was attacking him and that through trading blows he'd likely come out on top. This was especially true as the fight had been going on for a couple of minutes by now and Neil could feel himself becoming stronger due to the presence of his own blood.
As the crawler smashed its body into Neil he choked up on the axe brought the head directly into the body of the crawler.
"BzzMzzz" It let out loudly as Neil planted his axe into it. He then held out his axe with the crawler still on it and watched as it flailed in pain.
He then brought the axe back up towards the sly and slammed it into the ground with the crawler still on it. This caused the axe to crush completely through the crawler and swiftly killed it. Upon its death a small message popped up in front of him.
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Congratulations on reaching level 10!!
You have gained new skill for your class with this achievement, along with that you also got a boost of five points applied to each stat.
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"Huhh" Neil let out a sigh as he was exhausted from his first difficult fight of the dungeon. Too exhausted to even read the message as he swiped it away, deciding it was a task for later.
Behind him Amelia stood smirking, seemingly content with how Neil had dealt with the creature.
"You showed much improvement in that fight compared to your prior ones, and also that was an interesting finisher" She said in a content but serious voice.
The tired Neil took this as more compliments and praise and quickly picked himself up from the floor.
"Though that was only an injured crawler" She added to her prior statement, which was able to cut down Neil in mere seconds.
He said nothing, instead opting for a simple nod, he then turned and continued towards the staircase that he now knew they were near.
They came to the crossroads and Neil waited to hear the answer he wanted from Amelia.
"Right" He distinctly heard her say and almost continued in that direction before he stopped himself.
'Wait, I know left is the correct direction, she really did get it wrong' He thought to himself.
"How about left" He said out loud to Amelia.
"Why left" She responded to him. Neil would need to bullshit some answer if he wanted to get out of this with her continued trust and heading in the correct direction.
"All I can say is that I feel a stronger pull of the artifact in that direction, it's as though the artifact calls out to me due to my skill" He chose this as his reason hoping it would be believable enough to fool Amelia.
"I suppose going left is fine enough, and It'll be pretty obvious to tell if we went to far making it easy for us to turn around choose the other option." Amelia responded back to him
'Success' Neil thought to himself, but a question still lingered on his mind and he couldn't help himself from asking.
"How were you choosing which direction to go" Neil asked curiously.
"Well I just always chose which passage seemed wider. I noticed in the first floor that the passages you chose tended to be wider and we got to the center quickly. Since the two passages we just came across were equal in size I had a more difficult time choosing and just went with the right." She answered.
'Wow' Neil was surprised by her answer, he had been expecting to hear the name of some helpful skill but instead she was just using reasoned logic the entire time. He had truly been negligent to the importance of reason within this world just like within Earth. After hearing her answer felt dumb at his prior lack of sense that he had been using and swore that he'd use more logic instead of just relying on the knowledge he came into Archemia with.
He also had never noticed the small differences in the size of passages and assumed them all to be the same, but after looking closer at some of the passages that they were passing he realized what she was saying was right and their truly was a difference, even if it was just barely noticeable.
The two of them went left and continued forward a few hundred feet until they came across the next staircase down. They quickly went down the staircase and decided to set up camp at the landing that was before the entrance to the third maze.
Upon reaching the third floor the light changed as it got darker than it had been on the prior two floors and the it seemed to lose any sheen it may have previously had as everything was now just a dull grey color that blended in with its surroundings.
It had taken the two 3.5 hours to get through the second floor and they had come to the decision that it would be smart to rest at the landing before continuing through the third maze.
Once at the bottom Neil went into the tent they had set up as he was chosen to be the first sleeper. Once in the tent he pulled the crusher heart out of his pouch and popped into his mouth as though it were a snack. He could feel his body harden after its consumption and wondered how much his stats had increased and what ability he had gotten from it's consumption.
"Analyze" He whispered while looking at himself.
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Name: Neil Hunt
Species: Human
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Class: Blood Butcherer (Base Class)
Level: 10
Vitality: 57
Endurance: 25
Strength: 33
Dexterity: 8
Intelligence: 11
Agility: 12
Will: 17
Mana: 200
9 Unspent skill points
Skills:
The Eyes of an Outsider (Passive Level 2): You're prior knowledge Archemia allows you to investigate what is contained within it with an already well known system. Though you are better able to understand the items and yourself within Archemia the beings of Archemia are distrustful of you.
You can call for and receive basic information about any nonliving object, you may also see information on yourself. This skill cannot be used on other creatures and people are automatically distrustful of you because of your unique eyes. Furthermore your eyes now provide you with an enhanced precision that can make out minute details and see things from great distances away.
Downward Cleave (Active Level 1): After using the move numerous times on enemies you were able to develop it into a skill.
An Over head strike skill usable with any axe type weapon, the damage from this move will be 150% of what it previously without the skill.
Cooldown: None, though repeated uses will exhaust your body.
Blood Frenzy (Passive Level 1): As a Blood Butcherer your strength grows by being in the presence of blood at an explosive rate, though your mind will deteriorate.
Each minute you spend with 20 feet of blood you grow more powerful, with more blood you gain more power. There is not set rate it just depends on the blood you surround yourself with.
Bloody Strike (Active Level 1): You have a strong control of blood and are able to infuse your own blood into your strikes to triple their overall damage.
Do 300% damage with each attack you infuse your blood into, though each time you do this it removes 5% of your health.
No cooldown, you can go until you're body is unable to.
Butcherer's Feast (Passive Level 1): As a being strengthened by the presence of blood you are also able to ingest it for a series of benefits.
Through consuming the blood of another creature you can heal yourself for whatever damage you may have suffered.
Durable Surface (Passive Level 1): Your skin is innately tough making it much harder to be pierced by sharp weapons or hurt by blunt ones.
You're skin is durable and much harder to pierce, allowing for you to take weaker attacks without noticing them as they are unable to pierce your thick skin.
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Neil's stats had become much more impressive than they were when he first entered the dungeon and he had also gained multiple new skills. Furthermore his eyes had now leveled up, giving him the answer of how he should go about increasing their level. As he guessed it was from himself reaching level 10 as they increased in level as he increased his own. Before he could have an in depth look at the rest of his stat increases and his new skills exhaustion took him over and he fell asleep.
Outside of the tent Amelia sat on guard.
"He's definitely a unique one" She said to herself after witnessing Neil through the entire second floor.
"But now will be the time when he actually proves himself." She quickly added, looking directly at the third labyrinth that sat ahead of her.