Instead of a larger imp (which would have been comfortable, honestly), the inhabitant of the next room was a lizard man, six feet tall, with a more nervous than muscular build, reddish skin and a long, forked tongue. But it was his wonderful armor, spear and shield that caught my attention the most. So far, apart from the swords of the dark elves and the loot I took from the tunnel of light, it was the best equipment I had seen.
Back to the checks, what we are going to do is the mind of a cheater is like this: the beam did not tickle him, nor the light laser, nor the air knife, but what made me most nervous is that he did not launch to the attack, he protected himself at the back of the room with his shield while he looked at me with his reptilian eyes...
"Well, if you don't come, I'll go." I said to the monster as I advanced with my spear ready. When I was a meter away from the distance of the spear, I injected mana and the jet of water shot out. It dodged the attack with an impetuous movement that he took advantage of to gain momentum with his spear... he was also out of range... A jet of fire came out of the tip of his weapon; it surprised me at point-blank range. Luckily, luckily, my shield saved me from being burned alive. I composed myself to attack, but on the floor a circle of fire did not allow me to advance towards it without risk of seriously burning my legs... I opened a door and jumped to the other side of the room...
I used the water that had come out of my spear and tried to hit him with my water bullets, but he masterfully stopped them with his shield, and the ones that he didn't stop he dodged by jumping to the side...
I tried to trap him in a mudhole and leave him still; however, he reacted like a spring, jumping to the nearest wall where he stuck with his feet... I didn't expect that... he started running in my direction. The circle of fire It formed again on the ground, forcing me to jump into a rift, but it seemed that I was already expecting this because, as I came out of the other rift, a wave of fire hit my shield...
"I really didn't want to resort to this.": I raised my hand, concentrating on noticing his vital mana. When I could already feel his being, I reversed the flow and launched my death mana…
His scaly skin began to crack and flake, and finally the lizard died without understanding what had happened...
Killing him like that didn't feel good; it was practical, no doubt, but it felt dirty, like playing with something forbidden...
With the next lizards, I discovered that they could cast many more types of fire magic through their weapons, even with their shields... I couldn't detect traces of magic on the weapon after they died, so this was more of an ability than not. A weapon enchantment...
When the group fights began, there was a lizard's group of three, including a lizard who was especially proficient in continuously launching fire magic through his sword. The curious thing is that when I checked the weapon at the end of the fight, the metal was cracked and in poor condition, like If it had become brittle...
So magic damages metals when channeled through them? It was never bad to learn something new.
My tactics became methodical with the arrival of more enemies, conjuring water from the spear, a sling of death magic, and water bullets, and ending up finishing off the survivors by hand...
There was no passion or adventure, just a methodical, unilateral massacre... after each round, I rested and recovered, and so I continued to lower levels.
When my instinct told me that it was time for the boss to arrive, in addition to the weapons and armor (blessed space backpack), there were about 920 stones... For anyone else, they would have been enough to turn around, but I wanted to see the merchant's face. If I dismantled all the tests, it was almost a personal thing... The damn scammer almost left me without coins to pass the tests. Also, while others could repeat them as long as they had coins left, I only had one chance... Another thing is that going to the end was not an option...
I only had to step foot on the stairs, and I began to notice the heat in the atmosphere... an infernal heat and a strong smell of sulfur. Was I descending into hell itself?...
The staircase ended in a natural cavern of more than 300 meters, the lava flowed in rivers around the strip of land that meandered, and there were in the distance the largest creature I had seen so far in my life... with 20 meters long, and at least more than 3 meters high, the salamander was an imposing monster, with its slimy, scaly skin a ruby red.
Unfortunately, the creature saw me at the same time as I saw it. What she did next left me perplexed. I expected it to attack me, but no, she jumped into the river of lava and disappeared...
"But what the hell... has she committed suicide?"...
It didn't take many seconds before my senses alerted me to the fact that she was to my right. Her enormous head came out of the lava and spat out a thick ball of lava like someone who spits water... I narrowly escaped by jumping onto a rift that led me to a wider and higher strip of land along the Magma River.
I put myself on guard and extended my mana senses... it was approaching from the right. It fired from afar, and the ball of lava the size of a washing machine hit my shield, splashing me and my body and burning me in its path. I had managed to partially avoid the trajectory and interposed my weapon, but the splashes generated excruciating pain that ate away at you. My life mana had a lot of work to do to repair my body... The shield, however, would not withstand many more blows of this type.
From a distance of 5 meters, her tongue shot out, and although I managed to retreat, she managed to catch my left leg... she began to drag me... With the water magic of my spear, I managed to hurt her in the mouth, but in that environment, the strength was much less than usual and I only made a small cut, although enough for her to let go. I opened a rift at the other end of the room and fled... I didn't want to lose my shield so I exchanged it for one of the ones who had caught the lizardmen. When I had not yet tied the shield to my arm, her tongue hooked on it and almost tore it off. As I watched him swallow it, I threw my death energy at him, but she submerged again.
I took advantage of the moment to take another shield from the lizards. The salamander's tongue again grabbed the shield that I was preparing before it finished, it seemed that the cunning monster wanted to remove my defenses before lashing the lava over my body again. ...
I managed to get 15 shields before the animal gave up eating them. Her tongue wrapped around my legs, and it began to drag me. I managed to pull and form a bullet of water with what was left in my skin when I only had one meter left to go. Being swallowed, the bullet hit her in the eye, tearing it out. She was close. It was time... All my metal energy was concentrated on the shields inside her stomach. The metal deformed, creating spikes and stakes that destroyed her organs. The pain forced her to let go of me...
But it was a big beast and wouldn't die easily, so before it fled into the magma, I concentrated all the death energy I could and threw it at point-blank range...
"Congratulations to the player for obtaining the essence of the mythical beast "fire salamander": 20% fire damage reduction.
I approached the corpse, but I didn't find anything that I knew how to use, more as a trophy than anything else. I removed the fangs and kept them in my backpack.
The place where the salamander was when I arrived was nothing more than a nest made of the red stones that I was looking for, and in the middle of the nest was an egg the size of a pine cone. It had red veins on the shell and gave off heat, a lot of heat...
I thought about the possibility of having a pet or mount in this game; however, having a slimy mount with a passion for bathing in lava lakes did not seem the safest thing to me... However, what would the merchant give me for this egg? I was laughing inside while collecting my loot...
Stone count 1493...
I climbed the stairs calmly; there was no rush, and as I walked, my mana regenerated little by little... The internal attack with the metal of the shields had been difficult. I could only feel the metal when I was already close to the mouth of the salamander, and I also had to empty all my metal mana into it. It is true that I had improved in controlling all the mana, and this had made the task easier, but the metal mana was still difficult to control...
When I arrived at the desk room, the merchant was pacing from one side of the room to the other.
"Don't talk to me; don't tell me... I don't want to know... why did it take you so long?"
"What's the hurry?" Do you have something else to do or..."
"Look, kid, I'm an important person, a very busy person, and this is only a temporary occupation. The sooner you all finish the tests, the sooner I can leave...."
"Then tell me what you can offer me now…"