Chapter 04 – First Kill.

“Are you sure we should be here?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s just the first floor, there are only goblins, skeletons, and rusty armors around; they are all trash.”

“I don’t know… wouldn’t it be better to go to an easier dungeon? The monsters from the lower levels sometimes travel to the upper ones…”

“Hah, that very rarely happens, and if something does, I’ll just protect you.”

An older teenager responded to a girl who was slightly younger than him. Both of them were slowly going down a very long set of stairs leading to a mostly empty chamber. Within it were paths leading to different places, each marked and given a symbol.

“Oh, I know those, we should probably avoid the goblins, right?”

The girl pointed at one of the markings and the young man that she was with nodded.

“That’s right, the goblins are weak, but they work in larger groups. It would be hard to deal with just the two of us, but we should be fine if it’s just one or two of those green bastards.”

The young man laughed while puffing out his chest. He was wearing a cheap set of armor along with a sword strapped to his side. The younger girl had some leather armor, and her weapon of choice was a bow that she was already holding in her hand. Even though there was no danger in sight, she seemed worried about this little expedition.

“As I said, stop worrying. The monsters here are rather weak. How about we just go get some skeletons? Those guys are quite slow.”

The man pointed to another path on the right side of the chamber.

“What about the living armors?”

“Those bundles of rust will fall apart from one good kick. Nothing to worry about; they are actually weaker than a skeleton, just take a few more hits, are really slow, and you can hear them coming instantly.”

“If you say so…”

The girl nodded while the young man continued to grin. He moved in close and placed his hand around her waist, which made her slightly frown.

“Don’t worry, just stick close to me, and there won’t be any problems.”

For a moment, she noticed that he had a strange expression when getting this close. Her instincts were telling her that something was wrong, but due to some circumstances, she needed to get stronger. Leveling up in this dungeon was the fastest way to alleviate her troubles. Even if her companion wasn’t the most trustworthy, without him, she would have been unable to come to this place.

“How about you lead the way, then.”

“Sure thing, just leave it to me.”

After wiggling out of his grasp, she made the man move in front. He was just a regular fighter type, while she was best at ranged combat. Their combination had an obvious synergy, and she intended to use it to battle the monsters here. Soon, the two disappeared into the corridor and were on their way to adventure.

*****

‘Is there any way to hasten this process? How long have I been doing this?’

Rusty lowered his head and gave out a sigh as if he was a human. He had spent many days exterminating small critters and bugs around the dungeon and at this point was having an issue finding more of them. Sometimes humans wandered in but he was lucky enough to avoid them for now. It didn’t seem like they wanted to stay in this dungeon too long or at least not on this floor.

One more discovery was a set of stairs going up, which like before he couldn’t approach. Rusty was even unable to enter the large empty chamber before the stairs started and could only glance at them from far away. It seemed to be an even more forbidden zone that the voice inside of his heart kept him and the other monsters away from. However, he was able to resist the orders some more, and perhaps his higher levels had something to do with it.

‘If I could only grind something else…’