Chapter 72 – Dungeon first floor.

“GRUAHGHHHHHHHH…”

A loud shriek of something non-human was heard followed by something similar to rattling bones. There was a strange screeching sound of metal against hard stone along with peculiar sounding footsteps.

This was inside the Albrook Dungeon that hasn’t been rated quite yet. Dungeons in this country would be rated after an extensive investigation. The harder it would be to finish the higher the rating would become. Most of these dungeons also were given nicknames, the super dungeon in the middle of the island had its own. It was called the Infernal Dragon Dungeon, the dragon that lived there had yet to be beaten.

A certain youth in an uncoordinated brigandine armor was standing there, shield and sword in hand. He was looking at a new type of monster that he had never seen before but he had read about in books. It looked like a common skeleton that you would find in many other similar dungeons. There was a small difference though, this one here was literally on fire.

This flaming skeleton here was dragging a large sword with one hand and moving towards Roland very slowly. He knew that taking care of this monster would be an easy feat but he wasn’t here to do that. It was the time to train his battle-related skills instead of his magic this time around.

He waited patiently without doing any hasty moves. The monster dragged its body toward him slowly and when it was in range it gave out a loud shriek. How the creature could scream without any vocal cords was what he started asking himself. The large overswing finally came as the skeleton tried hitting him with that sword.

He moved behind his shield and took the hit straight on. Normally this would be the time where he used his own sword to slice the monster’s head off. Roland didn’t do that yet though, he just backed off slightly while looking at his left hand.

‘The attack wasn’t that heavy, I can probably grind with this guy a bit…’

Some skills like shield proficiency and swordsmanship could be trained past the basic variant of the skills by some classes. This was true for most regular combat classes, even an archer could do this. But a non-combat class like a villager wouldn’t be able to do that.

So the grinding initiative that he thought of had started. One of the easiest skills would be the one concerning shields and armor. By just blocking with this piece of steel he could level it up. It was even easier with the armor proficiencies as a person only needed to move around in combat to level it up.

If you took hits while wearing heavy armor it would go up even faster but was a lot more dangerous. The tactic was simple, fighting slow enemies that were easy to read. This skeleton was one of them, his attacking pattern was pretty simple. It would only charge at him blindly while swinging its longsword. The creature’s strength was quite low as it had trouble holding its weapon steady, blocking it with a shield was a simple task.

So the little dance continued until the skeleton’s inferior weapon couldn’t take it much longer. With one last swing against Roland’s shield, the rusty sword snapped in half and flew against the wall. This was also the time that he decided to end the training session.

Roland listened to the voice that proclaimed how much experience he had earned. He was already used to how meager the gain was but it was still disheartening.

‘I could probably get more experience by quickly making iron nails at this point…’

The monster crumbled into a pile of bones after having its head chopped off with one swing. The fire on its remains continued to burn for a few moments before leaving mostly dust behind. As a little bonus, a small mana stone was retrieved from one of the eye sockets.

‘Can I sell this bone dust for something?’

Roland rubbed his chin while looking at the pile of half singed remains. He wasn’t sure but an alchemist might be able to mix this with something. It was a magic skeleton that could resist fire while moving around so maybe this could be used for a fire-resistance potion.

More money was always better so he placed what he could into a large jar that then was pocketed into a spatial bag. After he was finished here he was planning to visit the city, the market there was booming. This was his first day on the job so it would be better to take whatever he could.

He had many spatial bags with himself so he probably had a leg up against the competition. Most bronze adventurers lacked the funds for a bag like this and steel graded ones probably only had one. The bags he had weren’t bottomless, he would probably fill them up quite fast if he started gathering the larger creature corpses.

Roland grabbed what he could get and then examined his shield. He could see that the skeleton had scratched up his kite shield but it was still in working order. This particular one was in the shape of a teardrop. When he held it up to his chin it reached below his knees and was able to cover most of his body with its width.

It also had some mana stones imbued to its structure. He placed them on the inside right next to the shield’s enarmes. This enarmes was composed of leather gripping straps attached to the back of the shield. It was held in place by riveting through the leather and the facing of the shield. On the other side, a person could see the spots that it was riveted through. It wasn’t perfect and looked a bit janky but it worked well enough to get him by here.

There was a limit to how many mana stones a shield like this could hold. He couldn’t just plaster the backside with ten of them to mitigate all of the mana requirements. The runic structure wouldn’t be able to handle the purified mana and would just deteriorate the whole spell structure instantly. Something akin to a short circuit would happen which would destroy the whole rune.

He had chosen the lesser stones for this shield as he wasn’t willing to test the common graded ones on it. The limit on this steel shield was three stones, with them around the mana cost went down dramatically. Each stone lowered the mana requirements by close to 20%.

That counted for only spells at the same level though. He had placed a regular mana shield runic spell on it. With the stones and his passive skills the cost was lowered by close to 70% of its original. For him, with a high mana pool, this meant that he could spam this skill quite often and not fear running dry on mana.

This wasn’t the only spell that was on this shield. He had gotten the hang of multi-structural runic compositions a bit now. He had also gone with a lesser fire resistance buffing spell. This spell would take a flat number of mana points away from him for it to work. This would produce a constant effect, with the lowered mana costs it was quite manageable and a must for the dungeon filled with fire type monsters.

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He had already done some extensive testing against the weaker monsters. The slimes heated spit was useless against this shield. He didn’t even feel it heating up after taking a direct hit. It was also the highest possible spell structure which would make any fire attacks below tier 2 highly ineffective.

He didn’t have time to work on all of his gear yet, his house renovation was taking up a lot of time and he still lacked a forge. The plan was to train in the dungeon while waiting a month for the construction workers to arrive. Most of them were busy working on the various new stores that were being built by some rich merchants or business owners. The city was constantly progressing but he had already made an appointment.

Roland gripped his shield while placing his sword back into the sheath. He then pulled out the map of this dungeon’s level. This was still the first level and he was finished with examining it. It took him a few hours to go through the tunnels without rushing but it was time to move on.

The skeletons were the strongest enemy on this level and capped out at the 10th level. Besides them and the slimes, there were also lizard looking monsters called ‘Baby Salamanders’. That last one was rumored to evolve into more ferocious monsters like fire drakes and fire wyverns if they gained enough levels.

The biggest problem with this level was the sheer number of other adventurers. He met them along the way quite often which slowed down his progress. When they were fighting he needed to wait for them to be done before progressing.