“Hey, before we forget, what dropped from the monster? Was it a core or materials?” Ker asked.

“Oh, right.” Tess replied, checking over the drops. “Materials.”

Ker grinned. “Nice, you should have a pretty good ability to set limitations on what you get, then. You can go back to getting cores now if you want, just wanted to check.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. I don’t need the materials for anything.”

With that, the two cleared the rest of the floor. The fights went pretty similar to how the one with the dire deer had, the monsters just charging at Ker and letting Tess wallop them for massive damage.

While the monsters didn’t give her enough experience to level up herself, Monster Breeder was a different story. Once they had finished with the floor, she stopped Ker before exiting. “Hey, Monster Breeder leveled up.” She said, “I think I’m going to absorb one of Big Bertha’s cores, so let me do that before we go further.”

Ker raised an eyebrow. “That was fast, usually Classes level a lot slower than that…” He trailed off. “Right, your blessing. Forgot. Go ahead, but don’t bother looking through them for size differences; whenever a boss drops a core, it’s identical to any other core they drop.”

Tess nodded and took out one of the cores from her bag. She was still holding onto them, as The Rumors didn’t take her and Ellie to sell their drops from their session at the other dungeon, and she hadn’t had a good opportunity to give Gramps her drops anyway.

The core was about twice as large as the slime’s core she had absorbed the day before and was glowing a pale blue in the dim light. She took a moment to steel herself, then absorbed it. The process took a bit longer, the amount of smoke coming from the core being understandably larger than the amount that came from the other cores she had absorbed.

Tess was tempted to take Physical Nullification (Inferior) right away, but she decided to hold off on it for a bit. “Well, I did get a Skill.” She said. “Pretty good one too…I think.”

“What is it?”

“Physical Nullification (Miniscule). Bertha had the Minor version of it.”

Ker nodded. “Darn right that’s good. Every little bit of damage reduction helps, especially for someone as fragile as you. Are you stacking both versions right now?”

“No, I want to try something.” Tess took off one of her shoes, then activated Sharp Claws, letting her shoes and socks fade away as the claws came out. She then took Retractable Claws from the Monstrous Lion (Young) Core and retracted the claws, placing the shoe back on her foot. At that point she deactivated Sharp Claws and watched as her other shoe came back into being…and nothing happened to the one she was wearing.

“There goes the ability to have a set of footwear specifically for when my claws were out.” She said, beginning to take off both her shoes and socks. “I guess that wouldn’t really work if I took off the Attribute anyway. Actually…” She paused halfway through the process, reactivating Sharp Claws with only one foot wearing a shoe. She took one of Bertha’s cores from her bag and held it with her toes on the foot that was wearing the shoe, then tried to deactivate Sharp Claws.

There was an odd sensation, but nothing happened. “Well, that’s good to know. Can’t deactivate an Attribute if clothing it would put back on me wouldn’t fit.” She frowned, then tried again. “Actually, I feel like I might be able to if I force it. Don’t want to ruin my shoe, though, so I won’t.” She put the core back in her bag, deactivated Sharp Claws, finished taking the shoe and sock off, then reactivated Sharp Claws. She then retracted only the claws on her feet and put the footwear back on. “Handy, that. Guess we don’t need to stop by the shoe store.”

“Guess not. I’m afraid you won’t be able to try those out next floor, though.”

Tess tilted her head, putting the claws away. “Why not?”

“It’s the Challenge. If you want access, you have to go through the entire third floor without hurting anything, and then go through another gauntlet of more tightly-packed monsters without hurting any of them. It’s pretty rough for beginners and they tend to come back to it once they’re better geared, but it should be laughably easy for you. We’ll just waltz on through the floor, I can tank any number of these small fry, so don’t worry about me.”

And, true to his word, he could. By the time they had finished the floor, there were five or six monsters all trying to do some meaningful damage to him (even though they were only barely taller than his ankles), but he was just standing there as if they were puppies play-biting. “Just go through the door.” He said, “It’ll take us to the Challenge.”

The room beyond was a single large hallway, made of a dark grey brick and lit by torches. There were arches down the length of it, and Tess could barely make out silhouettes in shadowy alcoves underneath them. They weren’t lacking in presence, however; the hall was filled with a cacophony of growls, snarls, and barks, all clearly hostile. Tess gave Ker a worried look. “You really think they’ll just leave me be? I think they count as ‘unusually aggressive’.”

“I’ll be right behind you.” Ker said reassuringly. “They’ll go for me first. Even if they don’t, I can outheal any damage they dish out provided you don’t die immediately, and that shouldn’t be an issue. They’re pretty low level, there’s just a lot of them.”

“If you say so…” Tess took a hesitant step forward, then another. And then she nearly had a heart attack as a window popped up in front of her.

She exhaled loudly, then resumed her march. Right before she reached the first archway, there was a much louder growl, and then a pair of wolf cubs jumped down from their perches and barreled forward, sparing no time in their quest to injure their target.

Which, as it turned out, was Ker. “I’m fine,” He laughed, seeing the worried look on Tess’s face, “Keep going.”

The rest of the walk was tense, and Ker had picked up an entourage of twenty-odd beasts by the time they were done, but they made it without incident.

The sight of the floating Rewards Crystal’s room was gradually becoming familiar to Tess, the rooms containing them having yet to show any deviation whatsoever. She couldn’t help but be filled with a sort of anticipation as she went to get her reward. The last one had completely changed her life in an irreversible way, and while she wasn’t expecting something of that magnitude again, the possibility was there.

But she wasn’t going to delay because of that, so she put her hand to the crystal.

“Is Parasitizer on the list of Skills you can get from this Rewards Crystal?” Tess asked.

Ker looked the list over. “Doesn’t look like it. What Rarity is it?”

“Legendary.”

“Yeah, that’d do it. It’s not a Skill I’m familiar with, mind filling me in?”

Ker listened as Tess explained the Skill to him. “That’s…really solid. Really solid. That’s some pretty strong motivation to go unarmed, even if natural weapons don’t count, and now I’m almost completely confident they will. We’ll try it out on the next floor.”

Tess nodded, and the two left the room and immediately entered the fourth floor, where Tess once again extended the claws on her hand and began to watch for enemies. Her wait was, fortunately, not long, as a pair of wolf cubs were waiting just a short way into the floor.

Like all the monsters she had encountered, they went straight for Ker without paying her so much as a passing glance. She waited for a moment and then slashed out at one of them, her claws tearing through the hide without much resistance.

Tess didn’t feel anything aside from the blood splashing onto her, but she was able to spot a writhing grey leech-like thing protruding from the wound as the wolf wheeled around on her, snarling and preparing itself to strike.

Ker threw a pebble at it and it instantly turned its attention back to him, resuming its previous trajectory. A second later there was a pleasant tingling sensation, the wolf winced, and another second later it keeled over, body rapidly withering before it burst into rainbow haze.

“Nice!” Ker said, casually dancing around the other wolf, “Remind me never to get into a fistfight with you!”

Tess snorted. “Please, you’d destroy me before I even got in a hit.”

“For now. Give yourself some time to pick up some more Skills and all you’ll need is one hit to cripple me. Unarmed fighting is inherently weaker than using weapons, so, as a tradeoff for not getting the bonuses a good weapon gives, the gods made unarmed Skills far, far more potent than weapon Skills.”

He pinned the wolf down with a foot. “Just take care of this one, cut its throat or something.”

Tess stalked up to the struggling wolf and swiped down with her claws, opening a large gash on its neck and wincing as she was once again spattered with blood.

Fortunately, the blood evaporated with the rest of the monster when it disappeared, so she didn’t stay dirty for long. She picked up the cores of the monsters, hesitating slightly as she gauged the size of them.

They were about the same size as the cores of the lions, so she put them on her tentative list of cores she was willing to eject. Provided the lion core ejection wasn’t that bad, anyway. It wasn’t that big so she wasn’t anticipating any trouble, but she couldn’t help but be anxious about it anyway.

The rest of the dungeon went by in much the same fashion. The floors were all, in essence, one crossroads and however many paths it had. The monsters all just rushed Ker and let Tess take them out with a couple of quick hits.

Monster Breeder levelled up twice more, and Tess levelled up once, but she chose not to absorb any more cores until she had gone through all of the dungeon, save for the boss. Things were going well enough that she wanted to see all of her options before choosing to absorb anything, so she didn’t have to do any unnecessary ejections.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to. She had seen all of the monsters the dungeon had to offer already, which meant the only cores she hadn’t absorbed were the wolf cores and bear cores. She hesitated to absorb them both at once, wanting to leave a free slot for Mama Bear’s core, but eventually decided to take them and just eject one later.

So, at the end of the last floor before the boss, she had them stop before going into the safe area to let her absorb the cores and make adjustments to what Attributes she was using.

That level-up meant she also had three empty slots to put Attributes or Skills in, instead of the two she was expecting. Her first order of business was to put on Physical Nullification (Inferior), and when she did, she was immediately met with a window.

That was disheartening, but it made sense. In any case, what did she want? An upgrade to her claws would be nice, but she didn’t know if she could even have multiple instances of Sharp Claws in her storage or if they would stack with each other. She was guessing that, at the least, she would be able to carry multiple copies, but she wouldn’t be able to use more than one at once, if they worked similarly to Skills and degraded Skills. So, she took Sharp Claws from the bear core and put it into her storage.

Right…well, she had an extra Sharp Claws on hand if the combination Skill was completely unusable, and it wasn’t like she was going to fail, so there wasn’t really a reason not to try it out.

That left two slots for her to work with. Sharp Fangs…there was probably a Sharp Fangs (Moderate) too, but that was out. Doing the killing with her hands was already gross enough, she couldn’t bring herself to even try biting her foes.

Nothing else really caught her interest. Part of the Pack was decent, but she didn’t have the raw stats or number of allies needed to make it truly good. It was possible she could combine it with itself, but that wasn’t a guarantee and she didn’t want to use the slot she was saving for Mama Bear’s core or eject another core, so she wasn’t going to test that.

She would, however, test Keen Nose. Taking the Attribute from both the bear and wolf cores, she was pleased to find that they were capable of being combined, which she wasted no time in doing.

She tried it out, and just as quickly turned it off. The cave around her didn’t really smell that good in the first place and being able to smell better wasn’t helping. Perhaps in the future, when she had more slots, she would keep Attributes to buff all her senses, but for now she decided to just put Keen Nose away.

She opted to put it onto Big Bertha’s core, as she wasn’t planning on ejecting that any time soon and it had the most “room” for things. There was that odd shifting feeling again, which she was able to ignore as she contemplated her other choices.

Night Vision was probably a good choice. Being able to see better would come in handy in a lot of situations, and when she didn’t need it, she could just keep it off to avoid any extra sensitivity to bright light it would give. Well, if it gave any in the first place. She’d have to test that out.

She took that and turned it off. She deliberated for a moment about Quadrupedal Adaptation, but eventually decided it wasn’t worth it and took Part of the Pack instead. “Alright, finished.” She told Ker, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

“You got this, kid.” Ker replied, giving her a thumbs-up, “It’s going to be a walk in the park. Just ignore the small fry and focus on dealing damage to Mama Bear. If it looks like she’s going to start targeting you I’ll make sure to pull her attention somehow. Even if she ignores your Skill, all I have to do is deal more damage to her or the minions and she’ll get right back to attacking me.”

Tess nodded, and the two left the floor, just to immediately go through the door to the boss. The room awaiting them was one large, cavernous area, strewn with various grasses, fabrics, and other soft things piled up into makeshift beds.

From the largest bed an enormous figure rose, a bear who, when she stood on her hind legs, easily breached 12 feet tall. She gave the two intruders a cold look and then roared, the room shaking from the deafening sound.

Something about that sound shook Tess, like it was driving home that the opponent in front of her was something with which she could not compete. Even having dropped down to all fours, Mama Bear was taller than Tess, and her body seemed to be all powerful muscle or sharp claws and fangs, leaving Tess with no doubt that Mama Bear wouldn’t even work up a sweat killing her.

Even the crisis training Gramps had given her wasn’t of much help. She had practiced these kinds of scenarios, but that was all it had been – practice. There was something different about knowing that this could well be the moment she died.

And then it hit her, a wave of energy washing over her body and leaving everything it touched feeling much stronger than before. More importantly, it also washed away some of the terror, making her realize that the rules had changed. On Mael she would have been in a horrible position, but here? Here she had the tools to fight back.

She gave a silent thanks to what could only have been Underdog for snapping her out of it and extended her claws, which she noticed were a further inch longer and somehow even sharper looking than before.

There was a flash of light from beside her, and Tess was barely able to make out a ray travelling through the air to strike Mama Bear right in the side, causing her to roar and charge at Ker.

“It’s all you.” He said calmly, “Her bark’s worse than her bite, just whittle her down and she’ll be dead in no time.”

That was all the time they had before Mama Bear reached Ker and swiped a massive paw at him, only to be blocked by a shield of light.

Tess gulped and ran forward, plunging her claws into Mama Bear’s side and pulling downwards, opening a larger gash than expected in the boss’s side.

Mama Bear reeled backwards, whirling to face Tess before Ker slammed into her, once again bringing her attention to him.

There was movement from the back of the room, monsters of all the dungeon’s species rising from the nests and throwing themselves into the fray, rushing at Ker. None of them ever so much as touched the experienced adventure, though, as more barriers of light rebuffed their attacks.

The longer the battle went on, the more confident Tess became. Ker wasn’t taking so much as a hit, and every time she hit Mama Bear, she could feel the parasites dealing more and more damage.

Not even a couple of minutes later, Mama Bear fell. She didn’t ever even try to remove the parasites planted upon her, and the damage quickly spiraled out of her control.

As she fell, so too did all her minions, the room filling with the rainbow haze of defeated monsters. And, while the minions didn’t drop anything, Mama Bear dropped her core, which Tess moved over to inspect.

It was the biggest Tess had seen so far, clocking in at roughly the size of a small orange. She debated absorbing it then and there but decided to put that on hold in favor of the Rewards Crystal. As such, she pocketed the core and went to the door, waiting for Ker to follow before going in.

“What are you aiming for?” He asked curiously, looking at the crystal with a smirk.

“The best unarmed Skill I can get.” She said, taking a breath and placing her hand on the crystal.

“And?” Ker prompted.

“Mythical version of Return to Sender.” Tess replied. “Seems pretty good.”

Ker chuckled. “You better believe it is. What do you want to do now?”

“I’m going to absorb this core and then I want to go through the dungeon enough times to get the next Rewards Crystal. We can just run through all the floors without fighting, so it shouldn’t take too long…right?”

Ker nodded. “Sounds good to me. Let’s do it.”

Fighterman481

There's probably an argument to be made for natural weapons not counting as unarmed combat but my counterpoint is...I decided they did. I could justify it further but I feel like it's not important so I'm not gonna. We'll just call it "because I think it's cool".

Also the stat disparity between Tess and Ellie is growing much faster than I expected. I'm tentatively placing Tess around level 15 once she's done with this dungeon, which puts her at 29 in all stats (or 290 for HP/Stamina/Mana). Ellie is level 5, and she's looking at 55/550 in all of her stats.

 

Ellie's stats are generally going to be around 5x that of Tess if they're at the same level, so the disparity only gets worse from here.

 

I'm going to stop talking now in case I edge into spoiler territory (the stat thing is just math once you know their levels, and while I guess the levels are technically spoilers they're honestly not important and are going to change from those projected values before it's even mentioned in story (probably)(yeah, from what I recall the levels change, it's not a big deal), so it doesn't really count), next time we'll be meeting with Ellie once again, so look forward to it!

 

And, as always, thanks for reading!