Leon slipped into the Dungeon under the cover of night. Emerging onto the first floor he drew his daggers and toggled his stealth skills. Entering the Dungeon had been an odd experience with his new sense, but once he got inside it was easier to ignore the twisting and rippling of space. It did not take Leon long to find his first victims.

Driving his daggers into the skull of a hyena and retreating before its pack even knew what was happening. Then circling back and paralyzing another, then another. The pack never had a single chance to even get a swing at him before they were all dead. Looking at the death he’d just wrought so easily and alone left Leon feeling a bit squeamish. When he worked with the group, he usually held himself back in the stealth department for the sake of coordinated team effort. This was his first time going full assassin mode. And it was disturbingly effective against Tier 1 creatures.

Nothing on floors 1 through 3 even gave a hint of noticing Leon before his daggers plunged into their bodies using Invasive Strike, Double Strike, Power Strike, Reinforce, and every bit of Small Blades Mastery in conjunction with Perception Filter and Stealth to basically make it nothing but a slaughter.

Leon killed his way down the floors methodically. Hunting every creature, he could and storing their corpses. Now that the Telepad was up and running, skins, bones, horns, and organs of the different animals would be sought after for many things; so, keeping what he killed seemed like a good Idea. Especially because he didn’t seem to be finding even a single treasure chest.

It was actually odd that he wasn’t finding any chests. Leon wasn’t sure why, but he wasn’t actually all that upset about it. At this moment he wasn’t here for the treasure. He was here for the raw number of kills. One thing he did discover quite quickly though was that his new senses made it extremely easy to pinpoint the exits and entrances of the floors. They were like giant twisty turny vortexes to his senses. After crossing the Ocean biome and descending to the Desert Biome Leon realized how turned around him and team Terra had been last, they’d entered here.

The slaughter of animals that were entirely helpless before him continued as Leon descended through the Dungeons floors like the shadow of death. When he reached the tenth floor and began making his way through the labyrinth Leon was pleased to discover that the passageway was actually filled with packs on packs of different animals at every bend in the road. If it weren’t for the fact that these creatures were Dungeon creations Leon would have felt bad about his wanton slaughter. But as it was, Leon cut his way through the creatures that couldn’t even perceive his presence without a single shred of remorse. It was just business.

Reaching the center of the Labyrinth Leon found the monster to be on high alert. Like it was expecting him. But even with whatever forewarning the boss monster had apparently Leon was still able to remain invisible to it. Taking his time to position himself behind the massive Gorilla Bear Moose, Leon struck like a snake from behind his prey with his enchanted daggers.

The monster responded instantly, backhanding the area where it thought its attacker would be standing. But Leon had already blinked out of range. Repositioning himself Leon repeated the procedure ten times before the monster began slowing. The daggers venom enchantment starting to take effect on its massive frame. After another five doses of the daggers venomous blades the monster collapsed to the ground, breathing but unable to move. Quickly and efficiently, Leon positioned himself behind the monster’s massive neck and rapidly drove his daggers into the base of its skull. Severing the brain stem and killing it instantly.

With the final monster of the tenth floor defeated. Leon dropped his stealth skills and brought up the notifications he’d ignored as he delved to this point. Raising an eyebrow at what he’d been given. It appeared that he would have to do everything again, just not using his stealth skills.

Congratulations

For killing 10 unaware targets within a single night, you have been awarded the Title [Cloak and Dagger] Effects: All stealth and concealment skills are 10x easier to level and learn. Passively enhances natural stealth capabilities and all senses by a small amount.

Congratulations

For killing 100 unaware targets within the span of a single night, you have been awarded the Title [Assassin] Effects: Daggers and dagger related skills cause more damage. Stealth and concealment skills are twice as effective, cost half as much mana, and are not affected by movement speed.

Congratulations

For killing a being a whole Tier above your own development alone and without aid you have been awarded the Title [Giant Slayer] Effects: An overall increase in of body, mind, and soul strength and resilience by 10%.

Congratulations

For killing a Tier 2 being whilst still in Tier 1 without that being ever being able to fight back or perceive you in any way, even while fully unrestrained, you have been awarded the Title [Assassin of Giants] Effects: Damage mitigation caused by Tiers are ignored up to one rank above your current Tier. Body, mind, and soul strength and resilience are enhanced by 10%

Congratulations

For completing every floor of a dungeon matching your own Tier alone and without assistance while killing at a minimum 100 monsters per floor on average, you have been awarded the Title [Solo Dungeoneer] Effects: All loot dropped by any Dungeon for you during solo runs is increased in value by 10%.

Leon was very impressed with what he’d just gained for a night’s work. With the effects of his Hero Title that was a 40% increase in overall strength, 20% more valuable loot from soloing the dungeon. A quadrupling of the effectiveness of his stealth skills, while reducing their already negligible mana cost to basically nothing. Yeah, it was a lot of extras added on that were directly beneficial. So far this had been a massively beneficial dive for Leon even though he didn’t feel any different.

Proceeding up to where the chest had been last time he’d completed the dungeon, Leon found a chest that was much larger than any he had ever seen before. Inside he found a whole 10 gold coins, five different Lore Book sets, one of them space lore. A skill book for a skill called active camouflage which was an actual skill and not a magical skill book that taught spells. And a Ring of Mana Regeneration.

Putting on the ring Leon felt it drawing in mana from the surroundings and shoving it into his mana channels at a faster rate than his body naturally achieved. That was useful. Then he looked down at the stairs to the next floor of the dungeon and contemplated whether or not it would be a good idea to head down farther into the depths. If his most recent experience with a Tier 2 monster had told Leon anything, it was that he could fairly easily circumvent their senses already, and that was before his stealth skills had been buffed by an unreasonable amount. If anything, it wouldn’t hurt to go check it out and see if he couldn’t get another Title or two from his solo dive. It had only taken him about five hours to get to this point. So, he still had a lot of time on his hands. Activating his stealth skills, Leon descended the stairs to see what the 11th floor would hold in store in for him.

As it turned out the 11th floor was more of a blank canvass. The very first room was like a crypt. The walls, floor and ceiling were tiled with a dark green stone filled with flecks of yellow. Aside from the coloring, the room was featureless. Just a fairly small box room with an entrance and no exit. Leon huffed after arriving in the empty room.

“I guess that this is as good a time as any to give you some gifts then.” He said before promptly dumping a set of ten embryos he’d made. Leon was starting from modern working his way backward through Earths creatures. He had already given the dungeon everything from modern earth that had not been extinct at the time Earth got exploded. He’d already started on the most recently extinct species and was working his way down the line.

After giving up his gift of appreciation Leon went back up to the tenth floor and used his port-stone to teleport to the beginning of the first floor. He hadn’t gotten the titles he came here to get tonight. And that had been because he’d done everything the safe way. Now he was going to run through the dungeon guns blazing and not hiding at all.

Leon’s second run through the Dungeon was very different from his first. He was currently the only person in the Dungeon and for some reason the second he dropped stealth completely the game was on. It was like every predator and every food animal in the dungeon had decided that he needed to be brought to justice for his previous slaughtering of them without them being able to fight back.

A pride of lions charged Leon growling and roaring while hyenas cackled in the tall grass surrounding them. His keen senses easily spotting them all as they tried to sneak up under the cover of the lion assault. The first lion reached Leon and he ducked to the side while driving one of his daggers into its throat. Its growling cut off by wet gurgling as it flew past him with barely anything holding head onto its neck anymore.

Leon had no time to waste as multiple lions launched themselves at him. He blinked just before they touched him, landing atop one in the rear driving both daggers into its skull with crunch as the bones of its skull gave way to the sharped steel of his blades. Whirling to the side Leon launched a Horrific Missile into the center mass of another lion, causing its ribcage to practically explode from the impact of the supersonic projectile. Dodging left and right Leon slashed, hacked, and shot every challenger. The effort of dodging and attacking was not as taxing as it could have been. The attacking hordes of monsters on the first floor were significantly outclassed but they did manage to swat and batter Leon around quite a bit by the end of the fight.

Leon soon found himself surrounded by a myriad of corpses, some disemboweled, some decapitated and others simply pierced through in a few spots on their bodies. Leon’s Knull Armor was covered in blood and chunks of flesh from rolling and dodging throughout the battlegrounds. As he began the mundane task of dropping the corpses into his inventory Leon realized something odd.

He hadn’t really thought about it all that much since starting his scholarship with the Dungeoneers Guild. But Leon had been a man from the 21st century on Earth. He hadn’t killed anything bigger than an insect in his life before. In fact, he was damn sure that killing anything before he’d come here would have felt immoral and he would have hesitated to even fight in a controlled environment before. In this life Leon hadn’t experienced any hesitation when he’d first encountered a Dungeon spawn. He’d simply began killing without any discernible shift in his own mentality. Even the event with the furby’s hadn’t really fazed him all that much. The realization of all of this was actually a little more profound to Leon than anything else he’d experienced since arriving on this new world. It also brought up a lot of questions for him. Had he always had this killer instinct in his previous life? Was it part of being a Paragon Human? Was it the combat training he’d had for the past several years? Whatever it was Leon was pretty sure that he shouldn’t be feeling so uncaring about the mass of dead corpses he had created through extreme violence. Now that he really thought about it his heart rate hadn’t even gone up all that much and he hadn’t even felt fear at all in a long while.

Contemplating his own existence as he collected the corpses then opened the chest at the floor’s decent stairwell. Leon didn’t even give anything in the chest a glance. He just stored it all and headed down to the second floor.

Again, Leon was swarmed by all life on the floor. Nothing relented and even the fish in the ponds launched themselves at him when he passed close by. Surprising him with some of the massive varieties that were present. A few bears managed to swat Leon into a couple of walls, and one even managed to bite down on his forearm. Though the teeth didn’t make it through his armor the pressure of the bite was still there, and he’d been jerked around for a while until he managed to cut off the things head.

The battle in the cave Biome was somewhat even more messy than the last the last floor. Leon had no idea how long he was taking in these fights. But he’d pretty much killed everything that moved on the second floor after what felt like hours of being hounded from all sides. Even the things that were normally not aggressive had joined in on the fun. Again, Leon collected the corpses and proceeded down to the Jungle floor.

The Jungle floor was actually difficult. Mainly due to the giant snakes, pythons, and anacondas attacking in sync with leopards, pumas, and even elephants. Without his Quantum Blink skill Leon was absolutely sure that he would have been killed by the onslaught. He nearly ran out of mana during the fighting several times because of having to rapidly relocate many times. It was only thanks to his newfound capacity to maintain Meditation and assist Corey with drawing mana into his core while also being active that he actually made it through the battle unscathed.

The Ocean floor greeted Leon with an entry area full of seals, sea lions, walruses, and thousands of birds. The birds were not much of a problem, but them attacking at the same time as the lumbering waves of bluberous attackers made the first little beach area a challenge. The Saltwater gators and crocs didn’t help either. Crossing the open water without stealth was a no-go for Leon. As strong and fast as he was, he didn’t fancy himself as an able underwater combatant. Stealthing across the water onto the Island Leon was greeted by even more crocs, and gators along with various monitor lizards, Komodo Dragons, sea snakes, and eels. The Ocean Biome had plenty to throw at him.

The Desert Biome had a ridiculous plethora of animals to throw at Leon. Camels, Bears, foxes, dingo’s, wolves, snakes, lizards, birds, and insects. Leon battled his way through the fifth floor and was surprised when he was actually injured by a camel kicking him with enough force to send him flying nearly thirty feet and into a cliff face where a boulder had shaken loose and landed on his leg. A frantic teleportation and Lay on Hands had fixed himself right up, but Leon learned to be more careful from that experience.

When the monsters finally stopped coming Leon was actually panting with the exertion he had been forced to rely upon. His only saving graces was the facts that he could keep himself from being pinned down with Quantum Blink and accelerate his mana recovery rate enough to keep up with his expenditures as long as he paced himself.

The next floor was even worse. The number of animals that were large enough to actually be a threat was staggering. Leon was learning a lot about managing his resources by fighting hordes of animals that were intent upon his demise. Leon wasn’t sure why the dungeon was sending everything it had at him on every floor. But It was turning out to be very beneficial training.

Upon reaching the 10th floor Leon was fairly certain that he had killed at a minimum over 10000 animals. Even with his now ridiculous mental capacity he was having trouble keeping track. The labyrinth was filled with every animal species planet earth had to offer that was over fifty pounds. Leon fought his way through adopting new tactics as he went. He started flashing Perception Filter on and of rapidly throughout the fighting. Something about flashing it on and off seemed to disorient some of the creatures he was fighting, and it gave him just enough time in a couple of cases to rip and tear his way through the opposition.

Reaching the end of the Labyrinth and meeting the monster that guarded the stairwell. The Boss monster of the 10th floor. Leon had a fight on his hands that he wasn’t expecting. There wasn’t just one of the monsters. There were 10 of them. And they roared in unison the second he entered their perception. Tearing after him with such aggression and speed that Leon’s heart rate spiked for the first time in a long time due to a tiny bit of fear.

The Tier 2 monsters were met with Horrific Missiles to their faces. Which surprisingly did a lot more damage than the last time Leon had used the skill on one of them. His Assassin of Giants Title was at work, Leon hadn’t really thought there would be that much of difference in damage. Tier damage mitigation hadn’t seemed like it would be such a big deal but apparently it really was. His first Horrific Missile practically one shot the leading monster. Tearing a huge chunk of face off and breaking off one of its horns entirely.

The battle that followed was a frantic series of dodging, teleporting, shooting, and stabbing. Leon found himself launched through the air and having to heal his own broken ribs or dislocated body parts multiple times. But after a long period of combat Leon finally drove his daggers into the brain of the last living thing on the 10th floor as he fell to the ground feeling exhausted. He smiled to himself as he pulled up the notifications that had popped up during the second run that he’d ignored.

Congratulations

For standing alone against 100 opponents of equal Tier level and at least 50% your weight and defeating them all, you have been awarded the Title [One Against Horde] Effects: Physical strength, speed, endurance, and resilience are enhanced.

Congratulations

For standing alone against 1000 opponents of equal Tier level that were your equals in weight class and defeating them all, you have been awarded the Title [One Against Swarm] Effects: Physical strength, speed, endurance, and resilience are enhanced by 10%

Congratulations

For standing alone against 10 opponents of a Tier above your own and not only escaping with your life but defeating them all, you have been awarded the Title [One Man Army] Effects: 50% overall enhancement of your Mind, Body, and Soul’s strength and resilience. Regeneration skills, Titles, or Traits are enhanced significantly. All combat skills are 10x easier to learn and level.

Congratulations

For killing over 20000 Tier 1 creatures in a single 24-hour period you have been awarded the Title [Slayer] Effects: Inherently deal more damage to all being of equal Tier and take less damage from beings of equal Tier. Minor enhancement of your Mind, Body, and Soul’s strength and resilience.

Nine new titles out of a day’s work! Leon felt normal. But he knew he’d gotten drastically stronger. Tier 2 monsters would be a slight challenge now. Tier 3 were still off the table. But he could comfortably fight in weight class that was supposed to be above his own. The only thing to really do now was try and advance his Tier. There were other titles out there to get. But he didn’t know what all of them were or their requirements. For now, he was going to focus on absorbing the Tier 2 mana all around him before heading back up to the surface and getting something to eat. It shouldn’t take him very long to get to the next Tier if he could come down here all the time.