Levi slowed down his practice and came to a stop, giving a glance at the two boxes in the corner. They were empty, just like the last few times he had looked at them. He had been out of firewood and food for a few days. It was time to start heading deeper into the dungeon.

He had spent what had to be at least a week getting used to using Aecylic Empowerment. It had been slow work. The energy was addictive, each use pulling him in and begging him to let it out, flooding his body with power. If he didn’t have Concentrated Will Levi didn’t think he could have persevered. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he forcefully pulled as much Aecylic Energy as he could, and he wanted to keep it that way. The stuff was a deadly combination, dangerous and addicting.

But with a fair number of stat points in things like Willpower and his skills working in tandem he was able to push through the seductive allure. Leveling the skill up also helped, and when Aecylic Empowerment hit level ten and he got the third point in Aecylic Energy his practice started getting a lot more fruitful, allowing him to start moving with the skill active.

Now the skill was level twenty-four, and Levi had a feeling that he just needed that little bit more to push it over the edge for the next level. He needed to use it in battle.

With a final check of his condition, Levi moved back towards the secret doorway. He had achieved all he could in his current location. He needed more challenges. There were only so many times he could run back down to the lake, and even the trip along its other side got boring, that side bereft of a treasure chest, despite his hopes.

It had been a little while since he opened the door. A quick listen utilizing Improved Awareness didn’t tell him if there was anything on the other side, as if there was, it wasn’t making any noises he could hear. With Aecylic Empowerment going full throttle, he opened the door to an empty room. The corpses were where he had left them, nothing having come to disturb their repose. There was no sign of anything out of place. The only change was the firepit, with not even embers left from his last cooking session.

Levi wasn’t sure what to think about the undisturbed room. The dungeon was hard to predict, and the fact that even after multiple days nothing had disturbed the room could be either good or bad. Good that he didn’t have to immediately fight anything, but potentially bad if it meant he would have to fight more enemies at once later on, as opposed to a few in this room and a few in another. Such worries were ultimately meaningless though. He would defeat the dungeon no matter what it threw at him.

It took Levi quite a bit of time to inspect the exit of the room for traps. Part of that had to do with the entrance, and the fact that he couldn’t figure out where the arrows came from that killed the goblin in his earlier fight. He didn’t want to inspect it too closely for fear of the trap having reset, and looking from further away gave him nothing. That didn’t exactly inspire confidence he could detect any traps around the room’s exit.

He couldn’t stay still though, and his caution proved unnecessary, as he passed through unmolested. This time. Levi wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to come back and WHAM, trap. The dungeon was a sick fuck, and he would destroy it if he could. It had taken Susan from him.

Levi prowled forwards, briefly flaring Improved Awareness, straining his ears for the smallest of sounds. He wanted out of here, and it was time to show the dungeon who was boss. It was hard to get a handle on exactly how powerful he was now, but he was eager to find out. He never thought he was a violent person, but extreme circumstances called for extreme measures. And if that was bashing some heads in he was all too happy to oblige.

The tunnel he was in was much shorter than any of the others he had been in so far, and it wasn’t long before he heard voices. Goblin voices. He didn’t have a magic translator, but it didn’t take much to hear the voices’ agitation. Levi crept ahead, moving his feet toe ball heel. He was confident fighting any goblins, but there was no reason to give up his advantage of surprise.

Coming up to a slight bend in the tunnel, Levi cautiously poked his head around, peering into the room beyond.

He could only see part of the room, but from what he could see, it was much larger than where he came from. And it was filled with goblins. There was a face off in the center of the room, with two sides squaring off, seemingly prepared for battle. Levi smiled viciously, if they wanted to devolve into an internal struggle he wouldn’t stop them. Any of their own members they killed would only make it easier to mop up the rest. But while it was indeed an argument, it wasn’t quite as serious as he had first assumed, and Levi watched in fascination as a goblin holding a wooden stick walked up to the front of one side, facing off against a goblin from the other, this one huge, hulking over his stick wielding counterpart.

It looked like instead of a full-on brawl, the two sides would settle it with champions. Levi had his money on the large goblin, but contrary to his expectations, the one holding the stick came out on top. Easily. All he did was point his stick, or maybe it should be called a staff, at the other goblin and lighting came out, blasting the large goblin back towards his comrades.

After the one-sided battle there was a lot of talking going on, and right as Levi was deciding whether to just head right in with the proverbial ‘guns blazing’, a small contingent of goblins, including the goblin shaman, started moving towards him down the tunnel.

His brain quickly running calculations, Levi turned and ran. Quietly at first, then as he got further and further down the hallway his sprint got faster until he finally made it back to his original room. Luckily there were still no arrows fired at him as he came back in.

The plan was to ambush the group of goblins that were, presumably, coming down here to check on their comrades. The first step of Levi’s ambush plan was to clear the dead bodies off to one side, out of sight of the tunnel entrance. The tunnel itself didn’t have any good ambush points, it was too straight, so that left him with an ambush right as the goblins reached the room, and they would be a lot more likely to suspect an ambush if there were dead goblins lying about. So Levi cleared away the bodies before moving next to the passageway to lie in wait.

He couldn’t do much about the bloodstains on the floor. Hopefully their eyesight wasn’t good enough to see them. His eyes could only make out a difference if he knew what to look for, but the goblin contingent didn’t have torches, and he had no clue what their ability to see in lowlight was. The goblins from before did have a fire going, but that might have only been to cook their food and not for light. It did suggest they weren’t true darkness dwellers though, which was something.

Levi pressed himself against the wall next to the tunnel opening. He wanted to keep up Aecylic Empowerment, but he could only use it for so long and it was safer to use both Concentrated Will and Improved Awareness to accurately pinpoint the group of goblins coming towards him. He would only use Aecylic Empowerment for battle. Over his past week or so of practice he had gotten much better at resisting Aecylic Energy’s allure, but it was still a struggle sometimes, especially now, preparing for battle. The energy acted like a safety blanket. But he needed to learn to face things without it if the need arose. He couldn’t use it constantly, and he had to be ready if he was ever ambushed to activate it at a moment’s notice.

Or in this case, where he was the one ambushing. He couldn’t be sure, but Levi had a sneaking suspicion that when he was using Aecylic Empowerment he stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe not to senses like sight or hearing, but he would eat his hat if there wasn’t some way of detecting he was using the skill. It was too powerful to be able to also pass under the radar. Of course, for all he knew his brown hair turned blonde and started glowing. He didn’t have a mirror, and his hair wasn’t long enough for him to check otherwise.

Levi felt his anticipation growing as he finally sensed the goblins getting closer. He stilled his breathing, trying to blend into the stone wall he was leaning against. His first target was the goblin shaman. He had no clue exactly what magic it knew, but knowing any at all made it an unknown in need of elimination. He was confident he could take down a pack of regular goblins, like the ones he fought before, but dealing with a mage was new ground.

The goblins were cautious in their approach, slowly moving towards the chamber where their comrades were supposed to be located. Their leader, the goblin shaman D’tovilk, knew something was wrong when the forward guard didn’t come back yesterday. But he was growing older, and a few of the young upstarts were starting to challenge him for his position as leader of their clan. Stupid young ones, didn’t they know that was how their last leader, Grum, found his end? They wanted to lead a glorious hunt, slaughtering the Durn in the far rock field. But D’tovilk knew better. The others thought the Durn were stupid animals, devoid of intelligence. But D’tovilk had seen them plot, plan out an ambush, slaughtering his clansmen and his former leader. But the Durn shouldn’t have felt threatened by so small a group of his clansman. Something stunk.

D’tovilk cautiously led his band closer and closer to where the forward guard should have been. He couldn’t see much in the room. There was no fire, which suggested they had been gone for days at least. Only D’tovilk knew the secrets of fire. The others only knew how to feed the flame, lest it go out and they be forced to eat their meat raw. Which some preferred, but D’tovilk was a civilized goblin, thank you very much. He had communed with the ancestors and learned their knowledge. He tried to teach his brothers, but it was slow going. They were barely more than savages. Maybe the hunting group had gotten themselves killed by the Durn. Or perhaps just tripped on a rock and bashed their brains out. Goblins did that sometimes. D’tovilk would get to the bottom of it, and if he found them lazing about somewhere they would feel the business end of his staff.

D’tovilk raised his staff, muttering a few short syllables under his breath before the tip ignited into flame, shedding light before him. His flame should scare away any of the giant rats that sometimes came this way. Unlike goblins, they were true darkness dwellers, and light of any kind made them feel fear. But no noise was heard, and so D’tovilk continued his advance leading his brothers into the chamber. The guards were likely off loafing somewhere, he just…

Sensing movement, D’tovilk turned sharply, moving his improvised torch to intercept whatever dared assault his mighty self. He saw a strange limb, some sort of fleshy appendage formed into a fist, shooting towards him. The fist connected with his face, crushing his head and sending him flying across the room, smashing against the wall, and then the great goblin shaman D’tovilk Firecaller knew no more.