A spiralling descent of magic and colours he did not know the name of assailed him as he swirled and unfurled through what felt like a small tube.

Then Jaune was unceremoniously dumped on a hard wooden floor.

For a few moments, he just lay there, trying not to throw up. After miraculously succeeding, he righted himself and looked around.

He was currently in a shabby shed. An outpost maybe?

Beneath him the stone circle was still glowing purple. He got off of it; no sense in making the same journey back. On the right of the circle he'd come from was another one. Absolutely identical.

Jaune stood up and inspected his surroundings, noting that the source of light was an oil lamp. Maybe the Fishmen weren't as primitive as he'd thought. Or the fishman had been just a slave or worked under a species possessing higher intellect. Jaune felt his body unwind as he started to think, and took in the shed in its entirety.

A wooden tile floor, the two teleportation arrays, shelves stacked with dried fruit and meat. His eye twitched at that one. He'd eaten another sapient being for nothing.

"Not for nothing. I couldn't have known."

And the most important part was the fact that the shed didn't have a door. The only way to access it were the teleportation arrays.

Jaune would have honestly creamed himself (whatever that meant) if he had found these babies in a non-hostile environment, but he couldn't really sit down and study the things in enemy territory. Or could he? There was enough food here for at least a week, but sadly there was no water. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, though.

He decided he would return here and study it if he found a reliable supply of water and food. Maybe some clothing and medicine as well, he thought as his body shivered and his mind swam from a slight fever. He was still running around in only pants after all.

Jaune sighed, stood up, and started packing up the food to take with him. He really wanted to just stay here and maybe wait to get rescued or recuperate from his bad condition. It was pretty warm here compared to the caves.

But he knew he couldn't. If he waited, fear would grip his heart and not let him go any further. He was familiar with himself after all.

He gripped the trident. It had thankfully not been impaled into his body by the rough teleportation in his sweaty palms. He slung the improvised bag with food over his shoulder and entered the teleportation array that he hadn't been through yet.

The moment he got his feet under him, Jaune crouched in a defensive position, trident planted so that if any enemy was already running towards him, they would impale themselves on it.

First things first, identify his surroundings.

Another cave like the one before the shed, same mushrooms bringing light, and almost identical sand under his feet. Just that this sand, if possible, felt even finer.

The cave was about as big as a standard living room. Well, maybe not so standard since the Arc living room was quite huge, sometimes having to hold as many as nine people.

As he was looking around, he noted that this time the circle under his feet hadn't glown purple. Not important right now. His blood froze when he noticed two still shapes hidden in the corridor exiting the cave. They weren't moving towards him but he still entered the teleportation array again to be whisked back into the shed, where he could devise a plan against two enemies.

The array didn't activate.

The young mage just crouched there completely still, a complete opposite to the thoughts running through his head.

The Fishmen still hadn't noticed him, he deduced by their unmoving forms. That was good. He didn't know how he would kill two at the same time. He almost flinched at how fast his thoughts immediately went to killing. It was do or die though, wasn't it? He would have chuckled, if not for obvious reasons.

The first fishman had been armed, while he hadn't been, though now he had a trident he didn't really know how to use and a dagger he didn't really know how to use. Still better than nothing, but could he challenge the two fishman with his better than nothing?

He could, but it would be dumb. He needed to calm down and think. There must be some way to sway the odds in his favour.

What did he know about Fishmen? They screeched loudly, their fish parts were resistant to magic, their human parts not, they were sapient yet not particularly intelligent. His brow furrowed as he thought of how the fishman had run at him, trident raised above his head. Inexperienced in combat?

No, he couldn't label an entire species by one specimen. Maybe the one he had encountered was particularly inexperienced, or dim.

Now what did he know about these two fishman? He couldn't make out much since they were hiding in the shadows, but he clearly saw the silhouette of a trident in the hands of one and what appeared to be a net in the hands of the other. The one with the net, incidentally the one standing on the right, also had a dagger slung in his loincloth. He couldn't see if the other one was similarly equipped.

What to do, what to do...

He didn't know how much time had passed. It felt like an eternity. It had probably been five minutes when he finally came up with a plan, even if it was a bad one.

He had read a lot of books about adventuring. Sure, some had been of the more made-up category, but one thing they sometimes agreed on was throwing a stone to make a noise somewhere to lure an enemy there so you could either pick off him or his now lone partner.

Only problem being, he didn't have any stones. He could try to rip one off of the walls here, but that would create enough noise that they would immediately find him. Maybe. They were apparently half-blind, but he couldn't base his plan on a hope that they were also half-deaf.

What did he have that was hard enough to make a clear sound once it hit something. His weapons? No, throwing away your weapons was a very dumb move. The thought of magic, of course, led him towards his magic.

Immediately he tried to make an arcane bolt as stealthily as possible. It was a slow formation, the almost electrical green inside of it muted. Then he shot it off at the corridor behind the Fishmen.

A loud smashing sound resounded from the corridor, making both forms perk up, stones clattering on the ground. They then proceeded to walk towards the disturbance, tridents held out competently before them. Together.

Thank you books, you have failed me once again.

After a while, they came back, but this time stood in their previous positions noticeably more alert than before. Shit, he had made them actually take their jobs seriously for a while, making an ambush even harder. He tried stepping on the array behind him again.

Nope.

Time for plan B then. B for bolt. He formed one as powerful as he could and shot it with pinpoint precision at the knee cap of the fishman with the net. Simply by his weapon choice, he was more dangerous.

He almost retched as he heard the sound of a kneecap breaking for the second time in as many days.

He immediately started forming a second bolt as the fishman with the trident started running towards him. He crouched down, his own trident held before him.

When the enemy was near enough, he fired off his bolt at the midsection of the seemingly competent trident-wielder. Only for the fishman to jump into the air like some demented acrobat, do a flip over the bolt, and hold the trident above his head in a move worthy of a Spartan action hero.

Or at least it would have been if he didn't impale himself on Jaune's weapon when he landed. The corpse fell to the ground, and Jaune's arms not strong enough to support the entire weight.

"I swear to god, all of these creatures are absolutely autistic."

As the immediate danger passed so did his hyper focus and he started recognising other stimuli.

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Like, for example, the sound the cripple lying on the ground was making. Wait. Jaune furrowed his brows. The sound was way too powerful to be coming out of just one throat.

His eyes widened when he saw the corridor he had thrown an arcane bolt into earlier literally start bursting with Fishmen holding up all kinds of weapons, not caring that they were stabbing each other, and nearly frothing at the mouth.

Four, five, no more. From the noise, it was probably a number approaching a dozen. Instead of standing his ground like some dumb melee class pleb, Jaune prayed to all gods the teleportation array was working again, hauled the dead fishman under its armpits, and dragged him along into the circle.

Thankfully he found himself back in the shed the next second.

After he stopped thinking about the dozen or so Fishmen that were going to be coming for his ass in approximately five minutes when the array stopped recharging or whatever it did, the first thing he noticed was the fact that he was thirsty.

He turned to the corpse in his arms and made a disgusted face at the watery, clear blood that had seeped onto his upper body. Unfortunately, this was the best out of two options considering what other fluids he had available.

After he was done, the mage started carrying out his plan. A plan that had come quite easily, and was likelier to work than the stupid throw-a-stone-to-distract-them plan.

The teleportation arrays were only big enough for two grown adult humans, or three Fishmen, and had a cooldown of about five minutes. This meant that even if on the other side there were a hundred monsters with the wish to kill him, he would only have to fight three at a time in hopefully five-minute intervals. It would suck if the Fishmen knew how to recharge the arrays faster.

First things first, Jaune started gathering all the food in there. It didn't make any sense to fight here, so he would have to go back to the first cave system, and he didn't want to find out that the Fishmen were smart enough to starve him out by dying of hunger in a week.

After he was done, he dragged the body towards the array leading to the empty cave and hopped on, teleporting himself to his destination.

It was the smell that hit him first, but he didn't budge from his spot, noting the direction he was facing.

He was looking at the corridor leading to the now-sealed entrance.

Jaune found the source of the smell fairly easily. It was the now rotting corpse of the first fishman he'd killed and left here to warn him if any others came.

He would leave it there for now. Not that he particularly wanted to touch the decomposing thing with a ninety-foot pole, its slippery intestines spread out on the ground and the congealed blood mixing with the sand.

No thank you.

If he were a fishman, what would he do after coming through the circle? Go through the corridor after discerning there was nobody in the room he arrived in.

Ok.

Jaune threw the corpse he had brought with him on the wall opposite of the passage, the place the fishman would not be looking at after they arrived. Probably.

Then Jaune steeled himself and started shimmying behind the corpse, trying to ignore the sharp pricks of the stone wall stabbing into his back. Once he was fully concealed behind the bigger-than-him fishman, he started waiting, waiting, and waiting.

The thing that tipped him off to the arrival of the Fishmen was their screeching. He noted that teleportation did not cause a sound as it activated. Now was the time to see if his gamble paid off.

After a few more screeches, he felt more than saw the Fishmen start walking down the hall. Counting down five seconds, the time he himself needed to arrive at the halfway point of the tunnel, he slowly extracted himself from behind the body. He saw a fishman standing before the array, back to him. Must have been there to guard the circle. Stupid of them, they shouldn't have split up.

Jaune pulled out the dagger and slowly crept up behind the thing, made only easier by the sand beneath his feet. He could have stuck his hand before its mouth to prevent its scream, but that would have likely incapacitated his hand, as the thing would bite into it with its serrated teeth. A weird thought to have, Jaune found as he stuck the dagger into the Fishman's throat.

Surprisingly it did not scream, only gurgle a bit. He slowly lead the dying thing to the ground as to not make any noise.

The fishman was sadly equipped with only a trident and a dagger, nothing he didn't already have.

"RRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."

His eardrums vibrated with pain and he threw himself backwards, forming an arcane bolt over his shoulder. The fishman that had scouted the entrance had returned. No, he saw another silhouette behind him. The two others that had scouted the entrance had returned and were unsurprisingly not happy about finding their buddy dead.

They then promptly expressed their unhappiness with Jaune by throwing a spear at him. He threw himself on the ground to dodge. While this was happening, the first one started running at him, the second trying to flank to the left.

After two of these fights the panic that had hit him back then was mostly gone. Jaune was still scared shitless, but not to a point where he might actually shit his pants.

He threw an arcane bolt at the first one who was coming at him with a sword, but at the last second swerved the bolt to the left, hitting the other fishman slightly behind the first in the face, staggering its progress.

For an amateur at the weapon, Jaune thought his stab into the fishman's face was fairly on point. A trident had a longer reach than a sword, after all, which decided the fight between two people who didn't know their weapons.

But he wasn't an amateur with a sword. He was a novice, making him leagues above people who didn't have a skill. Because of that he largely ignored the last closing in enemy to hurriedly pick up the sword from the fishman's slackening fingers and discarded the trident. He threw himself into a roll to avoid a trident stabbing at his earlier position.

Righting himself, familiar weapon in hand, Jaune cut diagonally at his foe and when the monster parried it, kicked it in the stomach with all his might. He threw it on the ground, making it very easy to just step up and stab into its heart, or where he assumed the heart was.

The fight exhausted his stamina, even if it'd only been twenty seconds since he had assassinated the first enemy. Jaune fell on the ground panting. Not only from physical exhaustion but also from the mental one.

When he looked around the cave, now fairly full with the five corpses. he couldn't help but think of how many more hiding places he now had.

-/-

Jaune hadn't known how much he'd missed having a sword in the last two days until he held one in his hands, easily slicing through the last fishman of the newest group sent to challenge him.

The fights had been getting easier and harder at the same time. Easier since now, equipped with a weapon he had a skill for in one hand and an arcane bolt in the other, he was strong enough to kill three Fishmen in combat even if he didn't get the drop on one.

These fights the last two days had also been his first experience fighting in melee. Sparring with mum or Ray didn't really count as real combat experience considering they weren't trying to kill him, so the more he fought, the better he knew what to do the next time.

If getting double-teamed, try to keep the one attacking you at the moment between yourself and the other one. Don't try fancy acrobatics; you couldn't dodge mid-air. And so on.

On the other hands, bruises and cuts accumulated on his body, his breathing grew increasingly laborious, and the cuts that he received due to his tiredness began to itch. He was also running out of mana.

Despite all that, his determination soared with every enemy he cut down. Jaune Arc was not going to die in some random-ass dungeon simply because a random-ass Ursa wandered into a zone it really had nothing to do in.

Then, the enemies stopped coming. The mage had gotten pretty good at judging the timing between when the groups would come in. Once they didn't for once after five parties, he was relieved at the chance to maybe rest, but he couldn't let himself fall asleep. After some thought, a miraculous feat for his feverish mind, he concluded there were three possibilities.

One, an intelligent commander of the Fishmen had appeared and was trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

Two, they were simply planning on letting him starve or dehydrate on this side and if he entered the array he would be ambushed. A good strategy. The blood of his recently deceased enemies would soon start to coagulate and he would have nothing to drink by tomorrow. After two days he would not be in any condition to fight and would probably die.

Three, they had simply run out of bodies to throw at him. Not likely. If Jaune himself could wipe out all the forces of a dungeon, even a supposedly weak one, they wouldn't be so feared.

The most likely option was that what he had encountered was simply a garrison, and they had been too dumb to actually send a messenger to their base camp, or boss room or whatever, to tell them they needed reinforcements and that there was an enemy in the dungeon. And had then simply sent everyone they had at him, leaving the garrison unmanned.

Jaune sweat-dropped. It was truly a state of affairs that this was the likeliest option, simply because he himself had seen how feeble-minded the creatures truly were.

But was he willing to gamble on those chances and fall asleep here? That was the question.

It was starting to reek too.

He would no doubt get used to it. Humans were adaptable, but before he could go rest he would have to place a few noisy traps to wake him up if any Fishmen came despite the odds.

Maybe some pile of corps-

In that moment, despite the fact Jaune had gained two points in constitution, his body gave out due to extreme exhaustion and he fell to the ground unconscious.

-/-

Jaune woke up few hours later, thankfully being alive enough to wake up, amidst what looked like a slaughterhouse dedicated to killing fish-man hybrids. Their glassy eyes stared at him, accusatory, even in death.

Judging him for taking so many lives in such a short span.

Getting angry for some inexplicable reason, Jaune sprang up, roared, and threw one of the tridents laying about at the head of the nearest corpse, spearing it directly in its eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, you made me do it!"

Jaune sank to the ground and almost started crying, but stopped himself, since he didn't really have the fluid to spare. He dragged himself towards the wall with the least blood on it, propped himself up in a sitting position, and started listlessly practising arcane bolt.

"Seek power now so that in the future you do not regret not having it indeed, huh."

He didn't remember where he'd read the quote. He read a lot of books, even if access to literature was a bit faulty in a small village like Aschen.

He fondly remembered saving up his allowance for a book he had seen the peddler bring the last time. He couldn't believe these days were only one week gone.

It seemed like an impossibly long time.

His mana ran out. Jaune closed his eyes and started imagining fighting against an imaginary opponent. At some point, he fell asleep again, plagued by nightmares and insecurities.