The dungeon this time was similar to the time I woke up hungover. Gray rock walls that were slightly cooler than the outside world but not too cold. In the middle of the room was the monster, a white bird about the size of a crow. In such a cramped space, I doubted its ability to fly well. It didn’t even move, watching my every move with its eyes while sitting still.

I set down the bludgeon off to the side so my shield would be ready if it counterattacked then readied my spear for a lunge. Right as I thrust the spear, the bird flapped its wings and lifted off, dodging my spear. There it somehow hovered in the air just by stretching out its wings. No wind nor was there any kind of movement or flapping of its wings beyond the initial time. It’s as if the bird was frozen in time mid-flight.

Once, twice, twice I tried skewering it on the end of my spear but every time it missed as it dodged in every direction, up down, left, right, and it even backed away a few times to avoid my attacks. Not once did it ever try to get close to me or attack. The spear obviously wasn’t working out so I dropped it and picked up the bludgeon. As fast as it was, dodging a bludgeon at close range was unlikely.

Keeping my shield up, I approached the bird. In response, it flew over my head and got behind me. Before I could turn around to face it, I felt a stinging pain on my back. I flipped around and swung my bludgeon at random, missing the bird but forcing it to back off. Blood dripped down from its talons. When I was focused on keeping my shield up to block any attacks from the front, it used its mobility to claw my back.

This was no easy opponent. Even if I killed this thing, I wouldn’t want to stick around to wait for another to spawn or continue onwards to fight more instantly. No wheat grinding, no fishing, and not even trying to get to the rest area. What was the point of staying in this dungeon any further?

If it wasn't for the fact that the monster was currently blocking the exit to the dungeon, I'd have already bailed out. I felt like a cornered rat as I couldn't leave nor could I go further into the dungeon. And if I let my guard down for even a second, or rather kept my guard up too much, it'd strike me where I couldn't stop it. Mobility and intelligence was this monster's quirk.

Last time it acted because I got too close and had my shield up in front of my eyes, blocking my eyesight. Perhaps going towards it without the shield in the way would make it move. Or I could use the spear again and try to herd it to the side by aiming slightly to the side to push it to dodge the opposite way. Yet, given the opportunity, I would rush out of the dungeon so I couldn't just drop the bludgeon. Would be nice if I had some way to keep the weapon I wasn't using strapped to my back or waist until I needed it.

I picked up the spear off the ground and kept the bludgeon in my off hand with my shield. Then wave the spear around in front of me, not even bothering to thrust with it. The bird dodged to the left so I walked around the perimeter of the room to the right, continuing to wave it just to the left of the monster. Right as I managed to get halfway to the exit, the bird suddenly stopped dodging to the left and flew above the spear. Then it flew straight towards my face with its talons facing forward.

They got bigger and bigger in my eyes. I lifted up my spear and bludgeon as fast as I could and just barely stopped its charge. Not that it hit me or my weapons. Instead, it flew up and tried to get me from a blind spot again. Thankfully I was on the edge of the room with my back pretty much pressed against the wall so it couldn’t get at me. It flew all around me, trying to find a gap while I used the spear and bludgeon to guard each of these areas. Meanwhile, I started sliding towards the exit carefully whenever it paused in the air.

After what seemed like an hour-long stalemate, I took a step backward and slipped out of the dungeon without any more trouble. Back on the surface where I no longer had to fear getting my eyes gouged out or talons scratching my body, I sat down and took a short rest in the grass. I wasn’t the only one there, Matt from Jerry’s group was also seated on the other side of the dungeon entrance.

“Bad luck with what the dungeon threw at you? Same as me. At some point, you get so used to the bullshit the dungeon throws at you occasionally that you hop right out as soon as you see a sign that things won’t be easy. Unusually hot temperatures, constant rain inside the room, armored monsters, monsters not visible immediately, and more. The list goes on and on, endlessly some people say,” said Matt.

What he said reminded me of the dungeon with the snakes hiding in holes and the lizard one with the constant cold. They really were unfair without the right preparations and luck. Before I just brute forced my way through such obstacles and didn’t even consider the fact that I could leave and come back with everything different. Without the knowledge taught to me by Jerry and Chris, would I have still left that dungeon or insist on fighting that bird? It was definitely worth consulting the three of them whenever I could.

“Hey Matt, should I get a belt or something to keep the weapon I’m not using on my back or something? It’s kinda hard to fight while keeping track of both of these,” I asked. That was a pretty major issue in the previous fight as I couldn’t really use my shield when I was trying to leave.

“Just use a strip of cloth and tie it to yourself. Might as well just tear a strip of cloth from your shirt or something for it. They’re pretty much rags already with all those stains and wear. I’ve got a knife so I can help you out with that right now,” said Matt while walking towards me.

The problem with that is the dagger right below my shirt and if it’s not long enough to tuck in, I won’t be able to store things in my shirt. In fact, I should’ve gotten a bag or pockets on my pants. Would be worth checking into later. Overall, I couldn’t let him help me with this and had to do it myself, preferably in the bushes or in the dungeon. Could just say I’m going to the bathroom or doing it later.

“No thanks, I can handle it myself,” I said to stop him.

“Alright, suit yourself. I’m heading back inside to see if I can get a good setup,” said Matt while walking back into the dungeon. Surprisingly how easily he gave up after I said his help wasn’t needed. Wouldn’t people normally insist on helping while thinking I was only saying that to be polite or out of pride?

Either way, the only blades I had were the dagger and the spear, with the spear being a bit awkward to cut cloth with and a bit dull on the sides. Between the dungeon and the bushes, I chose to re-enter the dungeon. If I faced anything flying or some other shit, I’d immediately exit instead of trying to fight it first. Then use the time until the next spawn to whip up a makeshift belt from my sleeves or pants to preserve my shirt’s tuckability.

Despite my injuries, fresh on my back and my still healing shoulder, I entered the dungeon once again and found my surroundings to be brown. Felt more like dirt than rock as if I was just below the surface. It even felt a bit damp and soft like the ground after a light rainfall. As for the monster, it was a rat. Not a ratman like before, but a normal rat like the normal lizard. Anything but normal with its huge size but otherwise indistinguishable from its animal counterpart. In fact, it was larger than the lizards who were the size of a small to medium-sized dog. This ratbeast was the size of a large dog.

Part of me wanted to bail right then and there because such a big rat was bound to be strong. At the same time, it had seemingly no special characteristics so it should have been possible to kill it with a well-placed spear. A loud squeak could be heard as the massive rat scurried towards me. I dropped the club again and readied the spear before me. Like the lizards before, the rat came to me without any reservations and ran right into the spear all by itself. I positioned it so it would hit the spear with its head and dropped it right as I felt any impact to keep myself from shredding my arm and shoulder from the force.

The result was a still very much alive rat with a spear sticking out of its forehead squirming all over the place and trying to pull it out. Which meant my spear could break at any moment if it even rolled a bit funny. Left with no other choice, I picked up my club and walked up to the beast. It paused its struggle to snarl at me but was unable to stop me as I bashed it on the head just above where the spear was lodged. The impact caused the rat to fall onto its side and violently shake its limbs.

Still wasn’t dead. To finish the job, I walked over and slammed the bludgeon hard on its shoulder to stop its front leg from moving so much. Then pulled out the spear from its forehead, stepping on its chest for the leverage to pull it out. Even with all that it still breathed so I stabbed deep into its exposed chest with the spear multiple times. Finally, it was dead.

For some reason, I decided to stay in the dungeon instead of leaving. The monster was surprisingly easy to beat despite its size even if it did take some time to fully kill. And the weapons provided to me managed to do quite well, suffering barely any damage, though the spear was now covered in blood and guts.

The bludgeon was pretty much an upgraded version of the tree branch I had yesterday. It was a tree log carved into an easy to handle shape that was topheavy enough to deal serious damage when swung around. However, what set it apart from a mere stick, was the two strips of metal nailed around the top of it in a circle. While thin, the metal helped keep the bludgeon intact while making it harder and dish out more of a punch. The concept was similar to the rings around a barrel.

While the spear was a long, rounded strip of wood with a metal top. Wasn’t too sure how it kept on the end, but I suspected it had something to do with either nails or strong glue. Whatever kept it together wasn’t visible on the outside. The blade was a triangle that looked somewhat like an arrowhead but a bit longer and rounded on the sides. Both the wood and spearhead were able to survive the impact from the rat’s head which made them quite durable. For spare weapons, they were of good quality.

Some time passed and no new rats spawned so I sat down and decided to work on either a belt for his bludgeon or shoulder strap for the spear. My sleeves were a bit thin and hard to work with so I took off my pants and readied the dark dagger. Such a menacing weapon’s first use was in amateur tailoring. Just the thought of that amused me as I started cutting from the bottom up in a spiral pattern. The hardest part had been keeping the resulting strip of cloth from being too thick or thin and in the end, it was very uneven.

In the process, I lost the bottom part of one of the legs on my pants and gained a new belt. After all, in this dungeon, I’d be using the spear first then the bludgeon. Immediately, I tested it out by tying the bludgeon to my waist and taking a few steps forward. It did get in the way of walking a bit but more or less worked as intended. At that moment, I was ready for anything. Unfortunately, nothing happened at that moment nor the next, nor for a while.

At least half an hour passed before a new rat spawned from the wall. First came a hand that was more of a claw popping out of the wall from seemingly nowhere and scratching around. Then came another trying to grab onto something to get the leverage to pull the rest of its body through. By that time, I had gotten up and prepared my spear as I heard the scratching noise from these claws.

A head phased through the wall as if the wall didn’t even exist and screeched at me. Then a thought occurred to me, “Do I really have to wait for it to come out?” And like that, I approached the half-born beast and planted my spear right in its eye.

The beast wailed constantly as I twisted the spear and gouged out its eye. Then I did the same to the other eye, blinding it. I could have shoved it even deeper into the eye socket, stabbing into its brain and killing it. But I wasn’t sure if that would count as killing it properly and allow me to collect any loot. After all, it wasn’t done spawning. Wounding it would have to do until it came out completely.

Five minutes of constant screeching later, the rat had made it into the room fully and was struggling to do anything as it bled from its eye sockets. I knocked the beast onto its side with my foot and it offered up no resistance. To give it a clean death rather than muck up my spear again, I pulled the dagger out from my shirt and used it to slit the rat’s throat. As soon as the dagger cut its throat open, a cascade of blood pooled out and the rat ceased its struggle.

Another monster was down in a way that almost felt unfair. Then again, switching places the monster would offer me no mercy in a disadvantaged situation. Many more monsters would die by my hands in the coming days and from their flesh would come the resources I needed to live my life fully.

The next rat came after fifteen or so minutes and I repeated my actions from before. It was a most effective way of dispatching the monster. Incapacitating them from pain by wounding them and then killing them while they were down.

Ten minutes was all it took for the next one. Then five minutes. Four, three, two, and finally one rat entered the room every minute and never sooner. The small room filled up with giant rats that began rapidly decaying and disappearing at a speed just barely keeping up with the rate new corpses joined the floor.

It wasn’t until the number of dead rats climbed to one hundred did an item finally drop. A gray ore like what I had found yesterday, possibly iron or some other similar ore. Just one ore wasn’t enough and I killed more and more. Such little rewards for so much death, that was the wheat grind method. However, there was pretty much no risk for these rewards and my skill with the spear got better and better, at least better at hitting stationary targets in a weak spot properly.

After two hundred more rats, I finally got a second ore that seemed exactly the same as the first and decided to leave the dungeon. It had been hours since I had entered and I’ve had pretty much no rest with how fast the spawns got. Hours of constant work with only two ores to speak for it. At this point, it seemed more reasonable to try out the fishing technique or just aim for the rest area if I got weak enough monsters as the wheat grind method was just excessive in my opinion.

When I left the dungeon I found Jerry, Chris, and Matt all standing outside, probably waiting for me. Without saying a word they started heading back to town while waving at me to follow. Not sure why as it was still late afternoon and there was plenty of time to enter the dungeon.

“Let’s grab some lunch,” said Jerry as I started following them. Lunch? I’ve eaten it plenty of times especially as the first meal of the day, but I wasn’t too hungry just yet. Normally, I only ate twice a day and breakfast was still holding me together. Maybe I would find myself the room for a few bites by the time I got to Tom’s place.

What surprises me the most is that Jerry didn’t ask if I managed to find anything in the dungeon, nor did he insist on searching me for loot. Not sure how he expected to get a cut of my loot without asking for it and untrustworthy types weren’t really trusting people. Then again, maybe what Tom said to them still held some weight and they’d just accept anything I gave them until they felt like they were paid back or got a fair trade.