I went up to the room I had rented out for the night and closed the curtains. After spending time in a such a dark place, the sun was annoyingly bright. The curtains were thick and dark, casting most of the room into shadow when closed. It was perfect as my eyes adjusted within seconds. I set the keg, bowl, and a mug that Tom had lent me on the way up on a table next to the bed.

My thirst was stronger than my hunger so I removed the stopper and let the keg pour its sweet nectar into the mug. Actually, I wasn’t hungry at all as I was still full from lunch, but it would be nice to have some food if I got hungry halfway through the night or when I got up. It was hard to pour the keg into the mug as it was so big and awkwardly shaped. Even with my best efforts, some of it spilled onto the table and the floor.

So much for Tom complimenting me on not making a mess and giving me a discount for yesterday. He probably already knew a mess would be made as soon as he saw the keg. After all, it was his job to know all about kegs. I wondered if I drunk straight from the barrel, then could I have avoided this mess then realized I would’ve made a bigger mess by dumping it all over me. Which is why he gave me the mug most likely.

I took off my shirt and used it to wipe up as much of the ale as I could then took a sip from the mug. As soon as it touched my tongue I felt my body tremble. It burned my tongue despite being cold as ice and its flavor was so familiar that it brought tears to my eyes. This is something I’ve needed for years yet never knew I needed it so much until now.

An hour later, I was lying down on the bed in only my pants with my eyes closed and an empty mug in my hands. I had drunk three mugfuls and was enjoying the aftertaste in my mouth. It had filled me up and I didn’t feel hungry but I was too full to drink anymore. The stopper was put back on the keg to preserve the smell and flavor then I laid down on the bed. Sleep came surprisingly fast with how relaxed I was.

When I woke up, I felt like I had slept more than I had ever done before. In a good way that is, too much sleep can make me groggy but this left me feeling refreshed. I slipped on my shirt that smelled strongly of ale and opened the curtains to find the moon high in the sky. This made sense as I had gone to sleep in the late afternoon. It would surely mess with my sleep schedule but it worked out for today.

As it would be hard to carry the keg around the dungeon, I left the keg in the room and brought the bowl of food with me, eating from it while going downstairs. There were plenty of people still there, drinking the night away. At the counter, I found Tom opening a keg of ale, not the same kind I had in my room but still an okay brew. If I hadn’t just gotten up I would have considered getting a mug of it. Plus I had my own ale to finish off.

“Hey Tom, I’m going to be staying in the room tomorrow as well and left some things in there, is that alright?” I asked him after he served a round of drinks and had a slight break.

“That’s alright but I might go up there later to clean up whatever messes you made,” Tom said. Which was nice as I may have wiped it up with my shirt but without a proper cleaning it’d get all sticky and smelly.

Jerry, Matt, and Chris also happened to be at the bar. All three of them looked at me a bit funny. It was a bit rude of me to turn in early like that, but I’d make it up to them by doing a nighttime dungeon run. Maybe tomorrow I’d even let them try a bit of my hometown ale and we could drink it together. If I brought it out now, I’d be too tempted to drink it again to the point where I wouldn’t even be able to make it past the front door of the bar. Then again, doing that in the past hasn’t stopped me from clearing out the dungeon.

I nodded towards them and with the spear in my hands, it was obvious enough I was going back to the dungeon. No need to interrupt their good time with excuses when I can just bring back some results. It was a bit odd making the trip back to the dungeon entrance at night. I’ve all but memorized the path by now but it threw me off a bit seeing how different everything looked. Of course, I had made the trip back during the night before but without thinking too much into it, too tired to overthink things.

The dungeon entrance looked eerily dark during the day, but at night it glowed with an ethereal light. It looked like something you’d expect to find in the night sky, in the heavens, not down here. Which made sense considering I could find a divine item and a magical item within its depths. Inherently magical and undoubtedly unnatural. And hopefully, those traits will allow me to get stronger, heal my liver, and gain wealth greater than any man is supposed to possess.

I entered the dungeon for the seventh time in my life. This time the walls were yellow and it made the room feel unusually bright and colorful. Not the good kind of yellow but the dirty almost gold yellow that instead of looking valuable just looked dull and ugly. Besides that, the entire room smelled awful to the point where I could barely breathe.

As for the monster that spawned, it was a sword. If it was a monster. I couldn’t tell why the hell there was a sword in the middle of the room sitting on its hilt. It was common sense to me that a monster would spawn in every room of the dungeon and it’d be unique almost every time. But this was a rusty old sword, not a giant lizard, rat humanoid, snake thingy, or insect turtle combination.

How I was I supposed to fight or kill this sort of thing. Other than balancing on its hilt, it didn’t move and it sure as hell didn’t seem alive. It was tempting to walk over to it, pick it up and then slash at the wall to break the blade. The entrance to the next room wasn’t open so it wasn’t like I could just go by it and be on my way. This was something I was expected to fight. Or I could just leave the dungeon and pretend I never saw this weird crap.

At the same time, I was curious about this new kind of enemy and whether or not it’d be easy to fight. Also, since it was made of metal, could I not collect and sell whatever remained after defeating it beyond the normal loot. After all, the blood of the ratmen was still stuck on my clothes despite cleaning it in the river twice. If only the meat and other parts wouldn’t rot instantly upon leaving the dungeon, there would be a culture of selling stuff beyond the occasional loot for a more reliable income.

Surely metal could not rot. It could rust and melt but even that could be melted down and reforged into an ingot for a use somewhere. Possibly, this version of the dungeon, despite its horrible smell was a place of fortune. Greed filled my eyes as I looked at this sword monster and I approached it.

Once I got into range to attack it with my spear, it reacted to my movements by leaning towards me, balancing on only the tip of the handle. When my spear got close to it, it turned its blade towards the spear as if to guard against it. That is where it stayed, stock still. I lost my patience and swung my spear at it, stabbing or thrusting would do little against such a thin and small target.

Locked in place, the sword didn’t move a bit when my spear hit it nor did it take any damage. It simply blocked the attack then went back to facing towards me when I moved the spear away. In case it wanted to counterattack, I lifted up my shield in anticipation of it flying or launching itself towards me. And then nothing happened.

Since it made no attempts to fight back I tried swinging the spear at it again to no avail. Blocked by its blade again. However, I noticed a pretty much crack in the back of the blade and it was one-sided. Perhaps I could beat it simply by striking it there. Which proved to be easier said than done.

Every time I swung the spear, it hit the blade even when I swung it from a different direction. Hell, I even swung from above which was no better than a thrust in this situation and the damn thing still angled itself backward to block it. Eventually, I realized it rotated slowly and I was starting to get close to hitting it by switching my angle constantly.

Things devolved to me wildly striking it constantly mostly in a circular motion and a few thrusts mixed in for good measure. Then I finally found its weakness by going for a feint. It moved to block my swing from the right by turning that way, then I moved the spear over it and immediately swung back in a smooth motion. As the blade hit the crack in the back, the entire blade shattered into pieces. Success, but a short-lived one as the pieces immediately sunk into the ground and disappeared.

Not even a trace of the sword was left behind. So much for this dungeon granting me a fortune. It didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t too bad of a dungeon to explore. The sword had a weakness that could be easily exploited and for all I knew, it didn’t fight back at all. That might change if there were two of them, but I saw no reason not to go up to floor six at the very least. With my newfound strategy, I went into the next room.

I walked up to the sword and it positioned itself. Thinking about it, it seemed as if the sword was challenging me to a duel. If I had a sword instead of a spear and faced it up close, I wondered if it would act differently? Between fighting it with a sword and a spear, I’d much rather use the spear than find out what would happen.

Within a few seconds, I had shattered the sword. Like the previous sword, I only had to feint and go around it to dispatch it. This pattern continued as I traversed more rooms, all the way until floor six. There, I had to make a decision after taking out the sword there.

Fishing was the dungeon technique taught to me that I hadn’t tried out yet. For it to work properly, I’d have to go back two rooms and then wait. With these swords, I could handle one of them with ease and then go through several more rooms of them on the way back without trouble. So the most effective way to do it was to continue onto room eight then come back to this room and do something similar to the wheat grind technique.

However, a much safer alternative existed. That was going back to room four and just doing things there and it would be better than the wheat grind technique yet not as good as doing it at this room. Should I risk going to rooms with two swords and possibly new behaviors to get better loot and more chance of it dropping when I came back? Or do I go the safe route and avoid coming close to death again like pretty every other time I’ve gone past room six?

It’s not like I wanted to make it to the rest area again. I’ve already got a keg of ale waiting for me back in my room and that was good enough for me. Focusing on trying to get more loot was a more pressing issue than getting more good drinks. After all, with money, I could buy all sorts of alcohol I’ve never tasted before and possibly have them recreated in the rest areas down the line.

All that said, the biggest reason to not continue on was the overwhelming scent. It smelled like something died and got covered up for a week so the smell was contained and the cover was just removed now. I was constantly covering up my nose with my shirt which smelled mostly like the ale I drank yesterday, which made me thirsty. Yet, could I really back down from a dungeon simply from smell if these swords were that easy to deal with?

Seemed far more productive to just try and get used to the smell and see how the swords act when there was two of them. Just like the turtles before, they could be taken on one by one since the sword wouldn’t move from the spot, just rotating and tilting to block attacks. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, I found out when I walked through the portal leading to room seven. There, I found the room to be completely different from before and a single longsword sat in the middle of the room. Instead of yellow, the walls were a gray background with yellowish spots and cubes littering it. And instead of smelling like someone died and rotted for ages, it smelled like burnt hair, an equally nasty smell.

A single sword that was twice as long as the other swords leaned forwards like the ones I had faced before. Why was there only one of them? I pondered this while black smoke started to rise from the blade until it literally caught on fire. It was as long as the bottom of my foot to my waist and it was on fucking fire. The hell was I supposed to fight this of all things. I looked behind me to try and flee, only to find the exit to the room sealed.

This wasn’t fair. To make things worse, when I looked back at the sword, it lifted off the ground, floating in the air. The area around the sword crackled and random bursts of black smoke appeared randomly around it. And the smell, oh goddess the smell, it was so bad that I wanted to claw my nose off and barf. It was as if someone died, sat to rot for a week, and then was set on fire.

The sword angled itself downwards towards me, and to my vision it seemed so small as it lined up to my eyes exactly, being just a line floating in my vision that started to get bigger. Last second, I realized it was already attacking me and I moved to the side. I managed to dodge but it hit the ground at my feet, one of the yellow circles which turned red in an instant then exploded, shoving me away. My back slammed against the wall and I dropped the spear.

While my back hurt, the explosion just pushed me away rather than hurting me at all. It even left a crater where the yellow stuff had been. Before I could retrieve my spear, the sword got into position and started heading towards me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that I was leaning against a yellow cube on the wall. I dived to the side and lifted up my hands to protect my head as the sword cut into the wall and caused another explosion, launching me across the entire room.

My arms and back ached from being thrown about, but I remained unharmed for the most part. Once again, I was standing on one of the yellow tiles and they seemed to be everywhere. The only chance I’d get to attack this monstrous being was to make it hit the grey ground rather than the yellow so I wouldn’t be blown away. Either get tossed around like a doll until it ran out of yellow spots with the constant risk of dying, or move to a place without the yellow.

Before it could get ready to attack again, I started running back to the first place exploded, the crater in front of the entrance. It was able to easily cut me off by slamming into the ground directly in front of me and slamming me backward onto the ground with the explosion. It was playing with me. Right then and there it could’ve skewered me with ease but chose to attack the spot which would explode and knock me down.

This time, I chose not to move despite it charging me and the yellow spot below me. The sword aimed for my head and I protected that area with my shield. Without as much force as I expected, it lodged itself on my shield and pressed down on me. This kept it in one place and I pulled out my club in an attempt to strike it from behind. Hopefully, it had the same weakness as the other swords, a crack in its back.

As soon as I pulled the bludgeon from my waist, the pressure against the shield and instead clashed with the bludgeon. It had purposely stayed against the shield, waiting for me to take advantage of its time of supposed vulnerability. And I could only watch in horror as it melted through the strips of metal, cut into the wood and cut a large chunk of the bludgeon off, rendering it useless as a weapon. White smoke came from the sliced off club as the moisture was sucked out of it and it started to burn in my hand.

The sword, unimpeded by the bludgeon, continued downwards and hit the ground, exploding and sliding me off to the side with a sharp pain at my arm. Or what was left of my arm. The bludgeon wasn’t the only thing the sword had cut through as I could see both my lower arm and the pieces of the bludgeon on the other side of the room. It was hard to process seeing my arm separated from my body.

No matter how many times I had come close to death, my injuries had been superficial or serious but treatable. With my shield, the wounds would normally just close up and heal. But would it bring back my arm? It’s not like I could re-attach it as it was burned off, not just cut off. Which on a positive note was keeping me from bleeding everywhere.

I was left completely disarmed and my right arm was gone. I was crippled and could die at any second. The blade hovered in the air, preparing another attack, choosing to torture me than outright kill me. Though it was fruitless and caused nothing but pain, I lifted up my shield to defend once again. This time when it came towards me, I lifted the shield up towards an angle slightly.

It hit the shield and rather than sticking, it slid to the side as I lifted it up and to the right even more. Instead of cutting into my body, it hit the ground, grey ground not yellow which didn’t explode. There it stayed stuck into the ground and I pulled the dagger out from my shirt and tried cutting the back of the blade. In case it was faking being stuck in the ground, I did this as fast as I could, almost cutting myself on the blade while pulling it out.

The sword reacted to my motions and lifted itself up from the back, trying to back away. For just a second, the blade stopped at the front which was embedded into the ground, truly stuck. And that moment was all that I need to strike its back and watch as it shattered into a thousand pieces. It was over. All of it.

Even my newfound career in dungeon exploring was done for as I had only one arm. This room somewhat reminded me of that unique snake with the dark eyes I had fought before which had given me this dagger. I’d be pissed if this sword didn’t give me something in return for that hard-fought battle, a retirement gift per say.

Just as I thought that the scattered pieces of the sword, instead of sinking into the ground, started reforming into something.