As per the usual, I cleared the rest of the rooms up until seven without anything else happening. An increased number of enemies did nothing as they were too scared of my shield to do anything. The tenth room had the curious change of one of the skeletons wielding a sword, but otherwise the same. The only real downside this sword brought with it is that it disappeared on the skeleton’s death.

It was made of proper iron and could be resold or smelted down to make something new with ease. Instead, the dungeon greedily ate it up as soon as it touched the ground. Trying to catch it mid-air would only cause it to crumble away into dust. I tried to get my hands on one of these swords in vain all the way up to room fifteen, where one of the skeletons fought back.

Like the time back in the dungeon with the floating ice shards, there were ten enemies scattered throughout a large room with plenty of space for the skeletons to run around in. Rather than being able to corner them in one area of the room and take them out one by one, they could skirt around walls and run around me as I tried to herd them into one spot.

As soon as I got tired of chasing them and took a break by one of the walls, one of the skeletons with a sword jumped around the corner and sneak attacked me from behind. I heard it coming from behind me as the skeletons made a lot of noise when they moved as their bones bumped and clacked together but I didn't have enough time to dodge. All I was able to do was move my shield behind me at an awkward angle. The impact dislodged my shoulder and the pain was excruciating. As for the skeleton, its sword burned on contact with my shield as if it was a part of the skeleton and then its entire arm fell off as it ran off elsewhere.

In our trading of blows, we ended up with similar injuries. However, I was worse off as I had to deal with nine more skeletons than finish off the one that had just attacked me with at least four more of them bearing weapons. To deal with my dislocated arm, I slid my shield onto my right arm and moved towards the edge of the room to prevent any more sneak attacks and so I would be ready to fight back if they tried attacking me directly. Then I grabbed my arm, gritted my teeth, and pushed hard, trying to push it back into place.

Thirty steps from where I sat down, most of the skeletons gathered and stared at me. They were gauging their odds of being able to take me down in my weakened state. After four or five tries, I managed to force my arm back into position. I still couldn't use my arm as it hung loosely at my side, hurting every time I did so much as move a finger. In my attempts to push it back into place, I must have torn the muscles or what not. That was fine as it would heal with time and it was better than letting it heal before I could push it back into place or I might have had to cut into my arm to set it properly.

With my arm back in place, I stood back up, ready to face the skeletons who quickly scrambled away from me. Not only was this annoying, but it was potentially deadly to me as if they managed to delay for long enough, more skeletons would start to spawn until there would be too many to handle. They would literally swarm me with no regard for their lives, or lack thereof.

In such a situation, there was nothing I could but try to hit them at a distance. As I lacked any sort of weapon that could attack from a range like a bow, I would have to throw some of my weapons. Out of all my weapons, the only ones that could really do anything is my shield and the dagger. The staff and spear wouldn't do anything other than maybe tripping up their legs. My fire sword would become a normal sword when out of my hands and it was possibly very fragile on its backside so throwing it wasn't an option.

The dagger could instantly kill enemies with even the tiniest cut so I chose to use it. That and I had wanted to avoid throwing my shield and possibly losing the effect of the skeletons being scared of me. Which was also a solid option, setting aside the shield and cutting down the skeletons with the fire sword once they stop being terrified of me. It was also a fairly dangerous option as they could easily gang up on me.

I got close to cornering one of the skeletons holding a sword and threw the dagger at them. It then hit the wall next to the skeleton and fell uselessly to the ground. Throwing a small sword accurately was harder than he thought. Not that he was trying to hit it in the vitals or anything, just hit it in general but his throw went wide, going too far to the right. The dagger was undamaged from hitting the pitch black wall so he scooped it up and tried throwing it again on another skeleton nearby.

This time it hit the skeleton in the hip, with the handle instead of the actual blade. So the skeleton was still not defeated but the handle hitting its hip destroyed its balance and caused it to fall to the ground. Before it managed to get back on its feet, I pressed the shield down on it and finished it off, leaving eight more skeletons in good condition and one disarmed one.

On his third try, he finally managed to throw the dagger and watched as the blade collided with another skeleton's head then bounce off. The impact knocked the skeleton onto the ground, but it started to get up. Which meant that the skeleton was somehow immune to the effects of the dagger. Possibly the fact that it was undead and dark elemented had something to do with it. Or maybe the fact that it didn't have any flesh to cut into and the bones were like armor rather than a part of the body. Then again, the shield's power even worked on the sword.

I made sure to finish off the enemy since it had fallen to the ground. However, I didn't feel like throwing the dagger around anymore since it couldn't instakill enemies. At this point, even throwing the ores in my shirt would do as the skeletons seemed awfully prone to falling down after being struck by thrown objects. Why throw a weapon when I had hunks of metal ore?

There were some doubts in my mind about the effectiveness of this plan since the metal ores were very light and fragile. Those doubts amounted to nothing as I threw one into a skeleton's rib cage and knocked it off its feet. With this new throwing technique, I managed to kill off every last one of the skeletons one by one. Once they were all dead or more dead, two more ores appeared where I had killed some of the skeletons.

Once I put them in my shirt, I immediately became uncomfortable. This was the first time I had so many things in my shirt at once. The ores and wine constantly moved around and poked my stomach as they shifted around. It made moving around nearly impossible with heavy discomfort. In the past, I remembered thinking that I should get some pockets or new clothes and I was regretting the fact I hadn't so much at that moment.

Taking a risk, I pulled out all the ores except one and set them on the ground. There was a good chance that the dungeon would reabsorb them, but that couldn't be helped. If that was the case, then I would just wheat grind by the entrance to make up for the lost ores on my way back. Wait no, that would be fishing even if I did it on the first room right before the exit since I've gotten way farther than two rooms deeper.

On the way back, if they were still here, then I'd bring them along with me even if I had to carry them all in my arms. I'd even ditch the staff and tie some of them around my waist with the spear if I had to. The only thing I wouldn't do is throw out the wine to hold them. Even if the ores weren't so worthless and were of equal value or greater value to the wine, the wine would take priority. I pulled out the wine and took a good long sip of it before putting it back into my shirt.

Not counting the dungeon convergence, this was my first time reaching the sixteenth room. Last time it was empty since my fellow adventurer or knight had already cleared it and moved on without waiting for me to come along. It was more or less the same as room fifteen except with more enemies. Even with twenty skeletons running about they still fled from me. At some point, I expected them to overcome their fear through sheer numbers.

Even though I was fully aware that at some point this would change, I couldn’t help myself from going on. It was the same every other time I realized that there might be danger up ahead that could kill me. There were possible rewards for going further from new items to alcohol and food. It felt similar to gambling the way the dungeon was set up and it was addicting to just go as far as I could go in a situation like this where it was currently easy and not very dangerous due to the shield’s intervention.

One by one, I took them all out using the remaining ore I kept on hand. When I finished, three more ores sprouted from the ground and I simply piled them up by the portal leading back towards the surface and moved onto the seventeenth floor. There, I found myself in the rest area. I wasn’t sure if I should have been relieved or disappointed. A dangerous part of me wished there were thirty skeletons to fight.

As for the food and drinks, they were unusually large portions. The food was sitting in a bucket and was enough to feed me for a full day or two while there was a small barrel for the drink. A barrel not a keg, as in this booze was almost as big as me. Thankfully, it was a smaller barrel, somewhere between the size of a wine barrel used for fermenting and holding water on ships and kegs used to carry alcohol in a way where it could be opened and poured by one man alone. If I wanted to pour this barrel into a mug for a drink, it’d spill everywhere. I had half a mind to dump the food onto the floor and use the barrel for drinking. The only reason I didn’t is because I was also hungry and still had the wine to sate my thirst for alcohol.

Unlike the ores, this big barrel wasn’t something I could leave behind and risk losing. I popped its top for a second to smell what was inside and it was beer, a full barrel of beer was enough for days of celebration and merriment. To go on, I decided that I would move the barrel through the portal, then clear out the enemies while leaving it by the entrance. Truthfully, I could have done the same with the ores, but I was worried about being ambushed as soon as I went through like what happened last time I got this far in the dungeon.

As soon I walked through the entrance to the eighteenth room, I realized that I could have just gone back to the surface at this point. I had gotten enough ores to make up for the entrance fee and the bonus of a full barrel of beer to keep me company for the next few days. However, the skeletons were still scared of me even with forty of them so it made sense to at least clear out the room first. A few extra ores wouldn’t hurt or at least be bearable as they chafed me a bit on the way out.

After killing the last skeleton, the sword that it had been carrying didn’t disappear upon its death nor did it collapse into dust. I picked it up and turned it over a few times in disbelief, feeling its weight and checking its condition. A genuine iron sword in fairly good condition, no rust and a few chinks here and there, was in my hands. It didn’t have any sort of element attached to it nor was the skeleton I killed anything special. So loot wasn’t constrained to just ores when it came to normal monsters, but other things as well.

The sword was tied to my back with the spear and staff, then I pushed the barrel of beer onto its side and rolled it towards the entrance to the next room. Who needed these worthless ores when I could get the swords the skeletons were carrying? As appealing as the idea of leaving then and there with all my gains, the sword had hyped me about even better rewards further inside.

In the next room, I found a man wearing a metal chest plate and gauntlet with a spear in his hands, but the rest of his body was only covered in normal clothes. His outfit was very mismatched and I couldn’t really criticize him for that as I was wearing essentially rags while carrying around a bunch of weapons and a barrel of beer. Over to my left, there was an active entrance leading to somewhere else, a convergence.

He had noticed my entrance leading to this room and decided to wait for me, not even killing the skeletons in the area, who kept their distance from the two of us. Well, not killing all of them, he had obviously killed a decent amount as there only seemed to be around twenty of them left. Unless the others were hidden deeper in the room. With the convergence, the room had doubled in size compared to the previous room and was a complete maze. Upon noticing my shield, the skeletons stepped even further away or outright ran deeper into the room away from us.

The man started talking but I couldn’t understand anything he said, but he didn’t seem hostile and was relaxed in my presence. Hopefully, that meant that he wanted to work together or he wanted to negotiate terms for one of us leaving. Both options were better than fighting. Once he noticed that I wasn’t responding to him, he started talking a different. I could tell it was a different language as the first time he spoke it was very guttural and deep, speaking from the throat and now he was talking with his nose, nasally and still fairly deep but not in such a strong way. Languages were hard to describe and all that didn’t matter as on the man’s third try, he started talking in my mother tongue.

“Can you understand me now?” asked the man.

“Yes, I can. I’m guessing you’re from somewhere far away from me,” I said. Based on the fact that he knew three or more languages, including mine, he must travel around a lot.

“My name is Vincent and I serve the divine, Itatem Duiturn, he who lords over healing and strength, bringing those that follow him power rivaling immortality,” said the man named Vincent, revealing far more than I would during his introduction.

“Is it alright to reveal all that,” I asked him.

“Seeing how the undead also react to you, do you not carry a divine item with healing attached? That makes our divines related, allied, or rivals. A combination of those most likely. Let’s assume that we’re allied and treat each other well as this dungeon is far too suited for our powers to pass up. Together we shall form a shield wall against these fell beings. Well, at least you will as only my gauntlet here contains healing powers,” said Vincent, revealing why the skeletons were so afraid of me and figuring out what one of the two powers of my divine were.

“It’s true that my goddess, Sanae Patil, uses healing and endurance on top of that. I’m not too well versed with matters regarding divines but I’ll take up your offer of working together for now,” I said.

“Say no more, let us bond through war. We shall slaughter these hapless skeletons and split whatever harvests they wrought for us. By ourselves, they run too fast for us to catch up, forcing us to trip them up by spear or throwing before we can vanquish them. Together, we shall push them towards each other, circling like a pack of wolves and picking them off like the sheep they are,” said Vincent. His plans were reasonable if not stated a bit oddly. I passed it off as it simply not being his first language rather than him being strange.

His plan worked quite well as the tight corners of the maze while allowing the skeletons to easily ambush us if they so wished, also allowed us to scare the skeletons in the direction of the other. Of course, they would then react to the other and try to run another way, but by then they would be surrounded by the two of us and killed. The way Vincent killed them was quite brutal as he would grab them by the neckbone, lift them up, and choke them as the gauntlet burned them to death. It seemed to be a bit unnecessary and excessive but he seemed to enjoy doing it and it worked so who was I to criticize.

We cleared out the nineteenth floor with our teamwork and gathered up the ores that had dropped, four of them total. Three of them were the ores I had been gathering, the light blackish metal that shined like silver when cleaned but was shoddy for weaponsmithing. I assumed the fourth was the usual ore from the dungeon Vincent had come from and it was yellowish in color, like gold, but it smelled like rotting eggs. It reminded me of the stuff in the dungeon with swords and I wanted nothing to do with it, but Vincent insisted on passing it to me while taking the three ores from my dungeon.