According to Vincent, leaving the ores by the entrance was perfectly fine as drops were reabsorbed into the dungeon much slower than corpses. However, things like my beer barrel or the weapons on my back from my spear to the sword I had just picked up would start breaking down as soon as I left the room or left unattended for an hour. That made me worry less about the ores and focus more on going further into the dungeon.

While it was going to be even more dangerous due to the convergence upping the difficulty and amount of enemies, I now had an ally to work with. He wasn’t someone I could completely trust but it was hard not to like him. His enthusiasm for killing monsters and working together rubbed off on me a bit. It felt like how I imagined a knight order should be when together rather than the constant distrust and worrying in my current knight order. Alas, Vincent already worked for another knight order that, while it may be allied with mine, was too far to work together consistently.

Vincent helped me carry the barrel through to room twenty. If not for the convergence, I would have expected to face around sixty enemies unless it jumped up in numbers and size suddenly like room fifteen did. With the convergence, I wouldn’t have been surprised to face over a hundred of these skeletons. Not for the life of me did I expect to face two of them. However, that’s what appeared, two skeletons who were strange compared to the previous skeletons. It reminded me of when some of the skeletons started having swords.

The one in the front wore full plate armor that only revealed the fact that a skeleton was wearing it through the gaps in the armor. In its hand was a machete, a long one-sided blade meant for chopping. Not only was it heavily armored and well armed, but it was also two heads taller than me while all of the previous skeletons were a head shorter than me. To make matters worse, it wasn’t intimidated by the healing effect on our divine items. It started to walk towards us as soon as we came into the room and we were forced to set the barrel off to the side and get ready to fight.

As soon as I lifted up my shield and went to draw my sword in case that wasn’t enough to beat it, something hit the shield. A rock had stuck my shield, hard enough for it to jerk back, slam into my forehead and had me seeing black for a second. Behind the skeleton wearing armor and holding a sword was a second, less conspicuous skeleton that was just as dangerous as the first. While it may not have armor nor was it any bigger than a normal skeleton, it held a sling in one hand and a rock in the other. Not only that, but the ground in this room was unusually loose and rocky, giving it plenty of ammo for the sling.

“Take out the slinger, I’ll handle the big guy,” shouted Vincent as he ran over to meet the machete-wielding skeleton with his spear. His spear was made of metal, high-quality stuff that didn’t break from hard impacts.

While he was clashing with the so-called big guy, the slinger slipped the rock into its sling and started spinning it in the air while taking aim at Vincent. I ran in front of its projected path and held my shield up with both my arms. It hit my shield with a loud thunk and nearly broke my arms. The impact was absorbed by my body and the rock fell powerlessly to the ground. So strong even though they were just rocks. I felt as if my role had swapped with all those skeletons I had beaten to the ground by lobbing ores at them. Suddenly, they didn’t seem so pathetic for falling from getting hit by rocks.

Behind me, Vincent was struggling to fight the armored skeleton and I needed to help him. Before that, I had to take out this ranged skeleton before it seriously hurt one of us. I wiped some sweat off my forehead only to find that it was blood not sweat. Too late, I was already hurt. While it was digging around at the ground to pick up another rock, I started charging towards it.

Until I started running at it, it had been taking its sweet time choosing a rock but then it managed to find one, slip it in, and start spinning the sling in what seemed like an instant. I was forced to stop running and put up my shield in preparation for a rock being thrown at me. My head was lowered behind the shield to prevent it from being able to hit me in the head. It finally impacted with a loud crack and I fell to my knees.

What had happened? That was the only thing going through my mind as I looked down to see my knee all bloodied and bits of a shattered rock scattered the area directly in front of me. Everything from my arms, to my stomach, and even my head was protected but my lower half was completely exposed. My shield was simply too small to defend from all directions. No pain was felt in my knee, just an aching sensation as the area throbbed in protest of what had just happened. There was no way I could stand back up after this and I was helplessly stuck on the ground as it prepared another attack.

On my knees, I had a lot less surface area for the skeleton to attack and it was easier to guard with my shield. A few rocks hit the shield hard or skimmed my skin around the edges of the shield. At this point, the only good I was doing was keeping the slinger from attacking Vincent. I couldn’t even check up on Vincent as the last time I tried looking behind me, one of the rocks skimmed my cheek, cutting it open. From the sounds of metal clashing, I knew that their battle was still ongoing and Vincent was still alive.

Expecting Vincent to win and break this stalemate for me wasn’t something I could count on. No doubt the armored skeleton was just as tricky to deal with as this slinging skeleton and he needed my help as much as I needed his. Since my legs were tied up from my bloodied knee, I had to resort to another method. As soon as the skeleton threw a rock my way, I pulled out the last ore I kept in my shirt and chucked it. Either it would dodge or get hit.

Or not, as I threw the ore too hard and it flew over the skeleton’s head. A chance presented itself as the skeleton got distracted by the ore and followed it with its skull. I pulled the shield off my arm and tucked it into my armpit before slinging it as hard as I could towards the skeleton and this time my aim was true, striking the skeleton in its back. It got knocked over and the shield landed on top of it, constantly burning it until it died.

However, without the shield’s healing assistance my body felt very weak and the pain from my knee hit me hard. All of the wine and food I had consumed earlier alongside some stomach acid came out of my mouth; I vomited all over the floor and felt horribly sick. Now I knew what Stephen had felt like when Chris suddenly tried to steal the shield from him. A sudden pain I had felt before but ignored since it wasn’t much exploded as soon as the thing making it nothing much left my hands.

At some point, the sounds of clashing metal behind me ended and Vincent pushed something into my hands, the shield. Both of the skeletons were now killed, one by me and the other by Vincent. The fact that I was unable to help Vincent in his fight made me feel even worse. If not for the fact that he looked completely unharmed, I would’ve dropped the shield just so I’d feel the pain again. The pain was what I deserved at this time for my failure.

“That was a crazy fight. Enemies like these normally don’t come out until the thirtieth or even fortieth room. Evolved versions of the normal enemies. Let’s distribute the rewards and agree on the fact that we should probably turn back now rather than go further and risk dying,” said Vincent while holding his hand out to me.

I took his hand and got back up. With the shield back in my hands, I was already starting to feel better, if not sore all over and shaky. As for the rewards to distribute, there were two pedestals that had appeared in the middle of the room at some point. Both of them had some sort of jewel on them, one red and the other brown. They appeared to be enchanted items despite the fact that we hadn’t faced enchanted enemies.

“They’re earrings enchanted by elements. One with the power of earth and the other with fire. Neither have much of an effect for us. They’re more meant for magic users as it increases their affinity and how many spells they can cast. Still, they’re of considerable value and a good prize for this dungeon run. You go ahead and pick which one you like and I’ll take the other one,” said Vincent.

Magic users were very rare. They could channel elements to do things like shoot fireballs and create water from nothing. Granting them an item like this would curry many a favor or sell for a price that would keep me comfortable for the rest of my life, which would be one year if I just relaxed and stayed comfortable. The value of these earrings to me was highly dependent on the elements of the magic users in my country or neighboring countries. Which I had no idea about so I just chose the red one because fire looks cool and I’ve got a fire sword to match it.

Vincent took the brown, earth earring and happily helped me as I started dragging the barrel back towards the surface. Along the way, I picked up some of the ores I had left behind and then said my goodbyes to Vincent on the nineteenth floor. He had to go back to the place where he had come from to reunite with his allies. How nice it would have been to just go with him or convince him to come with me. Surely at some point, I would have an ally like Vincent in the knight order.

The way back to the surface was wrought with hazards. Most of them due to all the ores falling out of my shirt and off the barrel. All the while, my knee was still in pain and wobbled every time I moved the barrel due to the strain. As much as I wanted to take a nice, long rest, I didn’t want to fight a bunch of skeletons on the way back. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had the opportunity with the rest area on the way.

Once I finally made it to the first room right before the surface, I set the barrel down and tried straightening out my clothes and cleaning myself up. It was much harder than normal since I didn’t have anything to wash with unless I took a beer bath and I was covered in blood, my own blood this time. Hopefully, I could just take the next day off to recover and my gains this day were enough to maybe rent a few more nights at the inn we were staying at. With that in mind, I picked the barrel back up and awkwardly wobbled towards the surface while fully expecting to be looked at like I was some weirdo.