The first thing that greeted me as I entered the dungeon was a faceful of water droplets. A constant stream of water leaked from the ceiling of the room, dropping down like rain. Not to mention the room was extremely hot with the rain was lukewarm and offered no relief. In fact, it made the room muggy and washed away my sweat before it could cool me down. It was downright suffocating.

As for the monster, I couldn’t see it at first as the water got in my eyes and I was constantly having to wipe it off my face or blink. I heard it before I saw it as an ominous short bark came from the center of the room. The sound reminded me of the hounds used for hunting in the woods and sent shivers down my spine. Those things could take down prey twice their size and fought monsters in the wild toe to toe.

It flitted along the edge of my vision, jumping back and forth just out of my eyes’ reach. The room was dark and the rain didn’t help too much with sight. As it was raining, I doubted the fire sword would be effective but drew it anyway. The light from the flames made the monster visible at last. Just as I had suspected, it looked like a dog, a heavily deformed one but there were strong similarities in its general shape and behavior. It was pitch black, allowing it to blend into the darkness quite well with some red streaks which was probably what caught my eye and allowed me to see it at all. Then it burst into flames just like my sword, lighting up its position.

A fire monster in a room filled with rain. That was just downright ridiculous but who was I to say anything when I took out my flame sword. Both my sword and the monster sizzled in the rain as the water evaporated on contact. Rather than my sword, I probably should bring out my spear instead to take on this enemy. My sword wouldn’t be able to damage it with its flames and was rendered an ordinary sword. A dog was the type of enemy I’d like to keep at a distance so it wouldn’t be able to rip out my throat. There was even a bit of temptation to pull out the dagger and try to kill it with that.

However, at this moment, it was sizing me up, watching my every move. As it could no longer hide, it chose to wait for the right opportunity. I could feel its eyes staring at my neck, readying to pounce at the first sign of weakness. Pulling out my spear or dagger would require sheathing my sword, putting my shield down, or awkwardly holding both the spear and sword at the same time. I stood as unmoving as the dog before me and watched the steam rising from my blade and the dog. It was the first one to break the standoff, leaping into the air towards me.

I lifted up my arms to protect my neck, crisscrossing my shield and sword in front of me while lowering my knees and spreading my legs out to take the impact. When it hit me, there was a flash of light that filled the room and reflected off the raindrops. It was like a bolt of lightning hit me. I pushed back, trying to throw it off me while cutting it with my sword, only to hear a noise reminiscent of metal hitting metal. A few steps away from me, the dog landed on the ground, completely unharmed. So it was also an armored enemy.

Or at least that’s what I thought when one of its forearms broke off and it became a three-legged dog. It was metallic yet brittle and easy broken, just like the ore that dropped from this entrance to the dungeon. Despite its amputation, the dog beast continued to stare me down. Not like it could flee even if it wanted to. Only one of us could survive, it or me. Running away like those skeletons had would accomplish nothing.

I walked closer to it, thinking it was only putting up a front and was actually unable to do anything in its injured state. The result was that I learned a missing leg did nothing to limit its mobility or how scary it was. It kicked off the ground and skidded across the ground towards me. Its jaws clamped down around my ankle as I tried to jump away in shock. Not only could I feel pain but an intense heat similar to the time when my arm was cut and burned off. Instinctively, I shook my leg and slammed its body onto the ground but it refused to let go.

Even when I started slamming the sword onto its neck, it didn’t flinch once and continued to clamp down. Pieces of its body broke off, making it look more like a rock than a living being. Instead of blood, flames spewed out of its wounds until I broke through its neck and decapitated the creature. No relief from my pain came with its lifeless body on the ground as its head stayed on my leg. At this point it was dead and the portal appeared, yet its body did not dissipate nor did it let go of my ankle.

Since I knew it was dead, I relaxed somewhat and sat down, no longer worried about getting my throat ripped out and more concerned with getting the dog head off. At first, I tried to pry open its jaws with my bare hands as I could fit my fingers in and grip the top and bottom of its mouth without cutting myself on its teeth. However, it was stuck closed and I couldn’t pull it apart. My second try involved sliding the sword between my leg and its jaw, with the back of the blade facing my leg of course, then using it like a lever to push its mouth apart with far more force than my hands could to no avail.

As more time passed, the pain in my leg faded away somewhat and I was trying to take it off more out of annoyance than desperation. It wasn’t like I could just leave with it on my leg. Or could I? Its body hadn’t dissipated at all and I could pick it up and move it around. Like the blood from the monsters staining my body, couldn’t I just leave the dungeon and it’d stay on me? And if that didn’t work, wouldn’t the monster head disappear upon leaving, solving my issue?

There was no chance in hell that I was going deeper into the dungeon. The loss of one silver was preferable to facing this sort of enemy in these conditions. Just in case, I pulled out my new bag and piled in the lower body of the dog, along with the leg I broke off and the tiny pieces that once constituted its neck. They might be valuable or my thought about it breaking similarly to the ore could be closer to the truth than I thought. If its body was made of loot, would it not stay in this state after dying?

Not even a day passed since I had bought this bag and already it was drenched in water. Which was probably a good thing as it would prevent the body of this fire dog thing from burning it. Hopefully, it wouldn’t burn any holes into the bag and keep it in a usable condition. Nonetheless, it was a bag designed for carrying ores and was suitably sturdy, holding the entire body of the dog with plenty of space for more. I tied its top closed then stood up with my ankle protesting from the movement.

Overall, I wasn’t hurt too much and could walk just fine if not a bit stiff. Every time I moved it hurt, but it was more of a stinging pain that was comparable to overstraining myself from carrying something too heavy. I left the dungeon completely drenched in water with a dog head attached to my ankle. This time, I actually attracted some attention from the crowd as they pointed at the dog head. I decided it was best to head back to the inn to figure out what to do next.

The short walk was excruciating with all of the stares I was getting. Those were even more of a pain than my actual injury and I wished people would just mind their own business as they usually did. Yesterday I wouldn’t have minded stares as it would’ve made my haul seem more impressive. Instead, they all brushed it off as normal, and it sorta was normal other than the barrel, but now I had to be the talk of the city. It made me wonder how they would’ve reacted to my arm being chopped off awhile ago.

They probably wouldn’t have reacted at all since amputees weren’t actually too uncommon. Losing an arm loses its effect when the people around you didn’t even know you had an arm in the first place. More likely they would have just reacted to my flaming sword had it been out like it was that day. Which is more or less the same treatment I had gotten back in town other than a few people who knew me better like Tom.

Back at the inn, I found Jerry and Matt outside the room, getting ready to go on a dungeon run or perhaps find a place to grab breakfast. I waved my hand to get their attention and then pointed towards the dog head, hoping they would help me brainstorm a way to get rid of it. We ended up going back inside the room as I explained what happened.

“Why not chop your foot off just above the head?” asked Matt. He seemed serious about his suggestion rather than joking.

“It’s not bad enough to warrant chopping it off. My foot still works just fine and the teeth aren’t cutting in too deep. It’s just stuck and hard to get off. Why would you even suggest such a thing?” I asked.

“You can just grow it back, can’t you? You’ve already done it once,” said Matt, explaining his reasoning.

“It takes awhile to do that and I’m already hogging the necklace during the day and the shield as well at night. Your suggestion would put him out of commission for a while and make it take longer for me to heal,” said Stephen.

“If we can’t get it off after like a month, maybe your suggestion would be reasonable if we have enough money to get by and nobody injured. However, we should be able to get it off through other methods easily enough before then,” said Jerry while pulling a dagger out of a sheath on his leg. I never knew he had a dagger there.

He started poking around on the head with the dagger. Eventually, he settled around the teeth, poking the blade into where the dog’s gums would be if it were made of flesh and not stone, ore, or whatever the hell it was. After jiggling it around a bit on both sides, the tooth came loose. Encourage by this, Jerry did the same for the other fangs, loosening all of them. Just like that, the dog’s mouth suddenly could be opened and separated from my leg.

The last thing to do was pull out all of the teeth and stem the blood. I did this one at a time to keep my bleeding to a minimum, using some of the beer to clean my wounds and to quench my thirst. Nothing like a good drink after some hard work even though it was still morning. Like that, the problem was resolved and my injuries would be healed up fairly quickly since they were superficial.

Now that Jerry and Matt were up, we decided to go out together and grab some breakfast then bring back a portion for Stephen. By then, my leg would probably be healed enough for another attempt on the dungeon. And while we were out there, perhaps we could find a buyer for this dog beast and perhaps find out what it was made of. As long as it was worth a good silver, I’d be fine with it.