The bright morning sun peeked from behind the clouds as Rick rode on Holmes through the deserted streets of his city, finally out of the house.

“Can’t believe this is the same Middlesboro,” he shook his head looking around. Although not the biggest, it would have been impossible to escape the blaring horns just a few months back, even this early in the morning. Now, roads were lined with broken-down vehicles and buildings, dark and gloomy that only housed beasts.

‘It’s a good thing the Library is near to the Administrative Block. It would have been a mess just reaching the place otherwise,’ Rick mused.

It was only when he checked the World Map that he realized the extent of change that the world had undergone. Cities were becoming isolated islands amid the rapidly expanding forests. Even Middlesboro had changed. With the Kaz Wildlife Sanctuary so close to the city limits, the forest was slowly overrunning the city itself. The suburban parts of the city were already taken by the forest and the rest of the survivors seemed to have left their homes and huddled up with the rest in the settlement by the Library.

But Rick was not headed to the Library. His destination was at the eastern edge of the city, right by the expanding forest.

---------------------------------------

“I better make this quick,” Rick said. In less than an hour’s ride, he had reached the other side of the City. It was the part of town that Samira always told him to avoid, whenever he was in town. Not a single soul around, with garbage strewn about and riderless bikes, dotted the road while the curbs were lined with bars, rip-off shops, restaurants and even a pet shop. But what worried him was the forest, it was right behind the street and small shrubs were already making across, along with a vine that was creeping along the wall of the building next to him.

The worn-down and dingy pub, with a broken neon sign advertising its existence amongst the other run-down breweries on the street, the Cock & Haunch Pub.

“Okay, let’s go!” he said taking a step forward.

“Peep… peep…” Pip encouraged him lazily before dozing off to sleep once again.

‘I almost forgot putting you in,’ Rick chuckled as he picked Pip up from his head and carefully put him in the pocket of his jacket.

Rick pulled the door open and walked in.

Ding

[You have entered the Cock & Haunch Pub Dungeon]

[Dungeon Level: 3]

The door closed behind as Rick walked in.

It was pitch dark inside. The smell of alcohol reeked throughout the place along with another pungent stench. The sound of glass cracking under his foot rang as he took a step.

A light breeze ruffled his hair.

“No,” he cried and immediately ducked. His hands bruised as glass shards cut into the palm of his hand. A loud crash rang to his side as splinters flew onto him.

This was not how he had planned this to happen!

He quickly stood back up and immediately apparated two Earth-golem cores before him. “GUARD!” he said aloud, his plan already down the drain.

“AGHHHHIIEE!” a screech rang out as something crash down on the golem to his left. Dirt flew off the golem onto him.

‘What the hell-’ Rick screamed in his head. He thought he had prepared for the dungeon well, but the attacks were coming too quick for him to even think straight. Before he could complete his thought, the monster launched another attack at the golem. This time around, the mental link with the first golem disappeared. It had already killed one golem.

‘Oh, this is bad!’ he gulped nervously. It only took two strikes for the monster to destroy one of the golems, that too in the dark. That would mean that the monster was as strong as the Treants! He did not move a muscle, even the smallest sound could be his death.

Rick had studied the Cock & Haunch Pub Dungeon thoroughly before venturing out along with the monster in it. Its glaring weakness was that it was blind, but it was compensated by its sharp listening abilities. His original plan was to find the monster first and immediately attack it wordlessly after placing his defences. But he had definitely failed to account for glass-shards being littered on the floor.

‘This is not too complicated. I can still do it,’ a few seconds past, he calmed down. The monster was still wailing from time to time as it had not smelled blood in the air and knew he was still there.

Rick tossed golem-cores all across the room, not knowing where the monster was. The swings of the monster attacking the golems reverberated throughout the room.

Every time a new golem took form, the monster would lash out. Right after a second golem would apparate and the monster would turn his attention to that. Meanwhile, while the ground shook and creaked around the golems damaged, the monster would be drawn to it again. Rick could tell all of this happening through his mental links with the golems.

‘Protect your golem-core’ he instructed the golems. The monster’s attention was finally off him, as it kept swinging at the golems

‘Lumite!’ A yellow light as bright as a lantern appeared on the palm of his hand, finally shedding light onto the dark tavern. Rick looked around the pub. There were broken shards of glass littered across the floor along with splinters of the broken tables and chairs. As he slowly looked over to the bar, he stopped. He finally found the monster, the Karakonza!

Although he had seen it in the books, seeing it in real life was still another thing altogether. Hunched atop the bar table, its yellow pale skin wrinkled over its body in folds. Long sharp teeth poured out of its closed mouth and a few frill strands of hair fell from his head onto his face where his eyes should have been.

“AGHHHHIIEE!” it screeched again and Rick looked on as the Karakanza stood on its hind-legs and whipped both its arms, swinging them from one end of the room to the other corner. Another golem was destroyed.

‘It really has elastic-like arms,’ Rick realised. The Lemegeton had described it as ‘by shortening its body’s size, the Karakonza can extend another part of its body over long distances…’

But there was no time to waste, he could not stand still forever. He immediately tossed a water-golem-core at the direction of the Karakonza's and immediately instructed it to self-destruct.

“GAAAA!” the monster screamed, but he did not see any damage to it. Instead, the Karakonza’s attention was not drawn towards Rick’s direction.

‘Immolate,’ he instructed another golem on the other side to him to self-destruct, drawing the Karakonza’s attention away. ‘So, golem-core won’t work. I will need a little more time then.’

He instructed the golems that were standing motionless, scattered across the room, with their arms across their chests to jump up once, drawing the monster’s attention. It worked and the Karakonza immediately started lashing out at the golems.

‘It’s different,’ Rick immediately realised as one after the other, the golems were being destroyed with one strike. As he watched on, it struck him. The Karakonza was no longer lashing out at the golems wildly. It was attacking a couple of inches below its shoulder, right where the golem cores are. ‘It’s learning! It’s learning fast!’

He could not let this go on!

Rick tossed another dozen golem cores across. But before they could even take shape, the Karakonza swiped at the golem-core, mid-air, destroying three!

‘Damn it!’ he clenched his fist. But his face had a smile.

Rick was not just relying on his golem cores this time around, after all, he had a month to prepare. He tossed another beast-core right at the monster.

The Karakonza sensed it and immediately flung his arm at the beast-core. But right before it touched the core, the beast-core suddenly caught on fire!

“KEEEEEHHHH!” the monster screamed.

The fire raged up his hand growing larger by the second. It swatted the arm around trying to get the fire out. But with all the broken alcohol bottles, the fire only grew larger.

‘Heh!’ Rick smiled. His plan had worked. Unlike physical resistance, the Karakonza did not have a good tolerance for fire.

The last core he threw, was not a golem-core, instead, it was a fire-sealing artifact he had built and named it Fire Bomb.

Right after working on the Plume, he researched how many fire elements would he need to start a fire. But just a fire would not do, he would need a large fire!

So, he spent long hours finding what could seal such amounts of fire elements without burning up themselves. Along the way, he found a second use of the beast cores, apart from making golems off them. But only fire-beast-cores could become Fire Bombs.

But while the golem’s self-destruction let out a large blast, it could be overcome with high vitality. On the other hand, Fire Bombs were like Molotov cocktails, that exposed the enemy to fire.

Rick threw another Fire Bomb at the Karakonza. As it flew across the air, he extended his mana, as just as it hit, Rick immediately unsealed it. The beast-core immediately started burning before a large fire erupted from it.

Another long minute later, he finally heard the notification.

[Congratulations you have cleared the Cock & Haunch Pub Dungeon]

Oh yeah,” he said, finally speaking aloud. Even with every obstacle, it was easier than he had expected it to be. But he knew it was not the time to celebrate. Rick did not read the rest of the notification right away. The fire was spreading across the bar. He immediately threw over a couple of more golem-cores.

“Walk over the entire place till all the fire is dozed off,” he instructed the water-golems and walked out of the pub.

The sun was high over his head. It only took an hour’s work to kill the Karakonza, but Rick felt exhausted. Although the pub was a raging fire pit on the inside, it was impossible to tell from outside the dungeon. He sat on the curb outside and checked the second notification.

[RICK HANIQUE]

Strength: 17.3

Stamina: 15.4

Concentration: 61

Perception: 23

Vitality : 2.1

Agility: 20

Mana: 49

“Every time! Every time!” he grinned. All his stats had increased considerably, apart from his Vitality, which he assumed was because of his glass cuts which were already healed.

His Mana was and Concentration was flying past the rest of his stats after his month-long practice.

“Maybe I should try increasing the rest of my stats first,” he mused as he beamed at the numbers. “Okay, show me the other notifications.”

[Quest Reward: Karakonza Bones x2]

[Karakonza’s Bone]

[It has high conduction of Mana that enables Karakonzas to change body shape.]

[It is a crafting material]

“What does that even mean,” he said curtly, as he pulled out the Lemegeton, unsatisfied.

"[Karakonza’s Bone]

The Karakonza goblin-species rely on their acute sense of hearing. As such, they have evolved bones which can morph to allow them to quickly attack any threat perceived by them. This ability is achieved due to the unique properties of the Karakonza’s bones that are very attuned to mana flow.

The bones of Karakonza’s have been used in goblin cultures for making totems, weapons and crude armours. When Fritz Fuller was examining the properties, he discovered that it could be used for other purposes more suitable for human usage and thereafter crafted what came to be known as wands…"

Once done, he walked back into the pub. A dozen golem stood around without purpose, surrounded by smouldering wood. The place was completely a ruin. He carefully crawled over to where the bar-counter previously was. He squatted down and started shoving away the ashes, in search for the Karaonza. But what he found was only two bones, pale yellow in colour, each the length of his arm.

“Too big for the Storage-Ring,” he opened his eyes and put them in his backpack instead. He walked around the pub, disaparate the golems and in the process also found two unbroken bottles of whiskey. Swiftly, he put them away from safety and walked out of the Cock & Haunch Pub one last time.

‘I can probably do another,’ Rick said looking up at the sky. There was easily another four hours of daylight left.

He apparated Holmes and climbed on it. Just then, his eyes fell on the vine he had seen before. In the mere one hour, it had covered the entire wall!

‘This is not good,’ Rick scrounged his forehead. With a last glance over to the growing shadows of the forest, he whispered, “Let's go!”

The sun was still bright and he had a safe four-hour window before dark. So, without wasting another second, he headed off towards his next destination on the list, Milo’s Gym. Only a couple of blocks away from the pub, proximity was the only reason for Rick to choose this dungeon. It was a dungeon that did not have just one monster and that made him very nervous. It was one of the clan-type monsters.

From what the Lemegeton had informed him, the Milo’s Gym Dungeon was the lair of a Czar Mouse and his clan.

“Hate gyms. Making me work just to reach,” Rick mumbled as he looked up at the three-story building. A board on the third floor had the words Milo’s Gym written in worn-out red paint along with the picture of a man in briefs flexing.

Begrudgingly, Rick opened the door to the building.

Ding

[You have entered the Milo’s Gym Dungeon]

[Dungeon Level: 9]

“Hell no! This is NOT the gym. That’s up on the third floor,” Rick complained as he drew out his spear from his back.

“Lumite,” he cast. This place was much brighter than the pub, but this time around he was up against god-knows how rats and mice. “This is bad, this is bad,” he kept mumbling under his breath.

He quickly cast a look around. The wall to his right and the stairs were a few steps up to his left. Slowly he made his way towards the stairs, keeping his eyes peeled for any movement. A few steps in and the stairs were right around the corner.

‘Deep breath, come on’ he readied himself. In a blink, he jumped out of the corner and immediately swiped his spear across the front steps.

There was nothing there, it was clear.

‘Okay, okay. I need to move on then,’

Just as he was about to take the step up the stair, a shadow passed by through the corner of his eyes and Rick instinctively drew his spear back to at the shadow.

But he realized he was a second too slow, as a stinging pain shot up at the side of his arm.

‘Aah,’ he groaned taking a few steps back. The light from his palm disappeared at the moment’s distraction. But Rick could clearly see what was the creature before him.

A rodent, bigger than a poodle with a shiny black coat and long claws stood before him

‘Is the Dungeon boss? The Czar Mouse?’ he wondered as he stood ready, the spear drawn in front. Bust just then, a second rodent, similar to the first, apart from its brown coat appeared beside the first.