This FF depicts scenes of violence and some cursing .

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After he moved on top of the teleportation circle, Curunir instantly found himself on the second floor. Even though he moved to another floor there were no changes in the scenery, not that he expected any. Before starting slaying scrorpions again he checked the progress of his skills. Half of his skills had leveled up with the biggest progress on his Sword Mastery and Body anatomy skills. By hitting only the vital areas the Body Anatomy skill increased by a good amount. While checking the progress of his skills Curunir noticed a skill he hadn't seen before.

Optional Hematophagia: (Lvl. 1: 00%) Hematophagia is a practice of certain creatures of feeding on blood. Your satiation factor, health and stamina rise when you drink blood. Higher level of the skill has faster and stronger effects.

Curunir had forgotten that he was supposed to get a skill once he got a class. After the ritual of bonding himself with Caleb, he got a notice about gaining a new skill but he couldn't get it yet because he was classless. It seems by bonding himself with Caleb he got one of his skills. Caleb wasn't a simple Vampire. All Vampires have the Hematophagia skill, however Caleb and now Curunir have a skill with the word ''Optional'' in the front.

[It's a good thing I can keep my taste for food. That skill is realy usefull. I was wondering how I could heal myself since healing magic doesn't work on me. Thankfully I don't have to learn this lame bandaging skill.]

Potions were good for battle if you had the option , but still they were quite expensive. Curunir now all he had to do was drink some blood and he could heal himself. Adittionally he could raise his satiation factor and stamina.

[I hope it doesn't have the taste of blood though.]

He once again moved deeper into the cave and not long after he found the monsters he had to kill. The scorpions were bigger and their carcass seemed tougher. Curunir attacked the nearest lone scorpion to test the waters. Dodging the scorpion's attacks was quite easy since they were considerably slower than the ones at the beggining of the first floor. The main body of the scorpion however was tough enough to block most of the damage. Curunir changed his methof and attacked on the scorpions limbs which he severed after two to three strikes in each on of them. Once he severed all the limbs, he used his sword to turn the scorpion upside down. With his first attack panetrated the bottom side of the scorpion's carcass and killed the monster.

With just once battle he was able to determine the weakness of the scorpion, although he suspected that would change on the next floor. After he connected hi japtem he moved to attack a group of scorpions. The process of dodging and attacking only when he saw an opening on the limbs was quite time consuming.

[I can probably endure some hits, although I should be cautious.]

Curunir let some of the non lethal attacks to land on him while he aattacked the limbs of the scorpions. After finishing the group and collecting the japtem he decided to check how effective was his new skill and replenish his health and stamina. He got one of the tubes with the scorpion blood and drank a sip. Thankfully for him it tasted like apple juice.

[ Not very fond of apple juice but considering how bad it could taste...... It might also change with higher level or if a drink different kind of blood... Wait! Did it just replenish 100 of my health with just one sip?]

One sip of this blood was enought to replenish 100 of his health, 10% of his stamina and 15% of his satiation factor!

[Mufufufufufu grinding alone will be a piece of cake, no reason to join groups full of annoying people.]

Like that Curunir continued slaying scorpions non stop. His level raised fast, after all he was killing monsters with double amount of his level. He decided to only increase his strength for a while so he could kill the monsters faster. He only stopped his carnage to repair his clothes and weapon which eventually resulted to raise his transmutation skill to level 2. It took him only five hours to kill every scorpion of the 2nd floor.

On the 3rd floor once again the scorpion were bigger and tougher but slower. Something had changed though, they all were in big groups. Groups of five to groups of eight. Curunir's Endurance, Sustennce and Fighting Spirit skyrocketed from facing the big groups in continuous battles. Sometimes he even got rewards with str,agi or vit. The time he spent to finish the 3rd floor however was much higher. There were also times that his resistance to dark attacks wasn't enough to resist the poison of the scorpions. The damage was weak though and in the end it only resulted on bonus poison and dark resistance.

Little more than two ingame days had passed but his level had increased by a lot. On the first floor the monsters were between level 15 and 25. On the second between level 30 and 40 and lastly on the third floor between level 45 and 55. After level 15 Curunir only increased his only strength which now was more than double the amount of his agility stat. Curunir however at level 42 was by no means slow. After his huge increase in strength a good placed strike could severe the scorpion's limb easily and the attacks on the top of the carcass weren't completely blocked.

After moving to the 4th floor he repaired his gear and filled his satiety. He didn't want to waste all the food Caleb prepared for him and the food also gave him some stats and a little regeneration for a while. He didn't continue after resting though. He decided to log out and get some real life rest before challenging the next two floors and the boss. The first 3 floors were easy for him but it wouldn't be the same for the 4rth and 5th floor. Additionally, Curunir had no experience against bosses. Little research before his grand fight would be a must. It's not like he can get info on the boss he is going to face, the dungeon doesn't really exist but, he could get some important information about how to fight bosses alone.

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The next day Curunir continued his advance on the 4th floor. Once again he found some changes compared with the previous floor. The number of scorpions in a group had increased by one and all had now an additional medium size crimson scorpion. After some hard won battles, Curunir understood what was the 'role' of the additional enemy. It was a 'group leader' which cordinated the scorpions's attacks. The damn things even had defencive and attacking formations.

It took him some time to learn each formation and how to counter it, but eventually he could handle the groups quite easily. The 'trick' was to kill the crimson scorpion as fast as possible. He used sneack attacks when he could, to kill it before the battle even started and when he couldn't, he just dodged and parryed or even getting some minor hits here and there while rushing to the crimson scorpion. Once it was dead the rest of the scorpions went in a confusion state for 30 whole seconds, which were enough to reduce the number of scorpions by one or two.

The 4th floor was a higher challenge than he had predicted and it took him two in-game days to finish. The total number of days that had passed until now were four and a half days and he was ahead of schedule by a lot. Curunir driven by the bonus experience wanted to finish the boss before the bonus effects disappeared. He had only little more than two days to accomplish that though.

The 5th floor was nothing he had expected. The monsters on the last floor were all mini-bosses! Much bigger than the previous scorpions he had met till now. They were as big as a horse and each one of them radiated a strong light from its body, result from their much shinyer blood in their bodies. The only good thing at the moment was that they were not in groups.

Curunir cautiously attacked the first scorpion. He had a shocked face once he tried to block its first attack. He was thrown back for about 2 to 3 metres and he was really lucky he wasn't knocked on a wall but on the ground. Furthermore his weapon had lost 5 durability just from that.

[I guess I will have to take my time inspecting its every move and try to dodge as much as possible.]

Curunir concentrated on every little move the mini-boss was doing, every little habit that indicated its next move. Something like that wasn't something someone could do from one moment to the next. However he had done boxing in his real life for quite a period and even though he wasn't going pro, he still had a lot of sparring matches. That plus his enormously raised concentration stat and after half an hour he could dodge almost every attack the mini-boss threw at him.

Achievement unlocked50 consecutive dodges

+5 agility

[Huh?..............]

Curunir couldn't believe what he had seen. After looking for any kind of information on the web about the game, not even once did he come across something like achievements system. The Achievement system was after all a very well kept secret that only some self training freaks knew about. Of couse there was a way to come across these kind of information, but it was very expensive and it was possible only on a certain place and since it was quite expensive none dared to spread this secret, cause it would be a huge loss of money.

[This Dark Gamer site... It probably has all kinds of even the most secretive information. I have to find a way to become a member..... asap, as the gamers say.]

Curunir didn't have the luxury to think about the Dark Gamer site though. There was a more pressing matter to think about and that was the miniscule damage he could do with his weapon. After several hits the mini-boss had over 80% health yet. Curunir knew he had outleveled his weapon long ago. Not having any other choice of weapon at the moment, Curunir tried to think of other ways to increase his damage and soon he remembered something he had seen on a video of a boss hunt.

He attacked between the scorpion's carcass parts where it wasn't that hard and tried to focus his attacks on a single point. It was really hard to accomplish since the space between the different parts of the carcass were quite thin. He barely could fit the tip of his sword inbetween and he often failed to do so. As they say howerver, repetition is the mother of all learning. Again and again he dodged the creatures attacks and countered whenever he could at the exact point he had attacked before.

The Creatures Health finally started to drop more rapidly and in the last attack Curunir took the remaining 5% of its Health. It was by far the biggest attack Curunir had ever done. This 5% of health was half if even more of the amount of health a scorpion of the 4th floor had. Mini-bosses have much more health points than normal monsters after all.

Like that he handled the next mini-boss and the ones after that. His sword was losing a lot of durability especially from misplaced attacks so he had to repair it after every battle. That only served though on raising his transmutation skill easier and the amount of mana he had to use to repair the sword was tiny compared to his.

Curunir was improving tremendusly after every succesful kill and soon he got rewarded for it. After he killed the 10th mini-boss he finally got his first attacking skill.

Cry Strike (Lvl. 1: 00%): A series of increadibly fast stab attacks at the exact same point. Its real name is 'Cryptanalysis Strike', but later was renamed to 'Cry Strike' to hide the meaning of the strike and because it usually makes the ones it was used on to cry in pain.

Rank: S

1st strike: 110% attack power

additional strikes: +20% attack power of the previous strike

2 strikes max

Mana: 250

[An S rank skill!!!!]

Curunir was ecstatic, after all he just learned a what is known as 'legendary skill'. The amount of mana it needed was quite high but still he had a lot of it to spare. He used his one and only attacking skill repeatidly not caring a bit about his mana. He could beat the mini-bosses without his skill after all. What was the most important thing for him was to raise the level of the skill. There was no doubt that it would be one of his big weapons in the future, if not the biggest.

Like that he finished the 5th floor in 2 days. If there is something he regreted was that he didn't have that idea sooner so he could get his skill on earlier floors and raise it more for the battle with the boss. The skill was at level 4 after continual use with an increase of 10% attack power on the first strike in every level.

After a good rest and meal he repaired all of his gear and re-enchanted it since he could do stronger enchants with the increase of the skill's level. His Sharpening and Polishing had leveled up a lot too.

He stood at the entrance of the last chamber. Slow breaths and closed eyes helped him focus and calm his mind. He needed a clear mind for what he had to do next. He was going to challenge a dungeon boss alone and he had to win. Two hours remained before the week ended and his double experience was lost. At this point he didn't really care about the experience since the most important thing for him was to win his next battle, which was also the biggest challenge he had ever faced so far in this game.

He was sure that even if he died the first time, he wouldn't fail the second. With updated gear for his level and bonus stats from buffs he would be stronger more than 3 times. Winning like that though made him think was kind of meaningless. In the end, the biggest challenge he was going to face wasn't the challenge of killing the boss, but the challenge of surpassing himself and he couldn't compromise without doing so.

Chapter 9Chapter 11