The main piece of loot from the Boss was its “heart”, a fist-sized piece of plant matter hidden deep beneath the roots.

According to his buyer, a potent insecticide could be made from it, or when mushed a good fertilizer for rare plants. The rest of the loot consisted of a jar of sap from the roots and a few teeth from the remains of the head. If not for him going all out on the trunk, he would have been able to harvest a bit of fibres from it. Throwing the loot into his bag, Prof concluded, the dungeon was indeed a shitty one.

The loot was underwhelming, the challenge – not counting the Boss – laughable, the layout unimaginative. What the city militia was training here, Prof could not fathom. Maybe the “training exercise” was like the team buildings were back on Earth: everyone got drunk and had a free evening away from home.

Prof shrugged and walked over to the hedge-covered exit. Wasn’t it customary that the door to the next floor opened after defeating the Boss? Probably only in Earth-fiction, obviously on Arkadia one had to work for the possibility of advancing further. At least the hedge was an inferior version of the greenery in the fourth room, so Prof was able to hack his way through easily.

Only one thorn lodged into his forearm.

The second floor was reachable through a short curving corridor, and according to his information was a step-up in difficulty. The first room was occupied by half a dozen meter-high, twig-like creatures, hiding between chest-high bladed ferns and thorn-shooting bushes. The later was more dangerous than it was on the first floor, the thorns almost able to penetrate clothing and armour.

The twig creatures were individually not much of a thread, their weak limbs doing basically no damage to Prof, but they swarmed him and tried to drag him into the bladed ferns. They also had not much in the way of HP, and since their main bodies consisted most of the loot (it could be made into hafts and handles), Prof decided to be cautious with swinging his axes. As it turned out, kicking on twiggy hard was enough to defeat them – with 101% in [Hand-to-Hand Combat] Prof was just proficient enough to land a kick once out of three times.

He lost ten HP in the room, almost exclusively from the bladed ferns, and ended up dispatching two of the six walking bundles of kindling after all. Two others were kicked hard enough to crack the main body, so Prof was left with only two hafts as loot, plus some berries and ferns.

In contrast to the first floor, where the corridors and rooms led to the boss room in a straight line, the second floor at least implemented sideways corridors. The one leading to the second room was located on the left side, deep behind the ferns and shrubs. Another four HP were sacrificed to reach the exit.

The second room was a maze again, this time with random twiggies jumping out of the hedges. The pitfalls were a bit better camouflaged too, but after falling into the very first one, Prof noticed the tell-tales and avoided the rest. The most dangerous part were the twiggies, a few times they almost succeeded to push him into the hedges or the pitfalls, but with Agility and Dexterity of 18 (and vastly higher body mass), Prof was always able to remain standing. A slower or lighter person would have been probably pushed into the hedges.

He managed to harvest six main twigs another few berries and flytrap “teeth”, but the loot was still lacklustre. No coins, no metal, no baubles, just plant parts. In his time in the Domain, he haven’t seen any Elf hugging trees, and he knew they liked money (specifically his money), and it was said they were the best smith on Arkadia, so they probably liked metals too. Not being much of plant-lovers, Prof couldn’t understand, what such a dungeon could give them.

Then again, Prof was explicitly told, that the dungeon was shitty and not many Elves visited it.

To reach the third room, he had to exit the room on the left side again. Navigating the maze took time and was as annoying as the maze on the first floor.

The third room was inhabited by midget treants; two meter high walking trees, waving clubs around. The three tree-people advanced in a line abreast, not giving Prof a chance to single one out easily. Fortunately, they were slow, cumbersome and had a very low Skill in swinging their weapon around. Prof tested them for a few minutes, learning that there was no teamwork between the three, they could easily get in each other’s way, stopping in confusion.

Launching his offensive, Prof kited two mini-treants into the third, and when they ran into each other, he attacked the third one. A chainsaw would have been better to fell the pocket trees, but Humans have used axes for the same purpose for thousands of years – and so did Prof now. With a few hits he crippled the left leg of his target, retreated, and launched another feint. One of the remaining woodmen even fell over its crippled companion.

Prof took advantage and attacked the last treant left standing. Again, a few hits was enough to cripple that one too, but the tripped would-be firewood was back on its feet already. Prof retreated a bit so the two treants, crawling after him could not reach him, and crippled the last one too.

This was finally proper training! Having put 26% into [Axes] he could feel the difference. His movements became more flowing, the strikes just a bit more precise, a bit more stronger. If he had this level in Skill back when he fought the Dire Wolf, things would have been much easier. Now, against the slow and ponderous trees, he reigned supreme.

Killing the crawling treants was easy afterwards. Just hacking firewood in the back yard. As loot Prof got the three clubs (raw material for carpentry), and a collection of different parts of the treants themselves.

Continuing, Prof took a right turn. The fourth room held three grown up, four meter tall treants, wielding wooden maces. The weapons even had spikes! Or large thorns…

These walking trees were a bit better in teamwork, but they could be still lead into blocking each other, and they weren’t much faster and more dexterous then their midget variants. And definitely not much more intelligent either.

What they were better at was durability.

Their thicker bark gave them some armour that made Prof’s attacks less damaging, even with Critical Hits. His tactic remained the same from the previous room; goading two treants to block each other and trying to cripple the third one. Because of the bark armour, it took twice as long to cripple each leg, and even if he managed to cripple, the treant did not crawl after him, but used its mace as a crutch. Prof had to destroy both of their legs (or one leg and a mace) to send them crawling, so even more work for him.

After all three trees were felled and looted, Prof took a break. Fighting through the dungeon without much of a pause took its toll, Prof started to get tired – and he still had the boss to defeat.

The loot so far wasn’t outstanding, and he could use basically nothing from the whole haul. Even the loot from the large treants was only good for selling. One of the maces survived, and he got a treant heart (looking like an actual heart, just made out of plant matter) from each of them. As far as he knew, the hearts were the base ingredient for a potion that gave some armour rating for the bare skin – it was a useful potion, but it was reserved for Army Use Only, so Prof could only dream about having a few of them.

He had to dissect the treants to get to the last part of the loot: “bones”. They were no bones as found in animals, but denser, stronger wood. Next to some alchemical properties, the larger pieces were good for hafts. Prof was told, it was better than the average wood his weapon’s hafts were made of, so he reserved two humerus for his own use. The leg bones he had crushed, but that still left him with a lot of bones to work with.

Dissecting a tree was disturbing. There was no blood, but green sap (he collected about a liter worth) and he could identify only a few organs. His [Medicine] Skill was abysmal, but he nonetheless was sure, a Human had more than four internal organs. There were no lungs, for example. Well, trees breathed through their leaves, so they had not much use for lungs.

Rested up, he set out for the last room, the Boss Room for the second floor. The Boss was an even larger Treant, almost six meters tall, wielding a wooden sword. Prof tried to use [Observe] on it, having forgotten to use it on the other dungeon monsters so far. The information he received wasn’t much, the Skill only informed him, that it was a Boss and below Level 6.

That was somewhat strange.

Even the raccoon was a higher Level, despite being only the Boss for a first floor. Then again, the fights in this dungeon were strangely easy, maybe the monsters were really low Level? He haven’t asked about the Level in the city. Prof shrugged. Don’t look an easy fight in the mouth, or however the saying went.

At first Prof tested the Giant Treant and concluded that it still was rather slow and ponderous. The only thing that went in favour of it was the thick bark covering most of the creature, providing enough armour that Prof’s axes were almost useless. Almost but not entirely and the armour-piercing spike on one of his axes proved its worth especially. Prof could evade the Treant’s swings easily, felling the legs however was a long slog.

Damaging one leg took three times as long as with the normal treants in the previous room. By the time the Giant Treant finally fell to the ground, Prof was starting to get tired, and he still had to finish the fight. That took even more time, the bark on its back was even thicker than on the legs, but thankfully Prof didn’t have to evade while hacking away.

And finally, the Giant Treant transformed from an enemy needing killing to a pile of dead plant matter needing to be looted. The harvest was around the same as the medium sized treants provided: a two-handed wooden sword, a treant heart and a lot of “bones”. He mentally assigned the humerus to himself, so he could sell those of the medium ones. According to his source, the Giant Treant’s bones were even better than those of the medium ones.

Making a last sweep of the boss room, his Scavenger Perk started tingling. Beneath a small bush, he found another little statue, this time of a gold plated bronze official. Maybe a high noble or a high priest, he wasn’t sure how either dressed on Arkadia.

Prof debated for a bit if there was any sense of doing a second run, but decided against it. The dungeon was too annoying to be bothered with again, and although the loot was passably valuable, it was cumbersome to carry and disgusting to harvest. He waved goodbye to the nice park at the entrance and set out to sell his gains.