Chapter Fourteen - Progress is Baby Steps

Attempt five was a wash. The sneaky kobold in the first room scratched me up pretty badly, and I regretted getting snacks instead of a first-aid kit.

Still, I got through the second room easily enough, and then reached the third room.

This time, I tried a new tactic that I liked to call 'being patient.'

That mostly involved waiting a long time until the kobolds were distracted, then I snuck in closer. One of them sniffed at the air, then started to follow my trail. Its snout was to the ground when I stabbed it in the neck.

The noise attracted a second, which I killed with just a small scuffle. And then it was me versus three somewhat alert kobolds.

I decided to go noisy and kicked one into the fire, then managed a quick and dirty slash across the big one's front. It was nowhere near lethal, but it took some of his bravery away.

He... broke my arm in what I suspected was many places a few moments later, and I reloaded.

Six went better. I got sneaky with a quick jab at the eye. The socket around a kobold's eye was kind of oblong. If I pushed my knife in at the wrong angle, it would catch on their skull and not kill them, I had to slide it in sideways, sorta.

The more you knew!

The second room went nice and quick. I had that one down to a science... not a particularly good science, but still. I got the one that was distracted with knapping quick, then shoved one into the water and fought the third. I came out of it with a weak bite on the leg and some scratches, but the room was cleared.

Then the third room again.

This time, I bought a can of wet cat food. The smell was strong, and when I opened it and tossed it into a corner, two kobolds went to investigate.

I snuck around the fire, using the light to blind the dog-like monsters. Their vision wasn't all that great, it seemed, not when looking past light. That let me get in close behind the big dog, and I chopped at his neck multiple times, taking him out.

Then I had two to fight before the distracted kobolds came over.

It was close, but I survived... with a lot of small, annoying wounds, and a nasty bruise on my arm where I'd been bitten.

I was reaffirming the fact that I was a cat person with every loop.

This was still the first time I'd gotten through the third room. I took it as a good sign that I was getting better, at least at fighting kobolds.

Getting better otherwise... I wasn't sure.

I sat down next to the fire for a moment, letting myself just soak in the heat. It was nice, even if the smoke got in my eyes some. I was getting better, if only out of sheer technique and with familiarity to this dungeon and these specific monsters.

Was I getting magically stronger?

I... thought so? But it felt very minimal. Every kill was something, but when I reloaded, I didn't feel like that progress came with.

Maybe I was wrong, but my gut told me I wasn't.

So, when I completed this dungeon, I'd get the benefit of completing a dungeon solo, and not the benefit of having done it a dozen times over.

That was fine, I supposed.

Groaning, I stood up. It was what it was. This portal run was what I wanted. I was getting better at it. Better at fighting through repeated experience, and the magical strength from spending time in a portal would help my long term goals as well.

Time to keep moving.

Only I had two options. There was a corridor leading to a rickety wooden doorway fixed into the stone, but also, behind a large outcropping, was a tunnel.

I'd seen some short form vids of people doing some cave diving, and while I wasn't claustrophobic, it was very much not my kind of thing. Still... I went with the mysterious tunnel first.

It was probably not the path to the portal's boss, but I wanted to see where it led anyway. I was aiming for a full-completionist run here, after all.

The tunnel was narrow, so much so that I had to move in sideways at some points, crabwalking through while flicking glowsticks ahead. Eventually it opened up slightly, and there was a drop. It was a couple of metres down, angled at something like thirty degrees, with lots of nice rocks to grab onto on the way down.

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I really didn't wanna, but I was here already.

"Fine," I muttered before turning and clumsily going down. I bashed my knee, and got a jab in the gut on the way, but I made it, and then it was just a small walk to a room filled with glowing lichen and a suspicious chest.

I glared at it, then scanned the room. Then I walked around it twice, even tossing a glowstick at the chest, in case.

Could it be a trap? The ground around it seemed stable. No spiked above.

I opened it from as far back as I could and... nothing? The chest was just a chest.

Within, sitting there as if it was abandoned and forgotten, was a knife. It was in a small, leather sheath, all brown with a few small fangs worked into the leather.

The knife itself was made of some sort of carefully carved bone, or maybe ivory? It was as long as my middle finger, with a fairly crude wooden handle.

Basically, shit-tier loot. But hey, I'd take it. I'd heard of loot like this before. There was a lot of speculation about the hows and whys, but I wasn't too informed about it.

Continuing, I slipped through another narrow corridor, and then arrived in a familiar room, one with a portal in its centre.

The entrance.

So, this little passage bypassed the second room and went straight to the third. A shortcut? One that involved climbing a little, but still, not impossible. It might be worth trying next loop. It'd make things a little different.

I walked all the way around the dungeon, hopped over the trap, then went over to that door in the corridor past the third room. The door was jammed shut, but a few hard kicks to its middle opened it.

It led into a large, rather open cavern. At the end was a portal, this one shifting and unstable and thin, like a slice cut into reality. The exit portal. I looked around the room, then spotted the final obstacle.

It was another kobold, only this one made the big guy in the third room look like a chump. It was five foot something, wide as hell, with scar-covered skin that was missing big patches of fur. It wore a sort of leathery coat, crudely made, but still clearly clothing.

The kobold had one of those weird South American weapons with it? I wasn't sure what they were called. A club, with knapped bits of stone sticking out of it, each bit looking jagged and sharp.

How the hell was I going to kill that?

The one saving grace was that it was alone. It was also staring right at me.

"Ah, crap," I muttered.

As it turned out, the boss wasn't restricted to its room. It came howling out towards me, club brandished.

I ran back, looking for anything to use, and saw the fire.

Diving behind it, I picked up the club of not-so-big-guy, then spun around and flung it as hard as I could back towards the boss.

It landed, smacking him on the shoulder hard enough that I was sure that it had hurt. The boss growled, then leapt at me, heedless of anything in its path, including the fire.

It must have singed some fur from that, but it came at me anyway.

I raised an arm at the last moment as its club came around and--

My world was swallowed up by the sound of bones snapping like twigs. My bones.

I was tossed to the side, rolling in an ungainly heap on the rough ground, knife clattering away, the pain was blinding, it was everything, it was...

I Reloaded.

Damn, how was I going to handle that?

The boss had been... actually, not that fast. I could outrun him, but I didn't have a good ranged option, and unless I could find a gun to steal at the start of every loop, I'd be out of luck.

Could I take it in melee? If I focused purely on dodging, maybe? I wasn't sure I could hurt him that much.

What if...

I thought kicking the door open had woken him. What if I was patient again? And didn't just barge into the boss room? Could the boss survive an attack from stealth?

Well, I had something to aim for for the eight loop, at least. Maybe I could spend some time training against the not-as-big kobold? Yeah, that'd make sense.

Baby steps!

***