My second life as a dungeon

The rest of the day went by without any more incidents and the next day Val managed to reach level four. We were both getting much stronger than when we started and the squads had stopped giving as much experience so we decided to start staying out overnight, although we would only be gone for one night before returning to the dungeon. This meant that we were able to start pushing much further to the goblin colony.

I knew that we were getting closer because we were starting to see more squads that were hanging close together. This wasn’t an issue though as even though I could only use two of the three skills I had received for getting my job it had been enough of a power boost that I could now take down two squads at the same time with just a bit of help from Val. 

I was really glad that Val had decided to come along as, even during the first week where she could only take on one goblin that I left for her, she was nice to talk to and didn’t let me feel lonely. This was helped by the fact that we shared a lot of interests and personality traits. For example we talked about different monsters and theorised how new monsters started being created, the history of the world, what my old world was like and our favourite stories among a plethora of other topics.

We both enjoyed being outdoors, reading and learning new things, we shared a hatred of injustice. But that didn’t mean we were exactly the same either as neither of us would get alone with a clone of ourselves. For example Val was incredibly studious and could concentrate on one topic for hours at a time whereas I was easily distracted by everything around me.

We couldn’t spend all of our expedition just chatting to each other, some of it had to be finding the next squad of goblins to take down. As we were getting closer to the colony not only were the squads more common but the goblins themselves were getting stronger which worried me. Even though I had gotten stronger it was only by so much and I might be able to take them at the moment that could easily change if they got too strong. 

My worry was made worse when we came across something that made me realise that I may have underestimated how difficult this would be. It was a group of nine goblins, which usually wouldn’t be too bad except that the leader of the pack wasn’t the typical warrior. In fact it was double the height of the warrior goblins, had massive muscles big enough to crush my head, wielded a bastard sword that was as long as the goblins massive arms and it wore no armour.

It had the typical look of a goblin with a bald head, tiny nose and eyes, elongated ears that ended in a sharp point and a wide grin that showed too many teeth, obviously perfect for ripping into flesh. The only two differences was that it was dark green instead of the usual light green and it had a slight intelligence behind its eyes, as much as a bloodthirsty monster could anyway. It was a Hobgoblin Brute.

I had been taking out the standard squads pretty easily so far but seeing this made me scared for the first time since I arrived in this world. I wasn’t sure what I should do so I turned to Val and said, ‘That hobgoblin is a lot scarier looking than what I expected it to be and honestly I am contemplating turning back right now.’ I took a few breaths before continuing ‘Although part of me still thinks that if we go about this properly it should be doable as long as we properly plan for it. What do you think we should do?’

‘I agree with you, I have seen you take out eight standard goblins by yourself while barely breaking a sweat.’ Val said after thinking for a bit ‘We should be able to take care of them if we work together.’

We quietly walked a little bit away before spending a good five minutes making a plan of attack and then another two minutes getting into place. Once enough time had passed that I was sure Val was in position I started the fight with a [Critical shot] at the hobgoblin. The arrow went into the monster's left eye, causing it to lose sight in that eye but unfortunately leaving it alive.

The hobgoblin roared in pain while charging in my direction with the other goblins lagging behind by barely a second. Even though they knew where I was, my plan meant I couldn’t run away yet so I stood my ground while shooting all 5 [Quick shots]. I wanted to shoot all five at the hobgoblin but that would leave the archers alive to attack me and I didn’t want a lucky shot to take me out.

Thankfully I knew that just one arrow was needed to bring them down so I sent two arrows at the archers and the remaining three at the hobgoblin. The two archers weren’t expecting the speed of the arrows so they didn’t dodge in time and were easily killed. Meanwhile the hobgoblin managed to hit one of the ones aimed at it out of the air, cleaving it in half.

This meant that, even though it was still hit by the other two shots, it was still alive and charging at me. I had 20 seconds until I could use [Critical shot] again so I could only use standard shots for now. In the end it took me three more shots over the next 15 seconds to finally bring it down just before it reached me.

With the Hobgoblin down my first job was finished so I turned around and ran, trying to keep the six remaining goblins off of me. Meanwhile Val was following behind and throwing stones at the slowest goblins, which, since the warriors were higher level, were the standard goblins. Even though Val was weak and didn’t have a class she had grown over the past few weeks and was now stronger than the goblins, especially by themselves, so she easily dispatched the four of them without the two warriors noticing.

I would have been firing at the warriors during this time but I didn’t trust that I could aim and run at the same time without either tripping on something or hitting Val so I just focused on running. That said I still managed to keep an eye on how many monsters I had chasing me so I knew what was going on.

Both of my skills had been up for a while so when the last standard goblin fell so I turned around and activated [Critical shot]. I was worried that they would reach me before I could get my shot off but luckily I had been faster than them so I managed to get the shot off before they reached me. The left warrior got an arrow straight through the head just before it was in striking distance of me.

Unfortunately I couldn’t use the bow anymore as the other goblin was now too close and I was too tired to run again so I dropped my bow, extended my claws and got into a grounded position. If the goblin was capable of higher thought it might have decided that I wasn’t worth the effort but it was just a monster only capable of killing so it continued to charge at me without a second thought.

As it reached me it raised its sword to hit me with a downward swing, I easily saw this coming so I sidestepped the hit and used the bottom of my palm to jab at their elbow, causing them to drop the sword. With them open to my attack I swiped at their throat with my claws, ending them as a giant spurt of blood sprayed over me and they fell to the floor.

I checked over myself thinking that I had gotten out of that whole fight without a scratch until I felt a pain in my side and realised that the last goblin had managed to get a hit in when I tried to side step the attack. I had also levelled up again from this last battle but I was too tired from running to really care too much.

Once Val and I met back up I figured that we had barely managed to get out of this fight alive and if we continued forward then we would most likely run into a stronger squad so we made our way back to the dungeon. On our way back Val bandaged my wound and we fought a few more squads but we eventually got back home.

It had been a few days since then, it was the second morning of one of our two day expeditions and I was sleeping in our camp when I was suddenly woken up by an explosion. My body pumped me full of adrenaline and I jumped up, extended my claws and looked around trying to find the enemy that had caused the explosion.

I didn’t find anything as it wasn’t caused by an enemy, this was made clear when I looked at Val as she was just staring at the wooden staff in her hands with a look of surprise on her face. As we weren’t in any danger the adrenaline slowly left my body while I calmed down and walked over to Val.

Once I got to her I gently shook her and asked ‘Hey, what was that explosion, is everything okay?’ Hearing my voice pulled her out of her trance as what she had just accomplished sank in for her, causing a huge smile to appear on her face. I had a feeling that I knew what had happened so I also had a smile on my face, although it wasn’t as big as hers.

‘I did it!’ She shouted as she turned to me and gave me a tight hug ‘I cast my first spell and received the [Mage] class.’ I had had a feeling she was close to figuring it out as it had now been three weeks since I had given her the staff but I was still overjoyed for her. It usually takes around a month, sometimes longer, for a typical mage to learn their first spell even with a teacher, which leads me to believe that she might become a great mage someday.

Unfortunately we were in the wilderness and goblin scouts might be around so, even though I was happy for her, I had to try to calm her down before something came to investigate the noise. ‘That is great, I knew you could do it; we’ll do something to celebrate once we get back.’ I said, with a smile on my face ‘But for now we need to keep the noise down so we don’t attract any unnecessary attention.’

Hearing this Val lost some of her excitement and looked a bit sad as she said ‘Oh right, sorry about that’ She was obviously a little embarrassed about losing her composure ‘I completely forgot where I was.’

‘It’s fine, I didn’t mean to imply you shouldn't be happy about this.’ I replied, I kicked myself a little for what I had just said as I didn’t mean to bring the mood down so much. ‘In fact I wish we could shout and scream to the world about what you had accomplished.’

With Val calmed down I sat down in front of the fire and tapped the dirt next to me while saying ‘Come sit down and we can talk all about it.’ Val sat next to me as I continued ‘So, how did it feel to cast your first spell?’ I asked, I was really curious about the magic in this world as I was still trying to figure out how to cast spells and I could tell that Val wanted to tell me all about it.

‘It is hard to explain,’ Val answered before concentrating for a few minutes and then continuing. ‘It kind of felt as if a well of energy inside of me had been locked just wanting to get released. Then once I figured out the key to unlock it it just started to move on its own and before I could do anything to stop it the energy travelled through my hand and into the staff before shooting out in a bolt of fire.’

‘That sounds amazing’ I exclaimed with wonder in my eyes, wanting to go straight to trying to figure it out for myself but holding back as I could see how excited Val still was to talk about it. And talk about it we did, we spent what felt like two hours just chatting about magic and anything related to it until the exhaustion finally reached Val and she slowly fell asleep leaning against me, it had been around midnight when she had cast her spell so she hadn’t had her sleep yet.

I gently moved her until her head was resting on my lap before slowly reaching over to the blanket behind me, trying my best not to disturb Val, before I covered her with it. Her breathing hadn’t changed so I knew that she was still asleep. I looked up at the stars above me, I already knew I wouldn’t be able to recognise any but I still enjoyed stargazing. Suddenly a sad thought crossed my mind as I realised that I was no longer able to experience that same sky as anyone from my previous life.

I shook the thought from my head and instead thought about our day, how we had met and everything that had happened since I had got here. It was certainly something I would never forget, and I was sure that this was just the beginning of our story together. After an hour of reminiscing I looked down at Val and whispered, ‘I am truly happy that I took that deal no matter what happens.’ Before concentrating on my bow while trying to see if I could feel the same thing Val did.