Filled with displeasure and boiling rage, he keeps following the path forward. He makes it back to the featureless pillar from his initial trip where he turned around.
“What the hell is the deal with this fucking thing. It’s the only damn thing I’ve seen in this entire cave so far that’s out of place. It almost looks carved intentionally like this to stand out. No way one of those Troglodytes has the intelligence, or even really the anatomy to do something like this. Could it be something the dungeon spawned as a waypoint of sorts. Maybe there are intelligent creatures in here that made this as a signpost, or indicator. Is it maybe a natural feature and I’m reading too much into it? I hate all this mystery shit just let me be cool and strong already sir dungeon.” Kyle whined
As Kyle continues walking his phone suddenly stops. Hours of loudly blaring music drained it entirely. He checks it initially, concerned that maybe the dungeon won’t let electronics work after a certain point, but is relieved to find his pen still works. “Thank god baby never leave me again” He takes a big draw and winces when he sees how low the wax is in the cartridge. “I really don’t want to leave my house.” With a groan Kyle continues down the path shortly finding himself in front of several branching paths a quick glance down one of the tunnels reveals even more splitting paths. “Welp! This is new. Umm I don’t trust myself to not get lost with this many tunnels, so I just pick the leftmost one and stick to the direction, then just follow that wall back.”
As he continues walking he finds another smooth pillar, but one has indistinguishable scratches on it near the top. They look consistent, not random, but Kyle can’t immediately decipher them and he chooses to ignore them.
“Grooooaaaaoor”
“Uhh what the fuck was that. That didn’t sound like troglodyte.” Kyles raises his gun hand keeping it ready in front of him.
Kyle sets his eyes on a new type of beast. His hand falters as the massive beast almost entirely fills the tunnel width. The monster has thick rolls of fat coiled around every joint. The actual body section of this thing is entirely smooth, but clearly hiding tons of fat. He can still see above, but his view on either side of it is completely blocked off. Looking above its head Kyle saw
“Damn this thing’s huge, it could give me a run for my money!” HIs words escaped his mouth, as he pulled the trigger. He wasn’t aiming, but with the creature's size, at this range it’s almost impossible for him to miss.
Each bullet hit’s fairly center mass, only one trails down to the bottom left side of the creature. It roared and blood pours from the wounds with bullets still inside of it. However, when the bullets hit they seemed to slow down as it hit the beast as if its skin was made of rubber. It’s forward movement was stopped, but the hits seemed to barely stagger it.
The creature slowly steps forward haggardly by its own body weight. It opens it’s mouth and reveals a fairly smooth gooey tongue. It shoots it forward at Kyle, but purely by luck it’s met with a stray bullet. The fatty tongue explodes sending bloody chunks everywhere coating Kyle and the walls.
Kyle starts backing up while focusing on the creature he continues to shoot, but at a slightly slower pace trying to aim for the less fatty areas. With his poor physical acuity he stumbles almost immediately, but not before another several rounds hit the creature. Every time it starts to pick up momentum it is hit by another bullet, forcing it to start at 0 again. Again Kyle loses count of how many times he’s shot and again Kyle hits it more than he needs to. He shoots the unmoving, bullet riddled body of the froghemoth one last time directly in the head.
*You have defeated a level 6 Bulking Froghemoth. You have gained XP. You have leveled up*
“Huh that thing didn’t have a 2nd name describing its fighting style? That's weird. OH SHIT WAIT I LEVELED UP!”
“Okay, but so like what do I do now? I was hoping for more stat points to be honest. I guess this is more than a 33% increase though, so it’s actually not that bad. The question is what do I put them in. Magic could be cool, but I don’t have any spells and I don’t know what to do with it. I know for a fact that with my luck I’ll get shit in return.”
His speech is interrupted by the stomping sounds of a large monster. A troglodyte comes running from one of the tunnels directly at Kyle. Reflexively raising his arm and unloading another 3 rounds. The small rounds are enough to shatter its small bones on impact and leave massive gaping wounds.
*You have defeated a level 5 Shambling Troglodyte Duelist. You have gained XP*
“Ooof that was overkill” The slide slams back locking in place. “Oh shit this thing is empty. Anyway, back to what I was trying to focus on before I was interrupted. I think agility and finesse wounds help me most with shooting and stuff. But like looking at my progress through the dungeon so far do I really need that? Leveling up my constitution would improve my overall health too. That would be cool. Not that I’m sick that often, my stomach hurts constantly though. Would that fix it? I wonder if I got my strength up and started lifting weights I would be able to get stronger. Or maybe even lose weight faster, if I can build muscle. Could this be the start of my gym era?” Flashes of being in public flash through Kyle’s mind. “I bet I could get the same effect with finesse and agility. Plus then I could start running through the tunnels. That would be fast as fuck I bet. Best case if I lose some weight and start working out I can earn stat points without leveling up?”
Kyle forgets to stay positive for a moment and in a whisper says“Fucking doubt it though”
Before checking his stats he loots the pouches. “Damn I hoped that big guy would give something unique, but just more fucking silver.
“Alright I need to head back and get more ammo.” Kyle puts his gun away in his holster and heads out following the wall to make it back.
After an hour of walking Kyle notices that it's getting dark only when he sees how much the indication light on his pen lights up the tunnel in front of him. “Ohhh that news I guess? Has it been getting darker this whole time? Should I be worried about that? How dark is it gonna get?“
Kyle keeps his pen in hand with the mental excuse that he needs it for light. He goes down the path eventually getting to a point where he can see the red light of portal home. The once faint light now brightly shines from numerous yards away. Undoubtedly a beacon.
Unaware Kyles approaches the portal and casually reaches his hand out. Suddenly he feels immense pain in his arm. Behind the portal is a small, thin, newly troglodyte stand hidden by the floating orb light.. Kyle is shocked the creature moves completely through the portal as if it isn’t even there, rears back it’s arm.
He drops his pen to the ground, the cartridge cracks when it hits the ground. He fumbles to grab his knife. Surprised when it only takes him a moment to get it out of the sheath and in front of him. Still his actual combat experience outweighs his increase in speed and the beast has a chance to thrust his forward directly at his heart.
Kyle tries to dodge to his right, but jumps instead forcefully smashing his head into the wall. His head rings and he rolls to the floor. Trying as quickly as he can to orientate himself towards the creature.
The troglodyte was carried forward by its attack giving Kyle enough to get the knife in front of him between him and the monster. He tries to jump up as quickly as he can, focusing entirely on getting on his feet. The sudden bouncing leaves him out of breath.
Panic and adrenaline start to set in. The hand not clenching the knife is trembling. His legs start to shake and it gets harder to stand on them. His mind is racing and he can’t think he stands there letting the troglodyte charge in at him again.
This time he tries to pivot like he has seen professional fighters do. He fails, but still moves enough out of the way that the monster grazes the side of chest between two rips. Its claws are more for piercing than for cutting, so the wound is shallow and mostly a scrape. The pain makes it harder for Kyle to focus and he wildly swings his arm to the left towards the monster.
There is no technique and Kyle doesn’t aim. The tip of the blade stabs into the side of the beast's head. Digging in a quarter of an inch to the monster's skull. The monster reacts by biting. Clenching down as hard as it can on Kyle’s left arm. Kyle easily digs the knife out. This time he tries to stab downward into the beast's neck and shoulder.
Like a dog with a toy it tries to thrash its head. Kyle is too big to be significantly moved by this, but his motion still causes its teeth to imbed themselves deeper and to shred his arm. The blade falls directly into the beast's neck, instantly severing whatever major artery the beast has in there.
*You have defeated a level 1 Troglodyte. You have gained XP*