For all that my leg was currently decommissioned, I quickly proved that the munchling couldn’t match my crawling speed. Dexterity, after all, was not a stat that applied only to my legs. While the rocky, uneven terrain slowed me down, I was still more than fast enough to escape having my head bashed in. That didn’t mean I got out painlessly -- each motion agitated my wound, and it occasionally scraped and jostled against the ground, forcing me to choke back cries -- but with each passing second, the gap between us grew until I was out of the cavern entirely.
Luckily, it didn’t appear that the munchling was a particularly dogged pursuer. Either by its own natural inclination or some imposed set of dungeon rules, it stopped at the chamber’s exit, leaving me in the long tunnel back up to the surface. Panting despite the lack of real exertion, I kept my eyes glued to the miniature golem until it walked back to the copper mound and rejoined the heap. Only then did I let myself relax.
“That went… badly.” As my adrenaline began to wear off, I tried to figure out exactly what had gone wrong. This one’s level was higher, but is that really enough to explain how much damage it just did to me? Sure, I hadn’t been fully empowering my armor, but it was still rare to find anything so low-leveled that could hurt me with brute force.
Only after reading through the initial identification results again did I spot a relevant line: The munchling concentrates and condenses consumed metals within its body to strengthen itself. I hadn’t thought much of that point at the start, but now that I thought about it, the golem’s volume hadn’t increased as it ate the ore I gave it.
Does that mean it’s just endlessly condensing more and more metal into itself? Even with copper’s relative lightness, the monster must have weighed a frightful amount depending on how much it had eaten. There were probably a few skills involved too, but it looked like that additional mass translated into a ridiculous amount of extra force.
Further reflections, however, would have to wait. An aching pain drove me back to the present, my leg begging me to tend to it. Frankly, I already would have if not for the bone fracture. As it was, I didn’t want to heal my skin shut only to have tiny shards of bone trapped inside.
Nothing for it. I had little doubt that what followed would suck horribly, but that’s what I got for underestimating the dungeon.
Alchemy has reached level 14!
Heal has reached level 7!
An hour later, I gently tapped my left leg against the ground, slowly applying more pressure until I was more or less sure I was back to normal.
Pain Resistance was a godsend, but the augment I’d gained at the Initiate rank only empowered the skill when I was suffering from magical-based pain. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet leveled the skill high enough to shrug off serious physical damage, and I certainly couldn’t rely on it to let me dig around in my wound to pull out bone fragments.
Thankfully, Alchemy came to the rescue. My time in the jungle had left me with a wide selection of herbs with minor anesthetic properties, and I quickly went to work drawing out their potential. While there was barely enough room to pull my cauldron from storage and the entire brewing process was awkward and cramped, I made it work. After managing to brew both a topical anesthetic salve and a more general oral pain-numbing potion, I put both to the test immediately, sighing in relief as the worst of the pain subsided.
From there, I simply washed the wound with Conjure Water and pulled out any visible bone pieces. Putting them back in place was beyond me, so I didn’t bother. A few rounds of Heal sealed the wound shut and hopefully fought off any germs I’d just introduced to my system, and then as best as I could tell, that was that.
“Probably should be wearing a cast and letting my Constitution work on it for a bit longer, but I’m tentatively going to give myself a bill of clean health.” It still astounded me just how quickly I could heal these days, but hopefully, I wouldn’t need to put that rapid healing to the test again.
“I think this is as clear a sign as I’m going to get that I need more physical resistance before clearing this region.” I strongly doubted that the munchling I’d fought was the strongest creature I’d find if I continued, and while the golems were slow, that wouldn’t help if they swarmed me or got a lucky shot in.
Thankfully, that was nothing a quick trip into my class space couldn’t solve. I’d kept six points in reserve exactly for a situation like this. Leaving myself with only two left, I spent four on the skills I’d need to fight metal monsters. The first three went towards maxing out the defensive skill I’d originally grabbed for similar situations in Sylum’s metal dungeon.
Force Dispersal 2/5
While wearing armor summoned or enhanced by Arcane Armory, increases defenses against blunt-force damage and collisions. Additionally, reduces knockback effects, vibrational effects (sound attacks, etc.), and whiplash.
Force Dispersal has reached rank 5!
Feeling like I was spending far too many points on defensive skills these days, I threw a pity point into the corresponding offensive skill as well.
Armor Penetration 2/5
Grants passive armor penetration. This skill allows your strikes to completely bypass a small, flat amount of armor, and also increases your strikes’ ability to pierce, puncture, and penetrate all forms of physical armor.
Armor Penetration has reached rank 3!
The original impure munchlings had been hard enough to kill as it was. I had a sneaking suspicion that I’d be needing the extra penetration to handle the pure metal variety. The skill was also widely applicable, and I could have used it back when I’d fought the hydra with its thick defensive scales.
All right. Take two. Newly kitted out, I decided to test just how big a difference my class skills made.
“Again!” Doing my best to fire up the munchling at my feet, I shouted at it to continue. In truth, I wasn’t sure the creature had ears to begin with, but it couldn’t hurt, could it? Just as before, I’d pulled a single pure munchling away from the pile, and just as before, it was intent on shattering my shins.
Unlike last time, however, the results weren’t favoring it. A metallic fist crashed into my armor, only sending the faintest of vibrations through my body.
You have completely blocked an attack from Ore Munchling (Copper - 98%).
“Cool. That was with 50 points of earth mana empowering my armor. Let’s take that down to 30 and repeat. You can do it, little guy! Fight on!” Lessening the flow of mana to my plate armor, I let him try once more, once again fully blocking the damage. This time around, it was only when I dropped Overload Armor entirely that anything changed.
Ore Munchling has punched you for 2hp!
Both the damage and the accompanying pain were negligible, and I marveled at just how big a difference three class points could make. Summoning my pickaxe, I put the other side of the equation to the test. First attempting to fight back without any mana, I swung down with all my might, driving the tip of the pick directly into the monster’s head.
A deafening din of metal against metal reverberated through the chamber, but for all the noise the blow had made, the damage was much more lackluster. Pulling back my weapon, I discovered a dent in the dense copper, only a few centimeters deep.
Guess it couldn’t be that easy. Bit by bit, I repeated my earlier test in reverse, adding more mana to my attacks until I managed to crack the crystal embedded within its coppery head. Like a puppet with its strings cut, the now-inert golem crashed to the ground.
Axes has reached level 18!
Turning my attention to the rest of the mound blocking my way, I could only shake my head as I tried to count just how many munchlings lay before me.
This might take a while.
By the time I fully cleared the path forward, my muscles were only starting to ache despite the intense workout I’d put them through. After what felt like the millionth blow dispatched the last of the tiny golems, I could only thank my considerable Endurance for keeping me upright. Paired with the first Charisma threshold to keep any sweat at bay and a few casts of Chill to keep me nice and cold, and the entire experience was… relaxing, in a way?
It felt odd to say that about something that was essentially hard labor, but there was something soothing about the repetitive motions, about turning my mind off and slowly working through a task. Perhaps it was a holdover from the many months I’d tried to use my mind as little as possible, but I decided it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. So when the ground was littered with copper of all shapes and sizes and the pathway forward was finally clear, I almost found myself sad to see my job done already.
Very quickly, it became clear that I needn’t have worried. After another long downwards journey, the tunnel opened up into another chamber. Much like the last, veins of ore littered the walls, and just like the last, a single exit lay before me, blocked by a giant pile of metal. The only difference this time was the color: Replacing the warm golden brown of copper was now a grayish silver. After enough mining in Sylum, I was fairly sure I knew what I was looking at, but I let God’s Eye confirm for me.
Ore Munchling (Tin - 97%), Level 20: 1300/1300hp
Nothing for it, then. Out of a normal amount of caution, I pulled a single tin munchling over, repeating my earlier tests of its strength. While it might have been a hair stronger than its copper cousins, the difference wasn’t overly noticeable.
And so, after a brief stretch session and a snack break, I resummoned the familiar weight of my pickaxe to my hands. With my armor charged and my weapon humming with mana, I strode forth to the oversized heap of tin, ready to throw myself into battle once again.
Four more times, the dungeon threw the same tried-and-true formula at me, spruced up with a different type of metal. The third -- a cavern full of iron ore -- turned out much life the previous two. Surprisingly, however, the remaining three required a bit more effort on my part.
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The fourth room technically didn’t contain any metal at all. Instead, when I focused on the nearly pitch-black munchling mound, I received a thrilling discovery.
Ore Munchling (Anthracite - 99%), Level 21: 1400/1400hp
Coal. It’s made out of coal! With any luck, I’d be able to gather some for the cabin. Wood was perfectly fine for fires, but constantly keeping my storage full of bulky tree trunks was less than ideal. On top of that, I was excited to see what sort of flavor a coal fire could impart to my cooking.
Of course, the moment I started thinking about coal fires, I realized there might be a shortcut to get through this chamber. Resisting the urge to immediately launch a fire arrow at the giant mass of coal, I first repeated my earlier tests before trying to ignite a single munchling. Tapping it with a fire-mana charged spear didn’t seem to do anything, and it wasn’t until I dumped a full 200 points of mana into my weapon that the coal finally reacted.
Honestly, I’d been half-convinced that the creature would just explode, but the truth was slightly underwhelming in comparison. A gentle layer of blue flames covered its entire body, the fire thankfully emitting almost no smoke. It was strangely pretty, although the fiery form in the darkness probably would have scared the hell out of anyone without darkvision.
This new development seemed to shock the munchling, who did its best to curl its rocky arms in front of its eyeless face. After examining itself for a while, it gave off a decidedly human-like shrug before returning its attention to me.
With that, the flaming creature began advancing towards me once more. Unlike its earlier lethargic bumbling, though, this time it moved fast.
“Oh shit.” Jumping back, I avoided its newly sped-up fist, letting the blow smash against the ground instead. Where the burning fist struck, a crater formed, sending shards of rock flying out. Nearly slack-jawed, I stared first at the indent in the ground before turning my attention back to the munchling.
“Did I just give you a power-up?” As if all the released energy of the coal was flowing directly into the monster, it surged forth with a grace and speed belied by its awkward, bulky form.
I spent some time letting it chase me around, waiting for it to burn itself out, but it seemed that I’d severely underestimated just how long condensed coal could burn. In the end, I was forced to pelt it with enough water arrows until the fire died down. God’s Eye confirmed that it had lost a bit of coal mass and gone down a level, but that was all that had changed. Beating it in a more standard way, I resolved that I would not be trying that strategy on the entire mound. Fast as I was, I had little desire to face dozens of flaming, empowered golems.
One long slog later, and most of the coal heap was now sitting safely in my storage while the rest lay on the ground.
The remaining two rooms were a bit more bothersome. Tungsten came first, and while my fully charged armor could negate any attacks against me, I struggled much more to overpower the hard metal with my attacks. Not quite willing to sink two more points into Armor Penetration, I slept on the issue, leaving the mines and heading to the nearby mountain cave I’d claimed for myself. I used the opportunity to drop off all of my ore to free up my storage space before heading to bed. Waking up renewed and refreshed, I got to brainstorming.
I could try to tunnel around them. Somehow I feel like the dungeon wouldn’t like that, though, and it’d probably take forever. Could I lure them all out and move forward without fighting? Possibly, but then they would all return and block my way back, too. I didn’t love the idea of cutting off my escape route.
Another day was lost to experimentation, a few of my more promising ideas not panning out. For one, I tried to feed the tungsten munchlings some copper ore to weaken them, but they only looked at the lesser metal with contempt before ignoring it altogether.
In the end, it was one of my dumber plots that actually did the job, and I pulled it off through the power of alchemy. It took a full two days of constant brewing and swapping out different ingredients, and I was half worried that I’d need to take another trip to the jungle, but miraculously, I succeeded. From there, I made a few cloth tarps, courtesy of a bandage-producing treasure I’d grabbed from the necrolord boss in the desert crypt. After poking some holes in the cloth and soaking the tarps in my new victory substance, my secret weapon was complete.
Returning to the mines, I first laid out a few of the tarps before calling over a single tungsten munchling. As soon as it stepped onto the cloth, I summoned a long spear and pushed against the monster with all my might. It toppled over, and I held it down for a while before letting up on the pressure. Freed from my interference, the munchling immediately attempted to right itself.
Unfortunately for it, however, it couldn’t. Each time it tried to lift its limbs, they remained stuck fast to the cloth below.
I summoned a stone container of my newest creation, grinning as I identified it.
Sap Glue
A powerful, fast-acting adhesive.
Who would have thought that all it would take was a glue trap?
After slowly covering the rest of the traps in munchlings, what followed was a maddeningly long wait. I’d poked a few holes in the cloth to give the metallic creatures some contact with the earth, and from there, the tungsten slowly leached out of them. It was a full day later when their composition dropped to 70% tungsten, at which point I found that I could, with serious effort, dispatch them. I even got a skill for it, too, though not one I expected to use much.
You have learned a new skill: Trapmaking
A few days of this eventually allowed me to clear out the rest of the tungsten munchlings, and from there, I repeated the process with the final set, which turned out to be mithril. The only exposure I’d had to the exceedingly rare metal was in Sylum’s metal dungeon, where it had taken multiple layers of buffs from my party members before I could break off even a piece of it. Here, I was forced to wait considerably longer, unable to destroy them until their composition dropped to 30% mithril. I’d long since bound Conjure Liquid to my new glue, having already run out of the ingredients to make more.
A full two weeks later, it was over.
The last of the mithril munchlings were gone, allowing me to continue unaccosted. Originally, I was worried that I’d find another chamber after that with some even stronger metal, but when the tunnel branched into two separate paths, it was clear that the dungeon had changed things up.
At random, I decided to go left. Even before I was spit out into a new chamber, I received a welcome notification that I’d only ever seen once before.
You have entered a safe room!
Nice. Not entirely necessary, but still a good find. If nothing else, I was getting a bit tired, and I was growing increasingly worried about sleeping outside the mines in case all the munchlings respawned and reset my progress. Perhaps I’d spend a night here.
It was only then that the tunnel widened out enough for me to fully take in the safe room, and I pulled up short as I saw what awaited me.
All throughout the mines, I’d spotted veins of ore, but they’d been sporadic and not particularly rich. More than that, the metals I’d seen thus far had all been sterner stuff, generally fit for making weaponry or armor.
It was something of a shock, then, when my eyes landed on countless deposits of shimmering gold and glistening silver. A few other metals were thrown in here and there, but it was clear that the entire safe room was dedicated to softer precious metals, and a few interesting types of rock, too. Was that marble over there? And maybe some limestone? Of course, I didn’t have much use for money right now, and if I did, the mithril was probably worth more. Even so, I found one of my older skills perking up: Jewelry Making would have a field day if I could figure out how to use all of this.
Still, as much as I wanted to get straight to mining, the unexplored pathway weighed heavily on my mind. Leaving the safe room behind, I decided to finish my exploration before calling it a day. A short hop, skip, and jump later, and I’d made my way back to the fork in the tunnel and chose the second path this time.
This time, I knew what was awaiting me, if not specifically, then at least in the general sense.
We hadn’t cleared the region yet. There was still a boss to fight. There was only one path left. It stood to reason that there would be some sort of boss battle up ahead. While I doubted I’d be attacked before I at least spotted what I was up against, I kept my armor overloaded while masking my steps with Dark Soles and Stealth.
In the end, I needn’t have bothered. When I entered the final room of the mines, it was overwhelmingly clear where the boss was, and it didn’t look particularly mobile.
Unlike in all the rooms before, I hadn’t entered at surface level, instead ending up on the lip of a deep pit with the ceiling only a few centimeters above. As befit the final room of a mining dungeon, the walls of the pit were lush with the greens and blues and silvers of high-tier metals, with God’s Eye confirming the presence of mithril, adamantine, and a few others besides. I suspected a good deal of the metals my Stygian Warhammer was made out of were present below, though I certainly wouldn’t be able to make a second one on my own.
Unfortunately, if I did want to reach any of those deposits, first I would have to go through the room’s guardian.
Lying there at the pit’s bottom, motionlessly lazing about, was a form much like the rest of the munchlings I’d grown overwhelmingly familiar with. With short limbs formed from lumps of metal and a larger, flat-topped head, it was the mirror image of its siblings with only two serious differences.
One, naturally, was its composition. With access to stronger metals, it had sampled them all, creating some sort of alloy. Its entire body was a grayish blue-green, and I had a sneaking suspicion it was considerably tougher than any of the other metals I’d pitted myself against.
Its second major difference was even more concerning, however.
Unlike the munchlings, the boss was huge.
Ore Muncher (Advanced Alloy - 100%), Level 34: 12,000/12,000hp
An evolved form of the simpler Ore Munchlings, the Ore Muncher is able to digest and store considerably larger amounts of metal, with its better control allowing it to hold onto this metal without leaching it back into the earth. Holding an innate sense for constructing perfect alloys stronger than the sum of their parts, the Ore Muncher becomes a truly frightening foe when given unrestricted access to enough metal.
With its legs alone already being taller and wider than I was, I knew I wouldn’t be winning any slugfests against it any time soon. Frankly, it might have been large enough that even Alara wouldn’t have been able to handle it. The Dense Brawler specialized in fighting massive opponents just like this, but even she had her limits.
Hope she’s doing okay. Though, in fairness, I was confident her uncle had hired the very best healers for her. But reminisce later. I had more immediate concerns at the moment.
Somehow, I doubted a bit of glue would get me through this fight. Hoping something might come to me, I sat on the edge of the pit, gazing down at the boss. With every solution I cooked up feeling more outlandish than the last, I was beginning to come around to the idea of sinking two more points into Armor Penetration.
When it finally happened, the only warnings I got was a strange reading from Tremor Sense and the briefest flash from Danger Sense. By the time I even thought about moving, it was too late.
One moment I was calmly sitting there, plotting the boss’s demise.
The next, I was hurtling down into the pit at breakneck speeds.
Ore Muncher has hit you with Earth Column for 98hp!
Incredulous, I managed to twist in the air just enough to spot the pillar of rock that had formed from the ceiling, ramming into me, the sight of it sending me into a panic. It knows Earth Magic? And it could see me from down there? I cursed, first at God’s Eye for not giving me a better description, and then at myself for not being cautious enough.
It’s fine. The column hit me for a decent amount of health, but nothing truly concerning. With the fifth rank of Force Dispersal protecting me, I hadn’t even broken anything. Let me just slow myself down with Featherfoot and-
Whatever grand strategy I was about to come up with was cut short as I entered the range of the boss. Even with all of my Intelligence boosting my thought speed, I only had time for a single thought as a truly titanic fist started flying towards me.
I really wasn’t expecting it to be that fast.
For a brief instant, I stared down the colossal clump of metal inches away from my face, flaring as much mana as I could into my armor.
And then, at last, it hit.
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