Shoomph
In the open doorway stood an imposing silhouette. Pale light from the main room leaked into the red doored room. Zach blocked out a majority of it as he eclipsed the room in a dark shadow.
Combat Reward Rooms (Red Rooms):
These rooms are only for the bravest souls. You can earn high-level rewards depending on your performance here.
Be careful though, we would not want our star player to hurt himself.
"This is fine. I'm up for any challenge!" Zach proclaimed loudly, forgetting that a skill book had put him out of commission for a minute merely moments prior.
Would you like to begin the trial?
"Let's go!"
Rolling room...
Horde Mode!
A horde of 10 slimes will fill the room.
"Wait... but I only have one dart." Zach said deflating like a balloon. His confidence was well and truly out of the window.
The once dark room lit up. A harsh red light colored everything leaving no shadow in sight. Then they came. Ten circles appeared on the ground. Squelches could be heard as the slimes' grotesque gooey forms began to ooze to life. Ranging in size from a mouse to a dog.
"Okay think Zach. They're not moving yet. I need to pick a target and quickly." His eyes scanned for the smallest slime in the room, trying to get a guaranteed kill and reduce their numbers. There was one right by his feet; it might have been the smallest but looked like the size of a softball.
Raising his arm slightly to point at the creature, he could feel what must have been mana rushing through his body and into his palm. "Magic Dart!" He screamed as a small cylinder of pure white energy shot from his hand and annihilated the slime, leaving only a smoldering piece of ground.
The rush of defeating the monster was fighting the exhaustion of using all his mana at once.
First kill with Magic Dart!
Well done slugger, that was the dumbest shot I have ever seen.
You have gained 1 skill point.
With a squish and a squelch, the rest of the slimes began to shuffle into the center of the room. One even managed to jump and lunge at Zach. The gelatinous blob was hurtling towards him. The translucent missile was a complete unknown. This thing could be poisonous; it could be dense. Whatever it was, Zach knew he could not allow it to hit him.
Whether it was reflexes or fear; Zach knew what had to be done. Twisting his body in a motion as he had done so many times at practice. He swung his bat. But he did not have his bat, yet mid swing he thought about equipping his club. With a SPLAT, he eliminated the slime and sent pieces of it across the room.
Just eight more.
The small ones moved quite fast whereas the larger ones were slowed down by their sheer mass. The cramped room meant that even those slow ones would be on him soon.
The small horde were very simple to play a very crude version of whack-a-mole, to begin with at least. The small fast ones were small enough that the club was hard for Zach to miss but also strong enough to immediately kill them. Half of them had died before the first challenge.
As the club came down, expecting another splat, Zach did not follow all the way through as to not smash the club on the floor and feel the reverberation. Thus, the slime did not die. It had enough health to survive the initial hit and dashed to his foot.
Contact meant that these slimes would begin to deal damage to their prey. In terms of the system that meant incremental health depletion. For Zach though it meant a sharp stabbing pain wherever the slime existed when the damage went out.
The first strike of the slime was enough to distract Zach from attacking another and allow panic to set it. His eyes immediately were drawn to his foot to identify the source of the pain. The red lights and the water in eyes from wincing in pain clouded his vision. Thrashing his leg about to try and remove the creature was not a conscious choice but simply one of pure nature taking over. The violent nature of this did allow the slime to come off, and upon making contact with the wall, its small body splattered.
With only four left to go it was surprising that he let his guard down but after flicking that enemy off Zach was immediately met by another shooting pain in his calf. The slime he had gone to hit was now attached to the back of his leg. Taking the only action, he could think off at the time, Zach copied a wrestling move he had seen once on television.
Jumping up into the air and slamming his own leg into the hard stone floor was certainly an interesting decision and one that left him in a lot of pain. But it did remove and kill the slime, leaving only three remaining.
Shuffling and squidging towards him. The three masses surrounded him. They began to circle him as a pack.
What followed was a mere act of desperation. Each swing had more force than accuracy. Flailing limbs and jumping slimes. Sweat, goo, blood, and pieces of clothing were scattered across the small room.
The smaller slimes bruised the skin and made the body ache. These larger ones ripped flesh and cloth.
A thunderous blow came down on the largest slime. The body of it bending around the wooden club before it melted into a bubbling puddle.
With one down the other two were a bit easier to take down, though Zach's struggle was not without damage to himself. By the time he was down to one slime, most of his legs were exposed and bloodied. His bare chest was bruised, and his breath was heavy. Each pump of his heart filled with adrenaline. Each step, each swing, and each attack was filled with energy that had more than dwindled.
Both Zach and the monster met each other's eyes. Well, Zach's eyes met the reflection of himself where eyes would be. Mutual desire to win filled both creatures. They both charged to the best of their abilities; Zach with a limp, the slime with its shuffling.
The slime leaped forward, using its mass to fling itself into Zach's shins and finish him off. The primitive creature had instinctively calculated the acceleration of them both and knew if it jumped it would meet the hobbling attacker. Yet it landed back on the ground with a squelch.
Somehow the jump had been predicted and countered. With the last of his leg's strength Zach took to the air, bringing the club above his head and using the momentum of the fall to smash the slime into tiny pieces.
Congratulations on beating your first red room!
Calculating Rewards ...
...
You have gained 2 skill points
For your use of a club you have advanced the Basic Club Combat tree by 3 points.
Your knowledge of slimes has increased: +5% damage against slime-based enemies.
Basic Club Combat 3/10
You have gained 3 Physical Stat Points
Zach limped out of the room. "What's my health at?" To which the screen popped up
Health: 3/20 (8.5 p/h)
Stamina: 5/40 (12.25 p/h)
Mana: 1/5 (6.75 p/h)
"I wish I could have used another magic thingy at the end there, would have made that way easier..."
Would you like to assign your skill or stat points?
"Oh yeah... this whole thing is going to take some getting used to. Cut me some slack dude I don't have a great memory. Uh... let's put both of those skill points into the magic thing. Maybe I can shoot more magic."
Basic Magic 2/5 -> 4/5:
You have gained 2 Magic Stat Points
You have 3 Physical and 2 Magic Stat points would you like to apply them?
"Yes" Zach put 2 more points in his Magic Stat. "I guess I'll go with strengt- Actually man think about this. I need more health surely. I guess... Er... Why didn't middle school biology go over this stuff? Oh yeah, actually the scientific method. I'll put one of my three in each of these and see what it does."
Vitality increased from 4 -> 5:
Health: 3/20 -> 5/22
Health Regen: 8.5 p/h -> 9.5 p/h
Stamina Regen: 12.25 p/h -> 12.75 p/h
"Okay so I get health and regeneration from this. That's good at least. I guess next one up."
Durability increased from 5 -> 6:
Health Regen: 9.5 p/h -> 10 p/h
"Either that is genuinely the worst stat or it does something else."
Endurance increased from 8 -> 9:
Health Regen: 10 p/h -> 10.25 p/h
Stamina: 5/40 -> 10/45
Stamina Regen: 12.75 p/h -> 13/75 p/h
"Okay so vitality increases my health and regen. Durability does basically nothing. Then Endurance is about stamina. Got it. Arghh I should have used the durability one on strength..." Zach sent his club away and rubbed his aching triceps. The adrenaline was wearing off.
Yet he persisted. Dragging his broken body to the silver room. "Please don't be anything bad. I'm sorry for bad mouthing the pop-ups." He pleaded.
You have entered your first item room
These silver rooms have a free item in them.
These items are based on luck
Wiping the blood from his lip, staining his thumb, Zach smirked. "Of course they are." At this point he found it comical.
Quite a bright room appeared before him. Much like the treasure room that he had found, the skill book in this room seemed to be well taken care of.
In the center of this cleaned room was another chest; this one was a classic wooden one with silver accents instead of gold. Knowing what to do, Zach approached the chest, hand outstretched ready to click the pop-up. Which the system did automatically giving the green tick. Once more bright light poured out of the chest as if it was trying to escape from the bottom. Then the shadow leapt out and as it filled in color, the identification happened.
Beast Hunter's Gloves
★☆☆☆☆
A set of gloves crafted from leather to aid in hunting.
+1 Agility
Would you like to equip your new item?
Zach stared at his now tattered and torn baseball gloves. Letting out a sigh he replied, "Yes." With a small zip his hands now were covered in a tanned leather glove that was tied to the wrist with a small, frayed rope. "Guess it's time to move on." He said, looking down at his hands. Shuffling back to the main room.
His eyes whipped back and forth to the two exits. He could go to what was originally left when he entered and hope to meet up with the group that had four. Or he could go to the right hand one and potentially find Samuel and Jorge. Surely Jorge is keeping them safe, and he is currently quite low on health and stamina. Surely, he can rest if he goes the other way.
Zach went right.
The darkness once again disappeared, and his vision adjusted to the empty room. Eerily empty except for giant wooden doors that reminded him of the ones that they had entered this dungeon to. There was also a figure in front of them. A tall box of a man, with a metal bat slung over his shoulder, and a baseball cap turned backwards.
"Well well well, I should have known it'd be you. But dang do you look worse for wear."
"Of course my cruddy luck brought me to you. Aaron" Zach said through a half smile.