Chapter 3: Dungeon Challenge (1)
He was currently in a small dark natural cave. The room was only about five meters wide and nearly round. Its high wasn't much with only about 2 meters. He was easily able to touch the ceiling with his hand and it also meant that he could just jump around.
The only light came from the moss but it was enough for his eyes, so his vision wasn't impaired. Together with the smooth floor, it would make moving around manageable.
His carefully looking around paid off, since in the moss behind a small stone, at a location that wasn't visible from the starting point, he found a small white pill inside a plastic wrapper. After picking it up a popup informed him about what it was.
[[ Item: Energy Pill
Grade: 1F
Description: A form of energy storage in the form of a pill. It can either be swallowed to be absorbed and be used to improve nanites, or it can be crafted into one energy pack.
]]
The second usage wasn't important to Ivan, but the first one intrigued him. He hadn't read about his nanites being capable of being strengthened before. With his nanites improving his body, wouldn't strengthening them help him with the upcoming fights.
He didn't hesitate but tore the plastic wrapping and swallowed down the pill. To his surprise, it tasted like mint and was easy to swallow.
[[ You have swallowed an Energy Pill. Since it is the first pill you have swallowed, the Nanite-Suit upgrade menu has been unlocked. ]]
Together with the prompt, he could feel himself become just a tiny, tiny bit more powerful. It was a surreal feeling but he was sure that he had improved on all aspects. It was exactly the same feeling like the one that he had when the message about the experiment had come and he had first gotten his Nanite-Suit.
He opened the Nanite-Suite upgrade menu and a new screen, which he hadn't seen before popped up. There also was a new icon beside the dungeon browser.
[[ Nanite-Suite Upgrades
Current: Stage 1 F "Primitive"
Energy: 1/100
Material: 0/100
Info: Nanite-Suites can be infused with energy and material to improve their performance. Once the limit has been reached it is necessary to improve the nanites themselves.
]]
Once again, the screen didn't contain that much information but it contained the necessary one. Whoever designed them had made sure to make them as minimalistic as possible. Somehow Ivan was sure that the next time he opened the screen the info wouldn't show up again. Of course, he could ask AIA about it, but the info wouldn't be displayed like this again.
He closed the screen and focused back on the task at hand.
He carefully unsheathed the knife he had just bought and then started to move towards the tunnel leading out of the room he was currently in.
There was a square of about five meters before the tunnel gently curved. Until the curve, there was nothing in sight but the naked walls of the tunnel itself. Still, Ivan carefully made his way forward, checking every spot. Finding the 'Energy Pill' just now had ensured him that his guess was correct and it was possible to find hidden items. And he was completely unwilling to let anything slide by him.
But there was nothing. When he arrived at the curved part, he got even more careful. Slowly making his way around the curve he was able to look into another room. This was of the same size as the one he had just come from and was also empty.
That was, it was empty of anything but the green-skinned monster sitting in the center of the room. Its head was turned towards the other tunnel entrance, leaving his back to the one Ivan was coming from.
The monster was only about one meter high and sitting down his head was even lower. From behind Ivan wasn't able to get a complete picture of how it looked but it seemed to have a similar statue as a human with the long limbs, the small size, and the green skin is the main differentiating points.
The only clothes he could spot on it were a thin string on his hip which should be used to fasten a loincloth. But besides it, there was nothing on it. Thankfully its arms were located beside it instead of in front of it. This allowed him to see that there was nothing in its hands and the long nails seemed to be its only weapon.
Ivan didn't even think about the morality of attacking a living being from the back. A living being that technically hadn't done anything to him. Instead, he fully focused on determining the best way to slay this monster.
Having never killed anything larger than a fly he could only fall back onto his gaming experience.
He didn't know where any important organ was located but he was sure that the thin neck should be a weak point. Just when he was calculating the best way to attack that thin neck with his knife the voice of AIA interrupted his thoughts.
"By focusing on another living being inside the dungeon you can obtain some information about it."
This seemed like a useful tip and Ivan directly followed it. After focusing his mind on the monster sitting before him a window with some information popped up.
[[ Monster: Small Green Goblin
Stage: 1F
Description: One of the weakest monsters the Small Green Goblin lives in dark caves and mainly consumes the moss growing on the walls. It is always greedy for a more nutritional diet and doesn't hesitate to attack anything that could provide such a thing, making it extremely aggressive.
The limitations of its diet also limit its strength and intelligence making it dumb and acting only on instincts.
]]
The information provided was quite detailed. Although it wasn't of much use. Sure, the description told him that it was extremely aggressive but that was something he had already expected. The most important information was surely the fact that it would only act on instincts and was dumb.
But for his current situation and plan, this didn't matter. Instead, it would have been nice to find out more about how good it was at sensing smells or sounds. This would have told him how likely it was for a sneak attack to succeed.
Not having gotten any useful information he turned his mind back to planning his sneak attack. He calculated the best attack vector for his knife, the best spot to lunge forward, and the best angle to approach from.
'Here goes nothing.', with this thought, he slowly crept forward. He followed the path that he had planned out beforehand, that would keep him behind the goblin and out of its view. Something that sounded much fancier than it was. After all, it was just straight forward.
When he reached a point about two meters behind the goblin, he tightened his leg muscles and pushed himself forward in a lunge. His knife clearly stretched towards the neck of the goblin. He wasn't trying to do something as fancy as slitting its throat. No, he just wanted to ram his knife into its neck and hope for the best.
And that was what he got. His knife slit into the neck of the goblin with surprising ease. By luck, he also cut through the main artery and the windpipe. With the blood splattering out in front of the goblin, it didn't even get time to react to the sudden attack, when it was already mortally wounded.
With only the sound of blood and air gushing out, it slowly fell forwards onto the ground, already dead by the shock of having suddenly gotten its neck nearly separated.
It could be said that Ivan's sneak attack had been a huge success. The ambushed goblin hadn't even had time to realize how it had died.
After about five seconds after its body had touched the ground, the corpse of the goblin suddenly vanished. Together with it the fluids it had lost vanished as well.
If not for the small indicator on Ivan's field of view, it would have been impossible to know that there had ever been a small goblin sitting here.
[[ Congratulations, you have killed your first monster. ]]
[[ Small Green Goblin has dropped 1EC. ]]
These two messages were the result of his hard-planned sneak attack. Looking at the clock he had already spent more than thirty minutes in the dungeon.
Although the drop had been disappointing, Ivan understood that this was only the entrance dungeon. So there really shouldn't be any good drops available.
What surprised him was that his mind seemed to have changed. If it had been before then there was no way he would be so calm after killing a living, breathing being. But now he felt as if, what he had just done was something natural. He wasn't sure if this change was a good thing but for clearing the dungeon it was surely helpful. Besides he had no choice but to accept it.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone