Chapter 28: Chapter 13.1

I let my body drop to the floor, copious amounts of sweat running down my face. Turning my head up, I took huge gasps as I tried to regain my breath. Damn I didn’t even need to use a potion.

“Good job Newbie-kun! Ne, ne, can we start using weapons now?” Tiona asked. The damn Amazon wasn’t tired at all.

I took a glance at her giant double headed sword and gulped… still, I nodded. It was about time I really started to train with my spear. Hey, maybe I could even survive a few blows now!

Grabbing at the water skin I drank a few gulps and poured some on top of my head to help me cool down. With a grunt, I threw the water pouch towards Tiona and couldn’t help but stare when she did the same.

Why? She wasn’t even sweating! Still, I decided to stay quiet. The view was amazing after all.

Opening my pack, I pulled out my new eyepatch, a black piece of cloth that covered one of my eyes and completely blocked its vision. Today I was wearing it on my right eye.

While the Sharingan wasn’t really doing much outside battle, using the eyepatch halved the amount of mind it used just by being active. I was also hoping it would be enough to stop the damage it was doing, or allow the potions to fully heal it.

Plus… well it looked good. Tiona approved!

“Great, I can’t wait to start training you with my Urga. Using weapons is far more fun than just my hands!” She crouched in front of my tired body and poked at my eyepatch. “Hey, do you think I should wear one too? It looks soo cool!”

I tried to think of Tiona wearing an eyepatch. “Somehow, I think it would look cute on you.”

“Really, you think so?” She asked. Her face far too close to my own. “Let me try!”

“Hey, get your own!” I pinched her hand when she tried to steal my eyepatch causing her to pull back.

Tiona briefly pretended to lose interest, but even with only one sharingan I wasn’t fooled and managed to block her second grab, then the third. With a glint on her eyes, the Amazon attacked with both arms and it was all I could do to keep her from grabbing the piece of cloth.

“Mou! Now I really want to take it!” She grumbled as I struggled to keep her fingers away from my head. 

“Ha, now I really don’t want you to!” I answered and continued to struggle.

 Using my legs, I finally managed to push against the ground and slip aside while jumping to my feet. Panting hard, I adjusted my clothes and smugly lifted my head high. I won.

Glancing back, I caught the glint on Tiona’s eyes and shouted. “I still have to go to the dungeon, see you!” then scrambled away as fast as I could.

“Bye newbie-kun!” She waved with a smile on her face. “Remember, I have a mission outside the city tomorrow so I won’t be able to train you, but don’t you dare slack off!”

“Don’t worry; I’ll probably spend the day in the dungeon then!” I shouted back and waved at the Amazon. 

I took a very quick bath and ate something on my way to the dungeon. I had just gotten my magic ring yesterday and had yet to test its effects on any monster. I also had to pay the Witch and, while delving mainly on the fifth floor for half a day had been enough for now, it wasn’t gonna let me gather enough funds.

It was about time I push further into the dungeon.

Taking off the eyepatch again, I put it into my backpack and entered the dungeon at full strength. While blocking one eye didn’t really affect my daily life, I wasn’t about to risk facing monsters without my depth perception. 

Kobolds and Goblins weren’t even a threat anymore. I dispatched them with contemptuous ease as I rushed through the first three floors, only having to watch out for dungeon lizards. They could still surprise me if I wasn’t paying attention.

Reaching an empty room on the fourth floor, I found one of the Lizards sneaking through the ceiling for an ambush and decided to use it as a test subject.

Using my spear, I blocked its first attack and used the shaft to slam it into the ground, then pressed it down. The beast struggled to free itself, but my strength had grown enough that, with leverage, I could keep it pinned with no trouble.

Finding out how to channel my mana into the ring took some time. I was far too used to channeling it into my eyes passively, guiding it towards somewhere else wasn’t easy, but I eventually figured it out.

The ring absorbed my power for three seconds before I felt it was full. Pulling the mana back was actually uncomfortable, it felt slower and thicker, but not to the point that it hurt.

Still, when I stared at the Lizard’s eye and sent it an illusion of darkness. I immediately knew it had worked. The skill felt almost as powerful as if I had used the mangekyou to cast and the lizard took nearly three times as long to break free.

A few more tries and I was sure. Using the ring took me four seconds, instead of being an instant cast, but it more than tripled the power of my illusion and I suspected that even a lesser illusion could affect a level 2 target, if for a short amount of time.

That gave me ideas. Unfortunately, the ring could only hold a small amount of mana, and I didn’t have the skill to constantly be using it, so I couldn’t walk around with a charge ready.

Still, it was a great improvement, and made me feel much better about risking delving lower floors.

Opening my small leather bag I checked my potions and noticed it wasn’t full, I had been forced to use four health potions and two stamina potions this week. I sighed.

I quickly decided to break through the fifth floor tomorrow. I’d refill my potions today… and maybe buy another bag to keep in the backpack. Tomorrow, with my supplies full, I’d have the entire day to explore the lower floors.

I could continue to hunt today, but the drops would probably pale in comparison to tomorrow and the monsters were no longer a threat. It was better to continue experimenting.

Well, time to improve my monster taming abilities.

Jumping up from the Lizard’s back I used the butt of my spear as a lever to flick it away. The beast flew through the air and fell in a heap, giving me enough time to charge the ring and catch it into another greater illusion.

I assumed the lizard would continue to blindly attack me for a while, and that it wasn’t smart enough to figure out when something was wrong. So I just put it into a loop where it would charge me, bite my arm and then experience debilitating pain.

The creature stayed immobile as my illusion played out, after only 7 seconds it lost control of its limps, twitching in place like a fish out of water for a full second and stopping again.

The same 8 seconds loop played out in the creature’s mind twelve times before it finally broke out of the illusion… either that or the spell just lost power.

Lying with my back against a wall, I watched curiously as the beast gathered itself; it got up and finally found me. The lizard actually growled at me and hesitated, but still tried to attack.

You are reading story Dungeon Delving is Damn HARD (danmachi / kinda SI) at novel35.com

I put it into another illusory loop. In this one it wouldn’t just suffer pain when it bit me, but I’d actually resist and stab it through the eye. Then it would feel the pain.

The creature learned fast, it stopped trying to attack me after only twelve minutes and tried to desperately run away.

Thankfully, with the ring charged, I managed to catch it in lesser illusion powerful enough to dissuade it from running. The dungeon lizard just lay on the floor and gave a pitiful whine.

Damn, now I felt really bad. I know it was a murderous beast hell-bent on killing any and all humans, but torturing it until it obeyed me felt far too much like animal cruelty. There had to be a better way.

With a sigh, I stepped away from the beast and it didn’t try to escape again. Finding a large boulder I sat on top of it and started creating new illusions, those ones were ways to teach the lizard to obey commands.

I spent nearly half an hour teaching it how to ‘follow’, ‘hold’, ‘attack’, and ‘run’ by showing it an illusion of what I wanted and sending a pleasant feeling whenever it obeyed.

It helped that Dungeon Lizards were ugly as fuck, so I didn’t feel as bad about brainwashing it. I don’t think I could have done it to a whimpering Almiraj.

Wandering around with the lizard following me by walking through the ceiling, I quickly found a group of three goblins. They hadn’t noticed me so I quickly pointed and shouted. “Dungeon lizard, I choose you. Attack!”

My monster dropped on top of a goblin and bit down on the creature’s head, crushing its skull. The other two goblins seemed extremely confused at the lizard’s attack, giving me enough time to dispatch one with a thrown dagger to the back of the neck.

The last one finally caught sight of me and screeched, but my loyal companion wasn’t done. Twisting around, it delivered a tail swipe to the monster, smashing it into the wall before tearing out its throat.

I quickly channeled mana into my ring and sent it a sense of accomplishment, as well as some pleasure. I harvested the goblin’s magic stones and sighed as there was no loot drop. 

Looking from my bag of magic stones to my new lizard companion, I considered things. Pulling one of the smaller ones out, I threw it to the beast. The lizard’s tongue darted out and it scented the air, but didn’t seem interested in the stone.

A quick lesser illusion of it eating the thing changed that and the monster consumed the stone, it seemed to shake a little as the stone dissolved into its mouth, but wasn’t really changed.

I was probably gonna regret this, but I so wanted to see what would happen.

Composing an illusion of the creature attacking a different human and getting the same pain. I sent it and hoped it would cause the beast to focus mainly on other monsters instead of adventurers.

Together, we continued to explore the fourth floor; I constantly sent it after other monsters, feeding it one in every four stones we got. After two hours of this, the monster had consumed nearly twenty magic stones and grown capable of killing four goblins by itself.

Still, the other dungeon monsters seemed completely oblivious to my little pet, only turning to attack it after it had initiated an attack and never before. It allowed the lizard to always kill at least one monster before the others turned on it.

The little guy actually seemed to get a taste for Kobold’s magic stones and started guiding me through the dungeon while hunting them. Made for a much more effective delve.

Eventually, I noticed a lone adventurer coming up from the deeper floors and took some distance from my pet. 

“Hold.” I told the beast and turned a corner. I wanted to see what it would do when faced with another human… or whatever race it was. Almost forgot Danmachi had more than humans.

I still kept an illusion ready, just in case the lizard got the jump on the adventurer, but it wasn’t needed.

“Ugh. Another one of those.” The man said and laid his backpack on the ground before pulling out a sword. My lizard hissed at him and took a step back, causing the man to pause in confusion. “What the…”

The dwarf advanced towards my lizard, the creature held its place until the last second, hissing and pawing at the ground until the dwarf was nearly upon it. With one last hiss the lizard decided that avoiding a human was worth more than obeying my command and ran back towards me.

Waving between my legs the lizard hid behind me, its tongue nervously darting out in quick jabs. I laughed and rewarded it with another illusion, trying to cement the behavior with positive feedback. I also feed it another two stones.

The dwarf turned the corner at a sprint and nearly didn’t manage to stop when he saw our position. His eyes quickly looked from the hiding monster to my satisfied smile and he grunted. “Huh, guess you tamed it.”

It wasn’t really a question, but I nodded anyway. “Yep, this guy’s turning out to be quite capable.”

“Humph. Bit of a waste if you ask me. Spending time taming such weak monsters, that is.” He said and sheathed his sword. The dwarf still kept his distance and maintained a wary eye on the both of us. “Impressive taming ability though.”

“Thanks, I’m just practicing before trying it on stronger monsters.” I answered and stepped aside, letting the dwarf continue his way up.

“Good delve.” He nodded and passed me by, his hand still gripping the handle of his sword. I nodded back.

Wandering some more, I choose a room that was completely out of the path from one floor to the other and, after eliminating the monsters inside, sat down.

By this point, my lizard had learned to dig into the monster’s chest to fish out their stones by itself, so I watched it consume the three kobolds that had been on the room and settle down by my feet.

I considered eliminating the thing to avoid causing some unlucky adventurer trouble, but the creature had avoided confrontation with other adventurers quite well and… well, I really didn’t want to kill it.

So, I spent another hour or so bombarding the thing with illusions, trying to teach it to run away from any adventurer, be it human, dwarf, pallum or whatever. I also instilled in it a sense that this room was its home, so I’d know where to find it on my next delves. 

I knew what I was doing was dangerous, but the dungeon lizard was a fairly weak creature and I was pretty sure it wasn’t developing a resistance to my illusions anytime soon. 

I had also observed the rate at which it grew during the day and it wasn’t going to become a problem anytime soon. It could eat the entire floor several times over and it still wouldn’t be a match for a level 2 monster.

Eventually, I left the lizard on the room and made my way back up in record time, my backpack holding only half my usual loot.   

Putting my eyepatch back on, I made my way to the market and sold all my loot drops before restocking my potions, leaving me with only a thousand valis or so. Hopefully, I’d be able to get far more loot tomorrow.