Chapter 9: Chapter 08 – Skill Gathering

After a split second, the lights came back.

I jolted upright.

The lights had never flickered or faded or anything since I first found this dungeon. There was no reason why such a thing should happen. They were one of the constants of the dungeon as far as I knew after all.

I was nervous, but I had to know what happened.

Slowly, I crept along the side of the fountain pedestal and looked around.

At a glance, there wasn't anything wrong. The room hadn't changed, nor had the fountain. But as I looked, I realized there was a difference. The fountain I was in should've been one I had only just visited, yet it looked clean. There wasn't any traces of dust on it anywhere.

Not only that, but as I stood up and got out from under the water curtain, there wasn't any trace of any dirt or dust anywhere. There should've been footsteps in the dust on the floor when I entered and exited the room, but there wasn't.

It was only then I noticed something that definitely shouldn't have been there: my things.

I found several piles of various drops on leather hides laid out on the floor along with a carpet made from rabbit fur.

It looked exactly like my home base, but that should've been impossible. I should've been on the fourth floor fountain, yet everything suggested that I was at the first floor fountain.

Carefully, one step at a time, I got out from the fountain and checked everything to see if it wasn't a hallucination or something.

I felt like I was pressured to the point where I really would've started to hallucinate my home.

Everything I touched seemed real. There was no indication that any of it was fake, no matter how hard I tried.

But what was most important wasn't what was inside of my home, but outside of it.

My nerves had been frayed to the limit, so my steps were unsteady as I slowly made my way to the dungeon side of my home and passed through the winding hallway.

At the end, I was forced to close my eyes due to how bright it got, but once I get used to the light, what spread out ahead of me was the familiar sight of the prairie maze where I spent so much time hunting.

My heart was pounding in my chest as I stared. Drool started to overflow, but I didn't have the mental capacity to do anything about it, because all I could think about was...

(FOOD!)

Before I knew it, was was in a mad dash, looking for prey.

Three turns later, there was a wolf. The same type of brown wolf that I had spent hunting all before I entered the second floor.

Without any mental capacity to slow down the slightest, I pounced on the wolf, wrapped my arms around it's tough bristling fur, and bit down with all my might.

The momentum of my leap knocked the creature down and we rolled on the ground until we came to a stop.

If my fangs didn't have a death grip on the back of it's neck, it would've been a heartwarming scene.

But I was too hungry to worry about such a thing, as I greedily sucked up the delicious blood that seeped from the wolf's wound.

The monster was small, and thus the quantity of blood it had was also small. I wasn't satisfied, but being even a little satiated brought the biggest smile I could make onto my face.

With the feeling of having sprouted wings, I raced around from one monster to the next until I could barely move from how bloated I felt, but the smile never left my face once.

 

I wasn't sure how much time I had spent, but it was a genuine struggle to get back home. My body felt heavy, and it was difficult to walk well. Though any monsters that I happened to meet were all ended swiftly with a single swipe of my claws.

The drops were left where they appeared. I felt like if I reached down to get them, I wouldn't be able to stand up again. My belly was so bloated I thought that if someone saw, they'd think I was pregnant. Though maybe they'd run screaming in terror first since in the latter half of my feeding spree I got pretty sloppy and let blood splatter and drip onto me as I fed. Now that I was so full, I didn't even bother eating and just killed the monsters that I encountered in the easiest ways I could. Due to that, I was pretty much entirely covered in blood.

The fact that the suicidal monsters kept rushing only to be split into two and burst their insides on me by my claws didn't help.

But I was a vampire. Being covered in blood wasn't actually that bad of a feeling, though it started to get annoying once it started to dry.

"...I'm the blood princess...hehehe...urp"

I started to laugh at my stupid joke before it felt like I put too much pressure on my stomach and almost threw up.

It wasn't good etiquette to throw up your meals...though in a sense I've been playing with my food for the last bit, so it was kinda too late for that.

(Someday, it would be nice to be able to have a bath of blood)

There was some negative images of a certain Hungarian countess who did just that, but it felt much more appropriate for a vampire to do that.

Once I got back, I had a slow soak in the fountain. My body handled the cold water surprisingly well, but a warm bath would've been really nice. That was something I needed to figure out.

As I relaxed and digested my meal, I thought back to what had happened earlier.

I was at the fourth floor fountain, then suddenly everything went dark, and when I could see again, I was at the first floor fountain.

Such a thing had never happened before. I've bathed in the fountain quite a few times already, but there wasn't any indication of being sent to a different fountain while doing so.

The only difference was that this time it was after I visited a different fountain. Though I did bathe in both the second and third floor fountains and nothing happened.

Was it unique to the fourth floor fountain?

But it didn't look any different from the others, so that theory was pretty weak. It was more likely that it worked with any fountain, rather than specific ones.

Then the only thing that was different was...

(I wished to come back to the first floor...?)

It was a theory worth testing.

"I wish I was on the fourth floor"

While leaning my back against the fountain's lip, I mumbled out those word without much thought.

Sudden, everything went dark making me jerk up before the light came back a split second later.

I stood up and looked around. Everything I left on the first floor was gone, but now there were the things I left behind on the fourth floor.

Now that I confirmed not only that it was possible to move between fountains, but what was needed to make it happen, a smile erupted on my face. Everything I went through, all the hunger and suffering, were things that didn't need to happen. But on the flip side, it meant that no matter what happened, no matter how the later floors were set up, I didn't have to worry about food, since I could always come back to eat.

But I did need to know more about this teleporting, so I started to play around with it, moving between different floors and trying out different commands.

What I learned was that I could move between any fountain I've visited, so no cheating floors. I also discovered that there was a lot of leeway when it came to teleporting around. It worked as long as I was touching the fountain, and any command that was reasonably clear of my destination and intent was enough to activate it.

With those discoveries packed in the back of my mind, I stored my loot back on my first floor home and continued deeper into the dungeon...after having one last bite to eat.

 

It turned out that the golems were pretty similar to the skeletons from the floor before when it came to feeding.

They were tasty, like eating lightly flavoured rock candies, but not too satisfying, also like eating rock candies.

The biggest difference was that I had to suck out their essence directly from their cores inside their central body. It wasn't possible without first opening up the hard shell. It was kinda like eating lobsters, but wasn't as rewarding.

Otherwise though, there wasn't anything remarkable about the floor.

The third floor gave me a few new skills, particularly [Bow Technique] and [Sense Presence]. The latter was kinda nice, but there wasn't anything that actually tried to hide at this point, so it went to waste for the time being.

The fourth floor gave me [Strong Arm] and [Tenacious Body]. The first raised my [Strength] and the latter [Constitution]. Golems were annoying to farm, but the passive skills were nice.

In addition, I noticed that the walls often had cracks and something sparkled in between. A close examination simply revealed it to be some sort of metal in the walls, rather than a hidden room or something, so I lost interest. The golems were already dropping large stones, crystal clusters and lumps of clay. I examined each drop a little. The first was a light grey and a bit grainy in texture. The crystal was smooth and hard, and the clay was hard with very little moisture, but felt more like modelling clay rather than some ordinary clay from the ground.

Out of curiosity, I tried licking them as well. The first one tasted as I imagined plaster would taste like, and lightly fizzled in my mouth as I tried to spit out the bits that came off on my tongue. The crystals tasted like salt. So much so that I desperately wiped my tongue trying to get the overpowering taste out of my mouth. The clay simply tasted like dirt.

I regretted tasting the last one, but the first two were informative, so overall it was a net positive. Now I only had to find a use for them to make my suffering worth it.

The same pattern continued for the most part. I'd enter a floor, feed and loot what I can and continue to the next floor.

Occasionally there was a particularly interesting floor.

The eleventh floor was one like that. The structure was new to me as it wasn't maze-like in any sense.

What first greeted me was a pair of monsters standing in front of gateway.

The monsters themselves looked like bipedal dogs wielding crooked metal spears and wearing armour made from roughly patching hardened leather together. Kobalds, if my memory served me right.

Of course, the second they noticed me, they acted in the usual manner and charged me without considering the difference in our strength.

Beyond the heavy wooden door was a small empty passage with another door. Past that was a larger hall with several kobalds outfitted in various ways.

At first I saw it as an easy and simple battle, but after the second monster went down, a sharp pain in my shoulder informed me that there was more than met the eye in that room. Above, instead of simply a ceiling, there was a second floor balcony overseeing the room I was fighting in, and there, there were a pair of kobalds aiming their bows at me.

Once I realized that, the fight was simple, but the fact that the floor was set up in that way shook me.

The rooms themselves weren't set up like usual. They weren't simply branching halls with side rooms that either had a treasure chest, enemies, traps, or were simply empty. All the rooms seemed to have a purpose, though there were tons of duplicate rooms, as if they were made to pad out content.

What was especially interesting was the fact that the monsters that appeared in those rooms were also appropriate for those rooms. Kobalds wearing chef outfits were in the kitchens, ones in leather aprons and wielding a hammer were in the smitheries, ones in white aprons over robes were surrounded by bottles filled with mysterious liquids.

But not only that, like in the second room past the initial gates, there were defensive rooms as well that contained strategically placed monsters optimized to ambush explorers like myself.

Frankly, if this wasn't in the middle of a dungeon, I'd have thought I accidentally wandered into a kobald fortress or something. Well, the layout itself didn't make much sense, and there were too many duplicate rooms in the first place. No fortress needed seven weaving rooms and six tanneries.

But while the design of this floor was unique, the most interesting part about it was the monsters themselves.

It might've been the first time I saw kobalds, but that wasn't what made them so unusual. It was the skills I got from them.

At first there were a bunch of ones that used magic. It wasn't the first time I got magic related skills, but the floors where they appeared, the skills were held by monsters that didn't have even vaguely humanoid characteristics.

Komodo dragon sized lizards that spat fire and rocks or floating jellyfish-like monsters that flung water and wind blades were the kind of things I encountered up until then. If I didn't get the announcement that I had received the [Fire Magic], [Earth Magic], [Water Magic], [Wind Magic], and [Arcane Magic] skills, I would've thought that they were some sort of racial skills or something else entirely.

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But because of the nature of the monsters I received the skills from, and the lack of usage details in their descriptions, I couldn't figure out how to activate the skills. Simply having them wasn't enough. I needed the knowledge on how to use them to make it work.

It was like the skills were taunting me. Using magic was a fantasy staple, yet while I not only had the skills, and they had reached rank three by the time I finished floor seven, I still couldn't use them.

Made worse, they even gave me rank 5 for [Astute Mind] which raised my intelligence and [Resolute Psyche] which raised my anima.

It made me want to cry a little.

But that all changed on this eleventh floor. This time, there were kobalds that could use magic, and while it was only earth or wind magic, I could see how they chanted and waved their arms to cast their magic.

It was surreal how I could understand their chants but not their random yelling. One had real concrete meaning, but the other was considered little more than yelps and grunts according to my language comprehension skill.

The chants themselves seemed a bit generic and simple. Things like 'Rocks rise up and impel into my enemy' or 'Arrows of fire, fly through the air and strike my enemy'.

Seeing real examples though had me start practising magic, though I hadn't figured out how to get it to work by the end of the floor, no matter how close I copied the words and motions. There was probably something else that I was missing. I hoped to figure that out as I dove deeper into the dungeon, but for the meantime, I decided to spend extra time in the fountain rooms working on it on the side.

In addition to the magic, the other things I found was that the strangely dressed kobalds I killed actually had skills corresponding to their perceived profession. Cook kobalds had the [Cooking] skill, tailor kobalds had the [Tailoring] skill, etc.

Since this was the first time I saw such a thing, I spent extra time farming these non-combat skills in case I wouldn't find them elsewhere. Even if I didn't have any immediate use for any of them, it was only a matter of time until they each came in handy.

With that in mind, I got the [Cooking], [Smithing], [Carpentry], [Leatherworking], [Tailoring], [Enchanting], and [Alchemy] skills, and even to rank four. While the others were self-descriptive, [Enchanting] seemed to be the skill to imbue items with magical properties, and [Alchemy] seemed to be the power to create items that inherently had magical effects. Basically [Enchanting] powered up existing objects while [Alchemy] created inherently powerful things. It was the difference between making a weapon magical and making a potion. At least that was what I got out of it, but since I didn't know anything about the process itself, I couldn't actually use the skills, rendering them dead skills for the meantime.

It felt like this place was excessively convenient for vampires like me to get the skills I couldn't normally get, but the monsters also dropped items that were unique to them. Each time I would get something that related to the profession the skill was related to. From those that had [Cooking], I got herbs and spices. From the ones with [Smithing], I got metal ingots. From [Carpentry], jars of sticky liquids that looked like varnishes and lacquers. From [Leatherworking], jars of some sort of cloudy liquid that might've been some sort of tanning agent, as well as dyes. From [Tailoring], lots of dyes. From [Enchanting], just crystals of various colours. And from [Alchemy], a wide assortment of plant and animal parts.

I wasn't sure how much I'd use that sort of thing, but just in case, I routinely returned to the floor's fountain to drop off my loots before continuing to farm the skills. It was better to have than to have not, in my opinion, though excess was a distinct problem, I could always clean up and throw any away if I started to run out of space.

In addition to that, I had also gotten and raised the [Leadership] skill. I didn't realize it at first, but each group had a leader, like when a boss monster lead some subordinates.

Oftentimes the boss was merely the strongest and the group didn't really coordinate beyond a basic, predetermined strategy, but sometimes the boss would actually give orders. They were rare, but it seemed like these bosses had the [Leadership] skill. At least that was my theory.

The skill description was that it increased the user's ability to give orders to others, and for others to follow the user's orders. It seemed like it was like a charisma boost for giving orders to those who acknowledged the user as their leader, and addition, if those subordinates followed those orders, they became more capable while executing those orders.

The effect wasn't strong amongst the kobalds, but I could certainly feel that they got a little weaker when I aimed to kill the groups' leaders first. It was certainly going to be useful someday if I ever got my own allies.

By the way, the kobalds reminded me of those street hot dog vendors. The boss was a kobald in a fancy outfit, imitating some sort of noble or something. He tasted a bit like a gourmet hot dog with too many toppings.

After the eleventh floor, I encountered floors similar to this a few more times. Floors that were shaped like a castle, or a fortress, or some other purpose built structure, rather than simply a giant labyrinth that may or may not have the appearance of being artificially built.

I didn't forget to farm up the rare skills a bit each time, though I didn't find any new ones past the first floor, the drops progressively increased in quality.

 

The thirteenth floor was a dense forest with light streaming down through the breaks in the canopy lighting up the paths. This time the monsters were all plant based.

There were child sized humanoid brown carrots that ran at me screaming so loud that I had to resist the urge to cover my ears. These things were annoying as all hell, though they were weak. Even a weak hit would knock them down and shut them up until they got back onto their pointed feet. Overall they were slow and weak but that screaming was difficult to deal with. Especially when they were combined with other monsters.

It tasted like a ginger candy.

The next was a monster that strongly resembled a sheep, but it didn't charge at me when I first encountered it. Instead, it simply watched me as I approached it. Suddenly, it charged at me without warning. I sidestepped it then backed off, waiting for it's next attack, but it didn't come. It simply returned to it's original position and just watched me.

The thing was really strange.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that the entire area around it was barren. There wasn't any grass or shrubs near it in a perfect circle aside from a single large plant in the middle. From that plant, a single large vine extended and was connected to the sheep's belly.

Rather than an animal, it seemed like this was a plant-type with animal characteristics, and it was unable to reach beyond the barren area. That was why it didn't attack until I got close.

It really was an odd monster, but when I next tried, it was easy to cut down with my bare claws.

I couldn't help but think the monster tasted like a sweet roast lamb.

The last monster I encountered in this floor was basically a giant closed lotus, except it was in the middle of the path. The flower pedals reached above my head, but when I got close, vines from around the base whipped at me.

It was fast, a lot faster than most things I've fought, but it concentrated on restraining me rather than doing direct damage.

Instead, the flower opened up and there was a naked woman with green skin waiting inside as I was lifted off the ground. Being the first thing I encountered that so strongly resembled a human, and an extremely shapely and naked one at that, I couldn't help but blush. But it looked like the woman wanted to eat me, and I had no intention of reversing the usual predator/prey relations I had lived since arriving in this world.

The vines weren't too strong, making it easy to pull on my restraints and cut myself down before quickly pouncing and biting down onto the green woman's neck.

She tasted like a fruit tart.

Beyond the theme, there were two things that stood out on this floor.

The first was that there was a large amount of vegetation growing conspicuously on the paths made between the dense trees with thick shrubs filling the gaps. Normally I wouldn't have given them much of a look, but some of them were small berry bushes. There were strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and a few others I didn't recognize.

Noticing that made me curious, so I started to check out some of the other plants. To my surprise, I found lettuce, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and a whole slew of other vegetables.

The amount I saw was enough to feed a small village for a day.

It was pretty unfortunate that I couldn't eat any of it, but if I had been reborn as a normal race, I most likely would've starved to death far before reaching this far. Despite the drawbacks, I was glad I chose to become a vampire.

The second interesting thing I found on this floor was the skill I had gotten from all of the plant-based monsters that inhabited this floor: [Solar Power]. It basically restored the user's HP and MP while under sunlight, making the monsters here a pain to fight if I couldn't keep take them out quickly, since it was so hard to keep them in the shade the entire fight.

While I successfully got the skill and even raised it to rank five thanks to the fact that all the monsters had it, it was a racial, preventing me from using it. It was so frustrating when I checked it out, since I thought I could use it to negate my sunlight weakness.

 

The sixteenth floor was shaped like a winding canyon, with the entrance being at the bottom of the valley.

Rather than sharp bends and turns blocking the way, the walls oscillated irregularly and large boulders forced detours. Sometimes staying at the bottom beside a slow stream, sometimes climbing up the walls on narrow paths, or even through small caves that cut right through the canyon walls.

The monsters I encountered were all aerial, making the fights particularly disadvantageous for me, not having many means to fight at ranged.

I first relied on a bow and arrows I got by returning to an earlier floor, but it quickly became evident that the strategy wouldn't hold up if I didn't minimize my fights, something I didn't want to do. Once I ran out of arrows, I abandoned my bow and instead relied on intercepting the monsters in melee.

The most prevalent monsters in the open canyon areas were a bird-like monster with the head and torso of humans. Pretty blatantly harpies.

They would dive down and try to scratch me with their talons or grab me to throw me around. But at the same time, since I also relied on melee strikes, countering those dives were the main, or rather, sole method I had to take them down.

I'd either grab their leg and swing them into the ground before giving them a finishing blow, or simply jump up and rake my claws wherever I could, preferably their neck or wings.

Despite being completely disadvantaged on an entire dimension, the harpies were stupid and continued using the same strategy even when they saw another of their kind fail their attempt and get killed.

There were other birds that resembled big falcons that often showed up with the harpies, but they had the same fighting style, though they were much faster. Conversely, their speed also made them much more vulnerable, making any small scratch on them enough to ground them long enough for me to finish them off.

The most difficult monsters though, surprisingly, were shaped like balloons with jellyfish-like tendrils hanging from the base.

There were two varieties of them. One was pink, and the other light blue. The pink ones would swing their tendrils, which then detached and flew at me. It flew kinda like a bola, and when I got hit by it the first time due to surprise, the tendril refused to come off, sticking onto my body like it was covered in glue. It didn't feel like glue at all, since anywhere it touched my skin stung like I had a really bad rash.

The blue type would try to come close and strike me directly with it's tendrils. These too stuck to my skin if they hit, but the combined impact of the swing caused additional damage.

The balloons were a royal pain in the ass, as I had to avoid touching the tendrils even on the attack, or else they'd get stuck on my hands or arms.

The monsters here gave me two interesting skills though. The first was [Flight]. It allowed flying, but only if the user had wings. It was the first time I got a skill I wasn't allowed to use, yet wasn't a racial. Vampires often had the ability to get wings in a lot of fictions. In fact, when I discovered the [Flight] skill, I thought of the [Alter Form] skill I had gotten so long ago, but it was a racial, shooting down my idea instantly. I still hoped that I could find a use for the skill eventually.

The other skill I got was [Float]. It basically allowed me to float just like those balloons did. It was an interesting feeling, just freely floating around. The skill even let me move around a bit, though it was slow. The constant MP expenditure was annoying, but the amount decreased as I continued to rank it up.

 

As I was relaxing in the fountain after returning to my home base from the 25th floor, I realized something I'd been neglecting this whole time: my home wasn't really secure.

There weren't any doors or anything blocking anyone from entering my home and stealing anything or setting up an ambush for when I returned. The thought left me a little unsettled. I might not have seen anyone yet, but it didn't mean that the possibility didn't exist.

The obvious thing to do was make a door and block off the entire dungeon from entry, but that would hardly do much. I didn't have the knowledge or skills to make any sort of door to block off a particularly determined person, and drawing attention to myself like that would only risk even more people showing up to break down any barricade that the first group couldn't penetrate and look for me even deeper in the dungeon.

The best way to avoid unwanted attention was to hide my things deeper in the dungeon. The further I went, the less likely someone who stumbled into this dungeon would discover my things and try to steal them or harm me.

As long as my belongings weren't found, I'd have the initiative if someone else started to explore the dungeon.

With my mind made up, I made some crude cleaning supplies from my random assortment of junk, went back to the 25th floor fountain, and started to clean.

'You have gained the [Cleaning 1] skill!'

A surprising announcement resounded in my head as I was dusting the walls with a rough broom made from a stick and bird feathers. It wasn't too odd when I thought about it, considering the other skills I already had, but it was still a little unexpected.

With better tools than when I dusted and washed the first floor fountain room, it didn't take nearly as long to clean the room to my satisfaction.

My next step was moving all my things over from the first floor to the 25th.

One by one, I grabbed leather bags or wrapped up piles of loot and brought them all over. It took dozens of trips to make it, but none of it was too heavy and I didn't have to move my body much despite how far the fountains were from each other.

That said, it was tedious, boring work, and I ended up placing everything in pretty haphazard and random locations. Most of it was just for storage in case I needed them, rather than things I used much anyways.

When I was done and was checking around to make sure I didn't forget any loose materials, I noticed that there were dirt and dust rings around where my loot was sitting before. It was pretty unsightly, and a dead giveaway that someone lived there before.

Tipping explorers off so early would be problematic for me...probably.

So I continued my work, while having breaks to eat, and cleaned the first floor fountain room. Then the second, and the third, and all the way to the 24th.

In the end, it was pretty obvious that a clean fountain room would be suspicious if there were dirty ones as well. Even more so if those dirty ones had footprints all over the place.

On the other hand, if all the fountain rooms were clean, it did raise some suspicions, but it was also possible that people would presume that they're normally clean until people start dirtying the place up. It was the difference between an absolute giveaway and a possible one.

If that was the case, then my choice was obvious, even if I did have to do more work for it.

From then on, I started to clean every fountain room I arrived in, as well as clean up any mess I made when visiting earlier floors. I also periodically moved my things to a deeper fountain to reduce the chance of anyone finding them.

As an aside, my [Cleaning] skill rose to rank 3 by the end.

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