Everything ached. That was the very first thing on my mind when I woke. My back and rump especially. They felt as though I had been sitting on those terrible excuses for trains they call the metros for the past fifteen hours straight. I was rested, but when I moved pain flared in my spine.

  I opened my eyes to the most inconvenient sight ever. I was up in a tree. When had I gotten into a tree? And why did everything hurt? I mean, some pain was understandable for sleeping in a tree, but not this much.

  I felt a small trickle of sweat run down my face. It was rather hot, wasn’t it. Reaching up to wipe it away, I looked at my hand. Red blood covered it. And it was sticky which meant it had been there for a little bit.

  Ah, that was right. The wolves. I took in the state of my body. They sure had done a number on me, hadn’t they. I was covered in gashes and blood from shoulder to toe, probably head too, but I couldn’t see it so it wasn’t there.

  This was what happened when people ventured into the dungeon alone. They were constantly in danger, and had varying degrees of survival chances. I had virtually none, given my limited experience with the world, but I had some. Those poor folks who came in with no training at all had no chance at all. At least I knew how to throw a knock-out punch. Plenty of training about that in bar-fights over the years.

  At least my wounds were healing somewhat. With my health stat at six now I could heal much faster than a normal person. Though, considering the things that had assaulted me, I was probably healing slower than I normally would. They were a level higher than me, and that was important. Especially in the early levels. But I was now level two, so that was something. I wasn’t too under-leveled for this floor now.

  Oh who was I kidding. I was already far under where I was supposed to be. I had seen a graph at one point in time. In these early levels you were supposed to gain at least two levels per floor, preferably more, in order to even keep up with the dungeon’s difficulty curve. I and most other people who came in nowadays were at least a level behind when we entered the second floor.

  That wasn’t too bad of a deficit, but it led to many more deaths than usual. People encountered level three or four mobs, like I did, and just died. I was lucky the wolves had decided to just run me into the ground before eating me instead of piling on me immediately.

  It was at these sorts of times I really wished I had a party. Monsters would be so much easier, even if our experience gain would be slower. But I hadn’t been able to find Roland and his sister on the first floor—not that I had been looking—so I was on my own.

  I took a look at the floor quest. That man had said they got more personalized after the first floor, and that was true. Based on what I saw, though, I wasn’t so sure.

  Floor Quest: Go to the nearest village and solve their problem. Do note, this is a solo quest. If you do not complete it on you own, you will be given another.

  So. The dungeon was pushing me to act on my own. That wasn’t good. Not good at all. Sure, all of the most powerful people alive had done the dungeon solo, but so had some of the most dead ones as well.

  Well, I was not going to be one of those. I was determined to not just survive, but thrive. Humanity needed more powerful people, after all. Our whole race depended on it. So I would complete this task alone.

  First things first, I had to get out of here. That was going to be a problem, though. The wolves were still beneath my tree. They were all asleep, but that didn’t change much. Dogs had very, very sharp ears. My steps would have to be virtually silent to not awaken them.

  Slowly moving down to the lower branch, I plotted a course between them. It was erratic as erratic could be. There were only a few spots free of dogs.

  I noted it was still noon out, which meant a whole day had passed. No wonder I was hungry. Had the wolves sat there the whole time? They must have. Why would the bother to come back if they had gone away?

  Stepping off of the lower branch, I began to move. It was slow going, maneuvering between black shapes on the ground, often being close enough to feel their breathing. Terrifying, that was. They might feel the feedback from their breathing and wake up to see what was bothering them.

  I desperately hoped they wouldn’t track me based on my scent. They could find bigger, better prey in the forest if they just looked hard enough.

  Halfway through the pack, I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out nice and slowly, careful not to make a noise. Even so, one of the wolves twitched. I flinched. Waking them now could prove fatal. They wouldn’t make the same mistake as last time.

  Dungeon mobs learned much faster than their counterparts on the outside. They recognized patterns almost as fast as a human, had even better base stats, and could do a lot of things we couldn’t. The only advantage humanity had against them was our ingenuity. Monsters almost never invented technology past the iron age. Also, most of them didn’t have thumbs, so that helped.

  There were a few species of monster that acted like humans: goblins, orcs, elves, demons, specific types of giants, etc. All of them had at least semi-humanoid forms. Humans were the best at it, of course. They weren’t dungeon-created monsters.

  I reached the edge of the pack and it was all I could do to not sprint away at top speed. I needed to keep stepping lightly until out of earshot. That could be anywhere from fifty feet to fifty yards depending on how well this species of wolf could hear.

  At least the hard part was over. Walking through the wolves had my heart pounding loud enough even the people on the other side of the floor could hear, I was sure of it. Given the fact the floor quest implied there were multiple villages, that was probably much further away than the edge of the first floor was. And if that was anything to go on, I assumed the floors would keep getting bigger as I progressed.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  A twig snapped underfoot. I froze.

  Listening acutely, I couldn’t hear anything. But that didn’t mean the wolves hadn’t woken up, that just meant I couldn’t hear them. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but us humans actually have pretty bad hearing in the grand scheme of things. However, in the dead silence of the predator-filled area, hearing nothing generally meant I was pretty safe. So I continued on.

  Only after I had gotten far away from them—at least three tree trunks away—I picked up my pace to a walk, then a jog, then a dead sprint. I had gotten away cleanly. Thank God for that. I could still feel their claws and teeth snagging at my skin, urging me into exhaustion.

  That was probably because I still had the wounds. A single day wouldn’t completely rid me of them, but the scars would probably be faded in a week or so.

  In this day and age, scars were something to be proud of. The more scars a person had, the more layers, the bigger, the more jagged, the better they were regarded. Scars were a symbol of victory. Of course, magic was advanced to the point where scars could be rid of with a wave of the hand, but most people chose to keep all of their non-deformative ones. There were a few notable exceptions, namely the four natural Paragons and a few of the better known Masters, but it was generally held that scars meant experience.

  I wasn’t going to be keeping mine either. See, while having scars is a point of pride, they also provide a minuscule performance reduction. Even the carefully curated ones most people wear have a small influence on their mobility. I didn’t want that. It could get me killed.

  Now, where was that village? I had been told to find the nearest one, but not given a direction to head in. That was a rather major hindrance if I do say so myself. Not that it would matter much anyway. I was rather terrible with directions. You couldn’t really see the sun on this floor, except at noon which wasn’t the most helpful of times to see it.

  Picking a random direction that wasn’t where the wolves were, I started running. I needed to test my endurance now that I had stats. It was probably attached to my strength stat, but even still stats boosted the mortal body by a lot.

  After fifteen minutes at an almost dead sprint, I realized it wasn’t worth testing any further. Fifteen was more than enough. If a chase lasted that long, I was either back in a place where other people could help me, or I was so lost that I had no idea where I was. If that was the case, I was just dead. Because if I was running from something, that meant I couldn’t fight it.

  Where was that village? I hadn’t found it yet. Were things like that really so hard to find? Maybe I could climb a tree to get a better look at my surroundings.

  Yeah. Right. Climb one of those things? I would have better luck running around like a headless chicken as I was already doing. In fact, I would have a better chance of finding the village in the next two days if I stuck my head in the dirt and took a look around for ten minutes before continued on my way.

  At least my senses were enhanced so I could smell smoke from the fireplaces earlier than usual. Or I could smell the tanner’s shop. Though smoke would probably be preferable.

  Tanners had a rather specific scent to them. Kill an animal and leave it to rot for a few days. Then take it inside a closed room, douse it in kerosene, and light it on fire. Once it is lightly toasted, put out the fire with water made from the essence extract of an unwashed sock. Let that ruminate in its own sweat for another day and tadda, you have your average tannery.

  Yeah, I would rather avoid having to smell that. I’m sure you would too, if at all possible.

  I continued wandering for another hour and a half before stopping for a lunch break. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me earlier, what with my stomach quite literally yelling at me to eat. Something about sneaking through a pack of ravenous wolves just isn’t too helpful for my stomach, I guess.

  I also took the opportunity to change. My clothes had been veritably shredded, and they had been stained with all the blood that had leaked out of my body. Unfortunate. I was going to have to stop by a marked somewhere and pick up a few new sets of clothes somewhere. There was only one more spare set of clothes in my inventory, and it was probably my least favorite of the bunch. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t give you a reason if I tried.

  A loud chattering noise came from my right just before something slammed into me, scratching and clawing. I’m ashamed to say the first though that came to my mind was “at least I haven’t put on my new clothes yet.”

  Three-tailed Red Fox(Lvl 4)

  These things are a bit more clumsy than their cousins the grey foxes, but they make up with it in strength. This one is a three-tailed fox, meaning it’s dangerous. Foxes can grow between one and nine tails, with the odd number ones being far stronger than the even ones. However, all foxes have a weakness.

  At this point in time, I was pretty sick and tired of being jumped by random monsters. The big trees weren’t very good hiding material, but there were a lot of smaller ones as well as bushes and long grass for things to hide. And I was sick of it. It made me angry.

  I shoved the thing off me, despite the sharp claws digging and hooking into my skin. Backing off, I stared at it. It was red with small black markings along its nose, ears, and paws. In all honesty, it was probably the most demonic looking thing on this level. Even though it was kinda cute.

  Shame it had to die, really. But it had interrupted a nice bath and I wasn’t feeling very charitable towards monsters at the moment. Especially canines, which a fox technically was. Though its technical name was vulpus(fox), it was still a loosely defined dog. Why? Who knows? At least it wasn’t a cat.

  When it jumped at me a second time, I stepped to the side and grabbed it by the middle tail. Unfortunately, just one tail wasn’t enough to hold it up, so the tail tore off at the base when I tried to lift it.

  Poor fox. That looked like it hurt, not to mention the tails were technically part of the spine. Ouch.

  The fox let out a loud howl, though nothing like what the wolves were capable of. It sounded more like a scream to me. It turned on me—oooh, very intimidating—and charged, making as though to scramble up my leg since a leap didn’t work.

  I just kicked it.

  It yowled, disoriented, and I picked it up by both of its remaining tails. The thing twisted and struggled, but to no avail. It was caught, well and truly.

  Walking up to the nearest large tree, I hefted the fox. This wasn’t going to be a particularly glorious death, but it would be quick. I give it that. The problem with these smaller species even at a higher level was that they had to get really fast or really, really strong in order to out perform us larger, more maneuverable ones. It was sad, really.

  Looking at the poor little fox one last time, I swung it around in a circle once, twice, then slammed it against the tree. That didn’t quite do the trick the first go around, as it was still twitching, so I did it again. It died that time. I got the notification.

  Still quite somber, I walked back to take yet another bath and put on my clothes after the blood stopped streaming from the mauling I had gotten.

  It was only after I finally stopped being covered in blood that I smelled the faint, almost nonexistent odor of smoke wafting though the trees. I had found the village at last.