Second chance swordsman.., p.23
Second Chance Swordsman (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1), page 23
This was going to be his first dungeon gate since he had survived the white gate for the second time. His stats were higher. He had more abilities now. More weaponry and equipment.
He had cleared the blue dungeon gates before entering the white gate in this new timeline. He couldn’t wait to see what the difference was now that he was even more powerful.
With that sense of keen excitement, Sam stepped into the blue dungeon gate.
He immediately appeared in a large field of bright green grass with a blue sky overhead.
Sam immediately took on a defensive stance and looked around.
It was a grassland dungeon world, which was a little bit more difficult than a cavern dungeon world. In a cavern, you had a bit of breathing room upon entering the dungeon, as usually there weren’t any monsters coming to attack from behind you, whereas in a grassland dungeon, monsters might attack you from any direction.
Usually that wasn’t the case—as a blue dungeon was typically on the easier end of dungeons—but it was still a greater possibility in a grassland dungeon compared to a cavern dungeon.
Sam was just about to relax when the ground at his feet began to rumble.
Here they come, Sam thought.
Sam quickly materialized his deadly berzerker sword and got ready to take on the approaching threat.
Bursting out from the ground nearby was a group of ant-like creatures with sharp sickle-like metal claws for hands.
Let the training begin, Sam thought and rushed at them with his sword.
He triggered his Pain Ring ability.
A red circle shot out from him and took on a large circular radius that encompassed both him and his attackers.
He swung his berzerker sword and chopped one of the humanoid ant-like warriors in half. Green goo shot out from its body.
Sam was pleased.
His increased strength and equipment was clearly paying off.
He didn’t even have to rely on taking damage to increase his strength with the power of the Pain Ring ability—he just had the stat advantage over his current opponents.
He sliced up the other opponents with just as much ease.
But, he didn’t have a chance to relax as more ant-warriors showed up.
Maybe they’re weak individually, but they have strength in their absurd numbers, Sam thought to himself.
As five more ant-warriors emerged out of the ground, Sam took in the corpses of the monsters he’d already killed.
Most of them had disintegrated into mana stones, but some of the green goo still drenched the grass nearby.
Sam grinned.
It was an opportunity to test out his new death lord ability.
As the newly arrived ant warriors charged at him he triggered Blood Flame.
The green goo suddenly erupted into a huge amount of crimson red flames, roasting the ant warriors alive in seconds. More than that, the ant warriors seemed to react much more negatively to the Blood Flame compared to other monsters. Many of their limbs exploded from mere contact with the magic fire.
After destroying the wave of warriors, Sam waited for more enemies to arrive, but after sixty seconds, he finally took a moment to relax.
He gathered up the mana stones left behind by the ant creatures and contemplated everything he’d learned from the fight with them.
He was incredibly pleased to discover that his death lord’s Blood Flame ability did not rely purely on conventional red blood from humans, but seemingly any lifeblood or liquid that coursed through a creature would trigger the ability.
Even more fascinating was how the ants reacted to Blood Flame differently to other monsters.
Sam thought this fact had the potential to be something truly powerful and exploitable in this dungeon.
He materialized an empty health potion from his inventory and filled the glass tube with as much of the remaining green goo as he could find.
He had managed to gather about half of the potion with the green blood of the ant-warriors.
Sam looked around and contemplated what he should do next.
Grassland dungeons were often massive zones and usually had a large amount of monsters, which made them a great location for training.
He knew from his previous timeline that thousands of ant warriors lived in this dungeon.
Hordes of them had gone on to ravage the nearby town of Lighthold in an event known as the Winstermid Massacre.
Sam was determined to stop it and reap all the gains from doing so.
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Sam triggered his mana sense to see if he could gather any information.
His eyes widened as soon as he did so.
Sam’s mana sense instantly made him feel in much more danger than he had been feeling before.
Even though Sam couldn’t see any monsters in front of him, his mana sense suggested that he was surrounded by a large number of monsters.
He bristled at the knowledge, instantly feeling a bit uncomfortable and twitchy.
He looked at the mounds of dirt and grass left behind by the ant warriors.
There must be countless numbers of them burrowed underground, Sam realized.
A grin began to creep onto his face.
This is a training gold mine.
He walked over to the mounds of dirt to study where the ants had come from.
They were quite shallow tunnels in the dirt.
The ants were smart enough to make sure when they came above ground to attack they didn’t immediately leave themselves open for a counter-attack on their home base.
But the intelligence of the ant warrior’s strategy only went so far. Or, at the very least, it avoided the immediate threat of a counterattack. The mounds of dirt would still eventually lead to somewhere.
As Sam began to follow the mounds of dirt left behind by the ant warriors that he had destroyed. He started to think maybe the ant warriors’ strategy was to kill their opponent before they even had a chance to follow the mounds back to their base.
I better get ready then.
As Sam followed the dirt trail left behind by his former attackers, another wave of ants came his way. This time they sent ten of them.
Sam wasted no time.
First, he triggered Pain Ring. Not because he planned to take advantage of the ability itself, but more because he wanted to collect more kills towards leveling it.
Then, because he wanted to keep moving towards the ants’ home base, he materialized the glass vial of ant blood. He threw the glass right into the middle of the battlefield, smashing it to bits, and creating a scattershot of green blood right near the current incoming ant warriors, and then triggered Blood Flame.
Sam was cleaning up and collecting mana stones and more green blood less than a minute after the fight started.
He fought about four more waves by the time he arrived at the end of the mounds and found a proper entrance to the ant colony.
Guarding the entrance way was over a hundred ant warriors, while worker ants seemed to be carrying resources found across the grassland world and bringing them down into the ant colony.
Sam had expected to meet more resistance right at the entrance to the ant colony.
There were too many ant warriors spread apart to use his previous strategy of smashing a glass of blood on the ground effectively.
So, Sam went back to basics.
With his berzerker sword in one hand and his fiery flame sword in the other, Sam rushed the small army of ant warriors head on.
He triggered Pain Ring and started the long haul battle.
It was one hundred ant warriors against one.
Most people would bet on the ants just by the sheer enormity of their force.
But, as Sam had already discovered they were weak individually and for every attack that did land on him, cutting into his flesh, it only made him stronger.
He was a whirlwind of destruction as the ants surrounded him.
After Sam reckoned he’d massacred a third of them, he triggered Blood Flame now that they’d all gathered in one location around him.
Suddenly, the crimson red flames surrounded him. The shrill screaming wails of the ant warriors filled his ear drums.
Soon, he was surrounded by his Blood Flames in every direction.
As he stood surrounded by the flames, Sam was glad to see the flames didn’t seem to harm him at all.
On his way to the entrance to the ant colony, he made sure to test more cautiously whether the Blood Flame had harmed him and was glad to see it hadn’t, but a cautious experiment felt a lot different from being completely surrounded by vicious red fire and not being harmed in the slightest.
Sam left the mana stones behind and gathered as much green blood as he could into vials, downing a few health potions in the process just to have empty bottles.
With his offensive materials gathered, he stepped up to the entrance to the ant colony and was very pleased to see it was a long deep tunnel down.
Perfect, Sam thought.
He triggered Pain Ring and then lobbed his collected vial of blood down into the ant tunnel.
He waited until he heard the glass smash and then triggered Blood Flame.
He was just preparing to throw in another one of the blood vials when the whole ground beneath him shook.
Brief snippets of pain cried out only to be snuffed out very quickly.
What’s happening down there, Sam wondered.
His answer came in the form of a notification on his profile screen.
Congratulations Pain Ring has leveled up!
Sam blinked in absolute shock.
Wait, what!?
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The last Sam had checked the Pain Ring had needed well over another 1,400 kills to level up.
How did he achieve it so fast?
He quickly surmised that when he tossed in his vial of blood and triggered Blood Flame in the colony, he had delivered a level of damage far greater than he was expecting.
The only way it could have possibly worked was if it had extended the blood far faster and quicker than he had expected.
The Blood Flame’s explosive effect on the ant warrior’s bodies must have created a ripple effect throughout the entire colony down below.
That sure makes my life easier, Sam smirked.
He then went onto look at his new stat gains and the evolution of his Pain Ring ability.
Sam
Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)
Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks. Battle awareness also now increases as you take more damage.
Class: Death Lord (Legendary) (Rank: Novice Tier)
Ability: Blood Flame (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Morph all spilled blood in a nearby radius into a powerful magical fire.
Strength: 18.9
Agility: 18.4
Endurance: 18.1
Magic Affinity: 21.8
Skill Quests
Pain Ring (Level 3) – Destroy 3,000 monsters with the aid of battle awareness. 0/3000
Blood Flame (Level 2) – Seek the enlightenment of the Blood Flame. 2/3
Sam took in a breath of excitement.
There was so much to take in on his new stat profile, which he was very pleased about.
His plan to move forward on his training was proving to be a great success so far.
All of his stats had made gains, which was important, as he wasn’t sure which stats needed to hit 31 to rank up death lord. It could have been the same two stats as blood knight, or the other stats, or maybe death lord required all of the stats to reach the 31 stat threshold in order for it to rank up to apprentice-tier.
Either way, the only way he could find out was to keep raising all of his stats, which he looked to be doing.
The top three stats were catching up to his magic affinity stat, though he hadn’t taken the time to drain all the monster stones he had acquired in the dungeon yet, so that stat was due a nice boost at a later time.
The best new development in his profile was the evolution of his Pain Ring ability. It had taken him over a year to acquire this ability in his first timeline, so he was very pleased with the pace of his current progression.
He looked over the words of the evolution with excitement.
Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks. Battle awareness also now increases as you take more damage.
The ability was the same as it had been before, with a now added bonus. More than just increasing in strength as he took damage, he also increased his battle awareness.
Battle awareness was a difficult to describe enhancement, but it was a powerful upgrade. It was hard to describe exactly how it worked, but from his experience in his previous timeline, Sam knew that essentially it worked as follows: as he took on more damage, he gained a greater understanding of an enemy’s weak point.
It was an incredible evolution to the ability and Sam couldn’t wait to start utilizing it.
Now that he had leveled up the ability, he could also see what the skill quest for the next level was.
Pain Ring (Level 3) – Destroy 3,000 monsters with the aid of battle awareness. 0/3000
The number of monsters necessary to kill to level up the power was only 1,000 more than the previous one, which made the skill quest deceptively seem like only a minor increase in difficulty.
But that was far from the case.
He’d have to utilize battle awareness to get the kill, meaning he’d have to get more harmed in the process for him to claim the kill towards the skill quest. Going from level 1 to level 2 with Pain Ring, it didn’t even matter if Sam utilized the skill so long as he slayed monsters within the ring itself.
This would require a bit more work.
Sam was also glad to see he had made some headway on leveling up the Blood Flame skill as well.
He quickly surmised that what the system meant by “seeking the enlightenment of the Blood Flame” was the discovering of how Blood Flame could cause different types of effects depending on the type of monster you were fighting.
So, clearly to level the skill further would require him to keep roasting more monsters alive with the special flame.
Fine by me, Sam thought.
Sam walked over to the entrance to the ant colony and considered the best way to go down and collect the mana stones, when the ground at his feet began to tremble.
What’s going on?
Sam thought he had slayed all the ants.
Nearby, the ground burst open and a gigantic ant emerged.
It was glowing yellow with mana all around it.
Sam’s eyes twitched.
It was the dungeon’s boss monster.
The ant queen.
And even worse than that, it had drained all the mana stones of the dead ant warriors into itself, massively increasing its stats, power, and sheer size in an instant.
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Sam stood in awe of the gigantic ant queen.
The size of the monster defied comprehension.
It was as big as a building.
Worse was the power level of the mana emanating off the creature. Yellow flames surrounded the ant queen, suggesting that she’d somehow rapidly drained the cores of her ant followers and had ascended up to a monster at journeyman-tier levels of power.
This is not good, Sam thought.
The ant queen was so large it could barely be contained in his vision.
It was mind boggling how large the ant queen was.
Sam’s eyes twitched, just trying to come up with a strategy to take the monster out.
He rushed forward.
The ant queen swiped its massive metal scythe-like hands towards him.
Sam triggered Pain Ring and let the massive sickle-like arms graze his back.
Sam involuntarily groaned between gritted teeth as the powerful boss monster’s attack wreaked havoc on his body.
He collapsed on the ground and quickly rolled away as the ant queen came in with a second attack that would have sliced him right in half had it landed.
The initial pain that had coursed through Sam’s body lessened, thanks to his necklace of healing, and he felt his Pain Ring convert the damage into a new power inside himself.
He looked around to see if he had developed any battle awareness of the queen’s weak points, but it looked as if he hadn’t taken enough damage yet.
Sam didn’t care and retaliated with his new bonus strength, slashing at the front leg of the ant queen with his berzerker sword.
He cut through part of the flesh of its front leg.
It wasn’t much of an attack—more like a scratch than anything else.
Which made sense as the ant queen was now a whole two tiers above Sam.
But the good news was: a scratch still revealed blood, some of which had managed to fall onto the grass.
And blood, even a drop, was all Sam needed to trigger Blood Flame.
A bright red flame of fire began to glow around the ant queen’s front leg, mixing in with a red flame from Sam’s own blood from the ant queen’s initial attack.
The Blood Flame ability finally broke through and caused some sort of significant pain on the ant queen as it suddenly shrieked and wailed.
Sam’s red blood caused the giant ant’s skin and flesh to explode, creating more blood, which only fueled Sam’s death lord ability more.
The ant queen recoiled until its whole front leg collapsed forward.
Exactly what I was hoping for, thought Sam.
The ant queen was as big as a building and Sam had devised a strategy to take her down based on that. By taking out the front leg, he now was making the ant queen less mobile and off balance.
