Dungeons Online

'The dungeon is definitely changing,' Tom thought with a grim look on his face. 

This was the first time for him to encounter a monster as such. Instead of getting affected by the magic, one that would simply consume it. A monster that could even dissolve magic hardened into physical objects. 

'Or is it something new?' Tom suddenly thought, whipping out his true weapon. Since his magical spears would be of no use, or rather, would only make the monster stronger, he had no other choice but to use the only physical weapon that he had in tow.

"No, it doesn't matter," Tom muttered, raising his eyes towards the pulsing blob of stolen magic. Now that the monster snacked on his energy, it's lost its greatest trump card - its invisibility. 

Tom rushed forward. 

The ceiling was sadly out of the question for now. Without the use of throwing and then swapping places with his spears, Tom had no means of reaching it. 

'Since I can't hit your core, let me just chip you away!' he decided, rushing towards the wall with glistering stones. 

Tom stopped his legs when he reached roughly ten meters before the wall, sliding the rest of the distance on his foot instead. 

'Now that I think about it,' he smiled, 'you are not the only one who can consume magic!' he thought, brandishing his spear and thrusting it right at the wall. 

His body instinctively protested. The idea of thrusting his weapon into a solid wall didn't resonate with his instincts well. 

But it was Tom that was the wielder of his body, not the opposite. 

The tip of his spear touched the wall... And sank into it. Nearly three-quarters of the blade ended up immersed in the wall before the tip of his weapon finally struck something solid. 

'You are quite deep, aren't you?' Tom thought as a vicious gleam flashed in his eyes. 

There was no need for finesse. Tom forcibly turned his weapon around for the edge of his blade to aim sideways... And then, he started running. 

His monster-born weapon slashed the local boss with ease. For all the tricks the boss had to its sleeve, its body was surprisingly delicate, likely a reason behind its vicious tactics. 

After all, in the dungeon, every strength came at a cost. Just like Cleo's consciousness fading away after the girl overused her ultimate spell, for this monster to be able to counter magic so well, it had to be insanely weak against physical attacks!

Tom continued to run in a circle. His initial idea of cutting a huge layer of the monster out quickly proved futile when the boss managed to regenerate the opening of his cut before Tom could even reach the third of the room's circumference. 

'What a crafty, little bastard,' Tom thought, tightening his jaws. 

Yet, rather than getting annoyed, Tom simply continued to run around the room, with his speer constantly damaging the monster as he went. 

'No matter how quickly you can heal, there is a limit to how far you can keep it up!' he thought, a vicious smile appearing on his lips. 'I wonder who will run out of breath first, me, or you?'

This plan sadly proved to be as short-lived as the previous one. Not because Tom had any doubts regarding his stamina, but because he realized the greatest flaw of his plan. 

'It would take too long,' he thought, clenching his teeth. Yet, even for a second, he didn't stop running around. 

By the time he finished his fourth lap around the room, the monster finally reacted. 

Tom continued his jog like usual when the wall suddenly morphed out. It suddenly started to condense, decreasing the thickness of its body glued to the wall, only for a blob of its mass to suddenly erupt outwards, blocking Tom's path. 

'Whoa!' he thought, pulling his spear out and slashing the protrusion at its root, cutting it away. 

'That was close!' he thought, stopping his advance and retreating to the middle of the room. 

'Still, you fucked up,' he thought, a vile grin appearing on his lips. 

Because Tom could recognize the faint smell that the cut-away protrusion gave off as soon as it splattered on the floor. 

It was the same smell that he fell all the way in the past when he and Claudia lost their clothes.

"Now I know just who are you," Tom said out loud.

Just like he guessed up before, the boss of this room was a simple slime. By latching itself all over the walls and ceiling and then masking itself out in it, it managed to conceal its own greatest weakness - its core. 

Even with the light pulsing across what appeared like thin veins within its body, Tom was unable to decide whether to follow this hint or not. 

'It could be another trap,' he thought, staring at the place where are the lights converged and swirled into a whirlpool of lights. 

Judging from the memory and his movement around the room, it was exactly the same place where he had previously thrown his magical spear at. Which meant it likely wasn't the location of the slime's core. 

'After all, why would it expose it all on its own?' Tom thought, taking a moment to analyze the situation. 'Or was it the flaw of its building, and it's my fault that I attacked it with magic, to begin with?' 

Troubled by the situation, Tom ended up simply shaking his head. 

'There is no use to overthinking things," he decided, shaking the spear in his hand to fix his hold over it before running towards the wall again. 'It reacted to being cut before, so it's likely losing out with that,' he thought. Tom then slammed the blade of his spear into the squish of the wall and started to run again. 

This time, rather than trying to figure out the best approach to fighting the beast, Tom focused all his attention on the changes to his surroundings. 

Surely enough, before he could do even half of the lap, the wall started to react. Once again, it suddenly started to grow, proving that the thickness of the slimes was shrinking. 

And then, just like before, it suddenly shot out. This time, though, rather than a single blob reaching for Tom's flesh, an army of hundreds of them, each the size of a twig, erected from the wall. 

'Futile!' Tom shouted in his thoughts, slashing away half of the slime arms with a single swing. But without his haste spell active, he was just a second too late to do away with the other half. 

'Yuck,' he thought, when the slimy mass attached to his clothes, quickly burning through them to get to his flesh. 

And sure enough, even with the massive level difference between him and the slime, its touch hurt like hell. 

'I guess acids work the same, no matter how strong one was,' Tom thought, extremely tired after forcefully restraining his autoguard spell. 

Since this slime thrived on absorbing magic, he decided to pay it back, in the same way, a while ago. He just had to reach a situation where he would be able to do so. 

And without injuries, against controlled magic, Tom was unable to use his bloody-spear spell!

"Got you," he whispered after waiting for a few more moments for the slime's acid to dissolve his skin and reach the living part of his flesh. 

Tom then slammed his spear into the wall, along with half of his arm's length. 

'Bloody spear!' he thought, only to start shaking his hand around. 

The greatest advantage of using a spear laid in the massive leverage one could use to make one's attack hit heavier than with any other weapon. In that regard, only mallets and hammers made even better use of this principle at the cost of their maneuverability. 

But it didn't matter now. Tom's opponent didn't reveal the location of its weak point, nor did it have any permanent limbs or parts that Tom would need to cut away. 

What the young man needed was any sort of damage to the slime. 

And just moving around the spear, deeply embedded into it, was more than enough for a huge array of small cuts to appear inside the slime's body.

Tom didn't aim to seriously injure the monsters with his attacks. 

All he needed was for any sort of injuries to resonate with his skill!

'Bloody spell,' Tom thought, a smile of satisfaction spreading on top of his lips. 

In an instant, it felt as if a thunderbolt struck Tom. A single second was enough for the third of the slime's body to wither away while all of its energy rushed into Tom's veins.

'Huh?' Tom shrugged in surprise, not expecting his tactic to have such a wonderful effect. 

'Damn, I need to injure myself again,' he thought, raising his head towards where the rest of the slime remained. Yet, just as he placed the blade of his spear on top of his palms with the intention of cutting it, a strange idea appeared in his mind. 

'Could it be possible to...'