Evil Avalon - Volume 2 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Smiling Fiend

We continued traveling along the stone-paved floor, heading to the hidden area. The straight corridors were perfect for seeing ahead, even if there were plenty of crossroads. Thus, we had to be vigilant against ambushes from the blind spots of the intersections.

I’d walked by myself as there were bound to be more encounters in these parts that other adventurers rarely ventured. Although, I had to keep an eye on how my legs were doing as I proceeded.

“What sort of monsters will we get on the tenth floor?” asked Kano, idly spinning her dagger in her hand.

“Mostly large humanoid monsters like trolls and orc lords,” I explained. “The miniboss is a minotaur.”

“Ooh, a minotaur?” noted Kano, humming. “I wonder if I’m strong enough to beat an orc lord in a fair fight now...”

The image of the orc lord as a fearsome foe was still fresh in my mind from our trains on the fifth floor, but we were probably more powerful than it now. That realization hadn’t quite sunk in based on how quickly we’d leveled up.

Many humanoid monsters were on this floor, so I instructed Kano to put on her chest the Crest of the Orc Lord we’d found on the fifth floor since it would give her buffs against them. The badge with a cute picture of a pig would increase her attack damage by ten percent and reduce received damage by ten percent. Only the fifth floor’s orc lord dropped this item, and perhaps I could get a few more if we could monopolize the bridge-dropping trick.

We heard pounding from the left corridor, and felt tremors as we approached an intersection. A troll was coming. I peeked around the corner and saw a troll lumbering in our direction.

At almost three meters tall, the troll was a giant. Thick fur covered its muscular body, it used tattered rags like clothes, and it had messy hair. Trolls weren’t perceptive, so they wouldn’t attack unless we strolled blatantly up to them despite them being active monsters.

“What do we do?” whispered Kano. “Should we fight it?”

“No,” I whispered back. “We’ll wait for it to pass by.”

Small-bladed weapons like daggers and shortswords often failed to penetrate past a troll’s thick muscles or fat unless you managed to hit it in the right place. To take a troll down quickly, you needed a weapon with a longer blade or skills with high attack power and penetrative capabilities. We were better off avoiding the fight for now.

So, we backed up and waited for the troll to pass before continuing to the hidden area.

***

After another kilometer of walking, dodging traps, and sneaking past trolls, we reached a spot on the road blocked by an orc lord. There was no other way around, and the monster was there to stay.

Orcs were slow and horrible at pursuing their enemies, but I wasn’t sure whether my numb legs would carry me fast enough to outrun one. I had the option of letting Kano bait it into chasing her and getting it lost. But she wasn’t familiar with this map, meaning she could run into other monsters and find herself at the head of a train. Defeating the monster was our best option.

“We’re taking him down,” I whispered. “Be careful not to swing your dagger too hard, or it’ll break.”

“Gotcha,” murmured Kano. “I’ll take it on first, then you get it from behind.”

“Sounds good.”

This orc lord carried a giant club, like the one on the fifth floor. When it noticed Kano darting toward itself, the monster swung that club at her. That said, Kano sped up quicker than it could react to, and her blade gleamed as she cut it open from armpit to hip.

The monster stumbled and roared in pain.

Unfazed by its shrieks, Kano mercilessly cut into the orc again and again. The orc fell to the ground and transformed into a magic gem, and the fight was over before I could get behind it.

“It wasn’t quick enough to react to your attacks,” I remarked. “It probably couldn’t even see them happening.”

“And that’s not even as fast as I can go, I think,” said Kano.

Despite the nasty impact the giant club could deliver, Kano was too quick for that to be a realistic concern. Part of that was because she could see everything the orc was doing, mainly because her physical enhancements had increased her movement and reaction speed by far more than I’d assumed. Seeing that the fight looked like a piece of cake for her, I thought she could probably trounce the minotaur.

We had a few more battles to assess our strength, then reached the domed room that housed the miniboss. We’d need to pass through this room to get the mechanism, letting us into the hidden area on the other side.

The room was about fifty square meters large. We peeked through the entrance and saw the two-meter-tall minotaur standing in the center alone. It looked small relative to the large size of the room, yet its bulging muscles and bull head gave it an intimidating appearance.

This minotaur had a monster level of 12. It wielded a labrys, a powerful axe with two symmetrical blades. You’d need a high strength stat and a sturdy weapon to deflect a blow from that axe. More importantly, this was the first monster in the dungeon that used weapon skills... Other than the unique boss we’d encountered on the seventh floor. The minotaur didn’t detect enemies well, so we would be able to sneak past it moving along the walls.

How were we going to proceed?

“I really want to fight it...” pleaded Kano quietly.

“Oh, go on then,” I said. “Just be careful with its weapon skills. You don’t wanna get hit by one of those.”

“’Kay. It’ll be dead before it gets a chance anyway!”

Minotaurs used the two-handed axe weapon skill called Full Swing, which increased attack power by an amount proportional to its user’s strength stat. I’d taught Kano how to spot the movements that preceded Full Swing, but her current physical enhancements and reaction time would allow her to evade the attack even if she didn’t spot it before it activated.

As soon as Kano entered the room, she leaned forward and charged at the minotaur. She went up to fifty kilometers an hour in the blink of an eye.

The noise alerted the minotaur, who noticed the intruder advancing and braced itself for an attack as it knew its disadvantage. That decision proved this wasn’t a simple monster that relied solely on brute force.

I followed Kano but failed to reach the speed I had at level 8. Nonetheless, I was still running faster than an ordinary person could outside of a magic field.

No need for us to rush into an attack if the monster isn’t on the offensive, I thought. Or does Kano have a plan to kill it?

Since Kano saw the minotaur was on the defensive, she zigzagged toward it while launching feints. That kept the monster guessing which direction the real attack would come from.

The minotaur seemed to hope it could use its strength to knock Kano’s weapon away when she attacked and delivered a counter. It gave up on that plan and relinquished its defensive stance, probably realizing it wouldn’t work. Hence, it crouched and began performing the motions to activate its weapon skill. A Full Swing would mow down everything in a wide range in front of the monster.

But the minotaur reacted too late. Kano sped up and reached the monster before it could activate Full Swing. She slipped past its right flank, stabbing its belly and circling behind it. Her hands moved independently of each other to repeatedly slash the monster, an elegant feat made possible by her Dual Wielding skill. The attacks dealt massive damage, their power bolstered by the Crest of the Orc Lord.

Regardless of the damage the minotaur took, it activated Full Swing. Fortunately, Kano had already left the attack’s strike zone. The monster shrieked as Kano made mincemeat off its back, then it collapsed to the floor and turned into a magic gem.

In DEC, the only way to stop an offensive skill once you’d started performing the motions was to carry out a “skill cancel.” No monsters would ever cancel their skills, at least none I remembered from the game. The minotaur probably didn’t know how to cancel skills if the game was anything to go by.

Full Swing was difficult to evade after it had begun due to its attack radius. Luckily, you could get out of the way if you spotted the skill motions before activation.

There were four ways to dodge: advancing, crouching, jumping, and retreating. Of those, only the first two left you in position to counterattack. Kano had increased her speed and advanced, getting behind the monster and attacking it from there.

Her choice was justified by her high level relative to the minotaur’s. The minotaur wouldn’t have chosen Full Swing as its first attack if they’d been at the same level. In fact, its whole combat style would’ve been different, as it wouldn’t have gone on the defensive.

“I know, I know. That only worked because I’m higher level than it,” said Kano, sighing.

“Yep,” I said. “Well, I wouldn’t have given you the go-ahead to fight it otherwise.”

Thankfully, Kano appeared to have a good understanding of her limitations. Overconfidence was an adventurer’s greatest risk. If we could respawn like in the game, we could throw ourselves into situations without worrying about the consequences. But that wasn’t how it worked here.

We picked up the magic gem and dungeon coin dropped by the minotaur, then walked toward the stone wall at the back of the room. Once there, I scanned the stone wall until I found a small hole. I slotted our dungeon coin inside, and then...

“Whoa!” Kano exclaimed. “The whole wall just opened up! Oh my God!”

The stone wall slid apart where the stones previously met, causing a loud rumbling as the heavy wall passed over the ground. I entered the newly created opening, marveling at the elaborate mechanism. It amazed me we made all this happen by simply slotting a coin in a hole.

We were safe now; no monsters would spawn beyond this point.

As we walked through the open, tranquil space beyond the wall, memories of my first time playing DEC flooded in. This spot had been a secret when the devs first launched the servers until it became a popular place to use as a base of operations for players participating in public raids because of its large size. Whenever I came here, the place had many adventurers selling items from stalls and parties trying to attract new members. Now, we were the only ones here.

We passed through the open area and walked for a while until we came across a rectangular building composed of rough stones piled atop each other. I let out a deep sigh of relief. We’d finally arrived at our destination, Granny’s Goods. I hadn’t planned to visit this shop for at least another month, but events had conspired against me.

In front of the shop, a woman in thin and slovenly clothing sat on a simple chair puffing on a kiseru, a Japanese tobacco pipe.

When Kano and I approached, she calmly arose. The fiend, her large horns protruding from her forehead, smiled in greeting and welcomed us.

“Oh, hello there,” she said. “Would you like to browse my items?”