Reaching the 44th floor was a pivotal point in the dungeon because there one starts meeting monsters capable of buffing and healing other monsters, basically from now on the monsters have the ability to either heal, buff or both, something that would be very hard to deal with in the later floors.The monsters on this floor were weasel-like creatures that stood upright and could cast a speed and damage resistance buff on themselves and each other, their hands had scythe-like claws that could shred armour and cut through steel like it was b.u.t.ter, they moved swiftly and attacked in teams, the worst part about them is that the buffs stacked and if not dealt with fast they would become too fast and too st.u.r.dy resulting in inevitable explorer deaths.
That, however, was predicated on them having enough mana to cast their buffs, since Yunan had cultivated the habit of absorbing mana when anything got in range, he did not even know about the buffs until he was in the midst of a big battle and one of the scythe weasels that was just outside his usual range of 100 meters cast the buff on its mates.
From that point onwards Yunan made sure to leave only one that was not drained from mana in each group, and with that degree of hardship he started working on dodging, perception and dagger mastery, mostly because there was no better occasion to do that, usually Yunan had stats higher than the floor by a considerable margin, leaving him unable to truly upgrade his understanding of dodging and perception but only refine its mastery at the same level, with now him being more than 20% weaker, he used that to fuel his comprehension.
With his daggers in reverse grip he would move so that his blade would meet the neck of a weasel while dodging the claws on the way there as well read and perceive all the attacks coming towards him using a combination of echolocation, and 360° vision and things like air sensitivity, using all of these overloaded his brains with barely enough mental energy left to plan the next move.
It took Yunan a record-breaking 9 months to feel confident in facing the boss, and when he arrived at the den of the boss Yunan almost cried tears of indignation, there were 4 bosses altogether, they were buffing each other even though there was no battle, Yunan was not confident he could drain their mana and wait for the buffs to wear off simply because he would be caught and eventually beaten or forced to flee, so he decided that he should just drain their mana and then run around until the buff duration ended before he could engage safely.
With that in mind, Yunan cast mana syphon on the bosses and kept it on to make sure they would not regenerate any, then once he was discovered and chased after by the 4 bosses he just used teleportation to run from one corner of the den to the next, he would dodge the occasional claw swing when he was sure he could, and would simply teleport away if he couldn"t.
Every 10 minutes Yunan would take a moment to try to inflict harm of on the bosses using his dagger, he had to wait until his casual swipe on the arm left a noticeable scratch, and that only came true during the 5th hour, after 5 more hours he could do more than just scratch the bosses, that was the correct moment to strike back at the bosses.
The retaliation from Yunan was fierce and ferocious, he attacked using his maximum speed and added both wind and lightning to the blades to make it cut even better, he did not use his buffs, however, not wanting to take the easy way out. Yunan didn"t specify a target to focus on, because this style of combat does not take targeting into consideration, this storm like style would focus on dealing damage to the closest target and was the only way to deal enough consistent damage to all the bosses at the fastest possible rate.
The battle was not just hacking and slashing to see who would die first, it was much more than that, it was a war of attrition and those who failed to deal more damage while keeping in shape would die miserably. The bosses had thick hides and even if Yunan could slash them, he could not do much more than stack injury upon injury and hope that the natural healing would help shave the stamina of the bosses. While he himself was making sure to keep his energy intake high and his energy output low, even if he had enough natural regeneration to outlast the 4 bosses in a prolonged fight, he was not in his optimum state thus it was wiser for him to save both energy and mind to last for the long run.
Random thoughts were abandoned to the simple, "find the shortest path to deal damage, find escape route to avoid damage", and with 4 bosses at the same time he was still stretched thin anyway, his natural healing and regeneration were consciously delayed and slowed down so that the energy consumption would remain as low as possible, and remove a lot of stress that could acc.u.mulate thanks to such high consumption. Still with all that and the fact that Yunan was digesting healing items and mana filled meals, it took Yunan a full 100 hours of endless fighting before both he and the bosses were too shredded to even move, Yunan used his healing and restored his natural healing and regeneration in the last 20 hours, he focus some of his mana to keep the armour regenerating itself and did not forget to add some paralysis poison to his attacks.
By the end of it, the bosses had become a true exhibition to the effectiveness of death by a thousand cuts, even with their abnormal natural healing, they still could not remove all the stress before more piled up and by the 80th hour, the magnificent fur they were born with now became patches in the midst of overlapping scars that healed over and over again just to be slashed open soon.
As for Yunan he took a very grave wound after relaxing when dealing with an almost dead boss, the boss has run out of energy and could do nought but sit and wait for its head to drop like its brethren, however, it made a very surprising last effort that cost it its life and dealt a horrible wound on Yunan. The boss had cut Yunan from neck to hip removing a huge chunk of flesh, bones and organs, basically the whole right side of Yunan: shoulder, 80% of a lung, 75% of the liver, a full kidney, a bit of stomach and intestines, part of the spleen, rib cage and a scratch on the hip bone.
Yunan was Lucky to have his portable home because the genie too the liberty to send Kitty to retrieve the treasure while Ophelia stabilised Yunan and reattached the severed part, luckily the cut was clean and there was no need to regrow any part of the body, by the time Kitty returned with a book bigger than herself, both she and the stable Yunan were returned to the house and Ophelia asked the genie to bring in her master Anne and Leader since they were the highest ranked healer she knew.
The healers arrived in time and helped sustain Yunan and heal him, Ophelia had a done a perfect job when reattaching his severed part because she unconsciously felt that error was unacceptable, thus doing almost all the work and leaving only the restoration of functionality part to the healers.
Anne and Leader praised Ophelia so much that she blushed with a silly smile for half a day, however that smile lasted for a week when she got herself a praise from Yunan and a promise to steal her heart when it was time for her to grow old with someone.
Survival is one of those things that drives one to grow beyond their limits, especially after surviving such an event like a 100-hour war of attrition. Survival tasted sweeter than victory and gave the survivor a feeling of being able to resist the wrath of G.o.ds and men, and that is why most those who survive acts of violence think they could take revenge, those are the ones that survival is wasted on, a true survivor would only think about surviving longer, they would not think about others or revenge or even their own lives, their only drive is to do anything and everything to survive once more, and Yunan currently was that kind of guy, his only thought "I will survive this too". A true testament that he had reached death enough times it was more of an old friend than a dreaded foe.