There was one thing Joshua hated to see whenever he played video games while growing up. He was never the biggest gamer and usually stuck to the more common things unless he had taken a specific interest in something, but there were the occasional trends in games that got on his nerves. At the moment Joshua was looking straight at one of those trends and was cursing under his breath at it. This trend was the fact that after taking on a harsh fight for the first time, directly afterwards the rest of the game, or dungeon in this case, has the same crucial strategy to a fight put into everything going forward. At the moment Joshua could just tell that with the shadows all over every single wall going forward that all the creatures would get the same benefit from it as the boss they had just killed had gotten.tKnowing dungeons he highly doubted that the walls become covered and shadows just for them to come across a completely different type of enemy that couldn"t take advantage of the change. So in all likely hood they"d be up against the same opponents along with something different. "Well, maybe we might luck out and find an interesting pet or something on this floor for you to tame Lilly." Joshua said with a sigh. If that happened he"d at least feel a little bit better about the current situation.
t"What makes you think that?" Lilly asked a little confused, but also a little excited at the possibility of gaining another pet.
t"Well so far this seems to be around the time when we start finding interesting creatures for you to tame. In the beginners dungeon we were able to find Flutter in the same way so if we come across a variant it should be a rather interesting creature for you to tame. Probably not on the same level as Tank and Cinder, but those two are rare occurrences that I don"t expect to happen all the time." Joshua explained.
t"Then what are we waiting for? Let"s go find are knew partner." Lilly said excitedly, but Joshua grabbed her shoulder and stopped her before she started rushing ahead blindly.
t"Cool it first Lilly. This place isn"t like the first floor where we could see the creatures coming from a mile away. The shadows will block our senses of them and I"ll most likely have to rely on my aura pulse to find them ahead of time. They may not be as strong as that boss was but they"re still of the stealthy nature and can kill us if we"re taken of guard." Joshua explained getting Lilly to calm down. The girl was extremely calm and collected under most circ.u.mstances, but when it came to finding pets she could go off the rails in a moment s notice.
t"Alright well then lead the way fearless leader, but make sure to keep an eye out for any interesting creatures this time around. I highly doubt a variant would be as simplistic as the creatures we"ve faced up to this point so far." Lilly said as she stepped back. Joshua simply nodded before taking the lead in exploring the second floor. He had a feeling that this was probably the last floor since this was such a small town. He highly doubted it would garner a complex dungeon. Larger towns probably had a few more floors than that and who knew how many floors a city sized dungeon would have. That would probably take weeks to clear by the time they got to it, but that was still a long way off from where they were at for now.
tThe first hall they went down was similar to the same concept on the first floor. It was a long corridor that went on for a long ways before splitting at a certain point into three directions. The difference this time around was the fact that Joshua was on edge the entire time they went down the corridor. He was constantly using his aura pulse to make sure there were no creatures trying to sneak up on them and he also had his short sword out ready to retaliate the moment it happened. He didn"t plan on getting caught by surprise, but up to the first split there were no enemies in the way for them to have to deal with.
tWhen they got to the split Joshua immediately used his aura pulse to inspect the three paths and this time around he was surprised to see there were no traps on any of the paths. The center one once again was clearly the right path to take forward as it continued on well past his aura pulse range. The left and right paths however ended within sight, but didn"t have a trap at the end of them. The left path had three of the shadow creatures from the first floor guarding a treasure chest. Now that the environment around them was to their advantage they"d be more annoying to deal with, but that was the only change going on with them. The right path however had a new creature at the end of it that looked extremely similar to the feline boss monster they had faced to clear the haze from the town. He couldn"t get a perfect look at it through his aura pulse, but he noticed that it didn"t seem to be phasing in and out of the walls like the other creatures were.
tJoshua decided to save the new creature for last so he took the left path so that he could go deal with the annoying shadow creatures first. He took the lead since there were only three of them and they tended to attack whatever they saw first. When they got to the end of the hall Joshua immediately brought his short sword up to block one of the claws of the creatures that tried to surprise him. He then twisted the blade and slashed through its neck before its shock at being caught pa.s.sed. The other pair of creatures came in at the same time, but Joshua simply blocked one of the twos claws while shooting the other one in the head with a rail bullet before it even got close enough to touch Joshua. The next moment a large fireball smashed into the last one that Joshua had held in placed and Joshua watched as the creature slowly died.
tHe then checked the chest for traps before opening it, there was more of the same materials inside except in more quant.i.ty. Joshua was happy with that since he preferred getting raw materials so Naomi and Nathan can make him his gear in the future instead of getting a new weapon or armor that would only last a couple of dungeons at the rate he was leveling. In fact the short sword he was using at the moment was getting close to being too low level. By the time he reached forty-five he would most likely have to switch it out.
tThe group back tracked their way towards the split and then headed down the right path this time. Joshua was interested in seeing how much the new creature was like the haze boss from the town. It obviously wouldn"t be as strong, but if they were a part of the dungeon then in all likely hood Lilly was going to be able to tame one if she wanted too. Of course Lilly would go for a better version of the creature if she could find it so Joshua was hoping they"d find a variant. When they reached the end of the hallway they came face to face with the new creature and it was almost the spitting image of the haze boss except without all the usual purple pulsing veins that came with all haze creatures.
It looked more like a normal cat than the haze boss except for the tail where it still had the same scythe like protrusion at the end. Of course it size was nothing like the haze boss that towered over buildings. This cat wasvmore around the size of a horse if anything and it was growling with its tail up in the air preparing to attack the moment they got closer. Joshua charged forward with the cat following suit soon after. Joshua watched as it leaped into the air and started curling into a ball while spinning. This made the blade on its tail even more dangerous as it shot towards him. He immediately stopped the a.s.sault with perfect timing as he blocked the tail sending the creature off balance, before grabbing its tail with one hand and slamming it fiercely into the ground. The blow caused it to bounce right back up and knocked all the air out of its lungs.
"Do you want to tame this one?" Joshua asked Lilly to make sure before he killed it.
"No, it doesn"t have much potential to grow beyond this point. It might grow an extra tail or something in its next evolution, but that would be the end of the road." Lilly said with a frown followed by a deep sigh. Joshua simply shook his head at her antics before turning back to the creature and stabbing it through the heart to put it out of its misery. He then walked over to the chest and went through a quick inspection before opening. This time around he found a large shield on the inside along with some materials. He"d check out how good it was later with Naomi then give it to Jayce the next time they met.
After that they continued on their way to explore more of the second floor. They ran into similar situations along the way with split paths and treasure chest every now and then. Whenever an obvious trap was up ahead without any sign of benefit to be had Joshua would ignore it and continue on. When it started to feel like they were getting close to the end of the dungeon based off the fact they had been fighting for hours Joshua finally came across a final split. This time there were only two paths and Joshua could see exactly where each path lead through his aura pulse.
The Right path lead to a large door with a skull and bones on it depicting the boss room. It was clearly the way to go if they wanted to finish the dungeon, but Joshua didn"t immediately rush over towards that direction. The other path lead to a monster room that most likely had a decent treasure chest inside it and might possibly have a special variant like the beginners dungeon had. Joshua lead the group down the left path first and warned them about what was up ahead before opening the door at the end of the hallway. He let Tank go in first to take on the brunt force of the ma.s.s of creatures" attacks, afterwards the rest of them would go all out and deal with all of the creatures inside.
The moment they all entered the room the door behind them slammed shut and locked itself while the room went completely dark. Cinder immediately started radiating heat and giving everyone a good view of their surroundings do to the glow her body was giving off. Tank marched into the middle of the room and that"s when Joshua saw several creatures rush over to try to attack the large turtle. It was a combination of both the shadow creatures and the cat like ones, but since Tank had withdrawn into his sh.e.l.l all of the attacks just glanced off his sh.e.l.l and he was left completely unharmed the entire time.
While the madness of the situation took place Joshua took notice of one creature that stood out from the rest as it seemed to be a combination of the two types of creatures in a way. It was able to travel through the shadows like the other shadow creatures, but it had the shape of the cat like creatures along with a pair of tails that had protrusions on the tips that not only looked like scythes but could also change from time to time to other shapes. At one point it attempted to use a drill on the end of its tail to pierce into one of the small openings on Tanks sh.e.l.l. Luckily Tank noticed and turned so the blow hit the sh.e.l.l instead.
Joshua immediately blinked towards that creature before it could try to hide away in the shadows and banged it in the head with the flat of his scale blade before grabbing hold of it and leaping out of the ma.s.s of creatures that were in the area. The next moment a wave of flames engulfed everything else as Cinder and Lilly got to work. Tank followed up with some bubble traps to kill any of the stragglers and the room was once again quiet except for the struggling cat like creature that was in Joshua"s arms. He made sure to hold it by the tails so that it couldn"t flail them at him in its aggressive state.
"Well how about this guy? He seems interesting." Joshua said as he showed the cat to Lilly. It wasn"t as big as its counter parts in the dungeon since it was about the size of a large dog instead of a horse, but Joshua was certain it was far more powerful.
Lilly smiled at the creature before their aura"s started to intertwine. After a few moments the large cat had calmed down and Joshua had let it go. It pounced over towards Lilly excitedly as she started to scratch it behind the ears. "She"s Puuurfect!" Lilly said with a smile. Joshua nearly face-palmed at the smug look she was giving him.