The Cardboard Explorer

Cade slightly tilted his head and continued walking further inside the dungeon. Everywhere he went, there will be explorers around and they all looked at him weirdly.

He expected them to stare at him but he still felt totally embarra.s.sed. Fortunately, his mouth mask and hoodie covered his face.

No one knew his real face and he did not need to worry about people laughing at him when he walked around without his linked equipment.

When Cade entered the dungeon earlier, he did not know if there were any changes to the dungeon layout too as he only had one experience going inside the dungeon.

However, looking at the explorers nearby, it looked like there was some changes happened to the dungeon"s layout. He did not know what changes occurred to the layout but he can guess it.

Looking at the explorers drawing and taking pictures of the dungeon, it was possible that the dungeon had turned to a maze.

Before this, it was common knowledge that the dungeon was quite linear. There might be some with one or two different paths but they were all lead to the end of the floor.

Cade did not know how complicated the maze was but it was possible that it was just a simple maze as the explorers around him did not look that concerned about it.

Cade did not mind about it either but he did get worried that there were too many explorers inside the dungeon.

Cade tried to find some big tongue toad but unfortunately, when he found one, a party of explorers were fighting it.

It was unethical to steal kill and he did not try to do that. It was fine to do that when the party was in danger but they all looked at ease fighting the monsters.

Cade kept walking and he found none. They were all taken by someone. Cade sighed. In the end, he decided to go deeper into the dungeon"s first floor and hopefully to find a toad on the way.

The deeper Cade went, the lesser the explorers he found and after about 30 minutes of walking, He finally found his target. A lone big tongue toad. It was a big as an adult human but the height was much lower compared to human.

Cade checked his system to see the toad"s grade. On the first floor, only level 1 toad can be found but since the dungeon was that of D grade, there were E grade and D grade toad to be found there.

Cade did not want to fight a D grade toad yet. He felt that he was still not fully prepared for that.

Once he checked the system, the toad he found was E grade. Cade sighed in relieved. He took out his cardboard short sword from his storage and equipped it.

Cade took a deep breath and rushed towards the toad from behind the monsters. The toad sat there yawning as he was bored that there was no one around.

The toad decided to find another toad but when he turned around, a brown sword was coming at his face. The toad was shocked but he instinctively jumped backwards immediately.
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Cade"s sword hit the ground but he was not surprised. Instead of waiting, Cade immediately followed up with another slash with his sword.

Seeing the next attack coming, the toad got serious. Instead of attacking Cade, the toad jumped backwards once more but his jumped this time was stronger than before.

Due to that, the toad kept his distance from Cade immediately. Cade missed his second attack and he looked at the toad that was already quite far from him to make another slash.

Cade tried to run towards the toad but before he was abled to do that, the toad opened his mouth and a big, thick and slimy tongue launched at him fast.

Cade immediately put out his shield to block the attack. However, once the tongue hit the shield, he regretted it. He should have evaded the attack.

Cade was sent flying backwards and he fell rolling on the ground. He immediately tried to get up as another attack was coming at him. However, he was too late.

The only thing he can do was blocked it again with his shield. He was once again sent flying by the tongue attack.

Once Cade was on the ground again, he tried to stand up. His body was shivering from pain. He was not in pain because of the attack but because he was falling on the ground.

The toad attack did not seem to exceed the defense his shield provided as his shield was totally fine. Its durability went down a bit but that was all.

Looking at the situation, Cade knew that his equipment will do well inside the dungeon but he himself was not up to standard.

Other than his luck, all his other stats were slightly better compared to normal humans. However, that was not enough to fare well against a monster especially a strong monster like the toad.

Monsters inside the dungeon had level and grade but there was one more thing that the system did not stated in their evaluation.

Upon more and deeper researched, humans found out that each species of monsters had different amount of stat even if they were of the same grade and level.

Humans a.s.sumed that they all had the same stats and the only difference about them was their skill and the way they were fighting.

However, researched showed that different species of monsters had different amount of total stat points. Thus, humans started putting another parameter for the monsters, difficulty.

The slime dungeon that Cade completed before was of difficulty 1. The lowest difficulty ever. All the monsters with difficulty 1 had maximum of 10 stat points in each of their stat at level 1 E grade. The maximum amount will increase by 10 for each increase in level.

If the monsters had difficulty of 2, the stats will be twice of difficulty 1. All higher difficulty followed the same rules.

The big tongue toad dungeon had the difficulty of 3. That meant, the toad had three times more stats than what the system predicted with their levels and grade.

The toad that Cade was fighting can have a maximum of 30 stat points in each of its stat. With the attack that Cade had receive earlier, Cade knew that the toad"s strength surpa.s.sed his.

Other than his luck, all of his stats were below thirty and only his vitality stat and endurance stat were above 20.

Cade did not suffer from any injuries but he still felt pain all over his body. The toad retracted his tongue back but he did not stand still while his tongue was retracted.

The toad took a big jump forward to close in to Cade. Cade was out of his tongue range at the moment. If he wanted to kill Cade, he needed to close the distance.

Cade saw the big jump the toad made but instead of retreating, Cade went forward. Their distance closed in fast.

The toad tongue fully retracted. The toad was still in the air and he launched another attack with his tongue as Cade was now in his tongue"s range.

Cade did not stop his advanced and he kept moving forward while the tongue was coming closer and closer towards him.

Cade tried to block the tongue again but instead of straightforwardly blocking the tongue, Cade tilted his shield a bit to his side, to change the direction of the tongue.

The tongue hit his shield and it was misdirected to his side and hit the ground. His parry worked but he was halved succeed in his plan as he was pushed aside quite a bit by the recoil of the tongue attack.

Due to the recoil, Cade lose his footing and he fell on the ground. He quickly stood and evaded the tongue that was swiping the ground towards him.

Cade successfully evade the tongue and the toad also successfully landed on the ground and the toad retracted his tongue back.

"So, he can only attack twice every time he uses his tongue," Cade saw that the toad will retract back his tongue every time it attacked using it twice.

At the beginning, he thought that they were too far away. It was true that they were far away and it was evident when the toad jumped forward to close the distance.

The second time the tongue was launched, it attacked twice and was retracted even when their distance was not far from each other.

How many times the tongue can attack was not really a concern to Cade as he planned to do something else. He saw a lot of other explorers did the same and he knew he can do it too.