The Illicitous Dungeon

"Human scum," Therina cursed with an icy expression.

She relied on the recoil from blocking the arrow to dodge back away from the ogre's club and spare hand smashing down toward her, hiding in its blind side.

"Hoh? You actually blocked that? Impressive," One of the human swordsmen laughed at her. "Jax, I think you are losing skill levels."

"Shut up, Hanz, use that lump of useless steel in your hand and go cut her tendons."

The two swordsmen split up in multiple directions to flank Therina while the archer knocked another other, not using a skill this time to save his mana.

The ogre was blind with rage and couldn't find Therina, but it did see the two swordsmen charging toward it and switched to attacking them. The two wanted to disable the elf first though, so they made disarming her their priority over killing the half blind, half dead ogre.

The first swordsman dodged around the ogre's crazed attack before attacking on one side, while the second swordsman timed himself to attack at the same time.

The archer also released an arrow, trapping Therina in a three-way attack.

As the three weren't trying to kill her, but would and disarm, she still had room for leeway as she dodged back again while deflecting the arrow. She retailiated with a deadly thrust at the neck of one of the swordsmen, but he was <Lv. 16> and much faster than her. He easily brought up his sword and protected his neck, although her ferocity did leave him feeling a chill on the back of his neck.

"Feisty one, aren't you?" The other swordsman said as he made a follow up attack.

"Watch out, the ogre is upon you guys," The archer warned his party members as he continued to cover them with arrows.

Therina was at a severe disadvantage against the three, as while less precise with their swords, they had higher strength, speed and real life battle experience. They were also developing fearlessness towards death, even recklessness, that was referred to as the initial reason why all high level rankers were crazy in one way or another.

The first swordsman used the Swordsmanship skill, charging cut. Mana flowed through his body as he charged forward in the blink of an eye, instantly upon Therina as his sword came swinging down upon her.

Therina reinforced her blade with mana and tried to deflect the blow, but the swordsman's strength was simply too much higher than hers. She made a split second decision and released her sword the moment she felt his strength bearing down on her.

She pulled out the hunting knives from the back of her waist as she slipped past the attack and ruthlessly stabbed one of them into his throat, twisting and yanking it out immediately.

"Hanz!" The other swordsman called out upon seeing his throat gouged open and blood pouring out.

Hanz was in a state of disbelief as he raised his hand in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. He had confidence in his body's resilience and most of it was covered in armor too, but he severely underestimated Therina's precision and savagery in her counterattack.

Before he could even reflect on what she did, everything was already over.

[

Hanz (Apprentice Swordsman <Lv. 16>) killed!

+ 872 exp

]

Therina earned the single largest amount of experience she had ever earned before. She felt that there was a use for humans after all – experience bags.

"Shit, Derrik, this woman is savage, let's bail!" The archer called out as he shot several more arrows and dodged a couple of throwing knives that were thrown back in retaliation with deadly accuracy.

With little regard for their fallen companion, the two immediately retreated away from Therina and fled deeper into the dungeon.

"Don't chase them," Styx commanded in her mind, causing her to falter and almost not dodge the ogre's attack properly.

"Why?" She asked in response as she retrieved her fallen sword and quickly finished off the ogre.

[

Ogre <Lv. 13>) killed!

+ 207 exp

]

The ogre quickly turned into a pile of ash the rapidly evaporated in motes of light, leaving behind a mana crystal half the size of a thumb. The experience along with killing Hanz filled up an entire third of her experience requirement to level up.

"Because if you kill them all, nobody will know about you."

Therina found herself dumbfounded once again at Styx's reasoning.

"Isn't it better for people to not know me? If those adventurers file a complaint to the city guard that I attacked and killed one of them… I cannot fight off the guards."

"Don't be so paranoid. Beautiful elf randomly attacked three lecherous adventurers and killed one? They wouldn't have the guts to report that. Even if they did…"

"If they did?"

"Well, even if they did, the guard might give a brief investigation into you, but nothing would come of it. In the end, that dead adventurer is just another corpse to feed the dungeon. Your bigger concern should be them coming attacking again, but with more people."

"Shouldn't I definitely kill them then!?"

"No. You need fame, it will help you in secretly luring people back to my dungeon. The poor elf who lost her entire family and village to a wild dungeon break, their greed and lust will lead them right into my hands. If they hate you, you can lure them here even easier."

"You don't worry that I will be killed?"

"My things are not so weak."

Therina helplessly shook her head with a smile before continuing to investigate the dungeon floor. Of course, she didn't forget to loot any mana stones on the fallen swordsman and his sword, which Styx said was of good quality and his monsters could use.

There were plenty of other people on this floor as ogres provided a good amount of experience points and were pretty slow. Due to this, people spent far more time looking for monsters than actually fighting them.

~~~~~

The sun was beginning to set by the time Therina left the dungeon. There had been several other incidents of people attacking her, but she had either robbed them and drove them off or fled if there were too many.

A pretty woman, especially an elf, alone in the dungeon attracted a lot of attention, and quite a few of the higher level adventurers and mercenaries could look past her Concealment and spot her.

Styx had placated her into not killing any humans for the time being, at least not until she could saturate her mana network with potential. To level up sooner would only lower her future Max Level.

There were a total of five confrontations with humans, three which she robbed their sacks of mana crystals, and two which she had to flee from due to being severely outnumbered and outleveled.

There was one other moment where she ran into a Second Step beastman ranker. She immediately felt a dangerous premonition when she saw him and decisively avoided him out of caution. The ranker also noticed Therina, but simply chose to ignore her after she fled.

Therina had gained two thirds of the experience required to level up, but had almost no potential built up so had to hold off on returning to the dungeon. She did harvest a wide range of fungus and mushrooms which had spread themselves through the dungeon.

Of the mana crystals she had harvested, or robbed, half of them were sold for a total of 7 silver 13 copper. The other half would return with her to the dungeon for Styx's study and experimentation.

According to Styx's demands, she bought another cheap book which contained a couple of the lowest level arrays such as the commonplace light array. She also embarrassingly entered a store selling adult products and spent another 5 silver on a magic powered vibrating dildo.

She then returned to her inn for the night.

"I haven't taught you about meditation before, have I?" Styx asked whilst she was stretching her body to train and maintain her flexibility.

Therina bent forward while sitting and grabbed onto her feet before pulling them to the sides.

"No, you haven't. Meditation for what?"

"As a method for training."

"Training my meditation skills?"

"Training your mind. Potential shouldn't be limited to just physical and magical training. It should extend to the metaphysical as well. Even operating your own mana network can build up potential."

"And by saying 'should', you don't actually know."

"…Irregardless, training the mind is a part of training the body."

Therina wasn't exactly convinced, but she still told Styx to go on.

"Good, no cross your legs and close your eyes. Focus on steadying your breathing… in…. and out…. and in… and out… feel the air within and around you. Your body is the sole point of reality in a boundless space of nothingness, rhythmically sending out a pulse every time you exhale…"

Styx continued talking in Therina's mind, directing her thoughts to first target a sensation of being one with the surroundings, extending the mind's senses to feel everything around her. He wanted to go into some further training he knew of to fine tune her cognitive processing, but he felt that would be rushing things too much.

~~~~~

The following morning, Therina checked out of the inn early, but didn't receive a refund on her booking. She had booked and paid for five nights, so the room would remain hers until the end of that period, regardless as to whether she was there or not.

They simply didn't do refunds.

It was next to no money for the elf, so she didn't make a fuss about it but returned the room key and left. She had stopped using Concealment under bequest of Styx, who thought it would be a good chance to allow people to see her leaving the dungeon city and which direction she was heading.

This way, those people who were targeting her for revenge would come looking for her and hopefully find the dungeon. They would then turn into much desired experience for Styx, who had plenty of traps and tactics to kill them.

The tactic definitely worked, as several people shadowed Therina as she left the city and made note of where she was heading. They didn't dare follow her over the hills and farmlands however, as that would simply be too obvious and they were under the impression that she was unaware of them tailing her.

Seeing she was headed toward the Abyssal Forest, they quickly ran back to report to whom they were spying for.