Chapter 10 – Progression (1/2)

I had arrived at the 33rd floor.

This time, it was in the shape of an old stone temple. It reminded me of those pictures of the Aztec ruins, but since I started from the inside, I couldn't tell for sure.

The layout itself wasn't too different from most other floors. But the monsters were a different story.

As I entered the second passageway, my [Sense Presence] skill went off, alerting me to a monster, but I couldn't tell where it was. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary either. Even [Spirit Perception] and [Mana Perception] wasn't showing me anything despite sensing something in this section of the hall.

I warily passed through the hall, careful about whatever make my skill go off. It was the first time since I got the skill that I couldn't pinpoint where the enemy was using it. Halfway to the next turn, a sharp pain came from my left leg.

From the corner of my eye, I could see a pitch black spike receding from my leg and merging with a black puddle-like substance.

I fired off an ice lance at the puddle. It swiftly moved to the side, but wasn't fast enough and the ice tore into the substance, causing it to shudder before growing still. The feeling of it's presence had disappeared entirely.

The sight of this black puddle unnerved me. I hadn't noticed it at all despite carefully examining the entire hall.

Picking it up, it felt more like a piece of soft rubber than a liquid. At most a thick gel.

It tasted like black liquorice.

Eating this black thing's essence didn't heal my wound, but since I had gotten the [Regeneration] skill from the trolls on the 29th floor, my wound soon closed up on it's own. The trolls also gave me another rank in [Exceptional Vitality].

All the other monsters on this floor was similar. A white transparent ghost that defeated even my [Spirit Perception], a chameleon that blended with the walls perfectly, even a killer jack-in-the-box that couldn't be detected at all by my [Sense Presence] skill.

This floor was one of the most difficult I had encountered so far. The constant ambushes were tough on my nerves, and oftentimes I ended up just barraging the entire area with area-of-effect spells to deal with them whenever I detected something or noticed some telltale sign that a monster was waiting for me. It still didn't stop the jack-in-the-box monsters if they didn't show up with other monsters, since it was a waste of MP to fire off AOE spells into empty rooms.

Fortunately, at least those monsters showed themselves right before attacking, so I had a split second to avoid getting hurt. Not like it was reliable, but it was enough to avoid getting completely paranoid about this floor.

When all was said and done, I had ended up farming up the skills here. They weren't too compatible with my current fighting style of magic plus quick melee, but the utility outside of combat made them a worthy investment.

[Sneaking] made me blend in with the surroundings and silenced any noise I made. As the ranks went up, the effectiveness rose. At rank 6, I blended in with shadows to the point where I couldn't see my own body parts, and I didn't make any sounds while running on the stone floors. It was less effective in well lit areas though. I had the feeling that this worked even on [Spirit Perception].

[Suppress Presence] did as it was called. It suppressed my presence, making me more difficult to detect accurately with [Sense Presence]. It didn't stop detection entirely, but it did make it difficult to determine my exact location, depending on the opponent's [Sense Presence] rank.

[Suppress Aura] contained my magical aura and reduced the natural bleed-out. It seemed like this was what [Mana Perception] detected when I used it to find monsters. I could even vary the degree I suppressed my aura.

All three I farmed up to rank 6, and testing their effects on other floors was particularly fun, but made the encounters too easy, so I refrained from relying on them too much.

Floor 47 had only one notable thing about it. Rather, there was two, but they were related.

All the monsters were spiders. That fact meant that they all dropped bolts of spider silk.

Finally, after all this time, I had the base material to make clothes that wouldn't weigh me down if I were to cover myself properly.

The second I felt I gathered enough, I had rushed back and started to weave some simple underwear to get rid of this itchy fur I'd been using this entire time.

I made some rudimentary tools and got to work. Bottomless, since I couldn't stand the idea of putting up with the itchiness when I was so close to having better clothes.

But soon I found out that weaving was a hell of a lot more work than I expected. Keeping everything together while I threaded a single thread back and forth, I probably spent hours just making a single pair of panties, and simply gave up making any spares or a top, let alone an actual wardrobe.

I understood then just how important proper tools were, though I was happy to have half-decent underwear. They were a bit unshapely, but the smoothness and softness of the silk made them incomparably better than my old pair.

Someday I needed to make a loom to process this silk. In the meantime, I regularly returned to floor 47 to stockpile silk.

As a side, I had finally managed to fully suppress my urge to feed any time I had killed a monster. Just barely in time as well, as farming spider silk would've broken me mentally if I couldn't stop myself from feeding after every kill.

The 54th floor was pretty unusual in some ways.

The stone tiles and bricks alternated between black and white.

There were braziers lining the walls alternating between red and blue flames.

There were two nearly identical, yet opposing monsters charging at me from in front.

Both monsters wore heavy plate armour that obscured their entire bodies, but one was pitch black and the other pearl white. The black knight wielded a large two-handed sword, and there were horns sticking out of it's helmet along with large bat wings from it's back. The white knight wielded a sword and shield and had white eagle wings growing out of it's back. Both were huge, almost twice as tall as me and at least triple my width.

It was like a pair of heavenly and hellish knights suddenly ceased their war and teamed up to take down an interloper.

Technically I was an intruder and they were allies to each other, but the surreal scene made me wonder what was supposed to be the theme here.

The white knight charged ahead and tried to bash me with it's shield. I froze the ground with magic and jumped over the shield to avoid whatever followup the knight intended.

The black knight, right behind, saw me sail over the white one and swung it's sword at me.

Unable to evade in midair, I activated my [Spirit Form], letting the black sword slide through my body mostly unimpeded. But my skill wasn't high rank enough for my spirit form to be complete, causing a light gash across my body. I gritted my teeth from the pain, but landed on my feet.

The white knight slipped on the ice and fell, but the black knight turned around to face me, but didn't charge. Instead, it slowly circled where I landed with it's weapon ready. I wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but I tried moving from the spot I was at. The knight turned to face me, but didn't do anything else.

I closed the distance between myself and the black monster, but it didn't react beyond keeping it's gaze on me.

As an experiment, I thrust out a hand and materialized it just before it connected with the knight's armour. Only then did it react, trying to dodge my strike, but it was too slow and I managed to rake it's armour.

Sparks flew as my claws gouged holes in the hard metal. The scent of blood wafted from the point I struck, but it was weak. From the tear in the armour, I could see a few light scratches on black scales.

I undid the materializing immediately and hopped back.

The knights didn't do anything beyond remaking their stance and watching me.

I had confirmed that they most likely couldn't see me, but they could sense my presence. If I combined [Spirit Form] with [Suppress Aura] or [Suppress Presence], I'd be able to fool the knights entirely and strike at them without them detecting me.

But if I did that, I wouldn't get much practical experience along with my XP and new skills. Even more importantly, it wouldn't be as fun.

I moved to a decent distance before cutting off [Spirit Form]. As if as one, the knights charged at me again. But this time the black knight was in front.

I rose a knee high stone wall in front of the white knight and charged at the black one. The white one crashed into the wall, tripping once again as blackie swung it's overcompensation known as a sword.

Without slowing down, I ducked down and to the side, cleanly avoiding the strike before I raked my claws across the back of it's knee, tearing deeply into the flesh under the armour. This time the scent of blood grew strong in the air.

Not missing a beat, I continued towards whitie who was still in the middle of rising up from it's repeated display of forced clumsiness.

I hopped over it lightly and landed on it's back. In the perfect position, I stabbed my claws in between the gap of heavy armour of it's chest plate and helmet. I could feel the chain mail valiantly but futilely struggle against my sharp talons. On the other hand, the gorget it was wearing managed to resist me, only allowing three claws to reach in and tear out the monster's throat.

The monster collapsed while spasming as I hopped off and faced the only remaining foe.

Seemingly angry that it's friend had died, the black knight charged at me once again, albeit with a severe limp.

With it's slowed movement, I fired off a stream of fire at blackie, broiling it inside of it's armour. It didn't manage to close the remaining distance before the walking pot roast lifelessly fell to the ground.

Now that both foes were down for the count, I ripped whitie's helmet off so I could enjoy the meal.

Under the armour, it seemed like the monster was actually some sort of humanoid reptile, with a mix of skin and golden scales and a face looked more like a scaled falcon, sharp beak and all.

I didn't notice it before, but it also had a tail, as did the black roast.

When I bit into whitie though, something unexpected happened. As I sucked its blood, rather than the usual sweet and savoury flavour of blood I had gotten used to, I got a hot, burning sensation that filled my mouth, as if I was drinking pure hot sauce.

Tears ran down my face as I let go and spat out the remaining blood from my mouth. The blood burned for some reason, and even after spitting it out, there was a tingling sensation left over, though the hotness quickly disappeared, unlike when drinking actual hot sauce.

The pain was pretty oppressive, but I wasn't sure why it had happened.

A quick look at my status revealed that I was missing a chunk of HP, but I had received damage, and not all of it had recovered yet. So with one eye on my status, I braced myself and took another bite of the fallen monster.

Immediately the moment the blood touched my fangs, the burning hotness returned, but I sucked it up anyways. Watching my status, I could see my HP slowly drain, point by point. I lost roughly five HP ever second of drinking, but I had thousands. From a survival standpoint, it wasn't a problem, but mentally it was devastating.

Something about this blood was poisonous to me, and the burning sensation was my body telling me just that.

But I needed to know. I needed to know if there was something I could gain from doing this.

If I could get skills from these guys while masochistically drinking their blood, then I was very interested in finding out what those were. It wasn't hard to imagine that almost no vampire would be willing to go through such an ordeal just to get a couple new skills.

Conversely, by being one of the only vampires with the skills gotten from these monsters, I would have a distinct advantage over others. I just hoped that this wasn't a waste. I can handle some cuts here and there, but this deliberate self-immolation play wasn't going down well with me.

When the white knight was fully drained, I rushed to blackie for a palette cleanser and to heal myself. When I ripped it's helmet off, I was greeted with a similar face to the white one, but with black scales.

Taste-wise, it reminded me a bit of roast chicken, while the white knight was like the most insane buffalo wings ever.

The theme of dark and light continued on this floor, with two more monsters showing up on top of these two.

They were the same reptilian race as the knights, but was equipped far differently.

The first was wearing thick all black robes reminiscent of a necromancer, and had a big gnarled stick in its hand. The other wore a white and gold outfit that reminded me of a bishop, without any crosses though.

They both relied heavily on spells, the black one on black coloured spells that looked like shadows directly leaping and attacking me, while the other fought with beams of light.

The dark projectiles weren't difficult to deal with, being slow, but on the occasion that they hit, they cut through me like butter.

The light beams on the other hand weren't just fast, since it was just light, but also insanely powerful. A glancing blow roasted my flesh like someone put a plasma torch to my skin.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the fear I had on my first day when I found out that I was weak to sunlight.

Rather, it really felt like the priest-like monster had weaponized sunlight against me.

Fighting these religious zealots was painful and frustrating, so I just gave up and took them down immediately with magic. Big fireballs, storms of wind blades, hail of icicles, or a barrage of flying stone spikes. Whatever I needed to get those bastards down before they cast anything.

Though all the pain and difficulty, I did get rewarded though.

The black monsters gave me [Dark Magic], and the white monsters gave me [Light Magic], both to rank 3.

[Dark Magic] was basically magic of the darkness element, whatever that was. On practical terms, it seemed like it specialized on the creation and manipulation of shadows. It even made those magical shadows take physical form and be used in combat, as I had experienced from the black robed monsters of this floor.

[Light Magic] conversely was of the light element. Basically it was magical sunlight, but at an intensity that could do damage to normal people, not just vampires like myself. When I tried it out and fired off a light ray, it turned my hand to ash. Even using [Light Magic] was seriously dangerous for me, but the fact that it was made it extremely valuable. Nobody would expect a vampire to use [Light Magic] if just using it would hurt them.

There was one more thing that made going through this floor worth it, outside of simply getting to floor 55.

That was, out from the boss chest, I got a new backpack.

Of course, the discovery first started with disappointment.

When I opened the chest, what came out was a doll shaped like a common white plush rabbit. The only difference that was immediately obvious was that it had a pair of straps attached to it's back and a mouth that could be opened.

Thinking that there might've been more to it since I could feel mana emanating from it, I opened it's mouth. What revealed itself was that there was a hole inside the mouth. So rather than just a plush toy with carrying straps, it was a backpack shaped like a plush toy.