It made the slightest of movements, the plant.

Nothing more than a final setting of stiffening limbs as life breaks its binds and escapes; or an exact opposite bringing the same result, as it happened in this case. But, the sound which jolted out from that movement was nothing short of lightning’s crackle in the silent chamber. Even someone deaf or unconscious would have heard or felt it through the shaking of the ground, and I was neither deaf nor unconscious.

Though surprising for sure, the plant revival didn’t panic me. It was just another foe, another hurdle before the boss room. This time I was sure of that.

I appraised it just in case to save myself from surprises, which it held plenty in the form of a title and stats. Its skill set though unusual, brought not even a ripple to my sea of emotions.

Spoiler: Status: Stiff legged stick insect

Stiff legged stick insect (Uncommon)

Level

5/15

Type

Insect

Rank

2

Job

Trent

Health

675

Mana

880

Title: Earth bound.

Stat Tier: E

Strength

3

Intelligence

16x10

Agility

-

Constitution

15x5

Dexterity

-

Vitality

6x10

Wisdom

8

Endurance

10x5

Skills:

Nature Manipulation*(9), Growth*(4), Spike*(14), Thorns(6), Compress(5), Rise & fall*(18), Roots*(3), Whip(9), Slash(6), Hammer(2), energy drain(6), nature affinity(4), Iron bark*(3), Convolute(2), Sharp weapon mastery*(18), Blade aura*(7), Hyper regeneration*(7), High Earth resistance*(27), High water resistance*(13),

This is the last one before the neutral zone. I can do this. Just one more and I can rest. I mentally prepared. However, I also knew that it needed to be a short struggle, a quick fight. My reserves weren’t enough to culture a prolonged effort.

Reckless courage activated when the waking beast sat its hateful yellow eyes upon me, giving a shallow but helpful push to my stats.

You have decided to face a foe of a higher tier than you. Reckless courage has activated. You receive a 10% boost to your physical stats.

The being, the Trent, however, waited instead of rushing at me like its predecessors ‘the bugs’ had. It assessed me from far. That gave me plenty of time to back away and finally check out the penalty I faced against beings of a higher tier. The penalty, which I easily found logged at the end of my status, was a status effect called status balancing, a normal-sounding name for a dreadful thing.

[Status balancing][Status effect]

[It comes to effect when fighting against foes a tier higher than you. It decreases your stats by 25% when against a foe one tier higher than you.]

[Current effect: -16.4%]

Although the base deduction was 25%, thanks to the skills Confidence and reckless courage, the penalty was reduced to a workable16.4%, which was delightful, considering the difference returned 36 points to my status.

Unfortunately, my distraction allowed the thing to attack first. The grass moved, controlled by the thing. I was fortunate enough to have sensed their movement; otherwise, I could have been bound by the roots and beaten senselessly by the grass.

The grass had moved very slowly, very precisely around me to not get my attention, and had it not for my acute senses or had I picked the other option in its stead, I wouldn’t have noticed the micro-movements its limbs created.

The grass blades became aggressive upon finding their cover blown and slashed at me with their serrated edges, now covered in a dull silver sheen to my eyes. The torrent they created was absolute in its lethality, as I found out with a shallow but smooth laceration on the exoskeleton covering my shoulder. There was no place to go or even hide this time.

Thankfully, the grass could only bend at certain angles without cracking and losing its spring, which I was able to determine after a few more shallow but painful cuts to my back and abdomen. Nothing leaked, but the pain was burning. I had no idea the common grass which could be found everywhere could be used as such an effective weapon. It was an eye-opener.

I ducked under a grass blade coming from my right, rolled away to further right from one which had come sketching a shallow trench in the dirt ground, used the momentum from the roll into a jump to escape above a blade which had come hacking through a few other grass shoots. However, I quickly realized that the jump had been a mistake. The tallest blade among the rest swatted me back to the ground faster than I had risen from it.

I tried to get up but found myself already bound to the ground by thin tendrils of cold and wet roots. I sensed enough disturbances in and out of the ground around me that I wantonly had to burn the few points of mana I had recovered and slip through the bind. I did that and found once again being stalked by —this time— both the roots and the blades.

I cursed myself of a few hours ago, who believed he had the strength to get through this shit!

One slotted wind cannonball toward the cluster of blade rising and falling at me, another at the roots behind; I watched as both of those whirls of air tore through their target and gave me some room to breathe.

The one I had unleashed at the roots disappeared into the darkness, the other one however changed into a vacuum bomb after touching its target, giving me a reprieve from the blades for the time being.

Memorize rose to level 18, but it was of no use. The roots, the persistently gut-wrenching roots, were too quick in their recovery, too many in their numbers. They had my torso wrapped, legs stretched, and abdomen squeezed before I could understand what had happened.

“Shit!” I screamed internally. Strength of 41 points didn’t allow the roots to tear me apart, but that didn’t stop the Trent from spinning a ball of thick and thin dirt-covered roots around me. They were cold to the touch, almost as cold as the green light which had drained my health in the last boss room. My health started dropping to the tune of menacing ones and twos right after, alerting me. Health drain resistance rose to level 5 a few seconds later, but that didn’t stop the roots from trying to squeeze me dry.

The roots twisted and turned with my slightest jerks, and tightened and squeezed harder and harder with every second that passed. My body held on for a while but then I felt my limbs giving. I’m going to die here. I thought and became frantic. I pulled at the roots and bit them, but the roots bound my mandibles like they had bound my limbs, and pushed into my orifices. I had to suffer for an excruciatingly long and laborious minute as my health now dropped at twice the rate than previously.

I retaliated in anger with mana extraction and gasped in glee upon finding it working.

Mana flowed into my body at a thundering rate of one per second. That might not sound insane, but in comparison to 1.74 points per 1:44 seconds, it was an astronomical improvement. Were the roots not responsible for my dropping health, I would have remained bound by them until my mana was back to full, but such wasn’t the case.

Ten seconds later, I wasted another slotted cannonball to lose the roots binding my body and performed the cross-action required to unleash a cross slash with my freed forearms, which thanks to its recently unlocked special ability called drill instantly shredded the ball made of roots and freed me.

It was the most desperate situation I had been in a long time. So much for adventure, I thought as I fell. My senses were blaring again; this time with even more aggression. The blades simply watched me as I got up as if stunned by my heroic effort —You have to let the underdog marvel at their short successes in times of distress, as I later found out is a marvelous method of sending them into despair.

I unleashed —or leaked out in this case— a groaning wave of rhythmic quake to push the grass and the roots away from me. It worked, but in the sense that the objects of my concern were only pushed and bent, not swept away for good. However, that breathless quake allowed me a straight sight at the Trent hiding behind the menaces, though only for a minute appearance and then the grass was up and straight, ready for another volley of blade swinging.

Sick and tired of the dungeon and its games, I tried to make haste past the recovered and recovering grass and into the forest of death spanning between me and the giant. Perhaps, if I was fighting at the peak of my ability I could have dodged and charged or rushed, even accelerated through the forest with my acute senses and uncanny bodily control, but as I, I couldn’t even get past their first line of offense.

I was pissed and mana drained and hurting. The Trent had brought my utmost best out of me. There was nothing else left for me to do.

-Nothing else other than to go into overdrive . . . the thought passed through my mind.

Using the skill meant possibly ending my conquest after this stage because it could only be used once a day, and I was yet to face the boss of the third floor. It was a hard decision. I came so impossibly close to achieving my goal. I was so close to getting rid of the dungeon forever, save my colony . . . the farm, too. But it was my only choice. Though brimming with reckless courage, I wasn’t reckless with my decision. I dodged the grass blades and took my time and only after I got my middle legs sliced cleaned did I make up my mind.

It was unfortunate, but I had done my best. The faces of my friends new and old passed through my mind as I opened the gate of agility and went into overdrive.

The world slowed.

The grass blades did, too.

Strength flowed thought my limbs.

Sounds became dragged . . . distant . . . illusionary . . .

I saw the roots growing or lurching out of the ground like brown tendrils of lightning.

I touched the face of a grass blade uncomfortably near my head and found it unsatisfactorily stiff;

the silver sheen covering its edge, familiar yet strange.

I pranced past the grass blade and tip-toed through the web of roots growing to cover the ground.

My senses, I noticed, had grown sharper: I sensed the ground come into motion before the spikes rose out of it; I heard the roots rustle and the faint moaning of the wind while being cut by the grass blades. I entered a zone of absolute accuracy where the dangers around couldn’t have harmed me even if the world hadn’t almost come to a standstill.

Coming to stop underneath the Trent I looked behind at the forest which was slowly coming to know of my disappearance and was growing frantic. I was yet to wake up from my hyperactive state. I looked up and saw the creature standing with its branches extending away from its body like a conductor conducting a symphony. Considering how the grass forest was under its control, that analogy wasn’t wrong though unfavorably poetic and unworthy.

How much of the minute allotted under the state had I wasted? I had no idea. But I was certain of one thing. I was passing this stage and leaving the dungeon. Without further ado, I let loose one of my last four slotted wind cannonballs, and it slowly rose away from me: faster than Trent’s motion, but at a carriers pace at best. Amazingly, two echoes appeared on either side of the cannonball, only to spin around it like two children’s scared and vulnerable, yet strengthening their mother with their presence. The three-ball so destruction thundered up and away from me, creating a dangerously visible swirl of wind at the front, easily shearing through that Trent’s body and its branches equally. In the end, the magical swirl exploded into a vacuum and destroyed all traces of the monster from the stage, leaving but a windless void in its place.

I felt air slowly caress my body as it moved up to fill the void left behind by the vacuum. There was much to be learned from that simple work of nature.

Like the air, present also moves invisibly to our discretion to fill the wounds of our past, but it’s also up to us to either let it cover the void with new memories or leave it alone to slowly drain us of happiness. Simply said, my past wounds had scabbed but were yet to completely heal.

I was still watching dusty air slowly rise up from the ground to fill the void when the system’s bells rang inside my head. I had done my part. I had mixed feelings about leaving, but going further would have been reckless and a mistake. So, unfortunate as it was, I didn’t change my mind and stuck with my decision of calling an end to my adventure. It was, however, a well thought out decision, something which I was surprisingly taught by the one thing I had come to crush, the dungeon.

It was time to leave. The notification read:

{Your special ability->Proficiency overtaking has absorbed the skill Nature affinity from the foe defeated.}

{Subject doesn’t possess Bleeding resistance or Mana drain resistance or Stamina drain resistance or Resistance to soul siphoning.}

{Skill couldn’t be absorbed.}

Commencing transfer to the final boss room: Graveyard of fear.

Best of luck, challenger

-Or maybe not.