E N Chapter 17

: Nightmare Dungeon [3]

[N POV]

Nightmare Dungeon, 5th Floor.

"Crap, crap, crap! Shouldn’t they be consuming each other? "

Claude said as he ran away from the group of rabbits, wolves, and bears that chased him with zeal.

Looking at this sight, Claude couldn’t help but remember his first kill. At that time, Claude was still a 7-year-old kid.

**

In contrast to his experienced past, Claude is still a child who recently swung his sword.

He understands from his first incarnation that in order to develop faster, Claude needs to have a first kill and experience the fear known as death.

People will run whenever something they fear is getting closer to them. Using that as a basis, in his first incarnation, he always pushed himself to the cliff.

In the end, the result was already known as he was known as the strongest mercenary in his past, before his reincarnation. Bringing fear to those that became his opponents and safety to his allies,

One not only had to know how to battle but also how to survive. In order to achieve that, the survival skills Claude learnt from his 1st incarnation’s past played a big role in it and were of more importance than the ones his 2nd incarnation had.

As a kid, he doesn’t really need to have a full rest; a simple nap is enough to rest his mind. Even so, something like that couldn’t be done as soon as he realized it. Using the systematic learning that the 2nd incarnation experienced, Claude learnt how to do things step by step.

His first kill should be something easy, and that something easy is the butcher’s place.

There, he killed his first livestock and puked all the things in his stomach.

He couldn’t bear the smell of the dead livestock and didn’t even have the appetite to eat the livestock he butchered.

The child had a nightmare for days, but forced himself to deal with it.

In the next 2 weeks, he trained in the butcher to kill the livestock as fast as possible and study their biology while helping his mother cook the livestock.

After all those things were cleared up, he went to the woods himself and killed the first monster he ever met. Because of his immaturity, Claude was almost eaten by the monster alive.

You must never bring your kindness to a hunt. That’s what he learnt as he almost lost his head from the whimpering monster trying to trap him.

For a while, he killed the surrounding monster as practice, and he developed a steady mind on killing the beast.One time, on his way to the hunting ground, he found slavers doing their barbaric things to the young Claude. what they did isn’t something that can be forgiven, using the darkness of the night, Claude killed the first human.

Different from killing the livestock and monsters, he felt nothing but unquenchable thirst when he did that, though.

He wanted to kill, killing every slaver that he could find and saving the slaves that were their commodity.

Sometimes, the slaves he saved will choose to follow him and train under his tutelage.

It’s not weird to see those that were once saved, sold again the next day. Once that happens, however, the person will be filled with sadness as they will mostly be sold by their family, or be abandoned because they fear the retribution of the slave trader that they ran away from.

Unknowingly, Claude's militia was growing faster than he expected, and by the time he called Mike to discuss the future, Claude had dispatched his group of militia to Mike. To stabilize Mike’s standing in his merchant group, or take it over even.

A month before the metastasis, Mike had taken over the merchant group and firmly grasped them. Of course, it’s not easy for a mere 11-year-old kid to take over a merchant group. However, Mike isn’t a mere child.

He’s a prodigy in his own right, and he flawlessly controls the situation.

Claude shares his knowledge he had from his incarnation, writing them into the book and explaining anything Mike didn’t understand. That alone is enough for Mike to understand the big picture and even some details.

Bringing his merchant group to another height, with the addition of Claude’s Militia, it’s not hard to receive a safe source of income.

Furthermore, Claude’s militia never stopped their night work.

Leaving the Militia and Mike aside, Claude, who has planned plenty of things, has already returned to his daily life.

Once he learnt about smithing from his father in the morning, he did sword training in the afternoon, followed by magic training with Rudeus and his enchantment training alone until night. He took an hour nap before heading to his Milita basecamp, and washed himself in the river after dawn before helping out with his father in the smithy.

Surprisingly, Claude can still survive with that schedule.

His injury can be healed by the spell now that he’s in the Nightmare dungeon. But, his fatigue will crush him so much he won’t even wake up after 2 days of sleeping. which slows down his exploration.

Fortunately, there’s no respawning monster until the 6th floor. So, it’s safe to say that these floors are the safe rooms for him after he massacred every monster within the said floor.

In the end, after dealing with the monster on the 8th floor and destroying the spawning point, which will stop the monster from appearing for another month, Claude safely reached the last monster that his 3rd Incarnation fought, before the information was cut off.

Which means, his 3rd incarnation was killed by the last monster an unknown number of times until he found a way to defeat it, and from there on, the incarnation stopped sending him memories.

The troll had almost endless stamina. It’s the type of monster that toys with its prey until the end, and greatly damages the enemy’s mentality before devouring them alive.

Although it mostly snacked on the monsters of the lower lever, it actually didn’t need to eat.

The Troll’s regeneration is faster than the eye can see, and even losing an eye isn’t a problem for it as it can regenerate as soon as the eyes are plucked.

It’s an unreal existence that will despair towards their enemy, and it took Claude 4 months alone, just to investigate any possible route to attack it by sneak attack.

You need to kill it as soon as you damage it heavily, or just lightly injure it. If you fail to defeat it after you show that you’re skilled enough, the troll will hunt you down to the lowest floor.

There’s no place to hide, once the Troll gets mad, obstacles are nothing but a piece of paper. In one of the memories of the 3rd incarnation, Claude was tortured by the Troll with regeneration.

The Troll shares its blood with Claude’s 3rd incarnation, plucking each limb apart and letting his 3rd incarnation drink the blood to regenerate the plucked limb.

The troll smiles widely when it hears the screaming voice of the 3rd incarnation.

What made it maddening was the fact that it took 3 years for the 3rd incarnation to die, after the Troll lost interest.

3 years of torture, being forced to eat his own meat, and butchered like livestock for the Troll.

Imagine a 7-year old kid being given such memories. It’s already good if he can stay sane, but Claude can do even better. As he overcomes the nightmare and focuses on preparing himself while maintaining the growth of the village,

In the end, he was sent back to this nightmare dungeon again.

Thus, to forget his fear, Claude fought the Troll while singing a song about monsters killing humans. Well, you know the title. It gives him strength because he remembers their world comes from the same fiction and it's probably somewhere.

"I am not suffering alone in this world," was what Claude thought as he continued to fight against his destiny.

In the end, Claude succeeded in defeating the Troll, and he left an empty grave for the Troll he dismantled and saved every part of the body, especially the blood that could instantly heal him.

To mock the Troll and bury his fear, Claude called the Troll Trolly.

Bringing an end to his never-ending nightmare.

______________________________________________

[Edited 24/10/2022]

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