DxD: Tutorial 06

-Tuesday, 9:48pm-

Trees whip past me as I leap from branch to branch. My hands reach out and push, pull, and pivot myself into position using other branches and trunks as I weave a path through the forest. My new Rogue skill, [Parkour], really is the coolest.

Especially in this bitch of a dungeon that is less a dungeon and more just a large patch of woods. I arrived here to see the door to the boss room right in front of me, only to be told by some cryptic riddle bullshit to go find the four wardstones and deactivate them. I'm glad it's not just more stone passageways, but being told to go on a glorified scavenger hunt is pretty annoying as well.

I see a flash of white among the greens and browns as I monkey my way through the forest and come to a silent stop on a tree branch.

"Same plan as before Yua," I whisper.

"Okay," she replies. She scrambles out of the hood of my jacket, where I keep her safe while moving around so quickly, and leaps down to the branch before leaping to another one. At level 15, her stats are already good enough for such a feat, despite her young age.

I draw my Ka-Bar Combat Knife and Iron Dagger of Burning and leap down. In the same instant that I land on the ground, my weapons plunge into the back of the Mushroom Person in front of me. It bellows out in a low voice despite not having a mouth, and turns to swing at me. I quickly dodge backwards. I had already gotten hit by one of those punches and it had sent me tumbling.

"Another one to your left!" Yua calls out from above, acting as another pair of eyes. I glance over and see it, it's rotund form slowly waddling around towards me.

"I see it," I say. "Keep an eye out for pixies, and get to the ground if you see them coming." I bait another punch out of the first Mushroom Person and stab it again. With a low groan, it falls over dead.

"Got it- oh, there are some coming now!"

I turn my attention to the other Mushroom Person. "Keep them busy like you did last time. Attack if you see a chance, but focus on not getting hit." Not that the pixies are dangerous. More annoying than anything. I run behind the Mushroom person and my knives flash out and cut it's back. It bellows as well, and thankfully it catches fire. I dodge a punch, nearly get hit by the surprise follow up, but then it dies, burning to death.

I immediately turn to Yua and see her weaving around a group of small creatures. They're humanoid, but are only four inches tall and sexless, with pure black eyes and gossamer wings. They also don't do any real damage, having no means of attack. They're simply a nuisance, getting in your face, distracting you, pulling on you, and they're fast and hard to catch.

Yua jumps up suddenly and swipes at one with her paw, catching it by surprise and throwing it to the ground, where it lay dazed. Before it recovers she pounces on it and bites it, killing it.

Hard to catch by normal standards anyways. For two DEX focused builds, they were just good target practice. My knives tear through the rest in a flash.

"Good job Yua, that was impressively done," I praise her.

"Psh. They may be weird but bugs are still bugs and no bug can escape Yua!" she proudly declares. I laugh.

"What a fearsome hunter you are," I say. I pick her up and place her on my shoulder, and she climbs into my hood. "Let's get going, there's a lot of forest left to cover." I leap into the trees and we're off again.

-x-

-Tuesday, 11:12pm-

The Mushroom People are annoying to fight, but they give good XP, especially with me and Yua taking Minor XP potions for that five percent increase. My CON and STR had reached 50, giving me perks that increased my health, health regen, stamina, and stamina regen. INT had reached 100, giving me a perk that decreased the costs of all skills by half. Those combined meant I could keep my skills up constantly, including the one I got at Rogue level 40, [Detect].

I feel [Detect] ping a location, indicating treasure. Following the ping I land next to an innocuous looking log. Not fooled by its appearance, I kick it and the top of the hollow log snaps off, revealing a treasure chest hidden within. I grin when I see that it's locked. Locked chests always have better loot.

"Another chest Yua," I say as I take out my tools and kneel in front of the chest. "Keep a watch as I pick it open."

"Yes Papa!" She climbs out of my hood and onto my head, where I can feel her weight shift slightly as she looks around. I'm not too worried due to the skills I have up being enough to give me some warning. [Detect]'s level is still low though, which means it's range isn't very high, so Yua keeping an eye out to give an earlier warning is helpful.

Plus, she likes having something to do. She doesn't really have any methods of attacking, especially anything tougher than a Pixie, so I have her mostly playing support. Which is fine, honestly. She's still a young kitten, improved stats or not. She doesn't need to be a full fledged warrior for at least a few months.

I hear a satisfying click as I shift the last pin into place and the chest unlocks. I grin and store my tools before opening the chest. Inside is a cartoonish heart made out of a red crystal or glass.

Better loot indeed. That will be extremely helpful, though I'll have to pick a target for it very carefully. I stash it in my inventory and stand up. Yua climbs back into my hood and we're off again.

-x-

-Tuesday, 11:48pm-

The last Mushroom Person dies with a groan. I sheathe my knives and drop [Sneak]. Due to an upgrade it got when I reached Rogue level 50, I can't keep it up indefinitely anymore.

<[Chameleon](Active) - Level 22(8%)>

Though 10 minutes with all of my skills active is still more than enough time for most things, and a bit more leveling should see me back to indefinite stealth and all skills again. Plus, I can choose not to activate the [Chameleon] aspect if I need to save SP.

I call Yua down from the branch she's on and turn to where [Detect] is telling me a secret door is. A bit of investigation shows that what looks like a normal tree at first glance is actually a puzzle. I sigh. I've come across several similar trees, and they were all the same, but this one just looked more annoying. Climbing the tree I bend the branches in a certain way to arrange them in a pattern that was indicated on the trunk.

When I move the last branch I hear a click, and an opening appears in the trunk at the base of the tree. I drop down and hop in. It's a short and cramped tunnel directly downwards. No ladder, but the walls are close so it's easy to climb up and down it. At the bottom is a small room lit by a bioluminescent moss of some kind growing over the walls.

The last time I found one of these rooms there was a chest in the middle that had a jug that could produce a gallon of any mundane liquid once a day. But this time there was just a large stone covered in glowing runes. I touch it, and the runes fade. The sound of a bell rings out.

"Oh thank god," I say. "That's the first of four wardstones down. Come on Yua, we're taking a break." I use [Dungeon Traversal] and teleport back to my bedroom.

"Why?"

"Because you need some sleep. I'm sure you didn't sleep enough today to spend all night this active. So you curl up in Papa's hood and sleep for a few hours. I'm going to find all the secret areas in the Zombie dungeon and farm some alchemy materials."

"Okay Papa," Yua says with a yawn. I feel her weight shift as she gets comfortable. "Have fun."

-x-

-Wednesday, 2:34am-

[Detect] pings a wall with an odd looking torch, but I'm already heading towards it. To my surprise, the Zombie dungeon is absolutely filled with secret areas that I just hadn't bothered looking for my first time through. This was the twentieth secret room, and the eighth that was hidden using the same mechanism. I grab the torch and pull it downwards like a lever. The stone rumbles as a portion of the wall swings backwards, revealing a small room with a chest inside.

The chest is unlocked, unfortunately. I had some amazing luck earlier. The things I found earlier included a gem that can copy written and printed information, a bracer made of a liquid metal that could change shape into simple tools or even a blade, a skill that let me clean up bloodstains, an amulet that improved my STR by 25, a stuffed doll that looked exactly like Yua, and no less than 4 Gacha tokens.

But all of those had been in locked chests. Except for the Yua doll anyways. Unlocked chests had given me potions, simple gear, and random crafting materials, so this one didn't exactly fill me with excitement.

I open the chest and peer within.

...why? Why is this even here? This isn't remotely zombie themed at all. Though on second thought, I'm extremely glad it isn't.

Whatever. I'll take the free slightly magical sex toy. Aika would probably get a kick out of it. Ooh, or Ms. Nakano. Edging is her fetish right? I mean, considering her other fetishes she probably prefers edging others, but the thought of edging her while she's teaching class is pretty hot. I store it in my inventory and turn to keep searching, but a window appears.

So I could just reset it and run it again? Neat. Maybe something to look into later, if I need to farm some loot. But I've done enough in this dungeon for today. The XP from the zombies here does basically nothing for me. [Lockpicking] is the only skill that got more than one or two levels. I have enough ingredients now anyways, it's time for some [Alchemy] grinding while Yua gets some sleep in.

-x-

-Wednesday, 3:55am-

I resist the urge to cackle, since it would wake Yua up, as I look at the fruits of my labor. Or, in the case of the four items I got from the Gacha, my fruits of my luck.

<(210) Despair>

I'm not sure which one pleases me the most. Despair is a set of extremely good throwing knives from Warframe, and just the knowledge that Warframe weaponry is in the Gacha makes me smile. The Senzu Bean is nice, useful for emergencies, though not terribly unique. And the water tree would one day grow to be powerful enough to flood a manor in a torrent of water, or water an entire farm in an arid environment. It's utility shouldn't be underestimated.

But the Poisonous Sheath seems like it's custom made for me. Infinite poison application to any blade so long as I prepped it with enough poison? It was a dream come true, especially since my Alchemy skill updated when it reached level 25.

<[Alchemy](Active) - Level 29(28%)>

Using three ingredients is what turns potions into Moderate potions.

I had already used a lot of my potion materials making over fifty Minor Poisons, but I had enough for 15 Moderate XP potions, which increased XP gain by 10%, and 3 Moderate Poisons. Combined with the two Moderate Poisons I got as loot, and I had just enough to start soaking the Poisonous Sheath in a poison that did INT/5 damage per second, which gave me quite the edge.

I glance at the time. Yeah, that should be enough for now. I pick up Yua, waking her up. She yawns cutely.

"Come on Yua. We're gonna get a couple more hours in before I have to go to school." She wakes up quickly and dives into my hood as we vanish once more into the dungeon.

-x-

-Wednesday, 6:47am-

I flop face forward onto my bed with a groan. The next area of the dungeon was pure hell. Sentient plants that fired seeds like pistol bullets, plants that breathed fire, and plants that healed the other two types absolutely filled every inch of the place. And to access the wardstone, I had to find four red flowers to some shrine and place them there, meaning I had to hunt all over that section of woods while dealing with them.

It mostly resulted in Yua sitting safe in my hood while I ran under stealth to kill them as fast as possible before they noticed me, something only made possible with [Detect], since they blended in with all the plants that didn't try to kill me.