18

Then after what felt like an eternity the final tree fell. My muscles twisted, and coiled as I was forcibly healed very painfully. I rolled over, and dry heaved a few more times before passing out there in the dirt. I simply didn't have the strength or energy to stay awake anymore. I wondered briefly what the next floor would had in store for me. 

When I awoke hours later my eyes were crusted badly with dirt, and dried tears. My body felt as if it had been run over twice, but besides the stiffness, and muscle pain I was healed. I couldn't see anything but the screen with my rewards on it. Now that the fire had burned out, and the trees were gone I couldn't see much. No wait. 

I realized I could see. I looked up to see the light of what looked like a thousand stars. All the lights on this floor were in the roof. My stomach grumbled in protest. I hadn't eaten since entering the dungeon, and I could start the next floor with minimal problems. 

I just wouldn't last too long. I created a small ball of fire in the air in front of me, and tossing that small fireball into the air allowed me to see even more. The trees had burned down to almost nothing. I couldn't see any of the wolf poodle beasts nearby. On a positive note they'd be cooked when I found them. 

I couldn't dismiss the reward screen. It didn't allow me to dismiss it. How many floors was in this dungeon again? This was only the second floor. I wasn't forced to choose to move on like the last dungeon. 

I could sleep as long as I liked, and do whatever I liked for a while. I would prepare more on this floor before moving on to the next. I searched through the ashes of the trees to find their cores one by one. There had to be another way I could use these. Selling them, and crafting with them couldn't be the only ways I could use them. 

Some impulse told me to put it in my mouth, but another one told me I would die if I did that. I clenched my hand around the beast's core as I collected more, and more while I was looking for the beasts that had edible meat. I wanted to probe the world around me with my senses, but my senses weren't enough. I could use that spectral mapping skill. I needed one more skill point to get the skill. 

I frowned to myself as I looked for something to eat. There was no water on this floor, but the meat would be enough for me to sate my thirst for the time being. I sped up a bit. Going from a walk to a run. I ended up searching for hours before finding any food. 

I pulled off the burnt meat, and hair. It took me a little while to find something edible. It tasted like shit, and my guts wanted to do several back flips, but I didn't really care. I was too hungry to care. I started exercising once I was done.

Might as well bank up a few more stat points while I was at it. I knew it would take me a few days to get those stat points, but I didn't really care. I needed them. I needed that strength to get by in this crazy world. I read through my rewards slowly as I considered what reward I would choose from the list of rewards offered. 

Solo clearance bonus

+ 1 strength 

+ 1 speed

+ 1 stamina

+1 mental resilience 

+ 1 mana capacity

+ 1 mana regeneration

Level clear reward - choose one

+ 5 stat points 

+ 1 vitality 

Soul sword

I was pretty sure that the soul sword was exactly the same as the soul fangs. As much as I would like another weapon I didn't think that was the right choice right now. Armor would be a better option for me, but armor wasn't one of the options. I picked vitality. Vitality was the hardest of my stats to improve. 

I couldn't work to improve it so basically the only way to improve it was to use stat points. I only got two per level up. It took patience to gather that many stat points. I wanted to use them on the stat random draw. There was a chance I'd roll high, and get a whole lot of what I wanted all at once. 

A stat draw from the one hundred point stat draw guarantied me one hundred stat points worth of stats, but I could win as many as five hundred stat points worth of stat points. It would be really worth it if I managed to get lucky. That, and since I could work off a large number of stat points with exercise I really didn't need to spend them on any other stat. Even mana regeneration would uptick bit by bit with me using my mana. The number of rotations I could do with my mana in my mana veins increased with each, and every mana vein I cleared. 

I sat there alternating between exercising, and picking bits of food off the monster corpse. I decided I wanted to sleep before moving on to the next floor. I didn't need much sleep, and my soul fangs were raring to go so it was time to go. I laid down on the ground, and relaxed. The dirt was a little cold, but it wasn't too bad. 

It was fairly soft. I buried myself in dirt when the wind chill got to me. I just wanted to ward off the wind chill enough that I could sleep, and dirt was the only thing I had to cover me. Once the wind chill was off of me I fell asleep rather quickly. I dreamed of dragons again. 

So many of them laid out on the fields before me. Dozens of shades of color covered the cliffs, and fields around me. Many of them were blurry. Only one was clearly in focus. That one was a sharp icicle blue.