19

She looked across the distance with ease. Her silver blue eyes silently judging me. All I saw there was pure disappointment. I could tell that she thought I was too weak, but she didn't snap me awake like last time. Something had changed. 

I stared back at her with no fear. She snorted at me in disdain. 

"You think I'm too weak for you still don't you?" I cocked my head out of curiosity. 

She didn't answer. I kept moving closer. I couldn't really call it walking since I was in something of a dream state. It was more like floating. I was able to see more, and more details of her. 

She was a true beauty. She was all sharp angles as if she'd been carved from ice. Her scales were like pure blue icicles. Sharp tapering edges that turned transparent towards the ends. Her horns were similar to her scales. 

Six of them in total. She had spikes going down her back. Sharp icicle like spikes on her back. They weren't big, but they were angled in a way that made them sit barely higher then the rest of the scales on her back. She was surprisingly sleek in appearance. 

Her wings looked almost too stiff to be part of a living creature, but when she moved her movements were incredibly smooth. As if she were sliding along on a track. The way she moved was almost ethereal. I wondered how she might look in flight. I was also wondering if this was what my dragon was going to look like when she matured. 

Her tail whipped out from behind her, and struck me in the middle. If she'd hit me in the mid section in real life with a strike like that then I would be cut in half. She was far stronger then I was in this dream. She was probably going to be that strong at a minimum once she matured. I sat up in the dirt. 

I had a really high growth curve to follow. I couldn't let up even for a single day. Not if I wanted to be strong enough to face her once she was here. I knew I had a lot of work to do. I cracked my neck, and stood up slowly. 

It was time to go to the third floor. I had a feeling this one was going to be even harder. I could feel the familiar falling sensation of going to the next floor of the dungeon. It didn't take long for me to be transported to the next floor. Light blinded me as soon as the teleportation was done. 

This floor was full sunshine, and desert. Of course. I really hoped this no water theme wouldn't keep. I took a step forward, and the whole world shook. The monsters I was trying to avoid were beneath the sand. 

Ten of them burst from the sands around me, and all of them looked like heavily armored worms with massive circular maws full of more teeth then I could count. Run. My instincts screamed at me. I didn't argue with them. I started running. 

The massive worms dove into the ground, and started following me. I sped up from running to a full sprint. The rumbling got worse as I ran. That made me think there were more monsters following me now, but I couldn't look back to check. The sand seemed to suck in my feet which made running hard. 

I sped up another few notches. I was pretty close to a full tilt sprint by now. I couldn't go much faster then I was now. I couldn't pace myself very well at this speed. I was going to get exhausted sooner rather then later.

I needed to fight. I used my high jump skill. Hoping that getting my feet off the ground would make it so the beasts wouldn't know where I was. I was semi right. Getting my feet off the ground did confuse the beasts. 

They didn't seem to know where I was if my feet weren't on the ground. I wondered if they detected sound or vibrations of some sort. It didn't matter very much to me. I came slamming down as fast, and hard as I could. Soul fangs in hand. 

My soul fangs slammed into that armor, and cut clean through. The armor wasn't nearly as tough as I thought it would be. The part that sucked the most was that despite the blades going in easily these monsters were too big for my little daggers to do as much damage as I wanted them to. I jumped off that beast as it thrashed in the direction that I had just come down on it. Slamming into another one, and slicing down the beast as I continued all the way down to the ground. 

The cut wasn't deep or debilitating in any way. I smirked to myself as blood poured down on me from the twenty foot long cut. The blood was a greenish color, but that didn't matter much to me. I wanted to trigger my bloodlust. Blood was key to that. 

I needed to see a certain amount of blood to trigger my bloodlust. I had thought I needed to grasp the feeling bloodlust gave me to trigger it, but I was wrong. It was blood that trigger it. I hadn't quite unlocked the skill yet. I was pretty sure I could trigger it on demand once I managed to properly unlock the skill. 

Blood would turn into mana, and health as I used the skill. It would allow me to push my stamina far past it's normal limit as well. Big soft monsters like this were ideal for blood loss, and that meant I'd be able to go crazy for as long as I wanted. I smiled as I started laughing. This was the ideal place for me to have some fun. 

"Let the chaos begin," I leaned into the bloodlust.