Supreme Warlady Elena Burnstock

Dawnbreaker Destruction!

I didn’t say the name of my tier six skill out loud. There was no need with my support skills. The massive chamber of floating streams of glimmering water and floating rock cubes was lit up as my blade Sarah, named after my older sister, swung out.

The champion monster here on the 25^th layer was a high level variant of a Shadow Soul Reaper. Annoying, but I knew I could do this. My Squires were holding off the other monsters that were trying to swarm our position. They just needed to hold for one minute so I could win this fight.

I used the recoil of my swing to land on a floating rock cube, which shattered under my armored boots. The chunks went flying off into the darkness of this part of the layer and floating streams of glimmering water. Like stars up in the night sky. I kept controlling my tier 6 attack to keep pressure on the champion monster. The wave of magical white flames, were all consuming, consuming Mana itself. Except for high level monsters and the dungeon, it cut through anything.

The high level variant of a Shadow Soul Reaper, moved so fast. Even for me it was difficult to make out its movements. It was a level 250 monster after all, far above my level of 159. Many would say that a 100 level gap was impossible and they would mostly be correct, but I had confidence I could win this fight, since I had forced the monster to block my skill, pinning it in place, not allowing it to dodge. That was the power of Dawnbreaker Destruction, forcing a high level monster to shield from the nearly uncontrollable white flames no matter what they might try to do to avoid the attack.

Kicking off the stone block, which shattered under the force, I sailed through the air. The monster’s scythe was a parody of a true farmer’s tool as it created a Mana void to resist my tier 6 skill. ‘Hang in there Sarah, you were always the best.’ I said to my sword and my long dead sister. Time to push things to limit.

Mana Surge! One Blink! Hyper Slash x5!

I activated the first two skills to slow down time for a singular moment. Nothing else moved. Not the water of this environment, not the monsters, not even the Mana in the air. The stress on my body was immense, but it would hold. Even as I felt my blood boil inside of my body, I cut off my tier 6 skill and swung Sarah five times in rapid succession, unleashing a sword formation.

Many people believed that I had some hidden master or backer. They were all fools and idiots, well the fact they believed it was an actual person. My tutor had been far more uncaring and brutal. Suffering no failures, no hesitation, no mistakes. Even now, I kept my intense focus on everything around me, observing and learning.

My only teacher was the dungeon and the monsters down here. I never learned the systematic way in a classroom or through any kind of standardized instruction. My teacher was the very enemy I sought to overcome and destroy to avenge my family. Later on, I picked up some basic skills and spells, but the true core of my profession and combat build was all developed by me. My tier 6 class reflected such accomplishments.

The sword formation trick was something I learned near the end of my first legendary descent from a monster on the 24^th layer. It had almost killed me, but I had endured the previous time. The Hyper Slashes merged into a specific symbol that had the meaning of locking one in place. Enduring that assault while trapped had been one of the closest moments I had come to dying.

Now this champion monster would experience what I felt, but I wasn’t about to let up. Even with my Mana rapidly decreasing, my body on the verge of exploding, that was nothing to be concerned about. I was Elena the Farmer of Monsters. They had reaped my family, now I would reap them in turn. That was the title I held for myself inside of my heart next to my precious memories of my long dead family and my son.

I didn’t like shouting my skills, but I needed to push through, to go beyond what was possible if I was going to win this battle without incurring heavy losses. My foot slammed down into another floating block and I went flying behind my sword formation directly at the monster, the air distorting from my speed. I used my Mana to provide only the barest of cushions around my body and armor, but I couldn’t let my focus be diverted too much.

“SLICE!” My favorite tier 3 skill. I had never upgraded it even after it had reached Mastery. I didn’t need some fancy nonsense for my ultimate killing strike. My tier 6 skill was flashy and insanely strong, but in the end a sword was meant to slice things apart. To harvest the lives of monsters and enemies.

I shouted the skill to let the dungeon know I was coming for it. To avenge my family that had been killed by the monsters it had released into the world. If the dungeon didn’t have a fear resistance skill, I would give it one, the same with all the monsters down here. There was a reason I didn’t take my son into the dungeon, all the low level monsters fled from my presence in the upper layers, disappearing into whatever hell had summoned them.

The high level variant of a Shadow Soul Reaper brought its scythe around, despite being locked in place. It blocked my tier 3 attack. But that wasn’t surprising, for combat was a battle of wits. One move setting up the next, that was the way to kill these stupidly powerful monsters and the way they sometimes tried to kill me. The other way was to unleash some nonsense skill the dungeon gave them. Something I would not allow to happen if I could prevent it.

That was why I had ended my previous descent at this layer. I knew what was coming and I was mentally prepared for whatever nonsense it might unleash. It was an indigo core monster, which meant it was a step up from the previous monsters. Sarah hummed as I vibrated my blade using a tier 4 support skill.

Just as my attack was about to cut through the monster and its weapon, the monster disappeared. While I had been weary since it was my first time fighting such a high level monster of this variation, I was ready for something like this. My Perception stat was pushed to the limit as I tracked its position. I had gotten the necessary support skill, Spatial Sense, and had been relentlessly training it during the years I had been watching over my son. Lots of high level monsters liked to use quick and tricky spatial skills.

For one day, I would descend once more to never return. To go to the bottom of the dungeon or die trying. If I failed, my son would carry on my legacy, to hopefully one day reach heights I couldn’t, or the dungeon as it were. While I doubted the value of systematic learning, it would give him a strong foundation before I taught him personally.

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The monster reappeared behind me, swinging its stupid weapon towards my head. A concentrated orb of black Mana on the front that would no doubt be instantly lethal, even for me. I was ready. Sarah, my trusted blade and sister, deflected the monster’s blade and skill. I then channeled Mana through my weapon. A bright flash and powerful Mana stunning effect was unleashed.

I never ended my Slice skill. My blade cut through the robe of the Shadow Soul Reaper, burning away its Mana structure and killing the champion level monster. Its indigo core, pulsing with Mana, appeared in the air and I snatched it instantly, putting it away in my spatial storage.

That had taken just over half a minute. My combat ability hadn’t atrophied during my absence from the dungeon. Raising my son had let some dullness accumulate, but my descent had shaken that off and I had improved once more. I let my skills deactivate as I pulled out a potion to help stabilize my body, counteracting the damaging Mana as my healing points spiked upwards as I drifted through the air lightly touching down on a floating rock cube. Activating too many skills at the same time led to Mana rampage.

I didn’t like relying on such things, but my Squires were struggling quite a bit. I shouldn’t let them die. I took the potion and then kicked off the floating stone cube I was standing on, sailing through the air. Sarah held in my hand. I barely felt my heavy armor that I wore for general protection, but it would do nothing against a direct attack. That skill would soon cap out. I would have to think about if I wanted to upgrade into something even more durable and resilient.

Hyper Blade. Hyper Blade. Hyper Blade.

I killed each monster that was entangled with my Squires, giving them each a few seconds of breathing room and to restore their confidence that we would win. While I didn’t like teams or other people in general, having Squires to keep the pressure off while dealing with the champion monster made things much easier.

Perhaps when I made my final descent, I would find some like-minded people and we could each fight on our own but in the same general area of the dungeon. I had already begun asking, time would see if the others were interested. Having competent teammates would alleviate the pressure quite a bit.

The annoying part about going this deep was that monsters couldn’t be easily killed without active skills. Hyper Blade. A flying slash cut through another Shadow Stalker. Annoying monsters that blended in with the darkness of this environmental section of this layer that were swarming our position.

Even with my sensory skills it was a bit of a struggle to make anything out. That was when I felt the first bit of danger. There was something off. An Abnormal was somewhere nearby. The chance of running into one increased as one descended the dungeon.

Monsters that broke away from the normal leveling pattern of monsters on that layer and champions. “Abnormal!” I shouted out while my Squires continued to fight the remaining seventy Shadow Stalkers.

I landed on a floating cube and closed my eyes, forcing my Perception stat to support specific skills. There, it was trying to hide with some kind of spatial manipulation. Annoying, but I knew the perfect way to deal with such a thing. Kicking off the floating cube, I flew towards the Abnormal.

I activated several support skills. Sarah began to glow and vibrate. Mana began to bend around the blade itself in structured patterns with the faint glimmering of symbols shining slightly brighter than the blade formed in the air around the blade.

“SLICE!”

With enough Mana anything could be killed. I would get a bit low with my reserves, but it was fine to deal with this Abnormal. Annoying and dangerous, it was best to kill them quickly. It was forced into existence, a swirling mass of hooked tentacles with eyes and suckers. A variation of a Tentacle Horror, but clearly much higher level.

A shimmering quarter spherical white shield snapped into place just before Sarah would have cut through the monster. For a single moment my blade hung there and the shield began to bend inwards slightly as the power behind my blade. A powerful defensive skill spell as I observed its Mana flow. That was something I would have to work on figuring out after leaving this layer of the dungeon.

My blade rebounded and I was caught out of position as tentacles snapped forward, their barbed hooks digging into my heavy plate armor. That would be annoying and costly to fix. The alloy used to make my tier 5 armor wasn’t cheap or easy to come by.

Aura of Repulsion!

A wave of powerful Mana exploded from my body pushing the tentacles away for a single moment. Grappling monsters had a key weakness, they grappled me. My blade swung upwards slicing through several of the tentacles. Sarah would not be stopped. Black corrosive blood went flying all over me as I kept swinging, never slowing down.

If you wanted to fight to the death, then let’s fight to the death monster. The ones with weapons were far more annoying than something with barbed tentacles. I wasn’t worried about getting hurt, even as my armor became pockmarked and the few exposed portions of my body began to liquify and drip away as the black monster blood washed over, giving me a dungeon baptism.

Pain and suffering were old friends. What worried me in a fight was something that could deal overwhelming damage in a single strike, which weapon carrying monsters were capable of like that Champion with its scythe.

This Abnormal wasn’t as strong as the Champion, but it was annoying as it regenerated quickly and kept trying to wrap me up in more tentacles. It was probably a blue core monster, which was disappointing. Another indigo core would have been useful. I didn’t care about levels that much anymore. It was simpler and easier to think in terms of monster core color. I would leave number counting to others, while I focused on killing.

It would just be a small drop of experience I needed to reach my next level, but I didn’t keep track of such things, blocking out the experience counter in my status. Levels were no longer important but skills and skill combinations were the deciding factor in fights. That was why I wanted my son to have a stronger foundation, so he could go beyond what his old mother could do.

Well not that old, not yet. Fire Slash.

Fire was best against regenerating monsters. Its putrid flesh burned. It black blood boiled into acidic steam. Fire Slash. I used my skill again to end this fight. The Abnormal was finally slain, leaving behind a charred and chopped up corpse. I swung Sarah two more times, separating the inner potion of the monster apart and blowing away the blood and acidic steam from around me. My tier 4 immunity skill would have improved. A welcome benefit.

A blue core, useful and valuable for paying Alchemist Footworth to make a Mega Elixir, but nowhere near the immense value of an indigo monster core. Looking back at my Squires they had defeated the remaining Shadow Stalkers. Good, they weren’t completely useless.

Glancing in the distance, I could make out the portal through the raging veils of energy to the 26^th layer of the dungeon. Another time perhaps. For now it was time to go back to the Last Bastion and then home to see my beloved son. I had messed things up for him, but if he was like me, it would only push him towards greatness.

With a mental thought I opened my status to check my skill levels. I had gained an actual level, no new stats unfortunately. I was now at 160. The 10 free stat points were nice, but just a small drop against my total stat count. That was when something interesting caught my eye. Something I had never seen or heard of before in my list of tier 3 skills.

Slice(101)

A tier 3 skill had gone above level 100. That shouldn’t be possible. But I had made the decision to not evolve my favorite skill into a higher tier. How interesting and something to think on. Sometimes simple was better. It didn’t feel any different in my mind or my senses. I swung my blade once. Slice.

There was something that wasn’t there before. Some of my other skills had become part of Slice on their own, increasing its power naturally. Like my vibration and flame skills. I smiled slightly. Another tool to defeat the dungeon.

“Let us return,” I declared loudly to my Squires. Perhaps other people had discovered such a thing before me but never shared. It wouldn’t surprise me, since the other legends were mostly bastards or pigs.

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