Eli woke up to a mess of a room, wood and stone debris everywhere with this fine dust that just sticks to everything, which was making him aware of how dirty he was for the first time. He was just in his ape underwear and had a bone in his hand, his skin was grey and red from blood and grime, toned muscles but still slim, he felt like he may be a bit taller than before too. He thought he probably looked like a monster himself, maybe some kind of cave man monster or something. His skin was healed but his hand still needed a bit more time so he did what he always did when he was awake and had time to kill, he meditated, focusing on his internal magic.
This time while observing his magic flow through his body like crashing waves he paid close attention to each unopened node to see if any were giving any signs that they could be opened soon. His life and death nodes located at his left shoulder and right hip respectively, were both showing signs of accepting magic as it passed around them. He wasn't sure how they would open or react but he felt the death node wanted it more. It's strange to think of it as having a will of its own but it felt like it wanted to be opened. However, he wasn't sure what the side effects would be to have pure strong death magic flowing through him so he just sat and observed. He wasn't really thinking about anything or focusing, he was just letting his mind go blank as he felt the movements of his internal magic. The process was very relaxing, taking some of the tension out of his shoulders that he had gained from watching his flesh disintegrate.
Standing, Eli stretched his shoulders and moved his right hand around to feel it was healed but stiff. He still had five days left until his two weeks were up and he just wanted to take his time getting to the last boss and just enjoying his adventure. Getting lost in the movements of his magic was making him more outgoing, at least a little and more himself he thought, but he wasn't sure how he knew that. Adding to his growing list of questions that didn't have an answer to, he started walking towards a tunnel at the far edge of the chamber. Entering it, he was walking slowly and paying attention to his surroundings as best he could, his gut told him there would be one more trap and then the last boss room.
After only about a minute or two of walking he noticed a thin, almost invisible wire across the floor, taught and only 4 inches or so above the floor, a classic tripwire he thought and made to step over it but then froze. If I was a devious dungeon maker, and this place was devious, the wire would be a diversion and stepping over it would be a trap. He made his body glow and started closely inspecting the area around the trap looking for any hint of anything out of place. He found nothing which worried him, most traps on this floor were pretty obvious. This could be a fake trap, a real one, or something else, there just wasn't a way of telling without spending a crazy amount of time on this. So, Eli did what he always advised his bosses in the military to do, spring the trap and use it to make your own.
Walking back to the previous room he found a stick and used it to poke the tripwire, it snapped and did nothing at first. He just stood there waiting for whatever was coming but nothing happened. He squatted down to get a closer look and grabbed one end of the broken wire and pulled, more wire came out. It just kept coming, there had to be a hundred feet of it before it stopped, and it was tough stuff for how thin it was, so he decided to keep it and put it in his inventory. Which gave him an idea and he went back again and grabbed a few small rocks and pieces of wood, he even gathered up some of the dust and got that to go into his inventory as well. Maybe they could be useful during this run for traps and such.
After that weird trap he was even more on edge and was walking slowly along the right side wall and again found an obvious trap but this one was a pressure plate that seemed an awful lot like a bear trap but made out a dull grey metal and it was two feet wide. He set it off with a stick and put it in his inventory for now, since he hadn't really had much to put in there so far and now at body level 1 he could carry double his body weight. He was 6 foot 2 inches and 195 lbs before the system and he was probably 6 foot 4 or so now and weighed significantly more, but he wasn't sure how much. His bones alone have doubled in weight since all this started he was sure of it.
Moving further in, he spotted another trap but this one was more subtle. It looked like there was a large flat rock he had to walk on and it looked a bit chalky, like a very soft limestone. He would bet that it's set up to break and it's some kind of spike pit or just a very deep hole. Trying to keep his distance he used one of his longer sticks and poked it, and nothing. Then he threw a few stones on it with no result, and he started questioning if this was even a trap. If it is a trap he can just jump over it, but if it's a fake trap then the other side is probably the trap. Working the problem in his head taking the dungeon as a whole and these fake traps into account he thought he knew what was going on.
If he was correct, and the lesson here was to not be complacent, then all he has to do is approach each trap as if it is in isolation and be careful. So he moved around the stone slowly and made it past without incident, but he was moving very slowly now being suspect of every rock and imperfection in the tunnel. After another 20 feet the tunnel turned right and started to open up, becoming bigger and leading to a large open chamber lit by six torches coming up from the floor near the walls. This had to be it, the final boss room. The back wall was flat and had six stone statues in front of it, all six were 10 foot long salamander chameleon things and he grew worried right away. What if these chameleon type things could camouflage, he thought while scratching his chin standing just outside the large chamber.
From where he was standing he couldn't hear a sound, but as soon as he entered the chamber he could hear water drops, the outside edge of the room was like a stream or pool. Water was dripping into it from the back wall and the sound was echoing loudly in the chamber, he wasn't sure but it seemed louder than it should be. He stayed at the entry and was just taking in the room and seeing if he could notice anything about it that would help in his fight. The room wasn't as big as the other boss fights, so maybe this boss was smaller or there was some kind of trick to this that he hasn't placed yet. He closed his eyes and focused on his magic to see if there was anything affecting it, but he couldn't find anything. However, to be sure he was going to try something he had worked out in his head to try and rid himself from influence, he pushed a bit of his own magic out of his body.
He thought he could do this to get foreign magic out of him to hopefully rid him of the illusions like the ones from the tree. He pushed with his will and forced it out of himself creating a haze around his body like the haze from a desert road in the heat of the sun. It only lasted a second but it did give him an idea for the future. Moving on, he took slow steps toward the middle of the room doing his best to be as observant as possible. He was sure that there was a trap here, but without being able to notice it all he could do was walk into it. His feet didn't make much noise so the sound of the dripping water and its echo off the stone walls and ceiling was all that he could hear. He still thought there was something off about the drop noise but was distracted by the statues at the end of the room.
They were in a row and facing toward the opposite end of the room, they looked like lizard men from video games but more of a salamander body and kind of a chameleon head. Short limbs and a long body and they were posed to look like they were standing at attention. As he got closer to the center of the room one of the statues cracked and a thin layer of stone broke off and a monster that looked just like it stepped forward. It held out one of its hands and a stone spear came out of the ground right into his hands and it took a fighting stance. It didn't look strong to him and he wasn't getting much magic off of it either so he stood still with relaxed posture as it approached.
When it got closer it leaped at him and faded into the background while slashing his spear down, the move was a little slow and he deflected it with his bone mace while taking a side step and went for a sloppy left handed punch. Its camouflage didn't hide it entirely, it just made it more blurry with hard to see edges, which made Eli miss his punch and the monster elbowed him in the chest hard enough to knock him back a step. This surprised him because he was sure he was stronger, but something about the way the lizard moved felt like a martial artist, which was something he wasn't.
All the old martial arts movies he had seen all said the same thing, it's not about strength, but skill. If Eli knew one thing clearly since the system came, it was that he was not skilled at this at all and that this fight was going to hurt. The monster came at him again with a slash to Eli's right side which he barely avoided getting cut because he stepped into it going for a counter but the monster again used his momentum to shift his stance and get more leverage on his swing. Getting cut by a bladed spear would hurt, but getting hit by its stone pole just down from the blade also hurts. He went flying back and barely caught himself before he hit the water, he got to his feet quickly and stood balanced trying to come up with a plan.
This wasn't like fighting those other monsters, they were beasts, all animal instinct, but this was a skilled thinker. It was acting and reacting with purpose and thought, able to counter his moves as he was making them. He was going to have to get creative to solve this one, it wasn't going to be a stand up martial arms fight if he could help it. He walked toward the monster with slow casual steps and right before he got into range of its attacks he whistled and flashed light magic out of his body really bright for a quick second. The monster brought an arm up to shield its eyes then lunged forward at him just as Eli did the same, which led to a familiar exchange and he got knocked away again. He repeated it again, whistled a tone and the flash went off and they charged.
On the 6th one he yelled in frustration and charged in without doing the flash, but right before their weapons would meet he whistled again and the lizard man brought his arm up expecting to be blind again. However, this was Eli's plan, at least it was after it didn't work, and he got a good swing in while it twitched its arm up to protect its eyes from the light even though he had not used any light magic. He queued up smash as soon as he thought he would get the hit in but didn't put anything extra on it, just some magic from his earth node. The damage was high, it was a clean hit, Eli inwardly cheered, thank you Pavlov.
The monster staggered back and went to a knee, it looked like the damage was to the monster's side, which means it still was able to react some, forcing most of the damage to one side. It was breathing heavily and coughing every couple of breaths, and while Eli was very bruised, he was not cut and he didn't feel tired. It did not seem like this monster would be able to keep fighting at the level it was before so he dashed forward and smashed its head to the ground and it was dead. But in that instant, 2 more statues broke and came out, this time with one getting a stone short sword and shield and the other getting a staff with a crystal on the end.
So this was going to be the classic tank and ranged damage pair, the tank probably has some movement skill so it can intervene if someone goes for the magic user. The shield monster got between him and the staff one as it murmured in growl and click language preparing a spell. A sudden distracting thought came to him, am I going to have to chant spells? He shook his head and decided that if he stayed close enough to the shield monster the other one wont fire off anything devastating since it might hit its buddy. Eli would need to use it as a line of sight while he tested out the shield guy, who apparently could read his plan and they started a positioning dance as he started testing the shield with repeated blows.
Surprisingly the shield bearer held his own and was only slightly pushed back by his repeated hits; his shield, however, was not doing as well. It was becoming misshapen but was holding, Eli however, had been hit by 2 fire spells and some thorns coming from the ground kept cutting into his legs. The monster he was fighting up close kept moving to be just out of line with his partner so that they could fire spells from a distance but still protect them. He waited until he could get them into line and gave his smash a little kick of extra magic and the monster went flying into his buddy and they both fell over to the ground. Eli rushed over and smashed them as fast and hard as he could without hurting himself. It took him 3 dozen hits to finally finish them both off.
And since he knew the last three would awaken soon he leaped forward and smashed the first one in the back of the head as soon as the stone started to break, killing it instantly. The second one tried to block with its arms and both arms broke but it was alive and leapt backwards, the third one was just gone. He hadn't even seen it break out of the stone; it just wasn't there anymore and that made him worry because stealth types were something he had no idea how to fight. Just as he smashed the second one again killing it a system window popped up in flashing red and a lot of exclamation points.
"You have violated the spirit of the dungeon challenge!"
"Difficulty has increased to its highest level allowable by the system for your level!"