This was not how he saw it going, double the difficulty meant it was twice as strong as the first solo guy, but invisible and apparently able to erase its magic presence as well. Eli had not seen what weapon it received either so there was no telling how this was going to go, but he knew his eyes were not going to help. With eyes closed and focusing on his hearing and magic sense, he stood still and relaxed waiting for the first hint of an attack, but after a few breaths and nothing coming he was getting worried. How was this thing going to attack him, he thought, while trying to keep himself calm and ready to strike. Then he noticed that the sound of the water drops had changed, it had a lower tone in its echo than the sound generating the echo.
Suddenly, he could feel a dark and hopeless bit of magic behind him and he tried to dodge to the side but it caught him in the right side of his lower back sticking out the front. The weapon was a dagger a little over a foot long and its blade was wavy and thin and like the other weapons it appeared to be made out of stone. Eli grabbed the part sticking out of him and tried to break it or at least hold it until he could spin around but the monster just let go and jumped backwards falling back into invisibility. The dagger turned to sand, which led him to believe that the monster could summon another one without difficulty. He did another purge of magic in case the dagger was poisoned or something using more magic this time and the monster could be seen briefly to his left. He must have done something to the background magic in this place with his improvised move that messed with however the lizard man's invisibility works.
This time he prepared himself to attack and pushed even more magic out, it was not easy to force magic out of yourself, the boundary between you as the magic container and the outside world is like a balloon. So you have to pressurize your magic so it has enough force to seep through your pores and get out. Despite the pressure required to do this, barely any can get out so both of his bursts so far have barely been 5% of his total magic. This next one, he would try and get it to be closer to 10% by itself. Eli took a deep breath in and brought his will and wisdom to bear as he pushed harder and mentally allowed his magic to escape. With so much focus on his improvised skill this time it blasted a large amount of magic out.
This magic not only made the lizard man visible, it staggered him as he looked at Eli with wide round eyes of surprise and fear, but it shook its head and decided to get serious. At the same time, after that magic push, Eli felt a little weak. He needed to buy time to recover so when the lizard man charged in he just wanted to focus on defense until he could figure out how long it would take to recover. With the monster's dagger and Eli's short bone mace, this was a close up battle with lots of kicks and punches and they were about even in strength and reaction. The monster had more skill at fighting than he did but he was tougher and didn't tire as easily.
The struggle continued between them, the monster would strike and get a shallow cut or stab in if Eli couldn't block or parry. Eli was mostly using his mace for defense and trying his best to get punches or kicks in here or there. After another minute or so of Eli getting cut up by this monster, they seemed to be evenly matched, but you couldn't tell that by looking at them. A full minute of fighting and Eli was covered head to toe in blood, so much so it was affecting his feet's grip and making him slip a little. However, the lizard man had only a little blood around his face from punches and one kick that split its skin, but it was panting and looked like it would collapse at any moment. He had been relentless in not stopping his attacking, and was going to keep pressing the monster until it made a mistake.
During the fighting Eli was partially keeping some of the magic sense in his focus awareness to be ready for any kind of trick this monster had up its sleeve. The monster's magic was being spent on something but he couldn't place it. It wasn't something he recognized but he knew something was there. It felt a little like the suppression sound magic from the tree but it was on the ground, being left behind in some places where it had stepped. Eli started to take more hits as he tried to focus on what the monster was doing, then he realized that the spots were a pattern. So, Eli took a guess at where something might go in the pattern and let a slice hit his chest while he swung hard at where the monster's knee would have to move to get its foot in position for the pattern.
His mace connected with its knee and a loud cracking noise echoed through the room while the monster lost its balance and fell. It quickly got back up but clearly in pain and not able to keep its weight evenly on both legs. The monster clapped his hands together and spoke a word in a growl and two clicks. The floor pattern seemed like it still needed 2 more spots to be complete but the monster activated it and an intricate circle appeared under him with runes and geometric lines. Although there were clearly some gaps in it, it took effect and suppressed some of Eli's power. Now with both of them weakened, the fight continued, both using more energy and both taking more damage. This fight would come down to who could keep going as exhaustion and injury weighed on both of them.
Another two minutes went by and both were barely able to stand but neither had given up or even stopped fighting, their moves were slower and they both seemed to be just about out of strength. Just then Eli took his last bandage out and stuck it to his forehead allowing him to gain something of an edge back. When the monster saw this its shoulders slumped and it knew it was defeated. That moment of distraction was all Eli needed to bring his smash to bear fully and catch it right in its side knocking it over and finally the monster was down on the ground. He didn't finish it off right away, giving himself a little bit of time to recover in case killing this monster started something else. After he felt a bit recovered, he walked over and hit the monster in the chest with a smash, caving it in and killing it. The suppression on him stopped and system windows started showing up.
"You have defeated the floor 3 boss"
"You have cleared the dungeon"
"You have earned 12000 system credits"
"Experience earned"
"Your magic level has increased from 21 to 24"
"Stat points are available"
"Dungeon: Cacophonous Caverns has been cleared"
"Please choose a reward based on your contribution and progress"
"Choice 1: a piece of equipment"
"Choice 2: improved recovery item"
"Choice 3: information on class advancement requirements."
He didn't make his choice yet, he needed to recover and to see to his stat gains and check on the wear and tear of his weapon. He just laid down and rested as the bleeding slowly stopped and he started recovering as his skin was knitting itself back together. After collecting his thoughts, he applied his stats, 1 to wisdom, 2 to intellect, 1 to reaction, 1 to vitality, and 2 to resistance making his stats look like this.
"Magic level 24"
"Stats: Strength 10, Reaction 11, Vitality 11, Intellect 12, Wisdom 11, Resistance 12, Will 72"
His 'Will' stat just keeps going up and he doesn't really know what that means, the system's explanation just said it was a measurement, not something that the system can control. The problem was Eli didn't know if this was because his Will was increasing, or it was just measuring it and he had to perform more difficult tasks for the measurement to increase. Either way there wasn't much he could do about it now so he decided to check on his mace to see if the equipment choice was what he needed. It was looking a little rough, probably had lots of time left on it though since it still felt strong and it's magic was solid he could feel. He really didn't feel like he needed a recovery item, he did get hurt a lot and often severely, but it just didn't fit him as a fighter in his soul.
This just left the information, and since he was close to a class advancement at 25, this might be something very important. He shrugged and chose the information since he was going to be running this place again after he was done here. Maybe he would get a shot at another choice when he cleared it again. After he selected it, a scroll appeared in his inventory and he took it out and started reading. It wasn't very dense, just listing requirements for advancing past your current rarity at each advancement level. For example, if you were a rare class and wanted to get to a Epic class at level 50 you needed 3 open nodes, 3 total nodes, 3 skills and enough fate and will to warrant the system's attention. Any rarity above rare was something awarded by the system which means it has to be paying attention to you, the scroll made it sound like getting the system's attention was the hard part.
He looked through to find his requirements to upgrade from epic class to supreme at level 25, they were a bit intense. He needed 4 open nodes, 6 total nodes, and 5 skills. Thinking about what he had, which was 2 open nodes, 10 total nodes, and 3 skills, he had a long way to go. How would he get the skills? He was confident that with all the growth in here he could get those nodes open in about a week of struggle, but he needed 3 more skills. He looked at his skills tab and asked out loud, "how do I gain skills outside of my class skills?" The system responded with a window.
"Most skills are made from the individual understanding something fundamental about the flavor of their node. Every node is unique and the more the skill matches the flavor, the stronger its potential."
That was some good information this time, maybe the system is pushing on the scale for him a bit more than he thought but this also seemed like it could be a trick. What if he creates three crappy skills and is never able to replace them. Also, if understanding is needed for a skill maybe paying more attention to what the skill does and how it works will help level it up. He needed to figure all this out and come up with a plan to make skills after he gets those nodes open, no need to rush the skills if he cannot get the nodes that are needed to open. With these thoughts in his head he walked up to the big flat wall in the back of the room where the six statues were guardians and placed his hand on it.
"You have finished this dungeon"
"You completed this dungeon in 10 days, 3 hours and 43 minutes."
"Choose an option"
"1 leave and return to entrance"
"2 return to safe room on any floor/choose floor"
"3 reset dungeon entirely to run again"
"If you choose to reset, the restrictions on leaving will still be in place."
"Warning: completing an already completed dungeon only gives 20% as much experience"
"Warning: completing an already completed dungeon only gives loot every 10 clears"
Looks like he can reset and work on skills and nodes and such at the first floor safe room. He won't advance much from the clears afterwards but he can set a good record on the podium outside the dungeon and work on leveling his skills. Eli selected to reset and found himself in the dungeon safe room on the first floor, he took a deep breath and decided to work on nodes first.