Taking deep breaths to calm down from the battle with the slimes, Nickel's attention turned inward. Toward his Dragonheart.
Despite it's fancy name, this was just his normal heart. The same kind as all the other races. …well, that was a lie. It was also the storage for dragonforce, the energy that fueled dragonfire.
What he found left him surprised.
His Dragonheart wasn't nearly as empty of dragonforce as he'd expected.
Why?
He'd felt his dragonforce deplete to fuel his silver flames. His regeneration wasn't fast enough to recover most of the energy he'd spent, yet it had.
He did come up with one theory, though, after thinking for a few minutes.
The Silver family was one of the seven destroyer families. Each one bore a hereditary aspect, one of the aspects of the destroyer. Hence the name. The aspect passed to every child born to the Silver family was the Aspect of the Destroyer: the Blood of Gula.
The Aspects of the Destroyer weren't the only hereditary aspects. There were an equal number of so-called opposing aspects, the Aspects of the Saint. Both types shared a few characteristics.
They would always be passed from parent to child. They would always be the first Aspect a child of the family would awaken. And the Attributes, passive abilities granted by an Aspect, would always be the same for the bearers of these Aspects.
It was due to this that Nickel knew what aspect he'd one day awaken. Or had already awakened, apparently.
The Blood of Gula was focused on gaining strength through devouring… something. It was different for everyone.
His father's aspect ability allowed him to consume different forms of life energy. Lifeforce, stamina, vitality, you name it. He was also able to redistribute that life energy to those around him, thanks to techniques developed by the family over thousands of years.
All this was to say, Nickel could make a reasonable guess that his silver flames had inherited something from his aspect. Likely the ability to refuel his dragonforce, using the remains of what they destroyed.
What a pleasant surprise.
—
Around half an hour later, Nickel stood before one of the exits of the room he was in. The west one, specifically.
He didn't have any logical reason for picking this one.
But his parents always enjoyed watching the sunset together. And this was the first step on his journey to get them back.
Moving down the hallway, keeping close to the wall to his right, he attempted to be stealthy, checking each of the passages that split off. But after walking for several minutes, and nothing happening, he relaxed slightly.
That was a mistake.
As he passed by another passage, the first he didn't stop to check, he was struck in the back of the knee.
Stumbling forward slightly, Nickel quickly caught himself and turned to his right.
Standing in the hall was a group of 7 goblins, staring warily at Nickel. They were clutching a variety of crude weapons. Small knives and clubs, one of which the goblin closest to him had just used to attack him.
Had Nickel been any normal adventurer, this might have a chance of playing out differently. But goblins were monsters at the lowest end of the totem pole. And while dragons weren't considered monsters…
The goblins instinctually feared them all the same.
This was a situation born of unfortunate circumstances.
For the goblins.
Nickel took a few steps toward the lead goblin. It was frozen in place, shaking, it's comrades backing away in fear. Once he was right before it, Nickel swung his arm, slashing straight through the creature's throat.
The companions of the now dead goblin shrieked and turned, attempting to flee the way they'd come. Nickel was faster, though, and unwilling to allow the little bastards to alert the rest of their pack.
Goblins hunted in packs. This was probably only half their number.
He caught up to the first and thrust his clawed hand through it's back. Leaving it to bleed out, Nickel moved to the next, severing it's leg.
The next two were near enough to each other that he simply picked them up and struck their heads together.
He dropped them, continuing to the fifth goblin. He cleanly severed it's head with his left hand and used his right to throw the head to knock down the sixth goblin, who had almost made it to a bend in the hallway.
He stalked up to the last goblin.
It seemed to have accepted it's fate, merely laying there, trembling. In one swift movement, he pierced it's heart with his claws.
Picking up the corpse,Nickel moved back down the hall, finishing off and collecting each of the others. Setting them down in a row, he prepared to extract their cores.
In humanoid monsters, and in most non-humanoid ones, the monster core was located opposite the heart. This was also where the dragons' Manaheart was located.
As he worked, Nickel wondered if that was why goblins and other low ranking monsters instinctively feared them. Perhaps they saw dragons as far more evolved and higher ranking monsters.
Either way, it was largely irrelevant to Nickel. Once he had the cores extracted, he piled up the bodies and used a much smaller amount of dragonfire to burn them. It took little more than a quick spark to set them ablaze.
After the remains of the goblins had been cleaned up, Nickel once again turned his attention to his Dragonheart.
Just as he'd thought. Despite using up a small amount of dragonforce to dispose of the goblins, he actually had far more of it after doing so. He was almost full again.
Starting down the hallway, Nickel rounded the bend and continued on. If the goblins had come from this direction, there was a chance the stairs down to the next floor were as well.
So far, aside from the ones he'd just killed, Nickel had only seen one other goblin. He'd been in the dungeon for several hours now, and while most of that time had been spent sleeping, it still didn't make sense for there to be so few goblins.
Unless, that was, their home base was on the second floor.
He could also be completely wrong, and was about to walk into a base that was actually on the first floor.
Nickel continued walking along the path he was in, following it's twists and turns for several more minutes. He would encounter a slime, a lesser one, every so often, and dispose of them with his practiced slime disposal maneuver.
Eventually, he had begun to find slime remains as well, already dispersed by the time he found them. Following them, he came to stop just around the corner from the sound of goblins.
Sneaking a quick glance, he found yet another group of seven goblins. They appeared to be arguing amongst themselves, screeching at each other. One of them kept pointing down the hall, while another… kept gesturing at the stairs behind them.