Harmony: Harmony Book 1, page 6
“That’s so something a man would think,” Gwen said, shaking her head as Nate laughed at her joke. The young man thought about retorting that this was a complaint a 20-centimeter-tall woman would also certainly make, but he didn’t want to risk making his friend angry when he was depending on her to heal him from any wounds.
“Are you ready?” Nate asked when he managed to stop laughing.
“I was born ready!” Gwen replied triumphantly, making Nate roll his eyes where she couldn’t see. “From today on, we are officially adventurers!”
Trying to ignore the nerves he was feeling, Nate drew the short sword from its sheath at his waist and began to walk toward the only exit from the small cave they were in. To the young adventurer’s delight, the passage to the depths of the dungeon was high and wide enough for him to pass without any trouble. With his sword ready for any surprises, Nate began to carefully follow a dark tunnel while Gwen flew a few steps behind him. Nate practically jumped out of his skin every time Gwen’s light orb created a new shadow as they walked along the passage, but to their surprise, they managed to find the exit of the tunnel without anything happening.
“That was totally disappointing,” Gwen grumbled with her arms crossed. “Where are the deadly and treacherous traps that would bring our doom?”
“This is a Tier 1 dungeon, Gwen,” Nate said what he knew was obvious to both of them. In fact, this wasn’t just a Tier 1 dungeon, the lowest Tier possible in which they could exist, but it was also the weakest dungeon that Jessamyn’s subordinates had managed to find within a reasonable distance from the city. Or at least he thought she had sent subordinates to conduct the searches, since he couldn’t imagine the older fairy wasting her time doing it personally. Turning to his friend, he continued speaking. “You know that until Tier 3, the only traps present are quite primitive and instinctual creations, and even then, they are quite rare in Tier 1 dungeons.”
Gwen knew that too, of course, since much of what Nate knew about dungeons had been information passed on to him by her. So, she knew that Tier 1 and 2 dungeons that had ambush instincts were considered rare and that these occasional traps couldn’t even compare to those seen from Tier 3 onwards.
Seeing the girl agree, Nate turned his attention to the situation at hand. A few meters away from them, they could see that the tunnel opened into a larger space that was probably another cave. What they didn’t know, however, was whether this new space would be as empty as the previous one had been.
“Stay behind me,” Nate said as he crossed the last few meters between him and the entrance to the cavern. Flying behind him and keeping her light orb in a position that wouldn’t hinder the combat they would certainly engage in, Gwen couldn’t help but find it cute how he was concerned about her safety when she was by far the more powerful of the two. She was only Tier 1, it was true, but she had magic and powers that the man didn’t have. At least not yet, although that could certainly change depending on how successful they were that day.
Steeling his nerves, Nate crossed the opening and entered the area that he could immediately see was indeed a cavern. Unlike the previous one, however, it not only had a significantly larger area but was also not empty. The moment Nate laid eyes on the inhabitants of that room, three pairs of eyes stared back at him. The first enemies Nate and Gwen encountered in that dungeon were creatures that bore a certain resemblance to Earth’s moles, but they stood on two feet, were about 1 meter and half tall, and had enormous claws that the young man certainly didn’t want to get too close to.
“Fuck,” Nate muttered as the three creatures began to clumsily run towards him. He knew it was very naive of him to hope they would only encounter one enemy at a time, but up to that point, he had hoped everything would go perfectly. However, Nate didn’t panic when he saw the three enemies quickly approaching him. He had trained for this, after all.
Assuming a defensive stance, Nate waited for the first of the creatures to enter his reach and then thrust his sword to try to stab it. The creature tried to dodge the attack more out of instinct than anything else, but although it didn’t manage to get away completely, Nate’s blade found its shoulder instead of its chest. With his sword encountering more resistance than expected, Nate wasn’t able to penetrate the creature’s flesh much before he had to retreat and dodge the claws of the other two. Although the damage he inflicted wasn’t deep, at least now one of the creatures was bleeding from its shoulder, and judging by how its left arm hung limply at its side, he had damaged something important.
“That was so cool!” Gwen exclaimed as she watched her companion inflict damage on the opponent. She was floating peacefully near the cave ceiling, so she was completely out of reach of the opponents. “Do you think we can find a sword my size? I know I didn’t train for this like you did, but it can’t be that hard, can it? And if you say something like ‘just grab a pin and poke everything in front of you’, I will totally turn off the light.”
“I kind of need to focus here, Gwen,” Nate said as he dodged another blow, doing his best to keep his focus on the three creatures wanting to shred him to pieces, and not on how the girl completely nailed what he would say. If he didn’t know she couldn’t read minds like her sister, he would be really worried about that.
When one of the mole-like monsters stretched its arm too far during an attack, Nate seized the opportunity. Stepping into the creature’s range, he pushed his sword with all his skill and strength into the creature’s chest. Fighting the urge to drop his sword and cover his ears to avoid hearing the creature’s terrible screams, Nate pulled his sword out as he kicked the creature backward, causing it to fall on its back on the ground while writhing in pain.
Caught off guard by how real the situation was, so different from what was portrayed in so many movies and books, Nate couldn’t take his eyes off the creature as it writhed and choked on its own blood. For the first time in his life, Nate saw what death really was. It wasn’t the push of a button, a suit in a coffin, or a news report. It wasn’t a hospital bed or a date on a tombstone. No, death was something ugly, cruel, and unjust, something that stripped its victim of all dignity until all that was left was despair and suffering.
Seeing the fight finally leave the creature, Nate couldn’t help but think about how easily he could be the one lying on the ground, and how many times he would have to face this realization as he followed the path he chose. That was the risk of failure, a risk he had accepted many years before. A part of Nate would even say that this wasn’t a risk, but almost a guarantee, and that he was destined to fail. But even in his greatest moments of weakness and doubt, another part of Nate, a confident and dreamy part, always whispered something to his soul: ‘What if he didn’t fail?’
Before Nate could contemplate this truth any longer, however, he heard Gwen shouting his name. Unfortunately, Nate couldn’t act fast enough to avoid the claws that struck his back.
Faced with the claws of the creature that hit him, Nate’s leather armor proved to be only a minor setback. With his back burning as if on fire, Nate took two steps forward as he tried to regain his balance and then raised his sword to block the third creature’s blow. At the same time he made this defense, he felt a refreshing sensation on his back that he knew meant Gwen was using her magic to heal him. With a cry of pain and anger, Nate turned his block into a counterattack and delivered a horizontal slash with the creature’s neck as the target. Even though his blade didn’t make a very deep cut, it penetrated enough for a waterfall of blood to start flowing from the wound.
With one more enemy defeated, having fallen to the ground while desperately clutching the wound in an instinctual attempt to end the pain, Nate turned his attention to the last of his enemies still in combat. Nate expected to see fear in the bestial expressions of the creature, but he could only see the same territorial aggression he had first witnessed when he entered the room.
“Just you now, asshole,” Nate growled through the pain still affecting him, although he could tell Gwen’s magic was healing him quickly.
As if this had been arranged, the two opponents advanced on each other, both intending to end the battle with the next blow. When Nate saw the mole-like monster raise its bloodied claws to deliver another brutal attack, the young adventurer threw himself forward. Thus, instead of the dungeon monster hitting him with its claws, Nate was merely hit by its arm. Taking advantage of the opening, Nate didn’t pause his movement and simply used all his speed and weight to drive the sword into the creature’s head.
The collision of the two of them was enough to send both to the ground, but while Nate let out a cry as he felt his healing wounds worsening slightly, the creature made absolutely no sound. Having lost his sword during the collision and subsequent fall, Nate quickly got up and began to retreat to try to gain space between him and his enemy in case it was still able to fight, but this was unnecessary. Unlike the other two, the third enemy that the young adventurer defeated seemed to have died instantly and was lying on the ground with Nate’s sword lodged in its skull.
Seeing the scene, Nate let out a sigh of relief and then let his legs finally give way. Falling to the ground, the wounded man who had just killed something larger than an insect for the first time closed his eyes and tried to control both his breathing and the whirlwind of emotions he was facing.
“I’m so glad you’re okay!” Gwen shouted at the top of her lungs as she landed on his shoulder and hugged the side of his head. “Wait, you are okay, aren’t you?”
“Kinda,” was the only thing Nate managed to pronounce before he turned to the side and emptied his stomach onto the ground.
Chapter 6
“Are you feeling better now?” Gwen asked with concern as she gently stroked Nate’s hair with her tiny hands.
“Yes,” he replied, taking a deep breath. “Any chance we never touch on that subject again?”
“No chance,” Gwen told him with a chuckle, trying to lighten her friend’s mood. “I’m totally telling everyone about this.”
“Well, then I guess I’ll have to bring up that time when you drank too much and ended up falling into the toilet while using the bathroom,” Nate said with a smile forming at the corner of his mouth as he recalled the incident. The girl must have taken about ten showers before finally feeling clean again.
“What were we talking about again?” Gwen asked with confusion in her voice. “I think I had sudden amnesia and totally forgot the last few minutes!”
“I think you were talking about how amazing I was fighting those three opponents alone,” Nate suggested with a mischievous grin, receiving a scoff and a roll of the eyes in response.
Nate wasn’t really trying to imply anything by that, Gwen knew, but merely teasing her a bit. Even though she was more powerful than a normal Tier 1 would be, her offensive capabilities were practically nonexistent. Even if she disregarded the fact that with her size she would probably lose a physical fight against a small bird, her magic and powers still didn’t give her any efficient offensive options, being more geared towards things like healing injuries and support magic like the light orb that still glowed near the cave ceiling. Fairies, in the end, weren’t exactly a combat-oriented race, and the powers she had access to in Tier 1 mirrored that truth. This could change as she advanced through the Tiers, she knew very well, but that was still something far in the future.
With his back injuries completely healed with Gwen’s healing magic, Nate headed towards the nearest of the monsters he knew had been created by the dungeon. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to what he would do next, but fortunately, he no longer had anything in his stomach to throw up. He had to complete this task before the dungeon absorbed the bodies, after all.
Gathering his nerves, Nate used his short sword to make a cut on the creature from chest to belly. He had to fight back the bile threatening to rise in his throat as he opened the creature and put his hand inside it in search of something. It was a gruesome job, but one he had to do not only to achieve his goals but because he was the only one between the two of them who could. A few seconds later, Nate withdrew his hand from inside the creature, holding a small bloody sphere that looked to be the size of a marble. This was the mana core of the dungeon monster.
Due to all the studies he had done over the years, Nate knew that it was incredibly common to find worlds where life forms had evolved to possess mana cores or similar organs. And this wasn’t exclusive to animals and monsters, as he knew that there were even other worlds with variants of humans that possessed this magical organ, although it didn’t happen on Earth. In fact, in a world like Harmony, the presence of the core in his hands was what differentiated an animal from Tier 0 and one from Tier 1 since Tier 0 creatures didn’t possess a mana core within them. There was still much about these cores that Nate didn’t know, but he had the knowledge that one of the most important functions of the cores seemed to be to serve as a container for storing mana.
Furthermore, he knew that there could be variations of mana cores depending on what type of mana the being possessed, such as fire monsters that would normally have mana cores altered to better work with that element. Cores like these could serve as a kind of filter, turning pure mana into fire mana, and vice versa.
“Do you think there’s anything valuable in these guys?” Nate asked Gwen as he stored the core in the leather pouch on his belt that he had bought with Trevor’s money for this exact reason.
“I have no idea,” Gwen shrugged, since like Nate she had never seen this type of monster before. “The claws are quite sharp, though. Maybe we can get something for them, or find some other use.”
Nodding his head, Nate got back to work and began to cut off the creature’s claws. Finishing with the monster, the adventurer then moved to the next fallen form, restarting his process of looting the monster. Before Nate could start working on the last monster, however, Gwen stopped him. Not really understanding what the girl wanted, the man just watched as she stared fixedly at the creature, going so far as to land on it.
“I think I can see the core!” Gwen exclaimed happily. Now that the creature was dead, Gwen found that she was able to see a ‘point’ of mana that stood out from the rest of the mana infusing the monster’s body. She didn’t know if it would be possible to discern where the core was in a living creature, but she was sure that was what she was seeing. To her, it was as if all the mana that wasn’t ‘leaking’ from the creature had become practically inert and had dimmed its ‘glow’ when life left the monster, except for the mana core, which continued to shine as vividly as before.
With this revelation, Nate managed to finish off the last monster of the dungeon in record time, having found the core exactly where she had pointed. After more time than he would have liked to waste, the two adventurers had acquired 3 mana cores and 30 claws since the creatures had them both on their feet and hands.
“Hey, Gwen,” Nate called to his friend as he looked at his bloodied hands. “Any chance you can give me some water?”
Granting his request, the small fairy used her magic to generate a faint stream of water that Nate used to clean himself as best he could. He also took the opportunity to hydrate himself a bit, as he hadn’t drunk anything in hours.
With nothing else to do in that cave, the two adventurers passed through the only opening that existed there other than the one they entered. Coming across another tunnel, Nate once again took the lead while Gwen floated behind him with the light ball. Nate half expected not to find any surprises in the tunnel, but that route proved significantly different from the previous one. With wide eyes, Nate watched as a giant armadillo appeared beyond Gwen’s light range. This wasn’t a normal armadillo, however, as it stood a meter tall and nearly two meters long.
When Nate laid eyes on the biological tank rushing towards him, he knew there was no way he would be able to stop the animal’s charge, or even dodge it due to the limited space of the tunnel. So, he did what any sensible person would do in his situation: he turned around and started running.
As soon as Nate reached the entrance of the cave, he threw himself to the side to get out of the path of the giant armadillo’s charge. Fortunately faster than his pursuer, the man reached safety with enough time to prepare his own attack.
Brandishing his sword, the human adventurer struck a swift blow to the monster as it followed him into the cave. Although the blow technically hit its target, Nate felt the sword vibrate in his hand and be repelled upon hitting the creature’s tough shell, which didn’t even scratch.
“Fuck,” Nate muttered as he realized that this battle would be even more difficult than he had first imagined.
Apparently not even realizing that it had been attacked, the monster turned towards Nate and again charged at him. Knowing that the only advantage he had over his opponent was his speed, Nate acted before the monster could gain too much momentum and also advanced against his opponent. Having caught his adversary off guard with his actions, Nate thrust his sword into the creature’s left eye and, before the armadillo could collide with him, threw himself to the side.
Having narrowly dodged being run over by the monster, Nate assumed a defensive stance as he assessed how much damage he had inflicted. As he had hoped, the monster’s eye had proved to be a weak point, judging by the blood trickling from the destroyed organ. Unfortunately, however, it seemed that the armadillo was feeling more anger than pain at that moment, as it didn’t even hesitate to continue its attempt to reach Nate. With a terrifying sound that sent shivers down Nate’s spine and that he was almost certain armadillos on Earth weren’t capable of reproducing, the monster pressed on with its attack as if Nate were the only thing on its mind.
