<strong>— Five hours after the third pulse of the cube. —</strong>
"Hmmm..." Luke groaned, with great pain in his chest, as he opened his eyes, which were burning quite badly due to the blinding light he saw before he became unconscious.
Although the limbs of his body were numb and the burning, felt in various parts of it, Luke stood up and before scanning his surroundings, he checked himself.
The half-beast looked down and saw that he was wearing his routine worn clothes, which he had been wearing for over a year, and only washed when he could. His leather boots had almost no soles. His pants were full of internal patches, which he had to learn to sew himself. And his sweater, which might have kept him warm on cold nights, protected him even less.
Shaking his head negatively to get rid of the pessimistic thoughts, Luke huffed.
"Where am I?" he wondered, beginning to scan his surroundings.
On the walls of the enclosure, there were small gray crystals, whose luster appeared to have faded long ago. On the ceiling, huge pointed stalactites created shadows under each other, which increased the pitch in that place.
"Fung... Fung..." He sniffed twice and smelled the same rotten smell that he was beginning to get used to. "I'm still in the Dungeon, apparently..."
Without rolling around too much, the man opened his inventory and picked up the Return Stone, a pebble shaped like an icosahedron. Since he never had to use his own, he didn't have much practice, but he mimicked what Nathalia used to do.
"Exit, please."
The stone rose from Luke's palm, glowed a little, started spinning at a very high speed, and then died in his palm again, losing its glow.
"You're kidding, right?" The man had a crooked smile on his face, disbelieving that this was happening. "Get out, please!" Luke yelled at the stone, and it didn't even move.
Luke sighed and inhaled a few times until he lost his patience and threw the Return Stone away, however, the stone made no sound as it fell. Discouraged and frustrated, he finally looked down, and that's when he saw, at the edge of his feet, an oval object.
The half-wolf's eyes sparkled when he saw the Black Egg. He immediately tried to pick it up, to put it in his Inventory.
[Living items are impossible to store].
Luke did not know whether to be happy or disheartened, because the voice message meant that the egg was not rotten, but since he did not know where it was, his return would be further delayed by the egg.
"Buuuf..." He huffed, stressed. "I have to get that egg out of here fast and I have no idea how to take care of it I need to sell it as fast as possible."
Crec! A snap rang out through the cave, alerting Luke. In pure reflex, the man jumped back, still slowed by the pain in his abdomen, and tried to draw his saber. However, when he put his hand where the dragon handle should have been, he caught only air.
'Oh! Shit...' He thought as he raised his arms to defend himself.
In the next instant, a kick from something so fast he couldn't even see hit his belly and made him feel his organs being crumpled. Thrust backward, Luke had the strength to try to strike the thing that kicked him, but the creature deflected easily.
Still, the half-wolf didn't let this attack go in vain, as soon as he heard the creature's footsteps retreat, he charged forward and simultaneously used his natural ability that made his hands as sharp as daggers.
Tchaaak! He successfully pierced the white blur that attacked him, only then did he notice that it was an adult bipedal rabbit. Chaaa! He removed his hand from the creature's chest and dropped it to the ground. Instants later, he saw the monster turn to ashes.
"Sigh..." Luke sighed in relief, however, he didn't even have time to rest, because as soon as he blinked his eyes, he saw dozens of pairs of red eyes in the pitch of that cave.
At that moment, Luke knew that it wouldn't be easy to get out of that place alive, maybe with an egg, but he still needed this.
In the end, the half-wolf made it out alive and with the whole egg, but he took so many hits that he could barely stand.
Luke didn't know why, but each of those rabbits was from two to four times stronger than the Giant Spiders.
Although he managed to kill them all, he found it strange that they didn't interfere with each other's battles, they just came one by one, as if they were playing with Luke, or respecting him in some way.
As he walked through the twisting caverns of the unfamiliar floor, the man was sure he was neither on the first nor the second floor, which meant he was in an even more adverse and unfamiliar situation than he could conceive.
'Those damn Sensorials should make barriers more resistant to failure...' He judged internally, as he staggered with his hand on his stomach.
Luke was not good at making decisions, and well, it took a toll on his sense of direction. When normally a Return Stone would point in one direction, the half-wolf naturally chose the opposite, and this only made an already bad situation worse.
Clashes with different kinds of monsters were inevitable, which always left Luke close to death. In between the many encounters and mismatches, the man's stomach rumbled louder than a normal stomach could rumble, and he felt his guts twisting as if they were fighting for the last scraps of protein left in his body.
'How the hell am I to find food in a Dungeon?' Then a quick thought ascended in his head as he questioned himself.
Not thinking sanely, he opened his <Normal Inventory> and clicked on the icon of Rabbit Paws, which were still fresh as it had been a few hours since he collected them.
"Haha! How ironic, huh? A wolf devouring raw rabbits... who would have thought I'd laugh in a situation like that." He said as he sat down, looking at the red meat near his face.
To not have time to taste the meat, Luke planned to devour the foot in one bite. He opened his mouth, and skin, for the first time in a long time, put his huge fangs out of his gums. Nhac!
However, something he didn't expect happened, his mouth was stopped by a mysterious force before his fangs tore through the flesh, and the characteristic female voice, which he used to hear in his head sometimes, warned him:
[Monster Meats cannot be eaten. The penalty is the reduction of your HP permanently if you do so].
What Luke did not know, was that that moment in his life, that place and time, was where it all really began.
______
Discord for illustrations of the characters:
https://discord.gg/qz2vDAn7Kb
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