[HP: 9/20]
[XP: 45/50]
[Warning: Further strenuous activity may increase Bleed status]
What is my pn from here? There are typically 3 ways to leave a dungeon. The first is to find an exit portal. These are often located separately from dungeon entrances, so civilians who end up in a dungeon are usually screwed unless help arrives before the monsters do.
The second is with a portal scroll, able to be purchased at the Grand Exchange, a market for Rankers to trade their loot. Speaking of loot, since my priority is set on Not Dying, I mainly left the remains of the corpses alone and continued on.
Finally, option 3 requires killing the dungeon boss, typically the most powerful creature in a given dungeon. Based on the name of this dungeon, that would be the Lizard King.
My only real option is trying to find an exit portal. Facing down a boss is entirely unreasonable; it typically takes a raid team to do so.
The tampon in my side is already completely soaked through, so I quickly repce it for the second time–tampon #1 ended up in the face of a ranger lizardfolk as a distraction–and continue onwards.
Another option could be killing another lizardfolk to get the XP needed to level up. In many games, leveling up tends to recover life and mana, and sometimes clear status effects.
But I was already bleeding before I Awakened, and leveling up to Level 1 didn’t heal or cure me. Could it just be a Level 1 thing? Maybe the Ranker system is just hardcore…?
I turn the corner and finally find the answer to my question. A bzing blue-and-white portal bzes in front of me, about 100 or so metres on the other side of a room.
A very big room.
A room so rge and spacious, my gamer senses scream BOSS ROOM. One way in. No pilrs or crates or rubble to act as cover.
Back when I was still in high school, the teachers would force us to participate in 100m sprints as part of our school’s athletics day. I was fitter then, since PhysEd was unfortunately a mandatory subject, not to mention not in pain and bleeding out of two holes, and even then my personal best was in the twenties. In my current condition, it will likely take me upwards of forty seconds to cross the room.
Will that be fast enough to escape before the boss shows up?
I grit my teeth, hold my side, and run like an old woman te for bingo night. It must be quite the sight to behold: a small, overweight woman with a bag of shopping looped around one arm and holding a big hammer in the other, stumbling in the most awkward sprint ever. I’d ugh if I saw that in a video clip, probably titled “Top 10 Idiots in a Dungeon”.
Perhaps the boss is too busy ughing too, because I make it halfway across the room before it shows up, dropping down from the ceiling and nding in front of me. I almost trip as the ground trembles under its massive weight.
Before me is a fat and towering lizard man, so big I barely make it to his knee. He is dressed in extravagant purple robes with a golden trim. Atop his head is a crown embedded with gemstones. With both of his hands, he carries a gigantic hammer, looking kind of like an anvil and a metal tree fused together.
[You are in the presence of
[Due to strenuous activity, the effect of your Bleed status has increased]
[Status: Bleed]
[Take 1 damage every 30 seconds]
My health ticks down by another point to 8 and Lathokar licks his bare fangs with a tongue as slimy as it is massive. A small thought pops into my head as he widens his stance and raises the hammer: maybe I could win if I only had picked a spellcasting css and kited him.
Some inner gamer instinct within me activates, and I dash forwards towards his legs. When fighting big bosses like this, stick to the butt where they have a limited moveset. It may not be the pce for optimal DPS, but it often ends up being safe.
The hammer smashes the ground where I had just been standing a second or two prior, the stone splintering into many shards, and I run under his bulging belly and between his legs, almost getting clotheslined by the tail.
[HP: 7/20]
Fighting back a great sense of repulsion, I realise this is not the tail.
I grin, and swing my hammer.