Miri let out a scream as the stinger pierced through her flesh, causing her incredible pain. As she flinched away, the scorpider tried to follow up that first attack with another series of rapid pincer jabs. Trying her best to muster through that pain, she swung her staff in front of her to try to parry those jabs before retaliating with a series of Crescent Arcs that managed to both damage and push the creature away, creating a bit of space between them.

  Miri could feel streaming droplets of warm blood trickling down her arm from where the wound was located. She gritted her teeth trying to endure as much of the staggering pain as possible while also doing her best to maintain visual focus on the deadly enemy in front of her. The realization that there’s a good chance she might die right here suddenly haunted the back of her mind. She would not let it end here, at least not this soon. Her pride simply wouldn’t allow it.

  While she had a bit of precious breathing room, she took this time to quickly drink two potions—one potion to restore her health and another potion to restore her mana. At this very moment, the poison from the stinger was probably inflicting her with both a poison and a paralysis status, which simultaneously sapped her health little by little over time as well as slowing her movements.

  While the health potion she drank earlier technically didn’t cure her status ailments, it did provide her with enough healing to stave off the damaging effects of the poison. Additionally, being a mage that’s less reliant on speed and strength, the paralysis wasn’t nearly as detrimental to her fighting ability as it would be with other types of builds. After mentally bracing herself from the pain, she returned her focus back towards her enemy.

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  Channeling her mana once more, she casted another Meteor Impact, hoping to finish off the monster once and for all.

  “Meteor Impact!” she called out as she casted that powerful spell. Once again, a purple magic circle formed on top of the giant creature before unleashing a massive boulder that crashed right on top of its body. When that didn’t seem to be enough to finish the job, she casted several more of the same spell—one after another in quick succession out of sheer panic, even disregarding the enormous mana cost. “Meteor Impact! Meteor Impact!! Meteor Impact!!!”

  Like a slipper squashing a cockroach, the gargantuan creature had finally succumbed to the devastating damage of the spells and died, letting out a shrieking squeal as life faded from its carcass. The boss of this dungeon was finally defeated, and with that, Miri had spotted yet another notification in the corner of her vision, indicating that she had leveled up once again.

  [Level up! You have reached level 3!]

  The redheaded mage collapsed to the ground from both the physical and mental exhaustion. Never would she have thought that adventuring could be so tiring in real life. However, even she had to admit that it was a whole different experience than simply playing the game in front of a screen, something that she could perhaps get used to over time.