What I wasn't a fan of however was a fucking firebird immediately throwing a small ball of fire at me the moment I got a certain distance away from the floor entrance and flying away.
"Get back here you little bastard!" I yelled and chased the thing.
Turns out that may not have been the best decision, who knew?
"At least take me to dinner first!" I yelled as I dodged one of the three bloody hornets trying to stab my ass with their stingers.
As the things quickly found out even without abnormal resistance poison was absolutely fucking useless against me as I just had to flex my technique to purge it since it was from a living source. The stuff was a level two material so my technique cost almost nothing for me to purge the stuff from my wounds if I acted fast enough and didn't let it spread. The poison itself though was good shit as it was a paralytic and also a pain in the ass to harvest since obviously the monsters that make it aren't likely to just sit still while you collect it.-
Standard practice is to cut off the thorax that they store and produce it from before crushing the heads and milking the venom from the stinger. As the monsters were literally giant fucking hornets(stuff of nightmares) they were not easy to hit so precisely unless trapped first, typically with a net. Me though? I was casually bottling the stuff weeping out of the wounds they gave me before closing the wounds themselves. I was literally the single most annoying type of enemy for creatures like this that rely on their poison and strong piercing ability and speed to hunt.-
I was not only unaffected by their poison that was meant to slow me down but I was also fast enough that they couldn't use their instant kill stabby ability on me cuz I simply moved out the fucking way. I out stated these things in speed anyways so they were helpless to stop me from taking this alternative poison harvesting method that was so much better, less complicated. Once I had a nice full vial of poison I was officially done playing with these things and one shot them when they tried to attack me again. I was almost equal to a high level three stat wise in all regards so killing low level threes like this was easy.-
They also weren't training against because they were too damn predictable always aiming for my chest or head with those stingers of theirs. They also attacked in straight lines unless there was an obstacle they need to go around. It was laughably easy to cleave their heads from their bodies and then refine their stingers to guarantee they drop before collecting the stones and smoke that was much better than those Minotaurs, easily fifty percent better I recon.-
Obviously each bloody hornet being worth one and a half Minotaurs wasn't like an extreme amount of value but it was still enough that it was worth it in my opinion. Besides that the stingers were level three materials and thus totally worth more than the horns of a Minotaur. My "fight" also served it's purpose of attracting more monsters to my position.
'Two Bugbears, a battle boar, a lizardman and three firebirds. Gonna kill the fried chickens first then deal with these melee monsters.' I thought as I took stock of my enemies in a glance.
"GRAAAAAAAH!" the monsters roared and charged me with the Boar being the fastest and the birds already charging up balls of fire.
I lifted my right leg and leaned forward to burst out at full tilt immediately towards the boar that had it's head down to gore me with it's tusks and was thus a lovely launchpad to get to the birds overhead. In one fluid motion I ran up the boars head and neck before shooting into the air in a blur at the birds that released their flames only to find them blocked by a burst of my own before I made three rapid slashes with the sharp side of my weapon as I flew past them.-
Three red wings separated from their bodies and they fell out of the sky in a panic as they uselessly tried to stay airborne with only a single wing. I continued my trip through the air until I crashed into a wooden tree that creaked under my impact. Wasting no time at all I gripped the tree with my free left hand and pulled, accelerating to the ground as I performed a flip to land harshly on my feet.
"Who's next?" I asked with a grin as I stood up from my landing site fully.
The answer was the Lizardmen that had already been on the approach while I was up in the air. They both had rusted weapons that the dungeon had no doubt gotten from dead adventurers it had eaten. They were decently fast and strong so you know points for that but you know how this turned out, with them dead in case that wasn't clear. They might as well have been flailing those weapons about relying on brute force as they were. There was no skill or precision to be found in their movements but rather they were pointing the sharp bit at me and swinging.-
It was insulting to consider that weapon usage as far as I was concerned and punished them for it by cracking the blunt end of my weapon over the back of the "hands" holding the weapons. The weapons were dropped and forgotten as I pressed them. I was much happier when they fought back with their claws and tails as it felt more natural to me and less shameful for them when I crushed their skulls shortly afterwards. That of course left the two bugbears and battle boar that were also charging at me after finally turning around and catching up.-
Unlike Lizardmen both of these two monster species were hefty and once they started charging in a direction it was hard for them to stop and go the opposite direction. Momentum was kinda a bitch like that for larger monsters, made my job easier though since I was whittling them down one species at a time.
"I hope you are as delicious as you look cuz I'ma eat you after this was over!" I yelled at the battle boar that genuinely looked more pissed off when I said it, might have been a trick of the mind though.
First up though were the Bugbears that were lumbering at me with tongues out and long rivulets of saliva coming from their mouths. I simply leapt up above their heads and swung the blunt end of my weapon right on the top of the first ones noggin braining it in an instant. The body collapsed like a puppet with it's strings cut and the momentum dragged it through the dirt. The other followed suit shortly after as did the boar that I wasted no time at all refining the flesh and fat of to get it to drop.