My Isekai Fantasy Is All Wrong!

Chapter 6: Instance Dungeon

To enter the Instance Dungeon, I had to manually accept the World Quest while in the immediate vicinity. When I did so, the world around me shifted slightly such that the sky turned red and the previously clear forested terrain took on a heavy fog.

I’m not going to lie, my first thought after seeing such ominous changes was that perhaps I had been a bit too excited and got ahead of myself. What the hell was I thinking, instantly accepting the quest and letting myself get dragged into this situation?! I had no idea what a Timberwolf was or how many of them I might need to hunt down to leave. Hell, I didn’t even know how to hunt in the first place!

After a bit of anxious pacing back and forth, and paranoid over analyzation of everything I could see, I calmed down a bit when I realized there were clearly defined bounds to the Instance Dungeon. A couple paces directly behind me, stretching out to a couple hundred meters into the sky and off to the distance, there were veils of completely opaque clouds à la Dark Souls. Touching them gave me the option to leave the Dungeon at will, but at the cost of forfeiting my right to complete the World Quest and create the Instance Dungeon again.

So, I could leave whenever I wanted and the area I needed to comb over to hunt these Timberwolf things was easily identifiable. That made me feel a lot better, but I was still rather worried about the idea of fighting anything bigger than a chihuahua. Sure, I had my newfound Skills to hopefully come out of a serious fight alive, but I didn’t have any experience beyond my initial sword training.

“Alright, that’s enough bitching for today,” I muttered to myself before slapping my hands against either side of my face. I then looked through my Inventory before summoning a quick snack to raise my chances for the imminent hunt.

[Observe]
[Name: Coffee Granola Bar (100%)]
[Description: A home-style granola bar made of oats, nuts, chocolate, and coffee syrup. Has enough sugar and caffeine to wake up the average Snorlax. Sells for 12 Shop Credits.]
[Effects: Cures - Hunger | Fortify (1 Hour) - Agility (+3), Perception (+3) | Instant - Health (+50), Stamina (+75)]

After eating the granola bar, I incurred the Buffs and drew out my sword before delving deeper into the Instance Dungeon to seek out the Timberwolfs. The +3 to my Agility didn’t show as I didn’t run into the unknown like an unhinged maniac, but the same could not be said for my Perception. Three extra points to my Perception effectively increased it by almost exactly 50%. It made my eyesight better, it made my hearing better, and most important of all, it made my olfactory sense better.

Honestly, I never thought I’d get the best benefit from being able to smell things better, but in this particular situation, it was both a blessing and a curse.

[Observe]
[Name: Timberwolf Beta]
[Description: A common Timberwolf pack member. It is a magical construct made up of chaotic energies, tree branches, and soil. Not sentient or conscious at all, it only seeks to augment itself by devouring living beings and subsuming more magically dense tree matter.]
[Level: 2]
[Health: 500/500]
[Strength: 10]
[Constitution: 8]
[Vitality: 5]
[Agility: 10]
[Perception: 10 (1)]
[Intelligence: 10]
[Wisdom: 8]
[Luck: 0]
[Charisma: 0]

Apparently, when you combined chaotic energies with organic matter like the tree branches this thing was made of, you got the equivalent of a sulfur bomb to my enhanced perception. I don’t know how I wasn’t gagging as I sniffed out the awful smell which only got more potent the closer to the Timberwolf I got, but it was truly the worst thing I’d ever had the misfortune of encountering.

Fortunately, the Timberwolf did not look like it would be much of a challenge. Not only was I stronger and faster than it, but it was also suffering from something that wasn’t a Debuff that left it with an effective Perception of 1. The only thing I could think of was a quirk in its anatomy or pseudo-biology. Perhaps, because it was a mass of animated wood without an actual olfactory sense, it could only perceive with magic things that had magic; Magic, which frankly, I didn’t have.

Whatever the reason, the Timberwolfs abysmal senses would only make what was to come easier for me. I steeled myself and got as close as I could, amazing getting within reaching distance with my sword, before lashing out with a sneak attack and destroying the Timberwolf instantly.

[Sneak Attack!]
[Critical Hit!]
[+889 Damage!]
[+2 Exp]

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered to myself while looking at the remains of the Timberwolf. All I’d done was swing at its head and its entire body had exploded into hundreds of pieces of scrap wood. I guess this was what overkill looked like in real life.

I tried to use Harvest to quickly loot up all the pieces of wood to no avail. When I collected enough to sell off a kilogram of Timberwolf Scrap for 5 Credits, I decided it was worth it to store the remaining pieces and later sell. For my troubles, I was rewarded with the unexpected find of an Unrefined F Grade Magic Crystal in the midst of my looting. It went for 10 Shop Credits on its own.

When I was done, I put my nose back to the proverbial grindstone as I tracked down the next source of foulness. The next Timberwolf I encountered was similar to the first, but not a one-to-one copy, and yet it died the same way due to their shared terrible sense of Perception. A smack to the head yielded a Critical Hit, while an attack against an unsuspecting target triggered a Sneak Attack.

And on and on I carried on against the next couple of Timberwolves before I was unexpectedly tackled from the side. I could hear it coming only a fraction of a second before it happened, and thus couldn’t do anything to protect myself.

[Sneak Attacked!]
[-158 Health!]
[-12 Health!]
[-15 Health!]

I landed with the massive five-foot-tall amalgam of tree parts and dirt trying to bite through my Iron Armor as its likely hundreds of kilograms of weight held me down. I cast Observe on it as I smashed down the pommel side of my sword on its snarling face to hopefully stop it from continuing to thrash around and cause more health lost with its every move.

[Observe]
[Name: Timberwolf Alpha]
[Description: Fit to be the leader of small Timberwolf packs. It is superior to its Beta subordinates in all aspects.]
[Level: 5]

[Critical Hit!]
[+55 Damage]
[Critical Hit!]
[+59 Damage]
[Critical Hit!]
[+70 Damage]

It was only after I drove the blade side of my sword into one of its eye holes that the Alpha withdrew from biting into my armor and I managed to kick it off of me. By the time I had gotten up to my feet, the Alpha had also recovered and began circling around me. It let loose a loud howl to which I immediately charged it.

‘Ain’t no motherfucking way I’m letting this thing get help from more of its cronies!’ I cursed internally as I stepped toward the Alpha and swiped at it with an upward slash.

Thanks to my Buffed up Agility, further empowered by the Foundational Sword Skill, I was almost twice as fast as I normally would be. This was enough to easily track the Timberwolf as it sought to evade my blade.

[+158 Damage!]
[+144 Damage!]
[Critical Hit!]
[+280 Damage!]

The Alpha was terribly outclassed against me once I had the autonomy to attack it with full-powered swings. It was also probably not the smartest monster around as it didn’t immediately run away even as the seconds passed without it managing to harm me in the slightest. Even if it had been banking on its Betas to join in the fight and gang up on me, it should have retreated temporarily or at least stalled for time. Instead, it adamantly continued trying to bite down on any part of me that it could latch onto, even after I proved time and time again that I was fast enough to block anything I couldn’t outright dodge.

[Critical Hit!]
[+256 Damage!]
[+6 Exp]

I did not have time to celebrate my victory as the sounds of various approaching Timberwolfs sounded off several alarms in my head and I only had a couple seconds to prepare myself. It was not enough to eat something and recover my health or add more fortification Buffs to my Status.

“Ugh, damn it all to hell,” I groaned as I followed through with an impulsive decision to dump all my free Stat Points into Agility.

The — debatably present — line of thinking behind the thought was that my best shot at minimizing risk was by taking the fight to the approaching mobs before the unknown quantity of them could gang up on me. As I was with my previous effective Agility of 14.3, I was already capable of easily beating the Alpha. That alone might be enough to avoid any attacks from a single stronger foe, but I was almost certain it would not hold up against a group of even two weaker ones.

I was hoping that after the point dump into Agility, I would be fast enough to manage at least two Beta Timberwolves head-on while I blitzkrieged my way through them. The absolute worst-case scenario would see me get locked down by more and more Timberwolves until I couldn’t even fight back, at which point no amount of increased Strength, Constitution, or Vitality would save me.

Was I being melodramatic? Probably. Perhaps, a bit of a cowardly bitch? Sure. In the end, though, my choice proved to solve my problem better than I could have hoped for.

With a raised Base Agility of 14, augmented to 17 by the Coffee Granola Bar, and then boosted an additional 10% due to using the Foundational Sword Skill, I had an effective Agility of 18.7. That made me ridiculously fast; inhumanly fast; and, unexpectedly, it also raised my raw damage output.

The overall damage per second I expected, since I was able to dish out more attacks faster than before, but the numbers themselves were higher than I anticipated.

[+381 Damage]
[+366 Damage]
[+2 Exp]
[Critical Hit!]
[+712 Damage!]
[+2 Exp]

The only explanation I could come up with was that while my Gamer powers followed a clearly skewed logic, there was still basic physics having an effect. My maximum speed and acceleration had increased, and as Force was a function of Mass times Acceleration, the outcome was self-evident.

I cut down two Timberwolves that had approached together, moving so fast and with such enhanced reaction time that I felt confident I could take on two more with the same outcome, before going on to kill three more before the madness stopped.

[World Quest Complete!]
[Name: Dungeon Crawl #295]
[Description: Got rid of all 13 Betas and the Alpha.]
[Reward: +50 Exp, Common Dungeon Chest]

[Level Up!]
[Full Recovery!]
[+3 Stat Points!]
[+1 Perk Point!]
[Shop Function Expanded!]