The station we entered the dungeon in didn't have anything of interest to offer us. Just rusted beams and cracked concrete as roots of trees broke their way in and started tearing the place apart. No loot to steal or enemies to farm.
The only way forward was the tracks. We had to hop down onto the old rails, pick a direction and start walking. And so we did. I took point, weapon in hand, leading the way while Jeff, mainly being a healer, followed along a few steps behind me.
The tunnels ahead were extremely dark, only lit by occasional ceiling lamps, and even those were dim at the best of times. Surprisingly, most of them still worked, flickering and buzzing, but still technically working. Honestly, it was a miracle. The world was supposedly ruined by nuclear war, but something was for some reason still keeping these lights in the tunnels working. Impressively, the subway's wiring outlived civilization.
I wasn't going to complain. Every working light meant fewer places for something murderous to hide.
If nothing else, this reminded me that I needed to get more things for my inventory and prepare for any possible situation. I had stocked up on food, water and enough medical supplies to open up a small clinic, but I was still missing a lot of survival gear. Like flashlights for situations like this.
I made a mental note that as early as tomorrow, I would put in an Amazon order so big they would have to make several trips to get it all up to my apartment. With the money I was making from dungeon diving now, buying extra gear wouldn't even make a dent in my wallet. I wasn't a millionaire… yet… but I was getting close, and the money gained was only increasing every floor.
One might criticize me for not having prepared more beforehand, but it has not even been a week since I got the new memories and system. Cut me some slack, I'm learning as I go.
For now, we'd have to make do with what we had. Limited visibility with no fancy high-beam flashlights or drones scouting ahead. Just me leading the way, twin-blade ready in hand, threading along the rails, with Jeff a few feet behind me.
It didn't take long before we came across our first group of enemies. Before we even saw them, we heard noises. Skittering and squeaking in the dark.
Dozens of tiny claws tapping against concrete and the metal tracks echoed throughout the tunnels. I slowed my pace, signaling Jeff with a hand to be quiet. Not that it mattered much. Jeff was about as stealthy as a bowling ball. He came to a stop, tongue lolling out as he stared ahead.
Out of the darkness ahead, shapes started to appear as they approached us. The mutated rats Gali had mentioned beforehand. Some were small, cat sized, while others were larger, more akin to a dog. Their eyes glowed faintly red in the low light, their fur dirty and rough.
"Alright, Jeff," I said, whirling my twin-blade in my hand. I would have given some sort of orders, but I immediately realize I have no clue how to work together as a team, I barely even knew what I was doing alone. I eventually settled for something very basic. "Just stick close and watch my back, I guess."
"Mrrr!" Jeff barked in confirmation.
The first rat lunged, and I moved to meet it, spinning my blade and carving an upward arc through the air. The twin-blade sliced the air, meeting the rat mid-flight.
The blade cut cleanly through the rat down the middle, meeting no resistance, sending it sprawling in two different directions in a heap of blood.
"Easy enough." I muttered. Too soon.
Because the second rat ran up and hit me low, headbutting me in the hip. I stumbled and brought the spear down to stab it, but before I could even land it, a third rat came in from the other side, latching onto my jacket and sinking its teeth into me.
I expected it to stop there with a little stab of pain, almost like a needle drawing blood, as these high quality clothes bought from camping and military stores had been enough to stop 99% of attacks up until now. Not this time, though.
With a ripping sound, the rat tore through the jacket like it was made of wet paper, its teeth raked across my arm underneath the now apparently outdated armor I had been using. Pain flared up immediately as I felt my skin tear from the attack.
"Shit!" I cursed, jerking back and swinging the other side of my blade to cut the rat and get it off of me.
Blood dripped down my arm. It wasn't a deep wound, but to me who wasn't yet used to pain, it stung like hell.
[Careful! I told you, the tutorial floors are over, and you are going against real enemies now.] Gali warned with a frantic voice from the side where she was watching from.
Yeah, no kidding.
I wasn't given time to catch my breath before more of them surged forward. Jeff leapt into the fight with a growl, charging headfirst into a group of smaller rats like a predator charging in for its food. He body-slammed the first into the side of the tunnel, the impact probably breaking its spine, then chomped down on another's back, tossing it aside like a chew toy.
Clearly he was doing much better than me at this point in time, but I wasn't too surprised since, from what Gali told me, he is used to hunting for his own food.
I tried to follow up on his charge and coordinate with him. Key word being 'tried'.
I lined up a perfect strike at a larger rat that was winding up for a leap, only for Jeff to bulldoze into it at the last second, throwing it off its feet. My blade swished through the empty air where the rat had been a second earlier, and more importantly, where Jeff had been even less ago. Half a second earlier, and I probably would have ended up cutting my own teammate into sashimi.
"Watch it!" I yelled, yanking the blade back just before it made contact with the concrete floor.
"Mrrr?!" Jeff made a sound of confusion, his tail wagging like he thought this was a fun game. The rats were no more than moving, squeaky toys.
Clearly, we need to work on our team dynamics more before we can work together well.
Another rat dug its teeth into my foot, chewing wildly. I kicked it off, but not before it managed to shred through my leather boots like they didn't even exist. The rats weren't strong individually, but the danger came from the sheer number of them. The way they swarmed and shredded through my gear like it was nothing was worrying.
I gritted my teeth, ignoring the pain from the two bites I had received, and started carving forward to get through this group. I didn't wanna struggle and have to run away on the first enemies we encountered.
One slice through a small rat's spine... A thrust through a big one's skull… soon the numbers began decreasing, though I took occasional bites and scratches from them.
Jeff was no slouch, either. Even though he wasn't the most 'graceful' in his technique, he made up for it with sheer enthusiasm and fun he was having as he played with his new sentient toys. He mostly targeted the smaller rats, while the bigger ones were left to me.
It was messy as blood flew everywhere, and the shark was soon more red than blue, and I nearly got a heart attack every time he nearly lunged into the paths of my attacks, but we managed.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the last rat screeched in fear and turned to bolt down the tunnel. I considered letting it go, but then Jeff pounced like a shark shaped missile and bit it clean in half.
I lowered my weapon, slightly exhausted from the battle.
My arms were scratched and bitten and my all my clothing had been shredded to ribbons like they had been run through a paper shredder. At this point, it was probably better for me to take these useless clothes off as they are just making it harder to move and go for a simple T-shirt and shorts. Not like these are helping me here anymore.
Jeff bounced over, tail wagging, proud of himself. Damage wise, he wasn't much better than me as despite being covered in the blood of rats, I could also see numerous bite and deep scratch marks on his body.
"Yeah, yeah. Good boy," I said, scratching his head half-heartedly. Gali joined in too, though she couldn't physically do it
In response, Jeff barked as 3 bubbles came out of his mouth and homed in on me at a fast speed.
"Wait, wha-" Before I could even respond properly, the bubbles floated over and blew up upon hitting me. Instead of causing any damage though, it felt relieving as my fatigue started dissipating like it was never there, and my wounds stopped hurting, soon closing entirely a few seconds later.
Jeff sat with a proud face, his tongue still hanging out goofily. Right, I should reciprocate…
Mentally thinking about using my Bubble Bark skill, two bubbles appeared out of my hand and headed toward Jeff, similarly healing his wounds.
"That's useful." I pat Jeff's head. "We need to work on our teamwork, though. At this rate, I'm going to cut you up more than any enemy if we can't coordinate."
Jeff wagged his tail harder, spinning in circles until he almost tripped over his own feet.
I sigh and stand up. As much as the bubbles helped heal, they didn't patch me up fully, and I could still feel some pain and stiffness where the scars had been.
"Looks like I'm gonna be getting scratched up a lot tonight. I need to speed up my plans for making some real armor." I mutter to myself in thought.
Gwen was already beginning to build hers. Now that I know some of her blueprints, I can incorporate her ideas into my own as well, and maybe even do some extra with my Inventor skill. The 'armor' I was using before, which was just thick clothing, was useless now, and I was only alive thanks to the fact that my Might stat was increasing the durability of my body or the rats would have bitten through me just as easily as they had through the clothes.
Jeff sneezed and shook his body like a dog shaking off water, except in his case the blood coating his body flew everywhere, even on me.
I sigh and get back to moving, there was no point in standing around here. Better to move forward and kill more enemies to grow stronger.
We continued for another five minutes without running into any new threats. The tunnels however were not a linear path, they split off into many sections at crossroads, like a maze. For now, my strategy was simply to always follow along the wall on my right-hand side, wherever that would take me.
As we kept moving we took on a few more groups of rats, these had smaller numbers than the first we had encountered, thankfully. But the more concerning thing we had begun running into was graffiti.
Territorial markers.
They also had text, but not only could I not read their language, the alphabet system they used was completely unfamiliar to me. It wasn't anything found on my earth.
[Heads up. We're entering scavenger gang territory.] Gali said suddenly. [I can translate the text so not to worry. Be careful though, we will be coming up against other humans soon.]