Dungeons Online

With nothing but his simple spear in his hand, Tom stared at the boss. 

Tom couldn't know whether it wanted to set a trap by pretending to be asleep or if it was actually sleeping. After he woke the monster up with a kick, attacking it while it was asleep was no longer an option. 

In a sense, Tom deprived himself of great advantage. While that also meant not taking the potential risk of stepping into the trap, taking the chances of that happening, Tom still made quite a tactical loss. 

'All according to the keikaku,' Tom thought, bringing up an ancient meme in his thoughts. 

The lizard slowly moved up, not showing any signs of a hurry. It appeared that it was aware of the vast difference in power between itself and the invader. As such, it didn't showcase any anxiety or caution, taking its time to shake up the drowsiness. 

'I wonder if I can pull it off,' Tom thought, feeling how the adrenaline started to flow through his veins. 

The fight was inevitable. 

And so there was no point in wasting any more time. 

Tom rushed forward, dragging his spear along. Once just two steps away from the monster, he threw his leading hand ahead. 

Ting! 

The tip of the spear bounced off the lizard's scales. Not even a bruise appeared, proving just how powerful the monsters could be when attacked with normal arms. 

'No, that's the wrong way of thinking,' Tom noticed as he retreated a few steps. 'It's us that are too weak,' he realized when observing the lizard's patterns of movements. 

This dungeon wasn't a game at all. By entering it with their real bodies, Tom proved it beyond any doubt. But that didn't mean his opponent didn't have any patterns. Contrary to that, they were likely to be far simpler and more straightforward than any pattern a competent game developer would come up with!

After all, patterns are a pretty powerful tool. Their main downside... is that they are boring in the long term. As such, developers would often struggle to make the patterns for their bots... as unpredictable as possible. Make them too complex for a human brain to notice the pattern. They would use any tool at their disposal to hide the fact that everything in the game was actually just a procedure. 

But this dungeon was different. 

The monster didn't mind revealing any and all of its patterns all at once. After all, what good would knowing a pattern of one's movement do when your opponents don't have the strenght to exploit them?

In the end, for a monster with no intelligence, the pattern was a great tool to improve the proficiency of its attacks and lower its energetical cost. And this attachment to patterns was the very reason why it was humans standing at the top of the food chain, not some powerful predator.

"Come!" Tom shouted as he charged ahead once again. And with no surprise, his weapon bounced off the lizard's scales once again. 

Its jaws opened up as Tom dodged to the back. But it didn't even try to bite him. It simply stood with its mouth open and then started to shake its head up and down. 

'It looks like it's having un,' Tom gripped his weapon even tighter, clearly driven by the rousing act of the monster. While he could handle humans insulting him, the same didn't apply to some damned, lowlife monster!

"DIE!" Tom charged forward, this time aiming for what could be the soft underbelly of the monster. Right as he was about to make the last step, he suddenly pushed the center of his weight to the side.

Tom fell to the ground, but his momentum carried him forward. Sliding on his legs, he used his entire body to drive his spear into the lizard's belly. 

But rather than protecting it, that damned lizard actually raised its upper legs as if in an attempt to give Tom even a better shot!

Ting!

The sound rang in Tom's ears, announcing the failure of his attack. 

'Now steady, let's work it out calmly and without any mishaps,' Tom thought as he fanned the fuel that made him appear furious. 

In reality, he was simply setting up a scenario. A scenario that would allow him to learn one crucial thing. 

"Fuck," Tom muttered openly as his slide ended. If the monster wished, it could stomp on him at least four times by this point.

But for some reason, it didn't. 

"COME ON!" Tom shouted while praying in his thoughts for his shouts not to affect Claudia. Because if she were to enter a second too early, this situation from dangerous would turn into a disaster. 

This time, the lizard reacted. Whether it was bored with letting Tom do what he wished or just wanted to get over with the ongoing annoyance, Tom couldn't know. 

And frankly, couldn't care less. The only important fact was that the lizard finally went on the offensive. 

"Huh!" Tom breathed out a mouthful of air when the first attack struck. He barely managed to avoid it by stepping to the side. 

The lizard, on the other hand, seemed to disobey the laws of physic. With how massive it was and how slippery the floor was, there should be no way for it to move around as agile as it did. Even after its charge, it only required a few steps to lose its momentum, turn around and charge again. 

"That,' Tom thought while dodging an attack. 'Was,' he spoke in his thoughts, jumping away from another charge. 'Too close!' he screamed in his mind when the lizard suddenly shook its bottom, sending Tom flying with a spinning attack of its long tail. 

"Guh!" All the air escaped from Tom's lungs when he crashed into the wall. Falling down to the ground, he could see droplets of blood dripping out from the corner of his mouth. 'I bit my lip? Or...' 

Tom couldn't even think for long when the lizard attacked again. While Tom managed to dodge, the injuries he suffered a moment earlier made his escape quite cranky. 

For a moment, the battle stalled. While he didn't have any skill allowing him to talk to the monsters, somehow Tom could tell what was going on through the lizard's head. 

Because the thought process of all the predators was roughly the same. As long as one understood its quirks, one could adapt that natural killing instinct to match how the other party would act out. 

'The normal lizards usually just wait for their attacks to fester. With how dirty their mouths are, that filth act like a pretty potent poison,' Tom thought, recalling some tidbits of information that he once found out while surfing through the net. 

And right now, the lizard didn't seem that keen to attack again. Rather than that, it rested down as if waiting for Tom to just keel over. 

'It didn't bite me or anything like that... Is it waiting for my injuries to act up?' he asked himself, trying to calmly analyze the situation. 

'Well, those are quite painful, I admit,' Tom said to himself before raising his head. For a moment, he stared down the lizard's red eyes as if throwing a challenge its way. And then, despite how painful it was, Tom rose back to his legs. 

In an instant, the lizard started paying attention again.

Tom took a moment to stabilize himself at his position. Then, once his legs gave him firm support, he readied up his spear.

The lizard was Tom's opponent. There was no doubt about it. But in this short moment, the two managed to understand each other. And with respect for a fellow predator on the brink of their life, the lizard charged once again. 

It had at least the dignity to spare his opponent a prolonged and painful death. 

'That's what I waited for,' Tom was barely able to keep his consciousness. With all the injuries hitting him harder than expected, acting as if he was getting weak was actually getting to his mind. 

"COME!" Tom shouted right as he forced his body into one last fit. One last struggle. And with the tiny bit of energy he still had, he changed the position of his spear by a tiny little bit.

The lizard was agile. It could turn almost in place. It could kill its speed way faster than Tom initially anticipated. 

And that's why he allowed it to charge at him so many times. That's why he held back from pushing forth with his plan until he was absolutely certain about the scope of the lizard's capabilities. 

He shouted when the lizard was just three meters away. By the time he managed to raise his entire spear, only a meter was left. 

The lizard attempted to ward off the attack. It noticed the danger and lowered its eyelids just as the tip of the spear was about to penetrate into its eye. 

But it was already too late. Its eyelid, while made of scales as well, wasn't resilient enough to withstand the sharpness of Tom's spear combined with the lizard's own speed. 

Just like before, the lizard stopped in its tracks after only a few meters. Carried from his initial spot by the lizard charge's momentum, Tom could only breathe heavily while holding on to the back of the spear's handle. 

Because the rest of the weapon was pushed deep inside the monster's massive body. 

For a moment, Tom's heart continued to beat hard, as if he couldn't believe what he just did. 

"Are you okay?!" Claudia came out rushing from beyond the corner. She froze for a moment when she saw the bloody scene, only to shake her head and lunge towards Tom. 

"Where? Where were you hit?" she panicked a bit, taking Tom's unresponsiveness for the sign of his potential injuries. 

"Look," Tom didn't mind the girl at all, raising his hand towards the wall with stones. "I was right."