Venerable Chapter 16: Chapter 16: Level 14 Monkey

Read chapter 16 of Venerable by Jade_White on NovelPedia.

"Mmm, mmm, mhnh..." Dustin was moving forward through the glowing tunnels of the dungeon while whistling his favorite song under his breath. The pale light from the cavern walls cast long shadows across the stone path. It had been around two hours since he regained his stamina. He had taken a solid rest, cooked the remaining fox meat from his storage, and eaten his fill. Once he felt completely recovered, he started walking again to explore the dungeon and clear the system's mandate. On his way deeper into the cavern, he encountered a few attacks by different monster species. Fortunately, almost all of them were below Level 10 and were not very hard to deal with. Dustin easily massacred them with quick strikes from his steel dagger. After that brief string of fights, his progress for clearing the dungeon reached twelve out of fifteen. Now, all he had to do was kill three more species over Level 7 to finally escape this place. While walking down a wide corridor, he opened the shop section. DING. The basic section of the shop appeared in front of him. He did not need anything from this section at the current moment since his stomach was already full from the fox meat. He swiped the screen to the right to open the Starter Shop. [ STARTER SHOP ] [ Basic Healing Potion ] [ Description: Can cure any basic injury quickly, but ineffective on any fatal injuries or poisons. ] [ Cost: 200 points ] [ Basic Poison ] [ Description: Can kill any lower-level species below Level 30 in just a few minutes to several hours. Effects may vary based on the species' stats. May be ineffective on anything higher. ] [ Cost: 500 points ] [ Normal Sword ] [ Description: A normal sword made of steel. No special effects or buffs. ] [ Cost: 150 points ] [ Ignis-Edge (Level 1) ] [ Description: A normal steel sword with fire-affinity mana added while forging. Gives a 5% boost to fire-type attacks. Also increases Agility by 3, Stamina by 2, and Endurance by 4. Weak against water and similar attacks. ] [ Cost: 560 points ] Dustin looked at the numbers and did the math in his head. He had earned 67 points for killing the evolved Level 11 monkey earlier. He still had 156 points left over from his previous balance. That gave him a total of 223 points. He could actually purchase the Basic Healing Potion right now. However, he did not have any major injuries. His arms and legs were slightly hurting from all the intense fighting he had done earlier, but spending 200 points on minor aches felt foolish. That was almost ninety percent of his total savings. Wasting a potion on muscle soreness did not seem wise to him at all. He preferred saving his hard-earned points to get a better weapon. The reasoning was pretty simple in his mind. Everyone loved cool items, especially when they came with stat boosts. If he saved up, he would not only get a cooler weapon but also receive a increase to his attributes. According to his gamer mindset, stat boosts were always worth spending a few hundred extra points. He thought carefully about what specific weapon he should buy when the time came. After some serious consideration, he decided to stick with a high-tier dagger. He had never used any real weapons in his entire. He had joined a martial arts class during his teenage years, but it was a traditional Asian style that mostly focused on hand-to-hand combat. Because of that, he did not know how to properly wield a sword, a bow, or a spear. His new class was Rogue, and the system had naturally granted him the ability to use daggers instinctively to some extent. After walking a bit further, he encountered a group of small, rat-like monsters. He quickly checked their levels using his system vision. It turned out that all of them were below Level 5. He just decided to ignore them. Killing them would not fill the dungeon requirements, and they would not even provide enough experience to matter. He had already killed several low-level monsters on his way here without seeing a single level-