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A blow hit like a semi obliterating a white-tailed deer on a freeway. Blood spewed out of my mouth as I tried and failed to shore up my defenses. Even as my head rattled, I did damage control. Using an enhancement technique and the one defensive technique I saw a naga do at the same time was beyond difficult. I didn't know how much the world spirit helped until I juggled two techniques. Strengthening my body wouldn't be enough for this fight; I needed to up my defense, too, if I wanted to get out of it alive. Unfortunately, I sacrificed my skating technique to survive and fell back to an older model speed technique. My head bent to the side as I crashed through rooms, dolls, and furniture.

It was such a shame I knew someone who would love to redo all these old antic pieces. There was probably a market for them, too, now that people were settling in with the system and the economy reset. Maybe if I had been a little more patient, I could have bought the spirit cores I needed. But it was a race to the top, not a jog.

My nails dug through the wooden floor, ripping out streaks of wood as I stopped from the blow. That hit had been stronger than the previous ones. I wiped some blood from my lip and spat on the floor. The zombie sure could take a hit and dish it out.

Unfortunately, with the change in my loadout, there wouldn't be any fancy twists to my speed technique. Skating with qi gave me many options, but my primitive speed technique was built to cross great distances. It was supposed to be used for traveling, and it was the foundation of my skating technique. The only reason I could fall back on it was thanks to its simplicity and drilling. Not only was the technique drilled into me, but I used it to travel for twelve hours a day on a trip. The technique was buried into me like the cutting cheese is to a Marathon line worker. I knew what knobs to twist and what order the cheese needed to be loaded. Pepper jack, cheddar, and mild, then turn the knob, or your legs will shoot off without you.

After so many hours into the process, I didn't have to think; it was instinctual. My other two techniques were a different story. The werewolf style enhancement barely worked with the naga defense technique, but keeping those two techniques working together was like answering phones and texting; it could be done, but both were sloppy. It took time to get good in both fields. So, I pooled what qi I could and dashed forward.

The furniture still splintered and popped around me as I took off. My realization and change of loadout happened in the blink of an eye. Before the dust settled, I zoomed back from where I came from. Dolls fell apart as I returned, snatching up their mid or low cores as I moved. Broken bits of wood bounced off my chest, dust blasted me in the face, and the holes I made were still ripping apart. Then I slowed down to a combat-level speed.

I threw a punch backed by my enhanced strength and defense. This time when my blow struck, my bones didn't rattle. Instead of withdrawing my fist for a second blow, I let my punch transfer its power and watched the zombie's chest ripple. Green flesh shook like a sea under a hurricane; bones ripped through the flesh and exploded into shards. But like the falling of the ocean, the flesh fell back, and the bones already moved back into place.

The zombie returned a blow of his own, and I threw up my left and felt the floor cave in beneath my feet. I twisted, throwing off all the power I could, and pushed the zombie's guard high.

For a moment, the zombie's guard was too high to protect itself. So I sacrificed my enhancement technique and used flamethrower. But, unfortunately, using so much qi was too much and flamethrower at the level it could be deadly to this regenerating zombie was almost too much.

The fire swallowed my vision leaving the zombie as little more than a shadow in the flame. I held my flamethrower for a few seconds before releasing it. The furniture and dolls in the room caught fire, and I fell backward on my ass. The fire continued to rage around the zombie-like a regenerating torch.

Slowly I rose to my feet as the zombie fell to its knees and began to roll. I blinked and suddenly realized what the damn dungeon was trying to do. Worse, it somewhat worked; most of the fire had died down, only the boiling fats within the zombie's body continued to burn.

I threw all the spirit cores I had collected in my mouth and struggled to cultivate them all. Finally, my cultivation began to recover slowly. Then, unfortunately, I needed to drop enhancement to focus on cultivation. That brought me down to defense and speed. While that wasn't the worst power set to have, I couldn't duke it out with the zombie now.

My mind flew through scenario after scenario. All the zombie really had to do was grapple instead of a strike. My defense wouldn't mean shit if it decided to rip my arms off or snap my neck. Getting away was my top priority, but how was I going to do it. The second the big guy was up, I would need a hell of a lot of distance and time to recover. Ok, I clapped my hands and found a solution.

I could trap the zombie here for a while with the right seeds. I pulled a few seeds from my inventory, tossed them on the ground, and funneled all the qi I could spare into them. The rapidly great and wrapped around the burning zombie. Instead of shying away from the flames, these saplings eagerly wrapped around the zombie.

"Oaks of the ashen lands aren't just used to intense heat; they thrive in it." So I taunted as the roots wrapped around the zombie and invaded hits wounds.

Already they began to feed on the zombie's burnt flesh, and the flames continued to burn now that the zombie was restrained. Qi from the dungeon continued to heal the zombie even as my mighty oak bound the titanic zombie.

For a moment, I contemplated just running and saying forget all of this, but that wasn't me. Instead, I needed to save Molly, Kale, and Vraley from my fuck up. To that end, I did have a plan; it might not be a good one, but I had one all the same. I just needed to open the door to the basement and get ahold of a high-earth spirit core with enough speed that should be possible. Fortunately, I knew how fragile these rooms could be.

I busted through the nearest room and threw out my senses, searching for the keys. Finally, after going through twelve rooms and ripping the dolls apart inside for their core's, I found a key. Then I charged into another room, and the key glowed. I held up the item and found it glowed brighter in specific directions. A smile spread across my face. So the keys could be used to track each other down. That was actually a good dungeon design.

I fought my way through the bedrooms and kitchens and found the second and third keys. The fourth one was easy enough to find with all three in hand. All I had to do was follow the glow through a series of halls ending in a ballroom. Unfortunately, I wasn't the first one here despite my incredible speed.

The bodies of monster girls were piled into the side of the room, their throats slashed open, and their blood drained. An overwhelming feeling of despair blasted down my neck like the frigid breath of death itself. The dungeon's qi withdrew from this person as if it was scared to touch her. If not for the blood and feelings of doom pressing down on me, I could believe I was staring at a girl enjoying a drink. She lounged in an easy chair dressed in a black dress, twirling one of her blonde German pigtails. Without the black dress and the bodies of monstergirls piled around her, I would have thought she was a girl on her way to October fest. But, instead of drinking blood from a classy wine glass, she held a massive tankard.

She smiled and upturned her tankard, slurping down its contents without a care in the world. This vampire exposed her neck to me without fear. That said something in itself that I wasn't ready to deal with. Despite my initial impression of this world, it was filled with monsters much stronger than me, and I still needed to jump through quite a few hoops to catch up.