Chapter 11 - Progression

I had arrived at the 33rd floor.

This time, it was in the shape of an old stone temple. It reminded me of those pictures of the Aztec ruins, but since I started from the inside, I couldn't tell for sure.

The layout itself wasn't too different from most other floors. But the monsters were a different story.

As I entered the second passageway, my [Sense Presence] skill went off, alerting me to a monster, but I couldn't tell where it was. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary either. Even [Spirit Perception] and [Mana Perception] wasn't showing me anything despite sensing something in this section of the hall.

I warily passed through the hall, careful about whatever make my skill go off. It was the first time since I got the skill that I couldn't pinpoint where the enemy was using it. Halfway to the next turn, a sharp pain came from my left leg.

From the corner of my eye, I could see a pitch black spike receding from my leg and merging with a black puddle-like substance.

I fired off an ice lance at the puddle. It swiftly moved to the side, but wasn't fast enough and the ice tore into the substance, causing it to shudder before growing still. The feeling of it's presence had disappeared entirely.

The sight of this black puddle unnerved me. I hadn't noticed it at all despite carefully examining the entire hall.

Picking it up, it felt more like a piece of soft rubber than a liquid. At most a thick gel.

It tasted like black liquorice.

Eating this black thing's essence didn't heal my wound, but since I had gotten the [Regeneration] skill from the trolls on the 29th floor, my wound soon closed up on it's own. The trolls also gave me another rank in [Exceptional Vitality].

All the other monsters on this floor was similar. A white transparent ghost that defeated even my [Spirit Perception], a chameleon that blended with the walls perfectly, even a killer jack-in-the-box that couldn't be detected at all by my [Sense Presence] skill.

This floor was one of the most difficult I had encountered so far. The constant ambushes were tough on my nerves, and oftentimes I ended up just barraging the entire area with area-of-effect spells to deal with them whenever I detected something or noticed some telltale sign that a monster was waiting for me. It still didn't stop the jack-in-the-box monsters if they didn't show up with other monsters, since it was a waste of MP to fire off AOE spells into empty rooms.

Fortunately, at least those monsters showed themselves right before attacking, so I had a split second to avoid getting hurt. Not like it was reliable, but it was enough to avoid getting completely paranoid about this floor.

When all was said and done, I had ended up farming up the skills here. They weren't too compatible with my current fighting style of magic plus quick melee, but the utility outside of combat made them a worthy investment.

[Sneaking] made me blend in with the surroundings and silenced any noise I made. As the ranks went up, the effectiveness rose. At rank 6, I blended in with shadows to the point where I couldn't see my own body parts, and I didn't make any sounds while running on the stone floors. It was less effective in well lit areas though. I had the feeling that this worked even on [Spirit Perception].

[Suppress Presence] did as it was called. It suppressed my presence, making me more difficult to detect accurately with [Sense Presence]. It didn't stop detection entirely, but it did make it difficult to determine my exact location, depending on the opponent's [Sense Presence] rank.

[Suppress Aura] contained my magical aura and reduced the natural bleed-out. It seemed like this was what [Mana Perception] detected when I used it to find monsters. I could even vary the degree I suppressed my aura.

All three I farmed up to rank 6, and testing their effects on other floors was particularly fun, but made the encounters too easy, so I refrained from relying on them too much.

Floor 47 had only one notable thing about it. Rather, there was two, but they were related.

All the monsters were spiders. That fact meant that they all dropped bolts of spider silk.

Finally, after all this time, I had the base material to make clothes that wouldn't weigh me down if I were to cover myself properly.

The second I felt I gathered enough, I had rushed back and started to weave some simple underwear to get rid of this itchy fur I'd been using this entire time.

I made some rudimentary tools and got to work. Bottomless, since I couldn't stand the idea of putting up with the itchiness when I was so close to having better clothes.

But soon I found out that weaving was a hell of a lot more work than I expected. Keeping everything together while I threaded a single thread back and forth, I probably spent hours just making a single pair of panties, and simply gave up making any spares or a top, let alone an actual wardrobe.

I understood then just how important proper tools were, though I was happy to have half-decent underwear. They were a bit unshapely, but the smoothness and softness of the silk made them incomparably better than my old pair.

Someday I needed to make a loom to process this silk. In the meantime, I regularly returned to floor 47 to stockpile silk.

As a side, I had finally managed to fully suppress my urge to feed any time I had killed a monster. Just barely in time as well, as farming spider silk would've broken me mentally if I couldn't stop myself from feeding after every kill.

The 54th floor was pretty unusual in some ways.

The stone tiles and bricks alternated between black and white.

There were braziers lining the walls alternating between red and blue flames.

There were two nearly identical, yet opposing monsters charging at me from in front.

Both monsters wore heavy plate armour that obscured their entire bodies, but one was pitch black and the other pearl white. The black knight wielded a large two-handed sword, and there were horns sticking out of it's helmet along with large bat wings from it's back. The white knight wielded a sword and shield and had white eagle wings growing out of it's back. Both were huge, almost twice as tall as me and at least triple my width.

It was like a pair of heavenly and hellish knights suddenly ceased their war and teamed up to take down an interloper.

Technically I was an intruder and they were allies to each other, but the surreal scene made me wonder what was supposed to be the theme here.

The white knight charged ahead and tried to bash me with it's shield. I froze the ground with magic and jumped over the shield to avoid whatever followup the knight intended.

The black knight, right behind, saw me sail over the white one and swung it's sword at me.

Unable to evade in midair, I activated my [Spirit Form], letting the black sword slide through my body mostly unimpeded. But my skill wasn't high rank enough for my spirit form to be complete, causing a light gash across my body. I gritted my teeth from the pain, but landed on my feet.

The white knight slipped on the ice and fell, but the black knight turned around to face me, but didn't charge. Instead, it slowly circled where I landed with it's weapon ready. I wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but I tried moving from the spot I was at. The knight turned to face me, but didn't do anything else.

I closed the distance between myself and the black monster, but it didn't react beyond keeping it's gaze on me.

As an experiment, I thrust out a hand and materialized it just before it connected with the knight's armour. Only then did it react, trying to dodge my strike, but it was too slow and I managed to rake it's armour.

Sparks flew as my claws gouged holes in the hard metal. The scent of blood wafted from the point I struck, but it was weak. From the tear in the armour, I could see a few light scratches on black scales.

I undid the materializing immediately and hopped back.

The knights didn't do anything beyond remaking their stance and watching me.

I had confirmed that they most likely couldn't see me, but they could sense my presence. If I combined [Spirit Form] with [Suppress Aura] or [Suppress Presence], I'd be able to fool the knights entirely and strike at them without them detecting me.

But if I did that, I wouldn't get much practical experience along with my XP and new skills. Even more importantly, it wouldn't be as fun.

I moved to a decent distance before cutting off [Spirit Form]. As if as one, the knights charged at me again. But this time the black knight was in front.

I rose a knee high stone wall in front of the white knight and charged at the black one. The white one crashed into the wall, tripping once again as blackie swung it's overcompensation known as a sword.

Without slowing down, I ducked down and to the side, cleanly avoiding the strike before I raked my claws across the back of it's knee, tearing deeply into the flesh under the armour. This time the scent of blood grew strong in the air.

Not missing a beat, I continued towards whitie who was still in the middle of rising up from it's repeated display of forced clumsiness.

I hopped over it lightly and landed on it's back. In the perfect position, I stabbed my claws in between the gap of heavy armour of it's chest plate and helmet. I could feel the chain mail valiantly but futilely struggle against my sharp talons. On the other hand, the gorget it was wearing managed to resist me, only allowing three claws to reach in and tear out the monster's throat.

The monster collapsed while spasming as I hopped off and faced the only remaining foe.

Seemingly angry that it's friend had died, the black knight charged at me once again, albeit with a severe limp.

With it's slowed movement, I fired off a stream of fire at blackie, broiling it inside of it's armour. It didn't manage to close the remaining distance before the walking pot roast lifelessly fell to the ground.

Now that both foes were down for the count, I ripped whitie's helmet off so I could enjoy the meal.

Under the armour, it seemed like the monster was actually some sort of humanoid reptile, with a mix of skin and golden scales and a face looked more like a scaled falcon, sharp beak and all.

I didn't notice it before, but it also had a tail, as did the black roast.

When I bit into whitie though, something unexpected happened. As I sucked its blood, rather than the usual sweet and savoury flavour of blood I had gotten used to, I got a hot, burning sensation that filled my mouth, as if I was drinking pure hot sauce.

Tears ran down my face as I let go and spat out the remaining blood from my mouth. The blood burned for some reason, and even after spitting it out, there was a tingling sensation left over, though the hotness quickly disappeared, unlike when drinking actual hot sauce.

The pain was pretty oppressive, but I wasn't sure why it had happened.

A quick look at my status revealed that I was missing a chunk of HP, but I had received damage, and not all of it had recovered yet. So with one eye on my status, I braced myself and took another bite of the fallen monster.

Immediately the moment the blood touched my fangs, the burning hotness returned, but I sucked it up anyways. Watching my status, I could see my HP slowly drain, point by point. I lost roughly five HP ever second of drinking, but I had thousands. From a survival standpoint, it wasn't a problem, but mentally it was devastating.

Something about this blood was poisonous to me, and the burning sensation was my body telling me just that.

But I needed to know. I needed to know if there was something I could gain from doing this.

If I could get skills from these guys while masochistically drinking their blood, then I was very interested in finding out what those were. It wasn't hard to imagine that almost no vampire would be willing to go through such an ordeal just to get a couple new skills.

Conversely, by being one of the only vampires with the skills gotten from these monsters, I would have a distinct advantage over others. I just hoped that this wasn't a waste. I can handle some cuts here and there, but this deliberate self-immolation play wasn't going down well with me.

When the white knight was fully drained, I rushed to blackie for a palette cleanser and to heal myself. When I ripped it's helmet off, I was greeted with a similar face to the white one, but with black scales.

Taste-wise, it reminded me a bit of roast chicken, while the white knight was like the most insane buffalo wings ever.

The theme of dark and light continued on this floor, with two more monsters showing up on top of these two.

They were the same reptilian race as the knights, but was equipped far differently.

The first was wearing thick all black robes reminiscent of a necromancer, and had a big gnarled stick in its hand. The other wore a white and gold outfit that reminded me of a bishop, without any crosses though.

They both relied heavily on spells, the black one on black coloured spells that looked like shadows directly leaping and attacking me, while the other fought with beams of light.

The dark projectiles weren't difficult to deal with, being slow, but on the occasion that they hit, they cut through me like butter.

The light beams on the other hand weren't just fast, since it was just light, but also insanely powerful. A glancing blow roasted my flesh like someone put a plasma torch to my skin.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the fear I had on my first day when I found out that I was weak to sunlight.

Rather, it really felt like the priest-like monster had weaponized sunlight against me.

Fighting these religious zealots was painful and frustrating, so I just gave up and took them down immediately with magic. Big fireballs, storms of wind blades, hail of icicles, or a barrage of flying stone spikes. Whatever I needed to get those bastards down before they cast anything.

Though all the pain and difficulty, I did get rewarded though.

The black monsters gave me [Dark Magic], and the white monsters gave me [Light Magic], both to rank 3.

[Dark Magic] was basically magic of the darkness element, whatever that was. On practical terms, it seemed like it specialized on the creation and manipulation of shadows. It even made those magical shadows take physical form and be used in combat, as I had experienced from the black robed monsters of this floor.

[Light Magic] conversely was of the light element. Basically it was magical sunlight, but at an intensity that could do damage to normal people, not just vampires like myself. When I tried it out and fired off a light ray, it turned my hand to ash. Even using [Light Magic] was seriously dangerous for me, but the fact that it was made it extremely valuable. Nobody would expect a vampire to use [Light Magic] if just using it would hurt them.

There was one more thing that made going through this floor worth it, outside of simply getting to floor 55.

That was, out from the boss chest, I got a new backpack.

Of course, the discovery first started with disappointment.

When I opened the chest, what came out was a doll shaped like a common white plush rabbit. The only difference that was immediately obvious was that it had a pair of straps attached to it's back and a mouth that could be opened.

Thinking that there might've been more to it since I could feel mana emanating from it, I opened it's mouth. What revealed itself was that there was a hole inside the mouth. So rather than just a plush toy with carrying straps, it was a backpack shaped like a plush toy.

I already had my faithful leather backpack, so I had no reason to switch, especially to something so small, but just in case, I looked inside it's gaping maw to see if there was anything there.

All I could see was endless black. I couldn't see the inner surface of the bag for some reason, so I tried reaching my arm inside to see if I could feel around.

Thinking about it, it was a stupid move, as I didn't know what would happen to my arm, but then again, I could just get it back using the regeneration skill or by drinking some blood. Most likely. Probably. There was precedent, but there was an exception to everything.

But when I reached inside the plush, I couldn't feel anything at all. Not any possibly hidden items, nor even the inner surface of the plush.

There was no way that was possible if it was a normal bag, but I had heard of bags where the inside didn't correspond with it's outside in many fictional series.

I returned to my home base to experiment.

The first thing I did after having a quick bite to eat and heal up then cleaning myself up was to gather a bunch of random junk I had no plans for, and drop them inside the bunny's throat. I kept putting things in one after the next, many of which were bigger than the soft and fluffy plush toy, yet it accepted it all.

I had quickly reached double, then triple the capacity of my usual bag, yet there was no indication that this magical bag had reached it's limits.

Once I had gotten tired of feeding it random stuff, I reached inside and started to pull it all out. The process was surprisingly simple. All I had to do was think about what I wanted while I reached in, and it would suddenly touch my fingers, letting me grab it. If I wasn't thinking of anything in particular, it would simply give me the last thing I put in.

Once it was empty, I put in a bunch of spare weapons and my blood and dirt stained character sheet and shouldered the bag. It was a bit small on me, and looked so cute that it was a bit embarrassing to wear, but it was too useful to not use.

I hoped that I could get another bag but with a more reasonable design in the future.

After I finished testing it's fitting and got used to it's shape and weight, I returned to my home to rest and reflect.

That last floor was particularly difficult due to my innate weakness of [Light Magic], forcing me to rely heavily on overwhelming firepower to eliminate the bishop monster before it could cast any spells. Otherwise, it would've been good for practice, but often, by killing one of the monsters right off the bat, it simply ruined their formation to the point that I couldn't get too much practice from the fights.

When I thought about it, I was seriously lucky the bishop monster wasn't smart enough to just create an omnidirectional ball of light.

I'd have probably died almost instantly if that happened, since most of my skin was still revealed, especially my head, not having finished making my first major piece of silk clothes. I swore to concentrate on that before going further into the dungeon.

The dread that came up from that realization made me panic a little.

I had gotten really lucky on that. If the monster had opened up with that the first time, I wouldn't have had the time to run or protect myself and would've died instantly.

In theory, all I had to do was to block direct light from touching my skin. My experience from the first day told me that indirect sunlight wasn't deadly, though it was a bit painful to my eyes.

I could've brought the risk down severely just by wearing clothes that properly covered my body.

All the materials needed to get that done was already available to me, making not wearing proper clothes pretty inexcusable at this point.

Rather, I had gotten way too used to going around half naked, since the dungeon constantly refused to give me clothes, and mostly only gave me heavy armour or weapons for equipment.

I had already made tons of furniture for my home already. A chair, table, fur rugs, some shelves, boxes and baskets, even a simple couch made from large blocks of wood with fur cushions filled with monster feathers. I had made rudimentary tools for making various things as well. I'd been wanting to start carrying blood with me as a snack, but the best I could do was make clay pots, which wouldn't survive wandering around the dungeon, it did serve well enough to leave me with a snack when I first come back from a new floor, even if the blood did taste stale.

But I was missing the most critical tool to make clothes: a loom.

No matter how much I wanted to make an outfit for myself, without a loom, it would take forever, and I'd lose my patience before I could make any decent progress. Even a simple, rudimentary, half-working loom would be enough to make a world of a difference.

But to make that, I needed more materials.

I went out and hunted treants on the 37th floor to gather wood. I didn't know how looms worked for sure, but I did know that they were generally large machines, so the small samples I had weren't nearly enough wood to make one yet.

For nails, I opted to make them from the iron ingots I got from the 11th floor. [Earth Magic] allowed me to work with metals, not just dirt and rocks I had found.

Once I was satisfied with the quantity, I returned and charred the end of a stick using fire magic and drew my plans on a spare piece of leather.

Looms basically held two sets of parallel threads apart, then swapped their positions quickly while securing the interlaced thread. Working with that idea, I sketched out several drafts before I was satisfied with the results, then started my work.

Over the next long while, I slowly built my loom, taking regular breaks to eat and relax, as well as entertain myself by grinding up some of my skills. Building the loom was a painstaking process, involving a significant amount of trial and error.

Piece by piece, I put it together, tested the mechanisms, tore it down and rebuilt parts of it before putting it together again.

Despite having seen a bunch of pictures of looms from historical shows and documentaries, actually getting a working prototype ended up taking me several days of work.

At least, I thought that's how long it took me. I still had no way to accurately measure time, so it might've been significantly less or more than that, especially after taking all the breaks I took into consideration.

Once that was done, and I successfully produced a small, rough handkerchief, I got to work on a full-sized loom.

With my prototype to work off of, this time it took significantly less time to make, despite being several times larger.

After a few more rest cycles, it was complete, and I immediately started work on making my clothes...then took a break to eat and release my pent up stress.

Building the loom wasn't so bad once I had a decent design, but actually using it was a pain. Just getting a few centimetres of cloth took so long, I couldn't imagine how many hours I would be working on just making a single set of clothes.

Again, just like when making my loom prototype, I worked on my silk cloth while taking regular breaks for food or entertainment.

I couldn't help but think I spent more time fighting monsters than actually working on my clothes, but it couldn't be helped. It was tedious, boring work and I could hardly get myself motivated to actually put in serious hours into it.

If it wasn't insurance in case I had to fight under sunlight or unavoidable [Light Magic], I wouldn't have even started on this work.

Sewing was one thing, but making the cloth itself was some of the worst work I've ever done...

(Aside from debugging)

I've yet to find anything to take that cake, now that I thought about it.

It was hardly any wonder that such a moral sucking task was what brought about my end.

When I was finished, I took my long piece of silk and stuffed it into a quickly shaped and fired a pot made from the clay gotten from one of the golems on the fourth floor and filled with black ink from a weaver kobald from the 11th floor.

After letting it thoroughly soak, I hung the wet silk across a wooden beam suspended between a pair of stands made from three wooden poles tied together near the end. Underneath, I lay some wolf hides from the first floor to catch the drip. I didn't know if stains and other damage would automatically disappear or what, but I didn't want to take that risk.

While I waited for the cloth to dry, I started work on a template for my new outfit. I didn't want to start cutting it without knowing for sure that it would work.

For my template, there were quite a few things I was interested in trying, but quickly weeded out any that were overly difficult, had little leeway, or just plain wasn't practical.

I needed something that could cover my entire body if needed, but was easy to move in. Frankly speaking, there were only two types of outfits that really covered both. The first was a close fitting full body jumpsuit. If I combined it with some sort of head wear along with the gloves and boots I already had, it would work, but it didn't seem very easy to make, and if I made a mistake, it could ruin the entire thing.

The alternative were big, flowing robes. If I made them overlap properly, then there was very little chance of them exposing any of my skin, yet the very nature of it wouldn't inhibit my movements since the silk was so light.

I sighed at the cliche conclusion I had reached, but since I didn't have the knowledge to make good clothes, the skills I had could only do so much. It wasn't worth the risk of having to start all over because I made my target higher than it had to be.

Thus, I started work on my prototype. While it was thick, heavy, and stiff, I ended up using the wolf leather like for my first coat for it.

Stitching the hides together, I started work on my new prototype. But like last time, it was too stiff to get an accurate measure, so I tried soaking it in the fountain while working it with my fingers. To my surprise, after only a few minutes of work, the leather had become incredibly soft and easy to work with.

Wasting no time, I stripped down to avoid letting my clothes get wet and wrapped the wet leather around my body, occasionally soaking the leather again to make it soft and pliable again, testing out various ways to wear the leather and trimming the excess as I slowly brought it to it's final form.

Eventually, I came up with a template I was satisfied with.

Using that template, I lay it on top of the now dry silk and used my claws to cut the cloth to shape, then using a piece of bone shaped into a needle, I stitched the black silk together to create it's final form.

What resulted was a black robe that wrapped around my body loosely down to my feet, slightly dragging on the ground. The sleeves were wide and loose, and extended well beyond my fingers in case I needed to cover them as well. On the top was an oversized hood that I could easily use to cover my entire face if I wanted to.

But I wasn't quite happy yet. Since I made it so loose and extra long, it dragged and got in the way all over the place.

As a final touch, I added belt hoops around the waist and wrists, and made belts for each out of leftover strips of silk. With everything bound in place, the robes no longer dragged nor obscured my hands. The fact that it was tightly bound around my waist was a little unfamiliar to me, but I had to admit that wearing it like that kept things much more secure than wearing the belt around my hips like a man. The minor choice made based on fashion ended up being a good decision.

I was happy with my robes, but it turned out that despite the fact that it was triple layered and incredibly baggy, there was actually some spare material left. I originally made a lot with the presumption that there'd be some waste and the thin silk would have to be layered to make sure that no sunlight could get through, but I didn't expect to be able to make it three layers until I started to cut the cloth from the template.

And even then, I had some extra.

Not wanting to let the excess go to waste, I worked on some scrap leather and made some new templates and used them to cut out some extra clothes for myself.

There obviously wasn't anywhere near enough for another robe, but I did have enough for smaller articles. The first was a tank top. I didn't have enough to make a proper tee shirt, or even enough to cover my abdomen, but it was enough to cover my chest if I gave up on covering my shoulders.

It was better than only having a tube top, though my leather tube top would be needed while I fought or ran around, I no longer had to go topless while I relaxed or did minor things in my home.

The second was a new pair of panties. With all the experience I gained from making all these new clothes, I was able to refine my panties from before. Putting them side by side was like night and day. The new one being night, since I was a vampire.

Putting them on, it fit much better and didn't look like an amateur had cobbled them together from an old, ragged shirt.

With everything put together, I tried moving around. It felt good, much more secure than my old outfit. I had forgotten nice the feeling of cloth was on my skin, though the fact that it was silk rather than polyester probably played a significant role.

I tried going out to an early floor to test things out, but I quickly discovered a problem: the hood easily blew back while I fought. Depending on how I moved, it could reveal my head. I should've known that something that flimsy wouldn't be enough. My head was especially important, since I could regenerate any other part of my body, but my brain was probably a weak point. It would be worth the effort to double up on covering it up.

With that thought, I made a hat. I might've had a hood already, but that hood could always be blown back at any time, especially during combat. The design I settled with was a simple newsboy cap with an oversized crown to make it possible to pull down to cover my head more thoroughly if needed. It was mostly made from defurred rabbit leather with a piece of bear leather used as the visor.

I also added a cord to the sweatband that attached to on one side using a blunted wolf fang as a button to secure the hat in place even more while I wore it. The cord wrapped behind my ears and was held taut under the base of my skull where it wouldn't get in the way of anything.

Finally, I dyed the whole thing black to match the rest of my outfit.

After a bit more testing and adjustments, I was satisfied with the results.

Proud of my new attire, I put it all together along with my new backpack and went on to the next floor with a skip in my step.

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A man in a white toga paced back and forth in a small office surrounded by pearl white walls, containing furniture and accessories of the same shade.

As he furiously scratched at his head and pulled at his hair with enough strength to go bald, he mumbled to himself.

"How. How could this have happened? Why did it happen?"

The man's face was full of panic and worry as he bore track marks into the speckless white floor.

"Not only did someone sneak in here, but they even triggered a reincarnation. How could security let this happen?"

Stopping for a moment, the man looked at the torn paper in his hands.

"Not only that, but there's hardly any evidence left. The trail's almost entirely cold, yet it couldn't have been more than a few months"

The man glanced at the crystal ball on the centre of his desk.

"Was it intentional? Was it an attack? Damnit, there just isn't enough information"

He looked back into his hands.

"All I know is that she's a vampire. Why did she have to become a vampire? Damnit"