Dungeon Menagerie 23 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRei

Dungeon Menagerie

Chapter 23

-VB-

Vanessa looked down at her weapons. 

She really got used to be an adventurer, but more than that, she found herself alarmed at the rate she was growing. 

Oh, she knew that it had to be partly caused by the Celestial Menagerie’s presence in her soul(?). Hell, it was probably most of it! 

But this also meant, just as Athena told her, she needed to get better with her skills just as quickly, but unlike with her stats, her skills needed to improve as well. 

Unlucky for her, she didn’t get any power from her friends or from the Menagerie itself that help to boost her skill levels. She knew that there were skills out there that did do that, though. 

‘... I think I’ll just be happy that I have friends I know I can trust,’ she thought as she set her spears down and picked up the Justitia sword. She needed to improve on her swordplay the most out of her skills. Her spearmanship was “acceptable” to a warrior goddess, which was probably good. But Athena cringed whenever she saw her using her sword without relying on Justitia Sword’s thrice-striking ability. 

She needed to improve, and outside of sparring with other adventurers, the best way for her to improve herself was to go down to the Dungeon and fight while holding herself back.

And that’s exactly what she was doing. 

Vanessa dropped all of her spears for Chauky to keep and turned toward the mass of monsters that had come after her. 

Even though her sword was longer than her legs and wider than her body, she spun it around effortlessly. 

Without even an iota of thought, she jumped forward. 

The first monster was an orc. It roared as it swung a broken tree trunk at her, but she lightly stepped on the ground and changed her trajectory. The orc slammed down but missed her completely. Vanessa ignored the light tremble from the crashing tree trunk as she felt the wind buffeting her momentary from the passing weapon. Instead, she struck at the orc’s wrist with the edge of the blade. 

She whirled around with the flow of her own attack, and watched only briefly as the blade slid through the orc’s wrist more smoothly than hot knife did with butter, and continued on as brought it around. 

In one (hopefully) graceful motion, she severed its wrist and then struck where its neck met its shoulder. 

The blade sunk into its flesh, slowed down, and continued to slice through it all.

She spun around almost as if she was a top, continuing to spin with her own attack as her blade cut through the orc from shoulder to hip.

Then she violently brought herself to a stop and struck again, but going the exact opposite direction, if at a different angle. 

The Justitia Sword severed the orc from hip to hip even before its top half started to fall down.

But she didn’t stop to admire her new strength, precision, and clean cut. She struck her next target, a bad bat that had tried to ambush her from above the instant she set her sights on the orc. 

Vanessa let the sword flow as if it was a gracefully thin longsword and not the butchering anime broadsword that it was. 

But her sword was light. 

And so was her movement. 

She went low, dodging an attack that would have pierced her skin, spun at the same time, and then struck at the end of the spin.

As the dead orc’s head finally hit the ground, the bat spun away with one of its wings listlessly flinging away from the force of the cut and the wind blowing from Justitia’s passing. 

And that’s when the rest of the monsters began to rush her. 

It’s been only three seconds since she took up her sword and went on the attack.

‘Not good enough,’ she thought to herself as she let out an explosive sigh and then inhaled a sharp gasp of air before plunging back into the thick of fighting. 

She lashed out with her sword, jumped over a charging needle rabbit, spun like a saw as she found herself surrounded after landing, and then pounded a bad bat into the ground with the flat of her sword before bisecting a would-be ambusher needle rabbit. 

By the time she was done, she had a bunch of cuts all over her armor and herself, a small mound of dead monsters, and a clapping chorus of her monster-friends. 

Chauky did his best to clap with its little legs, but he only made it sound like skittering of insects instead of something more hearty. She still took the intent behind his attempt to heart. 

The entire fight took her less than three minutes.

The post-battle magic stone and material harvest took four hours. 

The story of her life as an adventurer.