Second Floor (2)
In the next room, he was greeted by the sight of one goblin holding a stone in his hand.
It seemed like this was the armed mob on this floor. According to the forum, they would either attack you with it in close combat, dealing blunt damage, or throw it at you. Either way, it wasn't hard to handle them, since their attack pattern didn't change much as long as you keep an eye out for a rock throw.
Ivan's plan was to speedily close the distance and then use his knife to kill the goblin as fast as possible. This way he wouldn't have to worry about the rock that much.
He curled his toes, collecting all his power for one explosive outbreak, and then rushed forward.
The goblin had just barely managed to lift his arm, when the knife already entered his forehead, leaving it no time to do anything.
"Wow, this went well.", Ivan said to himself while staring at the space the goblin had just occupied. He hadn't expected to be able to finish the goblin before it could even react. "Maybe I should use this tactic more often. Now let's see what it dropped."
He happily picked up the drop of the goblin only to be disappointed by its description.
[[ Item: Rock
Grade: 1F
A rock used by some goblins for hunting
]]
The description made it appear extremely useless, but Ivan had his doubts. Until now everything that had dropped in the dungeon had some use or another. So he expected this rock to also have a use. It could just be that he wasn't able to see its use currently. Maybe if he analyzed it more carefully back home, he would find something out. After all the NAT should be a great tool to do an in-depth analysis of something like a rock.
After storing away the rock, he then continued on with his exploration of the second floor. It was a surprisingly uneventful exploration. With his knife and his experience, he was able to overcome all the groups relatively easily. And it only got easier with each group he killed, as his experience increased drastically.
A low initial experience in fighting would definitely result in a large amount of experience gain during life and death battles. That was, as long as one was able to survive and come out as the winner.
There was only a small hiccup in the fifth room when he ran out of energy. Luckily this only happened after he had already killed the goblins in the room. Sadly his energy bars weren't enough for him to regain his energy, leaving him no choice but to once again eat the slimy goblin steak.
Although the effect of eating it was great, the texture and taste weren't. Maybe it could be processed to taste better but in its raw form, it was outright disgusting.
But in order to advance and finish the floor, he had to bit the bullet and eat this piece of slimy flesh, trying to ignore everything about it.
Luckily he was finally done with the floor after killing the last goblin in the tenth room. Compared to what he had read on the forum, he seemed to have gotten a long version of the floor. But that was great news to him. Since the first clear always resulted in more drops than the successive ones, it was of great benefit if the first run was a long one, since more mobs meant more potential loot.
Thus when he started to go through his loot after finishing the floor and before leaving he felt happy.
Just the rocks already counted five, while there were also four goblin steaks and even two goblin leather. Now he only needed to get some more metal and he would be able to make two knives, that he could then sell.
Besides the stuff directly dropped by the goblins, he had also found some other stuff. Basically, the goblins would drop what could be on them, while the environment could hide some other loot, such as pills or EC.
All in all, he had found two Energy Pill and 20 EC. Not only that, but he also had found one Material Pill.
[[Item: Material Pill
Grade: 1F
A form of nanite improvement material in the form of a pill. It can be swallowed to be absorbed and be used to improve nanites.
]]
He didn't hesitate even one second to swallow the pills, improving his nanite suite.
[[Nanite-Suite Upgrades
Current: Stage 1 F "Primitive"
Energy: 3/100
Material: 1/100
]]
This was the result after taking the pills. Although the change seemed insignificant, Ivan knew that each piece changed things. The 3/100 didn't mean that he was 3 steps out of 100 for an upgrade, but that he had 3 points in energy out of 100 possible ones before he needed to upgrade the stage of the suite.
Ivan could also feel the change the pills induced in his body, he felt as if he had more energy to use. Although the energy of the nanite-suite wasn't directly stored in his cells, he could still feel it.
Having taken care of the loot he used the portal to get back to his room. It wasn't possible to stay inside the dungeon for long after you had cleaned up all the mobs.
Thanks to the Energy Pills, he still felt like he had a lot of energy left and he decided to take a closer look at the rocks.
He pulled out the NAT and inserted the rocks.
Instantly a prompt popped up.
[[ Found unidentified raw material. Do you want to scan it?]]
Of course, Ivan accepted and soon some details concerning the rocks appeared in his view.
[[Scan: Rock
Base Material: 1/2 Iron Ingot
Special Material: 1 Iron Essence
Rest Material: Manifested Energy
Remark: Two rocks can be used for automatic extraction of 1 Iron Ingot and 2 Iron Essence, or one Iron Essence can be extracted from a single rock. After extraction the rocks will disappear, leaving nothing behind.
]]
"Great", Ivan couldn't help but exclaim. Although the forums had described the rocks as useless, this didn't seem to be quite the case. At least his NAT seemed to be able to extract raw materials from it. And although he didn't know what Iron Essence was, the Iron Ingot alone would allow him to craft two more knives, knives that he would be able to sell.
Curious and excited he put a second rock inside the NAT and pressed the newly appeared option of "Extract raw materials".
He could feel some energy flowing into the NAT but thanks to the two Energy Pill it didn't seem as draining as before.
Soon the process had finished, leaving him with a shiny new ingot as well as two small pills of some kind of unknown substance. The pills should be the Iron Essence mentioned in the scan.
Curious he tried to find out more about one pill and a window popped up.
[[Exotic: Iron Essence
Grade: 1E
A concentrated version of iron, which seems to contain the essence of the metal. It can be infused into iron-based materials to improve them.
]]
The description of the item wasn't long but it gave him all the information he needed to understand it. Luckily it also came with the information on how to use it, which were directly loaded into his mind.
Astonishingly, the Iron Essence also had a higher rarity rating than the things he had seen before. According to the System, the grade of an item consisted of its level and its rarity. The level had a large impact on its usefulness but also its requirements. For example, he could make use of level 1 materials, but he didn't have the energy to make use of level 2 materials yet.
The rarity on the other hand didn't impact the requirements but only how rare it was. Generally, the rarer something was, the better it was.
Ivan's mind didn't stay on the topic of the grade for long. He was much more interested in trying out this exotic material. It was something completely different from the materials known on terra. While the dungeons were more like a fantasy thing, this was something he could touch, something he could work with. In some way, it seemed more real and interesting.
Following his urge, he pulled out the knife he was currently using. First, he took a look at it, so he would be able to better compare it later.
[[ Weapon: Basic Knife
Grade: 1F
Materials: [ Blade: Iron ], [ Hilt: Goblin Leather ]
Description: A Basic Knife made with simple materials. Nothing special but still extremely useful for beginners.
]]
He then put the pill against the blade of the knife and focused his mind on the pill. It was a weird feeling as if he somehow used a formerly missing, yet always present part of his body. As soon as he made contact energy gushed out of him and he nearly collapsed.
"Damn. The System didn't mention that it would cost this much energy.", he cursed while panting heavily.