Transmigrate to another world

Before I reach the room, I see two rat men in the main tunnel, they also see me at the same time. They rush at me recklessly and I just stand and wait for them, while the faster of the two reaches me and extends his claws, I calmly evade his attack and brandish my sword. As the rat man's head arches in the air, I take two steps forward and slash the second one as he watches the flying head.

- Killing the rat men 3/30

⟨⟨-DING-⟩⟩⟩

- Congratulations, the Sword Fundamentals skill has advanced to level 4!

√ Sword Fundamentals

√ Level 4

- Strength +4.

- You do 20% extra damage with swords.

I stood there for a minute, listening and watching for more enemies to attack. When no more appeared, I quickly opened the chests of the two rat men to retrieve their cores.

- You have absorbed the core of the Lesser Beast. HP +5 MP +5

- You have absorbed the core of the Lesser Beast. HP +5 MP +5

After absorbing the cores, I pick up the two corpses, drag them out and throw them into the trash pile. I then return to the sewers to continue exploring and hunting. When I reach the room where I found Ruby, I take my time and carefully search the room, but find no illusions or anything else to indicate the location of the forge.

-I guess I'll have to wait until I can ask Ruby.

I leave the room and turn left to follow the main passage. After about a dozen meters, I come to another tunnel on the left that is lit by a soft glow from within. I slowly descend down the three-meter tunnel and it opens into a large cavern that has a glowing ceiling.

The entire cavern, except for a path down the middle, is covered with mushrooms of various types and sizes. The glowing ceiling makes the cavern as dark as twilight, not dark enough to use my dark eyesight, but too dark to see well with normal vision. So I am extremely cautious as I follow the path into the cavern, the path winds back and forth between the mushrooms, but generally heads north.

The cavern itself is about forty feet wide and over a hundred feet long. It takes me a few minutes to follow the path before I see anything but mushrooms. About eighty feet from the cavern, the path splits: one path continues north along the cavern and the other path goes straight up the cavern wall.

I decide to go straight ahead first, I want to see what is in the cavern before checking the other path. As I continue down the path I start to hear the sound of running water and about thirty feet from where the path splits I see more rat men.

There are four of them this time, three look unarmed and are gathering mushrooms, the fourth has a sword sheathed on his back and looks a little bigger than the others.

I draw my sword, but the rat man hears it and turns to face me as he draws his own sword. The other three stop gathering and look around. As soon as the rat man sees me, he attacks me. Again I wait for him to come at me and, as he brandishes his sword, I raise my shield to face him. When the sword meets my shield, I thrust my sword into the rat man's stomach.

"BLOW BLOW" "STAB".

⟨⟨-DING-⟩⟩⟩

- Congratulations, the Basic Shield skill has advanced to level 3!

√ Shield basics.

√ Level 3

- Strength +3 Resistance +3

- You gain Defense +3 when you use a shield.

"DIZ" "DIZ"

- Congratulations, you've acquired a new skill!

- For having Endurance greater than 50 you'll get the Superior Endurance skill!

√ Superior Endurance

- Base HP increases from 100 to 250.

I swing my sword to the side and disembowel the rat man, then move to the side and drop him. As I pass by the rat man, I hit him in the neck with a backhand to make sure he won't attack it and then move towards the other three.

- Kill the rat men 4/30

The three unarmed rat men launch themselves at me. I elude the first one, brandish my sword against the second and slash with the shield at the third. I then turn and slash the first one as he heads towards me.

- Kill the rat men 30/7

I make a slow turn to check for other enemies before kneeling down and retrieving the three beast cores from the unarmed rat men.

- You have absorbed the core of the Lesser Beast. HP +5 MP +5

- You have absorbed the core of the Lesser Beast. HP +5 MP +5

- You have absorbed the core of the Lesser Beast. HP +5 MP +5

I then move on to the larger one I killed first and remove its core.

"ITEM"

√ Beast Core

- Quality: Inferior

Would you like to absorb it? Y/N.

"Yes."

- You have absorbed the Inferior Beast core. HP +20 MP +20 Strength+2 Agility +2 Stamina+2 Resistance+2

I then clean and sheathe my sword before picking up the rat man's sword to take a look at it.

"MAGIC ITEM."

√ Imperial knight's sword.

- Hit +3 Damage +5

- Durability: 96/100

"What a nice looking sword! I wonder how a rat man got it".

Anyway, this will be my main weapon from now on and I'll keep the other one as a backup. I pull the scabbard off the body and tie it to my waist, then sheathe my new sword. I now have two swords, a shield, a mace and the Black Razor.

I'm getting a little heavy handed, but I'm of the opinion that it's best to be prepared. I carry the corpses to the trash heap two at a time before returning to explore the cavern.

About twenty feet further on, the path ends next to a river, the river is about ten feet wide and seems to be flowing pretty fast. I see lots of fish in the water and that reminds me that I am hungry. The river cuts through the last section of the cavern, I want to go look, but there is no bridge, which means I will have to jump over it.

The bank on this side is about a foot above the water, while the other side seems to be about three or four feet above, which means I'll have to cross ten feet while gaining a couple of feet of height. So, I back up a bit to gain momentum and jump as hard as I can. I realize very quickly that I have underestimated my body when my head grazes the ceiling which is twenty feet up.

I land about fifteen feet from the river bank, which puts me fairly close to the center of the area on this side of the river. The area is about thirty feet wide and thirty feet long, but narrows as it gets farther away from the river. I keep looking around and realize that it is quite defensible, maybe not as good as an illusory wall, but it will probably work as a new base.

After all, there's not much point in constantly going back to the well when all I have to do now is down here. After searching the area to make sure there's nothing hidden, I jump back across the river and head to where the path forks. I follow the new path to my left and return to the main tunnel, only through a different entrance.

Then I backtrack and follow the original path back to the first entrance and return to the shaft. I take my spear, some firewood and a couple of torches and carry it all back to the cavern and across the river. I leave the wood on the ground and then go back to scout the area by torchlight to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Then I take the spear and go fishing for my dinner, after catching a fish.

A couple of fish. I pick the edible mushrooms I recognize and cook me one.

Decent meal. Once I finish eating, I make several more trips back and forth.

Onward hauling the stuff I've collected to the new base.

I don't plan to finish moving it all right now, mainly because of

I've collected the ore, but I want to get at least half of it done before....

Meditate for my usual six hours.