But the Smith did hear it.

He steadied his stance, planting his feet firmly, and brought his shield up, protecting his upper body.

The sound was familiar.

A bat monster, the same size that he was used to, was fluttering its way towards him in the same erratic random pattern he was used to.

He wasn't used to bat monsters being on fire, however.

Its entire body was covered in flames, trailing through the sky behind it like a wake, and where the flames faded a heat haze remained for several seconds. But other than that, it was the same size and had the same behavior as other monsters. At first, James was unsure whether it was a new kind of monster, or if a regular bat monster had just caught fire down here.

When it got within striking range, James took a swing with his Terra Rosa War Hammer.

[Technique: Hammer Strike]

Crunch

Months ago, on the first floor, he had needed the speed boost of the [Rapid Blow] enchantment to land a hit on the agile bat monsters. By now, his technique was simply good enough to land a strike with tricky timing.

The flaming bat monster fell to the floor and continued combusting like a pile of oily rags. But the Smith was too wise and battle-experienced to stop there: he immediately brought down another hammer strike, and then another, until the the fire stopped, leaving a dead bat monster with dark, dark red fur and wings smoldering with embers.

With the flaming bat monster extinguished, he brought his shield back up and looked around again, scanning for monsters. None spotted. He pulled out his usual iron knife to cut out the monster's magic stone, which turned out to be red, and immediately noted the iron knife taking damage.

He would need to forge one of Red Iron, or perhaps Blue Iron with a weak frostbite enchantment.

The cavern was small, maybe fifty yards deep at most, where a distant cavern wall with a couple lava flows remained. Mindful of the pools and streams of molten rock around him, James surveyed the room, but there weren't any materials of note other than a decent number of veins of Red Iron Ore, all fully saturated with salamander essence.

Having made a full circuit, he picked his way though the center, weaving around boulders and a small lava pool, and arrived at the far wall, where there was a passage wide enough for three men to walk abreast, and twice as tall as James was. The tunnel was dimmer than the cavern, which had a decent amount of background light from the glowing lava and blazing mushrooms, so James proceeded slowly and cautiously, with his shield raised, paying attention to what he could hear.

He paused to take a moment to appreciate the improvements he had made to his armor design to make it quieter, then continued.

The tunnel was some twenty yards long and ended in a three-way T-shaped intersection.

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James stopped. Something felt wrong. He didn't like this.

Whichever way he went, he'd be putting his back to an unexplored part of the tunnel. And it would be easy for something to come and cut off his path of retreat to safety.

He retreated for a moment back to the small cavern and checked his equipment for heat damage. Proof of his forging and enchanting, everything was still in perfect condition. He was sweating and uncomfortable, but it was still in the realm of what his innate [Heat Resistance] skill could handle.

After some thought, the Smith returned to the intersection, and placed down four of his Red Iron warding stakes, creating a safe zone that included the intersection itself and several yards of each of the unexplored paths.

That done, he turned to the left for no particular reason and continued through the tunnel for some yards before coming to a side passage on his right.

He put down another four warding stakes, and continued on straight. He was slightly concerned, having only four more warding stakes left.

For another ten or so yards he continued until he reached a four-way intersection. He cautiously looked down each tunnel, first the right which was empty, and then the left where he saw a reddish brown lizard monster, the size of a large dog, clinging to the wall.

It spotted him and dashed forward, the only sound it made that of its claws skittering on the stone walls of the tunnel.

Almost on reflex, James swung his shield towards the lizard monster as he planted his feet, catching the monster's lunge. The beast was surprisingly heavy, nearly breaking the Smith's stance with its momentum. He hadn't taken a heavy tackle like that since the mole monsters on the first floor of the Dungeon.

He noticed a small tug on his mana as the [Reflect] enchantment, which he kept active as a matter of habit, started reflecting something. But James had no time to puzzle out what that was as he was already swinging his Terra Rosa War Hammer around horizontally to catch the monster scrabbling against his shield.

[Heavy Blow]

Thud

That… was not the normal sound of his hammer obliterating a monster with one strike.

Still, the lizard fell from his shield and was writhing wildly on the floor up against the wall, so James took a fraction of a second to wind up a proper overhand strike.

[Technique: Hammer Strike]

[Heavy Blow]

BOOM

There it was. His strike landed true, smashing the lizard monster's head into a small crater in the ground, completely unrecognizable now.

But the body was still writhing.

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

The lizard monster's stubborn grip on life failed, and the carcass fell still. A surprisingly small amount of blood oozed from the mangled remains, and to James' surprise, he detected a moderate amount of Earth Essence in the blood. He dug through the body with his knife – he had already come to terms with the fact it would be ruined by the time he got back to camp – and was surprised yet again to find not a brown magic stone, but a red one.

Other than the blood and magic stone, there was a small amount of flesh that looked like it might be edible, its hide, and the claws.

[Appraisal]: Fire Lizard Claws

There were four of them at the end of each foot, only about as long as two of James' knuckles, and to James' amazement they went into his magic bag with no problem.

And that was the only thing that went in with no problem.

So James took some chain out of his magic bag, to tie around the corpse, and stopped and immediately put the iron chain back in his bag.

He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

And then he tried to drag the carcass by the tail, but the tail popped off almost immediately.

James paused, took a deep breath of hot cavern air, and let it out slowly. Then he turned up the output on his cooling system slightly.

With a little finagling, he managed to get a grip on one of the headless fire lizard's legs while still holding onto his hammer, and stepped back into the intersection dragging it along.

And here he paused once more.

Which way had he come from again?

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