CHAPTER 60 Crushing His Skull Between Her Thighs

Keith

After a nice lunch, Henrietta got to clearing the dungeon.

Keith enjoyed watching. It was no joke that she was the Heroine of Justice, and he was reminded again how fortunate they were to have come this far without her crushing his skull between her thighs.

They were very nice thighs, but that was beside the point. Also, he needed to stop using the word nice for everything when it came to his princess. His godmother had taught him etiquette—dragons required a great deal of etiquette, or they might eat you.

Luckily, Feliwyn was a patient sort, and she rarely ate people.

Henrietta activated [Quick Step]. She didn't bother using any of her other skills or perks, relying purely on her abilities to cut down every living thing on the second floor of the dungeon.

Keith still thought that having a dungeon named Hollow Gorge and an elven city named the Hollow, and having them both be on opposite sides of the kingdom—most days—was an irksome choice. However, that decision had taken place centuries ago, and perhaps the confusion had been the intent.

He still didn't like it.

While they lived at the castle, Keith was still under the belief that he and Henrietta—despite her thigh-crushing Strength sixty-seven versus his Intelligence eighty-five used for spell casting—were a pretty equal match, even without his golems to protect his body. After watching her capabilities, he was beginning to doubt.

She took on most of the floors by herself and cleared them in record timing. The unique ecosystems made for a nice … a fun variety of challenges. But with Henrietta almost sixty levels higher than the monsters, there wasn't much challenge on a fighting level.

The third floor was a midnight pine forest, and they shared a walk under the stars while dire wolves howled at the full moon. Henrietta told Keith about her times in the Depths of Despair Dungeon, and when he started to discuss the upper levels of the Hollow Gorge, she listened. He noticed she was a bit quiet afterwards, but he didn't think anything of it.

He thought she was just strategizing or enjoying the beautiful scenery.

The next floor was arid and a cut mix of rocky desert with some scattered trees. It not very comfortable—dust got into everything if it wasn't magicked properly. Henrietta had a great time hunting spiked armordillos and punching holes in their shells while dodging their pointy tails.

That was not the normal way adventurers defeated the nigh-impenetrable scale hide of an armordillo … but most adventurers who challenged this floor were level ten to twenty.

After hitting level ten, each of one's attributes were level ten (or thereabouts). Then every level up only granted two attribute points. A normal adventurer at level fifteen might have:

And anyone who chose to min-max at level fifteen, putting all their points into Strength or Charisma or Dexterity to cater to their class … were very easy to kill. If Keith judged correctly, with Henrietta's Strength sixty-seven, her other attributes should be around twenty to thirty.

Nothing down here stood a chance. Dungeon monsters were all creatures born of the dungeon core's magic and suffered from dungeon madness. As such, they were mindless killing machines who wouldn't be able to strategize a victory. Strength and skill were what determined the winners.

After the desert, they portaled to a steep cliffside, and Keith took over flying them around. Level five unigoats and griffins covered the mountain, and Henrietta's [Sword Aura], coupled with her [Force Thrust] perk, could one-shot the murderous goats off the mountain side. It became a game, between her strikes and his [Mana Arrow] spell, to see who could hit the most monsters.

They stopped at level six to have dinner. The old growth forest was filled with bloodthirsty treants and their smaller plant nettlekin cousins, who attacked them without mercy.

The leaves of the nettlekin made for a delicious pesto sauce. Henrietta cut the bark flesh off the treants and roasted unigoat meat on the heated boards. Keith was in charge of the fire, while Henrietta managed the knife work. She used twined herbs to brush the nettlekin pesto over a roasted leg.

"You were saying there are ten levels to the Hollow Gorge, right?" she asked.

Keith had magicked them up some chairs and a table and a teapot and two earthen cups. He let the fire go to burn naturally and turned his attention to his lavish dinner. "There are eleven. I think the last two might actually give you a challenge."

"Really?" Henrietta happily enjoyed her food and continued between mouthfuls, "Do you think we'll be done by tonight?"

They had about four hours left before they needed to think about leaving. If they could manage the rest of the floors in the same amount of time as the earlier floors, then they would be back in time for the last call for supper at Logan's Noodle House.

They had spent too much time enjoying themselves in each level and had only made it halfway.

"I think that you could solo it, but it might cost us time," Keith said. "Shall we continue after this, and I'll help if we run out of time?"

"Alright."

"How close are you to leveling up?" he asked. Keith felt a little bad that him being there took away half her experience points, but he wouldn't have given this up for anything.

"Close, actually!" Henrietta's eyes glazed over a bit as she looked at her character sheet. "I need just over a hundred."

"Perfect. There are fewer monsters in the floors ahead, but they will be six to ten experience points apiece, and even halved that should push you over." Keith drank his tea, not bothering to look at his own character sheet. He needed at least ten thousand points before he would level up. "Have you gathered everything you want? How is your dimensional storage?"

Henrietta was in charge of any and all harvesting because she had the [Harvest Kill] perk. It was fast. It was efficient. It meant they weren't bogged down by storage. The only downside with the perk was that it only harvested items from something Henrietta had personally killed. Which meant Keith was still in charge of magically crafting tables and chairs and cups and teapots every time they stopped.

He could have stored those things in his smaller dimensional ring, but honestly, it kept him from just sitting around and staring at Henrietta while she did her own things.

It worked out very well.

So they continued through an elemental water serpent and man-eating trout lake on level seven, and a nest of phoenix and rock lava golems on the side of an active volcano on level eight …

Keith was under the impression that they would continue through the entire dungeon this way.

He was also under the misguided impression that they would be evenly matched in combat if Henrietta's might was put up against just his magic …

When they hit level nine, Keith discovered just how wrong his assumptions were.