Maxwell lurked through the tunnel system, the dungeon corridors. He was nearing the location of the Leonir, and was loathe to find out what kind of beast it was.

He imagined that it had something to do with Lions, given the Leo part of its name, but he wasn't too positive in his ability to wrestle with a lion. But he really needed water, and hypothetically taking down a lion might give him some meat needed for food.

Max held a torch in one hand, and his knife in the other. He figured that most animals were afraid of fire in some way, so if it did turn out to be a lion of some sort, then having a flame might be to his advantage in scaring it off. Though… Lions were a type of cat, and Max wasn't sure about their ability to track based off of smell. It might try and attack him in his sleep.

Max stopped moving when he looked around the corner and a pair of beady eyes glinted in the light of the fire. He backed up a little bit when a giant rat, roughly the size of a dog pounced on the place where he had just been. He panicked, and dropped the torch, and cursed himself for his clumsiness.

The rat snarled and lunged again, it's large teeth sinking into his arm shallowly, impeded by one of the cloaks that he had taken from the closet. "Shit!" He exclaimed, and swung his knife in the direction of the rat that hung from him. He must've gotten lucky, since he stabbed it right in the head, and it went limp instantly.

Max peeled the rat off of him, and inspected the bite. It was a small incision, but it was bleeding slightly. Max looked around, and after making sure there were no more rats coming for him, he used one of the makeshift rags to tightly bind the wound. He didn't want to risk infection, so he hurried towards where he thought the fountain was after picking up his torch.

He entered a large room, and he could tell right off that he was right in assuming a lion like creature lived here: there were claw marks all over the walls and a large nest like area. Although from what Max remembered, lions slept in trees. Seeing as how there weren't likely to be a lot of trees in a dungeon, a next would have to do.

Max was about to walk further into the room when he noticed the creature crouched off to the side, clearly ready to pounce on him in a moment.

He took a moment to observe it. It looked like a lion, alright, down to the mane and the legs. The main difference was that it had a pair of deer antlers on its head. It's fur was a dark blue, however, which had helped it blend in with the darkness. If it hadn't been for the light of his torch and his wariness, he probably wouldn't have seen the beast.

It charged forwards before leaping, clearing almost 30 feet in less than a few seconds. Luckily Max was able to move out of the way, and made to stab at it. He wasn't so lucky this time, and missed the beast entirely with his knife. The young man started to panic a little bit, but held tighter to his torch. He wasn't about to drop it again, especially not against a more dangerous beast.

The leonir swiped at its adversary with it's paw, but the man dodged out of the way of it's attack once more. He was apparently pretty good at dodging, even though the most exercise he got on the regular is a short morning run every day. Max swung at the beast with his torch, and to his surprise, he caught it in the face, burning it lightly. The downside, which the man hadn't considered until just then, was that torches are pretty brittle, especially from being on fire for a while.

His torch broke as it hit the leonir, and even though the creature yowled in pain from getting some fire right to the face, Max was left with a foot long stick with a broken edge, not really something that he was keen on using to fight such a monstrosity.

The leonir was stunned from the flame, and so the man pressed the advantage and brought his knife down at it's head. He was pretty sloppy with a knife, but had managed to make a jagged cut that cut pretty deeply into its eye, drawing some blood.

This clearly angered the lion, and it surprised Max by trying to jump on him once more. Luckily, the wound that he had inflicted had made it's vision impaired, and the man watched as the beast slammed into the wall. Max couldn't believe how lucky he was getting. He stabbed once more at the beast, this time aiming for the chest, and slammed the knife down to the hilt into it before ripping it out.

The leonir turned, eyeing him with clear hatred in its one remaining eye, bleeding from both of the stab wounds that had been inflicted. It also took a look at the knife in his hands, and he held it in front of him menacingly. This thing hadn't even touched Max yet, which surprised him, but the man wasn't about to take any chances. It pounced on him one last time, clearly trying to knock the man down, and made to bite at his face.

Max brought the knife up, and drove it right between the ribcage, and he felt a shudder as the beast slumped on top of him. He gasped as the beast stilled, and felt the crushing weight of the leonir above him. This thing must be about 500 pounds!

Max pushed the beast off of himself with great difficulty, before taking in his surroundings once more. This room clearly had been the domain of the leonir, at least it had been before he had killed it. Or had he? Max looked at the beast that lay on the ground prone, and decided with a sickening thought that he should make sure of that fact, so the young man sat next to the beast and slit its throat for good measure.

Well, Max guessed that solved his food problem, at least for a couple of days before the meat spoiled. He was pretty sure that if he had salt, that he could make some sort of jerky or something that would make it last a lot longer, but all the man could do was cook the meat and hope it lasted him some time. The air down here didn't seem too saturated with moisture, so he wasn't necessarily as worried about bacteria growth than he might normally be.

Speaking of bacteria… Max needed to find that fountain and wash off this bite wound from the rat earlier. He looked around the room and couldn't find anything that looked like a fountain, but he did find another door that was busted open. Clearly the leonir had gotten in, and the young man tentatively looked around before he saw what he had been searching for.

An elegant fountain rose in the center of the room, and he realised that his throat was incredibly dry as he took it in. Without caution, the young man rushed to the fountain and drank from it as if his life depended on it, which he supposes it did.

After a minute of drinking, he took his time to unbind his bite wound, and grimaced at the flesh. It had started to heal already, and Max still wasn't sure that it was infected with something or not. Deciding that it was better to be safe than sorry, he took a moment to thoroughly wash out the wound, before making to apply a new bandage to it. Before he could, however, he was surprised when the wound slowly knit itself back together, leaving behind little more than pink flesh.

Holy shit! This fountain must have some sort of healing magic in its waters. No wonder the leonir had decided to make it's home right outside, it was a good defensible position, a good source of water, as well as healing in case it got injured.

Max gathered his wits and looked about the room once more. In the corner was a small chest, but he was wary of traps, or worse, a mimic of some sort. On the other side of the fountain laid a weapon rack that housed a couple of rusted weapons.

There was a broadsword, a small handaxe, and a spear with a rotten handle. The man shook his head at using the spear, it looked like the shaft would break the first time that he tried to use it. The handaxe was in a similar position, it's handle looking a little bit rotted. But the sword, while a bit rusted, seemed to be in decent enough shape.

Max took the sword off of the weapon rack and gave it a few swings with his right arm. The broadsword was decently balanced, but he wasn't exactly used to carrying around heavy weapons in his day to day life, so he was sure that if he had to use it for prolonged amounts of time, his arms would surely get sore.

Max took his knife in his left hand and held both the sword and the knife. It felt incredibly awkward to try and hold both of them, and he wasn't positive about fighting with a weapon in both hands. It just didn't feel right, and he was positive that he'd fumble one of them and accidentally cut himself. Not exactly on his list of priorities.

Max sheathed the knife back at his waist and held the sword. Even with it being lightly rusted, the blade still held a sharp edge, and he felt much safer with an actual weapon to defend himself.

The man gave it a couple more experimental swings, before turning back to the rest of the room. The small chest sat in the corner of the room, and aside from that, there were a few old broken pieces of furniture. He figured that he could probably use them as firewood for cooking purposes, at least until he had a more stable way of cooking food.

The chest intrigued him, but he was definitely cautious of it. Max leveled the sword at the small chest, before attempting to open it with his left hand.

Nothing bit at him, so he raised the lid higher and was relieved when the thing didn't turn out to be trapped or anything. At least, no traps triggered that he was aware of. Inside of the chest, there was a small brown bag, a ring with blue gemstones on it, and what appeared to be a potion of some sort. Max wished that he could identify what kind of potion it was, since a healing potion or something might be useful, but it very well might be some type of poison or acid.

He looked into the small bag, but for some reason all he could see was darkness. He lifted it upside down, and a book fell out of the bag. The bag must be a bag of holding! Or maybe some smaller variant, since it looked like it was made of leather. Interested in the book, the man took a glance at the cover, which was also bound in leather and wasn't titled.

Max opened up the book and was surprised to find instructions on magical spells! While he had already assumed that magic was possible, especially considering the existence of monsters clearly not of Earth, the man wasn't expecting to come in contact with it so soon into his impromptu adventure.

As interesting as learning magic might be right now, however, Max knew that he needed to eat. So he left the side room and looked at the leonir. While he had never exactly learned himself how to hunt or skin an animal, he was sure that he could learn, especially if he needed the meat for survival.

So he sat down and spent a good couple of hours trying to cut the skin off of the beast. He vaguely remembered from somewhere on the internet that you were supposed to cut along the places where the fur went in different directions, but that was really hard to tell, especially near where the mane began. Eventually he had skinned the beast, and worked at cutting the meat where he could from the bones and cartilage. He was also careful to cut away any excess fat.

Once he had a sizable amount of meat in his hands, he made his way back into the fountain room. Max knew that he needed to clean out this meat, even if it was a sloppy job. So he washed the chunk of meat in the fountain water and set about creating another fire.

Within the hour, Max was no longer hungry nor thirsty, but he was incredibly exhausted after the long day that he had. He decided that he would leave the leonir carcass out in the other room, just in case something else came by. He guessed that anything hungry enough would jump at the chance for a free meal, and in that time he might wake up and (hopefully) get the drop on it.

Max slumped into a chair that was still mostly intact, and closed his eyes. He was so tired…

[Warrior Class Obtained!]

[Warrior Level 3!]

[Skill - Lesser Dodge Obtained!]

[Survivor Class Obtained!]

[Survivor Level 1!]

[Skill - Animal Skinning Obtained!]

"...What was that?"