The left passage sloped downward as expected. Gradually, it was in descending. The descent that one noticed in their legs before by their eyes.

Noah kept his sword low at his side. His mana continued to circulated throughout his body in background level.

A habit he had built over the past weeks. It could help him to used mana more faster.

Damien walked slightly ahead, his own blade held easy in both hands.

The silence between them was comfortable. Noah was usually talkative and joking around. But not right now. They were in serious position currently.

The passage walls changed slightly as they moved deeper. The stone was the same material but the surface was different here. More textured.

Small carvings appeared at irregular intervals, shallow and worn, running along the lower portion of the walls like a border.

Noah glanced at them as he passed but couldn’t make sense of them. Not a language he recognized. Not symbols from anything he had studied.

’This must be quite old. But according to mana waves and exploration made by others. It’s low ranking dungeon.’ Noah was slightly confused. Was this much level enough for Main character to be danger.

He was wondering if there’s going to be sudden change in dungeon and rank up making it more dangerous

The symbols and patterns, whatever they meant, it was old.

The torch light they carried, a single handheld one Damien had brought, pushed back the dark ahead of them in a steady white light circle.

They walked for several more minutes.

Then Damien slowed.

Noah caught it immediately and stopped half a step behind him.

Damien’s posture had shifted. Shoulders slightly forward. Weight redistributed. The easy carry of his blade was gone, replaced by a quiet readiness.

Noah said nothing. He adjusted his own grip.

Then he heard it.

Small sounds. Low and irregular. Shuffling movements somewhere in the dark ahead, the scrape of something against stone, a short guttural sound that wasn’t human and wasn’t animal in any way he recognized from the surface world.

Damien raised a closed fist.

They stopped completely.

The sounds grew slightly louder as whatever was making them moved without knowing it was being listened to.

Then the torchlight reached them.

Three goblins.

They were clustered loosely in the passage about twenty meters ahead, gathered around something on the ground that Noah couldn’t identify from this distance.

Small and hunched, their skin a muted greenish grey, the color of old moss on wet stone. They were roughly the height of a crouching child but broader in the shoulders, with long arms that hung forward and thick blunt fingers curled around crude implements.

One had a short club. Another had what looked like a sharpened length of bone. The third appeared unarmed but was the most active, rummaging through whatever they had found on the ground.

Their eyes caught the light.

Small, yellow and reflecting the torch glow with a dull gleam.

The nearest one looked up.

For one flat second nothing happened.

Then it made a sound. Short and sharp and loud enough to echo off the stone walls.

The other two snapped their heads up immediately.

All three locked onto Noah and Damien with those yellow eyes and the shuffling stopped.

Then they moved.

KRRRCCHHHH!!

They made a screaming sound.

The one with the club lurched forward first, faster than its hunched posture suggested it could manage, letting out a rough snarling sound as it closed the distance. The other two followed a beat behind.

Damien stepped forward without hesitation.

"Let’s kill them. They are weak monster."

He covered the ground between them in three quick strides and met the lead goblin head on. He was holding the sword in right hand while torch in other. Yet he hand no problem in killing then.

His sword came across in a clean horizontal strike. The goblin raised its club instinctively but the angle was wrong and the blade connected cleanly, the creature going down hard against the passage floor.

Blood slread oh floor.

The second one with the bone weapon swung low at his side.

Damien shifted his weight and let it pass, then brought his elbow down sharply on the creature’s arm before following through with the pommel of his sword.

THUD!

It collapsed sideways into the wall with loud thud sound.

Two down in under five seconds. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The third one, the unarmed one, had stopped its charge.

It stood a few meters back now, looking at its two companions on the ground, then back at Damien. Something had shifted in its posture. Less aggression, more agitation.

Then it noticed Noah.

It turned and made a short grating sound. A decision made. It lunged sideways and came at him instead.

Noah moved. His blue eye narrowed, trying to see better in dark place where only torch light brightened the surrounding.

"Let’s see how weak this goblins are." Maoh muttered.

He stepped into its path rather than away from it.

The goblin’s reach was short and its lunge was committed. Noah let it come in close, turned his shoulder to deflect the grasping arms, and brought his sword across in a tight arc.

Slash!

Spalttered!.

A cut appeared on monster’s flesh.

"Gahckkk!" It groan in pain and fell foward.

The creature hit the ground.

Noah stood over it for a moment. His breathing was level. His grip on the sword was steady.

He looked at his hands briefly.

Then he looked at the three goblins on the passage floor.

’So that’s what that feels like.’

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no great feeling of accomplishment, no surge of something powerful.

This was what combat in a dungeon was. Not a training dummy. Not a practice exchange with a classmate.

But this monster were too weak that Noah didn’t even need to use mana.

Damien turned to look at him.

"You are good? Goblins are weaker compare to the monsters you fought in academy dueing that attack." he asked.

"Yeah," Noah said.

Damien looked at him for one more second, seemed satisfied, and turned back to face the passage ahead.

"More will come the deeper we go," he said simply. "Stay close. The more deeper we go the more stronger monsters we will come across."

"Okay boss. I will follow you close." Noah replied, in light teasing way.

They decided to moved forward again.