How many minutes has it been? The thought flickered through Uhtred’s mind as he swung his battleaxe down on the shoulder of one of the Ferrum Stygite Trolls — the Ogre Creatures of Floor 19.

Yes. It had barely been thirty minutes if Uhtred estimated the time himself, and he had already fought all the way down to Floor 19.

The entire speedrun had been a blur. He had simply been swinging his battleaxe and using his metal cosmic essence mechanically the whole time.

It was almost like he was some efficient weapon of slaughter.

It was only on Floor 18 that he had begun to put conscious effort into his movements, and the battle had actually taxed him.

Perhaps it was because he wasn’t as focused at first, but this run seemed a bit more difficult than the last.

However, the moment he had gotten into gear and steadied his mind into the zone of slaughter, he more efficiently dispatched the beasts on Floor 18.

Floor 19, on the other hand, was a totally different ball game.

For the first time since right after the integration, Uhtred’s life was actually at stake.

This wasn’t even a joke. He was literally only beating death by a hair’s breadth on this floor with every swing of his battleaxe, and every near miss of his vital points from these Level 19 Ferrum Stygite Trolls.

He had thought it would be a breeze, seeing as Zara had cleared the entire floor herself. But fighting them now, all that filled his mind was the thought of why he had even decided to attempt taking on a horde of Level 19 beasts all alone.

He didn’t even have the time to be suspicious or to analyze how Zara had succeeded in clearing this floor in the first place.

His suspicions about the girl still remained, but the fact that he had risked her life not long ago was still there. He had had enough of the questions that were piling up about her for the moment.

Instead, his entire focus was dominated by thoughts of his survival. His mind was focused on his every attack, his every use of cosmic essence.

He was shaving off any waste he could find in any of his movements, just to give himself leverage against the constant barrage of these Level 19 beasts.

Even one of them would take him some time to deal with, not to mention the nearly hundred of them that populated the floor, coming at him all together.

Their skin was extremely tough, the toughest skin he had encountered so far. It was literally like he was striking against steel. And the creatures themselves possessed high affinity for metal and even the earth element.

They bombarded him from all angles using their earth magic to make the ground tremble, destabilizing his footing and throwing him off balance. Meanwhile, several of them would launch at him with their powerful metal-coated fists.

They could morph those fists of theirs into different shapes: spikes, blades, and even hammers.

Uhtred’s senses were spread out to the maximum, but the differing weapons they morphed their arms into were getting hard to keep up with.

Defending against a heavy strike, he braced for impact, only for a blade to slash toward his exposed back. He lunged aside, twisting to parry the metal, but a different kind of bladed attack was already screaming in from a blind angle.

The problem was how different each strike was and how he had to adapt to them.

It was a high-paced, high-tension battle where even the slightest lapse of concentration would prove extremely dire.

His only saving grace was that, despite how much more intelligent these trolls were compared to the rest of the beasts he’d faced on every floor of the dungeon so far, their attacks were still basic and somewhat predictable.

They lacked the level of scheming a human had.

Still, the tide of this battle was already set. Only one of two things could happen:

Either the battle would continue at its current pace, dragging out for an extended period of time till Uhtred could whittle down their numbers — which seemed unlikely, as he would run out of stamina way before that would happen.

Or...

He had to come up with something new, something different that would change the tide of the entire battle in his favor.

The latter seemed to be the only choice. But actualizing it was way harder than it seemed.

Uhtred had already tried using the Heat Manipulation he had created in the moment when he was fighting against the Neanderthal warrior.

But the high pace of the battle gave him no room to even begin the process at all. He hadn’t gotten to a level of proficiency where he could simply activate the skill on a whim.

If he wanted to do something, it had to be done with the metal aspect. That was all his focus could accommodate at the moment.

As his mind deciphered the options and concluded on this path of action, he seemed to enter into a state of calm focus. Now that he had a clear goal, he began to think of ways to achieve what he wanted.

The current problem he faced was the difference in each attack that he had to adapt to. It was only his star-metal battleaxe he could use to defend himself. When it was against a blade, he used the sharp edge of his axe to parry, and when it was against a blunt force attack, he used the flat side of his battleaxe.

The switch between both sides was what proved difficult in this high-paced battle.

But what if, like the Ferrum Stygite Trolls, he could also manipulate the shape of his battleaxe to accurately parry each type of attack without having to change his grip on his weapon?

It would give him enough time to not just parry an attack, but also score a hit of his own with the time he would have used to chamge his grip.

Without hesitation, Uhtred tried to imitate the Ferrum Stygite Trolls, urging his cosmic essence into the star metal that made up the structure of his battleaxe.

Just as he defended against a blade attack with the sharp edge of his axe, he swung it towards a blunt hammer coming from his blind spot.

He didn’t bother switching his grip, but instead tried to change the shape of the point of impact to something that could defend against a blunt attack...

However, there wasn’t the slightest change whatsoever.

In truth, Uhtred actually felt a slight give as his cosmic essence cycled through the metallic structure of his battleaxe, but perhaps because of its particular star metal properties, it proved difficult and unmoving for him to manipulate as freely as he wanted.

If this was a lesser form of metal, it would have moved according to Uhtred’s will in that moment, but this star metal required more than the little push Uhtred had given to it with his Basic Level 3 Metal Magic skill.

The blade of his battleaxe met the blunt strike of the Ferrum Stygite Troll head on, sinking slightly into the metal of its body. His star-metal battleaxe was still more powerful than the metal the Ferrum Stygite Troll’s bodies were made of.

And in that moment when the blade of his axe sunk slightly into the metal skin of the Troll, the one thing Uhtred had been trying to avoid occurred...