The Retired Hero is an Extra

From his lowered position, he kicked off the ground to close the distance, leaving behind dust and an indentation in his wake.

He gripped his sword tightly and swung it in a horizontal manner, aiming for the wolf\'s lower jaw, just above its head.

The monster was caught unaware as it had just lowered its head after roaring to find a sword scraping its flesh.

\'Nice!\' Jash wanted to make the most of the strike and ducked, slipping past its head and slicing its stomach.

Alas, the monster jumped away, escaping with just a minor scratch.

"Huff... huff..." Jash panted for breath as he ended up overexerting himself due to his excitement, and the monster got a slight break.

It seemed to have regained its sanity slightly as it stopped giving chase idiotically and pointed its horn at Jash.

The mana inside the cavern suddenly started acting strangely, moving and converging at its horn.

\'What? It can do that! That\'s cheating!\' Jash complained, observing the changes.

The large movements of mana alerted him, and he was dumbfounded as it charged an energy beam-like attack.

\'Dangerous!\' Alarm bells seemed to ring inside his head as Jash gave up the idea of disrupting the attack, choosing to dodge it.

Using a chunk of his mana to burst in his legs, he covered half the cavern in two seconds.

The cavern easily spanned 80 to 100 meters, making it difficult to cover such an extensive distance.

\'My mana is low,\' he noted, wary of the next challenges.

However, it proved to be the correct decision.

In the next second, the wolf released its attack, a concentrated arc of fire which traveled in a straight line.

Yet it immediately spread in all directions up to ten meters, making Jash gulp nervously.

\'It shouldn\'t be able to launch such an attack again, right? At least not in a series, right?\' Jash nervously prayed in his heart.

Fortunately, he was still in his right mind and took this chance to attack the wolf from behind.

A cowardly move for sure, but did it matter?

He wasn\'t a sucker for pride and honor, he just wanted to end this fight and not die due to insufficient mana.

Without any reservations, he thrust the tip of his sword into the wolf\'s rear, aiming for the only other opening in its body.

The wolf instinctively felt danger and tried to move its hind limbs, changing Jash\'s target to its knee joint.

Due to the sudden movement, he also couldn\'t change target and his sword pierced through its skin, getting stuck in the bone.

—VRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!

An almost primal scream of pain escaped the wolf\'s mouth, making Jash nauseous due to its loud intensity.

Thankfully, his armor protected his ears or bleeding wouldn\'t be where it ended.

The wolf, enraged to its core, turned around and swiped its claws with blood-red eyes at Jash, wanting nothing more than tearing him to shreds.

"Ugh," Jash moaned in pain as the claws landed on his chest, hurling his body to the other end of the cave, colliding against the walls.

The attack disoriented his senses and the wolf would\'ve loved to finish him off, but the sword was still struck in its knee.

While the armor saved Jash\'s life, the wolf limped towards him with blood flowing through its one leg, lower jaw, stomach and back.

It glared murderously at Jash with seething hatred in its eyes, making his heartbeat faster

\'Damn! That\'s scary!\' Jash joked to lighten the mood and calm himself, but it proved impossible.

Finally, the beast was upon him and just as it was about to bite into Jash\'s armor, he moved.

Jash swiftly moved around the boss with a pair of daggers and slashed continuously, using the boss as a whetstone to hone his skills.

This served to only enrage it further as its eyes shone red with blood starting to ooze out from them.

His attack made the boss monster slam its legs furiously, but he was already far away, using his agility to escape the claw slashes.

The ground around the wolf was melting due to the intense heat in its mana-empowered claw slashes.

Jash just ignored the beast as it roared again. Its whole body that was dark was becoming more orange as the heat inside its body increased.

The blood covering its body due to multiple attacks made the beast look terrifying, but Jash stared at it calmly.

\'It\'s doable,\' he thought, clenching the daggers in his hands.

Jash dashed again to draw the beast\'s attention, but the beast had finally used mana around its body, making its defenses sharper.

It put a halt to Jash\'s plans, but he didn\'t stop. He accelerated further, trying to outrun the injured beast and swarm it with attacks with his higher agility.

Unfortunately, that wasn\'t easy as his speed was not enough to outrun the (D-)-Rank beast.

Even if its agility was hampered due to the knee injury, it didn\'t affect its dexterity as it raised its leg to strike Jash.

He sidestepped, not wanting to get hit again.

\'I fooled it once due to the dust cloud, but I don\'t have any weapon good enough to face it after these.\'

The daggers he wielded were the same ones Caera had used to fight in this dungeon at the end; yet they appeared new.

If he had to compare, they were better than his sword, but he couldn\'t just quit wielding a sword because of weapons, right?

In the end, he finally used a burst of mana in his legs to propel himself into the air.

His feet kicked off the dusty cavern wall behind him, and he burst forward, appearing above the boss monster from behind it.

It looked around in confusion as Jash hadn\'t appeared in front of it after circling it, but the sound of him leaping made its ears twitch.

Jash\'s eyes shone as he landed on the head of the monster, plunging his twin daggers into its eyes, blinding it in one go.

—VRRRRAAAAGGGHHHHH!

The monster howled in pain and flailed around frantically, trying to get rid of the annoying human above it.

Yet Jash held firmly to the daggers, even embedding his feet into the scabs formed from prior wounds.

Sweat dripped from his head due to the intense heat from the monster as his armor saved him from melting.

As the monster writhed in pain, Jash mercilessly turned its head and pushed it towards the wall.

However, before the collision, he jumped off the monster. His feet felt like roasted meat due to standing on the monster directly.

He couldn\'t even stand due to the burn, causing him to use his hands to balance himself.

—Bam!

Unfortunately, it wasn\'t the end of the blind monster as Jash hoped for it to be so.

It backed away from the wall with its bleeding skull yet it seemed insufficient to end it.

"What...?" Jash screamed unconsciously at the next turn of events.

Suddenly, the beast which was backing off had its head sliced off cleanly, startling Jash as he couldn\'t even see anyone else.

—Bzzt!

—Bzzt!

—Crack!

—Crack!

Soon, cracking sounds filled Jash\'s hearing as he found himself unable to even utter a word.

The pressure from this boss was nothing compared to the other entity he had encountered in the dungeon, yet the current situation was far worse.

\'Is it that?\' Jash thought, recalling the figure of that 8-meter-tall monstrosity.

The cave walls cracked open to reveal a black-gray space, surprising him as he had never even heard of such a phenomenon.

In the next instant, his awe morphed into shock and fear.

For the first time in his second life, he felt the sensation of fear and not just any other fear, an overwhelming sensation of fear.

It was as if he were not even a speck of dust in front of whoever existed outside the confines of the dungeon.