It didn't take a second for Leon to notice just how poor visibility was. There was barely any illumination from anywhere.
Cave structured dungeons were notorious for it, and standing in the dim of this one made that reputation immediately understandable. The darkness wasn't total, there were degrees to it, patches that were merely dark and patches that were genuinely black, but none of it was comfortable to navigate without a light source. This meant he wasn't just dealing with whatever lived inside this place, that would only be half of it, he would be dealing with it half blind.
If the monsters had night vision on top of that, the situation would become considerably less manageable.
Before he even got up off the ground, he called out his summons. Both skeletons materialized in the narrow chamber before him, greatswords in hand, the faint blue light of their eye sockets providing the only illumination in that immediate space. It wasn't much, but it was something, just enough to for him to make out his hands faintly.
He was aware of the spirit energy concern. Sustaining multiple summons was a cost, and he had no reliable way of knowing yet how deep this dungeon ran or how long he would be inside it. While he was aware that he needed to be careful not to run out of Spirit energy, dying was worse than running out. He could vaguely sense the current level of his reserves the way a person could sense how full or empty their stomach was, imprecise but present, and he decided that once he felt it dropping to a threshold that worried him, he would adjust, maybe pullback and be more conservative. It all depended on how the dungeon turned out.
'I hope this is a green dungeon.' He thought to himself, showing genuine feeling.
Green dungeons were the lowest in ranks of dungeons, they could contain Grade 1 and 2 monsters or beasts. Yellow dungeons were above that, and they held Grade 3 and 4 beasts and monsters, while Red dungeons were the highest, holding mostly Grade 5 monsters and beast, Grade 6 being rarer.
Before moving forward, he did what he had come outside to do in the first place.
He summoned the door.
The death energy rolled out as it always did, that familiar cold pressure spreading across the cave chamber and filling the enclosed space more completely than it did in the open air behind the dormitory. The door stood in the middle of the cave looking deeply out of place, and in some way still fitting.
Unsurprisingly, a skeleton stepped through wielding a greatsword.
Leon looked at it for a moment. "Bone Head number 3," he said quietly, and filed the newcomer into the formation.
Three skeletons now. The door disappeared as it did, and with that he moved.
He went slowly, keeping the skeletons close, two ahead and one trailing behind him. The cave corridor turned several times, each corner approached with the same careful patience, listening before peaking. The darkness gave him nothing useful to work with beyond the faint glow of six blue eye sockets around him.
Just then after making several turns, around a corner further in, something changed in the quality of the dark. There was now a warmth to it, certainly from a nearby light source. He slowed further and let himself get close enough to identify it before doing anything else, while he made the skeletons hold position because their bony legs would not do for stealth.
The light had an orange tint to it, flickering faintly, the unmistakable signature of an old torch mounted somewhere ahead. He eased himself to the edge of the bend and looked around it carefully.
What he saw required a moment to process.
He had known, intellectually, that this day was coming. He was living in a world overrun with dungeons and the monsters that poured out of them. Encountering one face to face was simply the logical extension of being here, and even more so if he was going to be a summoner that fought them head on. He had accepted that on an intellectual level.
Even with that resolve, actually looking at a green skinned monster standing in torchlight was still something else.
Even though no pressure was being exerted, and they weren't even aware of him yet, still, a brief and honest sting of fear moved through Leon's chest before he got it under control and pushed it back down where it belonged.
'What are those things? Not orcs...' He ran through what he knew, piecing it together from the browsing he'd done on his phone since arriving and whatever the original Leon had retained despite his extended absence from formal education, which, unfortunately, wasn't as much as he would have liked. The original Leon had started removing himself from classes and gatherings early, for reasons that were now understandable in context, and the gaps in his knowledge base reflected that consistently.
Still. Some things were basic enough that even incomplete schooling left traces.
From what he knew, Goblins were green skinned but stood at roughly the height of an adolescent child. They were small and agile. What he was looking at, however, was not small. The figures in that torch-lit space stood at around two metres, broadly built, carrying themselves with the unhurried weight of things that didn't move quickly unless they had a reason to.
'Ogres.' Had to be. Those were the only other green skinned bipeds on the list that matched the description.
Orcs, by comparison, had pale skin that ran close to a pigs, with a thin layer of hair across the body, a different creature entirely. These were ogres for sure.
There were two of them.
Leon pulled back around the corner and thought about it for a minute. The chamber was lit, which removed the option of using the skeletons' low visibility to his advantage. Skeletons were not quiet things. Bones moved against each other when they walked, a dry rattling sound that was fine in open spaces and considerably less fine when you were trying to approach two large monsters through a torchlit corridor without being heard first.
'Is there really no other way?'
He looked at the ground near his feet, and found what he was looking for quickly enough. A fist sized piece of rock, loose and available. He picked it up, weighed it briefly in his hand, and threw it hard against the wall further down the passage in the opposite direction from where the ogres were standing, and where he and his summons were facing.
The sound it made was sharp and clear in the cave acoustics.
Almost immediately, he heard footsteps. One set of steps, heavy and deliberate, moving toward the bend from the torchlit side. He watched the shadow it cast on the wall as it approached, reading the silhouette.
'One.' Just one had taken the bait. He positioned his skeletons tight against the wall on either side of the corner, close enough that the moment the ogre came around, there would be no time for it to react.
The moment it stepped into view, the skeletons moved on his command.
Three greatswords swung in wide arcs from three different angles, brought down on the ogre simultaneously. What Leon hadn't accounted for was that the ogre had been approaching with its weapon already raised with caution. It got its sword up fast enough to catch the overhead blow, iron against iron, holding the pressure back with more strength than he had expected.
He adjusted immediately, pushing the command through. The middle skeleton maintained the overhead pressure, bearing down and keeping the ogre's guard committed upward, while the other two repositioned and swept low, aiming for the legs.
The ogre's reaction was fast. It angled its sword to let the overhead slide off and brought it down to block the attack on its right leg in the same motion.