The Summoner's Rebirth: Awaken, Milady

She imagined the next floor, which was the ninth floor. Within seconds, the same warping effect enveloped her and brought her to the next setting. She was faced against exactly one monster. A large, mad looking demonic bull.

"...This sure is a big upgrade from the last floor!" Aria scorned at the great change and began preparing herself for this upcoming fight which would be severely harder than the previous one. "Come at me," she gestured towards the monster, who seemed to understand her meaning and began fuming. Smoke escaped from its nostrils as it stomped down at the ground hard repeatedly before beginning to charge towards Aria's way.

Aria pulled into a defensive stance, as her first priority was to figure out how strong the monster was. From there, she would assess a suitable winning plan that would bring her to the next level- the level she planned to stop in. Taking a deep breath in, she waited until the bull was in a close distance with her before dodging ever so slightly and slashing one of the bull's back legs as she avoided the entirety of its strike.

"So it doesn't detect my movements when I'm in a close distance with it. Perfect," Aria concluded. The bull's attack was one way from start to finish, so once it had locked her as the target, it will charge towards her like a madman. However, if she just narrowly avoids before the charge connects, then the bull couldn't change its directory because it was already too late and it had little to no room for adjusting its attacks.

Aria hummed as she looked around the room. She went to the nearest wall, where she knocked on said wall and confirmed its sturdiness. The first plan her mind gave birth to was to let the bull charge towards her while standing near the wall, and avoid at the last second. That way, the bull would ram into the wall and get stuck for whatever amount of seconds it was.

Then, she would strike it down. The bull's energy was too high, it was a monster that had all of its stats forced into strength and stamina, not so much in dexterity and intelligence. Thus, if she were too face the monster without using gimmicks like the wall, she was afraid that her strength wouldn't be able to contend with it.

She shouted, drawing the attention of the bull. Then, she began running near the wall to animate the feeling of 'prey running away from the predator', so that the monster wouldn't realize what she was trying to do. She emulated fear and nervousness, which was something that even the dumbest of monsters could sense as part of their natural instincts in fighting.

One of the most valuable tip in fighting monsters were to always keep calm and be confident, not letting them notice your change in emotions. If the monsters sensed emotions like fear of distress, then they would get even more excited and could possibly put you in a bad situation.

Aria, however, wanted to use this same feature to her advantage. To arouse the bull and make it want to risk charging. Even if it was reckless, it should've noticed that the woman had dodged its first strike. However, by creating the facade that she escaped due to luck and was out of balance right now, then the bull would surely take this as a moment of weakness on her part and desire to do another finishing strike.

And indeed, it started to stomp on the floor a couple more times, great blows of smoke puffing from its two big nostrils. Its eyes gleamed a menacing red light as it locked its eyes on Aria and charged.

Aria grinned for a split second, but quickly hid it again. The bull's speed was high, but in terms of real agility and flexibility, Aria was much more gifted in this area even if her core strength lacked compared to the bull.

She waited for the perfect timing, having calculated the necessary jump inside her head. She kept her act until the bull was already close to her side, and before its horns were able to stab through Aria's body, she casually used the wall as a propeller and jumped high up. The bull successfully rammed into the wall. Its horns created a gigantic crack in the sturdy wall, but it got stuck there and couldn't do nothing else but struggle and let out muffled roaring sounds of pain.

Aria took this chance, giggling as she drew [Halvargg] and used her height momentum to let the sharp blade pierce through the monster. The bull's meat was tough, and she found it hard to stab through when she landed her first strike on its leg. Hence, she used the height benefit to further increase her strength and landed a blow on a vulnerable part of the bull- the exposed neck.

[Halvargg] successfully penetrated the bull's flesh, piercing through its throat and letting out a large spurt of blood as Aria quickly drew the sword out to launch another powerful strike to the monster to secure its death. The bull screamed in horrid pain as Aria stabbed it over and over on the same spot, making an entire hole through the area.

Before long, Aria was able to carve a line throughout the neck line and successfully cut the bull's head off, ending its life. Aria saw the carcass twitch multiple times before finally dropping down and losing any remaining life that was invested in it. Aria sat down on the ground, as she had tired herself out quite heavily with those repeated strikes. It was taxing trying to injure the bull because of its resilience and strength. Luckily, the bull was quite stupid.

If it just tried to shake its body and move backwards in an attempt to get out, then perhaps with its great strength, it would've been able to escape out of the walls. However, it unfortunately lacked any credible intelligence and kept trying to force its way towards the wall even more, not realizing that it was stuck and that the blockage that held him back was a rocky dead end that would not allow him to get past no matter how hard it tried.

This was the drawback of a monster that focused on strength and relied on it to live life. Everything is done using strength. When tricks and strategies were pitted against it, how would it fare? Of course, not well.

The fight was declared as over, and Aria searched within the bull's corpse to find the key after that. Because the bull was not necessarily rare and was just blessed with great strength, Aria did not take any material from it. She had planned to cut off its horns, but she found it impossible to remove the bull's head from the wall. Not to mention, [Halvargg] wouldn't be able to cut through the hard material without a lot of effort, which would just tire her even more.

She had to conserve a bit of energy because there was still one stage left that she planned to take on.

The tenth floor. Out of a hundred, this number seemed small. However, as someone who had personally experienced the great change the System brought upon her for each multiples of tens, Aria proceeded with great caution.

Aria wondered if she could quit mid fight if she found the opponent to be a harsh one to take on with her current state. She knew that matchups sometimes played a high role in one's winning chances. For example, with the bull. If the fight was held in an open grassland where it would be impossible for her to get the bull to be stuck in the wall, then she wouldn't have had the chance to snap its neck up.

Feeling relieved, she held the tenth golden key in her possession and thought of entering the tenth floor. WIthin seconds, the warp happened.

She opened her eyes in the last floor she was taking on for today.

It was akin to a medieval torture chamber, a place that she had been to a lot more than she should in the past. Weapons were placed on the wall, and the murky scent of blood enveloped her sense of smell as she blinked repeatedly to regain her perfect vision.

The floor was drenched with water, and in the middle of the eerie chamber, there was a hooded creature wearing nothing but a black ragged cloak, all of his four limbs stretched apart and chained to the walls.

The creature's head began to look upwards after noticing Aria's intrusion. It was then that Aria got a view of the man's face and his features. Her eyes instantly widened.

Out of shock, she staggered backwards and muttered a name.

"..Noel," Aria called out, making the man weakly tilt his head as if asking if he knew her to warrant his name being called.