Stepping across the threshold into the cobra cavern, Henry wasted no time executing his new plan.
He exploded toward the right flank, his boots slamming against the stone. The yellow F-Rank boss, tracking his movement, reared back and spat a glob of fire-venom, not directly at him, but perfectly leading his trajectory to cut him off.
Seeing the red liquid flying toward his projected path, Henry slowed himself slightly. He let the venom smash against the stone just inches in front of him. The rock instantly superheated, radiating a blistering wave of hot air upward as Henry jumped cleanly over the spot.
As he landed and continued on his path, he found exactly what he had been looking for: three regular cobras perfectly stacked in a loose row. He planted his feet, loaded his weight, and unleashed a right-to-left horizontal Sinclair-style cleave.
The blade sheared entirely through the thick, scaled torso of the first cobra with relative ease. It pushed through the mass and tore into the second, carving a massive, lethal gash through its body. But as the blade bit into the third serpent, Henry's momentum finally died. The cobras' bodies were simply too dense and heavily muscled to cleave three at a time.
The third cobra, bleeding but very much alive, reacted instantly. It whipped its body around Henry's extended sword, coiling tight like a vice. Suddenly, it felt as though an extra hundred pounds of dead weight had been permanently anchored to his blade.
Caught completely off guard, Henry struggled to rip his weapon free. But he was stuck. The coiled cobra reared its massive head back, its fangs dripping with venom, aiming dead at Henry's face.
Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw the rest of the hissing swarm, including the lethal F-Rank cobra, slithering aggressively into striking distance to enclose the trap.
Genuine panic spiked in Henry's chest.
"System Restart!" he screamed, a fraction of a second before the cobra's fangs snapped shut over his face.
A blinding flash of blue light deposited him safely back at the dungeon entrance.
Henry slumped against the cold stone wall, not moving at all. He stayed there for several minutes, letting his breathing regulate before he tried to analyze exactly what had gone wrong.
"Okay. So definitely do not attack the bodies of more than two cobras at the same time," Henry muttered aloud, shaking his head at his own miscalculation. The serpents were deceptively heavy and surprisingly thick.
"I should probably go exclusively for the heads and necks in general, to keep them from trapping my blade," he added, pacing the small safe zone. "And I need to disengage significantly faster than I originally calculated. Hit and run. Don't linger."
He was mentally ready for another attempt, but as the spike of adrenaline finally wore off, a hollow exhaustion set in despite it being early.
He decided it was smarter to wait until noon to secure his next meal and top off his stamina. Although he couldn't see the sun or tell exactly what time it was in the cave, his metabolism and mounting hunger gave him an accurate biological clock.
Right on time, the familiar woven basket and fresh water barrel materialized near the entrance.
Henry sat down, eating his daily allotment of sandwiches and drinking deeply from the waterskins. Once his hunger was sated and his muscles felt completely restored, he picked up his sword and took his time making his way back into the dungeon.
As he walked, he checked his interface, confirming a deeply annoying reality about the System's mechanics.
To pass the time and test his movement between cobra runs, he had been routinely slaughtering the first goblin cavern. But the diminishing returns the System had warned him about were now hitting like a brick wall.
Despite clearing that opening goblin room tens of times, his rank progress had only gone up by two points.
'The goblins are functionally worthless to me now,' Henry thought with a sigh, swiping the interface away. The easy grinding was over. If he wanted to keep progressing, he had no choice. He had to keep challenging himself.
Henry ran into the cobra cavern, committing to the exact same right-flank route.
He anticipated the F-Rank boss's leading shot, perfectly stutter-stepping to let the volatile venom splash harmlessly in front of him. He dropped directly in front of the isolated cluster of three cobras.
But this time, his blade was angled higher.
Targeting the neck instead of the thick, dense muscle of the torso, Henry unleashed a quicker, lower-regium styled, horizontal cleave. The sword whistled through the air, completely bypassing the first cobra's guard and cleanly taking its head right off its shoulders.
He immediately tried to chain the strike into the second serpent, but despite the quicker speed of his strike, the extra movement of reaching towards its neck allowed the second serpent to react by snapping backward, rearing its head completely out of Henry's strike zone, and aggressively bunching up with the third cobra.
Adrenaline surged through Henry's veins. His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. His ego screamed at him to press the advantage. He felt absolutely certain he could dive in and butcher them both before they could strike.
But out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other cobras shifting, closing the gap fast.
'Don't be greedy,' Henry commanded himself, brutally cooling down his battle lust.
He swallowed his pride, aborted the follow-up attack, and violently pushed off his back foot to disengage, leaping five feet backward away from the coiled duo.
The very second his boots left the stone, the air above him violently sizzled.
A massive, glowing red glob of fire-venom slammed into the exact spot he had just vacated. The volatile liquid exploded against the rock, instantly superheating the floor and sending a blistering wave of hot air washing over Henry's face.
If he had taken that extra half-second to chase the kill, the venom would have melted straight through him.
Staring at the sizzling crater of molten rock, Henry felt a cold bead of sweat roll down his neck. He adjusted his grip on his sword, feeling a grim sense of satisfaction wash over him.
His discipline had just saved his life.