DanMachi 19

"Three to your right!" I warn Olive about an explosion ready to happen to her side while dodging a suicide projectile and slashing at another in front of me.

These little fuckers, better known as Fire Pebbles, were the slimes of this floor, they barely gave out experience, but there was a ton of them.

You might ask me. "But Andrew, you have that nice [Celestial Eyes], [Gate], [Alter Orb] combo can't you just take them out from afar?" The answer to that question would be. "Fuck you!"

These little fuckers are the size of a pebble, hence the name, they look like stones, they feel like stones and they don't move or do anything else, just lay on the ground, until someone gets close to them and then like a hundred of them starts firing off fireballs or exploding right in front of you, just for the heck of it.

No, we weren't caught up in an explosion till now, when they do go ballistic, they channel mana into themselves and start shining like little stars, giving off massive waves of heat. If they weren't so suicidal, I might have picked up, one or two for winter, and used them as heat stones.

With all that said, they don't drop anything, even their magical stones shatter when you kill them, furthermore, each one only gives about 10 points of experience.

You might be asking why am I so upset about them. Well, it's because this was the fourth wave of them we fought. I even switched tactics and only used [Mistilteinn] with [Infuse], thankfully, ice seems to be the bane of them. Firing off a single [Mistilteinn] tends to take out about 10% of the horde. Their only saving grace was that they did count towards the completion of the Level 4 Kill quest.

[Quest: [Slay 4 (R*14)] Completed 40 WP(x8) Received]

As the last wave of these fucker's was subdued, a loud chirp, coming from the west side, could be heard. Now that was one of the foes I really wanted to fight, not these fire/stone elementals. Descending from the sky five magnificent phoenixes breathed fire on us.

"Try to keep as much of their feathers intact as you can." I say to the swordswoman that could probably just one-shot them all with her sword right now, that, however, didn't happen. Instead, my lovely girlfriend allowed me to gain excelia by fighting four of the smaller ones, while she took care of the bigger one.

Ice attacks didn't have any effect on them, nor did water ones, death affinity didn't even leave a scratch on them. So I went with the next best option, darkness [Mistilteinn] infused with space affinity, and at the cost of a massive amount of mana, I was slicing through their bodies like a hot knife through butter.

Surprisingly, their wings were ethereal, they had no mass and as soon as you cut them off they dispersed and moments later reformed. Not even their bodies were fully real. Any damage dealt to them shrank their bodies. I found no weak points, as slicing them up to mincemeat only shrank them down little by little.

It was about ten minutes into the fight when one of them shrank to the size of a smaller chicken and could be killed, leaving a chicken-esque body without wings falling to the ground. After repeating the process three more times, I finally get a moment of respite.

The strangest thing was that the phoenixes only had a few hundred feathers each. They were warm to the touch and felt like silk.

The experience gain, however, was a massive 2,500 experience for each phoenix. Allowing me to jump one global level and one class level. While Olivia with her dragon, pebble, and phoenix kills jumped one global level, and fourteen class levels.

After five of these flying fire chickens were killed, I removed a bag from my inventory and carefully plucked all feathers from them. I was planning on creating the softest warmest pillows ever, or you know, using them in the crafting of armor.

Our dive continued, and on the next floor we met our first magmatic enemy, Olivia was totally useless against these kinds of foes, her spells did no damage to it and even if she shredded it with her sword it only reformed a few seconds later. It was my time to shine and I formed a [Alter Orb] and fired high-density water jets at these monsters. They died pretty fast, as their bodies turned to stone. The experience gain wasn't too high, but considering they were pretty easy enemies and came in large groups, it was a nice harvest, at least for me. We continued our descent and killed off any and all monsters that came our way. Until we reached floor 48 we didn't encounter any real troubles.

In the middle of the 48th floor, we received a surprise attack from a flock of firebirds. These guys alone wouldn't be a real issue, but they were joined by some faun-like creatures. The firebirds were red-colored birds the size of a Hawk, their specialty was dive attacks, and their only ability was turning into fire, which negated most psychical attacks.

The fauns were however something I didn't know about, maybe a new type of creature or maybe some rare ones. They were ash colored and their bodies were littered with magma-like veins, that pulsed ominous red. They used their goat-like legs to jump up high and fire firebolts down on us.

If all of that wasn't enough, if you came too close to them their horns started to shine bright red and they tried to head-butt you. Olivia focused on the fauns while I swiftly took care of the firebirds.

Even with their ability to turn ethereal, mana-infused swords cut them apart. I watched as they suicide bombed my swords, thinking they could just pass through them. After clearing the flock, quickly I joined the struggling Olive in her fight.

The fauns seemed to be level five, focused on magic and agility. They were faster than both of us, dodging our blows or sidestepping our spells. Time seemed to freeze as I spotted a faun using its horn attack on Olive from her blind side. My shout to watch out never reached her. But just as Olive was about to receive, what felt like a fatal attack, her pendant shield activated rebounding the faun, whose horn attack shattered twenty hexagons. I cast [Void Step] and appeared inside the bubble.

"Are you alright?" I ask franticly checking on her.

"Yea, yea, yea, your shield saved me, calm down." She says with a smile, she stands on her tiptoes and plants a kiss on my lips. Our moment was broken by another strong attack on the shield, rattling it and forcing me to move.

"I'll take care of it." I say giving her a wink. "Purge, Mistilteinn." A hundred swords black as the night appear around us, infused with death affinity, they start to spin around us and slowly expand in the area, leaving nothing after them. The fauns attempted to jump over them, only to fall into the shredder on their way down.

Moments later only their cores and a few red horns remained from the 100-plus group. With that last group, both of our Falna statuses maxed out and we decided that today's dive, which has already lasted for more than fourteen hours, was over. We picked up all the drops, I pulled Olive into a hug and before we [Void Step]ed directly into our house we shifted our races back to Humans.

Hestia was sleeping in the living room, with Lili in her embrace. Our arrival awoken the light sleeper and she looked our way.

"Hey, that took you a while." Lili says with a whisper, not wanting Hestia to wake up.

"Sorry, we were distracted by the 40th levels, fire, and lava-like monsters everywhere. It was fun till we ran into our last group of monsters some kind of weird gray goat people." Explains Olive.

"Fauns, Ashen Fauns." Confirming it from the kill notifications I add. These fuckers somehow gave a ton of experience. They might have come from a lower floor because killing the group of 102 Ashen Fauns has given me 3 full global levels, or around 81 thousand experience.

"Those!" Exclaims Olivia then quickly covering her mouth in fear of waking up Hestia. Hestia on the other hand just murmur in her sleep and tighten her hold on Lili.

Smiling at the two lolis, I turn to Olivia and say. "We should leave them and go ready for bed, I'm barely standing on my legs." I turn back to Lili and then add. "In the morning, could you tell Hestia that we need her to update our status?"

"Sure, goodnight." Says the petite girl, closes her eyes, and snuggles up to Hestia's bosom.

"Goodnight." Both Olivia and I whisper and move upstairs.

As taking our armor off alone was difficult, we both enter the bathroom together and peeled off our clothes, and washed each other. There was no funny business, only diligent scrubbing, both of us were dead on our feet and as soon as we lay on our bed we fell asleep.

The next day, as Lili promised, Hestia was notified about us wanting a status update, and the impatient goddess, couldn't wait for us to wake up. She entered our room without knocking and jumped on our bed, startling me, but not waking Olivia up. Thankfully, we slept in our pajamas, well Olivia did, I slept in only my pants, so Hestia didn't get too embarrassed or flustered.

"Morning to you too Hestia." I say between yawns. "You do know we arrived home late at night, and we could use an additional 3 or 4 more hours of sleep."

"Yeah I do, but I need to go to work." She says happily as she straddles my back and unlocks my status.

"Sure don't mind me, update my status right now..." I say with sarcasm oozing from my words.

"Oh quit being a baby. AHH! You can level up!" exclaims the happy goddess and starts clapping frantically.

"Then level me up." I say rolling my eyes.

"You have a new skill!" The loli rises her voice, to which Olivia mumbles something.

"What is it?" I ask curiously.

"Magic Penetration, you can empower your spells to ignore magical resistances, but they will cost more mind."

"Great, just what I needed. I'll take it."

"Done! What about your development abilities? You lost hunter as you didn't choose it on level two, but you can choose from Blacksmith, Metalworking, Mystery, Abnormal Resistance, Magic Resistance, Swordsman, and Chain Attack. What do you want?"

"Let's go with Magic Resistance."

"Are you sure? Blacksmith, Metalworking, or Mystery could help you with your crafts."

"Yeah, don't worry I'll get them later." I say and she starts to fidget something with the falna and locks it. I could already see a few notifications appearing on my system screen but I ignore them for now.

"And done, now get out of the room. So I can update Olivia's falna." She says, nudging me off the bed.

"Not happening. I can barely move. I slept for like 3 hours. Just do it next to me, not like I've never seen her naked." I say ignoring her increasing blush, as my words register in her mind, then turn to the side and try to get some sleep.

"Alright, but no looking!" she says and scoots over to Olivia's side of the bed. The sleeping beauty didn't even wake up from all of the commotions. I close my eyes and check my system notification as the goddess works her magic on Olivia.

[Falna Status Level Up]

[Falna Status] (Andrew)

Level: 3>4

Strength: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Endurance: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Dexterity: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Agility: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Magic: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

D.A.:

[Mage G>D] [Spirit Healing I>F] [Magic Resistance I]

Magic:

[Void Step G>D] [Mistilteinn E>D] [Celestial Eyes G>E] [Alter Orb H>F] [Gate H>F] [Celestial Forge I>G] [Clean I>F] [Infuse I>G] [Svalinn I]

Skills:

[Sage's Wisdom] [Mana's Blessing] [Magic Penetration]

[Magic Penetration LVL: Max]

- Empowers the user's magical spells with 10% magic penetration, allowing them to bypass some of the target's magical defenses and resistances.

- Increases the mana cost of the empowered spell by double the normal amount, reflecting the increased power and complexity of the spell.

- Provides some flexibility in spellcasting, allowing the user to choose when to use the empowered version and when to use the regular version, depending on the situation and the target's defenses.

- May allow the user to overcome certain types of magical barriers, shields, or wards.

- May allow the user to damage or disrupt magical constructs, entities, or beings that are normally immune or resistant to physical attacks.

- Requires a good understanding and mastery of magic, to use effectively.

[Magic Resistance LVL:1/120]

- Reduces the effects of magic on the user by 0.125%/Level, making it harder for spells, curses, and other magical effects to affect them.

- Does not grant complete immunity to magic, as some spells or effects may be too powerful or unpredictable for the user to resist, and some magical creatures or beings may have innate or specialized magical abilities that can overcome the resistance.

From the side, I could hear some light bickering, as Hestia successfully woke up the grumpy Olivia.

"Sorry, but I need to go to work, it's now or you'll have to wait till tonight." Explains the loli goddess.

"Go ahead then." Mumbles Olivia as she plants her face back into the pillow. Hestia pulls up Olivia's shirt exposing her back, pricks her finger, and lets a drop of blood fall on Olivia's back. Her status shines brightly and then unlocks. Hestia starts manipulating the text on it and says.

"You can also level up!" She exclaims with a bright smile.

"Mkay." Mumbles the almost sleeping girl, as if, not even caring about it.

"New skill, allows you to damage enemies even if their form wouldn't allow it. Huh, that's a scary skill you could probably damage ghosts or even soul-type enemies."

"Sure I'll take it" Perks up the girl at this news.

"Okay, the development abilities you can choose are, Mage, Abnormal Resistance, Magic Resistance, Crush, Strong Body, and Spirit Healing."

"What does Crush and Strong Body do?"

"Strong Body is a percentile boost to strength and endurance. While Crush will allow you to shatter defenses easier."

"Let's go with Crush, it could combo well with Chain Attack."

"And done. I'll leave you two to rest." Hestia unmounts Olivia's back and heads towards the door.

"Thanks, Hesti, have a nice day." Olivia waves at the goddess and promptly falls asleep.

Hestia turns towards us smiles and waves, then swiftly leaves the room.

I give a quick check over Olivia's status and I'm amazed at how the falna is responding to her wishes. It might be because of the system's meddling, but it was only yesterday that she had troubles with monsters that she couldn't physically hit, and now she gains a skill that allows her to do so. Okay, I'm not complaining I also got a penetration skill related to magic, but mine is percentile based and requires mana, while hers allows her to hit ethereal targets, without an additional cost.

[True Cut LVL: Max]

- Your weapon attacks will always damage the enemy, even if they are in a form you cannot physically hit.

[Crush LVL:1/120]

- Chances of breaking through defenses increase by 0.25%/Level.

[Falna Status] (Olivia)

Level: 3>4

Strength: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Endurance: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Dexterity: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Agility: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

Magic: 1,500 (SSS) > 0 (I)

D.A.:

[Swordsman D>B] [Chain Attack I>F] [Crush I]

Magic:

[Icicles E>D] [Void Step F>C] [Clean I>F] [Infuse I>E]

Skills:

[Heart's Desire] [Sacred Dance] [True Cut]

Just like mine, her stats were maxed out for level three, but she had a huge growth in her skills. Her swordsman development ability was already at B rank. Giving her library system a check, and I find it at level 73 granting her 36.5% additional damage with each of her sword swings, combining it with Severance, and her new skill, her attacks were almost unstoppable.

Okay, I'm the one talking, with my level 56 [Mage] development ability granting me a 140% increase in spell damage, add [Sage's Wisdom]'s flat 50% and [Mana's Blessing]'s doubling, and you get 480 or 390 percent increase in damage done with mana based attack. I'm not sure which one, because the bonuses might be additive or multiplicative, and without the Bonuses system upgrade I won't find out.

Whatever, it cost like a hundred WP, but had no practical use, so last time, we didn't get it. But next time if we have WP to spare, I'll get it just to check the bonuses gained from passive skills, classes, titles, and races. It's not like I can't count it up myself, but I'm extremely lazy.

We continued to spend the morning in bed, sleeping till early afternoon. When we were woken up by Lili's light knock on the door.

"Are you guys planning on sleeping all day?" She asks through the door.

I look towards Olivia and find her already awake.

"When did you wake up?" I ask her after giving her a brief kiss.

"About an hour ago, but didn't want to leave your embrace." Her words made me feel happy, and my hug tightens around her, after rocking her back and forth for a bit, and a light kiss, I let her go and answer the louder and louder knocking.

"Will be there in a minute!" I yell out and the knocking suddenly stops.

I extract myself from the bed leaving the pouting princess on her elbows, looking straight at me as I pull my pants up.

"Like what you see?" I ask wiggling my eyebrows while stiffening my muscles and giving her a little show.

"Yeeesss." She says in a husky tone, which makes my lower half violently react, but before I could rip off my newly equipped pants and jump back into the bed, the knocking resumes.

"Come on! We don't have all day!" Yells out the teenager.

With a sigh, I resume my dressing up and I swear to myself that I'll make Lili's training today a living hell. Getting fully dressed I open the door with a yell. "What?!" Lili reals back and look at me apologetically. "Ah fuck... Sorry... Hestia woke us up too early and I'm grumpy."

"There's an elf here who wants to meet you, Andrew." She says with a low tone. I pat her head and she lightens up a bit.

"Okay let's go meet her."