57 DanMachi 27

My last blink deposits us right in front of the stairs we discovered last week, leading straight to floor 59. After we descend I think about the two possibilities waiting for us at the end of the staircase. The first one is that we end up in a massive forest, occupied by demi-spirits, and caterpillars that explode on death. Two, we end up in an icy environment, the same one Zeus and Hera familia saw last time someone reached this level. With the size of the dungeon, and the amount of luck Olivia has, it will be truly miraculous if we did actually end up in the forest area.

As you descended deeper into the dungeon, the staircases grew increasingly expansive and the descent seemed never-ending. After ten minutes of walking, you reached the 59th floor, where the chilly air hit you like a wall. Our temperature regulation enchantments kicked in as soon as the chilly wind hit us, keeping our body temperature nice and comfortable. The mana expenditure for keeping it on was too small to even dent our reserves, instantly regenerating from our passive mana regeneration.

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 59] Completed 59 WP(x4) Received]

As we emerged from the staircase, a system notification greeted us, and we were met with the sight of a vast expanse of snow and ice stretching out before us as far as the eye could see. The 59th floor was a featureless expanse of flat terrain, devoid of any features such as trees, hills, or mountains, and blanketed in its entirety in snow.

"It seemed like we won't be encountering the demi spirits." I say with a light smile. Not like I really cared about the story of this world, we only came here to learn and get stronger, not to save it.

"Yea, from what you told me about them, I didn't really want to face them. I am not really a fan of monsters that spits liquid that can melt my clothes." She says, and I can't keep in the laugh.

"Yeah, sound like a bad porn plot." I comment and receive a light slap on my shoulder.

"You made me imagine it!" She says with a shudder.

"Sorry." I apologize while scratching the side of my head, and giving a wry smile.

The virgin snow prevented us from moving at high speeds and skillfully crawled into all of our clothes. I had to start up [Destiny] with fire affinity to melt away the surrounding snow, only to find a deep layer of ice under it, which was even worse for our maneuverability. So without another plan, I grabbed ahold of Olive and lifted her off the ground, and for the first time in the dungeon used [Fly].

Our flight was short-lived as we soon spotted our first group of monsters not far ahead. A pack of twenty snow wolves, each the size of a large car, were growling at what appeared to be a cave entrance in the snow. As we approached, we could see a single entity inside the cave that resembled a polar bear, with three pairs of eyes and paws as thick as tree trunks. The bear stood on its hind legs, fiercely defending itself and unleashing roars that shook the ground and delivered sonic damage to the wolves in front of it. Witnessing dungeon monsters fighting each other was a new experience for me, but when the bear took out one of the wolves with a single swipe, I knew it was time to intervene. We jumped into the fray.

The wolfs were level five, and quickly disposed of, but the bear was another thing. A level six with an extreme amount of vitality and strength. Olive tried to parry one of its swipes, only to be launched fifty meters back. While I bombarded the beast with multiple spells at the same time. Finally, a well-placed [Arsenal] spear, split open the monster's head, killing it in the process.

"You okay?" I ask concerned and firing off a [Gift of Life] healing her light bruises.

"You don't have to be so concerned." She waves me off. "I'm totally fine." She says, with a small smile then turns toward the remains of the bear. "Do we need anything from this guy?"

"Alright." I nod knowing all too well she would tell me if anything is wrong, or at least I would notice it. "Except for the magical stone, nothing else." I comment.

Before descending we agreed not to collect any drops except from the monster's higher level than 5. While the bear was durable, its hide was still weaker than the dragon one we were wearing.

"Let's continue, I've seen some movement to our left." I comment, pointing in that direction.

Surprisingly the only other type of monster we met on this floor, was some kind of Ice Zombies, as we were not the fists ones to descend to this floor, they must have an official name, but I liked to call them Frostbitten. They tended to go around in groups of fifty and were only at level five. They didn't really pose a threat, in addition to their stats being pretty low, removing their heads could instantly kill them, although, they did have a gimmick.

If your exposed skin touched them, it instantly froze. That might be the way for them to reproduce, so after suffering the first frostbites, we kept away from them and used ranged attacks. The hordes of these monsters were quickly dispatched, and we gained a nice amount of experience.

We didn't spend too much time on this floor, as the snow was starting to annoy both of us, so we hoped to clear these levels pretty fast. So as soon as we found the staircases leading downwards, we descended to the 60th floor.

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 60] Completed 60 WP(x4) Received]

The only difference between the 60th and the 59th floor was, that the 60th gained some small hills. Blocking some of our views forward. Besides the zombies, wolfs, and bears, this floor had a new type of enemy.

A big, three-meter-tall, white fur-coated ape-like beast. With sharp claws and huge fangs. Going with the tradition, I named it Yeti. These fuckers, lived and moved alone, but were level six entities, with their strength stat definitively over the falna limit, but compared to their strength, their agility was too low for them to really pose a threat. Their fur was the strength of steel and had the effect of magic resistance, so without a massive mana waste, and the usage of [Magic Penetration], we had to resolve the encounters in a good old sword-swinging fashion.

Although, even with all of its vitality and strength, Olivia could take care of it without any trouble. After dodging the two-handed swing of the Yeti, that, after impacting the ground, created a larger crater. Olivia [Blink]ed right on its shoulder and swung at its neck. Thanks to her bonus sword damage and other passive skills, her extremely sharp blade unceremoniously separated its head from the rest of the body which proceeded to drop to the ground with a loud "Thud".

"Do you think we're a bit over-leveled for these encounters?" She asks after cleaning her sword in the creature's hide.

"Yep, but we're gaining experience. Even if the encounters are not problematic at all." I comment. "But let's not jinx it."

"Let's hurry up and find the stairs. I wanna leave this frozen wasteland."

"Want me to use my spell to pinpoint its location?" I ask.

"Nah, it's more fun if we do it normally and we can farm some experience on the way." She says with a shrug.

"Alright. Let's continue." I say and we start heading in the opposite direction from where we came from. Using our system maps, we couldn't get lost even in this terrain. It was probably one of the gimmicks of these floors. Everything looks the same, and getting lost would be extremely easy. We even noticed that our footprints in the snow disappeared after a certain time. A [Fly] and a few smaller encounters later, we finally found the staircase leading to the 61st floor.

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 61] Completed 61 WP(x4) Received]

Now on the 61st floor, the area around us changed a bit, the small hills turned into small but jagged mountains where traveling by foot would almost be impossible. This floor gained some flying creatures, birds the size of chickens, which didn't have any defensive stats, but everything they had, was in their agility. Their claws and beaks were sharp as razors, and they did repeat fly-bys where they tried to injure us. Thankfully, some well-placed [Arsenal]'s and [Destiny]'s took care of the flocks. Showering us with massive amounts of experience and fried chicken bits.

The other new type of creature we met on these floors were blue giants, or as I liked to call them Frost Giants. These guys reached up to 5 meters in height and were massive hunks of muscle. Their build was mostly human-like, only their sizes and the two tusks exiting from their mouths, similar to Orcs, differentiated them from regular humans. They used animal pelts to cover part of their bodies and carried large clubs fashioned out of stone.

They had a tribal society, which meant each group we faced had a ton of them, but in the end, they didn't seem to be too intelligent. They communicated with grunts and yips but had no coordination, so the fights were quite easy. Like all humanoid monsters we faced, their glaring weaknesses were their hearts, brains, and necks.

After killing about two hundred of these monsters, combined with all the birds we slew, our levels raised like crazy, but we were still far from the max level. From then on we increased the speed of our descent and practically jogged to the 64th floor.

The Terrain from the 62nd to the 64th floor went through some minimal changes. On the 62nd the small jagged mountains, changed into large ones, with cave systems leading in and out of the mountains and we even found the staircases to the 63rd floor in one of these caves. Snow storms were pretty common here, but the visibility was still okay.

The 63rd floor had even larger mountains and the air started to grow thin. Descending them, was impossible, as each mountain was unimaginably high, and ended with bottomless ravines. Some spatial shenanigans were at play here, I felt it in my bones.

This floor was the one that also introduced frozen lakes to the mix. They were dangerous, even with the temperature below freezing, only the top layer of the liquid inside of them was frozen. Accidentally stepping on one of them shattered the ice on the surface, and made you take an ice-cold dip.

I had the joy of experiencing it firsthand, especially, how, after falling into the water, the ice over me closed up in an instant. I was never in real danger as my vitality kept me healthy, but the cold seeping all the way to my bones, did cause some discomfort. Thankfully, Olive got me out of it pretty quickly, and [Clean] plus some quick summoning of a few fire weapons around me, in combination with the heating enchantment, dried me up pretty fast.

The 64th floor was a similarly mountainous environment, with the temperature reaching around negative one hundred degrees of Celsius. On this floor, the wind was unbearable and snowstorms raged all around us. The visibility was almost nonexistent, but the terrain now, in addition to frozen lakes, had trees. They, however, were made completely out of ice and if touched, froze you directly to them. Keeping you in place with the only option of severing the appendage you touched it with.

Thankfully, my expertise with magic, allowed me to unfreeze Olive from one of them, well only after I explained to her the concept of stuck porn, and had a good laugh at her expanse. Yeah, my mind sometimes wandered in crazy directions.

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 62] Completed 62 WP(x4) Received]

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 63] Completed 63 WP(x4) Received]

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 64] Completed 64 WP(x4) Received]

The new creatures we faced on these floors were the Wendigo's, and Josei. The Wendigo's were scary creatures. They had an elongated elk-like skull made out of bone, with branch-like horns protruding from the side of it.

Their bodies were slim, almost too thin to function properly, with all of their ribs showing. Their gray skin, which looked unhealthy and ready to fall off at any moment, was actually highly magic and impact resistant.

Similarly, to the minotaurs, they had two pairs of legs, which ended with hoofs, and long arms, which were bone thin and ended with sharp claws. Some of them had thick furs surrounding their necks or going up their legs.

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The Wendigo's had an agility build, but they also had some vitality and strength mixed in. They hunted in groups of five to six, and because of their erratic movements and magic resistance, they were hard and prolonged fights.

The next monster type we met, were the ones I liked to call Josei, as in the Japanese word for woman. They were the most human-like creatures we've met in the dungeon. Olive was hesitant to attack them at first, but after the first one of them shifted into a monstrosity, all her reservations went away.

These monsters, as it could be found out from their names, looked and sounded like a woman in their early twenties. They kept calling out for help, to lure adventurers into their caves, and that's how we found them.

They looked cute and defenseless, their skins, before shifting, were snow white, and they had a thin yukata-like cloth covering their bodies, their eyes were red and they had long black hair. But if you got close enough to them, their bodies shifted, their eyes went white and their skin color took in a grayish-blue hue, and sharp vampire-like fangs appeared in their mouth, while at the same time, small horn-like protrusions appeared on their heads. Their fingernails extended and glowed with an ominous red tint.

These monsters were focused on magic and agility, their movement speed exceeded mine by a small margin, but was nowhere near Olive's in her Cat Person form, who could, currently, move at about 300 meters per second, only a few more levels away from moving at the speed of sound. o

The Josei had some nasty spells in their repertoire, their glowing nails weren't nail polish, but spells primed for blood manipulation. A small cut by them could extract all of the blood in your body in mere seconds, and that wasn't the only thing they could do. While we were focusing on defending ourselves from an onslaught of multiple creatures, four of them grouped up and started casting ritual magic. Thankfully, with my ability to multitask, I spotted it fast enough to disperse their spells, resulting in inhumane ear-piercing shrieks, when they received a backlash. Thinking about it now, maybe I should have named them Karen's.

[Quest: [Dungeon diving 65] Completed 65 WP(x4) Received]

Floor 65, however, had a surprise waiting for us. The terrain around us shifted from icy mountainous to an evergreen forest, with the temperature standing around early spring. The only thing missing from this place was the wildlife, and that made the whole place eerie and quiet. In the distance we could see a large hill, so we headed that way.

Imagine our faces when we realized, that the hill, wasn't actually a hill, but a sitting monster rex facing away from us. As Olivia and I, didn't really want to face a hill-sized monster, we backed off.

The creature, or as I called it, Ijiraq, as it closely resembled the monster from the Inuit mythology, was similar to the Wendigo's as it had an elongated elk skull, with two sets of elk like horns protruding from the side of its head.

Its posture was crooked, it had long, and when I say long, I mean really long, claws, with its legs ending with three-fingered paws. Its body adorned a moss-like robe, which we first mistook for the side of the hill. The monster had a strange staff lying right next to it, which had a jaw-like bone protrusion at the end, with teeth still visible in its sockets. The feeling I was getting from it was, dangerous. Even situated on the 65th floor, its capacities were minimum around level seven, if not more. It had an extremely high mana pool, and probably a vitality to match.

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Deciding it truly wasn't worth contesting it, we started searching around for the staircase to the next level. Our search even after an hour of looking around, was fruitless. Which prompted me to use [Celestial Eyes] and discover it directly under the floor boss.

"The staircase is under it." I say to Olive with a grim expression. "So, do you want to fight it, or should I just [Blink] us to the level below?" I ask. She places her thumb into her mouth, and starts biting it, like always when she thinks about something hard. This small gesture brings a light smile to my face.

Picking up on my expression, she quickly lowers her hand and looks away embarrassed, then comments.

"How sure are you that we could fight it?"

"It's probably heavily focused on magic, its total mana is about ten times mine, but I'm confident in my ability to interrupt its spellcasting. If we do end up fighting it, I might even learn new runes or spell combinations from it. Additionally, even if we can't fight it head-on, we could fly over it and bombard it with spells, or in the last resort we could just [Blink] out of this floor and escape."

"Okay. Let's face it!" She exclaims hyping herself up.

"Don't forget to use [Infusion] and your boost skills when needed. From what I could guess this guy is some kind of shaman, so be prepared for fire, water, ice, earth, and lightning spells. He might be able to shapeshift too."

"Alright." She replies and nods.

We checked our equipment, took out some potions and placed them on our belts, and prepared for a hard fight. With our weapons drawn, we closed up on the monster. As soon as we got, half a kilometer away from it, it stood up raised its staff high into the air, and roared. Shaking the whole floor.