Middle Floors

Swinging his new sword, Cassian easily decapitated an Orc, before continuing his momentum and turning the slash into a downwards thrust, stabbing a Hard Armored through its head.

His training with Takemikazuchi was already bearing fruit. Cassian noticed how much better his fighting skills had become in just a few days. He had become much more efficient and faster in killing them.

He was also very satisfied with his new weapon. It was performing at an amazing level and going through the monsters they had met so far with utter ease.

Coming up with a name for it was a bit more difficult than Cassian was expecting. Somehow, he was having trouble thinking of names to go with the elf theme. In the end, Leo suggested the name 'Everglade', and lacking better options, he decided to roll with that.

"Hyaah!" Cassian looked over as with a huff of effort, Leo swung down her Greatsword on the head of an Orc, messily splitting it in half all the way to the base of the neck.

Her growth was honestly remarkable. They had experimented with her powers using the Killer Ants. Cassian went around chopping them into pieces without killing them, making the poor ants go crazy with their pheromone calling. Soon enough they had an entire army going after them.

Killing them was left up to Leo. Cassian and Nico simply guarded her and kept a big chunk of the ant army off of her so that she wasn't overwhelmed. Like that she kept going at them, killing more and more.

At around a hundred kills, Cassian could tell that her physical stats had been boosted to reach around half of his. It was amazing. Certainly, better than what Cassian was expecting and fearing, but it turned out great. He could already tell that she would be an absolute monster at dealing with giant hordes of monsters and was already thinking of ways to exploit it.

As for the stat boost disabling, they tested it and found out that she lost the enhancement when 10 minutes of her not engaging in combat with enemies passed. Cassian was overjoyed at that. He feared that the skill would deactivate if too much time passed without her killing anything, which would make the skill practically useless against boss monsters that take a long time to defeat.

However now, they could boost her up before a boss fight and have her fight while enhanced.

Nico surprisingly came up with an idea to keep her boost going by engaging in a brief spar whenever it was about to run out. Then he got pissed when Cassian acted flabbergasted that he came up with something smart.

Sadly, it didn't work out. Only combat with those Leo perceives as enemies counts. Well, that or adventurers in general don't count and the skill is limited to monsters. But they found that unlikely, as the skill description never mentioned monsters.

Speaking of Nico…

"Spiraling winds of the tempest, gather and entwine—create a barrier of raging currents, become my Bulwark! Vortex Shield!"

Gusts of spiraling, concentrated wind currents suddenly gathered and surrounded Nico's form, creating a swirling barrier around him.

This was the new spell he and Hecate had been working on. It created a barrier of spiraling winds around the user, providing them with protection, as the Vortex Shield deflects and redirects attacks coming in contact with it.

It provided him with some much-needed defense, as it had a passive effect and the shield stayed up for a period of time protecting him from all attacks without needing his input. A much more effective defensive spell than the Air Wall as it was Omnidirectional and didn't need him to perceive the attack and react to it.

After slaying the final monster, the party stopped to take a breather and looked over the corpses filling the floor.

Nico thumped his staff on the ground in irritation. It was the staff he had bought from the shop Rose recommended. The shaft looked like gnarly, straight wood, which extended to the tip and encapsulated deep blue crystals. In all honesty, the staff was quite beautiful, despite not being extravagant.

The shaft was made of wood procured from a special tree in the Wishe Forest. It was called Heartwood Tree and was greatly valued by the elves for its great magical aptitude. The blue crystal on the other hand was mined in the dungeon, on the lower floors. It was called Luminara and was incredible for channeling Mana.

Overall, it cost 800,000 Valis, sending the familia back into being broke.

That was one of the reasons they couldn't simply ignore the monster corpses and continue with their dive, and the reason for Nico's irritation.

"Ugh, I hate this part the most. Going through all these corpses and butchering them for drops!" But even while complaining, he started extracting the magic stones. The sooner he began, the sooner they'd finish.

Since Leo has become a full-fledged adventurer, the party was left without a supporter, so now all three were always processing the monsters after each battle. With Leo, the slaying part became faster, but they were lagging behind on the harvest part. And to be fair, a single supporter wouldn't really be capable of keeping up with the number of monsters they were killing.

"Yeah, this has become a problem. Today, when we get back, I'll talk to Rose again and ask her to procure us a couple of supporters. Having to do all this extraction is really slowing us down." Cassian recognized the problem too. All three of them were extracting the stones, but it was still slow. A couple of extra supporters would speed up the process by a large margin since they could also do harvesting while the party was still in combat.

It took 10 minutes to get through all the corpses and now it was time to move on.

They stood before a staircase leading down to the next floor.

"That's the 13th floor. From now on the difficulty will spike, keep everything Rose told us in mind, and don't let your guard down." Cassian gave the order and started descending, the other two tensely following him closely behind.

As they walked, they could feel the changes in the atmosphere. The light dimmed and the visibility was reduced a little. Not a problem for Cassian, since could even see in darkness, but Nico and Leo needed to adjust. The air grew colder and moister.

The terrain was different here—rocky and uneven, with large stone pillars jutting out at odd angles, the walls being jagged and smooth at parts as if they had been polished. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, they could see dozens of different paths they could take. Some are wider and more explored, others narrow and less frequented.

Cassian headed off to the right side, he had discussed this with Rose and together they decided that this path would be the best for them to take. It was both properly mapped and less popular with adventurers, meaning they were less likely to encounter other people. Plus, it had many connected and forking paths in case they ever needed to make an escape.

They descended further into the 13th floor, the oppressive atmosphere thickening around them. Cassian motioned for them to stop as he heard a faint rustling sound, like something skittering across the stone.

"Hold up," he whispered, scanning the shadows. "We've got company."

From the darkness ahead, a soft, almost melodic hissing echoed through the cavern. Several pairs of glowing yellow eyes appeared, moving closer with a slow, almost predatory grace.

"Lamia Mormos," Nico muttered, his eyes narrowing as the creatures slithered into view. The snake-like women moved with unsettling elegance, their scales shimmering in the faint light. Each one had a long, muscular tail that ended in a sharp point, and their upper bodies, though humanoid, radiated a sinister beauty. They flexed their hands which ended in long and sharp claws, their mouths twisted into predatory snarls.

They recalled it from Rose's Bestiary lecture. These were basically inferior versions of proper Lamia. Their faces were more inhuman and that was just about the only physical distinction. However, they were both weaker and slower than Lamias.

There were five of them, blocking the path forward.

"Keep your distance from their claws," Cassian warned. "They're coated with poison. Leo, take the two on the left. Nico, use your magic to keep them off balance. Target their limbs, prioritize Leo's targets."

Leo nodded, shifting her stance. "Got it."

Before Cassian could issue another command, the Lamia attacked, their tails propelling them forward with frightening speed. Leo was the first to meet the charge. She swung her Greatsword with a powerful arc, aiming to cleave through the nearest Lamia's torso. The creature twisted mid-lunge, avoiding the blade, and lashed out with its tail. Leo stepped back, her movements steady and controlled, deflecting the tail strike with the flat of her blade.

Apparently, as Cassian found out, she had received a decent amount of training from a retired adventurer who lived in her village, so she was quite proficient in swordsmanship, the Greatsword in particular. But even with that, she would normally be far too weak to fight the monsters in the Middle Floors head-on. After all, it hasn't even been a week since she got a Falna.

But, as her next swing proved, she was more than capable of holding her ground, as her blade severed one of the hands from a Lamia.

This was possible through her skill, Slayer Momentum. She had kept it going from the upper floors and was now enjoying a significant boost to her stats. The key to her staying effective in the Middle Floors was to not let the boost run out.

A hard task to accomplish unless they completely ignored the monster corpses and just blitzed the dungeon, constantly staying in combat. However, there was a way to circumvent that, that Cassian figured out.

He got an idea back on the beginner floors. Leo's boost needed her to fight or kill an enemy every 10 minutes to keep going. So how would they accomplish this?

By bringing some fodder monsters with them and using them as replenishment.

Cassian's Axii was already strong enough that it could easily affect the simplistic minds of the weaker monsters. So, he used that to keep several of the kobolds almost lobotomised, with the only order being to follow him behind. It was impossible to give complex orders to them, especially when he controlled more than 5 kobolds, but an order as simple as "Don't fight and Follow" was accomplishable.

Whenever they were harvesting monsters, most of the time, they were not often left alone by the dungeon monsters so Leo could keep the boost going by killing the attacking monsters. However, if things were going bad and they couldn't find other monsters, Cassian would free one of the kobolds near Leo and when it attacked, she would fight it, extending the boost. 

Since Leo acknowledged those monsters as enemies, they qualified to activate the skill. The problem was that Axii was not meant to be kept active on an individual for such a long time, so it lost its effectiveness against the now-freed kobolds. Sometimes, it would still activate and bring them into the same lobotomized state, however other times it would not, and Leo would have to kill it. It was a gamble, and they had to be careful with it because of that, to not run out of the monsters at an inopportune time.

It was through that system that her boost was still active now and she could physically contend with the Lamia.

"Wind Bullets!"

The Lamia that was still intact and was going for an attack on Leo, suddenly had both of its arms penetrated with wind bullets, making it screech in pain.

Not missing the opportunity, Leo immediately swung her sword at the monster's neck, quickly decapitating it, before turning to the now one-armed Lamia.

Cassian engaged with the other three Lamia.

Making a handsign of Igni with his left hand, a burst of flame shot out and encased the three Snake-Women, making them shriek and obscuring their sight for a moment.

Running forward, Cassian jumped and drove his sword into the face of the Lamia in the middle, instantly killing it.

Pulling his sword out and using the now dead Lamia's body as a foothold, he kicked off it and slashed his sword at the monster next to it in a spinning motion.

The Lamia had already recovered from the flames and could see again. It brought up its claws to block the sword, but as it soon found out, it was not effective, as the blade went through its claws as easily as it would have gone through its flesh, bisecting the monster.

As soon as he landed on the ground, Cassian rolled to the side, as the last Lamia charged through the spot, he was previously occupying.

Not giving it time to recover, he dashed in and his sword into its tail. Painfully shrieking the Lamia swung back its claws, making Cassian duck to avoid it, before lashing out with his sword and cutting off the offending appendage.

The Lamia didn't even have the time to scream in pain as it was beheaded the moment after.

Cassian watched the dead monster fall down. Looking over to the others, he found they had finished their battle too.

Smiling, he congratulated them. "Good job, let's get the stones and keep this up!" Receiving a pair of cheers in return.