Chapter 51

I was determined to keep up my three-week level pace at least for now as I knew level five and up was a completely different beast of effort in terms of Excellia gain though granted my quest system was completely broken and was far better than Bell's Realis Phrase.

"The Amphisbaena has already been confirmed to be respawned and is currently holding its position on the twenty-seventh floor," Syr told us as she was acting as basically the record keeper for our Familia and was thankfully taking care of the majority of the paperwork for me. But the biggest thing she was doing was using her great social skills to gather information for us.

"We will be fine even with it rolling around as we will have Ryuu, Jake, and Haruhime with us," Bell said confidently which was a fair point with me being able to defeat Ryuu if my level was equal to hers when we weren't really holding back against each other, her wind bombs couldn't beat my fire which just made it a game of me chasing her till she surrendered.

"Alright let's just get into the fire portal and move onto the Water City so we can start grinding the new monsters," I ordered seeing Bell and Lili about to relax before our expedition.

"Yes!" They straightened up and I could see both Aisha and Ryuu rolling their eyes on how green they were acting.

Which made sense with us only being adventures for barely a month and a half.

'Yeah, I kinda broke this world over my knee didnt I...' I thought wryly at how Riveria was literally a century old and was a peak level 6 whereas I hadn't spent a fraction of the time to reach level three. I just wanted to pad out the stats a bit more before crossing the threshold to said level.

"We will see you ladies later." I waved to Hestia Freya and Syr as they were literally the only people in our group not always adventuring with us despite Freya wanting to push her luck and adventure with us. But I put a firm denial to that thought and simply brought up the whole baby in her tummy which made her drop it.

It took us a few hours to make it through the jungle floors but at this point, only the massive hives of the killer wasps were of any issue to us.

After killing the last of the hives guarding the entrance to the twenty-fifth floor my space ring buzzed lightly meaning something was put in there from Hestia's side and seeing as we were going down the stairs into the next floor, I checked it, and saw a piece of paper within the ring.

After reading the disturbing letter I called out to the group. "Hey, guys it seems Rakia is doing another one of their invasions of Orario." Everyone laughed at the army of fuck ups who have literally over the thousand-year history of Orario and have never even passed its front gates despite being slaughtered. They just kept coming back...

"The thing is that apparently, the forces of Telskyura and several other nation-style Familia's are trying to break the monopoly Orario has on monster stones, monster drops, and other things..." I drew off as I read the final paragraph which made me pause and almost stutter in pure confusion and almost whirl to look at Bell in confusion as the final news was complete Bullshit!

Not to mention Bell this would also be big news to Ryuu as well with her history with Astrea... "The leader of this Coalition is a level seven adventurer named Alfia and is leading an army of weaker cloned Behemoths..." I remember there was an event in Dan's memo about clones of Behemoth being made by Evilus and lost control of it. But now it makes sense if Alfia survived that battle and had a sample from Zald or something to make them.

"We need to get back immediately," Ryuu ordered highly agitated, but I denied her by grabbing her shoulder.

"Ryuu, the scouts say even the clones of Behemoth won't even make it here within the next week so it's best we focus on this and get stronger not to mention we are all going to level up again before they get here."

She took a deep breath, and I could see the trained combatant mentality within her as she nodded and shelved her thoughts and feelings for the bigger picture.

Lili then questioned me as we made our way into the floor. "So why are they invading us?"

I almost snorted at her innocent question but then again, we had two rather connected foreigners who knew life outside Orario who could answer. "Lili it's the value of the dungeon itself. The guild makes ridiculous amounts of money selling off monster drops and their stones to act as fuel for magic items around the world and other countries dream of having untaxed if not free access to the dungeon and simply send their soldiers within to train and farm the upper floors for easy profit." Aisha snorted, and I could understand having lived in America in my previous life how they flipped the whole Middle East on their head for the oil within.

Aisha then threw in another fact. "Plus, with Freya having been knocked off the pedestal people are far more willing to take their chances."

I was getting a bit annoyed at how the humanoid monsters seemed to fixate on me...

Down here there were even more humanoid monsters which now that I think about it. "Why are all these Humanoid monsters always female." I grimaced as I cut a siren in half making her poof into smoke.

"The dungeon is likely preying on males' pity or lust for the monsters..." Ryuu said slowly.

"Do people actually you know... fuck the sirens, harpies, or Lamia's?" I questioned incredulously as even though I was certainly stronger than them and would be able to tame them for such a... purpose but the taming would only need to slip for a second and your dick or throat may get ripped out. 'Not sure which would be worse, to be honest' I couldn't help but think shaking in sympathy at the thought.

Ryuu sighed and brushed her hair from her face, and I saw a light blush on her face as she simply replied. "Yes..."

Aisha hearing the taciturn elves' reply laughed heavily. "Yeah, back in the day when Zeus wasn't kept on as tight of a leash by Hera. He helped the redlight district get a few monsters and with the strength of the taming done by level eight it was safe for years and no one got hurt till they sensed their master's death."

"Well, that's human natural I suppose," I muttered.

After the day of fighting on the first floor of the water city and making sure we killed one of every monster we could, we retreated back home to let my quests reset, and tomorrow after the grinding we would all level up.