Crossing The Second Line

The optimistic mood Isaac had started out with didn't last for too long and at the end of the almost eight hour period, it was entirely gone, replaced by an unhappy frown. This didn't mean that nothing good had happened in the meantime, however. No, nothing of the sort.

As he had started out in the general vicinity of where he expected the hidden doorway of the manmade labyrinth to be, he discovered it almost immediately after his search had begun. Additionally, his Level 1 monster slaying quest had progressed all the way to 13.438/14.000, which netted him 4600 AP, a very respectable sum for a night's work. Even his Huntsman Development Ability, which had been stuck at the I-rank for the longest time, had finally ranked up after he had slain 10.000 Level 1 monsters since acquiring it.

[ Huntsman (H): When battling a monster one has already gained excelia from previously - 3% increase in all stats, 3% increase in excelia gained. ]

Still, none of this helped to improve Isaac's mood whatsoever.

What had happened was that, most likely, Isaac's worst expectations regarding the dungeon had turned out to be true. Just like last time, the circular area containing the fourth floor had a fifty percent larger diameter than the one on the third floor, which meant that this was in all probability the pattern the dungeon was going to follow for most future floors. This increase might sound small, but the diameter had already arrived at 27 kilometers. Now, while Isaac's exploring speed was certainly not slow and he never had to worry about treading somewhere twice thanks to his map, he had only managed to explore one sixth of the fourth floor tonight… and there were still approximately 1900 square kilometers of this labyrinthian structure left, which would take him almost 38 hours to explore at his current speed.

Even if this pattern of size increase only continued up until the 17th floor, it would take Isaac more than 4725 years to explore that one floor… at his current speed. Of course, Isaac would easily be able to manage far faster exploration speeds with his continued increase in strength, but the ridiculous increases in floor size still wouldn't make it simple to explore them in a reasonable amount of time. By now, it was no wonder to Isaac why the adventurers of this world had completely given up on that goal and just attempted to stumble upon a staircase leading to the next floor as quickly as possible. Anything else was simply unreasonable, especially because they didn't have the tools Isaac had available, which made it even harder for them to not get lost.

Judging from what he had observed so far, Isaac couldn't help but admit that giving up on this dungeon exploration endeavour was the smartest choice, if everything continued like this. Still, he resolved himself to at least scout out parts of the next few floors after he was done with this one, just to make sure his assumption wasn't mistaken. If there were no changes to the pattern on those floor eithers, Isaac would simply focus on finding the entrances to the manmade labyrinth and confirming how deeply into the dungeon it permeated, completing his research of rare specimens like the Infant Dragon and focusing his monster slaying efforts on specific floors that had monster species whose drop items would be very useful to him. One example of this would be the seventh floor and the Blue Papilios that inhabited it.

Thinking about how, even after he reached the absolute pinnacle of strength and speed that a mortal could attain in this world, Isaac would most likely still need an eternity to fully explore the dungeon, he knew that his approach to this endeavour was heavily flawed. There had to be a better way. Some way that could enable him to explore it in a reasonable amount of time. Still, as of now, this was just another problem to shelve and deal with in the future. Isaac already had a few ideas as to what he could attempt, but those would still need months upon months to become viable, so there was no need to waste time thinking about them now.

The only thing he could do for now was to continuously grow stronger… quite a simple answer to a problem, that was for sure.

When Isaac returned to the Twilight Manor via teleportation, with Averin in tow, he didn't unblur his existence until he had brought the rooster back to his room in the base. Speaking of Averin, thanks to his speed-related skill and insane Agility stat, he could easily keep pace with Isaac and hadn't dragged him down at all.

-----

Shortly after 6 a.m., Isaac, Tiona and Tione arrived on the 24th floor again. If one were to compare it to the 23rd floor, they would notice quite a few differences, chief of them being the ridiculous height of the ceiling at a few hundred meters. Additionally, adventurers would occasionally stumble across special trees whose fruits they were able to sell for a high price. The second to last real difference wasn't one in appearance. Rather, it was yet again a difference in the amount of monsters roaming the floor. Although the quantity of monsters the dungeon would spawn in one's vicinity most likely was related to the size of the party, the number of monsters per adventurer still increased every now and then, with this floor being one of these occurrences.

Just like so many times before, new monster species appeared on the 24th floor as well.

The most numerous new addition was the Dark Fungus, whose highest stat could reach up to D-550 / 2450. As was already expected, due to it being the most common monster on this floor, it didn't have too many distinguishing features. It was simply an about one and a half meter tall grey mushroom with somewhat humanoid arms and legs. As its Agility was quite low, adventurers often underestimated it and then fell prey to the poisonous spores it could scatter. If one was attentive enough, however, one wouldn't even be touched by those and could safely dispatch it. As Isaac's Divine Blood gave him a huge increase in stats, the Dark Fungi were a lot weaker than him in all aspects and didn't pose any challenge whatsoever.

Another rather commonplace monster species was the Hobgoblin, whose highest stat could reach up to C-600 / 2550, making it slightly more of a threat than the Dark Fungus, if one only looked at their stats. As the name implied, Hobgoblins looked very similar to Goblins, they were just larger, more muscular versions of them. They could reach up to two meters in height and usually roamed the floor in a group of at least ten individuals. While Dark Fungi mostly relied on their spores to catch their enemies off guard, Hobgoblins made use of their somewhat proficient teamwork and natural weapons made from the trees and rocks of the dungeon, which made them a bigger threat. Still, as before, Isaac simply outclassed them in stats by now, so they could only helplessly be slaughtered whenever they ran across him. Even if he was weaker than them, their pathetic excuses for teamwork wouldn't be able to put him into a tight spot.

Now, let's talk about one of the rarer monsters of this floor, the Bloody Hive, whose highest stat could reach up to B-700 / 2750. Interestingly enough, it was almost impossible to fight this monster on its own, as it housed swarms of Deadly Hornets. Depending on how many Deadly Hornets it harboured, its size could vary quite a lot, although its stats would stay more or less the same. Its body resembled a blackish-purple pinecone, which could either be situated right out in the open or hidden in the floors and walls of the dungeon, with only small holes enabling the Deadly Hornets to hunt. It was honestly a very fascinating concept, as Isaac hadn't expected an inanimate object like a hive to actually be a monster in this world. But even after he had grown accustomed to this and attacked the visible ones on sight, some Bloody Hives simply burst out of the walls and floor whenever he walked past them, which could easily catch many adventurers off guard. Their method of attack was anything but pleasant as well. After spitting out a reddish yellow liquid and rendering adventurers unable to move, they would allow their residents to have a feast. As Isaac had about the same stats as the hives, they still didn't pose much of a threat, but he worried about the time when his students and subordinates would get to this floor…

Besides Bloody Hives, there was yet another rare monster species on this floor: the Moss Huge, whose highest stat could reach up to C-650 / 2650. Its entire body was made of moss, but one shouldn't underestimate its strength at all. While it might look comfortable, it could harden its moss to ridiculous degrees. Also, even though the Moss Huges' stats were below those of the Bloody Hives, they were the far more annoying ones to deal with. There was one simple reason for this: they could create clones of themselves. The clones also didn't have magic stones of their own and didn't give any excelia when defeated. As it was quite easy for Moss Huges to confuse their opponents after shuffling the original and the clones a few times, especially in the heat of battle, they were masterful escape artists and were even harder to kill than cockroaches. Thankfully, Isaac wouldn't be fooled by such simple tricks. He always successfully kept track of which one was the original and could dispatch it without a problem. It wasn't like the Moss Huges didn't try to stop him. Once they realized he was trying to eradicate the problem at its root, they literally threw their clones in front of him, trying to use them to buy as much time for their escape as they could. Needless to say, not a single one managed to slip away.

Although Isaac had already started his research on all of these monster species yesterday, he had been far from finished and it took him until around 9 a.m. today to finally finish it.

At around this time, after a lot of searching, Isaac finally came across the last and rarest monster species on this floor - the Green Dragon. A few hundred meters away, he could see its twenty-plus meter long, green-scaled body securely guarding a small tree. This wasn't just any run-of-the-mill tree, however. It was a treasure tree, whose leaves looked like they had been carved from the finest pieces of jade. Of course, there were also a few precious fruits on the tree as well.

When Isaac wanted to challenge this new foe without further ado, he was hastily held back by Tione, who told him a little bit more about what kind of opponent he was about to face. She cautioned him that Green Dragons could even give weaker Level 4 adventurers a tough time, depending on their age. The older they got, the more terrifying their stats got - while they started out at Level 2 C-675 / 2700, they would be able to rank up and even reach stats as high as Level 3 D-575 / 6350. With how mindblowingly huge the dungeon's floors were, some Green Dragons could easily stay undiscovered for hundreds of years and would then be able to slaughter most adventurers passing through this floor in a heartbeat. Needless to say, Isaac wouldn't be able to deal with the strongest of Green Dragons, no matter what. The sheer difference in stats wasn't something he could make up for with skill and prediction.

As for why a Level 3 monster could give Level 4 adventurers a tough time, this was because most of them ranked up as quickly as they could, not even attempting to gain many more stat points at their current Level. This made the gulf between average adventurers and monsters widen further and further with each Level.

While Isaac was lost in thought over whether he should risk battling such a potentially deadly foe, Tiona chimed into the conversation with a bright smile on her face, trying to alleviate his worries.

"This one isn't that strong, it doesn't look like it has reached Level 3 yet. It's probably somewhere in between Level 2 and 3 right now."

This gained her an inquisitive gaze from Isaac, who was hoping to find out which physical features she had used to determine this. Once he knew, he could reduce the time he needed to research this species significantly.

"How do you know that?"

Yet, Isaac was fated to be disappointed with the answer the blissfully and innocently grinning Tiona gave him.

"Instinct."

'Are you kidding me?!'

While Isaac was trying hard to not let his annoyance show on his face after such a ridiculously useless reply, a sigh escaped Tione's lips. Why couldn't that blockhead explain things more clearly? She wasn't blind, she could easily make out Isaac's trembling eyelid and stiff expression.

"She isn't incorrect, it really is instinct. After fighting with as many monsters as we have, we kind of get a certain feeling whenever we face an opponent, letting us know how much of a threat they will be to us. This makes it somewhat easy to figure out the strength of a monster that's weaker than us. If I had to guess and convert it into that scale you're using, it would probably be somewhere between 3150 and 4050 stat points."

'So somewhere between slightly stronger than me and a little too much to deal with. Gotcha.'

After thanking Tione for her helpful input with an appreciative smile, Isaac informed his Amazoness bodyguards that he would give it a try and asked them to save him in the worst case scenario.

As soon as Isaac approached a distance of slightly less than one hundred meters from the dragon, it lifted its head up and stared at him with a hate-filled but somewhat intelligent gaze. It seemed like it was giving him a chance and testing him, because it didn't immediately attack him. After all, if it didn't have to move, why would it? But seeing how Isaac didn't slow down his approach, it soon stood up and released a loud, angered roar into the surroundings, warning other monsters to stay away while it was fighting here. If they dared to step into its territory… it wouldn't show mercy.

Of course, Isaac didn't have a way to know for sure what the Green Dragon was thinking, he could only guess its intentions somewhat. But soon, he didn't have time to waste on such distracting thoughts any longer, as he fully focused on his chessboard-like world of prediction. A split second later, a blue flame breath with a green hue whizzed past where he had been standing previously.

With this, by judging how difficult the breath had been to deal with, Isaac confirmed that its stats were most likely about 3900. With Isaac having almost 1100 stat points less, this would finally be a truly exhausting workout forcing him to his limits. At the prospect of being able to give his all again, Isaac's lips formed a genuinely happy smile, while he dodged yet another two breath attacks and approached within fifty meters of the dragon.

Seeing its seemingly frail opponent being somewhat hard to deal with, the rather intelligent dragon determined that it wouldn't be a good idea to wait around in a stationary position and risk getting hurt, so it unfurled its wings and took to the skies in one mighty beat. A somewhat playful and arrogant light sparkled in its eyes, before it began to bombard Isaac with its breath from the skies.

The moment he had seen the dragon take off, Isaac had already switched out his sword for his bow via the inventory and carefully aimed at it. As he wanted to research it, he peppered it with arrows fired with a differing amount of strength all over its body, while dancingly evading the breath attacks creating craters all over the dungeon's floor. But even though Isaac wasn't dealing any damage so far, he didn't get discouraged. After all, not being able to penetrate the dragon's scales with his arrows no matter how much of his strength he put into them was also a research result. And admittedly, his mind was mostly occupied with calculating the smartest possible movements so as to be able to avoid the numerous deadly attacks.

When he finally felt like he had gathered enough data, Isaac aimed his next arrow at the dragon's left eye. A split second later, a pained roar echoed across the skies, while the dragon dove straight towards Isaac, intending to tear him apart in close quarters. Now that it had taken some damage while having been unable to even touch its opponent, the furious lizard determined that it would only get put into a more disadvantageous position the longer it kept its distance.

Shortly after Isaac had successfully dodged the dive attack, the dragon attacked him by swiping with its claws and tail. The latter had been a very close call, as the dragon was able to move the very tip of its tail a lot faster than Isaac had anticipated. Because of this, his right cheek began to sting in pain caused by the air flow surrounding the attack. His opponent had almost wounded him for the first time.

Instead of growing incensed, the smile on Isaac's lips grew a little wider, while he agilely got close to the dragon and managed to perfectly stab in between some of its scales with his sword a few times, enraging the mountain-like presence in front of him even further.

But no matter what the Green Dragon did, this mosquito in front of it simply piled on wound after wound on its body and escaped unharmed time and time again! By now, besides the anger, a dread had settled into the dragon's mind. Compared to some of the other monsters of the dungeon, it didn't have particularly strong regenerative abilities. Even its blinded eye would take months to recover. If this situation continued, it would, sooner or later, get sliced into small pieces or bleed out. Neither of those were an option the dragon was particularly fond of.

So, yet again, it took to the skies. This time, however, it continuously made sure to turn away its functioning eye every time it saw that isaac let loose an arrow. With its incredible speed, it wasn't difficult to make Isaac's attacks miss their target just slightly. Previously, the biggest reason for its injury had been that it had started to underestimate its opponent's threat after they had failed to injure it for so long. Now, it wouldn't be easy to catch it off guard again.

The dragon and Isaac found themselves in a stalemate, with neither being able to injure the other. But no matter how frustrating the situation was, the dragon didn't want to return and risk dying - after all, its very minor intelligence had already enabled it to fear death.

After his attacks continuously failed, Isaac's mood almost got spoiled, before he finally thought about the treasure tree the dragon had been protecting. Seeing how much it seemed to care about it, getting closer to it might trigger it to return and face him head-on again. And even if it didn't do so, he wouldn't leave here with empty hands - he could simply take the tree with him.

Once he had decided on his course of action, Isaac charged towards the treasure tree, which the two had been getting further and further away from during their fight. Part of the reason why he had determined that the dragon cared about the tree to an exceptional degree was this very fact.

When the dragon finally noticed that Isaac had stopped attacking it and saw where he was running towards, a look of panic flashed across its face, before it dove at him even faster than before, desperately trying to keep him away from the tree.

Now that its weakness was exposed, however, the dragon's fate was sealed. While happily smiling, Isaac's research specimen slowly but surely turned into a more and more miserable lump of flesh and blood. While using its most precious possession to keep the dragon close, Isaac cut up the dragon like a psychotic butcher… until it finally collapsed in exhaustion. But seeing how it wasn't dead yet, Isaac's experiments continued.

It took a whole hour for the battle and research to conclude and for Isaac to cut out the enormous magic stone of the Green Dragon. Only then was the pitiful creature able to rest in peace.

[ Achievement Progress: Kill 2000 Level 2 monsters. (1731/2000) ]

While Isaac was still mourning the fact that the stingy dragon hadn't given him a Drop Item, yet another unfortunate thing happened. The treasure tree, which Isaac had planned to take with him, shrivelled up and died in a couple of seconds.

Even though this finally explained why the dragon wanted to protect it, as its lifeforce appeared to have been linked to the tree, causing it to wither right after the lizard's death, the loss of such a breathtakingly beautiful plant was somewhat hard to stomach.

'I'll just put the tree into my inventory before killing the dragon next time.'

Although the main motivation for Isaac to decide on doing this was that he wanted to preserve the tree, he also wanted to find out what exactly would happen to the dragon if its tree suddenly disappeared. Would it simply die or would it still be linked with the tree even after it entered his inventory? Well, with how rare these Green Dragons seemed to be, it would most likely take Isaac a while until he stumbled across another one.

The treasure tree wasn't entirely gone, however. In fact, its four, jewel-like fruits hadn't withered and remained in top condition, just waiting for Isaac to take them.

When Isaac returned to the Amazoness twins victoriously, he saw Tione restraining the growling Tiona with a joint lock. Seeing how brutal and long the battle had been this time, it was no surprise that an Amazoness like Tiona became all hot and bothered by such an 'arousing' display. After all, the more bloody a battle, the more attractive it would seem to an Amazoness. Tiona's flushed expression, heavy breathing and predatory gaze made Isaac more than a little uncomfortable, so he shot a grateful look at Tione, who kept her nigh berserk sister under control.

'This is getting a little out of hand. I should probably inform Riveria about Tiona's behaviour.'

Because it would probably be a good idea to change the topic and distract Tiona a little and as he truly wanted to know more about them, Isaac showed the sisters one of the fruits he had collected.

"So, what can I do with these?"

Although it wasn't easy, with Tiona getting slightly distracted by the beauty of the fruit and therefore somewhat reducing her resistance, Tione was able to explain all she knew about it through clenched teeth.

"You can sell them for about 500.000 valis each. They… god dammit, Tiona, keep still! They are used for making staves."

Because 2 million valis wasn't really a lot of money for him anymore, Isaac decided against selling the fruits. As they could be used for producing staves, they most likely had some magical conductive property or were able to improve a spell in other ways. After all, why else would they be used in the production of a mage's primary equipment? Once Isaac got more proficient with his mana, he could potentially find some use for these fruits, so it would be wise to hold on to them.

It took a few more minutes for Tiona to calm down again, after which she uncharacteristically turned a little bashful, clearly ashamed at her behaviour. But as Isaac honestly didn't want to obsess over this topic any further, he chose to simply act as if nothing had happened. After all, that was what happened - nothing. Tiona hadn't been able to act upon her instincts and harm him in any way.

A short time later, the three finally made it to the 25th floor. Because the Amazoness twins hadn't told him about what he was about to see, Isaac was honestly a little baffled when he first laid eyes upon the scenery. Even though it only took a couple of seconds for him to accept the reality in front of him, as it wasn't really that weird if one thought about what other environments this dungeon had showcased so far, this rare moment wasn't missed by Tiona and Tione, who had smug grins on their faces upon seeing him in such a condition.

The entrance to the 25th floor was known as the 'Second Line', as beyond this point, most adventurers would earn their qualifications to rank up to Level 3. It also marked the beginning of the 'Lower Floors' and an area called the 'Water City', which continued all the way down to the 27th floor. As one might expect from the name, these floors were also described as a paradise of water and along the many passageways, there were many lakes and smaller waterfalls leading deeper into the depths. All of this, however, wouldn't be enough to baffle Isaac.

These three floors had a single feature that made them stick out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the dungeon's floors - they were essentially one floor. While there were still staircases leading down to the lower floors, making it possible to somewhat differentiate them, one huge and massive waterfall, the 'Great Fall', connected all three of them. If one wanted to, they could simply jump down this waterfall into the basin at the bottom and skip having to go through two entire floors. Such a thing was unprecedented. While shortcuts to the lower floors had been around above the 18th floor as well, in the shape of giant holes most likely dug by Dungeon Worms, they only connected two floors, not three floors.

And, well, the breathtaking aspect of this whole thing was the Great Fall. It was simply too large to describe. While its height was only a few kilometers and Isaac could see the 27th floor's basin from up here, he couldn't even begin to imagine how wide it was, as both the basin and the waterfall stretched all the way outside of his range of vision. This was, by far, the largest waterfall Isaac had ever heard of. It reminded him of old sailors' tales about the 'edge of the world' back when people had still believed that the planet Earth in the world he came from was flat…

"You shouldn't really have to worry about any monsters on this floor. Everything but the Monster Rex, Amphisbaena, is a lot weaker than that Green Dragon. Just don't get careless and you'll be fine. By the way, we're planning to take care of Amphisbaena during the expedition, so there'll be quite the show to watch. Oh, you're wondering about what would happen if we met the Monster Rex? Just look at how massive these floors are. How likely is it that we'll run across it?"

-----

Two hours later.

Tiona dodged a stream of blue flames by a small margin, while carrying along the heavily battered Isaac at breakneck speed. At the same time, an ominous dragon's roar filled with bloodthirst and madness could be heard from just a short distance behind them.

"You just had to jinx us, didn't you?!"

With tears in her eyes and an expression even more diabolical than the two-headed Monster Rex she was escaping from, Tiona roared at her sister.

Instead of replying, the pale Tione, who had guilt plastered all over her face, simply focused on trying to divert Amphisbaena's attention away from the other two. While it might not be a deadly threat to either of the twins, Isaac's life was hanging by a thread. Like a candle in the wind, one gust was all it would take to snuff it out.