Ch 14: Dungeon Expedition Near the City of Joum

The dungeon that the conquerors were going to challenge was a dungeon with medium difficulty and was not the strongest of this category either.

The mithril rankers of the city usually use this dungeon to practice and a group of adamantine rank ones should be able to conquer it.

So it would be one of the weakest dungeons that Rein's team was going to face. But it was just perfect to take a leisurely stroll.

This dungeon had a total of five floors and every floor was more difficult than the other.

The first floor was the easiest and a gold rank adventurer could challenge this floor without taking too much risk. As for the second floor it was a bit difficult for a gold ranker but one should still be able to clear it with enough preparation.

The level of difficulty suddenly spiked from the third floor. All the monsters of this floor were rank four so it was not a place for a gold ranker to be in. There was even a rank three monster on this floor.

The fourth floor was not much more difficult than the third and the only difference was that it had several rank three monsters. And in the fifth floor other than the rank three ones, there was even a rank two monster as the final boss. That was the reason why only orichalcum ranks were capable of clearing this dungeon.

...

Rein, Tasha and Stella entered the first floor with all their gears on. Even though it was an easy dungeon for them, that did not mean they should be careless when challenging it.

The first floor of the dungeon looked like a slightly dilapidated hallway of a large house. There were many doors that led to rooms with either treasures or monsters inside it. Many of the doors also had traps that got activated when one tried to open the door.

Rein, Stella and Tasha all had their own ways against traps. So to search the whole floor as soon as possible they all started to open the doors alone.

Rein had developed a light elemental spell that used the creation properties of his golden light magic to block the mechanism of a trap, be it magical or physical, which effectively disabled that trap. He had named this spell "Trap Disabler".

Tasha did not need any special magic to disable a trap. As a top class assassin, she was able to do simple things like that easily.

As for Stella, she also had developed a unique way to take care of traps as she was very jealous that both Rein and Tasha could take care of them so easily.

She could use her Eye of Clairvoyance to understand a trap perfectly and then used her spirit armament to recreate the mechanism which allowed her to see through all the complexity of those traps and then she used that understanding to disable the trap.

In the very first room Rein encountered a snake-like monster with the body made of crystal. It was a low rank 5 monster and Rein defeated it with just a swing of his sword. Then he stored the monster's corpse, searched the room and then left after finding nothing.

Just like that the search continued. Most of the rooms on this floor were actually empty and only a few had rank 5 monsters inside it. Even fewer rooms had treasure chests in it.

Even with their speed, the trio needed to spend about 3 hours to properly search all the rooms on the first floor. When they came across rooms that already had adventurers inside it, they skipped those rooms.

So after 3 hours or so, they all met up and discussed what they were able to gain from here. The gain was not much for them, but for a gold rank adventurer it would definitely be a decent amount of money. This explained why this dungeon was so famous. The conquerors then left the first floor and entered the second.

...

The second floor was completely different and looked like a marshland. The very first monsters that they encountered here were giant worms, mud golems and crocodiles. They were not terribly strong and were only rank 5 monsters but their numbers were really very high. Rein's team got attacked almost after every step.

It was the reason why this floor was considered dangerous for gold rank adventurers. But still it was not a problem for Rein's group as all the monsters were defeated after just one hit. Stella even killed several monsters with a single spell of hers.

For this floor, the treasures were hidden under the mud. Rein mostly used his Eyes of Truth to find and grab them.

Clearing this floor took quite a long time. This floor not only had many monsters but it was also quite large. For that reason, the conqueror needed almost 5 hours to search the whole floor and clear it thoroughly.

The amount of money they were able to earn from this floor was much higher than the last one. As the number of adventurers challenging this floor had decreased by a decent amount, Rein's team obviously had less competition and were able to earn a lot more.

...

The third floor was a forest. Actually it was an extremely dense forest with a lot of monsters who liked to ambush the adventurers. Gold rankers would not be able to survive here and even a platinum rank adventurer would have a hard time with an ambushing rank 4 monster.

Even for Rein, Tasha and Stella it was quite troublesome. Both Rein and Tasha liked to use their agility the most and the dense forest was not the best place for that. And any large scale magic from Stella could easily create a forest fire which would inconvenience the other adventurers of this floor.

But for any of these to take affect, the opponent had to be considerably strong. But a rank 4 monster was nowhere near powerful enough for Rein's team to consider them as strong adversaries. So this floor also did not pose any challenge for the conquerors. Especially with Stella's Clairvoyance which made all the ambushes meaningless.

The boss of this floor was a large 10 meter tall rank 3 deer. It had the ability to control the plants around it. It was supposed to be quite a troublesome boss but a penetrating ice spell from Stella was able to immediately kill it. She did not use a fire spell which was most effective on it to not damage the material of this deer which was quite precious even for a rank 3 boss monster.

...

The fourth floor was also a forest but it was not as dense as the previous one. But all the monsters living here were extra large and the number of rank 3 monsters here was also very high.

But that was actually a good thing for the conquerors as the large size of the monster made it easier for them to spot it. Especially, this floor was a cakewalk for Stella who killed masters left and right with her Eye of Clairvoyance and god-like archery skills. Rein and Tasha almost did nothing here as Stella alone killed almost all the monsters living here.

They had already spent close to half a day here in the dungeon before entering the fourth floor. Rein had expected the fourth floor to also need four or five hours to be cleared. But Stella swept through the whole floor in less than 2 hours.

...

Finally the conquerors reached the final floor. It was a rocky mountain with the boss room located at the top of the maintain. Before challenging the boss, the conquerors cleared away all the monsters. This floor had a total of 13 rank 3 monsters and all of them were killed.

Only after searching all the nooks and crannies of this floor and making sure that they had not missed anything, finally the conquerors  entered the final boss room.

The final boss of this dungeon was a three headed snake-like monster called Cranujou. Even though it had a lower body of a snake, all three of its heads did not look like one.

Its right head looked like that of a bull and the left one looked like a tiger. And the middle head was like a dog. It could also use three elements. The bull head controlled fire, the tiger wind and finally the dog head controlled lightning.

Seeing the boss, Tasha suddenly said -

"Hey Rein, Stella. I just recently thought about a new technique and I think this weak boss is perfect for me to test that technique. Can you two leave it to me ?"

Hearing her Rein and Stella both nodded their head and stepped back and Tasha entered the boss room alone and challenged the towering 15 meter long final boss.

Now, what special technique did Tasha think of ?