Chapter 109 - Claudia's Training

"Just like I thought," Tom said once they finally reached either the ninety-fifth or eighty-fifth floor. And just like he guessed before, for the first time since the fight with that insanely overpowered girl, a boss monster of the floor appeared. 

"Do you want to take care of it?" Claudia asked, effortlessly punching away the attack of the boss. 

When they fought with the boss of the same level of strenght ten floors before, she still had some troubles with it. But now, after literally ten more floors worth of grade six mana stones, this boss was nothing but a small challenge for her. 

"I think you should get a little bit more experience fighting the stronger monsters," Tom said, taking a few steps to the back before resting himself against the wall. "Just shout if you need my help at any time," he added before conjuring several magic spears and throwing them all over the room. 

"Was it really necessary?" Claudia asked as she strolled towards the boss monster. This time, its appearance was pretty wild, incomparable to anything that they saw on the previous floors. "It may look like some kind of eldritch horror, but it doesn't appear to be all that strong," she said, kicking away a scythe-arm that reached for her throat. 

The monster itself was pretty hard to even describe. Higher than an average human by half, it had a surprisingly short torso. The majority of its real height came from the long limbs of it, all shaped in the form of a proper limb to half of its length and then turning into a deadly scythe towards the end of it. Yet, as if this wasn't enough to make the faint-hearted piss themselves on the spot, it's head...

Its head looked like some kind of tube with rows of teeth moving around it as far as one could glance inside. 

"Just in case," Tom replied, watching how the girl quickly got used to the pattern of the boss attacks. 

The most common attack of the monster was a lunge, then transforming into a wild slashing of its upper limbs. By ejecting itself at the target, the monster likely hoped to pin Claudia only to turn her into a meat paste with hundreds of quick and shallow slashes. While its attacks were so quick that even Tom would have trouble with keeping up with them, there was one major flaw in its attacks that this monster didn't appear to be aware of.

"Break!" Claudia shouted, pushing her fist forward. She didn't cross her relatively fragile flesh with the sharp scythes of the monster but used the ability that she gained all the way in the early floors. With her smash actually appearing roughly a meter away from her, the monster's tempo broke apart, leaving it stumbling across the floor. 

"Are you done playing with it, now?" Tom asked as this exchange continued a few times. The monster would lunge at Claudia, only for her to smash it out of its trajectory. But instead of following up with a finisher, she would simply wait for it to regain its stability, only for the entire process to repeat itself over and over again. 

"Didn't you say that I should train fighting strong monsters?" Claudia asked, turning her head only when she fisted the monster out of its path once again. But before she could add something else, she turned her face back to the monster, proving that she wasn't distracted enough to miss its movements. 

"Just wait for a damned second," she muttered, sending the monster away yet again with her smash. "If your guess is correct, then the further we go, the weaker the monsters will be. So in a sense," Claudia turned silent once again only to torment the boss for a moment, just to make sure it wouldn't catch her off-guard as she was speaking. "This is one of my last few chances to train, isn't it?" she asked, once again putting her attention back at the monster. 

"Okay, that's enough," Tom said, moving away from his resting place. He called forth his main weapon before pulling his arm to the back. 'Swap,' he thought, changing his place to a spear that just happened to be towards the monster's back. Then, without any hesitation, he pulled his retracted arm forward, sending his spear flying.

The monster's body was fully covered in some kind of armor, appearing to be pretty similar to the chitin structures that animals on earth would cover themselves with. Yet, against the might of Tom's spear embedded with a high chance of executing his entire combination with every hit, even the boss of what looked like eighty-fifth floor didn't stand a chance. 

"Woah!" Claudia shouted as she jumped away from the monster when a tip of Tom's spear suddenly appeared in its torso. Yet, even though it fully penetrated the monster, not even a drop of blood appeared on it as if the energy of Tom's attack vaporized all the fluids inside the monster's body. "What was that for?!" Claudia shouted, clearly displeased with an unexpected end to her training. 

"We don't have that much time to waste," Tom said, squinting his eyes. "If we are really going to check what's on the other side, then we need to account not for a single descent from a ninety-floor, but three times as much," Tom said, leaning his head over his shoulder. "One time to get down to the first floor on the other side, one time to get back to the ninetieth floor, and then one more time to return home," he explained his math before patting himself on the backpack. "With our current supplies, we will barely last that long. And I wouldn't count on the other side to happily provide us with food for our return," he added, shaking his head. 

"Why are you so damn negative?" Claudia asked, biting her lips. "Would it kill you to have some fun?" she posed another question as her anger and surprise mellowed down to a minor annoyance. 

"I'm not negative. I'm cautious," Tom corrected the girl as he approached the monster. Given how it died while standing, he kicked it down before pressing his foot hard on its carcass and grabbing the handle of his spear. "If we don't know what to expect, we cannot just assume a scenario most fitting our needs," he said, pulling his spear out of the monster in one go. 

"What a buzzkill," Claudia said, lowering her head as she approached the wall with stones. "Are you going to pull them out or not?" she asked in a voice, proving that she was still eager to pick a fight, even if it would be limited to just words instead of weapons. 

"Yeah, yeah," Tom dismissed the girl's taunt as he approached the wall and placed his hand on it. A surge of his energy later, the stones started popping out and falling to the ground just like usual. 

'For some reason, it makes me a bit relieved,' he thought, watching how the stones cascaded down to the floor. "Do we use them right away?" he asked, prompted by the sudden idea that appeared in his head. 

"Huh?" Claudia shrugged in surprise. "What for?" she asked, looking at Tom as if horns suddenly grew out of his head. 

"You see, we know nothing about what awaits us on the other side," Tom said, squinting his eyes as he watched the stones roll on the floor. "I'm not sure if you did, but I read a lot of novels about the situations like the one we are in right now," he stated before shaking his head. "While I don't want to get my hopes up for that, what if we somehow encounter other people in this dungeon once we reach lower floors?" 

"That would be..." Claudia started speaking only to turn silent in the middle of her sentence. "Weird, to say the least," she finally finished it after a moment of serious consideration. 

"What? Did you finally start to show some shame?" Tom asked, looking at the girl's nearly naked body. "Don't tell me that you are going to stand your ground and go back home because of that?" he asked jokingly. 

"As if you would care for that," Claudia said, shrugging her arms. "If we actually will meet someone, and if that someone won't be just an avatar of some random player, then..." Once again, Claudia cut her sentence short as she bit her lips. 

"In such scenario, being seen almost naked would be the last of the things on our mind," Tom finished his partner's words for her. "That's why I want to save some stones. In case we meet someone that could be potentially hostile to us," he said, using a small piece of cloth to stack all the stones in one place before covering them in a bigger piece of cloth. Once they were all safely tucked to his belt, Tom raised his eyes at the girl and finally finished his sentence. "In that case, just flashing grade six stones should be enough to discourage them from attacking us," he said before looking over to the gate. 

Right now, they were only eighty-five floors away from finding out whether Tom's guess was correct. But how far they were from the possibly nearest party from the other side or just the nearest group of adventuring avatars? 

That question was impossible to answer. Not because Tom was too stupid to figure it out, but because he didn't have the necessary information to make a sound judgment.

"Well, either way, we need to keep going," Tom said, checking whether the makeshift bag full of stones was safely tucked into his belt. "We are only one meal away from the beginning of our starvation!"