Chapter 110 - Claudia's Rushed Mishap

"At this point, I think it's safe to say that we are actually going down," Tom said, kicking away the corpse of yet another boss. 

"How can you tell?" Claudia asked as she looked around the boss room for the first time. 

"Not only it was weak," Tom said as he shrugged his arms before pointing the tip of his spear at the other end of the room, "but there is a corridor instead of gate there," he added. 

Just like when they were climbing, the last teen floors had no corridors at all. Rather than challenging the adventurers who dared to venture into the depths of the dungeon with swarms of monsters, the last ten floors were only focused on the bosses themselves. 

And right now, they have reached the area where this kind of convenient and time-saving shortcut no longer applied. 

"Do we rush, then?" Claudia asked, looking at the grade five stones embedded in the wall. Even though they had quite a lot of value, with how powerful the two of them were after feeding of tens if not hundreds of grade six stones, she could no longer see them as anything else but shiny trash. 

"I think that would be the best way to go about it," Tom nodded his head as he replied.. "But what if we encounter another party?" he then asked. "If we were to truly put our back into running, we wouldn't be able to tell whether they are monsters or adventurers at all, even if they looked fully human," Tom added, shaking his head. 

"Is that really something that we should be worried about?" Claudia asked as a wicked expression appeared on her face. "Even if they have some kind of civilization on the other side, we didn't see anyone from it on our side of the dungeon," she said, moving her eyes on Tom and smiling brightly. "We didn't see anyone on the last ten floors of this side either," she added, still unwilling to explain what she wanted to imply with those points. 

"Claudia, listen," Tom shook his head, witty enough to figure out the true meaning of her words. "Even if we are stronger than anyone on the other side, this doesn't mean we are capable of toppling their entire civilization," he added before shaking his head. "Heck, even if we could, I don't think it's something we should do. If there is anything that the last war taught to humanity is that it is a hella lot cheaper to just buy the stuff we need rather than trying to conquer it," he added before lowering his spear and taking a step forward. 

"What about our supplies, then?" Claudia asked, putting her hands on her hips. "You said it yourself. If we don't hurry up, we will most likely end up dying in the dungeon," she added as an ugly smile surfaced on her lips. "And to be honest, I don't really mind acting like brigands and robbing any potential party that we meet on our way to the bottom," she added, turning her previously ugly smile into a lovely one. 

"To think that less than a day in a dungeon could change you so much," Tom shook his head as he recalled all the magic spears he littered all over the boss room as soon as he entered it. "I hope that was a joke," he added, already marching towards the corridor's entrance. 

"Yeah, yeah," Claudia shook her head. "I think you should know where I'm serious and when I'm not at this point," she whined a little before following right in Tom's footsteps. 

Their journey through the corridor... was as easy as one could expect. With all the immense power they obtained through their hardships on the earlier floors, both Tom and Claudia were more than capable of rushing those floors all on their own. And with the two of them, there were hardly any moments when they had to stop to take even the shortest break. 

Back when they were still climbing the floors on their side, conquering the eighty-ninth floor took them roughly fifteen minutes. Even back then, the monsters of the corridor hardly posed any challenge to them. But right now, crossing through the entire floor just to reach its entry-gate took them less than three minutes in total, with the momentary fight with the boss of the floor included. 

"Hey," Claudia said her first word ever since they left the boss room only as they were about to descend to the higher floor, "could you leave the next boss to me?" she asked, looking at her partner with upturned eyes. 

"At this point, you should know that you don't need to make a cute face like that for me to agree," Tom smiled, unable to hold back the hastening of his heartbeat caused by the girl's cute expression. 

"Great!" Claudia almost jumped in joy before rushing right into the gate. 

"WAIT!" Tom shouted after the girl, but it was already too late. Before he could catch the girl's hand, she had already disappeared into the gate.

'Fuck,' Tom cursed in his mind, quickly following after the girl. A moment of spatial tearing later, he appeared in the boss room of the eighty-eight floor, only to see the girl already rushing at the massive and well-armed Orc standing motionlessly in the middle of the room. 'And I can't even scold her right away,' Tom thought, biting his lips. 

Even though they were powerful, that didn't mean they were invincible. A single well-aimed hit was more than enough to cause a serious, if not a lethal injury to them. The only reason why Tom didn't really care about it anymore was that hardly any monster was capable of executing an attack swift enough for Tom to be unable to avoid or even block it. 

Meanwhile, the girl didn't bother with such hesitations. She rushed at the boss without any doubt. Roughly four meters away from it, just as the Orc started to turn its head towards the invader, Claudia turned to the side, changing from running into a simple slide. 

The Orc turned fully around, raising its one-handed ax to strike the girl down. But Claudia didn't enter its range for no reason at all. Before the two of them could clash, she sprung her arm forward, smacking the air in front of the Orc with all the might of her body and with the momentum of her slide at the same time. 

"UGGHU!" The Orc screamed when Claudia's fists imprinted itself on its chest armor, instantly breaking at least half of its ribs. 

'I know that I'm strong myself, but I just can't help but be jealous of this skill,' Tom thought, watching how the metal plate on the Orc's chest refused to rebound. 

With its chest constantly pressed to the point of his insides squishing and breaking apart, Claudia only needed a single strike more to end the monster. With her fist striking directly into the monster's head, her actual attack transferred just a little bit further, turning the monster's brains into an ugly mess that then exploded outwards out of its skull. 

"How was it?" Claudia turned around and asked with a bright smile once she confirmed that the second attack of hers really finished the monster.

"You damned idiot!" Tom finally could shout freely without worrying about distracting the girl to the point where she would be in danger. "What would you do if we were to be separated now?" he asked with a fury-filled voice. 

"Huh?" Claudia shrugged. "What do you mean?" she asked, most likely still too engaged with the recent fight to think straight. 

"Did you forget what happened back when we first entered the dungeon?" Tom asked. It was his usual manner of discussing any problem that the other party wouldn't agree on. Rather than just giving out the answer, Tom wanted Claudia to figure it out on her own. 

"We entered it. What's more, there is to that?" she asked in response before suddenly turning silent for a moment. Then, roughly half a minute of Tom's silence later, her face turned blank. "Ah, I get it!" she shouted before lowering her head. "Sorry for going ahead like that. It completely fell out of my mind that we still don't know how this damned place operates!" she shouted before kicking the corpse of the Orc she just defeated. 

"It's fine, as long as you won't forget it again," Tom shook his head before approaching the barrier separating the corridor from the boss room. "Don't forget that it would be you who would be most troubled by it as I'm the one carrying the last of our supplies," he added before turning his face towards the corridor and moving ahead. 

'At this rate, our food and water will only last us until the lowest level of the dungeon on this side,' Tom thought, biting his lips in an expression of anxiety. 'I guess I need to pray really hard that there is actually some kind of civilized world on the other side!'