Chapter 426

A few hours later we had met back up with the rest of the girls. I found a secluded spot. We had only wasted about half of the day on that fruitless event, so I decided to return us back to the stairway leading to the 13th floor. Another floor, another temptation. That seemed to be the case.

This floor was very cold. In fact, most of the plants were actually frozen, and the whole floor circulated a ton of cold air. After being wet on the 12th floor, this floor was clearly here to capitalize on that fact. Had you spent too much time playing around with the water elementals and then went to this floor, without preparation, it’d truly be disastrous.

Of course, we had walked immediately down the stairs and immediately put on warm stuff in the stairway. By the time we reached this floor, we were as comfy as we could be considering it was rather cold. The girls, in turn, tried to cuddle up with me, but I ordered them to remain vigilant.

“Are those gems?” I asked, noticing something gleaming in the distance.

“Those may be ice, Master. It could also be a trick.” Terra responded uncertainly.

If I leveled her Mineral Appraiser up a bit, that would no longer be uncertain and she’d be able to know at a glance. Still, I wasn’t as tempted by gems as I was by other things, so we passed it by without a problem. We encountered three treasure chests along the way. One of them was booby trapped. Lydia was able to safely disarm it with her Disarm Trap ability through Scout.

The second chest turned out to be a mimic. We could tell ahead of time. The feeling the girls got from it was different from the treasure hunter, so we were pretty sure what it was. When it came between the treasure hunter and the mimic, I’d take the treasure hunter though. A chest with teeth and a long tongue snapped rapidly as it came at you like a snarling dog was seriously scary. It died a lot easier than the treasure hunter. The loot wasn’t as good, unfortunately.

The final treasure chest was normal. I made them check three times and it still turned out to be the treasure chest that took the longest to open because we were so nervous about it. When you knew something was a trap or a mimic, then it was easy to quickly deal with it. When you didn’t know, you just had to be extra careful. I supposed if every treasure chest was trapped or a monster, then the adventurers would never have any incentive to be tempted by what was inside.

We continued to progress through the cold, fighting snow wolves, and small ice golems. We found the end of the 13th floor quickly and then headed down to the 14th floor. It was warmer now, but still chilly, so we remained wearing some of the warmer stuff. At that point, we took a break and I cooked something under a smokeless fire. We ate dinner while talking about our plans for progressing.

At this rate, I hoped to reach the 15th floor before the end of the night. On the 15th floor, we’d need to watch out for knights. If Lord Reign really did set up a trap, it would likely be close to the safe room.