Chapter 20 - Rapid Descent

A solitary goblin was wandering the halls of the dungeon's first floor, while just outside of the range of its perception, Isaac's party was watching it attentively.

"Alright, this one will be yours, Mina. Do your best. In case of an emergency, we've got your back."

Finally, it was time for the timid farmer girl to slay her first monster. At her lord's order, Mina tightly gripped her sword before making her way out into the open, towards the lone monster. As she didn't make any effort to move stealthily, the short humanoid quickly discovered her and charged at her with a disgusting shriek.

Contrary to the worst expectations, Mina didn't freeze up upon seeing this. During yesterday's training, she had already become a little accustomed to reacting to quick changes in a combat situation. Now, although she wasn't very proficient with her weapon, she would at least get a chance to use it.

After a short few seconds, the goblin was close enough to attack Mina, so it jumped up to attack her throat, trying to end her in one move. Mina was too inexperienced and slow to dispatch the goblin right when it left the ground, still, she barely managed to dodge the jumping goblin by side-stepping. It took her a short moment before she collected herself and turned around to bring her sword down on the goblin's exposed back. With how sluggish and disoriented her opponent was, however, this short pause didn't end up being a problem.

That one strike severed the goblin's left arm, which caused it to roll around on the ground in pain, shrieking as loud as it could. Moments later, Mina beheaded her downed opponent. She had picked up this particular method of dealing with humanoid monsters from her lord, who pretty much always used it.

While she was staring at the corpse of the first monster she had slain, Mina relaxed and almost fell down, before catching herself again. A proud smile spread across her face.

There was just one thing that was out of place in this scene of triumph.

And that was her shaking sword arm. Mina wasn't exhausted… rather, her body and mind subconsciously reacted to her first time killing a living being. Even on her farm, she had always left the killing of the livestock to her parents, she hadn't wanted any part of that bloody business. Now, however, she had killed.

Even though it was just a monster and she couldn't care less about it, her whole body began to shiver more and more, while she tried to keep it under control. To no avail.

With a loud clang, her sword fell to the ground.

Before she had a chance to pick it back up, a hand grasped her shoulder and she was turned around, to be face to face with her lord, Isaac.

"I-It's nothing, milord! Nothing to w-worry about!"

Her pleading eyes weren't very convincing, as anyone could easily tell she wasn't okay at all from the way she was shivering and the cold sweat she was shedding. Obviously, someone as perceptive as Isaac didn't get fooled. But contrary to his subordinate's expectations, he wasn't here to chide her. Instead, he showed a gentle and approving smile.

"Well done. Here, take Averin for a while to calm down."

With these words, he grabbed the lazy rooster on his shoulder and handed the fluffy bird to Mina.

Isaac was already more than pleased with Mina. she had managed to kill a goblin without so much as getting scratched. Her fighting instincts were quite impressive, yesterday's training could only help awaken them little by little. Sure, she was still at the starting line but with a little polish and lots of hard work, this farmer girl would turn into a splendid soldier. She hadn't hesitated when killing her opponent - this was vital. These post-killing symptoms were only to be expected, so he wasn't surprised.

"Don't I get a say in this?!"

"Nope."

Of course, Averin's complaints were shot down instantly.

After the cute and fluffy Averin had entered her arms, Mina soon stopped shaking as severely and regained a lot of her composure. Rather than thinking about the fact that she had just taken a life, her mind got taken over by thoughts of playful bliss. With a wide smile and a happily wagging tail, she got engrossed in hugging the soft creature.

"Alright, you can carry Averin for now. Let's continue."

Following this, the group made their way all the way to the stairway leading to the fifth floor of the dungeon. Isaac hadn't descended further in his monster-slaying endeavours so far.

When they arrived at this point, he asked Jakk to protect Mina, Kalin and Averin, while he continued down further alone, to test his current strength. So far, every single monster they encountered had been so incredibly weak that Isaac honestly had been pretty bored. His group of students could just train themselves here in the first four floors.

Isaac instructed Jakk to only let Mina fight goblins, whereas Kalin should fight goblins and kobolds. As for the rooster, it should try to gain some fighting experience against all kinds of monsters that could be found. Even Averin would be able to kill everything up here, once he got used to using his speed as a weapon, after all.

Although the bunny boy heaved a resigned sigh, he accepted Isaac's wish. This was mainly because he was looking forward to today's training and knew babysitting would be a worthwhile price to pay for it. Jakk was well aware of Isaac's increase in strength, so he knew that their training session would be even more efficient today. After all, he now didn't have to hold back his own strength as much.

Before he left, Isaac assured them that he had a way to locate them and they didn't need to agree on a meeting spot. He only reminded them to never split up. Of course, he didn't tell them that the reason he could find them anywhere was that he could track his subordinates on the map, now that they were connected to the system.

Starting with the fifth floor of the dungeon, the previously light blue-coloured walls changed to a light green colour. The hallways and caverns also got a little bit more spacious. Additionally, the spawn rate of monsters was markedly increased.

It didn't take Isaac long to find the new monster species that started to appear on this floor, the killer ant. As the name implied, it looked just like an ant. It had a hard, red carapace and was about one and a half meters long. Its highest stat could reach up to G-200 and it was widely known as the new adventurer killer, simply because most new adventurers would have a hard time to hit its joints and get rid of it that way - which often lead to their deaths.

As Isaac was taking his time, slowly researching his new test subject, an unexpected phenomenon started happening once he had damaged the ant to a certain degree. With an unhappy screech, the ant spread a pheromone which soon made lots and lots of its brethren come to its aid.

When faced with this group of more than ten killer ants, Isaac would have had to retreat before his Status update. Now, however, this kind of predicament didn't even make him break a sweat. Instead of being annoyed at the fact that more monsters had arrived, he was just a little bit surprised. Then, he turned even happier, as he now had more than enough monsters to perform experiments on. Additionally, this kind of swarming behaviour would come in handy with a later plan of his.

In less than an hour, Isaac reached the sixth floor.

Just like on the floor before this one, a new monster species joined the fray from here on out. This time, Isaac was even more lucky, as the first monster he encountered on this floor was already this new one he had been searching for. It was the frog shooter, a more than one meter tall frog with a single eye. Compared to the monsters he had previously run into, it proved to be more of a challenge.

This was simply because it attacked by shooting out its tongue - its range was up to ten meters. As its highest stat could reach around G-250, these fast, long range attacks were quite a threat. Well, not for Isaac. Even though he had been a little surprised at the oversized frog's range, his own stats vastly eclipsed his opponent's. Therefore, he didn't even need to predict anything to easily evade the frog shooter's attacks.

Of course, Isaac wouldn't let his guard down like that and stop his prediction mode when in combat, therefore, the frog shooter didn't stand a chance and joined the ranks of the slain after experiencing a few tortuous minutes of a lab rat life.

As the monsters wouldn't be able to endanger him for quite a while longer, Isaac only stayed on one floor long enough to complete his new monster species research, before hurrying off towards the next one. The increased monster spawn rate didn't hinder him at all, as he was able to dispatch them in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of stamina spent.

Additionally, now that his Endurance had increased so drastically, the short few seconds and minutes between fights were more than enough for him to focus on recovering it. Unless he encountered an enemy that was tough to deal with, he could continue like this almost indefinitely. Well, he still needed to sleep, there was no way around that. For now.

Quite close to the stairs leading to the seventh floor, Isaac finally came across a monster only rarely found on this floor. It was very common from the next floor onwards, though.

The war shadow. It was a dark, humanoid monster about as tall as Isaac. Its physique seemed more akin to a shadow than a flesh-and-blood body. Long arms that ended in three sharp claws were its weapons, whereas its highest stat could reach up to F-300.

For Isaac, this monster simply wasn't threatening at all. While he was enjoying his research, the war shadow suddenly dissipated after it had taken a certain amount of damage, leaving behind a pristine magic stone. Before that, it had nigh instantly recovered from its wounds, which had delighted Isaac. Now, however, his enjoyment was cut short, which annoyed him.

As he needed a lot more test subjects for the research of this particular monster species due to them dissipating after a certain amount of damage was dealt, Isaac hunted them a lot more fervently than all the other new kinds of monsters so far.

Once he reached the seventh floor, three new monster species could be found. The currently spawning monsters would stay the same until the tenth floor.

The first new monster species on this floor was the purple moth. Its highest stat could reach up to F-350 and it was a huge, purple moth. Yeah, nothing surprising at all. Still, it was a lot more annoying to deal with compared to other monsters before it, because it spread a powder in the air. Isaac didn't even try to get in contact with that and dodged it wherever he could. It was only obvious to assume that it would lead to adverse effects were he to be covered in it. For his next exploration, Isaac decided to prepare the necessary countermeasures for this powder. If he asked around a little, he would be sure to find something quickly. He could have even asked Jakk about it in advance, now that he thought about it.

The second new monster species was the needle rabbit, whose highest stat could reach up to E-400. Just as the name implied, it was a rabbit with a horn on its head. Even its size was only marginally larger than a normal rabbit. It preyed on adventurers by sneak attacking them with its horn using its incredible speed.

Compared to the purple moth, this monster was extremely easy for Isaac to deal with. Averin's speed was many, many times higher than this slow rabbit's. At the same time it couldn't even escape his perception, even if it tried. Fortunately, Isaac didn't feel bad about researching on such a cute looking monster at all.

As for the last new monster species, it was really rare and Isaac only encountered one when he was already half-way through the seventh floor. It was the blue papilio, a huge butterfly with four blue, see-through wings. Its highest stat could reach up to E-450, so Isaac had expected it to put up a little bit of a fight. Sadly, however, it seemed to have absolutely no combat capabilities and no way to fight back at all. So Isaac's usual research turned into a one-sided beating.

Wait, wasn't it always just a one-sided beating? Oh well, doesn't matter.

When Isaac got his first drop item from the harmless butterfly monster, the system notified him of it - the wing of the blue papilio - being able to secrete a powder that was able to heal others. Wounds that didn't damage the organs or bones could be easily recovered if one used it. This not only made it a hot commodity amongst adventurers, it also explained what this peaceful monster's job was here in the dungeon.

Whenever there was another monster fighting adventurers, the blue papilio could just swoop in and heal its comrade, dooming the adventurer to be unable to kill their opponent. Of course, this only worked if the adventurer wasn't strong enough to deal with the opposing monster quickly.

As Isaac had only encountered the blue papilio when there weren't any other monsters around, he hadn't noticed this before now. While he had the idea to use a blue papilio to heal his test subjects to make them last longer, he had already finished researching all of the monsters here on the seventh floor. Because of this, he could only decide to collect the butterfly's drop items to use them as potions, if needed.

On the eighth and ninth floors, the size of the dungeon's caverns increased yet again, whereas the hallways in between got shorter. The ceiling's height changed from three to four meters on the previous floors to almost ten meters. Instead of a light green, the dungeon's walls' colour changed to brown. Moss began to grow on the walls, whereas the ground was covered in short grass. Close to the ceiling, there grew a second kind of moss, a phosphorescent one, which made the hallways and caverns of these floors almost as bright as regular daylight.

The only difference, monster species-wise, was that the goblins and kobolds spawning on these two floors got a lot stronger. Their strongest stats could reach up to E-400 and E-450 respectively. Still, these were the only changes, which meant Isaac didn't have to separately research them again. The appearance of these stronger versions of monsters from the very beginning of the dungeon was likely meant to catch adventurers off guard. Admittedly, that was not a bad strategy.

When Isaac finally reached the stairs leading to the tenth floor, it was around 11 a.m. and no monsters had been able to make him break a sweat. He had expected to be able to reach his limits today but as he had already met so many new monster species whose research took up quite a while, he had to postpone this goal for tomorrow. Still, until he had to make his way back up to the surface at around 12:30 p.m., to make it in time for his lunch and training plans, Isaac would continue to delve down further.

Looks-wise, the tenth floor wasn't too different from the eighth and ninth floors that Isaac had just been through. The average size of the caverns and hallways didn't change - the only difference was the mist clogging up one's vision. It was really hard to see further than about ten meters away. If Isaac's perception hadn't already been trained to a ridiculous degree, he would have had to proceed very carefully here.

Accompanying the environment's change was a complete change in which monster species' were able to spawn here. Gone were all the species Isaac had already researched, they were replaced by three new ones.

The weakest of them all was the imp. It looked kind of like a lilac-grey, emaciated goblin with slightly pointy ears and black eyes. Its highest stat could reach up to D-500, which was higher than all but one of Isaac's stats. Still, as he was a master of facing stronger opponents, this monster which was about as strong as him wasn't a challenge at all.

A new aerial monster species also joined the fray, the bad bat. As the name implied, it was simply a monstrously huge bat with sharp fangs. With its highest stat reaching up to D-550, it was quite a bit stronger and faster than Isaac. Additionally, it had the ability to slightly hamper one's concentration with its sound wave attack. Well, it was still not enough to hinder Isaac but for someone less experienced in maintaining their focus, this would easily have deadly consequences. A person like Jakk, who had even more delicate ears than a human due to being a hume bunny, would have a very tough time facing a bad bat.

As for the strongest monster species appearing on this floor, it was the first large category monster that adventurers could come across in the dungeon, the orc. With a height of about three meters and its highest stat reaching up to C-600, it was very difficult to deal with. It had an ugly pig head and wore old hide at the waist, akin to a skirt. Some orcs could even be seen carrying around large wooden clubs.

Well, they were actually trees they had ripped out of the ground to use as clubs. Only further away from the staircase leading down to the tenth floor could Isaac finally find the grey, leafless trees.

Whilst the orc's vast amounts of fat and thick skin provided it with a decent amount of defense, it still had glaring weaknesses. Mainly its speed, which was a lot slower than the other monsters on this floor. This would enable even a normal adventurer to more-or-less outmaneuver it and get a few hits in, slowly whittling it down. As for Isaac, he decided to slit the orc's Achilles' heels before beheading it once it either fell down or to its knees.

Because of the sheer size of the monster, it was rare for Isaac to come across a situation where he was able to dispatch an orc with a single, swift attack. Therefore, he spent a little bit more time on this floor than on the previous ones while making his way to the stairs leading to the eleventh floor.

When he finally arrived there, he only had about half an hour left until he had to start to make his way back towards his students. As he was pretty sure there would be even more new monster species on the next floor, he decided against going down for a quick look. He would feel very reluctant if he had to postpone finishing his research because he didn't have enough time or luck with encountering the right monster species.

So during the next half an hour, Isaac just hunted as many monsters as possible on the tenth floor, finally managing to start exhausting himself because of his dramatically increased pace.

-----

"Sorry to keep you waiting, everyone."

When the resting group of four heard these words, they instinctively gripped their weapons tightly and turned their heads towards the source of the voice. As soon as they realized it was Isaac who had returned and talked to them, they heaved a collective sigh of relief.

"Can you please not sneak up on us like that?"

Upon hearing Jakk's plea, Isaac gave it a thought and decided that it would probably be bad to blur his existence when he entered their range of perception, as he had just done. Giving others a jump-scare wasn't his goal, after all. So he nodded in response.

"You got hurt? Let me see."

It only took Isaac a few seconds to notice that Mina's right arm was tightly wrapped in a slightly bloody bandage.

"I got scratched when I was fighting three goblins…"

After the dejected Mina had reached out her arm obediently, Isaac took off the bandage and inspected the wound. It wasn't too deep and as it had been properly cleaned before applying the bandage, there wasn't much risk of infection. Well, even if there was, it wouldn't matter with what he had prepared.

"Hold still for a moment."

Under the others' watchful eyes, Isaac pull out a blue papilio wing from his backpack and spread the powder it secreted on Mina's wound. It only took half a minute for the centimeter-deep wound to close up as if nothing had ever happened.

"That thing is worth 100.000 valis! And you used it to heal a small scratch?!"

Jakk couldn't believe what he was seeing. Mina's small wound would have healed in a week or two and wouldn't have hindered her too much, especially because it wasn't on her sword-wielding arm. And yet, Isaac just spent an exorbitant amount of money on healing her?

"So what? It's just money. I used it to speed up the recovery process, thereby enabling her to not lose efficiency while growing stronger. If I hadn't done so, Mina would have been slightly hindered for at least a week. If I can speed up the progress of her growth in strength with money, why shouldn't I?"

To be honest, Jakk really couldn't understand this pay-to-win strategy of Isaac, he simply didn't earn enough money in the dungeon to afford such expenditures. Still, he recognized that the two of them valued money differently and there wasn't any use arguing. It wasn't his own money that was being wasted, after all. Kalin, on the other hand, just thought that his teacher was a very generous and caring man.

Even though the rooster in her arms didn't care about this money business at all, Mina was so touched that her eyes became a little red, she was about to cry. Only barely was she able to keep her emotions in check, that's how moved she was. Such a vast amount of money was spent just to support her slightly. With how poor she had been previously, it was no wonder why Mina reacted the way she did.

[ Mina Teagle's loyalty has increased by 5. ]

In a happy mood, the party left the dungeon for the day, ready to fill their bellies before their second round of daily training.

Isaac's monster slaying quest had progressed to 707/1000, whereas he got a mind-boggling amount of valis from the magic stone and drop item exchange: 236.300. It was no wonder why the strongest adventurers could spend millions of valis on equipment and supplies without batting an eye: the higher quality of magic stones and drop items from monsters deeper in the dungeon easily netted them that amount. That fact, coupled with Isaac's inhuman efficiency, had netted him a small fortune, even though he hadn't sold his last blue papilio wing.

Not mentioning Isaac's party, even the Guild employee at the exchange looked visibly impressed when he handed over such a huge amount of cash.

After seeing how outstanding his income already was at such an early point, the amount of money Isaac's rooster rearing plans could generate didn't seem so impressive anymore.