Chapter 49 - An Uneventful Beginning

As he hadn't made any efforts to hide it, Randi noticed the unwillingness in Isaac's eyes and decided to further elaborate on the situation. Thanks to this, it didn't take long for him to realize that it wasn't as simple as it had initially appeared to be.

For big and rich familias with higher ranked adventurers, all the money the party left behind right now was nothing more than chump change. In a way, even the effort of kneeling down and gathering the stones wouldn't be worth it. If they just focused on killing and harvesting magic stones from far stronger monsters, they could make the few millions worth of valis scattered on the ground in a couple of hours - the strongest adventurers could even do so in a matter of minutes. After all, magic stones became far more valuable the further one descended into the dungeon.

This wasn't the only reason for them to disregard the bodies, though. According to the knowledge adventurers had acc.u.mulated over the years, it took exactly 30 minutes before the dungeon would reabsorb a monster's corpse. That included owner-less magic stones, as they were still considered a part of the carcass. For some reason, once they were in the possession of an adventurer, they were excluded from this process, although Isaac couldn't yet pin-point the exact details. If he pointed at a magic stone on the ground and loudly proclaimed it as his, would the dungeon recognize his claim of ownership? There were many ideas of this kind floating around in his head, although he had to shelve all of them for later. In any case, the true issue with this reabsorption was that it took time to take a monster's magic stone out of their body. Although it wasn't a lot, it added up the more monster corpses one had to deal with. If one tried to salvage all of the magic stones they could potentially get from here, they wouldn't even come close to finishing their task before all the bodies would become inaccessible. If one tried to combat this with numbers, however, the same phenomenon as with the expedition party would occur: an endless assault of Monster Parties, which would lead to yet more bodies to be harvested. It was a never ending cycle.

But the worst part was yet to come. For a yet undetermined period of time after an expedition party had passed through parts of the dungeon, it would stay in a somewhat 'excited state', as it was often referred to, where even if only a small party or an individual entered these areas, they were very likely to be assaulted by extremely large or even multiple Monster Parties. It was often called the 'aftershock' by the adventurer community.

Before this became a well-known fact, the Guild had still tried to somehow get their hands on all the wealth that was being discarded down here but after a few spectacular failures and many casualties, they forbade anyone from doing so and proclaimed the respective areas temporarily off-limit every time an expedition descended. Nonetheless, there were always a few parties or adventurers, who either due to their unfortunate situations or because of simple greed were forced to take this heightened risk. Most of them never saw the light of day again, while some lucky ones actually made a small windfall that could help their struggling familias survive for yet another day. Still, overall, the increase in the reward wasn't proportional to the risk - it clearly didn't seem worth it. It was clear why only the most desperate would succ.u.mb to this temptation.

In any case, all of these problems only applied to other people, not Isaac and Ais. Although the latter's inventory space was somewhat limited, Isaac could store anything he wanted in his, no matter the amount. So during all of his monster slaying sessions, he always picked up every single scrap he got, no matter how inexpensive it was. Still, in the current situation he was in, it truly wasn't a good idea to derail the entire expedition party just for some small-time gains. With that in mind, Isaac stealthily added the few loose magic stones or drop items he came across into his inventory by touching them slightly with his feet while walking along. As the amount of focus it took him to do so was negligible, there was no reason to not do so. It was free money, after all.

The way to the 18th floor was fraught with no dangers. In all honesty, it was more of a drag. A short trip that would usually take about 30 minutes now took almost ten hours, as every step of the way had to be carved out of a constantly assaulting horde of monsters. But even though nothing unusual happened and all the monsters they had been fighting had been incredibly weak compared to the main force members they were facing, none of the expedition party members lowered their guard for a single second. As they had spent many years in the dungeon already, they were painfully aware that the moment one relaxed just a little, there was the potential for a stray anomaly to be thrown one's way. To be honest, part of this mentality was surely paranoia but if it helped them survive a little bit longer, it wasn't a bad deal.

No matter how strong the members of the main force were, however, ten hours of non-stop fighting and focusing on their tasks did take a slight toll on them. Even if it was only the exhaustion of repeatedly swinging their weapons for an ungodly amount of times, it was slowly but surely building up. It wasn't even close to the point where they had to start to get worried or think about resting, but the burden was certainly there.

Well, none of this applied to Isaac. While he, just like all the supporters, did pay full attention to his surroundings and to doing his job well, the amount of focus required to do so was honestly laughable. Thankfully, there were many things he could busy his mind with over this time, so he didn't grow too bored of the situation.

Then finally, after all this time, the party made it to the final room on the 17th floor. Here, in these crystalline walls, the Goliath - the dungeon's first Monster Rex - was laying in wait for its prey. Maybe because of its presence, no other monsters usually dared to enter here and the unceasing assault from monster parties had stopped as soon as the entire party had made its way in. As they were still situated around the entrance, however, they hadn't triggered the Goliath into action yet.

"Raimond, take the members of the third main force and let them gain some excelia by facing the Goliath. Bete, I'll trust you to keep them safe. The rest of you, follow me to the 18th floor."

Before Finn's decisive orders, Isaac had noticed the werewolf eyeing the faintly visible shape of the Monster Rex with a strong craving for battle. If Isaac had been strong enough to face it already, he would probably have a similar, although more hidden, reaction. Still, although he understood the feeling, the look of disappointment on Bete's face upon having his 1v1 opportunity denied made the corners of Isaac's mouth rise noticeably.

Sadly, Isaac didn't get to see much of the fight against the Goliath besides during the short period of time where the third main force members shielded them from its rage while they made their way to the staircase leading down to the 18th floor.

As expected, the Loki Familia campsite that Isaac hadn't had the chance to have a look at yet soon came into view. It was located in a huge clearing on the outskirts of one of the many forests dotting the landscape. Nearby, there was also a river that fed a few lakes carefully hidden by the trees, providing easy access to a water source. What was of note, however, was that the campsite wasn't overgrown in the least, even though the Loki Familia only came here every few months. Seemingly due to the strain from having been used as a campsite for tens of years, the plants had taken some long-term damage that wasn't easy to recover from in such a short time span. In any case, the specifics didn't really matter. The important part was that they didn't even need to prepare and clear the campsite extensively before being able to use it.

"Alright, we'll rest here for tonight and continue onwards in the morning."

Finn's decision was happily accepted by the entire party, who finally had a chance to somewhat relax. Of course, they couldn't let themselves go completely, as there was still a chance that monsters could appear on this floor. While they weren't able to spawn here because the 18th floor was a safety point, on rare occasions, they would wander in from the surrounding floors. Even though not many monsters would do so, considering the enormous size and seemingly endless monster population of the dungeon, that number was still a quite staggering amount. Thankfully, one only had to take out all monsters currently on the floor or in the vicinity to achieve a much higher degree of security on safety points like this, which made them so popular to begin with.

Before everybody could start to kick back and relax, the members of the first and second main forces spread out into the surroundings to scour them for any possible threats and to exterminate those wherever they came across them. This would still not eliminate the need to station some guards on the perimeter of the campsite, but it would significantly lessen their workload.

In the meantime, the supporter teams got busy as well. After setting down their burdens, the teams set up all of the party's large tents and got to preparing some firewood from the surrounding forest. During all of this, Isaac smoothly fulfilled his role, seeming just like a seasoned supporter. The reason for this was that even in his old world, Isaac had worked with tents on multiple occasions. Factoring in the supporter crash course from a few days ago, where he had to help his squad members set up a few of the ones they now used as well, everything worked out without a problem.

About an hour later, at around 6 p.m., the entire expedition party had reconvened at the campsite. Bete and the third main force had successfully slain the Goliath and joined the other main forces in searching the surroundings afterward. By now, everyone had taken a bath in one of the forest's lakes as well. Of course, there was no mixed bathing and there was also always the option to take a bucket of water and clean oneself in a more secluded location. This, of course, was what Isaac chose to do, as he wasn't particularly fond of walking around in his birthday suit in front of others.

Everyone besides the few unlucky main force members who were chosen to be responsible for the night's first watch had already started to make and eat dinner together. Because of the huge amount of people present, however, everyone sat around multiple bonfires and certain people flocked towards each other. Although nobody had told them to, everyone found themselves seated next to their fellow main force or supporter team members. Even Isaac followed this pattern, as he had just followed along with what the others were doing. So without any other pressing matters to take care of, he was having some small-talk over a bowl of stew. At that moment, however, his surroundings suddenly turned quiet and all of his fellow supporters froze up a little.

Although he had been a little bit confused by the situation for a moment, once he noticed the envy on Cedar's face becoming a little more pronounced, Isaac could already venture a good guess as to what was happening. And after turning around, his suspicions were confirmed, as he was greeted by Ais' gentle smiling face.

While observing the two love birds, who were just gazing into each others' eyes with affectionate smiles, the first one of the supporter team members to break out of their surprise-induced stupor was Line. As she was quite close to most of the familia's Executives, it wasn't as much of a shock to her for the Sword Princess to approach her, although it was definitely a little unusual.

"Do you want to eat with us today, Ais?"

Before Ais had even gotten a chance to reply, Line had already motioned at the others to make some space right next to Isaac. As this was originally her plan anyway, though, Ais didn't have a problem with this arrangement. With that in mind, she gave Line an appreciative nod.

"Thank you."

Without wasting any more time standing around, she sat down next to Isaac and joined the circle, who had still not regained its prior liveliness. But this time, it didn't fall upon Line's shoulders to deal with the awkwardness again, as Randi had also adapted to the unfamiliar situation and began to defuse it.

"All of you, relax. Let's welcome our princess with a nice feast!"

Her roaring but encouraging laughter was accompanied by two heavy slapping sounds, as she had just patted the backs of the ones closest to her, which were now grimacing in pain. Thankfully, the pain was only fleeting and soon, the jovial mood from before had returned. Orba, who seemed to be quite the experienced cook and had therefore been delegated to that duty, happily made some more of the delicious but simple stew he had provided them with earlier.

But a couple of minutes later, there was yet another interruption. With quite a lot of force, someone had suddenly jumped at and hugged Isaac from behind. He was even struggling to stay seated, while his back started to ache painfully. Well, by the absence of certain fat cushions, he could easily deduce the identity of his 'attacker'. To be honest, though, the smell, the skin colour and the fact that she was the only one in the entire expedition party that would assault him like this gave it away as well. It truly wasn't a surprise - Tiona had arrived. What was slightly unusual, though, was that the first one the chipper Amazoness talked to wasn't actually him.

"Hey, Ais! Why did you sneak off to see him all on your own?"

During her question, Tiona's hug got progressively tighter which caused Isaac's expression to turn a bit exasperated while his right hand, which had happily been held by Ais, twitched slightly. With his other hand, Isaac was hurriedly trying to remove the Amazoness' arms from his body, although he was ultimately unsuccessful.

In response to all of this, an unhappy pout stole itself on Ais' face, while she swiftly helped Isaac out of his predicament by easily wrenching open Tiona's vice grip with one hand.

"Because I wanted us to be alone together…"

Finally free again, Isaac turned his head to face Tiona and released a small sigh.

"I have no problem with you hugging me, but please don't crush my ribs next time, okay?"

A wry smile played across his lips as he began to divert some of his attention to mending his slightly cracked ribs. The force Tiona had used before hadn't been deadly by any means, but considering his current stats, it was still far beyond his Endurance threshold. Even though he wasn't nearly as mentally affected by pain as other people, that didn't mean he didn't actually feel it, so he would much rather prefer to not have to suffer.

While Tiona's bright smile turned a little stiff for a moment, she soon laughed the entire situation off, as Isaac didn't seem to be too injured. On top of that, he had even allowed her to hug him in the future, which was a big win in her book. Little did she know that Isaac viewed hugs a little bit differently than what she might have expected. For him, the act of hugging a person, especially one you considered a friend or a close acquaintance, was a perfectly natural thing to do. There was nothing depraved or 'lewd' about it, although one could indeed make a hug uncomfortable or into a perverted action by touching places that were off limits. In essence, a hug was just a show of trust and comfort, nothing more, nothing less. And as Isaac didn't dislike Tiona, he didn't mind getting hugged by her. To be honest, he wouldn't mind getting a hug from almost all the people he got along with so far, as there was no bigger connotation behind it in his eyes. Sure, if Isaac had feelings for the other person, the hug might feel a lot more significant, but as this wasn't the case, it was just a friendly gesture.

For the record, what had caused Ais to show a slightly displeased expression before wasn't the fact that Tiona had hugged Isaac but rather, it was his reaction which told her that something was wrong. Of course, it would have been a different story if Tiona turned the friendly hug into something more s.e.x.u.a.l, but as it stood, it wasn't anything weird.

Of course, with Tiona arriving at the scene, Tione wasn't far behind. Still, compared to Ais, the Amazoness twins were a lot better at fitting in wherever they went, as they had quite approachable and friendly personalities, compared to the Sword Princess, who usually gave off an air of aloofness. After all, Ais had been very quiet all this time, only occasionally praising the food and holding Isaac's hand. If she was someone that could easily be overlooked and blended into the background, that wouldn't be a bad thing, but because of her ethereal appearance and her now much more expressive face, she often accidentally became the center of attention.

In any case, all in all, it was a nice evening. Still, some of the males in the circle couldn't help but grow a little bit jealous of Isaac, as he was flanked by both Ais and Tiona. To their chagrin, he even continually avoided the advances and romantic actions of the cute Amazoness. Whether it were her attempts to feed him, the smooches she wanted to place on his cheeks or the times where she tried to hug his arm and rub her b.r.e.a.s.ts against it… on second thought, maybe there really wasn't anything to be envious off with the last one. Still, they couldn't help thinking about how they would definitely act differently if they were in the situation he was in. But anyway, this slight amount of envy wouldn't influence how they saw him, it was just a tiny bit annoying to have to look at.

Surprisingly, Cedar didn't act out this entire time. In fact, he was on his best behaviour yet. Ever since Ais had arrived, while he had initially looked at Isaac in displeasure, soon, a melancholic look appeared on his face. He didn't try to make life difficult for Isaac at all and didn't try to appeal to Ais in any way either. He just turned a lot more mellow than before, as if he had suddenly lost his edge. From time to time, a bitter smile flashed across his lips, but he hid that well enough so that nobody else really noticed it.

No matter how fun of an evening it was, all good things had to come to an end. At around 9 p.m., when Tiona was still clinging to Isaac like a leech, she suddenly got pulled away from him, which caused her to turn around in annoyance. Right when she wanted to complain to whoever had interrupted her, she quickly quietened down, while she showed a resigned and sad expression. This quickly attracted the attention of everyone else, who focused their eyes on the new arrival.

"It's bedtime, girls."

Doing her moniker of 'mother hen' justice, Riveria had arrived to get Ais, Tiona and Tione to get some early rest. Although she knew that the three wouldn't endanger the expedition by not getting enough sleep, they would surely cut back on it until they reached the bare minimum, which, in her opinion, wasn't a good thing to do. As it had been anything but the first time she went to tug the girls in, the Amazoness sisters didn't put up any resistance and just followed along quietly. Ais, on the other hand, did show a conflicted look while glancing back and forth between Riveria and Isaac, before finally leaving with the rest of the girls after wishing everyone a good night.

Taking Riveria's appearance as a cue, Line also ordered the team to go to their respective tents and rest up nicely. Of course, not everyone could have their own tent, so Isaac was paired up with the other two males on his squad, Auroch and Cedar. The former was a somewhat quiet but especially warm-hearted person who was really easy to get along with. He rarely got into any arguments and preferred a peaceful environment. The latter, however, did have his issues, so Isaac couldn't yet tell how this would all turn out.

The tents they were all resting in were quite large and had multiple partitions. The biggest one right at the entrance was determined to be the communal area, while three smaller partitions at the sides contained their sleeping bags. This way, they could all have some privacy and enough space to get some comfortable rest. Even a few portable magic stone lamps were available. In any case, such a relatively luxurious housing arrangement for the supporters wasn't a huge surprise, as the Loki Familia was filthy rich. They could easily get the best of any kind of equipment and supplies they wanted and they certainly didn't skimp on the expedition party's living arrangements.

After they had all changed into some comfortable clothes, the three decided to spend some more time in the communal area as it was still quite early. Too much sleep would be more of a bother than a help, after all. To Isaac's surprise, Cedar simply ignored him and Auroch - although that was quite hard to do with their large frames - and took out his journal. Without paying them any attention, he wrote down some words that Isaac didn't attempt to read, as he truly didn't feel a need to infringe upon the elf's privacy. This current change in behaviour was a welcome one, so Isaac didn't mind it whatsoever.

For about an hour, he and Auroch made some casual conversation before all three of them finally felt like it was about time to get some sleep, so they excused themselves and went into their own partitions before lying down in their sleeping bags.

Although today might have seemed uneventful, Isaac had been hard at work this entire time. He had taken the opportunity to work on his mana cultivation and had steadily increased the amounts of circulating mana drops. So far, after he had reached Foundation Establishment, the only benefit those additional drops gave him were a slightly faster access to mana when manipulating his surroundings or casting magics, but if he continually increased the number, Isaac was convinced that something would change, although he couldn't yet be sure what exactly it would be. His first goal would be to add all of the drops of mana in his mental layer to his channels. Now that he most likely wouldn't be updating his Status for a while, this was the perfect opportunity to catch up with the growth of his Magic stat.

By the time Isaac determined that both Auroch and Cedar had fallen into a deep slumber, he had made it all the way to 2397 drops. Now, it was finally time.

Would Isaac simply waste the entire night? Obviously, he wouldn't. While he had decided that he would still sleep about two hours every night, to reach that four hour minimum he had to satisfy every two days, the rest of the night would be used to gather some more AP and continue his dungeon exploration. After all, he could teleport anywhere whenever he wanted, there was no need for him to sit still. While there was definitely a chance that something could occur at the campsite while he was gone, the probability of somebody coming to find him first was pretty low. As Ais' senses were quite sharp, she would likely be one of the first ones to wake up and if something truly happened, they had already agreed that she would send him a message via the system, telling him to come back immediately. Well, the only problematic thing that could happen would be someone checking whether Isaac was in his partition of the tent in the middle of the night, but as that would be a very creepy thing to do and it was very unlikely, especially with his tent mates fast asleep, he could risk stepping out for a while. Even if someone did notice his empty sleeping bag, they would probably just assume that he went to relieve himself.

With Isaac's masterful body control, it was easy for him to change into his dungeon delving attire without making a sound. Then, after checking the system map for where he had stopped his grinding session the last time, Isaac silently teleported to the fourth floor.