Chapter 51 - Ten Floors

The 28th to 32nd dungeon floors were called the 'Green Wasteland'. Apparently, from here on out, it wasn't unusual for safety points to 'interrupt' thematic zones of the dungeon, rather than divide them. As for the name, it was rather perplexing if one hadn't experienced the floors for themself. The 'green' part had been chosen because the entirety of these floors was covered in rapidly growing, dense jungles, filled with many long extinct and alien-looking plants. Mountains, rivers and lakes also dotted the landscape. All in all, the floor normally looked like a beautiful painting, perfectly showcasing mother nature.

Once expedition parties entered these floors, however, all of this changed rapidly. Due to the vast amounts of Monster Parties they attracted, the environment was all but destroyed in mere moments, leaving behind a barren expanse for as far as the eye could see.

Ever since the beginning of the 28th floor, Level 3 monsters started to appear en masse, all of them reptilian and dinosaur-esque in nature. They had a clearly mesozoic vibe to them.

Thankfully, none of them spawned on the 29th floor, so after cleaning up the few that wandered in from the surrounding floors, almost all of the breathtaking scenery was preserved. At this safety point, the Loki Familia also had something akin to a campsite. For a few years, before the Top Executives reached their currently high Levels, this had been the frontier they rested on during expeditions. But for a few decades now, it had only been used as a temporary stop to recuperate.

In one of the mountain ranges quite close to the staircase they had entered the floor from, there was a hidden valley, only accessible by pushing aside several large, seemingly naturally arranged boulders that had been placed there to obscure the entrance. Honestly, after entering the several hundred meters wide and deep valley, it actually seemed to be more of a grotto or cavern. After all, light did only enter the place via a very small crack in the ceiling. It could be argued that it could be a cliff in between two mountains, but it just looked like parts of the ceiling of this cave had collapsed a long time ago.

While the main force members were exterminating the few pterodactyl-like flying monsters that had made this place their nest, Isaac couldn't help but have a bad feeling about the situation.

Yes, it was indeed hard to find and attack this place from the outside. It was great for staying hidden and protected. But once one was found, the security and 'snugness' this place came with could turn into an early grave. If the exit was blocked and the rest of the ceiling was made to collapse as well, one would be buried alive.

Admittedly, nothing had ever happened to the familia's expedition party while they were staying here over the years, but it still wasn't a good choice. If Isaac was in charge, he would much rather prefer an elevated position or even just an open field. One would be noticed by their enemies a lot easier but one's own forces would also spot dangers more quickly. In here, too many things could go wrong.

Thankfully, Finn seemed to be aware of the precariousness of their resting place, as he stationed some of the unlucky main force members chosen to stand guard tonight right outside of the site of the cave in, overlooking the hidden valley from above.

Once Isaac thought about it a little more, he realized that most of the party members would be strong enough to escape a collapse of this safe haven relatively easily, even while saving their weaker comrades. Maybe that was why the ones in charge didn't seem too bothered about the danger and would rather focus on hiding their tracks. Still, most of the supplies they were carrying with them would get lost or damaged, as the carts and piles of backpacks couldn't easily be moved away. So just in case, Isaac prepared some emergency measures. After all, one never knew what could happen, right?

-----

Of course, by the time the expedition party left their campsite and continued their descent at about 6 a.m. … nothing had happened. Isaac's precautions were for naught. It was somewhat anticlimactic, but little by little, he was growing numb to this feeling of disappointment. He didn't want Ais and her friends to be in danger but at the same time, he also didn't want to be bored. Still, there was nothing he could do besides releasing a resigned sigh and doing his job the best he could.

'It's only temporary…'

Words like these constantly crossed his mind.

Just like the night before, last night, Isaac had teleported out of his tent to further explore the fourth floor and progress his Level 1 monster slaying achievement. Because the main force members seemed to be a little more exhausted than before, everyone entered their tents a bit earlier, which gave him some more time to rack up kills. He ended his grinding session at 21.570/22.000, while his AP total reached 21.731.

If he had wanted to, Isaac could have already bought his 'Divine Body' upgrade. Still, he chose to delay this for now. The reason for this was that, after the upgrade would finish and he would return from the spatiotemporal displacement, it was unknown how his Divine Aura would be affected. After all, as far as he knew, the dungeon would go to crazy lengths to exterminate him if it detected even a hint of it. While he could easily completely conceal it right now, while only his blood had seen a qualitative change, he couldn't be sure about having instant perfect control over it once his entire body changed.

Isaac's own safety wasn't the problem. As previously stated, he could just regenerate even after suffering injuries that would kill any kind of being. Even death wasn't a possibility. What worried him were the people around him, chief of all Ais. While it was unlikely for the dungeon to create a monster which was too fast for him to even teleport away from, it was still possible. In that case, his beloved may get harmed or even killed, while the rest of the expedition party would be hit by a horrific tragedy. If he was all alone, Isaac wouldn't mind conducting experiments like this, even though they would most likely cause him a lot of pain. But under the current circ.u.mstances, the risk wasn't something he was willing to take.

With thoughts like these, Isaac decided on simply acc.u.mulating his AP for now. By the time they reached the surface again, he could then take many, many steps forward in quick succession. It would be an explosive growth that none of his future adversaries would be able to handle. Most likely, that is. There was always the possibility that he didn't give them enough credit.

Thankfully, during today's march, Isaac's boredom decreased a little bit, as their pace had increased by a lot. They were still only taking one hour to advance to a new floor, which caused some of the weaker supporters to get visibly strained. Not to the point of where they would keel over any second now, but only to where they would have to take a nice, long rest this coming evening, with little time to fool around.

When the party reached the end of a staircase leading to the 32nd floor, everything seemed the same as on the previous floors. They had appeared at a slightly elevated position which enabled them to survey the surrounding jungle easily. But there was one thing that was different from before. Many kilometers away, Isaac could vaguely make out a moving hill. It wasn't big enough to be called a mountain, as it definitely wasn't thousands of meters tall. But from what he could gather by looking at its surroundings, it should at the very least be about 400 meters in height.

And it was moving.

"Is that what I think it is?"

It had been a rhetorical question, but because he had spoken aloud, Isaac quickly got a reply.

With a sympathetic look on her face, Claire patted his right shoulder, trying to cheer him up. She had judged his question to be a sign of worry or an expression of feeling inadequate, the same kinds of emotions she had experienced back when she first laid eyes upon that monstrosity.

"Yep. That's this floor's Monster Rex, Tastrophanus. But no worries, a small elite force will split off and face him."

After Isaac politely thanked her, Claire also mentioned that the floor boss respawned every two months. This was legitimately important information, as he would eventually research even the various Monster Rexes. That would obviously require some planning on his part, as they couldn't be encountered in droves whenever he wanted to, like almost all other monsters. Knowing the timing, he could now more efficiently hunt them. Still, the respawn times of the various floor bosses were anything but a secret, so it would have been very easy to find out about them.

Once the party had re-entered the jungle, Isaac lost sight of Tastrophanus for a couple of minutes, but he didn't have to wait long for the environment to get utterly obliterated by the attacking monsters yet again. Because of this, he soon had a somewhat clear view on the battle that was about to take place.

Riveria, Ais, Tiona, Tione and Bete were sent to deal with the Monster Rex. This time, even a Level 6 had to come along, so that clearly showcased how much harder this floor boss was to deal with than Amphisbaena, which hadn't been too much of a threat. Well, at first, that might seem to be the reason, but it actually wasn't. Tastrophanus was quite slow, even Isaac could somewhat follow the movements of the main body. Only… its defense was orders of magnitude higher than anything encountered before this place. Way stronger firepower was needed to penetrate it.

While the enormous creature bore more resemblance to a turtle than a dragon or dinosaur, simply because of the mountain-like shell it carried on its back, its head almost looked like a snake. Not like the head of a snake, an entire snake. The neck was extremely long and the head was protruding from the shell for more than a hundred meters. Even more ridiculous was its speed - Isaac couldn't even see it once it started moving. And just like the rest of its body, it was covered in ridiculously hard, grey-ish scales that made most of the attacks thrown its way utterly useless.

It would still be possible to overpower it with brute force, but everyone that had been sent its way was definitely not strong enough to be able to do so, judging from how, for an entire minute after the battle had begun, no wounds had been inflicted on Tastrophanus although hundreds of attacks had pelted it like rain. This all changed rather rapidly, however, when an all-engulfing inferno and a bone-chilling blizzard engulfed the hulking monstrosity in rapid succession. The sheer size of the area affected by the Magic honestly impressed Isaac, as, while it only barely covered the entire body of the Monster Rex, that was still hundreds of meters. In any normal scenario, the area of effect would be enough to wipe out thousands of opponents in a couple of seconds. In any case, after these two magical attacks, the previously impervious mountain got quickly shattered by the attacks of the melee combatants and the battle ended within a couple of minutes.

A slight smile stole itself on Isaac's face, while his opinion of Riveria improved by a significant amount. The concept of using rapidly changing temperatures to weaken its defense was one of the first tactics he had thought of while casually imagining the best attack strategies for the small elite squad facing Tastrophanus. But he honestly hadn't expected the knowledgeable High Elf to be aware of the effect such a phenomenon would have. He had underestimated this world's, or rather Riveria's, acc.u.mulated wisdom. But instead of being disappointed in himself, he grew more excited. The more the people of this world knew, the more they could entertain him, after all.

While the rest of the expedition party was on a staircase leading down to the 33rd floor, the split-off group returned with a huge haul. Both huge in value and huge in size, that is. Just like the two Monster Rexes the expedition party had faced before, this one also blessed them with a Drop Item, which made Isaac suspect that the chances for this to happen were significantly higher than usual. Normal monsters would only leave behind a Drop Item one out of ten times, on average. In any case, what Tastrophanus had dropped was an enormous scale even taller than Bete and a Magic Stone a bit bigger than the one from Amphisbaena. Isaac could easily steal a few glances at them whenever he wanted to, as they were loaded onto the cart Orba's squad was responsible for, which was usually following right behind the trio of Isaac, Claire and Cedar.

-----

Haunted Halls. That was what the 33rd to 36th floors of the dungeon were commonly referred to as. The main reason for this was the staggering variety of undead monsters one could come across here. While there weren't any intangible ones like ghosts or wraiths, there were plenty of skeletons, zombies and ghouls of all kinds. Of course, there were also a few monsters that didn't follow this trend and were, instead, perfectly normal living beings. Still, the entire place gave off the same vibe Isaac would have expected from a necromancer's lair, rather than the dungeon he was familiar with. Speaking of familiarity, the environment yet again changed into a labyrinthian layout, this time consisting of hallways, mausoleums and even caverns containing graveyards.

As for the strength of the monsters endlessly rising from their eternal slumber to slaughter the intruders, some of them almost reached Level 4, while most of them were still Level 3.

Even the most hardened of adventurers would grow pale at the sights that awaited them on these floors, so it was no surprise that quite a few of the supporters got weak knees and had a hard time keeping up with the pace of the party's advance. This was just a temporary problem, however, as they quickly snapped out of the nightmarish thoughts clouding their minds. They were veterans and it wasn���t the first time they came here, after all.

Although he was a little bit spooked by the change, Isaac didn't let the waves of undead bother him too much. By the time he had decided to travel to new worlds, he had already expected to come across such ghastly scenes.

What wasn't temporary, though, was that the increase in the monsters' strength was starting to take a visible toll on the weaker main force members. After all, they were just Level 4, so dealing with an unceasing assault of monsters that almost reached their standard was legitimately taxing. Only due to their stronger comrades could they hold on in such a situation, as the Level 5s oftentimes cleared out vast swathes of enemies to give their weaker companions some time to catch their breath. Still, in the near future, the combat strategy of the whole party would have to be adjusted.

Finally, after four hours of very fatiguing battle, they had almost made it to the 37th floor, which marked the beginning of the 'Deep Floors'.

"Why are we taking a different staircase this time?"

With a somewhat perplexed look on her face, Claire asked Line, who had been passing by to support her squads while they were descending the stairs.

"During their last expedition, the Freya Familia slew Udaeus, so we won't be facing him during our descent. As it takes him three months to respawn, we'll only get a chance to hunt him on our way back home. So now that we don't have to stop at his palace, we can take this route, as it is overall slightly faster."

The bespectacled team leader's response was very satisfying, so Claire gave her a thankful nod, while a condescending smirk played across Cedar's lips. It had been obvious what was happening. He had easily deduced the situation himself, so now that he had something he could stroke his own ego over, he wouldn't miss the chance of doing so - in his thoughts, at least. And who could blame him? After all, he didn't make a big deal out of it and kept it to himself.

Observing the two, who were mostly as easy to read as open books, Isaac simply released a sigh while eagerly anticipating what lay beyond the horror movie-esque floors they had just progressed through.

-----

"Tsk."

In short: It was more of the same.

If he had to give a more detailed summary, it would be this: While the layout and environment had some major changes, a significant portion of the monsters on this floor still consisted of those filthy undead.

Just for the record, Isaac didn't dislike the undead simply because they were undead. In fact, he had no problems with them at all as long as they didn't go out of their way to bother him. But after encountering way more than tens of thousands of them over the past few hours, he had grown a little tired at their sight.

Another name for the 37th floor was the 'White Palace', although most adventurers only referred to the main palace Udaeus - the floor's Monster Rex - resided in when using that description. Besides that one, there was a seemingly endless amount of other palaces, which might even hold more yet undiscovered floor bosses. The reason the floor's name contained the descriptor 'white' was that the entirety of the floor - the walls, ground and ceiling - was of that colour. Seeing how skeletons were the only kind of undead still prevalent here made Isaac suspect that the material the environment was fashioned out of was some kind of bone.

But what were those aforementioned palaces? In a way, they were similar to onions. Yes, the vegetables. If one peeled back a layer, there was another layer quietly waiting beyond, again and again.

In the center of the palaces, there was an enormous, perfectly circular cavern called the 'Throne Room', as that was where adventurers had first come across the 'ruler' of this zone, Udaeus. In other palaces, it mostly just contained a huge number of monsters. Wrapped around that room were four areas known as the 'Knight's Room', 'Warrior's Room', 'Soldier's Room' and the 'Beast's Room', in that order. They got progressively larger in size and were divided by walls, which contained labyrinths and mausoleums that got increasingly more complicated in layout and difficult in strength requirement.

Compared to the mausoleums on the floors they had just passed through, the ones on the 37th floor had a special gimmick: One could only advance past them once a specific amount of monsters had been slain. This could differ from mausoleum to mausoleum, but generally, the ones closer to the Throne Room required a larger number of kills.

Of course, if one had the power, it would be possible to simply destroy the walls restricting one from leaving the mausoleums. But according to everything Isaac had heard since he had come to this world, it was never a good idea to damage the dungeon itself. As for why that was the case, he planned to find out firsthand in the future.

All in all, nothing much changed for the expedition party. They were already besieged by endless amounts of monsters, so having to kill groups that seemed paltry in comparison to leave a mausoleum actually gave them some much needed time to catch their breath, rather than hindering them.

"By the way, what's between the palaces?"

Because the staircase that had led them to this floor was located at the very edge of a Beast's Room, Isaac hadn't gotten an opportunity to examine how or if the various palaces were connected.

"Just an endless labyrinth. It's quite easy to get lost in there and unless you stumble across another palace or somehow find the way back, there won't be any staircases."

Although Claire's reply was quite anticlimactic - as seemed to have become the norm by now - Isaac only got more intrigued. Was that really all there was to this floor? It was possible. But he couldn't be sure unless he ascertained the truth himself. Wasn't it quite likely for some rare monster species to be hidden in between these main pathways leading further into the depths?

Well, no matter what, he couldn't take a look at the moment. Still, the sheer existence of something in this world evoking his interest was already a win in Isaac's book. Although the list of such things was ever-growing at the moment, there would inevitably come a day where he had researched it all. The longer it would take to get to that point, the better.

Before he could become even more distracted, a stern but caring male voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Don't even think about exploring that area. Not many people have ever returned, as it's so easy to get lost there. The labyrinths there… are on a completely different level. Rather than monsters, the biggest obstacles are starvation, thirst and exhaustion."

Orba, who had just been quietly listening to all of the group's various conversations on the way, didn't beat around the bush now that he spoke up. It was plain to see that Isaac was interested in exploring outside of the palaces in the future. It might still take him a long time to get the opportunity and strength to do so - Orba couldn't grasp the speed of Isaac's improvement yet - but the sooner he understood, the better. If a small party hadn't made it back by sheer luck, today's adventurers would most likely still know nothing about what lay beyond. The sacrifices had been way too grave compared to the basically nonexistent payout.

It was painfully obvious what Orba wanted him to do. Still, ultimately, Isaac's reply only consisted of a few words.

"I see…"

If Isaac had to sum up Orba's personality and role in the supporter team with a single term, it would be 'a big brother'. He always tried his best to protect the ones around him, had a friendly disposition and struggled to keep things harmonious, while shouldering as many burdens as he could. Still, he wasn't a pushover. If someone truly didn't want to listen to his advice, he would become quite stern and hard to deal with. Because of this, Isaac didn't want to cause the young Chienthrope man to try to stop him. It would simply be a hassle to deal with.

Thankfully, although Isaac's reply hadn't been particularly enthusiastic, Orba didn't doubt him, as they had gotten along splendidly over the past few days. Some downtroddenness over having lost an exciting adventuring opportunity was to be expected, there was no need to rub even more salt into Isaac's wounds.

So after giving his junior supporter some kind words of encouragement, Orba fully focused on his duties again. With a determined expression, he wiped off the bit of sweat that had acc.u.mulated on his forehead. It wasn't much further until they would be able to rest again.