Chapter 56 - Too Much Of A Good Thing...

The area from the 51st to the 57th floor was known as the 'Dragon Vase', because - starting from the 52nd one - the Valgang Dragons inhabiting the 58th floor occasionally shoot a few breath attacks any invading party's way. As for how they were able to perceive their enemies from thousands upon thousands of meters away, not to mention through walls and floors? That was a mystery. The other question one might have had about these nigh undetectable stealth attacks - exactly how the dragons' breaths could possibly reach all the way through these floors, seeing how they were getting blocked by tons and tons of the material making up the dungeon - that was an easier one to answer. After all, one didn't even need to think about it that much: the breath attacks were just that potent and powerful. Although they wouldn't be much of a threat up on the 52nd floor, due to the many in-between floors eating away at the power of the attack, down on the 57th floor, the might of the attacks was almost at their peak - and therefore enough to burn almost any adventurer to an ashen death.

Compared to this dragon breath minefield, the 51st floor, while identical in layout, was harmless. It almost felt like it was designed in such a safe way to lure the exploring parties into a false sense of security, making at least a few of them die to the dragons' sneak attacks on the next few floors. But if that truly was the case, why did the dungeon increase the difficulty step-by-step and not just hit the invaders with an ambush they couldn't survive, no matter what? If Isaac had been here, these would definitely have been some of the questions on his mind.

The Dragon Vase's floors' design was quite simplistic, yet also bizarre. Almost all the floors consisted of were expansive, interwoven labyrinths, with the height of the ceiling being at - at most - a few tens of meters. The ground, walls and ceiling were also almost dangerously smooth, looking suspiciously man-made. No matter what was truly the case, they were perfect to a degree that people couldn't help but think of them as creepy. The worst and also best part of these floors was that there were almost no blindspots for ambushing monsters - or cornered adventurers - to hide in. After all, the hallways were entirely free of clutter. This enabled adventurers to instantly notice when new monsters were 'born' from the dungeon and it also gave them ample opportunities to move at their full speed. It was harder to do so when having to dodge many small obstacles, after all.

All of this led to the 51st floor being regarded as a perfect monster-slaying spot. Still, because the ones appearing here were already at Level 5, not all of the main force members that had left the camp were capable of venturing here. The Level 4's had been led back to the 49th floor to fight opponents they could deal with, while the Level 5 and above main force members and the mages had entered the 51st floor. There, they had decided to scout out a few key locations to plan ahead for the following few days. This included making sure that the layout of the floor hadn't changed, harvesting a few rare materials and searching for some rarer and stranger monsters.

Of course, Ais, Tiona and Tione were also given such a task. They had to find out whether one of the strongest monsters that had been discovered so far, the Cadmus, was currently at its lair, the Cadmus Spring. Although it wasn't on the same level as a Monster Rex, Cadmus was still almost at Level 6, while residing in what was basically a beginner Level 5 area. It was no wonder why it was regarded with such respect. After all, far too many people had fallen to it.

But if it had a lair and nobody had been down here for a long time, why did they even need to confirm whether it had respawned? Quite rarely, Cadmus… just wasn't there. Nobody knew why. It could have simply wandered off after a certain amount of time had passed, been slain by some other monstrosity that happened to pass by or maybe, it just had a very limited life span. Whatever the case, the three girls had been sent out to ascertain its current status. After that, they were to return to the main force's meeting spot here on the 51st floor so that Finn and the other higher ups could decide on when and how best to face it.

Because they had already fought Cadmus plenty of times, the three girls made their way to its lair without a problem. It was one of the very few large, circular rooms in the Dragon Vase, with a diameter of a couple of kilometers and a ceiling height of close to one kilometer. Inside, it housed an area akin to a miniature world. A couple of hills with steep cliffs, some trees and a small spring right in the middle, feeding into a pitifully tiny lake. This was the Cadmus Spring, whose water could be sold for ridiculous amounts of money. Still, there wasn't much that could be taken from here on each visit.

There was also an almost fifty meter long dragon, currently curled up around the lake, making it look even more pitiful in comparison.

Yes, like quite a lot of monsters in the dungeon, the Cadmus was a dragon. Its scales were a somewhat subdued grey, while its very popular drop item was made up of a large patch of them. Weirdly enough, someone had decided to call it 'Cadmus Hide', although it was a patch of scales.

"Good, Cadmus is here. I guess it's time to go back, then?"

Because none of the monsters they had encountered on this floor so far had been a challenge, Tiona was lazily stretching, while the three girls observed the huge dragon from right outside of the entrance to its lair. While Tione nodded in reply and turned around, ready to depart, Ais was distractedly staring at the grey dragon.

'Why do I feel a lot less pressure from it than I normally do?'

With a confused look on her face, she tilted her head, completely ignoring the Amazoness twins, who had already noticed her peculiar state of mind and started to eye her curiously.

'I feel like I should be able to kill it easily. But I haven't improved that much since I was last here, right? So is that even possible…?'

The more she thought about it, the more excited Ais became and subconsciously, she started to grip her sheathed sword's handle. That, of course, didn't escape her friends' eyes.

"Do you want to kill it now?"

Bubbling with fighting spirit, Tiona wrapped an arm around Ais' shoulder, now staring at the resting dragon with a ferocious gaze of her own. In response, she got a nod - but also a reply that she hadn't expected.

"Yes. But I want to face it alone. I'm sure I can deal with it. Please?"

Seeing the serious and tranquil look on Ais' face, Tiona could only smile wryly and release a sigh, while Tione also became a little disheartened. If they had all faced Cadmus together, the scolding they would get for going against Finn's orders would most likely have been less severe. After all, it was a lot less dangerous with all three of them. Still, once Ais had truly set her mind on something, there was almost no way to snap her out of it. And besides that: both the Amazonesses were extremely hot-blooded. A duel between a fair maiden and a dragon would surely fire them up and would be quite the sight to see. While they would have preferred to take part in the battle themselves, they both stepped aside and left the stage to Ais without any complaints.

"Then we'll clean out any other monsters that might arrive here. You'll be able to fully focus on your fight. I wish you the best!"

Right after nodding at Tione's encouraging words, Ais pulled out her sword and charged at the still resting Cadmus, while mumbling to herself.

"Awaken, Tempest."

This short chant activated her 'Ariel' Magic, a type of enchant type magic that allowed her to imbue things with the power of the wind and control airflows. There were far too many possible applications for even Ais herself to have more than a very surface understanding of it for now, so at the moment, she relied on one of the most basic applications she had figured out: an armour of wind. Still, its effect wasn't as simple as one would assume, as it vastly increased her own speed and the strength of her attacks.

[ Ariel: A wind element enchant type magic that grants the user full control over the wind and surrounding air. Only limited by the user's imagination and mana reserves. Will require 50% less focus if activated via the chant.

Chant: "Awaken, Tempest." ]

Although she had taken a look at the system's description before, Ais hadn't progressed in her usage of the Magic yet. Still, she saw many possibilities. After all, if these words were to be believed, she could use it without a chant… and the only limit being her imagination basically meant that it could grow limitlessly.

In an instant, Ais easily broke through the sound barrier and before the resulting boom was even heard, she was already within a kilometer's distance from Cadmus. Thanks to her mastery over the surrounding airflows, she didn't experience any significant air resistance. But even if she had been subjected to such a thing, her stats relating to her physique were high enough so that she could completely ignore its effects. It would have reduced her speed somewhat, but besides that, it wouldn't even be an inconvenience.

Even though Ais' assault was incredibly fast and sudden, the grey dragon was still able to react in time. Right when she was about 600 meters away, it hastily and angrily spat a breath attack her way. But as this wasn't the first time Ais had fought a dragon - or Cadmus, for that matter - she had already expected this.

All of the times she had previously faced such an attack, she had concentrated some of Ariel's power on the tip of her sword and blasted through the breath head on. This time, however, she instead opted to dodge the attack by a hair's breadth while continuing to close in on the dragon. Maneuvering this exquisitely at such a high speed was also only possible due to her mastery over the wind. Only by using the surrounding air as a support tool could she possibly move fast and abrupt enough to escape the breath's destruction. This was also part of the reason as to why she had always faced breath attacks head on before.

Another part was simply that she had grown up in this world where the most wide-spread fighting 'technique' was to meet force with even greater force and hit your opponents as hard as you could head on. As everyone did this and only very rarely were there 'outstanding geniuses' who managed to see through combat more thoroughly, she had never thought about deviating from this norm. Only when she was sure that she would die if she took a hit head on would she even attempt to dodge, albeit mostly subconsciously.

But now that she had observed Isaac's battles many times, she had realized her folly. Or rather, the folly of this world's inhabitants. Her mindset had changed. Dodging would consume a bit of energy, yes. But so would meeting an attack head on. In fact, the latter would be a lot more exhausting. Additionally, dodging and closing in on your enemy would enable you to finish a fight faster, which would conserve even more energy in the long run. It was truly baffling that she had never really thought about this before, but Ais honestly couldn't be blamed for this.

Thanks to her timely evasive maneuver, before Cadmus could even fire off another breath attack, she had already arrived right next to it and swung her storm-clad sword at the side of its stomach. A painful howl and a fountain of blood followed. But thanks to the wind wrapping her like a blanket Ais didn't get stained by any of it, keeping just as flawless an appearance as before.

In response to Cadmus slashing at her with its claws, she performed another close dodge before using the power of its own attack against it. While its left arm was passing by, she pressed her sword against it and let its own movement split open its scales and give it quite a deep wound. Even a few muscles were severed.

At this point, Cadmus was enraged beyond compare and didn't care about its own safety anymore. In close range, it fired off a breath attack, implicating its own body in the process.

This time, there was no need for Ais to dodge. After all, she had long prepared her finishing move. While she had been harming the dragon's arm as a distraction, she had started to channel Ariel to its fullest extent, surrounding herself with as much of its power as she could bear. She had dubbed this move 'Lil Rafaga', but as it wasn't actually a separate Magic or a functional chant, there was no need for her to say it.

With her movements accelerating yet again and the wind pushing her stats far beyond what her Status would indicate, Ais completely disregarded the incoming breath attack. Without her even having to glance at it, it fizzled out at the edges of the maelstrom of wind enveloping her and making her seem like a living tempest. Without Cadmus being able to offer up any resistance, Ais sped up and beheaded it in one move. Well… she did behead it, in a way. But it would be more accurate to say that the moment Ais got close enough to its head to actually attack it, the Cadmus' head had already been ripped to infinitely small shreds by the wind surrounding her.

Instead of stopping and rejoicing over her 'victory', Ais didn't let down her guard and sped forward into Cadmus' neck - into its body - tearing apart everything that stood in her way. She was well aware of the non-negligible regenerative powers of most dragon type monsters, so she wouldn't give Cadmus a chance to recover.

In less than a second, she arrived right in front of the dragon's magic stone, which thankfully hadn't been harmed. After all, if it had been, it would have been worth a lot less. As to why it hadn't been damaged, that was simply due to Ais' incredible control over the wind: While it had ripped Cadmus' body, bones and organs to pieces, she hadn't allowed it to damage the magic stone in the slightest.

Then, she placed her hand against the magic stone and put it away into her inventory, instantly killing the resilient dragon. But before it could fully disintegrate into ashes, she pulled the stone out again, holding it in her hand. She could have accomplished a similar result if she had just used her wind to fully extract the magic stone from the body, but it was a little bit faster to do so by using the inventory. She could also save a bit of energy this way.

Just like that, a rain of ash revealed an otherworldly, blonde beauty, holding an enormous, spotless magic stone in one hand.

Before Ais could even search for Cadmus' drop item, Tiona had already charged at her and given her a bear hug, rubbing their cheeks together enthusiastically.

"You were amazing! Cadmus couldn't even defend itself! I feel like we'll be left behind soon if we don't improve, ahaha!"

Instead of sadness, all the chipper Amazoness exuded was confidence and the unquenchable desire to improve. Jealousy over Ais' progress was entirely foreign to her.

"Just you wait, I'll catch up!"

In response to her friends' words, Ais simply nodded, a small but encouraging smile spreading across her lips.

"Okay."

While the two had been celebrating, Tione had already picked up the Cadmus Hide and was making her way towards them, with a somewhat conflicted expression showing on her face.

"Say, what do we do about the Cadmus Spring Water? We didn't bring any containers with us. It usually dries up completely about thirty minutes after Cadmus has been slain and I doubt we can get any that quickly."

Ais showed a confident smile, confusing her friends a little. Then, she explained that what she was going to show them was related to one of Isaac's secrets, so it would be great if they could keep it to themselves for the time being. Of course, the Amazoness twins nodded and Ais had never doubted them - after all, Isaac had shared the existence of his teleportation ability with them before and they hadn't made a fuss about it. So if even he had decided to trust them that much, wouldn't she trust them even more than that, courtesy of spending so many years together? In any case, she had already discussed it with Isaac and he had told her she was free to tell anyone about whatever she wanted, should she feel like they were trustworthy enough. Maybe, besides a showcase of how much he trusted Ais, it was partially an attempt of his to create situations outside of his full control.

Under her friends' thrilled gazes, Ais walked up to the small lake and put her hand into the water, then stored it all into her inventory. It only took up one slot, as it was treated as a single item.

"Whoa… it all just disappeared… that's quite the impressive storage magic!"

Tiona nearly keeled over when the entirety of the spring water simply disappeared. She had already prepared herself mentally beforehand, but it was still an almost unbelievable sight. Admittedly, it was something that felt a lot easier to accept compared to teleportation, but the seeming instant deletion of the spring water was just too baffling. Even the ground of the lake was completely dried up, as if all of the water had been filtered and sucked out of it, leaving only the dirt behind.

While Tiona and Tione were waiting for more spring water to arrive before the spring would finally dry up in a few tens of minutes until a new Cadmus spawned, Ais had just discovered a problem. She didn't have any containers for the water. How would she be able to take it out of her inventory? Would she have to ask for containers to be prepared and then drip it into them? She would have to expose the inventory's existence to many others that way, but she really didn't want to do that. While she trusted all of the familia members she was close to, there was always a chance for one of them to accidentally spill such a secret while they were drunk - and that would attract some more annoyances. It wouldn't be a problem once Isaac had grown a lot stronger, but in the meantime, it would at least waste some more of the precious time Ais could spend with him.

With no idea what to do, she sent Isaac a message via the system.

"Do you have a couple hundred bottles? I put all the water from a spring into my inventory and now I don't really know what to do."

Although Isaac responded instantly, he sounded somewhat perplexed. Very quickly, Ais figured out why that was the case. He had told her that lots of things like the bottles she asked for could be found in the system store - and considering for how long Ais had already been using the system itself, he had expected her to already know about it.

Isaac wasn't the only surprised one, however. Ais was also utterly shell-shocked. She could buy other things besides the episodes of Isaac's past in the system store? How had she never noticed that?

Hurriedly, she opened the store interface and then mentally commanded for the list of items sold in there to scroll down. After she had passed the ones in the very beginning - the episodes of Isaac's past, she arrived at a long list of miscellaneous items and many, many other things. Honestly, she could probably spend months upon months doing this without ever reaching the bottom. Some of the things sold here piqued her interest, like an increase in inventory slots, so she mentally noted them down in case she would need them in the future.

She also saw the Divine Blood upgrade that Isaac had purchased before. If she hadn't seen how large of a disturbance Isaac had caused while he had changed his body's blood into ichor, she would have simply bought it right then and there. But upon thinking about it a little bit more, she decided to wait until they had left the dungeon again. She knew all about the effects of the Divine Aura and how violently the dungeon would react to it - and she was a lot less confident in controlling it than Isaac was. Still, why was the Divine Blood upgrade in her store as well? Were the two stores connected in some way? That was very likely, seeing how so many items from Isaac's old world were here as well…

After Ais found a search function within the system store and had zeroed in on a specific kind of unremarkable water bottle that could be found in this world, she opened her inventory and checked how many of them she needed for the spring water she had just gathered. And at that moment, her knees almost turned into jelly, causing her to have to sit down while staring at her inventory in disbelief.

Did that really say one billion liters of Cadmus Spring Water?! Usually they were able to harvest about a few hundred liters from the small lake before it dried up. To be honest, even calling it a lake was already far too generous - it was more of a glorified puddle. But even if they normally missed a few liters here and there, the lake surely couldn't contain more than 500 or so liters. What was she supposed to do now?!

Feeling like she shouldn't overwhelm the rest of her familia with a mind boggling windfall like this, Ais bought 500 of the water bottles for 1 AP each. She had long ago renamed her Achievement Points into AP, following Isaac's example. There was not much of a point to it, she just felt a little bit closer to him like that.

When Tiona looked away from the completely unresponsive spring, feeling somewhat disappointed, she noticed Ais sitting down, with a somewhat pale face. Hastily, she hurried over and grasped her hand, looking at her worriedly.

"Are you oka---"

Before she could even finish her sentence, the dungeon around them started to tremble, as if the very land itself was enraged. All over the walls of the room they were in, more children of the dungeon were born - and they were all Cadmus dragons!

Looking at the ever-increasing army of mini-boss monsters in front of her, Ais eyed a specific one that was about ten meters taller than the rest, sporting nearly white scales. It stuck out like a sore thumb from the sea of dull grey surrounding it and gave off a far stronger pressure - it was a mutant.

Shock flashed past the Amazoness twins' eyes, while Tione mumbled to herself.

"What kind of hornets' nest did we stir up? What the hell is happening!?"

A sigh escaped Ais' lips, while she couldn't help but smile wryly. She already had an inkling as to what had happened. Because the spring water had still been connected to the unknown reservoir supplying it, the system had simply taken all of it away. What should have been sufficient to provide this spring with a million years worth of sustenance was stolen suddenly and all at once. That, in turn, had either enraged the dungeon or triggered some sort of mechanism, causing the current predicament.

Still, Ais didn't look too worried, causing both Tiona and Tione to relax as well.

"So, what should we do now? Fight our way out and meet up with the Captain and the rest?"

While mentioning Finn, Tione started to squeal a little and couldn't help but tremble in excitement. But while such behaviour might have seemed out of place under such threatening circ.u.mstances, that was how she always behaved when she talked about him, so everyone was already used to it.

"You know… I can teleport us as well. So let's kill as many as we can."

Why would Ais worry about anything at all when she could simply bring the three of them to whatever safe place she wanted to without any delay? Isaac had long ago shared the ability to create markers on the system map with her - and the meeting spot here on the 51st floor had already been marked by her long ago, just in case. These Cadmus dragons were strong, yes. But they weren't strong enough to instantly obliterate them. For far too long had they had problems with finding monsters that would provide them with a lot of excelia - but all of these would. With the strongest escape technique that not even the world itself was able to hinder, why run away and pass up such an opportunity? Now that the dungeon was throwing so much delicious prey at them, they should use it as an opportunity to advance further!

Hearing her friend's words, Tione smiled brightly, cracked her knuckles and pulled out her dual swords, readying herself for combat.

"I've long since wanted to have a go at a Cadmus. While I don't think I'll be able to kill it as easily as you, Ais, I should still be able to do it. So… Tiona… how about a punishment game? The one who kills the least loses, the winner decides the punishment."

A competitive flame burst to life in Tiona's eyes when she heard her sister's provocation. She didn't really care about the game itself, but she still wanted to win.

"Fine by me. You're on!"

While the sisters were kindling each others' fighting spirit, Ais took a glance at her current Status - after all, the Cadmus dragons were approaching from the very edges of the room and the outside hallways. They weren't in a hurry and instead tried to encircle them and cut off their escape routes, giving the three girls a little bit of time to prepare themselves.

[ Name: Ais Wallenstein ]

[ Familia: Loki Familia ]

[ Race: Human, Unknown ]

[ Level: 5 ]

[ Stats ]

[ Strength: D-554 (+ 39) (22678) ]

[ Endurance: D-541 (+ 37) (22494) ]

[ Dexterity: B-797 (+ 42) (32287) ]

[ Agility: B-795 (+ 41) (32315) ]

[ Magic: A-844 (+ 52) (32820) ]

[ Magic ]

[ Ariel ]

[ Skills ]

[ Avenger ]

[ Development Abilities ]

[ Hunter: G ]

[ Abnormal Resistance: G ]

[ Swordsman: E ]

Seeing how she had acc.u.mulated tens of stats worth of excelia from killing the previous Cadmus, Ais got even more excited. She was aware that her Ariel Magic worked in a similar way to Isaac's Divine Blood buff. Whatever laws governed the gain of excelia, they didn't get taken into account when calculating the difference between the adventurer's and the monsters' stats. It was basically a hack.

Now that she had steeled her resolve by showing herself proof of what kind of explosive growth she would experience if she got through this, Ais' eyes turned cold and lifeless, while her face warped into a mask of hatred. Still, while it was twisted, it was impeccably beautiful nonetheless. She was a little bit surprised by the calmness of her mind, however.

After all, she had just decided to use her 'Avenger' Skill - her trump card against any kinds of dragons. Previously, when facing just a singular Cadmus, she hadn't even needed to rely on it at all. But with hundreds of them surrounding the group of three and even a mutant amongst the ranks of the enemies... it was time to let loose a bit.

[ Avenger: (Active) Makes the user succ.u.mb to their hatred. Based on the severity of the user's hatred for a specific enemy, all stats will be buffed by up to 50% when in combat with them. If the enemy is a dragon, the stat buff will double, while the maximum increases to 100%. ]

'I'll slay as many as you send my way, dungeon! So please don't disappoint me.'

Although she had just buffed her stats significantly with her Avenger Skill, Ais activated Ariel as well, further increasing her combat power. Then, without further ado, she followed in her friends' footsteps and shot towards the hundreds of Cadmus' that were slowly tightening their encirclement.