Pest control

Pest control

I left my base and made my way to the stairs heading down to the nineteenth floor. There was a steady stream of adventurers coming and going through the opening, some with smiles some without. The oddest of the bunch I saw consisted of an elf, a dwarf and a human which was weird as elves typically disdain both the other races while dwarves butt heads with elves. To be fair though it was more a cultural thing then a racial thing so it also wasn't unheard of for elves to befriend members of these other races.-

No one really spared me any attention beyond glances as I descended the stairs and entered the nineteenth floor properly. When I got there I saw something that I could only shake my head at as it was a foolish thing to do. A large flagpole with a banner style flag was stabbed into the ground and there was a impossible to miss sign next to it that read.

"The northwestern area of this floor is officially being hunted by the Mammon familia! All trespassers will be attacked on sight!"

Claiming an area in the dungeon while not illegal or anything is HIGHLY frowned upon as it cuts into the possible profits of the other adventurers on the floor. There were some resources that spawned only in certain areas after all and if that area was claimed there was a very good chance of familias clashing. There was however a sort of unspoken rule in regards to claiming an area that everyone followed, you can't block the stairs between floors. Doing so is little different from cutting off the people heading deeper and no one will tolerate that.-

I of course made sure to claim the magic stones of the hornets as they were level three in nature and highly useful for my crafting once converted to cursed stones. Once that was done I drew back the flames still burning around me and snuffed them out between my palms. I then walked up to the charred hive and sank my hand into it's exterior that crumbled into dust and scooped away the hard casing until i got to it's center that held the only thing of value it had, the core.-

Bloody hives were in fact almost entirely empty but held a core at the center that spawned the hornets and was an excellent magical catalyst with an innate poison affinity. The were also extremely rare as most adventurers refused to mess with a hive or flat out destroyed it as quick as possible which also destroyed the core. I honestly had no real use for the core at the moment but if we ever got an archer or rogue in the familia I could use it to create a piece of gear with poisonous effects for them.-

The stingers from the hornets could also be used for this purpose but were also good for normal blades if you discarded the poisonous aspect of them. I checked my metal finder compass and after getting a few weak directions chose to follow these leads since I needed to stock up some metals since I doubted I'd have much luck focusing on finding monsters. Sure it would be nice if I found some but with the amount of people running about this floor I didn't have much hope. The hive was honestly left alone simply because it was too troublesome to deal with to be worth the effort for everyone else.-

Not that I could blame them all as most adventurers on this level of the dungeon were level two or three and a hive sent out dozens of level three hornets to murder anyone nearby if it detects somebody. Considering the stingers on those hornets can punch through a level fours gear AND had poison on them and the danger to payout rate was far too skewed for most to consider taking it on.