Just as Aster predicted, their new member, Kali Norma, was extremely confrontational. It was as if the world had done her wrong, so she was angry against anything and everything in existence!
Thankfully, despite her harsh attitude and sharp tongue, she didn't act up to retract her party application or hinder the registration process. As such, Ms. Zenearith managed to complete the setup in a flash.
"Done! You three are in a party now!" Ms. Zena announced, clapping her hands.
As soon as their registration was done, Kali began to walk out of the guild, causing Aster to call out to her in panic. "Wait, Kali! Won't you introduce yourself to us first?"
"..."
The cat girl stopped in her tracks, turning toward Aster with an irate gaze, and answered a big, fat "no." before continuing on her way.
Aster and Cassy watched as her back left the guild before turning to each other and shrugging their shoulders.
"Wait for us, Kali!"
---
After the two caught up with Kali, she turned to them and spoke. "K. Call me K while in the dungeon."
Although Kali was just two syllables, saying it in full could still delay their coordination by a few milliseconds. Furthermore, "Kali" and "Cassy" sounded similar, which can confuse them in the middle of a messy fight.
"Oh, it's you two again!"
As they approached the gate, the same old man, the Oni uncle, smiled at them while greeting them.
"Are you gonna bring out another Field Boss? Hahaha! Oh, you even have a new member!"
"That's right, uncle! We'll be taking home another Boss!" Cassy joked, but Aster felt his blood run cold upon hearing it.
"No, nuh uh! One deadly fight is enough; I don't want to do it again!"
"Really? What a waste... Anyway, your ID, please."
At his urging, the three gave him their Adventurer's cards. He checked them with the machine in his hand and let out a soft whistle. "Nice. So you have a level 3 with you. The first floor should be a breeze!"
"Level 3?" Cassy asked, tilting her head.
"Here, you see?"
Before she could finish voicing her doubt, Cassy had already opened the backpack beside her and shown Kali its contents. There were already dozens of fist-sized blue spheres inside it, looking like little gems or orbs.
"... What? Impossible!" But Kali doubted her eyes. "The cores should be near-impossible to extract like this!" She exclaimed.
"Yes, but I can do it. So, please keep the cores intact." Aster smiled as he moved to activate his carved seal once more, drying the next batch of slimes and extracting 4 out of the 12 cores.
Kali looked unconvinced at first, but after seeing the extraction in person, she couldn't help but stare with her mouth agape. What she saw was something that goes against her common sense!
"See?" Cassy smiled while tilting her head. "So please keep the cores intact as much as possible!"
"Right. Collecting as many loots as we can should be prioritized over leveling up." Aster added.
"... I'll try."
With Kali coming to terms with what was supposedly impossible, she continued her hunting at an unbelievable pace.
"As expected of a real melee class." Aster mused, watching her move around with awe. "Though I wish I could hunt a few. I should be close to leveling up, after all."
In just half an hour of hunting, the backpack was already filled to the brim with slime cores. After counting, there should be over 50 cores inside, all perfectly intact.
"That's roughly 250,000 Tels! Amazing!"
"Right. It's a huge haul for just an hour of hunting!"
"..."
Only Kali had a bitter expression. After all, she knew that the amount they managed to get was simply impossible for a "real" newbie party. The only way they could reach over 100k Tels in a short time should be by hunting stronger monsters, or the Field Boss, and not by simply hunting weak slimes!
'That damned mayor, what sort of party did he dump me off to?' She thought with a hint of worry and fear.
Since their bag was filled to the brim, they decided to return once first and empty their loots, before returning to hunt some more.
"This time, let me hunt too!" Aster exclaimed.
He could no longer wait to level up!