Soon after, the three of them arrived at the dungeon's entrance. The time was 6 a.m. sharp, earlier than their usual 6:30 a.m. entry. The Oni uncle grinned at them after they paid the entrance, rooting for them.
"Alright, you're good to go! Good luck exploring a new floor, newbies!"
"We will~!" Cassy replied with a smile of her own. "But we'll probably be coming out in a few hours."
"Ohh! The usual hunting pace, then? That's great! Earn more money, and give me more dungeon entrance fees! Ha ha!"
With Kali and Aster ignoring the uncle, the three of them walked past the entrance, entering. After a short transition, with a bright light covering their vision for a moment, the scenery before them changed.
A wide plain almost the same as the first floor, with the only difference being the color of the slimes leaping around!
The three moved a short distance away from the entrance first, ensuring that nobody else would be able to disturb them, before Aster dropped the two bags down and arranged a clean area before him.
"Alright, all set!" He declared this while nodding to the two girls. "Let's start the day with the usual."
"You mean slime hunting, yes? Let's go~!"
"I'll hunt those pests; you bring the corpses back here."
With a short exchange, they coordinated their assignments with each other. Of course, the only reason they didn't need to discuss it for long was because it was the "usual" formation they take when hunting.
Without delaying, Kali started to run around, destroying slimes one after another, while trying to keep their injuries as small as possible to make their fluids leak slower.
Cassy transported the corpses in batches of three to five, depending on their overall size. After all, she can't carry too many, with her only having two hands.
Then, with the batch of slimes delivered, Aster would begin to work on drying them out. But this time, he noticed a slight difference compared to usual.
'I can control the temperature faster and more accurately.'
Before, it took him roughly 30 seconds to finish a batch, but now, it doesn't even take 15 seconds to complete them!
Of course, this happened for a reason. Aster's practice of controlling his Legacy-level Magic Carved Seal before affected his overall control of mana. The spell's accuracy, invocation speed, and strength of phenomenon alteration were all significantly improved!
Since the cores of Green Slimes and Blue Slimes were of the same size, the trio finished filling up two bags in under an hour, as usual. The only thing that delayed them was that the Green Slimes were a lot more spread out compared to the Blue Slimes on the first floor.
Kali merely sighed before following Aster's suggestion.
The reason she was feeling down was that now that Cassy had left on an errand, there was nobody to help deliver the killed slimes to Aster's side. That meant she needed to cut her hunting time to deliver the hunted slimes back to him, doubling her workload!
Kali ran around, hunting a few slimes, before carrying them all back to Aster. Then he would dry them out and extract their cores in their pristine, clean state.
*Tap!* *Tap!* *Tap!*
But while he was in the middle of drying the next batch of slimes, a sound of footsteps echoed from behind him.
"Cassy? Just in time. Help out Kali, who... huh?"
Aster muttered as he turned to look, but was surprised upon seeing who it was. It was the black-haired cat woman from yesterday! And, again, she looks bloody as hell, with stains covering her from head to toe. It was as if she had just come out of a massacre with how much blood was staining her body!
"..."
Aster frowned, readying himself to move at any moment. After all, yesterday, he was mounted before he could even react. This time, he at least wanted to dodge!
"It's you, isn't it? The one who exposed my location." The woman spoke, her voice cold and emotionless. "If I kill you here, will the assassinations also stop?"
"... What?"
Before Aster could deny her accusation, the cat woman's figure had already disappeared from his sight. At the same time, he felt a breeze cut toward his back!
'I'm getting mounted again?!' Aster thought as he turned around, raising both arms across his chest.
As he guessed, the cat woman was already behind him; her hand extended forward and grabbed his wrist. Then, in one swift motion, she performed a shoulder throw, slamming Aster to the ground in a flash.
*BAM!*
"AGHK...!"
Air got knocked out of his lungs, making him suffer in agony. At the same time, he saw the catwoman move as if to send a straight punch to his face.
"YOU AGAIN?!"
But then, a different cat saved him in the nick of time.