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Chapter 394

Floor six was completed quickly. When we were done, we stopped at the top of the stairway leading to seven. Unlike most dungeon explorers, we didn’t need to get through the next five floors or lose progress. We could bide our time and return to exactly where we last were. The only worrisome thing about that is the potential we run right into a group of monsters upon returning.

“Is this it? Is temptation just the fact that the drops are good? This feels like every other dungeon.”

After working through the sixth floor, I felt a bit disappointed. It was really more of the same. More monsters, more pathways, slightly different theme. I had expected that since the dungeon had a theme, we’d be doing something other than killing monsters. Like, a treasure room where we couldn’t touch any of the treasure. Now, that is a temptation.

I asked this question as we rested for a moment before heading to floor seven. Floor six contained Chinchilla Beasts, large rodents with ridiculously soft fur. They dropped their skin, which was apparently used to line coats in expensive clothing. The other monster were called Angry Salmon. It was literally a salmon the could float through the air. It even dropped Salmon cutlets. It felt like everything this floor dropped were luxury items. I could make a killing.

“No, seriously, isn’t it you guys who are strange?” Raissa spoke up.

“How so?”

“Compared to Dirage, there is about ten times the number of traps in this dungeon. Although I’ve been doing my best to avoid them for you, it seems almost unbelievable that you’re able to completely avoid every one. On top of that, these monsters are exceptionally hard for such a low level. In Dirage, you wouldn’t find monsters like this until past level 10!”

“Oh… I guess that makes sense.”

In truth, I was using my Map and Sense Trap to map out everything, so I managed to avoid all of the traps. After my experience with death last night, I was a lot more cautious than I was yesterday. I also hadn’t cleared the floor using the monster lures for this reason. These monsters were a bit tough to bring down, and three or more of them could become tough. Fortunately, we defeated them quickly, and when more than a few gathered, Terra used Earth to direct and delay them.

I supposed in a normal situation, creating walls of Earth at random was a taxing process that most mages could only do in a hurry. I tried it once, and it wiped out all my mana and it was still only half the size of Terra’s. That was the difference between an Earth Elemental and a human with Earth Magic. So, what would end up happening is if they got greedy and tried to bite off more than they could chew, they’d end up being overwhelmed by the rodents and torn apart.

“Well, whether or not we’re abnormal, we need to keep moving forward.” I decided to keep us moving forward.

We went on to the seventh floor.

Chapter 395

The seventh floor was more of the same. “None of this feels very tempting.”

The closest I had seen to the dungeon living up to the hype was a treasure that sat in front of a trap. I sent Celeste, who flew over the trap, grabbed the stuff with ease, and then flew back. I could only shake my head at how easy this all was.

“Are you still going on about that?” Raissa sighed.

This next floor had a trout with legs. It identified as a Legged Trout. I didn’t know why this dungeon had such a fishy theme. I could live with that, but it was also a little disturbing watching fish with legs run around. I felt like killing them was setting nature back on the right course. At least with the Angry Salmon I could pretend it was swimming through the miasma. Those legs were also unnervingly muscular. They also dropped meat sashimi slices.

“Oh, they’re worth a good amount of money.”

“You can keep them,” I said.

“R-really?”

“Yeah, go nuts.”

She happily collected it. The other girls were looking at me like they wanted to try the sashimi too. Ah, fine, we’ll keep just a little bit. If I didn’t eat things that looked weird on the outside, then there was very little I’d be able to eat.

During leveling, I had White Mage, Slave Master, and Cook equipped. I also swapped to True Dungeon Diver when I had something to check. I tried to keep Slave Master up all the time so the girls got leveling bonuses too. For me, my Cook reached 13 and Slave Master went up to 21. Since each kill for me ended up equaling 10, it was clear to see how long leveling took a normal person. It might take years to reach level 50 for a normal person.

Cook unlocked the skill Fire Control, which I had already gained from Basic Magician. As for Slave Master, I got a skill called Slave Communication. It allowed me to send messages to my slaves. I had been waiting for this one for a while. I had read about it from one of the books I had gotten about job classes. It worked within the same city, but couldn’t be used across a dungeon or extremely far distances.

I decided to switch from Cook to Dark Priest for a bit. It was a job I had avoided for a while, but I decided there was no reason not to check it out now. Plus, I was curious about what kind of skills and boosts it carried.

{You have unlocked the skill Darkness Control.}

It looked like I ended up gaining some of the darkness magic that Shao could use. That was very exciting. The girls were all leveling nicely too, although slower than I was. After all, they only gained 4X experience with each level compared to my 10X. However, we weren’t fighting very many enemies, so there wasn’t a lot of experience anyway. They were tough and their drops were valuable, but if it was experience you wanted, that was the one temptation this dungeon didn’t seem to possess.

We worked our way down to the eighth floor.

Chapter 396

We managed to get through the eighth floor. The monsters on this floor were the Legged Trout again, and something called a Deerk. It was basically a Deer monster. It had red eyes and really dangerous horns. It’d charge you. Like everything else, it either dropped food or clothing. This one supposedly made good leather according to Raissa.

“I can’t believe how much food they’re dropping. Are you sure you’re not a Dungeon Diver too, sir?” Raissa asked.

“Ah… even if I was…”

She blushed. “What I mean is Dungeon Divers of a high level are supposed have an ability, Increased Item Drop. No… you also have a lot of food drops, although it decreased this floor.”

She was a bit smarter than I gave her credit for. Cook had been increasing my food drops until I changed it recently. She was truly a professional. Her job was to manage teams and make sure everyone got out of the dungeon alive. Thus, this level of micromanaging was something she had to do when the enemy was stupid. She was sensitive to changes in group dynamics, it seemed. I wonder how she’d react if I equipped True Dungeon Diver and gained the Increase Item Drop ability. She’d definitely notice.

{Dark Priest has increased to 5.}

I wasn’t increasing levels as fast as when I was using the monster lures in Dirage, but it was still fairly quick. As for what skills I learned, Job Change turned out to be level 5. I also got Sacrifice, Unholy Hymn, and Drain. I didn’t want to use dark abilities in front of Raissa, just in case, but I could guess what Sacrifice and Drain did. I used Drain on a weakened enemy, and just as I thought, it absorbs their life force and recovers health and mana for me.

“It’s getting late, I’m hungry!” Celeste complained.

“I guess it’s time we call it quits. Let’s get to the next safe zone and then we’ll start tomorrow there.”

Since we had a map, it wasn’t difficult to go straight there. Usually, we’d take the long way, making sure to snatch treasure and kill mobs along the way. This time, we ended up in the safe zone after only fifteen minutes. With that, I pulled out food and began cooking. We could have headed back to the inn, but their food was awful. Considering how many tasty drops this dungeon had, it was a downright shame.

I eyed the stairway going down to the 10th floor. The door was open, meaning that the boss was ready to fight.

“What boss is it?”

“It’s called a Siren. It’s like a fish monster,” Raissa explained.

“Ah, I guess that’s why we ran into so many fish.”

I seared fish meat and combined it with a bunch of other ingredients. The girls were all making noises as they ate it, so I guessed I was getting better. Actually, my level was starting to leave Faeyna in the dust…

Before we left to return to the city, I checked out the wall mural. “Oh… oops.”

“What is it?” Lydia noticed me looking at the mural.

“That woman who got married to her prince… she’s the one who killed him!”

This was called the Widow’s Dungeon. Did that turn out to be a Black Widow?

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