Chapter 288

A/N : I'd like to thank all of you for supporting the story. Today marks the end of my new year resolution that started on January 1st 2023. After my radio silence hiatus from burn out towards the end of last year (Which I am still very sorry about how I handled in terms of communication with you) I returned with a resolution of not missing a chapter for 2023. Though a few may have been slightly delayed by a few hours here or there a chapter has gone out for every Monday Wednesday and Friday. Thank you all and I'll see you next year on the 1st or 2nd depending on your time zone!

“Well, what do you think?” Ajax asked before he lowered his tone a whisper only for Anna and Lexi. “He doesn’t have as much freedom on this floor, the monsters here will be level forty so he will also have to be on guard against them.”

“I want to keep going.” Lexi was the first to answer, unlike Anna she wasn’t as disadvantaged by the crystal nature of the monsters on this floor.

“I’ll give it a go as well.” Anna finally decided after a few drawn out seconds of silence. It was all Oliver could do to not let out a sigh of relief. “Now what?” she asked

“Now we pick a direction and go.” Ajax said as he looked out towards the three large tunnels their chamber split opened into. “Stay close to me, I don’t know if they can dig through the crystal yet.”

The large crystal cavern was a little disorienting to the team of four, first and foremost because while the cavern didn’t lack a source of light with the wall all shining they were also letting out colored light that changed as they progressed. A large upside to the cavern however was the loud sound that echoed from the monster's movement.

“Something is coming this way.” Ajax and everyone else could clearly hear the screeching sound of crystal dragging across crystal.

A large crystalline worm made out of connected rings was what quickly approached them. It wasn’t all that large, its thickness about the same as a regular person with a length of about twelve feet. Ajax however was very surprised that he couldn’t feel the presence of a core inside of it.

Despite not feeling a core he was still clear that crystals like this were weak to blunt force damage so he quickly pulled out his hammer as well as his shield and prepared to engage. With the monsters being level forty they were finally getting to the point where Ajax had to use his mana in order to fight, this meant that he could be worn down. Using [Mana Syphon] with the mana concentration on this floor meant that he could maintain a high stat advantage for cheap.

The worm was composed of about forty rings that moved together and Ajax’s fight swing of his hammer shattered five of them straight away while also sending the monster flying backwards. This also led to some good news for the team as they watched the monster prepare to charge again.

“It’s not healing.” Lexi pointed out.

“They are golems not elementals.” Anna also breathed out a sigh of relief as golems could be worn down by breaking down their bodies without them simply regenerating from the environment.

Once Ajax knew he was dealing with a golem and not an elemental he flat out charged the worm all but launching himself at it. The impact of the shield easily crashing through another eight rings and the hammer swing that followed took out another seven.  With half its body smashed to pieces the rest of the worm finally stilled and died. It was one of the advantages of the golems that they could keep going regardless of what they lost so long as enough of them was still left intact.

“That didn’t look so hard.” Lexi said as she examined the crystals the worm had broken down into.

“Too bad it wasn’t a miniboss, I expect them to be a bit harder.” Ajax shared his view on it.

With that the team kept on moving, for the first time since they entered the dungeon however Oliver was sticking a lot closer to Ajax. Unlike the young Baron the level forty mage was much more susceptible to being overrun especially when faced with their next group of foes.

“We’ve got incoming, and it's either a centipede or there is more than one of them.” Ajax called out as his hearing locked on the constant tapping that seemed to approach them.

What rushed towards them were a large group of four legged spiders. They legs much thicker than a regular spider and placed in a square formation allower the two feet tall monsters to move around quickly. The bigger issue was the eight feet tall fully eight legged miniboss that was following in their wake.

“I can take this miniboss.” Anna was quick to call out once she saw the big spider.

Despite the bosses much bigger size the eight legs it had were all rather thin. With such an obvious target Anna was quick to launch some exploding fireballs aiming for the joints in hopes of immobilizing the boss.

As for Ajax he was quick to react to Anna's claim on the boss. Armed with his hammer and his axe he got to work thinning out the dozen or so smaller spiders while making sure not to engage the boss at all. The tiny spiders however weren’t his main worry as he periodically glance towards Oliver, thankfully he wasn’t the only one as clearly Lexi had the same idea of keeping an eye on the caster.

The miniboss was quick to move but evidently slow to adapt, once Anna took out its first leg she had a much easier time all but immobilizing the spider within the first six attacks by taking out all of the legs on one side of its body, and even those two attacks that failed to take out one leg had managed to connect on the body of the creature slowly chipping away at it.

“How are you doing, do you need a potion?” Lexi offered, she knew that despite the clear effectiveness of the exploding fireballs they weren’t cheap to cast by any means.

“I’m fine.” Anna said as she heaved in breaths before using an ice lance spell to crush the head of the spider as well as a good part of the torso, with the spider being imobile she had no problem aiming and killing the creature.

The next mini-boss they encountered was a rainbow colored version of the worm they had first found on the floor, not only that but this worm was also twice the size of his predecessor, In the end however its size didn’t mean much as Ajax took it apart in much the same manner as the first worm if only this one taking a whole five swings of the hammer before dying instead of two.

“Hey this can be taken outside the dungeon.” Ajax exclaimed in surprised as his senses washed over the corpse of the worm.

“What are you doing?” Oliver sounded outraged as he watched Ajax shove the entire body of the worm into his spacial ring. “The whole reason you are clearing out an entire floor is so that they can’t figure out which you cleared, you do know they will check your ring on your way out.”

“Exactly” Ajax nodded. “If all they find are some third floor gems they will think the reason I stuck inside to clear the floor was because I was greedy, especially since there are so many colors here. I don’t care if they think I only got to the third floor, in fact I prefer it.”

It didn;t take long for them to find another spider miniboss for Lexi to kill however Ajax was sure to stay within two feet of Anna as they all got close to clearing the floor. As for Lexi, she very much copied Anna’s trick of taking out the legs before killing the boss.

“There is a worm boss up ahead guarding an arch, kill it and let's go.” Ajax nodded towards Oliver as he made sure to always put himself between Anna and Oliver.

Unlike what he expected Oliver simply nodded at his instructions before he entered smaller cavern. Despite the man’s attitude Ajax did have to admit that Oliver did have some talent for ice magic. It didn’t take long for Oliver to shatter enough of the worm for it to be considered killed.

“I’ll go through first.” Ajax said much to Olivers surprise, his smile however fell off his face as he saw Ajax leading Anna with an arm around his shoulder towards the arch. “She apparently used too much mana.”

Ajax’s excuse was a clear lie to all four of them however since Anna was going with it there was nothing Oliver could say. Despite turning his back to Oliver Ajax didn’t release his [Mana Syphon]. In fact he extended its range as far as he could. It was a good thing he did as he was able to syphon off a good bit of mana off the ice lance that was heading straight for Anna just in time for him to pull out his shield and shatter the ice as it closed in on them with a shield bash.

“So you’re finally showing your true colors.” Ajax said as he turned to face off against Oliver as Lexi and Anna both raised their staffs against him.

“Come now Ajax,” Oliver started. “This can still end up going in your favor in a big way. All you have to do is help me out here.”