Chapter 184: Stream Skip
———Lynda———
<1: 43 pm>
“Fifty-eight floors in…” I can’t help but remark. I’m not really sure if that's a big number or not in this context. I don’t think I have ever gone that deep even in the local dungeon. It does seem like the monsters there are much stronger, so it seems pretty darn impressive.
They don’t seem to be slowing down either, but they are also seen consuming more potions moving forward. They are using a lot more of their resources on the few couple floors than they do the first forty floors in. I think that’s enough to say that the strength of these monsters are getting dramatically higher. I wonder if there are like… actual stats for these kinds of things somewhere.
“By the way, Glery. Where will we be going this weekend? I kinda want to go back to one of those restaurants again. You know, we haven’t been eating out for a while.” I said while the streamers are yapping about something I don’t really pay attention to.
“Ah? Yeah, I guess that’ll be nice.” She said without paying much attention. And here I thought I was already overanalysing things.
…By the time we talked, they were already clearing more than half of floor fifty-nine, another big horde of monsters that still doesn't quite compare to the one on floor… fourty-six, I believe. Of course that floor the whole fight turned out to be optional, but still.
And there they go to floor sixty. At this rate, a hundred floors is probably a possibility.
———Karra———
<2: 11 pm>
“...This is a gimmick floor isn’t it.” Terry said while gritting her teeth. “Alright, time to nuke this bitch and go to the next floor. Everyone, stay back.”
There’s a bunch of tiles and a lot of traps visible, it’s very clearly a floor with some sort of annoying gimmick to it.
“I’ll set up a barrier, everyone, stand behind me.” Wiina said just to be extra safe, and everyone besides Terry took a few steps back.
*BLAST* *BOOM*
Ear-shattering sounds of explosion and blinding flash of light later, and nothing was left of the floor outside of the layer of obsidian-like rocks that managed to resist the blast. Even a part of the way down to the next floor is completely butchered.
“...Terrifying.” Cry remarked quietly as everyone jumped down into the newly designed floor. “So does anyone know what is up with the dungeon being designed like this? So many layers of progressively stronger material.”
“Who really knows? It seems to be like this to give people more ‘room’ by allowing some manipulation of terrain and size of the floor, but without just letting them dig their way around unimpeded.” Edea chimed in as we walked on the shiny black floor. “Now then, I believe that if we go deeper…”
*Strike* *Crack*
They pulled out a metal rod from nowhere and slammed it into the ground and caused the impacted area to shatter and create a somewhat deep hole. What they did was so sudden and hard to understand that everyone just stopped what they were doing and focused.
*Strike* *Crack* *Strike* *Crack* *Strike* *Crack*
They slammed it down a few more times until a new layer was found, which unlike the jagged rough surface of the current layer, is much more smooth and shiny, also a bit brighter in tone, looking more like dark silver, I guess.
“Could’ve warned us, at least.” Cry complained due to how much shaking their strikes were. It was clear that this layer is insanely tough and the amount of force needed to break through it caused the entire floor to shake violently. How much force is even needed to break this layer? Actually, what even was the amount of force needed to break the other layers? It’s pretty clear that the amount needed to destroy each layer increased dramatically. Just how much more durable could it get?
“Anyway, the main takeaway is that each floor has so many layers of increasingly powerful material. As for what happens when you get to the last layer… Well, let’s just say you’ll regret it a whole lot.” They ominously said as they walked forward. “Of course, that’s assuming you have enough strength to destroy a planet or two. I don’t think anyone has the gall to pull out something like that.”
“Wouldn’t that just destroy the… Nevermind.” Cry was about to point something but everyone probably has enough headache as is trying to keep up with what they’re saying.
“Let’s just get a move on, the viewers aren’t here to be lectured. We all know how low their attention spans are.” I remarked as we moved down to floor sixty-seven.
Everyone is still in good shape. I don’t really know how much power Terry possesses, but it is clearly greater than mine. That kind of attack would’ve cut my mana amount from max to half at least. The fact that she can casually just pull out an attack that would’ve wiped out literally all the monsters from previous floors makes it clear the gap between us is quite big.
Lrem certainly chose them right. At least with strong collaborators, issues are way less likely to occur like any unfortunate incidents that could cut the stream short. That was a massive issue only a few months back.
And here on the next floor. A bunch of glowing yellow gems and crystals growing out of the floors and walls and other rocks. Don’t see any monsters, but I can sense something lingering in here. Must’ve been hiding somewhere among the glowing ores.
“Another gimmick? Alright then…” Terry walked forward again, ready to wipe out another floor entirely.
“Keep your cool. You’ve already done it once, be a bit more conservative with your energy.” Wiina said while pushing her back. “In the first place, the gimmick of this floor is super easy.”
*Swing* *Swing* *Swing* *Splatter* *Shatter* *Split*
Wiina pulled out her katana and swung it around a few times, only for the entire room to be sliced apart multiple times with all the monsters hiding instantly killed due to multiple consecutive slashes that cut through their bodies like a hot knife through butter.
The monsters hiding were bulky lizard-like creatures with skin of similar texture and color to the floor itself, as well as having glowing ores much like the cave-like level.
It’s pretty clear that these monsters are all designed to match this specific floor with how well they blend into the area, and they can suppress their energy to an absurd level, I can only tell that there are other things besides us, but I don’t know their exact location. Also, some of them are clinging tight to the walls which isn’t where you would expect anything to be hiding, so that’s rather insidious.
Still, at least we don’t have to deal with a horde of them ambushing us with Wiina here, she cut through them and turned them into piles of bleeding meat.
Also, she cut so deep into the level that you can even spot the multiple layers she cut through using so much power. At that point it’s just flex, right? Monsters in general don’t seem to have the durability anywhere close to the deeper layers of the dungeon floor, and in the previous floor incident Terry went to about layer six, and seven for Edea.
I can’t really get a good look at how many layers Wiina cut through, but it doesn’t really matter that much as long as the monsters are dead.
“Alright, let’s move on. Hopefully nothing infuriating for anyone to deal with.” Wiina said before leading way down to the sixty-eight floor.
———Orrel———
<2: 19 pm>
“What the hell are you drinking?” Qyunda said, looking at the weird concoction in Kenni’s hand.
“Crushed Queerloop in chocolate milk.” She answered while she continued drinking it and follow that up with another avocado toast topped with fresh tomato and mozzarella cheese.. That sounds… not good, at all.
“I get some fruit working with chocolate, but not cardboard acting like it tasted like one.” Malk said in disgust. “Anyway, from what they were yapping about the dungeon layer… I never saw a layer like the ones shown, at all.”
“Yeah, from the looks of it. It’s pretty clear just from that that these streamers alongside Karra are very freaking strong. How did she even know to pick and choose?” Gregori remarked. “I’ve seen up to layer four just by complete accident, but it looks like the blast by that woman went two or three layers further, and like they said, it really gets a lot tougher with each layer, and they’re hella thick too, each layer is around three feet at least.”
“Are they consistent though? That’s what I wanna know.” Jeyst asked.
“It should be, they all seem to share similar thickness and coloring, at least, but that could just be my bias talking.” Gregori answered. He can tell quite a lot from a few drone cameras. I did come to a similar conclusion, but I can’t say I’m quite as confident as him to say those hypotheses out loud.
As for these streamers, they are fighting another big horde of enemies. It seems to be a trend in this dungeon that you usually fight a large quantity of enemies at least every few floors.
Despite no doubt using a lot of power to destroy an entire floor filled with traps and gimmicks, Terry doesn’t seem tired at all, and she has pivoted from taming and support to a more frontline role as she finds it harder to justify using early floor monsters to do the dirty work for her.
In fact, she’s so naturally strong that it’s rather baffling that she even tried playing support in the first place when she’s already a competent swordswoman who seemed to be even stronger than Karra. It’s not that she can’t play support, otherwise the monsters she tamed would’ve been decimated in less than ten floors in.
Right now, they are all playing offensive outside of Crylight who draws aggro and deals some poke damage with the bladed shield.
“Fascinating, many powerful people are gathered in one place for the sake of entertainment.” Emmie remarked after remaining silent for a few minutes at this point.
“Sure make good content. Quite a power fantasy ain’t it?” Kenni remarked before walking off to get some more snacks, looking for some candies.
“I know we didn’t really address it that much, but is it just me or is everyone eating a whole lot more than before? I know this place is filled with enough food to feed a city or two, but really, why?” Jeff suddenly asked something that was quite observant of him.
“It’s just for the simple fact that you burn through a lot of calories during a fight, as well as a few other factors. Even when you do normal exercise, it’s not as if your body will just scream at you to eat more food, but with mana involved the way it works is that your body being put in overdrive and consuming more of resources in your body to keep you in top shape and above the normal human limit, which would also include calories and other nutrients that your body will alert you to consume more of after the fight is over. Admittedly the extra amount of food you’d need isn’t exactly double or triple, I think some of us here are simply exploiting the large amount of food there is in this household. In the first place, we didn’t really exert ourselves at all today, we’ve just been binging and nothing else. If anything Karra and her crew need to eat a lot more than we do.” Gregori explained in detail.
“Huh. I see.” Jeff said before returning his focus to the stream while the others don’t really make any comment. I suppose everyone would rather not touch on the topic where they are called out for being a glutton without any good justification.
By the time Gregori finished his explanation, they had already cleared the sixty-ninth floor, so the next one would be another big boss floor.