22nd Floor (1)
Year 1452, month 10, day 02
“Let’s go, girls!” I said after opening the Warp gate.
“Yes!” They said in unison with excitement.
When we stepped inside the gate, we found ourselves in the corridor of the 22nd floor’s entrance. The corridor was much wider compared to the first floor. Since the corridors enlarged slowly on each floor, it was hard to notice, but when you compare them with the first floor directly, the current floor is more than 7 times wider than the first floor.
***
Race: Flexible Mud
Sex: None
Status: Normal
Level 22
***
On this floor, we will be clearing another type of cores that have compound elements. The flexible Muds can manipulate both earth and water elements. The mix of two elements sometimes gives birth to muddy types of attacks, defences, and appearances.
The cores hovering around were muddy brown in colour. Their surface was not solid but fluid. A layer of mud was slowly accumulating at the bottom of the sphere like a droplet, and dyed the floor temporarily when the drop fell on the ground.
Since neither the earth nor the water elements were specialised in speed, their movements looked slower and clumsier than the crimson hurricanes on the previous floor. Naturally, they specialised more in defence.
The earth element is slow but strong; however, the wind element is fast but more fragile. As for the fire element, it is explosively focused on destruction but has no sustainability when it comes to defence, while the water element is more balanced and easier to divert between attack and defence.
So flexible muds can launch slow but decisive attacks, protect themselves with the adamant earth element and support it further with water barriers. When they find it hard to penetrate their opponent's defences, they can even switch to a water attack to inflict internal damage.
The second floor of every quintet series was always easiest for me. They had harder defences, so most people must have had a hard time inflicting enough damage despite them being the least dangerous. As for me, I just defeated them with my superior attack output.
On the previous floor, defeating the cores took a long time because they were hard to catch. However, we just have to hit those flexible muds hard enough to crack their shells. The trick is to make the blow strong enough or give multiple hits.
“Start the attack,” I said while holding my sword in my hand.
“Yes!” The girls said in unison and rushed while Elaris readied her bow.
The girls positioned themselves similarly to the previous floor at first. Wyn and Woya rushed toward the cores, Elaris launched an attack, and as soon as it hit, the enemies noticed the girls. Wyn turned her direction toward the right while Woya took a turn toward the left.
The one that was hit by Elaris’s arrow fell to the floor as the arrow stuck to it. Despite that, it just stumbled around for a second and started to hover again. The cores with the earth element clearly have stronger defence.
In the meantime, the girls started to get behind the cores, and when they were relatively behind them, they turned and attacked the closest ones. That made our placement a triangle, as one point is Wyn, another is Woya and Elaris, and I took the last point of the triangle.
The girls dodged most of the attacks as they were slower because they were not wind attacks. However, the cores were also slow, so the distance kept closing. Elaris was also shooting as she was prioritizing taking care of the damaged flexible mud.
The damaged core was on high alert and focusing on defense. Elaris’s attacks were mostly on spot but they were either blocked or reduced to no threat by it using a water shield. So the best way to deal with them is to attack before they notice.
“Elaris, focus on helping the girls,” I said, seeing her struggling. “I will take care of it.”
“... Yes, big brother Han,” She replied with a somewhat sad expression, albeit it being late. She must be feeling bad for not being able to take care of the enemy.
She started to aim for other cores, and that made the girls’ advancement easier. I contemplated which attack would be better on these enemies. Any water-based or earth-based attacks are out of the question, and fire-type attacks wouldn’t work well on either of them.
This left me with a wind attack. A wind element attack also wouldn’t deal much damage to their earth surface, but it can easily finish the already damaged core. As for the water shield, the water element is weak against the wind element, so it should scatter without interrupting the attack much.
I focused on creating multiple wind blades, tried to put them after each other linearly, then launched them together. 2 of the wind blades deviated from their trajectory, but the other 3 kept their direction.
The first wind blade cut open the water shield that the core had put hastily and created a shallow cut on the surface of the core. The second one hit directly and created a deeper cut, but the cut landed on a place away from the arrow, and the final blade hit right beneath the arrow hole and connected with the damaged part. So the damage reached the inner part of the core, resulting in its destruction.
As the first enemy was turning to dust, another two were being handled by Wyn and Woya. Thanks to Elaris’ aid, the two flexible muds that are not targeted by Wyn and Woya yet couldn’t pressure them much, trying to avoid Elaris’ arrows.
There were not an infinite amount of arrows, so I laid a few bundles of arrows beside Elaris. Whenever she was out of arrows, she would get another bunch from the ground and continue to fire. As soon as the fight ends, she collects the fired arrows if possible and the circle repeats.
Elaris continued to keep the other two cores busy, without worrying about running out of arrows. In the meanwhile, Wyn and Woya got in the melee range of the cores near them. No matter how sturdy their defence was, they could put up with it only for a while until they completely collapsed.
Only two of them remained. If they sit still, they would be caught by the two wolfkin fighters. However, even if they try to distance themselves, the only direction they could run is where Elaris and I are located.
The simple minded mechanical cores could not produce any complex strategical movement, so they tried to put up a distance first. When Elaris started to deal some damage to them, they could not decide where to go so they ended up obliterated by two battle crazy wolfkins.
“Here, Master.”
Woya and Wyn handed me the coins they collected. It was 10 silver and 265 copper Obscuras. I merged 210 of them to additional 2 silver coins, so it became 12 silver coins and 55 copper Obscuras.
We tried to collect as many arrows as possible, but most of them were unusable. Since I had brought enough with me, it should be okay. When we were done, we continued to the corridor to find another group of monsters.
After a few hours of fighting our way through, I decided to let them rest after we defeated one or two more groups. As noon was getting closer, we were starting to get hungry.
Unfortunately for us, the next group of monsters were being hunted by another party. Since the corridors are quite wide now, we decided to pass by without interfering. It is like a verbal rule to not touch another party’s prey unless they ask for it, or if they looked like they were in trouble.
When we got close though, we were a bit surprised. There were only two people trying to hunt the whole group. I thought that they are strong and trying to farm coins here since flexible muds are quite slow aside from their strong defense. But I was wrong.
They were one man and one catkin woman. I could not see if the man was a human, an elf or a beastkin but I assumed it was human based on his posture. He was wearing plate armor that is covering all parts of his body with thick armor.
His armor might make people think that he is rich and good at fighting, but what I saw was a crudely swung sword. He was not dodging or can’t even dodge most of the attacks. He was completely relying on his durable armor which showed deep cuts and scratches all over its surface.
When I decided to take a look at his job, it became clear that he must just have his hands on some fine pieces of equipment and decided to dwell in dungeons. He is a level 30 soldier. Completely unexpected on the 22th floor.
The other person was a catkin warrior. She had basic leather armor and worn out iron swords, trying to hit enemies and dodge their attacks frantically. She looked so fast and strong but there was so little a single person could do in the middle floors of a dungeon.
I was skeptical at first, but when I saw her job, I became certain. Her job was level 5 beast champion. She was Nari. Although they could not see her identify window, the girls seemed to recognize her too.
Wyn looked toward her with pity and worry while Woya’s eyes widened as if she was shocked. The both of them certainly did not expect to see her here, not in this situation either. Then Woya’s expression started to relax slowly, but a deep sorrowful look took its place.
“Huh?” Elaris did not know what was happening, but she noticed our reactions. So she asked curiously, “Big sister Woya? Is there something wrong?”
“...” Woya did not answer, but she turned toward me and asked, “M-master… Isn’t she Nari?”
“... Yes. It appears so.” I replied without revealing any emotion.
“I see…” She bowed her head in sadness.
Just at that moment, another attack hit the man. One of the enemies was already dealt with, however 4 of them were still attacking them recklessly. Two of them were around Nari, and the other two were trying to breach the armor of the man. Even though they were slow, earth element attacks could be lethal if landed on wrong places.
The man had strong armor despite cracks on it. However, this was until now. The last attack landed on a place in his breast area where many cracks already formed. The attack shattered a part of the armor.
“W-what?!” The man became speechless. He must have quite confidence in his equipment.
‘That was bound to happen eventually.’ I thought while looking at the poor armor that might be worth quite a bit of gold coins in its new phase.
“N-nari!” The man shouted toward Nari while trying to fend off the attacks and desperately focused on his chest area with his one hand. “Come here, you b*tch. Your master is in danger, what are you doing, playing out there?”
“H-huh?!” Nari flinched when she heard him and immediately tried to get closer, but she was blocked by an enemy between them.
“You ungrateful slave!” The man continued to shout and became more and more angry as his voice continued to get louder. I was sure that his head inside the helmet must be red as a tomato. “Why don’t you listen just once? Get over here immediately! If you do, I will only beat you half of what you deserve! Who do you think was filling your–” He continued to shout.
“M-master!” It seems like Woya could not take it anymore and called me with deep worry on her face. Wyn also looked sad but she was reluctant. She is always aware of her boundaries. Even Elaris looked worried despite them being strangers to her.
I delved in deep though. Should I help, or not? The answers were clear. Even if they were to be strangers, I would still help. Since there is nothing to lose. I can even get something out of it.
“Okay. You go help her. I will deal with the man.” I said and stepped forward.
When the girls started to move. I approached the man instantly and stopped near him around 5 meters away.
“Do you need help?” I asked in a relaxed voice.
“H-huh?!” The man was surprised and took his guard instinctively. “W-who are you?!” The man asked with an uncertain voice as most of his focus was still on the cores.
“It is for later.” I pressed. “You are in a predicament. So do you want help… or not?”
“...” The man was desperate. He hesitated for a moment then nodded. “P-please help! Please save me!”
“Okay.” Seeing he asked it himself I did not have any more reason to hold back.