Looking Into The 8th Floor
Year 7445, Month 8, Day 13
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Year 7445, Month 8, Day 14
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Mu, it's only slight but it seems there's some air flow. Judging from this state the hall probably continues down for quite a distance. Since the darkness area from just now was a dead end we couldn't feel the flow of air but the hall this time has a capacity that feels like it might be connected to a monster room somewhere.
"It seems like there's a slight air flow as well. It's proof monsters are wandering around. Maruso, do you smell anything?"
Zenom asked Angela but Angela had her eyes clothes and was trying to pick up scents before that.
"I can smell an unfamiliar scent from that direction. I think it's probably monster shit or something though."
Angela pointed down one of the directions of the hall the air is coming from while replying. Of course~ if she can tell some kind of odor then that direction is the only obvious one.
I guess because he's tense from entering a new floor Basutorall swallowing sounded awfully loud.
"Since it's the long-awaited chance let's at least see what kind of monsters there are. Then, shall we try going in that direction? Carefully now. Since we don't know what kind of traps there might be proceed cautiously. We'll advance with the {Double Trail}, Angela and Ralpha will take the lead..ah, No, after all let's just confirm if there's any traps around here. After confirming there's no traps we'll lure monsters to us."
Since it can't be helped rushing I didn't use {Find.Trap}, {Detect.Snare}, or {Perceive.Pitfall}. Ralpha and Angela are hitting the floor with the pole we prepared before hand. Gwine and Basutoral are walking around poking places with their spears as well. If I don't have them do this occasionally their skills might dull after all.
"Try prodding the walls up to around our height as well. It would be unpleasant if there was another strange trap after all."
Before long we had completely investigated up until around 50 meters ahead from the teleport crystal and confirmed there were no traps.
"Alright, up until around 10 meters in front of us and around 40 meters behind past the teleport crystal is safe regardless of if we jump or roll. We'll take on the enemy with the {Reverse Triangle} centering around Zenom with me at the summit. Let's go."
Ralphai s on the left side of the front row, Zenom is in the center, Angela on the right side, and everyone is lined up with around 5 meters between. The second row has a distance similar to the first made up of Gwine and Basutoral. Then the third row takes formation around me while I slowly use the spell {Audible.Clamor} about 50 meters ahead on a random rock I could see with Identify vision.
A loud noise almost like a tire rupturing echoes through the 8th floor.
When I was looking further down the hall with Identify vision and I could see several specks with wings coming approaching in the distance.
【Male/1/12/7444.Giant Cave Cricket】
【Age: 0 Years Old】
【HP: 65 MP: 1(1)】
【Speed: 35】
【Endurance: 5】
There's several dozen of those and they're springing through the center of the hall heading over here.
It doesn't seem like they have any sort of special skill and while it says giant in the end they're just crickets. They aren't much of an opponent. If she does it calmly then even Gwien in the middle row can use magic so it should be possible for the five of them to deal with it.
Well, if I just send one shot of {Fire Ball} in that will probably wipe out a few of them assuming it doesn't take out half or so and that should increase the light as well...
"Something is approaching.."
"Yeah, rabbits? It feels like they're leaping along the ground."
"They seem like grasshoppers."
It seems Basutoral can see them.
When they approached to around 200 meters ahead I sent five shots of {Fire Ball} with missile added flying towards them. It seems the ones that took direct hits and were in the immediate vicinity of that died instantly.
Remaining is..eight more huh?
"I'll provide backup as suitable. Kill them!"
The giant crickets had a height of close to 80 cm. However, their HP wasn't anything special so almost all of the individuals died from just a single good hit from the tomahawk, broad sword, and spear.
The magic stones had a value of around 10,000 each so they're pretty good earnings, even the experience points was close to 400. Since it was a waste of skipping over the magic stones of the ones I finished with {Fire Ball} we waited for around 20 minutes to see if anymore monsters would approach and then after confirming if there were any traps along the way with spells we gathered them all.
"Now then, Al. What are we going to do? Shall we try proceeding a bit?"
Zenom asks me but I had no intention of proceeding from the start. Today wasn't for exploring but just checking the state of things on the 8th floor. There's no guarantee that crickets are the only monsters either.
"No, we won't proceed today. It's plenty if we can confirm the state of the 8th floor after all."
I crack my neck to the sides while replying.
"Are we going to lure more monsters again?"
"We aren't doing that either. Even after waiting this long nothing came along. Either there's nothing near here or if there is it's insanely slow like slimes. We should return once and try going to a different area."
I said that urging everyone along and we returned to the 7th floor.
We spent the entire morning teleporting into a total of seven locations and entered combat ten times. Among those five times was with the crickets, three times was with {Giant Mantis}, which were once again basically just huge praying mantis. Twice was against {Giant Millipedes} which were huge millipedes that reached a size of around 3 meters in all. It's all just bugs. The values of the magic stones were all pretty similar as well.
Honestly speaking, I thought Ralpha, Gwine, Angela or the women would at least raise a scream from all of the insects but there's no one with that sort of cute side among us. Only really Basutoral who made a pretty unpleasant face when disassembling them to gather the magic stones.
I only thought they were pretty disgusting when I saw the huge crickets as well but I guess because they're too big they don't really seem disgusting as bugs. The scythes of the praying mantis and the poison from the millipedes require plenty of caution but since we were able to confirm they aren't very powerful enemies at all you could say we've achieved our objective for this time. Starting from the afternoon we went back to fighting ogres on the 7th floor again.
After thinking about it once again taking on ogres is a lot more tense. They're a lot more dangerous as well, since trying to lure them over is as expected scary they have the flaw of having to explore the halls to search for them but the value of their magic stones is completely different and the amount of experience points for each individual ogre is higher as well.
After all I guess we should spend until the end of this year gaining experience on the 7th floor and leveling up?
Also, the problems with the 8th floor isn't just monsters right?