As I suspected, on my way to the dungeon, I stood out a bunch. People stopped and stared, and other adventurers around me, mostly the lower levelled ones like myself stared on enviously.
After all, while my armour was free to me, it looked extra super duper expensive.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some Soma Familia members tried to shake me down in the dungeons or an alleyway or something.
As it was, I just grinned and basked in the staress. After all, if I'm gonna make the Hestia Familia the best and greatest of all Familia's, I've got to bring in that reputation.
They'll see a newbie familia, with a newbie captain equipped with this epic gear and then my exploits will spread and people will want to join.
Not that I'm going to allow the standard scrub to get into the Familia. There's tons of trashy bastards around here after all. And even then, I'm not really interested in the familia growing too large and being full of absolute nobodies who I couldn't even remember the names of.
The decent ones, I'll shunt off to the Miach Familia. If my plan works out, they'll be more or less subordinate familia to the Hestia Familia, treated more like treasured allies, but there will be no contest on which Familia has the power in the relationship.
Though, that is the big plan, who knows if it will actually pan out like that.
====================================
My first stop in the dungeon was the first floor.
That was kind of obvious really since everybody had to pass through there to get to the deeper floors.
But, what I meant was that instead of going straight down, I took a leisurely walk through the first floor, checking every nook and cranny and made my way towards the first floor pantry where the spawned monsters came to eat.
Along the way, I tore through dozens of goblins and kobolds that burst out of the walls in an attempt to kill me.
Not that they could. They were incapable of harming me while in my armour. Despite how hard the crystal was, it had a surprising flexibility to it and even the armour joints weren't weak at all, so there wasn't really any point of the set of armour where it was weakest.
…Well except the face guard when I lifted it up and the open visor for my eyes.
"I really need a supporter." I mused, tossing the last of the magic crystals I'd torn from the slain monsters bodies up into the air and catching it between my teeth, before biting down and shattering it, swallowing the shards.
Cutting the magic stones out myself was hella tedious.
'It's not like I've not tried though.' I sighed, continuing on my way towards the pantry. I've been keeping my eye out for Lili, but I've not caught sight of her at all.
I want her, it's that simple. Not only because she was a hot little midget that could switch her appearance on the fly, but also because I want to pick her brain about her skill.
Artel Assist.
A skill that compensated for the weight of items the user was carrying. If I had that, I would be able to carry heavy objects with less strain and it would make even large powerful weapons much more wieldable.
'And it would help a hell of a lot with armour as well.' I mentally noted. Despite all the benefits this armour provided.
It was incredibly heavy. Way heavier than standard metal I'd say at that.
I was already beginning to breathe heavily.
A minute or so later I arrived at my destination. The pantry. I'd actually been spending quite a bit of time around here the last few days and checking in every so often.
I was looking for something specific.
My eyes scanned the wide open room that was the pantry. It looked like little more than a wide dark cavern space, except for the large quartz pillar at the end of the room secreting a dark liquid that flowed down forming into a large sticky puddle.
A large sticky puddle that had dozens of monsters, goblin and kobold alike gathered around it, bent down and feeding from.
And a golden feathered rooster that seemed totally out of place.
Huh.
I blinked slowly for a moment. That was what I was looking for. Had been for a while. Since my first trip into the dungeon actually.
A Jack Bird.
…I just wasn't expecting it to be here. Hoped for it and checked in just in case, but wasn't at all expecting it.
A wide grin spread across my face and I stepped into the room. My foot steps thundered through the room due to how heavy my armour was and the monsters all stopped feeding, whipping around to look at me, and a split moment later, growls, howls and roars resounded through the room, eyes a glowing crimson red with rage glaring my way before they rushed me.
My eyes were on the golden rooster though.
It was about forty or so feet away-
It moved.
Something seemed to shimmer around its thin legs and feet, before a split moment later it sped forward, a blur to my eyes.
Fast!
Even with my stats in the D-five hundred range, I could barely track it with my eyes and if it got passed me there was no way I was catching it!
I don't think I'd be able to hit it right now at all physically either way.
It's a good thing I have options. And that I'm standing at the entrance so it needs to come towards me to get through me.
With my face guard still up, I took a deep breath, drawing upon my magic energy, compressing it within my chest and then exhaled, throwing my head forward and releasing a wide spread wave of flame from my mouth.
The flame breathe ability I received from the first Infant Dragon magic crystal I devoured. I could use it in two ways, a weaker area of effect style like I am now, or a stronger, more narrow compressed version.
The Jack Bird's speed wasn't great enough to get to me and passed me before the flames swept out over the room, washing over the golden feathered bird, the goblins and kobolds alike, howls and roars of agony filled the cavernous room, but were soon to die down.
I licked my now dry lips and admired my handiwork when the flames sputtered out. Dozens of charred and steaming monster corpses littered the floor of the pantry room.
"Yes!" I pumped my fist into the air and cheered when my eyes landed on one very specific monster corpse.
That of a now charcoal black feathered corpse.
I quickly made my way over, ignoring the smell of burnt flesh as best I could and picked the corpse up. The gauntlets I wore, were made with clawed fingers and so I used them to rip the corpse open and pull out the magic stone.
As I did, the corpse burst into black smoke and a golden coloured egg fell towards the ground which I caught before it could.
The golden egg, the guaranteed drop of the Jack Bird. I don't know what exactly it's good for, but the guild will buy it for a full million valis!
I eyed the golden egg with a massive grin and excitement thundered in my veins, 'With this, I'll be able to buy a bunch of monster crystals and still have loads left of cash left over.' I thought gleefully.
Hell, I could probably use the money from this egg alone to buy a decent house for me and Hestia.
I don't think I will though. I think I'll save up for now until I have enough to purchase a big ol' mansion.
Call it personal pride, but Bell won Hestia a massive luxurious mansion, formerly belonging to Apollo.
I need to get her one at least on par with it or better, or I'm a failure as the captain of the Hestia Familia, right?
'That's what the store is for.' I thought. He'd keep some of the valis from the egg back for personal things for him and Hestia to make life more comfortable and entertaining, and use the rest to buy monster magic stones to power up with and for renovating the store when he got it.
Grin on my face widening, I chowed down on the Jack Bird's magic stone, stowed the golden egg in my loot pouch, and then started pulling the magic stones from the rest of the charred corpses littering the floor of the pantry room.
=======================================
When I was done looting the corpses of the monsters within the pantry and devouring them, I left it behind. While I was super stoked about the golden egg, I still had plans.
So into the deeper floors I ventured.
I stayed on the fourth floor briefly to kill a few dungeon lizards. Huge brown scaled lizards the size of a standard dog that could cling to any surface. I'd killed a few before already in the last few days, but got my magic stones mixed up and ended up trading all of theirs in and not eating any.
I rectified that before I moved on down to the fifth floor, where things in the dungeon began to change a bit. The first to fourth floors were blackish brown and there was little light.
It was a lot brighter on the fifth floor and the walls shifted into a shade of light green.
It wasn't really a bother to me with how dark the upper floors were, since I had night vision, but for others, even if the monsters got a bit stronger, it made fighting a bit easier.
The fifth floor while brighter, didn't really have any new monsters, it just spawned goblins and kobolds, albeit, larger and stronger than the ones on the above floors.
And so it didn't take me long to arrive at my real destination.
"This is it." I found myself standing before a staircase leading down to the sixth floor. I looked at it for a moment, before shrugging my armoured shoulders and making my way down.
When I reached the bottom, I immediately found myself in a wide spread square square-shaped room, despite it being just the entrance to this floor, it was already wider than the largest room of the first floor, the pantry.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
As I was observing the room, I heard the familiar sounds of stone cracking and the walls broke apart to reveal three shadowy figures.
They were tall and thin, with inky black jagged claws and one singular glowing red eye each. They looked like the Getsuga Tenshou had formed into near-humanoid shapes.
'War Shadows, they can sink into shadows and can't be hurt by physical attacks.' I thought, remembering what I read of them from the information book I got from Ron.
Well, they could be hit physically in one spot. Through the eye, where their magic stones were held. If he punched through there and destroyed it physically, it would kill them all the same.
But that would defeat the purpose.
Since War Shadow had one of the abilities he wanted the most. Really, the only ones he wanted the stones of more than a War Shadow right now, were of a Blue Papilion…or the Goliath.
The ability to create healing powder, which I could heal others with, and make a killing from and the power of regeneration.
Enough said.
Thank fuck for Infant Dragons.
I took a deep breath just as the trio of War Shadows rushed me and then exhaled, releasing a burst of flame from my throat that swept over all three of them as they got close.
Piercing shrieks echoed through the room for all of a second, before disappearing entirely.
When the flames died down, it was to reveal a trio of small magic stones lying on the ground.
I wasted no time in picking them up and devouring them.
"One down, four to go." I mused.
Three of them I could find on the seventh floor, a Killer Ant, a Purple Moth, and a Blue Papilion. But, the last one I could only find here on the sixth floor.
A Frog Shooter.
=======================================
Finding a Frog Shooter wasn't hard at all.
While the dungeon seemed to as a whole get wider and larger each floor one progressively went down, the upper floors were nothing like the lower ones passed the eighteenth floor, and were still for the most part caverns as opposed to what amounted to areas topside akin to the size of small villages and growing.
So as it was, I merely progressed through the sixth floor, following the map I'd purchased at the guild of the upper floors, and with a few turns, I found myself coming across a whole group of them.
Four of them in total just minding their own business milling away in a large hallway.
As soon as I stepped into the hallway, a set of red eyes locked on top of me, belonging to a large green frog-like beast that would come up over my waist in height.
A loud warbling croak left its throat, drawing the eyes of its companions to me, before it tensed its back legs and leaped through the air towards me.
Its cheeks bulged while it was mid-air and a moment later it spat towards me, its tongue massive in length stretching out towards me, thicker than my head.
I tilted my head, letting the tongue flash past and slam into the wall behind me, the force of the tongue lashing cracking the stone wall.
My hand flashed up, clawed gauntlet slicing through the air and I grabbed the slimy appendage and pulled.
The frog shooter gave a panicked warble as it was yanked even faster through the air towards me, my other fist coming up before it could do anything and slamming into its skull.
I both felt and heard the crunch from the impact as the frog shooter's eyes rolled up into the back of its head and it died.
Before it could fall to the ground I let go of its tongue and grabbed its throat, before bodily tossing it towards the other three frog monsters hopping towards me.
The corpse slammed into the one in the middle, burying it beneath the weight of its once comrade and I rushed forward, jumping as twin tongues from the remaining two lashed out at me like whips and avoiding the hits.
I landed between them and narrowed my hands into a knife edge, the claws of my gauntlets pointed out, and shoved my hand through one eye, straight into its brain, killing it, then spun and launched a roundhouse kick that caught the other one in the temple.
Once again, a skull went crunch.
Just then, the middle one managed to shake the corpse off of itself and it let loose a rage-filled croak and launched towards me.
And once again a tongue lashed out towards me like a whip, slashing diagonally through the air, trying to cut me off.
Thinking quickly, I dropped flush to the ground letting it pass over me, before pushing up into all fours and like a beast pushing off with my back legs and rushing it.
Before it could retract its tongue, I was already upon it, another knife strike flashing out. Blood splashed through the air as my clawed gauntlet fingers pierced straight through its eye up into its brain and it went limp.
"Hmm, their tongues are way faster than anything I've fought so far." I mused, pulling my hand free and eyeing the corpse.
Up until now, the fastest thing I'd fought had been the progressively getting stronger kobolds. But these whip-like tongues were way faster.
Pretty easy to predict the pathing of, but still way faster than the kobolds.
======================================
I wasted no time in extracting the magic stones from the frog shooters corpses and continued on my way to the seventh floor.
For all intents and purposes, it didn't take me long. Between the map of the upper floors I had, my stats that were way higher than your typical level one adventurer skulking around these parts and my enhanced senses, finding my way was a breeze.
I was attacked a few times along the way, by both frog shooters and war shadows, but it wasn't much of a challenge to deal with them.
Especially when they all rushed me in a straight forward group once. They were easy pickings with my fire breath ability.
Really, I think I spent the most time digging out their magic stones and devouring them.
Which was why I really needed a supporter that could take care of them while I tore through the monsters.
A supporter that knew what they were doing would really speed up my kill rate and progress.
Interestingly, as I made my down the stairs, deeper into the dungeon and entered the seventh floor, the area darkened once again, the only lighting being dim blue crystals lining the walls.
There was a big difference though. The seventh floor spread out much wider at the entrance, forming into a massive cavern that had to be at least a hundred feet or more wide, and dozens of stalagmites erupted up out of the ground into pointed spiky shapes.
A chittering sound echoed through the wide cavernous room and my ears twitched beneath my helmet.
A moment later, the chittering got louder, joined by a chorus of similar sounds and from out behind the large stalagmites, large four legged beasts edged their way into my sight. Each a bit bigger than the frog shooters I came across, with sturdy red carapaces.
A group of giant ants surrounded me.
But that wasn't all.
Flittering in the air above one of them, was a large purple moth.
A flash of movement caught my eye to my right, and I looked over just in time to see a white blur land on top of one of the huge ants, before launching through the air towards me.
A white rabbit with glowing red eyes and a spiky horn on its head, aimed straight for me.
It was fast, faster than the Kobolds and as fast as a frog shooters whip like tongue.
I punched it out of the air regardless though, slamming it into the ground, before stomping on its head and killing it.
That seemed to be the starting signal.
The chittering got louder, and the group of killer ants rushed me.
I focused on the one being followed by the purple moth. I flicked the face guard of my helmet up and breathed in deep before exhaling, unleashing a torrent of flame that washed over both the killer ant and the purple moth, roasting the pair of monsters alive.
Then I turned my attention to the rest of the killer ants rushing me, five in total now that one of them were dead.
They weren't as fast as the rabbit monster, a needle rabbit if I remember right, but they weren't slow by any means.
They just weren't close to as fast as me, and my armour is tougher than their own.
I sprang forward to meet them. My knee came up and caught one under the chin, blowing its head up, where I proceeded to grab it around its thin neck and twist with all my strength.
A savage grin spread across my face as its neck snapped, "Rah!" with a shout, I spun, using my grip on the corpses neck to lift the dead killer ant up bodily and slam it down like a hammer atop one of its companions, crushing it to death.
Excitement thrummed in my veins and I felt my blood pounding in my ears, my heart thundering in my chest.
I couldn't contain the laughter that bubbled up out of my throat at all.
Three left.
My ears twitched and I juked to the side as one them of launched at me like a bullet, pincers at its mouth trying to disembowel me.
It caught the side of my crystal armour and grinded against it as it went passed, but that was all.
Before it went fully past, I reached out and grabbed its legs and rapidly rotated like a tornado, slamming it into the other two killer ants and blowing them back into a set of stalagmites.
This was so much fun!
The killer ant in my arms writhed and roiled against me, wiggling widely, but it couldn't break free from my grip.
It chittered in surprise in panic as I heaved it up into the air like a hammer and sprang forward and then brought it down atop one of its brethren.
Crunch went their carapaces as I slammed it down with all my strength. The ant in my arms went limp, and I Iet it go.
In the direction of its remaining buddy that is. I slung it through the air towards the last killer ant struggling to its four feet.
The corpse slammed into it and smacked it back into the ground. Grin almost splitting my face in two, I rushed forward and jumped into the air.
And landed atop its head before it could recover, slamming down atop it with all my strength and weight.
"Well, that was fun." I chuckled, stepping off the killer ants now crushed head. As tough as its carapace was, my strength, combined with the durability and weight of my body and armour…meant it stood no chance.
I noticed then, that my gleaming crystal blue armour, was covered in a multitude of blood splatters, staining it. It was almost like a rainbow. Red blood, green blood, purple blood and the light blue of the armour itself.
Looks like it will need a good washing.
I could just grow another set of armour when I need a new set, but I made sure I had an easy way to take the armour off and put it back on for a reason. It's gonna get sold after all.
I'll be making a set of this armour every day to stock up on it for when I manage to get that store in tower of Babel.
"Well for now, best get a move on." I mused, turning towards the sizzling corpse of the first killer ant I killed, alongside the dead charred moth laying across its back.
That was another two targets down. Alongside the war shadow and frog shooter, that left only one more target in the seventh floor.
The blue papilion.
Though they were apparently quite rare down here, or at least uncommon, 'Best bet will be to head towards the pantry.' I thought, before getting to work extracting the magic stones of my kills.
=======================================
I have to admit.
So far, I'm liking the seventh floor way more than any of the other floors I've been to.
Not only is it bigger and more spacious, but there were a lot more monsters out and about on the way to the pantry, and the monsters spawned much quicker as well.
Mostly killer ants mind you, which were usually a problem for a lot of level one adventurers because of their tough bodies, ability to take a hit and call for back up.
Not so for me.
With my armour, that of a peak level two monster on par with a Minotaur, I could kill them with a single hit to the head.
Even grouping up against me did them little to no good because of the sheer fact that my armour was just that damn sturdy.
It took me a good half an hour to find the seventh floor pantry. Much bigger than the pantries of the other floors.
As expected though, the vast majority of the monsters in it were killer ants, followed by needle rabbits and killer moths to a lesser extent.
There was around thirty or so monsters in total chowing down, slurping up on that sustenance.
'Looks like I'll have to play the waiting game a b-' I paused in my thoughts as a glimmer of blue in amongst the purple moths caught my eye.
Ah, there was one.
There were around eight purple moths, or rather, seven, one of them I had glanced over and not noticed, was a light blue in colour, easy to miss in amongst the purple.
That'll do.
I stepped into the pantry, sliding the face guard of my full crystal helmet up, "It's time to burn baby burn~" I sang, a smirk spreading across my face as I inhaled deeply.
One by one monstrous red eyes snapped towards me, the heavy foot falls of my armour alerting them to my presence.
It was to late for them though.
I compressed a mass amount of my magic power into my throat, sparking it into raw blistering heat and then exhaled massively, unleashing a wide spread wave of flame.
The smell of burning flesh and corpses as abundant moments later and I let the flames from my mouth dwindled away and eyed my handy work.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning." I chuckled, making my way over to the corpses of the dead purple moths and the blue papilin all grouped together.
…I couldn't tell which was which to be honest. With them charred black, they didn't look different at all.
Which just meant I had to eat all of their magic stones.
I already planned on eating the magic stones of every monster I killed down here anyway. I would have plenty of valis from the golden egg of the Jack Bird I killed to last for a decent while.
Which meant I could focus on just increasing my stats through having a good monster meal.
So that was what I did. I ripped apart the corpses of the moths with my clawed gauntlets and ate all their magic stones, before moving on to the rest of the monsters and repeating the action.
It took me a good twenty or so minutes to finish. But by time I did, the corpses of all the monsters had dispersed the the yoinking of their magic stones.
"That should be me about done now." I mused, stretching out my arms and shoulders. I've gotten what I came for, though while my muscles are hurting and I'm breathing a bit deeply from lugging this heavy armour around, I kind of want to stay a bit more, but there would be no point-
A chittering sound broke me through my thoughts and I looked over to see a single killer ant making its way into the pantry.
Obviously it was coming to get some good grub.
It paused when it saw me, only for a moment before it chittered threateningly at me and rushed towards me.
I was about to just blast it with a shot of flame from my mouth and roast it, before a thought occurred.
'Monsters don't spawn in the pantry, that means the entrance is a bottle neck.' I thought.
And a killer ant, could draw in multiple of dozens of its species with its ability.
I closed my mouth and rushed forward to meet the ant, dodging to the side as it lunged at me before bringing my foot down on one of the joints of its legs.
A sickening crack rang out as the join broke from my blow and the beast chittered in pain, falling to the ground.
Quickly, I got to work while it was down and immobile. I reached out, grabbing the two other legs on this side of its body and ripped them clean off.
Green blood arced through the air, splattering me with it and the insectoid monster shrieked even louder.
And again when I repeated the motion on the other side, ripping the three legs on its other side.
It twitched in agony, but couldn't move at all, more or less now due to being legless.
…Well it had one left, but it was broken.
And now that it had no way of fighting back and was immobile-
A loud warbling sound began to ring from its mouth, the ant tilting its head up, and my nose twitched as I smelled a pungent scent coming from the beast.
Hmm, I can smell its pheromones due to my enhances senses, interesting.
Also, yuck, it's fucking rank.
"Hopefully this doesn't take long." I mused, taking a seat on the ants back itself and waiting for its comrades to come.
======================================
As it turned out, I wasn't waiting long, just a few minutes. I heard a mass of chittering echoing through the cavernous floor, followed by the sound of cracking walls.
And not long later, killer ants began to pour into the pantry in the dozens. Excitement flared through my veins once more and I relished in the red haze of combat that fell over my vision as I met them head on, leaping into battle and slaughtered my way through them all.
In the end, by the time the rabid rampant group of monster ants dwindled down into nothing, I'd torn my way through fifty five of them. Usually in groups of ten or so they rushed into the pantry.
And died together en masse.
By time I reached the end though, it was in much smaller groups they came in. Starting at ten or so, by time I hit thirty, the groups dwindled until it was groups of six, then four, then two.
Until only stragglers came chittering along into the pantry alone.
"That…that was a good time." I laughed to myself while panting deeply. Corpses of killer ants were piled up all around me, and I was caked from head to toe in their smelly green blood.
Wiping sweat from my brow, I turned to the final ant, and the first one, the legless one that had started this all, "Thanks for the assist mate." I pat it fondly on the head.
Then snapped its neck.
It wasn't really cruelty. After all, the ant and its fellows would live on in me as my precious excelia. They had forsaken the dungeon and were now going to be my comrades, forever.
Now came the less fun part though.
Extracting the magic stones from all fifty six of the dead killer ants.