The team had no issues entering the dungeon the following morning, the guards at the entrance in fact insisted that the Viscount responsible for the land surrounding the dungeon had been sent a message about what happened and there was every chance a gift would be waiting for them as they exited.

Ajax had started playing around with his newest skill as they were walking through the first floor of the dungeon. There wasn’t enough time for him to place any proper restrictions so that he could see how the benefit behaved but he could place ten second restrictions to see how they would feel.

The first trick Ajax noticed as they were moving was that the restriction for having an arm fall limp had the same beneficial effect as the one for him not being able to move the arm. In essence the restrictions were pretty much the same thing if his arm was by his side, if he was holding his shield however the second restriction would still prove rather useful while providing the same benefit.

The first floor was an easy clear where they found the first arch and went through it. The prince had been so impatient Ajax didn’t even get a chance to see what the miniboss guarding the arch was as the prince had already dealt with it by the time they got there.

The second floor was where the progression truly began. “Some sort of metal and fire floor.” Ajax let them know, while Benedict, Lexi, Xavier and Anna should have had no issues even with a bad match-up against a level fifty one he still wanted them to know what they were walking into.

Anna frowned a little hearing the dominant mana types, her preferred fire style was particularly bad against either element at a similar level, still with all the extra stats she had gather from the extra dungeons she did in the Empire and the Republic she was confident a five level difference would actually mean she outmatched the monsters.

The floor they walked in on looked to Ajax like they had just stepped into a giant’s forge. Oddly enough he could actually see a good amount of the entire floor from his position on the table where he saw a mug the same size as himself.

“It has been at least a decade since I last saw an enlarged contained floor.” the prince commented as he looked around.

“Twice that for me.” Aranor mentioned.

“I just hope the blacksmith doesn’t show up.” Ajax said as he warily looked towards the closed door.

“He won’t.” the prince assured him as the group moved towards the first arch that was by one of the many tool boxes scattered around. “Though I will tell you to be careful if you find floors like this at higher level ranges, once the levels go past one hundred and fifty bigger objects are acceptable as monsters, even something like the table we are walking on.”

Even though Ajax knew that bigger didn’t always mean better he was still a little wary when it came to fighting a monster the size of a small city, for all that he may very well be able to chip away at it while the behemoth could barely move against something in that weight class a single minor mistake would be enough to kill you.

The first thing to engage onto them was a hammer. Unlike the cartoons he had seen back on earth the hammer didn’t open a set of eyes, it simply used mana to launch itself towards them.

“It’s all metal.” Xavier said as everyone had plenty of time to get out of the way before the hammer actually landed on any of them. “How are we supposed to kill it?”

“All monsters on this floor are golems.” Anna said. “There has to be a core inside it, since it’s made of a solid material the core can’t change position. All you have to do is break it.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I want this one.” Lexi said with glee, she knew exactly what to do to destroy something that was stuck inside a hard shell.

“Careful it’s going to spin!” Ajax called out as he felt the hammer pull another load of mana.

At around the same time a pair of tongues also jumped from the tool box and looked to enter the fight. “Here comes the second one, who wants this one?” The prince asked with a wide smile.

“The core is at the screw point.” Aranor provided.

“I’ll grab that one.” Benedict said, happy to find something a physical based fighter had a good chance against.

Lexi wasted no time dashing towards the handle of the hammer after it missed its spell and sending a powerful shockwave through it and killing it the same way she did with the plant back in the previous dungeon.

“Thank you so much for helping me get this, I love it.” Lexi dashed back towards Ajax and gave him a hug after she finished her encounter, it was a testament to both her skill as a mage and how strong Vibration mana was that she had managed to kill something like this in a single hit.

“Do you see anything you want to fight?” Ajax asked Anna as he started looking around for something that fire might be decent against.

“Right there.” Anna pointed across the room as they waited for Benedict to finish his own battle.

The place where Anna pointed was a sack of what Ajax could only assume to be coal. He quickly got what his friend was thinking, it didn’t happen often but it was in moments like this one that he was reminded of Anna’s pyromaniac streak, the size of the coal bag had to be at least as big as some of the largest mansions he had seen. It would of course take more than an errant spark to light it all up but once the fire was started the amount of heat it would radiate would surely match if not beat out the worst deserts and volcanoes Ajax had encountered even on higher level floors.

“What about you?” Ajax asked Xavier.

“A fire elemental.” Xavier said as he pointed close to where the coal bag was.

As Ajax looked more carefully he saw a very high quality crucible that he would bet his entire fortune his father would love to work with. Next to the crucible however was a stack of many different already smelted bars of metal.

“I say we go for the elemental first.” Elena suggested, Ajax could absolutely understand her reasoning, coming from an elf who lived in a forest. The way she was looking at the bag of coal suggested she didn’t like the way Anna was looking at the bag.

Once Benedict smashed the core of the tongs the group as a whole made its way towards the crucible. “How come there aren’t more golems or elementals?” Ajax asked as they carefully made their way towards the other side of the enormous room.

“Because the floor is much smaller than a usual floor would be, there are only mini boss level monsters.” Anna explained. “This is one of the worst floor types for boosts because of how strong the monster types are, it is however one of the best ones for regular clearing. The mortality rate on these types of floors is one tenth of what it usually is.”

Ajax had to agree, even if the entire floor was almost as large as the capital that was on the extremely small side when it came to dungeon floors, even just looking around he could also see at least ten different arches already, something that definitely wouldn’t be the case with a regular floor.

As they approached the crucible Ajax could see multiple elementals there. Besides the pure three pure fire elementals Ajax counted at least four ember elementals and one molten elemental that was inside the crucible.

“I’ll leave one of the fire ones for you.” Aranor said before he began one shotting all the other elementals with ice lances that matched the power of the ones he used in the tournament.

The molten elemental was one Ajax found rather troublesome to deal with, it didn’t have the usual weakness of a liquid based elemental because of the high density of the liquid but it kept the benefits of a liquids flexibility. It was also however particularly weak against the cold and ice specifically which meant Aranor made short work of it.

As Xavier took on the final remaining elemental Ajax couldn’t help but be curiously drawn towards the large stack of smelted ingots off to the side. He was even more surprised when his [Sense Mana] picked up on one that he could actually take outside the dungeon buried deep at the bottom of the stack.

Ajax squeezed his way to the ingot and tried to draw it into his storage ring only to find out he didn’t have the space for it. He quickly headed back and started pulling things out of his ring and handing them to Lexi to hold before he returned to collect the ingot.

“What did you find?” Lexi asked curiously once Ajax returned with a triumphant smile.

Instead of answering, Ajax simply pulled out the ingot and patted it proudly. “My father is going to love this.” The ingot was close to the size their house was back in the village.

“Oh!” Anna made a pained sound as she looked at the ingot. “Who would do something so wasteful? That’s a steel magicite alloy, the magicite would be much better used for enchanting and runic engraving.”

“Is it any good for a blacksmith?” Ajax asked, a little worried about the souvenir he was taking for his father.

“It would actually be very useful in helping to grow their skill level since making the alloy is so wasteful they almost never work with it.” Anna answered, her voice still a little pained at the waste of magicite.

“We should make up our minds regarding which floor to head to next quickly.” Lexi whispered as she saw Anna heading towards the pile of coal. The mage knew her friend well enough that instead of looking for an elemental she was going to take out her outrage at the waste of valuable materials by setting the whole pile of coal ablaze.