The group watched Anna’s battle with the penguin with bated breath. It was obvious when her potion ran out and Ajax could feel Lexi’s grip on his hand tighten, they all knew that with the backlash of the potion the best Anna could hope for was a slow defensive struggle until the monster twenty five levels above her would finish her off.

The next fireball Anna released showed her lack of power, Ajax was tempted to end the fight there just to spare Anna the despair of fighting an inevitable loss. Mid-flight however the fireball’s heat shot up, so much so that it was now even hotter than before the potion ran out so much so Ajax was worried if the spell had burnt Anna’s fingers.

Her fireball wasn’t the only thing to get hotter as the small wall of flames surrounding Anna also increased in heat as the penguin struggled to put out the flames that would soon claim its life. With the penguin’s attention on putting out the flames Anna has enough time to chant one of her stronger spells and her flame pillar spell leaves the miniboss a half charred lump that is slowly turning to ash.

As soon as the battle is over Anna collapses to her knees, her eyes glazed with a faraway look consistent with someone inspecting their status. The prince wastes no time as he snuffs out the intense flames surrounding her before applying first aid. Anna’s hands suffered some second degree burns that are at odds with the few patches of frostbite that adorn her body.

By the time Lexi managed to cover the distance and wrap her arms around Anna she had finished inspecting her status, with a tired smile Anna leaned into her friend's hug “I did it.” falling unconscious after getting the words out.

“She’s out of mana, but otherwise fine.” the prince said. “Whatever happened at the end her mana usage spiked very high.”

Lexi had a much easier time dealing with the following penguin they met, by leaning into her domain and overall aggressive strategy the fight was over much quicker than Anna’s. Going all in on offense did have its price however and Lexi’s right arm had turned entirely blue after she used it to block one of the penguin’s frostbolts.

Ajax hovered around Lexi like a worried mother hen while the healer of the ranger squad worked to reverse the frostbite. “I’ll be fine.” Lexi reassured him but they all knew that the fight had been just as close as Anna’s, had the frostbolt hit her head or chest she would have died.

Benedict knew he had no chance against a fox or a penguin, there were chances they could find an ice golem or a weak elemental on this floor but he wouldn’t do any better against one of those either. His only chance was to try and take on the behemoth polar bears they had seen traveling alone.

His first attempt was also his last, Benedict understood quickly that he wouldn’t be able to bring down a polar bear. WIth their thick muscles and touch skin covered in layers of fur combined with an enormous body meant that he would need to fight flawlessly until he was almost entirely out of stamina to bleed them out. All the bear needed to win was to land anything more than a glancing blow.

“Your chances will improve once you start to integrate some magic into your fighting style.” Elana reassured him.

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“I don’t think I stand a much better chance that he did.” Xavier said as he took in the outcome of the fight.

As a fellow melee fighter Xavier would be hard pressed to keep up with the speed of the bear, even if he did have the damage to kill it the stat difference was just too high for him as a hybrid fighter.

“You could try it.” Ajax said as he examined the polar bear. “It doesn’t seem to be attuned to the ice mana at all.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Xavier asked.

“You could manage to remove a large amount of fur with your opening attack, the bear would lose its insulation, slowly the cold would kill it by itself.” Ajax explained his theory, he knew that Benedict couldn’t remove enough fur without magic but Xavier had a chance.

Ajax’s plan worked well in theory but as they soon found out Xavier simply didn’t have the stats to keep up on the defensive long enough for the cold to start having enough of an effect.

“No need to look so down.” the prince patted Xavier on the back. “I can barely kill something twenty five levels higher than myself and that’s a much smaller difference for me than it is for you.”

They had already been on the floor for more than six hours by the time all of them had finished or admitted they wouldn’t be able to clear the floor and they moved to return to Arianwyn who was still practicing her Domain. On the way there Anna had regained consciousness but kept silent about what had given her the increase in power.

“Has she taken a break at all?” Elara asked Aranor as she looked at just how tired Arianwyn looked and the fact that her Domain was still active.

“Not yet.” Aranor answered. “She used up the mana in her first Domain in about two hours and after releasing it a second time she has just focused on drawing in the Air, Ice and Water mana from the ambient mana into her Domain.”

All of them could feel that Arianwyn was successful but this was a slow process. This wouldn’t be something that would help increase her combat power directly but it would instead only slightly increase her reserves in a prolonged fight so long as she could draw on specific mana types from the surroundings.

“Any interesting arches for the next floor?” Arianwyn asked as she finally stopped practicing after noticing their return.

“Hard to say.” Ajax answered, with the level of the arch’s so high he could only glimpse the top two mana types present, maybe a third if they were all above 20% of the arch split.

Of the five arches they had found none of them had three overly dominant mana types, what’s worse was that all of them had either Plant or Earth as one of the two he could see with two of them having both. This did very little to narrow anything down.

“We’re not going for the water one.” Ajax said as he excluded the arch that was 50% water.

“I say we go for the Earth and Shadow.” Rimthel suggested hoping very much it would lead to an underground cave system that would have some metal ores.

“We’ve had too many underground floors in this run already.” Aranor shook his head. “We’ll also be clearing the floor and leaving it in a few hours at most, let's just go for the Plant and Light.”

None of them were worried about taking on the level eighty one minibosses, even the level nineties on the next floor wouldn’t really pose a challenge to any of them, Harold would be the only one who would have serious issues against the level ninety nines and Ajax would be the only person trying anything past level one hundred.

Support quickly built up around the idea of the Plant and Light floor, with it also being the floor where the group would camp for a night of sleep. Anna, Lexi, Benedict and Xavier didn’t waste any time and exited the dungeon as soon as they got on the next floor Elara and Arianwyn also joined them. The former was looking to spend time with Benedict while the latter was going to make preparations for her cousin’s upcoming birthday party.

The following floor turned out to be a simple hilly plain covered by deep grass. It was exactly what the group had hoped for as it was easy for them to clear a large enough patch to set up camp where they all got a few hours of sleep, Ajax Harold and Darkclaw getting a full eight hours so they would be ready for finishing this floor and then clearing out the next two as well.

“We might need to change our plans.” Aranor said to the two ranger squads once they made camp. “It might not be worth keeping both of you just to clear two floors around level one hundred and fifty. It might be better to break one of you up and send you one or two at a time in some of these lower floors where we know two mana types.”