The following weeks have been a leveling grind for the team of Nicholas, exploring different permanent dungeons around Curtana as part of their plan to enhance their skills in exploration, fighting, detecting traps, and even leveling up by gaining experience points at the same time.
Their goal is to explore all the low-level dungeons and simultaneously reach level 10 in Curtana. This would approximately take about a month, and then after that, they would travel to a nearby town to have an adventure and experience a diverse dungeon experience.
In the first week after leveling up to level 3, they went to Gnoll Mansion, Abandoned Crypt, and Creepy Forest.
[Gnoll Mansion]
[Level Recommendation: 3–7]
[Party Size: 5–6]
[Scene: A grand castle infested with mutated hyena hybrids lurking around the perimeter. [Find the throne room and defeat the boss guarding the room.]
[Clear Reward 0/1]
This dungeon is a few steps harder than the Kobold Quarry; more enemy spawn per clear and tougher enemy. Also, fighting in a more spacious environment can increase the difficulty since they can encounter multiple enemies in different directions.
Nicholas and his team, however, practiced their team play rigorously during the kobold dungeon. Also, having more experience and a more powerful weapon, they weren't that worried that they could not clear the dungeon. However, Nicholas, with his careful nature, proceeded to clear the dungeon at a moderately slow pace to avoid unnecessary risk.
[Dungeon Quest]
[Defeat the boss at the meeting hall inside the mansion.]
Since their goal is to clear every enemy in the castle while exploring everything, they decided to start on a corner, advancing around the perimeter and defeating the enemies outside before engaging the enemies inside to avoid a pincer attack from the enemies.
After successfully clearing the perimeter of monsters, the girls proceeded to the main entrance of the castle. However, Nicholas told them to avoid this entrance since there is a high possibility of a trap based on their previous clear knowledge of the dungeon. Another reason for Nicholas's plan for them to clear the perimeter is to find the side entrance. Walking back to the side entrance, which Nicholas saw earlier, they went inside the castle.
Inside the Gnoll mansion, Nicholas and his team were clearing the monsters left and right. Relying on their teamwork and their exceptional skills and talents, they proceeded to defeat the enemies quite smoothly. They when directly the find the boss room this time, and in was just a matter of time before they arrived on a wide corridor, and at the end is a large double door clearly indicating that it is the boss room.
After a few moments of talking with Maria and Clarice, they decided to check the other rooms for enemies and take a rest afterwards to recuperate. While they are not that tired, they still consider it a precautionary measure since they are clearing the dungeon for the first time.
At the same time, they also wanted to explore more since they have found the boss room. They could just go back after exploring more of the rooms, because the boss room is located at the end of the hall in the first floor and the Gnoll mansion consisted of three stories.
After 10 minutes of rest, feeling good to go, they walked away from the door of the boss room and began exploring the floors above to gain more experience and frankly just to battle some more.
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After a hour of exploration.
They entered the boss room. What they saw down the hall was a giant monster with the head of a hyena. According to the data, this boss monster has high agility stats and a multitude of daggers in his arsenal.
The hyena, sensing the presence entering the room, stood slowly, taking out two daggers and throwing them in the direction of Maria and Nicholas. However, in the eyes of Nicholas, the speed of the throw is seriously slow due to the difference in stats. Even before the dagger was thrown, Nicholas had reminded Clarice to protect Maria.
The hyena, seeing the people effortlessly block the daggers thrown, proceeded to take an take an initial stance. Nicholas and Clarice, seeing the stance, went to change their formation according to their planned tactic to defeat the boss. The boss dashing straight to Nicholas in front of him swung a dagger across his torso, trying to stab him. Nicholas countered it by using his skill [Earth Manipulation] and conjuring a stone plate on his side.
At the same time, the boss threw a dagger at Maria on the back, channeling a spell, but anticipating this, Clarice blocked the projectile since Maria was unable to. After successfully blocking it, Maria unleashed multiple [Wind Arrow] coming from different directions, converging to the boss. The boss prepared for this since he saw the channel of the spell successfully block most of the attacks that converged in his place.
Immediately after the spell, Nicholas proceeded to attack the boss. Holding back his strength, he fought fiercely with the boss. They went with this tactic of Nicholas dueling the boss while Clarice protects Maria from sudden sneak attacks for optimal DPS.
After a while, the boss movement slowed down due to the wounds accumulating because of the successful attacks from Maria and Nicholas. Clarice saw the signal from Nicholas to change formation since the chance for the boss to sneak attack Maria had reduced significantly.
Clarice dashed to the frontline, bashing her shield in the face of the of the boss, then kicking it in the stomach, making the boss roll down the floor for a while. Seeing the opportune moment, they unleashed their spell on the vulnerable boss, signaling its defeat immediately afterwards.
Seeing the clear notification of the dungeon, they cheered. This dungeon took quite a while to defeat, taking a toll on their endurance. Compared to their first clear on the kobold, it took almost twice the time since the dungeon is much larger, more enemies appear, and the boss is much harder.
Leaving the dungeon after receiving the rewards, they went to an eatery near the dungeon to celebrate their success and contemplate their mistakes and things they could do to decrease their clear time. For another week, this dungeon and two more will be their training ground to increase their stats and level. The increase in difficulty compared to the last dungeon rouses their motivation to increase their individual straightness, which makes the girls want to train more.
During this week, the Nicholas team will train in the morning and clear the dungeon in the afternoon daily.
On the morning, normally, Nicholas, Maria, and Clarice would train their skills, spar and even conduct team battles with soldiers or any other person willing to spar with them, and then go to the dungeon after having lunch in the afternoon. However, Nicholas is currently having other matters to settle since the proposed business idea was finally greenlit by the count. Which left Maria and Clarice to spar with themselves.
As for Nicholas, he is currently finalizing the beauty business plan after his mother convinced his father to greenlight the plan for selling the product.
His mother was really invested in starting the business since the product was really effective, and the lady friends she gave the product to test were really happy with the result. She believed that this product would be important to the aristocratic women in the world. However, without a proper source of mass production of the products, the number of orders will suffer due to the scarcity.
However, Nicholas wasn't worried about the possible scarcity of this product. With this tactic of scarcity, they can upsell the price of the products, since surely the demands for their effectiveness will be high. Then slowly build their reputation by showing that their product is a necessity to reach the epitome of beauty.
So Nicholas told his mother about his plan to increase the pace slowly while hiring trusted people to procure and concoct the blend of beauty products. This would lessen the risk of greedy people stealing the production method, and they could evaluate employees and alchemist intentions carefully before hiring them.
Before lunch, Nicholas would finally meet Maria and Clarice on the training ground to join them for a little bit of warm-up and training before having lunch and proceeding to their daily dungeon routine. Today they would be clearing the abandoned crypt, and if they had spare energy, they would push through to finish the gnoll mansion again.