Going to the second floor and leaving the operation alone was deliberate. While I wanted to set up a sustainable hunting operation, I didn't forget the real reason for it. Money was nice, but it was still a side benefit. A space I could freely experiment in was the part I truly valued.

Yes, I could stay there to improve the camp far faster, but the more I stayed with them, the more dependent on my orders they would become. It was another lesson I had learned from my old career as a professor, trying to lead the doctorate students. I might be able to answer their questions far faster than they could come up with on their own, but that meant they couldn't solve problems on their own.

I needed them to operate independently. I deliberately added the task of designing emergency drills to Harold, as a challenge and a test. After all, I needed someone to deal with the guild operations, and he seemed to have the right mixture of deference and initiative. As an added benefit, it was someone trusted by Eleanor enough to be put in a position of command.

Amusingly, I was the only guild leader who would classify that as a benefit. In the end, guilds and the town had a complicated relationship, a mixture of both economic and military forces. Hiring one of the guards would reveal a lot of secrets that a guild would have liked to keep hidden.

Information asymmetry was a more dangerous weapon than any sword.

That was not the only disadvantage of my operation. Technically, by letting the operation develop in a way that didn't require me to solve the problems directly, I was potentially creating competitors. Now that I had revealed the arrowheads, it wasn't impossible for someone to reverse engineer it — or, failing that, start purchasing similar equipment from System shops to test it. It might mean some of my guild members splitting to build their own guild.

Luckily, that was not a concern for me. The more guilds operated in the town, the stronger the town would get, which meant I could operate more freely. And, if I really wanted to make money, I could easily sell it to other guilds.

With the ability to mass produce, it would be much easier.

While it was not a problem for me, it was one for the other guilds. I didn't know how bigger guilds handled that risk. Eleanor had mentioned that there was some kind of method that the bigger guilds had to prevent it, but even she didn't know too much about it, making it a difficult solution to implement.

"It's hunting time," I said even as I rushed to the fourth floor at full speed. There was a reason for my hurry. Now that I had established a guild, I was responsible for it. I didn't particularly care for the efficiency of the operation, as I could already make the necessary ammunition en masse, which meant that, even with all the potential problems, it would still be profitable.

Their security, on the other hand, was a completely different matter. Even without possible interference from Thomas, the other guilds wouldn't be happy to see us succeed. And, the dungeon was a dangerous place.

My presence could easily intimidate them, but if I made a habit of staying away from the base for a long time, they might start to get ideas. It meant I had to show up often, preferably with a random pattern, to make sure they couldn't plan around my absence.

For that, Fleeting Step helped, but I couldn't help but wonder if the advanced version of Swift Spear included an even better variant.

So, when I arrived at the fourth floor — switching to my best set in the process — I stopped by the base just enough to get my crusher, before I moved to the other side of the second ring, which I created to capture the beasts. There were already a lot of giant monsters, but they weren't enough for my purposes.

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I tightened my grip over my hammer, crushing a few shells to replenish my mana completely. Then, I opened the box, triggering an artificial monster swarm. Then, I killed thousands of monsters, my hammer moving like I was in front of an anvil, not bothering to remove their shells, knowing that it affected the skill drop rate significantly.

I was glad that I had long learned to use a weaker version of Fleeting Step without the assistance of the skill, as it allowed me to stick to using Hammer while I dealt with the horde. It was critical, as without the vertical mobility it gave me, allowing me to climb on the monsters with ease, I might have ended up buried under their bodies.

The utility of mobility was difficult to overstate. For once, I was glad that the Stats were not very well defined. While every Stat had a role based on the class, Blacksmiths received Dexterity to improve hand-eye coordination, but it also increased footwork and general flexibility as well.

It was certainly beneficial.

As I killed thousands of monsters, I made sure to leave them in piles of fifty, which guaranteed the drop of a Rare skill, their shape and glow making them easy to distinguish. Unfortunately, that ease didn't apply to the content.

After an hour of steady hunting, I managed to collect a hundred skills, and sixty of them were Nurture. Of the remaining forty, I had two more Quake Hammer and the rest was incomprehensible because I lacked the prerequisite stats.

"Frustrating," I said even as I created another pile of monsters. It truly was, especially since I couldn't level up no matter how many monsters I had killed. I wondered if the other types of monsters could help me level up. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to experience that. Maybe if I could find the fifth floor —

My thoughts had been interrupted by the new skill stone that appeared, which gave me exactly what I needed.

[Skill Stone: Breeze Spear]

The moment I got that, I went back to the base and absorbed the skill. At this point, improving a Rare combat skill was something I had already optimized. A composite spear to allow me to use mana attacks in ranged form was all I needed.

It took me barely twenty minutes to improve it to the peak of nothing. I was happy to note that Breeze Spear was even more reliant on mobility. Combined with what I had learned from my Fleeting Step, it allowed me to move even faster.

[Breeze Spear (Rare) 197 - 200]

[Perk Options — Floating Stride / Hurricane Stab / Mercurial Dodge]

"Please no," I gasped even as I read the Perk options. One in particular caught my eye:. Floating Stride. I wanted to ignore it and choose Mercurial Dodge, but in the end, I still chose it. The ability to move faster was exactly what I needed.

"Surely not," I said, trying to convince myself, but the moment I used it, two things happened. I lost a hundred health.

And, my skill took over my body and I jumped. Soon, I found myself floating twenty yards in the air, my body clenched with fear. The fear was intense enough to forcibly disturb the control of the skill, and I landed on the ground with a loud crash, the metal armor and the metal floor creating a very explosive sound.

"That wasn't so bad, right?" I asked myself. "Merely twenty yards, and even landing on a metal surface didn't damage me. Harmless."

Unfortunately, my amateurish attempt at self-therapy didn't work as well. I still sat on the ground, my hands trembling badly while I breathed in and out, trying to stave off a panic attack. Doing that with my skill should have felt safer than relying on a griffin or a plane.

After all, I trusted the skills enough to deliberately trigger a swarm of monsters consisting almost exclusively of giant insects and fight against them. Why couldn't I trust them to give me a vertical jump ability of twenty yards, with some kind of floating mixed in?

It was only rational, right?

Unfortunately, as much as we wanted to believe otherwise, we were not rational creatures. Hell, as a sociologist, I made a living out of studying how that shaped our society.

It took five minutes for me to even stand up. "I'm so glad I need to visit the first floor," I said to myself even as I went back, the attacking monsters were merely a nuisance. Once I was on the second floor, I started hunting, once again using the mana trick to quickly kill the monsters and remove their shells with one hit.

Ideally, I should have been trying to integrate the Floating Stride into my moves. It was an excellent time. Instead, I relied on the movement trick I developed based on Fleeting Step, unable to bring myself to repeat it.

I remembered my old therapist likening facing my fears to fighting monsters. It turned out that she was wrong.

Fighting with monsters was easier.