After returning from the meeting with the guild master, Kiel had to ask Melissa how many dungeons there were and which she had already cleared.

She quickly realized where he was going with that and looked at him annoyed, "It was just two days ago that you were on death's door," she said, "We are not going in another dungeon."

Cassandra's head turned to face the cat whose expression was unreadable as always. Then again, how was she supposed to be able to read the expressions of a cat. "Why do you ask?" she asked him. This conversation was starting to pique her interest in a way she didn't expect.

Melissa must've translated for her because she got a low but confident meow in response.

Melissa sighed and translated back, "He wants to grow stronger." to which the cat nodded in response.

She found that was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect from a monster, but he had been anything but.

"I feel like I have to be the voice of reason, but the dungeon isn't going to go anywhere," Melissa said pointedly at Kiel who meowed back.

Cassandra shook her head at the two of them, "I don't think it's such a bad suggestion," she said, "besides, have you seen him do something without a good reason before?"

He meowed in agreement, but Melissa ignored him. That was of course until he enlisted the help of Edel.

They'd forgotten he had back-up.

If there were a few people staring at them before, when Edel started howling, they gathered a crowd.

Cassandra couldn't help but chuckle as Melissa shook her head and gave up.

His tail moved slowly behind him, and Melissa rolled her eyes, "You should be resting, not running after danger the second you recover." And he agreed with her, but life kept proving to him that if he did not move forward, he wouldn't be moving at all.

If he hadn't been trying to get stronger every day, when the quiet zone started forming on top of them, he might not have been able to escape with his life, let alone attempt to save Edel's too.

And besides, he didn't think he was running after danger... that often. At least the last few times it wasn't his fault.

When Melissa heard that she narrowed her eyes, "I've seen you fight. Acting cute isn't going to change my opinion." He meowed. She narrowed her eyes even more.

'I didn't even say anything!'

Finally after staring at him for a moment, her stern expression broke and she smiled. "You know I trust you... I just want you to enjoy life more than fighting," she said, putting her arms under his abdomen and picking him up.

He screamed at the indignity, but she didn't let him down. She put one hand under his hind legs and the other securing him tightly against her chest and walked merrily towards their house.

Kiel thought about teleporting away, but in the end decided it wasn't worth the effort. If it made her happy, he would endure the indignity just this once.

He wanted to go right away in one of the dungeons they knew about, but they held him back with the promise of food. If she wasn't such a good cook, he would have fought harder for them to get going.

To his welcome surprise, the dish Melissa brought him was steam-baked fish. Because he was planning to catch his own fish first, he wanted to refuse on the principle of the matter, but in the end the smell won him over.

After they finished eating, Cassandra grabbed her bow and sat on the couch on the living room.

He was still dreaming about the fish he just finished eating when he noticed Cassandra's new bow.

It looked the same as the one he broke months ago with the main difference being a pattern carved into the wood much like the one that lit up in the guild master's room.

"So, let's talk about game plan. Are we taking a mission from the guild to complete along with the dungeon, or do we just go?" Cassandra said, leaning back on the couch.

Melissa took over from there, "I suggest we don't take any new missions for the bronze-ranked dungeons. Gathering the materials is extra time that I don't think will be worth it," She looked at Kiel, "Instead considering how fast Kiel and Edel completed the previous one, I think we could just focus on clearing them as fast as we can."

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"We can earn more money from the silver-ranked dungeon materials, and we aren't running low on funds exactly." Cassandra nodded in agreement.

"Then the bunny dungeon?"

"The bunny dungeon."

Kiel for the most part stayed silent, not knowing enough to add to the discussion.

Hearing that they were going inside a bunny monster dungeon didn't exactly inspire fear and trepidation. In fact he was having trouble believing they weren't joking with him when Melissa told him that people had died in that dungeon before.

They had to travel further out of the city for this dungeon, but since they weren't exactly short on time, they had a more leisurely pace.

The goblin dungeon was considered a slightly easier dungeon due to the boss being slower than most, but as far as monsters went, the bunny dungeon had the weakest.

Looking at Kiel and Edel, Melissa would be surprised if they took more than an hour to reach the boss room.

In the meanwhile, Kiel had been pestering her about learning the language. If it was anyone else, she wouldn't have thought it possible, but Kiel had proven himself to be a class above other monsters.

He'd already been picking up things from the conversations she translated for him. He was still a long way from following a normal conversation on his own, but he was making progress.

She was also planning on teaching him how to read since they were on the subject, but he seemed less excited about that idea.

Finally they reached the entrance of the dungeon two hours later. Resting in the shade of the trees outside the cave, Melissa took a drink from her flask.

Cassandra took another flask from her backpack and shared it among Kiel and Edel. They emptied out the small container, and Edel even bit the flask, shaking it for more water.

She laughed and ruffled her fur, which Edel didn't seem to mind too much.

The cave in front of them held the same kind of ambient moss, illuminating the inside slightly. Kiel could see perfectly fine, but he wondered how the rest fared in a low-light environment.

It wasn't too dim, but small monsters would be able to hide much more easily in this place. Not from him though!

Cats were just better in the end.

Laughing at his own joke, he let Edel walk ahead while he followed close behind her, with Cassandra standing next to him and Melissa entering last.

Their steps echoed in the silence of the cave, though the silence didn't last for long. Only a few minutes after they entered they encountered their first monster.

A small, pure white horned bunny stood in front of them. It didn't survive for much longer as an arrow passed straight through its head.

He looked back to see Cassandra resting her bow after firing the shot. It was... cooler than he thought. He didn't have a chance to see how strong she was, and she was keen on surprising him.

As they passed by the dead bunny, she grabbed her arrow, checking its integrity. Nodding once, she put it in a quiver slanted horizontally on her back.

The next few bunnies they met, he either killed with a simple teleport, or Cassandra would shoot them down before they had a chance to attack them.

They were about even in killing speed, with him being able to kill two bunnies between each teleport. But where she had limited ammo, he could fight with no such restrictions.

Technically, he didn't have unlimited ether for his teleportations, but between his title and mastery of the skill, the cost was low enough in a high ether density area that he didn't need to worry about it too much.

In fact, he continued improving his skill in Spatial Shift, lowering the cost even more and increasing his speed. It was slow going, but he felt he was progressing at a decent pace. His new title, scholar, also probably helped with that.

He killed another few dozen horned bunnies, not letting a single one touch him. Edel wasn't as bloodthirsty this time, so he took the majority of the early kills for himself. The monsters were also weaker than the goblins. Where the goblins relied more on a balance between strength and agility, the bunnies were the same size as him and relied mostly on their agility and explosive speed.

Unfortunately for them, he was faster, stronger, and more agile, so there wasn't much they could do to him.

Where they had him beat, however, was in numbers. The horned bunnies came in such numbers eventually that Melissa asked him to teleport back. He'd already gotten hit by a few glancing blows, but he was still confident in dealing with the lot of them in due time.

Still, trusting her decision-making skills, he teleported next to Edel without turning to look behind him. This was more difficult than it seemed, but it was something he was getting better at. His Spatial Senses helped a lot with the accuracy of his teleportations.

Melissa then unleashed a massive fireball, enough to cover the entire cave, and torched the entire group of bunnies. There must have been over thirty of them in that spot.

The air felt a little hot in the aftermath, and Melissa couldn't help but stare at the burnt ground with an open mouth. Recovering her senses, she yelled in surprise, "I got a title from that!" she said, "It increases damage by a small amount when I'm against a large number of enemies."

Cassandra stopped lamenting the loss of her arrows and instead grabbed her hands in excitement. "Congratulations, that's amazing!"

Melissa nodded and Cassandra looked at her own notifications with a smile, "I just leveled up by the way, don't think I'm staying bronze for long."

They stopped to rest after the fight. The ground was warm to the touch, so it wasn't too bad sitting down. The area ahead of them was almost entirely pitch black after the bunnies stopped burning. Unfortunately the smell didn't go away, but Melissa assured him it would be okay in a few hours. The moss grew quickly enough when given the chance.

That made him wonder how they repopulated the dungeons with monsters. He furrowed his brows, "Do the dungeons create the monsters?" he asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders in response, "Probably? I'm not sure... someone in the capital would know more, I assume."

He was curious about the capital Melissa spoke about, but all she knew about it was that it was a much bigger city built on the largest collection of dungeons in the country.

If they weren't inside a deadly dungeon cloaked in darkness and about to fight hundreds more enemies until they defeated the boss, he would have loved to hear more about it.

Oh well, he would rip and tear until he was done, and then they would get back to that. They had a dungeon to finish clearing.