Pov Falcon

I stepped out of the gateway and moved to the side to get out of the way. I had finally reached it—I was finally able to see End's Rest. It wasn't anything special, although there were a lot more people and market stalls than I imagined, but that made sense. All of this would get a lot quieter as soon as the markets moved on to the next floor.

It took me a while, and while the front lines were already pushing into the 48th floor, End's Rest would still remain here for some time. When they finally reach the end of floor 48, this town will be renamed to reflect the floor guardian room just beyond this one. I don’t know how this tradition started, but every town outside the last room of the floor was named End's Rest until the next floor’s last room was discovered.

They renamed these towns usually for the floor guardian that barred the way forward to the next floor, like Sheep's Rest and so on. I heard a small ding and immediately checked my quest necklace. I finally got the achievement for making it to End's Rest. This achievement didn’t do anything except give you bragging rights, as nowadays you could show others what achievements you have gotten.

I moved through the streets. It wasn’t a large town, but there were a lot of people here. From what I’ve learned, back in the day these towns could be outright overcrowded, as so many prepared to move forward when the next floor was opened. Perhaps I will see that when I reach the end of the next floor before the next one is opened, but I guess we will see.

It was the most civil yet lively market I had seen in this dungeon, and it was hard to ignore the amount of epic loot displayed here. It was hard to fathom how much all of this was worth, and I wondered how many were able to steal something from here. There were many guards around from different clans and guilds, and I didn’t think they would let anyone steal something without heavy punishment.

It was a long journey here, and that final push was exhausting, so I looked for an inn. It wasn’t hard to find one, as they were almost as common as shop fronts. Basically, every other building was some sort of tavern or inn.

What I did was walk a bit further away from the gateways to get to a slightly less busy area. Like almost all other places in this dungeon, everything was built out of stone. Wood was simply too valuable to use as a building material, and the added protection from fire was also nice because of those fire-obsessed magic users, commonly referred to as Mad Men.

I do not understand why they think every problem can be solved with a fireball. It’s even more disturbing that, in a large portion of cases, it actually does solve those problems. I even saw some of them walking around; they all like to wear clothing that has something to do with fire. Even now, I saw one who seemed distracted and started to play with fire that was circling his fingers.

“Stop that!” I heard the guard nearby yell at the fire user, who seemed to come out of a daze, realized what he had been doing, and quickly extinguished the fire.

I tried to avoid people like that. In fact, I tried to avoid most people. While it was no longer in fashion to wear full-sized capes—especially because they are too dangerous to wear during combat—everyone still wore a smaller version to display their allegiances.

I myself was also wearing one. Although I wasn’t a part of any individual guild or clan, I was an outer member, as they nowadays call it, of the big three. If I didn’t wear any cape, I would be too suspicious, and if I wasn’t a part of those three guilds, people would think they could mess with me without consequences.

I also didn’t want to become a proper member of one of the big three, as I like to do things on my own. There were more of my kind, especially in the Runners Guild. They called us solo runners, as we even challenged the floor guardians solo.

We had our own leaderboards, and while I wasn’t even in the top 10 for the fastest floor clears, as I simply get too distracted, I had four number-one spots for the fastest solo kill of a floor guardian. What I didn’t have was the coveted first solo clear of a floor guardian. Unfortunately, I can’t get this title on this floor, as it was taken about two months ago by one of my competitors.

It’s all my fault. I simply get too distracted while moving through the floors, but if I didn’t get distracted the way I do, I don’t think I would have made it this far.

Finally, I found an inn that felt right—well, as right as it can get here; nothing was really that safe. I stepped in to find the first floor packed, but I didn’t think there would be any establishment that wouldn’t be.

I moved to the large counter that separated the back of the bar and a door to the kitchen from the rest of the room. It was a large one that would seat 20 people easily, and it was about half full, people drinking and waiting their turn to order. It seems that the serving staff was fast and competent, as it didn't take long until it was my turn.

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“What would you like?”

“I’ll take two full meals, house specials please, with two of your strongest ciders.”

“Would you be eating alone or are you ordering for yourself and someone else?”

“Just by myself.”

“Then take a seat at the bar. I’ll get you that cider right away, and the food will be out in about 10 minutes or so.”

Immediately, he moved and started pouring me two ciders. I took a seat and sipped the first one he put in front of me. It tasted kinda like apples, but the taste of alcohol overpowered it quite a bit—just the way I liked it. While I waited for the food, I started to think about my plan on how to fight this floor guardian.

It was the first floor guardian to not be a monster version of a regular animal; instead, it was a mix of different animals, although most of it still looked like a rhino. The six legs were interesting, and I would need to do a bit more research on how it moved with them. It mainly seemed to be a charging attacker, but it did have some elemental control over earth and wind—a potent combination.

My skills could handle the wind easily enough, and my talents should help with the monster and its ability to control earth to some degree. Everything else would, of course, like always, be carried by my equipment.

Well, I couldn’t disregard my talent in fighting, as I think in the end, that is what keeps me alive. I still don’t understand how for my platinum talent I got another fighting one instead of what I’m really good at, but let’s hope if I ever reach diamond, I would get a talent for my real talent. That wordplay made me smile.

"Hey, you!" I was snapped out of my head by those words and looked around to see three people coming close to me. "That sword of yours looks pathetic, it’s so small, and it seems like you’ve wasted some good loot on that. Don’t you think it would be better melted down? Don’t worry, I’ll get that done for yo—"

He stopped talking when that sword was drawing a little bit of blood from his neck. I didn’t say anything. It seemed like he wanted to do something more, but more and more eyes landed on us, and he wisely backed off and scurried out of there. It was annoying that this happened almost everywhere. I tried my best to hide what this sword was, but it was a bit too much to keep hidden.

Fortunately, I had the power to keep my items safe from people like that. I could see from the corner of my eye jealous looks as I sheathed my sword. If they only knew what the rest of my gear was, well, I didn’t think I could protect myself from all of them. The most valuable items were made out of legendary materials, which were incredibly hard to find, with every month only one or two pieces of legendary materials showing up in auctions.

My sword, however, was very special, and I couldn’t keep its strength hidden as I went overboard with it. I had one of the best crafters in this dungeon make it, and it was a good thing that such an individual was part of a clan and not part of the allied guilds, which was the second choice behind clans if you wanted an item made from legendary materials.

Usually, only one legendary material was used to make something, and other epic materials were used for other parts. This sword of mine had a unique feature that almost no one knew about. It looked like a short sword right now, but if I wanted to, it could expand to become a huge greatsword or anything in between, even a rapier, which is incredibly useful for fighting certain types of monsters and other adventurers, as most armour can't handle something with that much piercing potential.

All of that required a lot of materials, and I decided to use all the stores I had of legendary materials, which was 12 pieces. It was my most expensive piece of equipment I had, but almost every other piece of equipment also had legendary materials used, and altogether my current gear had 22 pieces. Of course, they were supported by epic materials, but still, if anyone knew, I think I would be in trouble.

I finished both of my meals and got a room on the 4th floor. As I entered, I activated the security measures, and unlike most others, I didn’t take off my equipment. Instead, I slept in it, as it was actually more comfortable to do so. Also, the fact that it would make it harder for someone to try to steal anything from me was just icing on the cake.

In my bag, there were currently two new legendary drops. I still can't believe how well my treasure sense works in this dungeon to find monsters that are so unique and so perfect for a chance to drop legendary loot.

Why this sense of mine didn’t turn into a talent when I got the gold rank, I don’t know, and neither do I know why it didn’t at platinum rank, but it doesn't matter much—it still works well enough.

I went into the quest necklace and started to go through all the different windows to see if there were any quests or achievements that I would want to hunt for on this floor before I moved onward.

Everything was now so much easier to navigate, as I had thousands of achievements and even more quests completed. There were many who tried to get all of those done, but I decided not to do that and only pursued the ones I found fun.

That, however, didn’t help alleviate the problem every adventurer used to have, and that was navigating these horrible windows where you couldn’t even filter any results for quests. About two years ago, a new section opened up. It wasn’t for every adventurer—actually, I don’t know anyone else who has it, but I’m certain there are others who have access to this.

At first, it seemed like a weird section to add, simply called suggestion. I was floored when I figured out that we could give suggestions on what we found lacking or needed change inside the dungeon.

Immediately, the first thing I did was explain how the windows in their quest necklace were simply too hard to navigate. I didn’t get any information back, so I didn’t think anything of it and continued to curse how the quest necklace used to work until about two months later when the entire thing changed overnight into this wonderful thing we have access to now.

Now, you could search for quests, and not just the ones available to you, but the ones that aren’t. There are, of course, still many hidden ones you have to stumble across, but you could filter stuff by area or by different classifications. You could even do that, with achievements, and some have rewards if you get them, so it’s nice to be able to search for them. Overall, absolutely wonderful.

I don’t use the suggestion section lightly, but over the years, I have written a few more suggestions. The latest one I hope would get implemented, even though I don’t know if that would even be possible. Perhaps it’s truly a problem only for me, but storing legendary drops in one of the banks over in the large guild safes is simply too unsafe.

I almost lost basically all of my legendary loot I was going to use to make this sword of mine when the bank where I was storing it had a heist. Fortunately, they didn’t reach the safety boxes where I kept my loot—if they had only known.

So, hopefully, the dungeon can figure out how to make personalized safes or something like that, so we could store our most precious belongings where literally no one can get to them besides ourselves.

It will probably take a week or more before I have a chance to challenge the floor guardian, but that should be enough time to prepare everything I need to kill it solo. Hopefully, I can also get enough legendary loot in the next two floors to make myself a similar weapon like my sword, but for blunt weapons or piercing weapons—perhaps combine the two. But that will depend on what kind of loot I find, as I can’t control that.

From as young an age as I remember, I’ve always had the knack for finding interesting things, and before I became an adventurer, I spent a large portion of my life as a treasure hunter. As soon as I learned of this dungeon and how much treasure there is to find here, well, I couldn’t resist, and I still feel it has been the best decision of my life to come to this place.

"Thank you, ETG, for this wonderful world you made," I said, just before sleep took me.