"Guys! Welcome back! How did everything go? You guys are a little late, did something happen?" I started off the conversation as soon as everyone was close enough.

Everyone immediately gave me a flat look. Uh-oh, had I done something? I quickly thought about the situation when it suddenly dawned on me. I smacked my forehead and looked down.

"Did.... did you guys wait on me?" I asked abashedly and glanced up.

Everyone was still giving me a flat look and.... no, wait. Mel was cracking a bit, she had the slightest smile.

After noticing that, I decided to act up just a bit. I fell to my hands and knees and started wailing.

"Oh woe is me! I have betrayed my dear friends and now must atone for my sins! Whatever can I do as reparations for my dear comrades?! Please won't someone tell me!?"

I paused for awhile as they digested my act, before a few sharp laughs rung out. Suddenly hands were hauling me up. Tom was there snickering at my antics.

"Seriously man you're impossible you know that? But honestly what happened with you? You're never out early. "

I smiled sheepishly, "Well I had a good reason, I promise! After plowing through a few groups I reached tier five! So I left early and took a rest to congratulate myself!"

Everyone suddenly had a shocked look on their face which caused my smile to get bigger and bigger.

"So, please forgive me? Let's just go have some lunch and relax a bit before we have to dive back in."

The shock faded from Bella the fastest. She walked forward and gave me a light smack on the shoulder. "Congratulations on tier five, but think about us next time yeah?" And she walked past me.

With Bella breaking the ice everyone else came to and hit me on the shoulder similarly as they walked by. I grinned at the sight and then hurried to catch up to Tom and Bea so that I could find out how everyone did on their solo adventure.

—----

After we had some lunch and everyone got all caught up with each on their solo dives in the dungeon.

It seemed Bea had not done quite as well to start off with since she did not prefer a close range weapon. She had taken a sword and shield, but still tried to use her warbow as much as possible. It did allow her to get through most of her packs of goblins before they reached her, but she still had to pull out her melee armaments and kill the rest that way. As such she only cleared five packs of goblins since she had all the extra time involved in setting up and waiting for them as well as retrieving her arrows afterwards.

Tom had stuck with his sword and shield throughout his entire time in training. He kept making references to the fact that he was the only one being normal about the weapon selection. He said he didn't have any trouble when the goblins swarmed him, since he was very familiar with their tactics as well as his weapon choice, and claimed he cleared six packs of goblins.

Bella stated she chewed her way through ten whole packs of goblins. I knew she had reached tier five but I felt it should be higher than that, after all I got to seven packs before I quit.

Mel and Em both reached eight packs of goblins. Melania stated she did not use her bow today after all and just used her fists and feet to kill hers. She hated to admit it but with how we currently were she acknowledged the bow was not the right choice for the fights, which caused Emilia of all people to nod sagely.

I gave them my account and how I turned around at the seventh pack myself, which led them to the misunderstanding that I hadn't left that early and I didn't feel like correcting them on it. I then recapped my meditation but left out the part of my progress on visualization. No reason to rub salt in the wound after all and two big advancements on the same day might make them a bit sore on the subject.

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After a small bit of banter about what and how everyone could improve over lunch we made our way back to the dungeon to start our second dive of the day. We chose the same path and ended up splitting up the same way.

After saying my goodbyes I jogged down my chosen path while waiting for my mana sense to detect the goblins. Since there never seemed to be any goblin packs soon after the splits this gave me a little bit of time to reflect.

Now that I had tiered up there would hopefully be a noticeable difference in my fights with goblins, so I was a little excited. They were already so weak as to be compared to wet paper bags that I hoped the tier change would make them noticeably weaker.

Finally after a short while I heard the drop and moved my head in that direction. Smiling, I sped up to a sprint so that I could get the first encounter as tier five out of the way. A short minute later and they came into view and I could see their tier visualization on them. Remembering that the goblins were all the way down on tier one I assigned that pool the number and grinned as it duplicated across all of them. It was always satisfying when things worked as intended.

Unsheathing my claymore I put on a stern demeanor and then charged into the pack.

—----

After the fight I contemplated on the changes in the battle. The goblins were practically bursting as I hit them and there was no resistance as I attacked.

I looked down at my final goblin kill and then back at the others behind me. For my last goblin kill I had gotten inventive, and had thrown the final alive goblin down the corridor. When it stood up it went right back to charging me wildly even though all the rest of its pack was dead. As it charged at me I took a leaf out of its book and wildly charged it. We collided and I again felt no resistance as I moved through him.

It was not a pretty sight however.

I got to watch as the little bit of blood in the goblin that got on me rolled and dripped off. Nothing actually stuck to this armor that the order loaned out. Whether it was a property of the dungeon created monsters or the armor itself though I had no idea.

Either way though I feel like I had a new tactic to use against the packs. It may just be the feeling of the power difference since the new tier, but I feel like I could just bulldoze my way through the goblins without stopping and increase my clear speed.

Nodding to myself I decided to try it on the next pack.

I began jogging down the corridor again until my mana detection let me know another pack was incoming. At that I went ahead and unsheathed my claymore. I had decided to copy a move seen in various animes where I ran at the enemy with my weapon drawn, out to my side and scraping the ground. Instead of scraping the ground though I was going to hold it slightly up so I wouldn't be hitting the floor.

This would be immensely impractical in any fight but ..... when I had trampled through the lone goblin area I literally felt nothing. If I could just charge through the group of goblins without having to stop and swing back and forth, my clear time would drop to a fraction of what it currently was.

I was shaken from my thoughts as various "ones" popped into my sight just as I rounded a corner in the path. Chuckling to myself I moved the sword into position and started sprinting as fast as possible.

Just thirty seconds later I was through all the goblins in this latest swarm. I turned to look at how everything ended up after I dashed through them. Over half the corridor was bisected cleanly and everything in my direct path was either squished or popped.

Laughing at the absurdity of the whole situation I turned back the correct way and proceeded deeper into the dungeon. Looks like not even numbers could possibly stop me now, so there was no longer anything I could possibly worry about in this thing.

—----

Well, it looks like there was indeed an end to my dungeon path.

I stood staring into a literal stairway heading down in the floor of a dungeon. It looks like my path was one of the ones that led to the next floor of the dungeon. Nothing seemed particularly menacing about it but I had to wonder, after all the instructor had warned us off from advancing to the next floor no matter what.

What if disobeying the knight instructor disqualified me for whatever ceremony or reward happened at the end of the year? I decided I couldn't risk it, as I definitely needed something to continue life in this new world if I didn't want to be beholden to the order. Sighing to myself I gave up on any thoughts of heading to the next floor.

It had been a few hours at this point and I must have plowed through twenty or so swarms of goblins. If I headed back I would arrive either right on time for the bell or just before, so its not like I could head back and choose a new path or anything. Grumbling about my poor luck to have a path with not enough goblins for me I turned to head back when my eyes alighted on one of the torches in the wall.

One of the torches I had never gotten around to inspect and now I had free time to!

Guess it was time to finally mark that off my to do list.