With Kara convinced to give it a try, everyone ate roasted monster crab meat. Even the porters and some of them cried because it was the best meat they ever tasted. It also saved us a day or two of rations. We had more meat than we could eat and nowhere to store excess food. The enchanted cold box was still full.

I let Sleepy and William eat as much crab meat as they liked. The little guy ate forty kilograms of meat. That was more than one and a half times his body weight. His stomach was bulging. Sleepy radiated a sense of satisfaction like nothing else. It confirmed to me that monsters could convert food into power with radical efficiency. The literature confirmed this but not on that scale. It had to be another of Sleepy's Perks.

So far, I knew two of them. The red nose and this turbo-eating one. Some scholars said that a monster's perks were highly influenced by what the monster suffered during its development. At his level, Sleepy already had five Perks. Legendary rarity granted a Pert at level four and another one every four levels.

It also had a ridiculous amount of Attributes. I could indirectly measure this from the bonuses I got in my detailed Attribute spread.

Soul Scout (rare) Level 22 Attribute Base Bonds Efficiency Total Strength 194 15 110% 229 Dexterity 157 19 130% 228 Endurance 189 22 130% 274 Intelligence 125 4 110% 141 Wisdom 162 6 120% 201 Clarity 15 13 110% 30 Charisma 51 1 110% 57 Health (HP) 242 653 Mana (MP) 66 72 Stamina (SP) 132 371

Since I got ten percent of Sleepy's and only five percent from William, I could extrapolate a rough estimate of each bond's Attribute spread. With their Attribute points progression per level, I came up with these numbers, with a wide error margin. Regarding William's Attributes, I could be wrong by ten points up or down. Since Sleepy's level was a comfortable 20, I had much more confidence on his scores. And those were the base values. I had no idea what their Efficiency points were allocated into but William's rarity granted him fifty Efficiency to distribute while Sleepy had ridiculous hundred and fifty percent Efficiency points.

Again, the Attribute values are estimated. I didn't include the bond bonus they gained from my own Attributes or the Beastmaster level points. It was easy enough to calculate these from my own Status above, without polluting my estimates. Finally, the System always rounds things down.

Name: William Olɿ Name: Sleepy Species: Tityron Species: Wolfertinger Rarity: Uncommon Rarity: Legendary Level 24 Level 20 Total Attributes 310 Total Attributes 670 Estimated Estimated Strength 80 Strength 110 Dexterity 70 Dexterity 170 Endurance 100 Endurance 170 Intelligence 20 Intelligence 30 Wisdom 20 Wisdom 50 Clarity 10 Clarity 130 Charisma 10 Charisma 10

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Even though he was four levels lower than William, Sleepy had over two times the Tityron's Attribute points. And most likely more than a thousand HP, around double what William had. I felt it was unfair but that's the tyranny of rarity for you.

When it came to the resource points, Rarity struck once again. Sleepy had three times more resources than William though a lot of those were on MP, which William's species ditched altogether. If I had to guess, Sleepy had more HP than me but his threshold factor was five to my three. I had no idea how much HP William had, only that he could parry attacks with his ram horns and get out unscathed.

*

*

Hours before we went to sleep, I approached Kara. "Would you like to spar for a while?"

She looked at me without saying anything. "I didn't bring any… you did, didn't you?"

My grin demolished any attempts at excusing herself. Kara needed weapon practice. I knew she hadn't had any since her promotion; the Guard Captain was swamped with paperwork and networking as she had to rebuild the garrison Alice destroyed. It was unfair. She still hadn't had that day off she promised me.

"Yes, I have two practice swords in my trunk."

"That chest shaped like a Giant's club?"

Everyone knew of my storage item by now. "Yup. I even have a hay bale, an archery target, and a training dummy."

"Do you always bring this kind of thing with you?"

"Absolutely not. But I have hundreds of liters of storage space empty and the castle staff would give me anything I asked for. Believe me, I wasn't shy in my requests. I knew you could use the training."

She blushed. "Well, now I feel bad for refusing. Thank you. Yes, let's spar. But only if you promise not to laugh."

Kara was a pencil-pusher before her promotion. She had only the basic weapon instruction course that was mandatory for all the Guard members.

"I only promise not to mock you to bring you down, Kara. Pointing out your mistakes and making light fun of them will be good for you."

"You!" She smiled. "Okay. Let's go."

We faced off. Kara had her shield and a wooden sword, I had two giant crab claws I modified to attach to my arms and move with ropes tied to the inside. I was leaning heavily on my Rope Mastery Perk to make this work. The claw edges were sanded and dulled to prevent injury. I also couldn't exert the same strength as the specialized muscles the Gibbermouths had.

"What is that!?!?" She laughed when I showed my crab gauntlets.

"You need to learn how to fight against monsters, Kara. Not people!" I shouted back. "Have at ye!"

We fought. I held no quarters as I tried to snip Kara's limbs and she tried to both defend and attack me. Hits on the claws were considered blocks by me.

The knights and porters who weren't doing watch formed a semicircle. Hector was inside his tent and didn't come out for the remainder of the night.

I roared and charged at her, claws snapping. It was also good to practice with my rope mastery Perk. It was almost like I could extend my sense of touch through them.

We sparred for two hours. Kara must have invested heavily in Endurance. While I didn't know her level, I knew she had suddenly doubled her available Attribute points and the Guard issued guidebooks for their members with good Attribute distribution strategies. They determined that Officers had to be extra tough.

Differently from other species who had most of their Attribute points fixed depending on their Classes, humans had the prerogative of ruining their builds by making bad decisions. Like when I dumped thirty points on Endurance.

I snipped her several times but she also struck me a good number. I could sense her loosening up and getting used to her extra Attribute points. In the latter half, she gradually became much faster. Not as fast as I was, though. I had to keep from using my full Dexterity for the sake of getting her to the point where she was using a hundred percent of her Attribute points. It wouldn't happen in a single day nor in a single week.

Our high Endurance was also food to keep us from sweating too much. One of the most important things to do in a Dungeon when you weren't fighting for your life was to make sure you didn't sweat much. Nobody wanted to stink in a Dungeon. Friendships have ended in the depths because of body odor.

Water was a delving team's lifeline. During a protracted stay, people could eat monsters but unless the Dungeon had a source of water, they had to get out before they ran out of it.

Using water for something as superfluous as hygiene? Preposterous. But Kara was a cosmopolitan girl, used to the creature comforts of civilization. We had the water purification barrel, which worked perfectly. Since people urinate more water than they drink, as long as we had food, we would always recycle more water than we drank.

But I had the bathtub I requested and I was intent on using it. I set it inside Kara's tent and let her use it. Being the gentlemen they were, none of the knights or the porters had any complaints about it. After Kara had her bath, I went and bathed too. After that, the water went into the recycling barrel and back to the reservoir.

*

*

The next morning, I asked Hector for some of his time. His tent was slightly bigger on the inside. It was ridiculous how better a fifty percent space increase felt.

"What is on your mind?" He asked.

"I think we should stay here for another day," I said. "If the crabs respawn, that is. We could take the porters and power-level them. At least to level twenty."

He brushed my idea off with a sneer. "That is a waste of time."

"Is it? I agree that the porters are plenty capable of handling the load they have now. What if a few of them die? Suddenly we will sacrifice some of our luggage to the Dungeon."

"We cross that bridge–"

"No. We address a delving issue before it happens, and then we don't suffer the consequences. It's a basic Guild procedure. I could go even a step further. We give the porters the opportunity to prestige."

Hector froze. "Prestige?"

Gotcha.

"Yeah. Their Classes are all Common. Fuck. The guys gain as many Attribute points as we do on a Subclass! If they prestige into an Uncommon or even a Rare if they are lucky, how much better our delve would be? We could have six backup combatants. Give them some pikes, and we have a back row of warriors to support us."

"Pikes? Who brought pikes to a - of course you did."

I shrugged. That chest was huge. The trick was that it couldn't be heavier than what I could lift, otherwise it wasn't a melee weapon and wouldn't go inside the quiver's side pockets. But at my current Strength score, I could lift a fucking lot.

"Your idea has merit, George. But we won't lose momentum now. We are going to break camp, descend to the second floor, and see what we can do. Who knows, the Core could be right after these stairs."

"It is not," I said.

"How can you even tell?"

"The monsters Alice killed in the air as they spawned. I couldn't identify most of them but some of those I did were elite monsters. They would only appear on the fourth or fifth floors."

"You can identify monsters?"

"Some of them, yes. There are some other requirements."

"Four or five floors. We can do this much."

"At least. If you won't delay, you are the leader. The Guild also strongly disallows challenges of leadership during delves. A lack of discipline is the number two reason for deaths during a delve."

"George. I consider you my friend. I appreciate your feedback. And I know you will do your utmost to make this delve succeed."

"Goes without saying. Don't worry. I just want to make sure all of us are the best fighting force we can be. I'll even spar with Kara whenever adequate. She needs to hone her skill."

He winced when I said "best fighting force." Fuck. Hector was almost crippled. And I couldn't talk about it.

"I appreciate it."

"Let's get this show on the road, then."

*

*

The second floor was less raw. The tunnel walls were worn off and the ridge edges were worn. The tunnels had damp air and had dark purple moss growing in patches everywhere. It also had deep alcoves perfect for monsters waiting in ambush. The light. from the helmets cast dark shadows inside the alcoves and its own glare ruined our darkvision.

I made sure to check each alcove on either side as I passed by them to make sure we weren't leaving enemies behind us.

I remembered why pirates without a darkvision feature wore eye patches. They kept one good eye in the dark so it would be adapted to the darkness of the lower decks.

I didn't have an eye patch but it was easy to make one out of a piece of leather and twine. It sucked to lose the depth perception but I could use parallax and scaling to tell where people and objects were related to each other. But when I tried walking with one eye closed, the tunnel features, amorphous as they were, all flattened. The shadows were a good indicator but even they didn't help much. I quickly improvised an eye patch to see if I could adapt to it.

After an hour, I removed the patch. The bright light of ten helmets quickly eroded any advantage I had in that eye but I could see deeper into the shadows for a moment. It could be a nothingburger or a great advantage in a darker setting. But the time it took for an eye to adapt to the dark could be pre-loaded if I knew I would need it.

I told Kara of my experiment. Hector was too far ahead of us to hear.

"That's great but wouldn't using only one eye ruin your aim? I never shot a bow, so excuse me if I'm stating the obvious."

"Not at all!" I laughed. "Shooting with one eye closed is okay. Most targets are far away enough that measuring the distance can be done using the scale between the target and the size we expect it to be up close. It's different from fencing where it would be a huge disadvantage."

"Then yeah. Let's go with the eye patch."

I would, after we camped for the day. I needed to make a decent patch with leather and a way to stay up, not this improvised crap with twine.