Jonathan cracked his knuckles, and sent the Void to them, also imbuing his gauntlets with Divinity. With a roar, he sent his fist screaming through the air, sending out a blastwave of power that tore through the nearest monsters. He had combined his physical strength with his Void Cannon ability, allowing him to project the force out with the full measure of his strength. The blast hit like a rocket, and the nearest dozen monsters died in an instant, their flesh pulverized by the blow. The others suffered severe injuries, and they tripped over the corpses of their companions, straight into the path of Jonathan’s fists. It was time for him to use a skill that he rarely had cause to use, given that it only really worked against beings weaker than him.

Fists of the Hurricane projected blasts of concentrated air pressure wherever his gauntlets struck, and for the first time, he decided to track what happened. A slight haze formed around his fists every time that he struck, and when he stopped punching, the haze exploded outwards, stunning weaker monsters. The effect was slight, but against monsters like this, he could use it.

The rest of the creatures died in short order, dying either to his fists or to Edgar’s devastating area of effect skills. There was no clear way out of this floor, meaning that they would have to kill every monster in the place, most likely.

“I have a feeling that this will not be so easy later on,” Edgar said ominously. “Our strength will eventually be tested to our limits, and whether we are found wanting or not is what will determine our survival.”

Not sure what to say to a proclamation like that, Jonathan simply nodded, waiting for the small amount of mana that he had used to recharge. A few minutes later, they kept going, Edgar deciding to float in the air above their heads in order to scout out the area. The monsters were not evenly distributed as far as they could tell, instead congregating in groups commensurate with their species. More than half of the monsters in this region were the strange wolf-like beasts, but there were others present too, larger and more powerful ones. It was towards a group of those that the men headed next.

The closest ones looked like crustaceans, but like the wolves, they were entirely black. They lounged in a hot spring of some sort, which bubbled every now and again, sending out noxious vapors into the air. All of them were covered in strange growths that looked like some sort of mimicry of barnacles. They had a trio of wicked looking claws, one of them coming up vertically from the base of the monsters’ heads. Rather than having a small head, most of the space was taken up by rows upon rows of teeth, creating a disconcertingly large array of razor sharp denticles.

Their eye stalks were summited by cloudy, oozing orbs that did not seem useful for anything. Jonathan started to gather energy to his fists. These monsters seemed to be a cut above the others. However, there were less of them overall.

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With a roar, Jonathan propelled himself forwards, towards the largest of the monsters. He raised one fist to the heavens, summoning his elemental energy to it. He landed like a meteor, bringing his fist down in an explosion of purple light. The shell cracked beneath him, revealing pitch black meat below. A wave of power coursed through the monster, tearing its flesh apart. A keening noise erupted from its toothy maw, and Jonathan smiled.

He kept hammering at the monster, and as it tried to grasp at him with its claws, it soon discovered that Jonathan had picked the one spot that its claws could not reach. With his monumental Intelligence stat, he was able to calculate things on the fly, and had estimated where the best place to strike would be.

A few moments later, the monster was dead, sending much more essence into him than before. Edgar was midair next to him, raining bolts of wind down upon the monsters below. He was out of their reach, and was able to pick them off one by one. With his massive mana pool he could remain levitating for hours if necessary. He was growing ever closer to his dream of true flight.

Ignoring his companion, Jonathan leapt to the next monster, trusting Edgar to not hit him with his attacks. They probably would do little to him, but it was better to be smart about it. Each strike of his fists, driven by all of his prodigious strength, landed like cannonballs, and he left a trail of devastation in his wake. On this floor of the dungeon, he was like a god. There had been about twenty monsters at the beginning of the battle, but their numbers had dropped by over half in less than a minute.

Jonathan leaped from monster to monster, using the bodies of the dead as platforms to jump from. By the end of the fight, the hot spring was cloudy with blood, and had it not already been so filthy, it would have been defiled by the fight. As the last bits of essence trickled in, Jonathan sighed. He was still without a level to show for his troubles. At this rate, it would take thousands of these monsters to give him even a single level. However, that was what the later floors were for.

Over the next few hours, the men fought their way through hordes of beasts, circumnavigating the cavern with ease. A constant trail of monsters followed them, providing easy pickings for the two hunters. Because of their ridiculous level of strength for this floor, it was cleared up in record time, literally in fact. Upon killing the last monster, they were met with two notifications.

Congratulations on being the fastest group to clear the first floor for the first time!

Below that was a more important one.

Do you wish to exit the dungeon? Doing so will force you to reset to floor 1 upon reentry.

Y/N

What these two messages meant was that Granath had been a bit cocky in coming here for the first time, and had been forced to leave. It was good to know that he was better than the worm at something, at least.