Even though it was mentioned that the first floors were technically second-rank, I think they were bullshitting. All I've had to do is walk, but the good thing is that we were descending quite rapidly. In about a day, we were already on the third floor, but everything was still a cakewalk.

I only had to use my shield once when a hidden snake ambushed us. Its attack was so fast that it actually broke its own neck when it hit my immovable shield. At least there was a consolation prize: I got an emerald-colored scale as a drop. It was mesmerizing to look at, especially how the light bent and bounced off it. I guess it could make a good jewelry component and it probably had some stat gains it could give.

I was allowed to keep it as it wasn't worth that much, but every drop that was worth something, or nobody wanted, went into the loot bag and would be later sold off and then distributed among us. The traps on the upper floors were also jokes. The only dangerous ones were pit traps with long drops.

The dart traps were especially a joke as they couldn't even pierce my unboosted armour. At first, Arabella and Horus worked on disarming them, but that was taking way too much time, so I just walked through them, triggering everything so everyone else could follow without having to worry about getting poisoned.

The first time I did it, Horus was quite displeased, as he called it unnecessary danger. The second time, he tried to hold me back, but I just dragged him with me as I walked, and he needed to let go of me so he wouldn't get poisoned.

After that, whenever I could, I just walked through traps so we could get through everything faster. This sped up our descent quite a lot, and by the 10th day, we had reached the 23rd floor. Nowadays, I was able to fight, but the reason was because we were facing a lot more enemies, not because they posed any danger.

We were still getting barely any experience as we were fighting rank-one opponents, but at least my taunt level had risen quite a lot. Other than that, it was quite boring, and I didn’t think that would change until we reached the lower floors, where we could finally start truly fighting.

When we made it to the 25th floor, I got the feeling that teleporting out of the dungeon was only one thought away, but none of us wanted to end our run. However, I did feel that it was time for a change.

"I feel like we have not taken this dungeon seriously enough. It almost feels like we are walking leisurely through it, and I do understand that we needed to get used to each other a bit more, but I think we all now feel comfortable enough fighting around each other that we should start pushing faster and fight harder so we can descend quicker.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I want to get as deep as possible, even if it means that when we teleport out of here, we’re half dead," I said, bringing back some energy into our party. While everyone agreed that change was needed, some were uncertain that pushing so hard would be a good idea.

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In the end, I also agreed that we shouldn’t push so hard immediately, but we should slowly ramp things up as we got more used to each other, fighting closer to our limits. After this change, we only walked when some of us needed to rest; otherwise, we were moving fast and didn't wait until monsters reached us, but instead, we charged at them. This allowed us to increase our speed, and Horus' knowledge of the dungeon allowed us to quickly figure out and find the staircases downwards.

Most wouldn’t call this lucky, but I did. On the 28th floor, we reached ruins that held second-rank opponents. They were a type of fungus creature that mimicked other monsters in shape. They also released spores, but Adam was able to neutralize them before others were hurt.

My system was luckily able to clear them out even without Adam's help, but it was certainly easier if my body didn't have to do extra work. Usually, we should have slowed down because of the harder enemies, but we weren’t messing around and attacked everything with prejudice.

With us fighting second-rank monsters, the number of enemies we fought simultaneously drastically reduced, and after a few fights, while we were dealing with some traps, I spoke up once again. "I think it would be best if I changed my shield out for a two-handed weapon I have. I will put it in my tattoo storage so I can pull it out whenever I need to, but I feel the extra damage would help us move even faster."

No one disagreed, but I did need to do some rearranging and to take quite a few things from my tattoo storage that I was keeping for emergencies, like food rations and water skins, and place them into the adventuring bag.

I made my shield disappear and brought out my greatsword. I couldn’t help but smile when I looked at it, and as soon as I was holding it, it almost felt like I was stronger. It was Adam who was the first to notice that my blade wasn't ordinary.

"Rich, that’s quite the particular weapon you have there. I didn’t expect for you to have an even stronger weapon," Adam's words brought more attention to my greatsword, but I just thanked him and ended the conversation, which was a quite clear sign that everyone understood that I didn’t want to talk about that topic.

We were lucky on this floor as we didn't need to travel a lot before we reached one of the boss rooms that would allow us to descend. I had still not been able to use my sword as the few opponents we had found were killed before they could reach me.

But this time, when I saw the giant biped lizard that was about four meters tall lying amongst the swamp ruins it was close enough that I was able to rush it in an instant. Even though the monster was formidable as it was able to activate its defensive abilities and its evasion ability before I reached it.

That, however, wasn't enough as one cut crushed through its defenses, cutting off one of its arms, and it simply didn't have the time to activate its poison breath as I was able to cut off its head with the second strike even before a single drop of poison was able to drip from its lips. It almost felt like I was cutting through air; my blade was so sharp. I didn’t even push my abilities, just used them normally. My mad laughter was cut off when I heard Horus clearing his throat.

"Oh yes, my apologies. I might have gotten a bit too excited there," I said while trying to stop laughing. They were a bit more used to my more eccentric behavior, but they all looked at me like I was mad. But then the attention was put on the blade that I was holding.

"If you want to know what it’s capable of, then honestly, I have no idea as this was the first proper opponent I have had to fight with this weapon," I told them, which stopped the flood of questions I was certain would have come.

I did notice Arabella looking at the sword a bit confused, but she shook her head like clearing it, and we all continued downwards. "With so much extra damage Rich can do, we should be able to continue to ignore defense and rush through any encounter for at least the next twenty floors or more. So everyone, prepare yourself for constant fighting and traveling," Horus said just before I felt the familiar feeling of being displaced into a different area of the dungeon, one floor deeper.