We began moving slowly at first, trying to stay as hidden as possible and avoid making any noise. We needed to reach the entrance of the building before anyone noticed us, as fighting our way in would make everything much more difficult, especially if more monsters came from behind us.

Fortunately, staying quiet wasn't a problem for me as I was able to silence every noise I made with my abilities. However, Horus wasn't as fortunate. Every movement he made created noise, but he had learned to keep it down quite well. We managed to get quite close before we heard the screams of the stick monsters. This time, however, it was a lot more eerie as they did it simultaneously, with only a slight delay, causing endless echoes.

I kicked into high gear, but even before we reached the doorway, more monster screams came from all around us. Before I entered the doorway, from the corner of my eye, I saw some of the monsters that came from the outside. I was relieved to see that they were only the regular kind of stick monsters, the ones we had fought before. When I stepped into the doorway, I activated my Call of the Ancestors ability, and ghosts quickly left my body with large tower shields and axes.

They parted ways to let my party members in, but I already had to start attacking as the short tunnel we were in was already half-filled with the boss monsters. My sword didn't let me down, and it cut through them like any other monster, but I did need to use quite a significant amount of energy compared to the stick monsters from before. I immediately activated my Heroic Stand ability as I met all the requirements of standing against superior numbers, and those enemies being strong enough to cause me serious damage.

This time, I didn't go for power output but efficiency as I continued to push my way closer to the edge of our small tunnel. The tunnel made a good choke point as the monsters couldn't push their entire mass towards us. Like that, when I reached my position, I made myself heavier and started to carve anything that came close to me.

The dungeon made the bodies of these monsters disappear quite fast, like with every other swarm-type monster, but even then, their own bodies proved to be difficult terrain for them to continue to push through.

These ones, however, were a lot more organized, so I never faced fewer opponents than the tunnel allowed to attack at the same time. This coordination made things harder, and I concentrated on saving as much energy as possible.

Knowing that I probably didn't need to use much core energy defending my entrance, I used a large portion of it to make the ghost that now defended the other side of our tunnel. Only five of them were needed to defend the entire width of the tunnel, but they switched with each other so no one's shield took too much damage.

Of course, Horus also switched in to do a lot more damage to the monsters outside whenever he was ready. With the boost I was providing, his sweeping attacks killed dozens. But like me, he was conserving as much energy as possible.

Arabella and Luana were using their own efficient attacks against the boss swarm. Arabella used conjured arrows that, when they hit, caused a kinetic shockwave that was quite efficient at killing these types of monsters.

Luana was throwing fireballs which were also quite effective against these types of monsters. Adam currently didn't have anything to do and probably won't ever need to heal us, but he will need to start spending his mana to keep us on our feet as our exhaustion will continue to build.

Stolen story; please report.

Like this, minutes quickly turned into hours, yet our fighting still continued. I hated the boss of this area even more as I must have killed at least seven times the capacity of the boss room's amount of monsters but they never stopped coming.

At least on the other end of the tunnel, things were looking up as fewer and fewer monsters were showing up. With that, Horus was able to come towards me, and I pushed further into the room so I could start spinning once again. I didn't want to do this, but against these types of monsters, it was simply the best way to fight.

Every one of us was exhausted, even me, although my body could keep going for a while. Unfortunately, I would run out of energy before that. If I wasn't using so much energy, my body could probably keep fighting for a week straight if I pushed myself, but running so much energy through my body is the same as sprinting while carrying your own body weight back on earth.

With me being able to do so much damage, the number of enemies finally started to diminish. When I was finally able to stop, I fell to the ground as I was so dizzy, but I didn't care. The way down was open, and while everyone was exhausted, we had survived yet another fight.

I didn’t dismiss my ghosts, keeping them for defense. Adam was the one who found the boss item drop. "Hey guys, I found it. It just looks like a stick and I don’t feel anything when touching it," Adam announced, and we all focused on him.

To me, it didn't look like a stick but a sapling. When Adam got close to us, I could feel some life in it and I knew that this item needed to be planted and grown like a tree. "Can I have that?" I asked. "Most likely. I don’t think that anyone else would want that," Horus said. After everyone had their turn with the stick, I was able to get it simply because no one else wanted this loot.

I examined it more, but finding out anything more about it seemed to be impossible. When I finished and put it away, I noticed that everyone else had a faraway look. I knew that they were looking at their achievement pages and it was time for me to do the same.

Up until this floor, I had gained on average 10 levels for every one of my classes. But this singular floor gave me 6 levels with all of my classes. I could now understand why every one of my party members had a small smile on their faces.

As I finished with my level-ups, I was incredibly glad to find that I had reached four milestones with four different stats. My perception and constitution hit the 640 milestone while my Presence and wisdom hit their 320 milestone.

I was also able to advance my cartography skill to the advanced rank. Two of the choices I was given were pointless as my interactive map was better than them, so I was left with only one real choice: an ability called hidden paths. I didn’t know exactly what this ability would do, but from the name, I could guess. While this wouldn’t be my first choice, I was still quite excited by the possibility.

But now for the traits. It seems that for perception, I got something called temporal awareness. Focusing on my sense of time, which was already quite good, I now felt that I knew exactly what time it was, even inside this dungeon compared to the outside world. Currently, this might not be that useful, but for war and cooking things to the exact time will now be made a lot easier and I wouldn’t even have to go and buy one of those dwarven pocket watches.

The constitution one was interesting. It was called vitality overflow and I could already feel how it was working on restoring my body from the exhaustion the long fight caused. I felt that there was a lot more to this trait as it wasn't absorbed by the giant among men, so it must be quite powerful. Only time will tell, but it was already quite helpful as my headache from using so much energy already started to lessen.

The next trait was called unseen shadow and I got it from my presence stat. This one I have no idea how it will work and currently, I couldn’t find any difference because of it. I will probably need a good meditation session to figure this one out.

The last one was from my wisdom and was called harmonic resonance. Again, I have no idea what it could do and currently, I didn’t seem to find any way to activate that as well. Traits overall were more passive benefits but many had active components and something called harmonic resonance could be either one, but I’m guessing it would be a lot easier to figure this one out if I just went home as I had a feeling it would reveal quite a lot.

Other than that, I have gotten more level-ups for my skills and abilities but nothing too exciting. I allowed the rest to go to sleep, feeling good enough to take the first watch and if there was any need for fighting, I had my ghosts who could help me.

Nothing happened during my watch, but I was glad that I was able to go to sleep. When I woke, we all ate a whole lot and after some discussion decided to go deeper into the dungeon. As we descended, the feeling of escape that was just a thought away disappeared and we were once again left without a way out until we reach the core or the two-month mark from our entrance to this dungeon.