The world plunged into darkness. I heard Adam cast a light spell, and Horus tried to light a torch, but none of these seemed to help us see. Even with my eyes, nothing seemed to appear before me. As I continued to switch around my vision and try different combinations, hoping to find something that worked, Horus was trying to come up with a plan to get us through this floor.

Nothing he came up with seemed to work well. As the minutes passed, we thought we might need to navigate this floor by sound. Luckily, after about ten minutes, I was able to see something other than darkness.

"Hold up, I might have something," I told the others, who stopped discussing their failed plans. It took about ten more minutes before I was able to dial in a better view, but even then, all I could see were outlines of things; the rest was still complete darkness.

As I explained that I was able to see something, we got up and continued onward. It seemed that the dungeon was at least somewhat forgiving as the tunnels seemed to be made of smooth stone and there were no traps around.

The monsters, however, were even worse than I had imagined. I had thought that without sight, the monsters would make noise so you would have a chance, but no, they were some sort of animal hybrids. It was so hard to see them properly as their fur made their outline blurry for me.

When one sneaked close, it was preparing some sort of a claw attack that I was able to detect with my energy sense. But I would have needed to react extremely quickly before it was able to attack someone. Now, I could just step close to it and easily kill it with one strike. I could imagine how its eyes got wider, or whatever it was using to see, as I was able to just detect it and kill it.

The experience was quite good as killing it was even simpler than some of the first-rank monsters above, but I could understand why as fighting them is so difficult, especially if there are more than one at the same time. The floor turned out to be a beautiful place for me as I was gaining so much experience. The others didn’t like it that much.

The boss monster was just a bigger version and a lot tougher, but still nothing compared to the last few floors. We got some sort of ring from it, but none of us could figure out what it could do. It was probably meant for some sneaking class, so it would make sense that it wouldn't work for us.

The next floor was the complete opposite; it was incredibly bright. We were in an almost jungle-like environment, but the trees were so thick as to block out the constant sun. The heat and the humidity were awful, but nothing our bodies couldn’t handle.

The ruins themselves looked to be the oldest we've come across. There was almost nothing left of the buildings, even though they were made from what looked like incredibly tough stone. What was also different about this floor was the background sound of smaller animals, like in real life. "Is this a complete ecosystem?" I asked.

"There are some reports of areas that are extremely realistic, especially this deep down. If we are in a jungle area, then the traps will not be something man-made. The poisonous animals that are around here will be the traps also there will probably be a larger variety of monsters we must fight, and their difficulty might fluctuate more than normal," Horus answered and continued his explanation, although he often reminded us that this deep down, everything he was saying was conjecture at best.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Arabella was the first to notice the first dangerous thing. It seemed to be a simple plant, but when a bug flew by, its leaves which were filled with small, hair-like spikes moved and pierced the bug. It tried to escape, but only in one or two seconds its movement stopped, obviously injected with a significant amount of extremely dangerous poison. This place might be a lot more dangerous than any traps we might've come across.

When the first monster showed up, I knew that this was going to be a difficult floor. It was some sort of dinosaur, kind of like a velociraptor but without the claw and a bit bigger, but they also seemed to be in a pack.

They were incredibly coordinated, and for the first time, I needed to use my taunt multiple times as it seemed that whatever pack abilities they had, they were able to break my ability eventually. They also appeared to have some speed enhancements, but their most dangerous aspect was their bodies.

They were incredibly strong, and their skin and feathers proved to be quite difficult to overcome. If I was able to make a proper attack, I was still able to end their lives, but if I was just a bit off, my strike would just slide off. They seemed to be a lot more susceptible to piercing damage, so Arabella was able to fight quite effectively. It didn’t take long for Luana to switch up her spells into more piercing ones.

We continued to try to find a way down to the next floor, but it was difficult as we didn't want to go too deep into the area with a lot of plant cover. The numerous smaller rivers proved to be the most dangerous places as there were many different types of water monsters here, from crocodiles to different sorts of dinosaurs that lived inside the water. All of them could survive and attack on the ground, making them that much more dangerous.

While the areas close to water were some of the most dangerous, it wasn't always so, especially when a larger dinosaur showed up. Luckily, it seems that we won’t be running into any T-Rex, but some of them weren’t far off. Luckily, they seemed to have long necks, making it a lot easier to deal critical damage.

Otherwise, the floor was quite pleasant, especially when Arabella showed us a safe berry to eat that she knew about. It was incredibly delicious but also had the side effect of making you quite full and less tired. I collected a lot of the seeds as apparently it was quite difficult to find this as there was none left in the wild. Only some individuals were still growing them.

When we found the boss room and the way down, we actually debated skipping this one and perhaps finding another one, but Adam was running out of poison cures. Everyone had gotten poisoned multiple times. Luckily for me, it wasn't a problem thanks to one of my sharmar’s organ. But it was only a matter of time before someone got poisoned by something we couldn't get rid of.

The boss we were up against was a giant crocodile-like monster that was in knee-deep water inside a mostly intact building. But even then, only the walls stood, and they still had multiple holes where you could easily get in from. There were also quite a lot of large rocks and no roof. That gave me an interesting idea.

"Hey Luana, if I remember correctly, you had some sort of a levitation spell. Could you pick up a few of those large rocks and then just levitate them as high as you can and throw them onto the boss?" I asked, but unfortunately, I was informed that I was stupid and even if she could do that, the monster would probably not even feel it.

She was right. I guess I was channeling a bit too much tabletop RPG energy with that suggestion. The fight turned out to be even worse than we imagined as the monster had elemental control over water, but fortunately, it wasn't strong enough with its water control to do any real damage to me, although I did have to hold my breath for quite a while during some parts of the fight.

Whatever its hide was made out of, it seemed to be even more resistant than the scales of the dragon I fought. It also had an ability that was able to block most of the energy off my attacks, but during the fight, I was getting better at getting past it, and even without energy, my sword was top-tier.

Still, making any critical attacks was impossible for a two-bus-sized monster. By the end of the fight, the water that was clear at the start was now so thick with blood that it was actually more viscous than water.

This time, we didn't rest in the boss room but went out so we could rest and get ourselves clean before we descended onto the next floor. Luana was also able to freeze our pathway to the stairways downwards so we wouldn't have to go through that blood and water mixture.