We reached the fortieth floor the next day.

It wasn’t that the fights were taking us long, it was that there were so many of them. In a lot of Dungeons, there was a path that you could follow that would take you straight to the floor boss. Here, there was nothing but desert. I had Footing on my boots, so I could still get around well, but Brute didn’t. Add in that he was already slow, mixed with no defined path and we were running into a fight every ten minutes or so. What should have been a two hour trek wound up taking us closer to three.

We didn’t have any trouble with the other three bosses and I gladly ignored the loot drops, there weren’t any more Unilops until the forty-ninth floor, so I doubted that we’d find anything anywhere near as valuable as what had dropped.

We stopped to rest before we started the fight and to go over our strategy.

“How many of you have done a fortieth floor boss?” Gall looked around at us.

Cass and Brute were the only two that didn’t raise their hands or nod.

“Just like the other raid floors, except this one has four stages.” Gall cleared his throat. “Stage one ends when the armored shell is cracked all the way off. It’s immune to damage under it, so don’t bother focusing on any holes to end the fight early. Watch out for the tails, they have scorpion barbs and there are four of them.” He looked at me and Garlin. “Once stage one is over, one of the tails will fall off and we’ll have three copies of the floor boss from thirty-one spawn. Each of you will have to deal with one and Nyssa will take the third. I’ll provide ranged support.”

That wouldn’t be too difficult. The big gimmick from floor thirty one was that the feline monster had a water line attack. Plus, it would only be level thirty-one.

“The main boss will stay immune to damage until all three are taken care of, then a second tail will fall off and the crystal in its chest will light up and it will enrage. It stays like that and the crystal is the only thing that takes damage during this phase, but any damage you would do to it is redirected to the crystal, so feel free to attack where you have an opening.” He looked over at Cass. “That includes you.” He eyed Brute, then continued. “Once the crystal cracks, the third tail falls off, it comes out of rage, takes five seconds to catch its breath then it’s a normal fight to the end. Any questions?”

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No one did, though I did question Brute's ability to tank the whole fight. He had a hole in his shield that I could put my hand through, not to mention the one in his armor. It also didn’t help that he was only level thirty-nine, but there was a HUGE difference between a thirty-nine and a forty. At each multiple of ten, and Adventurer’s stats doubled. So while someone in Tier Three would have their main stat around one-hundred-fifty, a level forty would have a main stat over three hundred.

And that wasn’t taking into account that the raid floors were meant to be done with twelve people, not just six. So not only was he underleveled, we had fewer bodies. On the plus side, Cass’ healing spells were a lot more effective on him because of the Tier difference.

But I knew I didn’t need to point out any of that because the rest of us already knew it. I’d just have to try to end the fight as fast as we could. We probably had one more floor in us before we’d need to head back. We were definitely about to start slowing down in how fast we were clearing floors.

Gall walked in first this time, with Garlin right behind him. Nyssa lingered back a little. Cass and Brute went through the door without an argument. We’d finally established that I wasn’t going to let her walk behind me.

“If The Tank goes down, dad is going to take over.” Nyssa studies my face for a reaction.

It made sense. Even if he was a Magic and Speed main, he would at least have a comparable Defense stat to a Tier Three. With my stat distribution, not to mention gear, I probably had better Defense than our Tank. The difference was I had a feeling that Gall had a taunt skill.

“He’s not worried about showing off his full power?” It was also painfully obvious that Gall was holding back since I knew his actual level. But to keep up the appearance of only being Tier Four, the old man was underpowering his spells.

“We’d probably survive if we lost the others, but that doesn’t leave much room for error.”

“Adventurers err.” I grinned. “We get things done.”

She shook her head and went through the door. I caught the smirk on her face before she vanished. The full saying was Adventurers err, the Grenium get things done. I knew that the Tridents had something similar that they said, so I felt like I conveyed my message. We’d be fine.