I continued to fight my way down to the 19th floor. Once I met up with Celeste and settled things down below, we’d find the 19th level library and then then I’d teleport up to the 15th to meet up with the girls. At that point, I could help them get the rest of the way down to the 19th floor.

Their appearance had been sudden at first, and my concern over Celeste had overtaken my common sense, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it’d be better to meet back up and fight as a group. Although I recalled the Adventurers telling me that experience didn’t get split when you were separated, so they gained more experience on their own as did I.

Part of the reason I hadn’t been leveling very fast either was my lack of 2X experience and the fact I was in a party with someone who was much higher than me. Simply put, once we all got together, our leveling potential would slow to a crawl. Double experience only worked on me, so even being able to drop my cheat skills and my usefulness in battle wouldn’t help the party by very much.

Still, when it came to safety, I think fighting as a group was best. Although the girls had plenty of healing water of life, they had no form of combat heal. Their current level should be able to get them down to level 15 though without me. Especially since they now have my party status up and Lydia gained my slave status up. Both girls should be much stronger now, because of that. Does party status work at a distance? Ah, well, I’ll ask Lydia tomorrow night. What was important now was keeping my head and finding Celeste.

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It was nearing night when I found the stairway leading to the 19th floor. I really hoped that Celeste was alright. In the past, she was still set to a slave of the dungeon’s boss, so the mobs all left her alone. Now that she was my slave instead, she was truly alone and could seriously get hurt. I wanted to go down, but I felt really exhausted. Instead, I decided to create a fire and camp out here for the night.

As I was cooking my meal, I saw something coming up the stairs. I immediately recognized it as Celeste. She was sniffing as she approached the stairs carefully. Why was it always food that caused this girl to come out of her shell? She was such a glutton if she kept eating like this… no… even in my imagination, I can’t see a fat fairy.

“Celeste!” I cried out excitedly.

Celeste looked at me with lightless eyes, but as soon as they locked on me, a fire exploded and she flew at me like a bullet.

“Master!” She screamed as her form ran into my chest.

She may be a fairy, but fairies in this world were still about a foot and a half. This was easily enough to cause me to stumble back onto my butt.

“Master… master…” she started crying. “You came back. I thought you left but you came back!”

“Haha… s-sorry. I stepped on a trap, it seems.”

I held her close. I felt relieved now. Suddenly, all that stress and worry, even leaving the other girls behind, didn’t seem to matter. We had all the time in the world. Why was I worrying about leveling the fastest? Safety was much more important. As soon as we found the 19th-floor library, I’d return to the 15th floor and reunite with the girls.

While I was thinking those kinds of thoughts, Celeste pulled back. She was staring at me with eyes that suddenly felt a little scary. I was a bit confused, so I raised an eyebrow.

“Celeste? What is it?” I asked.

“I smell a woman on you.” Her voice said, completely devoid of expression.