Before starting the raid, we had a quick introduction session.

Apart from Mika, Kamui, and I, there were seven other B-rank awakeners from the Saber Slayer Guild: James the guardian, Jennifer and Mary the healers, Andrew the scout, Brian the gunner, Edward the fighter, and Larry the mage.

The leader of the party was the guardian James. He was a middle-aged man wearing grey steel armor and had a matching big shield on his arm from the same one-set gears.

“Let me introduce you to your other teammates whom we scouted for this raid.” Said, Vladimir. “The one next to me is Shiryuu. He is a Mythological Weapon user like myself and a B-rank swordsman.” He pushed me forward.

“Nice to meet you all.” I greeted them.

‘Hmm, so that is the infamous B-rank Mythological Weapon user.’ Muttered Andrew.

‘I heard that he has a bad reputation.’ Replied Brian in a faint voice.

‘Shh, keep your voice down; we don’t need a beating from Vladimir. He is a friend of his after all.’ Larry pulled Andrew next to him to shut him.

“The next one is Kamui. He is a promising B-rank swordsman from the Ono-Ha-Itto-Ryu dojo.” Vladimir continued introducing us. “The final one here is the mage, Mika. She is a light mage user scouted by Sara.”

‘A light mage… That’s rare.’ I heard James addressing Larry, the other mage of this party.

“Now that you know each other, I’ll leave the planning to you and I hope that when you clear it, you will all be alive.” He smirked and left the area with the other high-rankers.

“First of all, let’s make this clear.” James addressed Mika, Kamui, and me. “Since you are new here and we don’t know the extent of your abilities, we will leave the first floor to you three. It is a test to see if you are worthy of being here with us. We are all members of one of the top guilds in the world, so if you are scouted to help us in this raid, then you must show us what you can do.”

“I don’t have a problem with your approach, but don’t forget that we are a team, so our success in clearing the first floor is linked to how you fare in this raid. Are you sure you wanted to give this task to us even if you don’t know anything about us?” I replied.

“Yeah, don’t worry. If I see that you are not fit for clearing the first floor, then I will immediately expel you from our party and get you out from this dungeon.”

“Is that even possible?” Questioned Kamui.

“Normally it is not, but Andrew is a unique scout with the ability to send a maximum of four persons out from the dungeon once a day.”

“This is interesting.” Said Kamui.

“If that’s your plan, then I don’t mind it. We’re up for the task.” I said.

“Yeah, bring it on.” Kamui sounded confident.

“I can do this too.” Added Mika.

“Then let’s get going.” Ordered James.

“By the way, is this a known dungeon?” Questioned Kamui.

“Yes it is, but we have a rule in the guild that information regarding known dungeons shouldn’t be told to awakeners who didn’t clear it yet. In our case, we all have not had the chance to clear it until now, so we don’t know anything about it. This is our first time, like you.” Replied James.

***

The first floor of this dungeon was a big plain green field surrounded by gigantic trees.

As soon as we entered, a message popped up and told us to find and kill the boss.

“So this is a normal hunting floor. There shouldn’t be any problems I guess.” Said Kamui.

“The dungeons are unpredictable. We don’t know what this floor hides for us.” I replied.

“I agree with Shiryuu. Let’s keep our guards up while searching this field first.” Added Mika.

We split up and each searched a part of the green field, while the other members stayed where we entered. I took the north side while Kamui and Mika searched the west and east sides respectively.

The field was too big and at some point, I could no longer see where the others were positioned.

I kept moving and stumbled upon a group of five shield-armored gorillas and two gun gorillas.

The shield gorillas made a wall and protected the gun gorillas who shot me with their big handguns from behind the wall.

I took out my sword and charged a ‘Dragon Head’ that destroyed the shields instantly. Then, I followed it with a ‘Step Slash’ to kill the armored gorillas.

The gun gorillas jumped to the back and kept shooting me with their bullets.

I enhanced my vision with mana to see the trajectory of the quick bullets and cut them in halves. Afterward, I used another ‘Step Slash’ to get into range and killed the last two monsters with a ‘Dragon Slash’.

I kept looking on the north side, but I didn’t find anything apart from the few groups of monsters that I easily killed.

After an hour or so, I reached the forest area and decided to climb a tree to have a better view of this floor.

When I tried to climb, more gun gorillas attacked me from above. A shower of bullets came down on me. I couldn’t block all the bullets so I jumped down and run towards a batch of intertwined trees and hid behind them. ‘The range of my attacks is limited inside this forest. I cannot fight them all here. I have to find a way out.’ I muttered.

I closed my eyes to feel the change of mana surrounding me to locate any monsters near me.

I tried moving slowly to avoid the monsters on the ground level of the forest.

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I kept roaming around the forest, but I couldn’t find anything. It was too thick and the trees were big enough to block the view.

"These trees are in the way. I should just cut them and finish with this quickly… However, it will only draw more needless attention from these gorillas… Attention… An endless number of gorillas… If I’m right, then the others could be in the same predicament as I, so maybe if I draw all the attention to this place, they can find a way to clear this floor… Let’s gamble on this.”

I put my sword near my hip and swung it with all the power I had and released a huge amount of blades that formed a big tornado that cut anything on its path.

“Ono-Ha-Itto-Ryu-Ougi, Disaster Typhoon.”

I managed to destroy most of the forest around me and killed all the monsters that were in the vicinity.

Due to the chaos that I created, more monsters swarmed the area where I was searching and found myself surrounded by a huge number of gorillas.

Suddenly, I heard the ground beneath me shaking and a huge monster appeared from inside the part of the forest that I didn’t destroy. The monster was a dozen-arm gorilla.

“So this is the final boss here… I didn’t expect to draw the big fish alongside its lackeys.” I smirked. “I need to buy enough time until Kamui and Mika can reach me here.”

After screaming a battle howl, the boss of this area attacked me with his huge fists.

I jumped over it to dodge the attack, but I was met with a shower of bullets from the gun gorillas. I launched a ‘Dragon Head’ to counter most of the bullets and followed it with a ‘Tiger Hunt Slash’ at the back of the boss to damage him while I was still in mid-air.

When I landed on my feet, several fighter gorillas ganged up on me with their whole bodies.

“Ono-Ha-Itto-Ryu, Tornado Slash.” I cut them all in halves as soon as they were close enough to make contact.

This attack also damaged the boss who was behind me and killed several lackeys in my surroundings.

The boss growled and turned around to stomp me with his huge leg. I jumped to the side and used a ‘Nail Slash’ to cut his leg, but his skin was tough and my sword couldn’t penetrate it.

He kept attacking me with several punches that I dodged, but I ended up being hit by the other gorillas who grew in number exponentially.

“There’s no end to them.” I gritted my teeth.

Suddenly, the boss swung his fist and threw me inside the part of the forest that I didn’t destroy. This time I was completely surrounded by all places.

I decided to run away into the open field in order to make them gather in one space and kill them all with a single attack.

They didn’t let me exit the forest and kept stopping me here and there. I had to keep fighting while trying to get away into the grass field.

After arriving at where I was before meeting the dozen-arm gorilla, I used a ‘Bull Tackle’ at the ground to create an obstacle big enough to give me time to get out from the forest.

The impact of the attack killed several monsters in the vicinity.

The big boss fell into the hole I created and had a hard time getting out from it. This gave me the chance to finally reach my destination.

After getting out, I stopped and put my sword above me and concentrate a huge amount of mana into it. “Ono-Ha-Itto-Ryu, Crescent Slash.”

My attack destroyed all the gathered monsters and didn’t stop until it hit the dozen-arm gorilla trapped inside the hole in the forest.

“I used too much mana on the last attack… If this wasn’t enough, then I’ll be in trouble.” I was out of breath.

After a while, no more monsters were coming out from the forest and I relaxed a bit to gather mana and restore my stamina.

Suddenly, I felt the earth shaking and a huge body jumped on me from the destroyed part of the forest.

“That’s… That’s the dozen-arm gorilla… He is still alive.” I exclaimed.

The boss monster was too fast and there was no way to dodge his full-body tackle. Fortunately, the attack didn’t connect.

A multi-layered light barrier stopped the monster.

“I’m glad I arrived on time.” I heard the voice of Mika behind me.

I turned and found her floating on a hoverboard made of light.

“I came at full speed to this place after I heard the explosion. I’m glad you were safe.”

“You saved my life there. That was a close shot.”

“Don’t mind it. Let’s focus on this boss right now.”

“He is too sturdy. He took a lot of heavy attacks from me and is still standing. On top of that, there is no end to all of these different gorillas.” As I mentioned them, more of them appeared from the forest.

“There is an explanation to their infinite number.” She said.

“What do you mean?”

“Even if you kill them, their bodies regenerate and they come back to life. I found this while I was exploring the east side of this area.”

“That explains it.”

“I think we should concentrate our attacks on the boss monster to finish things quickly.” Suggested Mika.

“Yeah, you are right.” I stood up and drank a mana potion. “Let’s finish this right now.”

While we were talking, the dozen-arm gorilla kept pounding the multi-layered barrier until he shattered it into pieces. That was our signal to commence our counter-attack.

Mika used a ‘Flash’ skill to blind the upcoming enemies and bound them with light chains to stop them from interfering for a while.

I took this chance to attack the boss monster with an ‘Uppercut Swallow Slash’ and followed it with a ‘Tiger Hunt Slash’.

My attacks didn’t do much damage to the monster because of his tough skin, and the fact that I was low on stamina and mana lowered the power of my skills.

The big gorilla tried to clap me with two of his fists, but Mika protected me with another multi-layered barrier and made a light platform under my feet that I used to launch a ‘Dragon Slash’ right on the monster’s neck. Then, she shot a light beam right onto his face.

‘The impact of the last attack felt different...’ I muttered. “I think I found his weak point,” I said to Mika who was preparing another light beam to attack the lackeys who were able to destroy the light chains.

“Let’s try attacking the joints between his body parts,” I suggested. “They are weaker compared to the rest of his body.”

She shot her beam at the freed gorillas and turned towards me. “Let’s try it.”

The monster stood up and let out a howl, and then he started beating his chest.

“I have a bad feeling about this.” I addressed Mika.

“Then let’s stop him before anything bad happens.” She made big light chains and bound the howling monster. She blinded him with a flash and made lightroom around him to keep him prisoned.

“This will stop him for a while. Finish him with your best shot.” She said.

While I was preparing to attack him with my strongest skill ‘Disaster Typhoon’, someone jumped from behind the monster and cut his head.

“Ono-Ha-Itto-Ryu, Tornado Slash.” Kamui landed in front of us and the monster fell lifeless.

“I was cool, right?” He smiled.

“That was one hell of a ‘Tornado Slash’,” I said.

“I was waiting inside the forest while concentrating a lot of mana inside my sword and waiting for the right moment to help you guys in this fight.”

“If you were there from the beginning, why didn’t you come to help us?” Mika reprimanded Kamui.

“It all worked at the end, hihi.” He laughed it off.

The door that led to the next floor appeared, and our other teammates arrived after a while.

“You did a good job. I acknowledge your efforts and skills.” Said, James. “Let’s move on now to the next floor and see what it is hiding for us.”