Our passageway was again trapped behind illusions, frustrating even Jet. Ian stepped on a pressure plate that was completely missed, being far too heavy to be triggered by Jet's shadow, and was stabbed in the leg by a spear that emerged from the wall. Luckily, Eliza was still topped up on Holy energy, so it was healed almost instantly, but it was frustrating how dirty the dungeon was being.

And what was the result of our struggle through the heavily trapped passageway? We entered a large room with the door closing behind us and enemies flooding the room. They were large multi-winged bat monsters armed with [Air Magic] and sonic-based attacks. Luckily for us, they couldn't avoid Ian's area taunt, and a lot of them ended up burning to death when they came into contact with him.

Most frustrating was they were emitting a constant hum that echoed throughout the room and afflicted us with an auditory hallucination to hide their projectiles rather than themselves. While I certainly was immune to poisons and pheromones, as evidenced by my harpy encounters, sound, and sonics were a definite weakness of mine.

'This must be how the pegasi felt when Trixie hid all my [Icicle] spells.' I thought.

I kept blasting lightning to kill them as fast as possible, joined by Eliza's dark lightning. Pelopi actually used some magic when she ran out of the biting variety of bats to fight; she conjured up a strange spiky seed pod that exploded rather violently with an accompanying tiny spark of flame. I had to refresh my [Arcane Armor] twice during the encounter, as it was broken by the hidden blades of wind.

Thankfully, we came out of the encounter with a victory.

<6 Trait Points are now available.>

'Okay... Seriously, this is getting annoying now. I want to level up my class!'

<[Lightning Magic LV 4] spell [Chain Lightning] learned.>

'What!? An actual usable spell right out of the gate?' I could not hide my shock and surprise.

"You get something good?" Pelopi asked me curiously.

"Yeah... I just reached level four with [Lightning Magic]; I just learned [Chain Lightning]," I responded, trying to understand the spell's implications. I cast and held the spell to start my deciphering.

"Oh shit," Jet said, looking a little pale. "If you thought Pyromancers and wanton [Fireball] spells were the number one cause of friendly fire... You've never been in a party with damn [Chain Lightning] in the arsenal."

"Hmm... I can tell it sort of bounces between nearby targets?" I responded.

"Ha! That's an understatement." Jet shook his head. "The bigger the spell, the more bounces, jumps, chains, or whatever you want to call it. Not to mention, it can hit the same target twice, and yeah, it does not differentiate between friend or foe."

I nodded in confirmation; there was nothing about targeting beyond the initial target, which means it was likely semi-random but likely influenced by proximity and factors like conductivity. It shouldn't hit any friends if I threw a bunch of [Lightning Rod] debuffs on enemies.

'Actually... if I fought a big enemy, couldn't I use [Voltaic Slime] to bounce between me and the enemy? Or would [Voltaic Slime] fully absorb the bolt and therefore no more bounces?' I wondered. Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly reliably test that, as no doubt the others would question why I was willingly casting an offensive spell against myself.

I also briefly glanced at what was clearly the [Chain] portion of the spell, as the rest was pretty much just [Spark] and [Projectile]. It was complex as all hell, and I wondered what other types of magic it would be compatible with. Could I make bouncing flames? [Chained Fireball]? Definitely something to look forward to.

The strange bat monsters didn't have much for us to harvest, mostly just their fangs. Their relatively small size meant I could toss a few into "storage" and withdraw them internally.

That was at least some silver lining—more profiles! After the horror of the first floor's giving me nothing, I was extremely happy to have my doubts stifled. As suspected, the Gust version had [Air Magic], while the Fanged variety had [Blood Drain]. The Acoustic portion gave it the [Auditory Delusion] skill, which, of course, required an Illusion affinity. I had to assume the Mutation also gave it the affinity, as otherwise, it was rather lackluster in terms of what it gave the bat monster. My Mimic mutation, for example, didn't give me an affinity, but they gave me extremely powerful traits and skills in exchange.

Both, however, had an interesting trait [Echolocation]. Unfortunately, the trait was incompatible with my species, which I guess made sense since slimes didn't exactly have ears or mouths. Still, it was undoubtedly something nice to have in my back pocket for [Chimeric Mimicry]. However, there was a new trait I could buy [Sonic Resistance], which I grabbed because I hoped it would prevent future sound-related threats.

Stolen novel; please report.

We carefully backtracked and took the other option, which led to a fork, and we again decided to flip a coin. However, this time, Pelopi insisted we take the route the coin didn't choose. Which... Lead us into another trapped room full of elementals. But not just any elementals, no...

The worst part was we couldn't accurately deduce their numbers or even which elemental we were fighting as they blurred together and heavily obfuscated their numbers.

"I bloody called it!" Ian shouted as we engaged the enemies.

I threw as much Mana and empowerment into [Glacial Aura] as I could after aligning to Ice. [Icicle] would be my main attack, but I threw the occasional [Bubble] spell around to protect my allies.

Ian was quite disheartened at being unable to do much in this situation besides being a meatshield. Pelopi also had to resort to throwing around her swampy [Water Orb] spells or risk seriously hurting herself in the process. Jet remained as effective as normal; despite his bolts burning on contact, their shadowy counterpart still dealt damage.

One very positive thing was that the Magma Elemental was the only considerable threat, and thanks to my aura, it was struggling to reach any of us in a timely manner. I also threw up the occasional [Ice Dome] to either provide cover for allies or a temporary roadblock for the elemental. With all the ice and water being thrown around, the mirages eventually vanished, and we could cleanly and efficiently remove the weaker elementals while evading the magma.

"All I can say is thank the gods it doesn't have a ranged attack," Ian said, looking rather tired from all the constant running around and taunting.

"Just please kill it already... I'm sweating my tits off." Eliza complained.

"I kinda like it. It's like the entire room is a big sauna." Pelopi said cheerfully before throwing another swampy [Water Orb]. "I think we need the water laser."

"You might be right..." I agreed. "When I freeze portions of it, it just melts them again. It's surprisingly durable for an elemental."

I had already, by this point, thrown all my debuffs on the monster, so I began firing [Waterjets] at it repeatedly and hoping to hit its crystal core somewhere in the slowly moving burning blob. It took quite a while, but eventually, I struck it, and it rather unceremoniously began to turn into a lifeless, yet still burning, puddle.

Pretty much the whole party collapsed when we got the final kill notification.

"Well... That wasn't fun." Jet sighed.

"But look! More loot!" Pelopi pointed to the chest.

"Yaaaaaay..." Ian said as he tiredly raised one arm to cheer.

"We might need to take a rest. I don't think we can rush to the boss at this rate." Eliza suggested.

We all took a moment to eat, drink, and rest. Ian even took a power nap, using Eliza's lap as a pillow as he was greatly tuckered out from all the running. Pelopi started growing some "stamina herbs" from seeds she pulled out of her pouch along with a mountain of apples.

Jet popped open the chest to reveal our prize. Inside was a vast quantity of coins and a sacrificial-looking dagger that any wannabe cultist would be overjoyed to receive.

<[Bloodrend].>

"Oh shit. A named weapon." Jet said excitedly. "Any idea what it does besides the obvious bleeding?"

I took a moment to study the enchantments carefully; it appeared there were three housed within this weapon, carefully arranged spectacularly. Not even Greg's work was this sublime.

"It looks like it has a chance to cause a bleeding affliction. It also has a function of returning when thrown, and finally, it has a combination of auto-repair and auto-sharpen," I answered. The last one, in particular, was so well designed I couldn't help but be awed.

Jet gave an impressive whistle before picking up the dagger. He flourished it a little before tossing it against the wall; it penetrated about an inch deep before flashing blackish red and returning to his hand.

"Bloody hells, that sounds amazing for any rogue. I'd be tempted to buy it if I wasn't already so specialized in ranged combat." Jet said excitedly.

"Hmm... Maybe I should buy it for my friend then." I replied. I figured Whitney would probably love a weapon like this.

"Sounds like I need to get in line to be your friend if your pockets are that deep." Jet teased. He did another small flourish and presented the weapon to me with the blade held delicately between two of his fingers and the handle pointing outwards.

"Thanks. Unless anyone else wants it?" I said, taking the blade and gesturing to the rest of the group.

"As cool as it looks, I'd rather get a big hammer or axe," Ian said.

Pelopi giggled and held out her bear claws, "I only need these babies."

Eliza paused as she scratched her cheek in thought. "The only use I could think of would be to cut Ian so I could siphon bleed damage off of him."

"Nope! Vetoed!" Ian instantly rejected the idea as he wildly flailed his arms in protest.

"Well... You heard the baby; I guess it's all yours." Eliza giggled. "Plus, it definitely suits you more."

"Yes. Very appropriate for the magical elf assassin." Pelopi nodded in agreement.

"Could you not cut yourself?" I asked curiously, then chuckled. "Wow, that sounds horrible out loud and out of context."

Eliza smirked. "I can't siphon from myself. Probably to prevent me from doing some loop where I take damage from my leaky dark pool and then siphon that."

"And one of the main reasons I try to damage myself as quickly as possible so she has some Holy to heal herself." Ian quickly added.

We chatted a bit longer while eating apples and evenly distributing the gold from the chest. I tried out the dagger a few times, which was pretty fun; thankfully, I didn't make myself look like an idiot due to [Attack Mastery (Lesser)].

'I think I'll pay the points to tier it up when it reaches level eight...'

This room, despite locking us in, did have another exit so we could continue our journey deeper into the second floor. Once again, we carefully journeyed forward with Jet out in front, followed by Ian, while the rest of us followed at a safer distance. The idea was that if Jet failed to detect another illusioned trap, Ian might trigger it and be in a much better position to survive than the rest of us.

"I wonder if the dungeon is finally taking pity on us?" Ian joked since we had yet to encounter even a single trap.

"Maybe. It's been highly unusual." Jet wondered.

Suddenly, Jet paused and frowned.

"What?" Ian asked.

We all took a ready stance.

"Did you not hear that?" Jet said as he walked a few paces.

Eliza, Pelopi, and I were too far away to hear reliably whatever Jet was talking about.

Ian seemed to be thinking as he also took a few steps. "It sounds... Squishy?"

"That's what I thought too..." Jet said, frowning hard as his shadow tried to interact with the floor.

"Is that... Sizzling?" Ian suddenly said.

"Run!" Jet screamed as he threw himself into his shadow.

Ian stumbled backward into a run when the entire corridor before us suddenly erupted in an explosion. I reflexively threw up multiple [Aegis] spells to shield Pelopi and Eliza behind me.

"Ian!" Eliza screamed out amongst the deafening blast.