We fought our way through the floor amped up by a new enthusiasm after our chances of success had increased by leaps and bounds.

Paying closer attention to our surroundings as we fought to prevent a similarly costly mistake, we tore through the enemies one after another. With all the trents we faced quickly falling victim to my magic the way the forest nearly did yesterday, eventually I leveled my Mage class and Magic stat to the point of being able to destroy them with only one cast of my Fire Ball spell. As for Yua, she had already started off strong, but now that she had a better understanding of how her ability worked, she beat down her opponents so fast that I thought she might start looking bored.

However, that feeling never came to pass within her. She was so overjoyed with her strength and increasing levels that that alone was enough to keep her happy, absurdly happy. Happy enough to look like she wanted to jump into my arms and squeeze me in a breath-stealing bear hug me each time I gave her an update on her status, even though our lives were literally on the line.

While the monsters were of a much lower level than us by the time we finished off the last of what this floor had to offer, their strikes were still deadly. Given how I was over-leveled compared to that earlier trent and how its strike was enough to leave me on the floor, unable to even cry out as I gasped for breath, I made sure we favored safety over quick kills. When we were unable to sneak up on an enemy, we purposely let them make the first move so we could dodge or counter their attacks and retaliate when appropriate. Thanks to this, I got relatively use to dodging a trent’s attacks and, for better or worse, Yua had more time to show off and enjoy herself.

This way of fighting ate up more stamina than was strictly needed, but it was best to tackle the dungeon as safely as possible. We did have spare health and stamina potions on top of Yua’s ability to keep us healthy, but the potions would run out if we acted recklessly and the time it’d take to go back to the city to buy more would be costly. Likewise, and for much the same reason, trading Yua’s stamina for my health would just slow us down in the long run. So, better safe than sorry was the name of the game as we progressed. I wasn’t proud to say that I still couldn’t move as easily as she did, so this mindset was mainly on me to maintain.

“Phew!” Yua exclaimed, wiping a bit of sweat off of her forehead after finishing her thirty-fifth goblin.

I made sure to watch her back as she fought, but when it was done, my job became making sure we were truly alone before joining in her momentary break. As I walked to her, I had to force my eyes away from her sweaty, glistening cleavage. The strain it took to do so was difficult, but done so willingly and out of respect. Primarily, anyways. It was just as much for my sanity and both of our safety. She couldn’t help the way she was dressed and distractions in the heat of battle were always dangerous. Her physically jumping into each and every fight she was confronted with had to be taking its toll on her, even with all the extra points I put into her Endurance. Way more than the occasional cast of a spell did me, so I didn’t want to bother her when she was working so hard.

“Yua,” I said to distract myself and she turned her emeralds to me as she caught her breath. “Are you sure that was the last one?”

“Yes, Master. The only other presence I can hear is coming from the boss room.”

While there was the chance that there may have been some monsters lurking about the dungeon still, since she didn’t hear the trent that snuck up on us until it was too late, I was a bit apprehensive to just take her word for it. I did trust that she was telling me what she honestly felt, but one can never be too cautious. It was more or less still a guess at this point, but we did confirm that the trents made very little noise when standing still when we snuck up on a few ourselves. Though, that only mattered if they were standing still. And I’d rather not turn the corner, only to walk into a face-full of spear or whip-branch.

Still, we’ve come this far. Going back through the dungeon in search of stragglers would just waste time. Better to press on.

“Good. I’m sorry I didn’t think to bring any water for us.”

“Hehehe… It’s fine, Master. I can handle this much no problem.”

She spoke with a brave, happy smile, but I wasn’t sure how much she knew about the human body. Well, beast-kin body, in her case. But my world was much more advanced when it came to biology to the point where even the dumbest person around knew that there were no exceptions to the fact that everyone needed water to survive. And given how long society seems to have existed in this world, they had to know this as well, if not to the same extent.

And Yua was surely not an exception. Even if beast-kin had a higher tolerance to such things, she was sweating up a storm. Her forehead, arms and exposed cleavage all glistened in the soft white glow that magically lit the dungeon. All of which suggested that she was in great need of a drink. Since I, for the most part, only had to deal with the occasional burst of heat from my Fire Ball spell while standing mostly still, I wasn’t as sweaty as the physical fighter Yua was.

Despite this and the fact that Yua actually soloed thirty-five goblins, she was still shockingly energetic. Meanwhile, I barely killed eleven trents. I mean, we chose to divide up the monsters that way, but if I had known that the numbers would have been so heavily skewed towards her, then I would have taken a few of the goblins myself. Though, that would just be to ease her burden a bit, as my absurd trait still allowed me to gain experience from her efforts even when I didn’t lift a finger to help.

The number of enemies on this floor was astonishing. Since the total was about double of what we faced on the first floor, not taking into account that someone may have stopped by this floor before us and took a few for themselves, I could only hope that the number of enemies didn’t continue to double the further down we went. If that really was how the dungeons worked, clearing floors would take forever. It would lend credence to why nobody’s even made it to the fiftieth floor, though.

However, the massive number of enemies did have a couple of rather nice benefits. While boosting my Adventurer and Mage classes up to 19 and 11 respectively and Yua’s Monk class all the way up to level 6, we also got a sizeable amount of loot to show for our efforts.

11 Trent Tree Sap, valued at 1 silver a piece. 4 of the rarer drop of a Trent Tree Root, valued at 2 silver a piece. 20 Steel Goblin Spears, valued at 2 silver a piece. 15 Steel Goblin Swords valued at 3 silver a piece and finally, 3 rarer Goblin Ears at 5 silver a piece.

Adding it all up, we were sitting on a whopping 3 gold and 6 silvers worth of total loot so far. We were absolutely nowhere near the safe-zone in terms of money, even after adding in the 2,400 gold coins we happened upon. That means we needed a bare minimum of 94 more gold coins. I had raised my Luck stat up to an even 60 points today and it did seem to help, but we still only managed this much.

Even after clearing the floor in only an hour and a half, we still weren’t earning money fast enough. My best hope for now was the boss of the second floor dropping something good enough to make up the difference. However, since the boss of the first floor only dropped an item worth 10 gold, that likely wasn’t going to happen.

Hell, at this point, I wouldn’t mind getting launched through another wall if a friendly leprechaun was waiting on the other side with pot of gold for me. My Luck stat got me this far, but I couldn’t base my every decision on it activating. I may be stupid in a lot of ways, but I refuse to let leaning on that possibility be one.

Considering our next actions while Yua plopped down on the floor to rest, I started running back through everything I knew about the dungeons before I came up with something that might work.

“Hey, Yua, you said the bosses respawn every hour, right?”

“Yes, Master. They do.”

“I thought so...”

If we failed to earn enough from the next boss and the next floor, then we could spend the rest of the day waiting in front of the first-floor boss room to repeatedly kill the Proud Great Wolf to farm its pelt. By that point, we should be so over-leveled that fighting it would be a breeze. In fact, judging by how long it had been since we last beat it, it was probably already revived and waiting for its next opponent.

“If we needed to, after we finish with the next floor, would you like to fight the first-floor boss a few more times for some easy money?”

“After we finished the next floor? Master, we haven’t even finished this one yet.”

“I know. I’m just thinking ahead.”

“Well… I don’t mind, but I think it’s important to focus on this boss first.”

“Fair enough. We’ll need our heads in the fight in order to beat… Uh, what was the boss on this floor?”

I couldn’t recall asking beforehand, but Yua smiled and explained as if gently reminding me of something I forgot.

“It is a larger type of Trent called Elderwood Trent. It mostly looks like the regular ones, but instead of having one whip arm, this one has four. It’s also much bigger.”

“But it should still be weak to fire, right?”

“Maybe? I only ever fought it with my fists. So, I don’t know.”

“Right. Then I guess we will have to find out.”

In order to make up for past mistakes, I made sure to talk over possible strategies with her, but since she didn’t know the boss’s weaknesses, she couldn’t tell me how things would really go. Since this was a trent we were talking about, we decided it would probably be best to repeat the strategy that worked on the Proud Great Wolf, but leaning more on my magic this time than her raw power.

After a short break to cool down and for Yua to catch her breath, she led us straight to the boss room. Thankfully, probably due to my improved Luck once again, we encountered no traps this time around. And this time, without stopping to see if I was ready, Yua pushed the nearly identical boss doors open and went in. So I didn’t get too ahead of myself, I stopped only for a second to take in what I saw.

Much like the last floor boss room, the room we found here was just as big and empty. The lack of any real sort of decorations to liven the place up made noticing the gigantic tree she promised would be waiting for us all the easier.

Standing at the back of the room directly in front of the door down to the next floor, was a massive trent. At a sizeable level 8, four levels higher than the regular trents, the branches that made up the top of its head stretched so far up into the air that its leaves scraped against the ceiling. Beneath its abnormally thick trunk, was a mass of thickly tangled roots extending that pierced straight through the stone flooring, as if to suggest that the boss grew out of the floor naturally instead of spawning there by magic as everything else had. These roots held its lumbering frame in place, rendering it unable to move like the other trents. It would be a stationary target for sure.

Though, that is not to say that it would be an easy fight, as four thick, limb-like branches coiled around its lower body like a set of wooden armor. Aside from its sheer size, which exceeded even that of the Proud Great Wolf’s, the biggest difference between the Elderwood and its smaller brethren were the large, jagged holes gouged into its bark. Three in total, they took on a humanoid face that looked to be forever shaped into the façade of a cackling mad-man. But this looked more like a sort of protective camouflage, rather than a functional face, because it didn’t move. Sort of like how an otherwise harmless creature might have evolved to wear poisonous colors to ward of the sorts of creature that might take it for their next meal.

Its frightful visage of bark and leaves was clearly meant to intimidate, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I’d say most trents in fiction had faces of some sort, so if anything, the ones we fought so far were the outliers. Still, upon seeing just how thick its branches were, my once injured arm twinged with pain.

Yea… There was no amount of gold in the world that would allow me to let myself get hit by that thing. If the smaller ones hurt as much as they did, getting hit by that’d definitely be similar to getting hit by a truck. And that wasn’t exactly something I wanted to try doing again, either.

When the large stone doors closed behind us on their own accord, the Elderwood Trent shifted and the first two branches wrapped around its trunk began to unfurl.

I immediately leapt into action and started chucking Fire Balls at it without an incantation to speed things along, while Yua quickly prepared herself and ran for its center. The balls of flame burst against its torso and, contrary to my assumption, its jagged mouth widened and howled a pained screech so loud that Yua had to stop in her tracks to clutch at her ears.

Despite the spreading flames already having dealt a third of its health thanks to my much higher level, the Elderwood Trent started wildly slamming down its four thick arms in an almost panicked fury. Unlike the easy to dodge whips of the smaller ones, these failed around so erratically, that they bent and changed direction mid-swing. It was as if their tips had minds of their own and reacted according to our movements. Not expecting this, apparently, Yua almost got hit by the first two as she tried to recover from the boss’s screech.

She jumped back to my side to avoid its continued rampage as the flames continued to spread across its body, burning it for that same continual damage we had been relying on in the last two boss fights.

“Sorry Yua, but I think it’s best you just let me handle this one. I think it’s already blind. It’s attacks aren’t landing anywhere near us. So, just focus on dodging for now.”

“… Understood.”

Looking only mildly disappointed, Yua agreed without question. She may have handled it neatly on her own the last time she faced it, it looked like the advent of my fire blew her expectations for the fight out of the water.

The Elderwood Trent’s branches continued to whip about blindly, but as I hit it with another Fire Ball, I noticed that its strikes were starting to leave deep cracks the floor.

Yup. Nope. Not getting hit by that. I would pay not to get hit by that.

We took several cautious steps backwards into the back left corner of the room to maximize the distance between it and us. Sensing what I thought to be our quiet repositioning, or perhaps regaining some of its vision, the Elderwood turned its massive trunk towards us as if it had been keeping an eye on us the entire time.

“Ach!”

Just then, Yua began to cough violently. She clutched at her throat like she suddenly couldn’t breathe and fell to her knees.

“Yua, what’s wrong? You didn’t hit me or anything. Why is the slave spell activating now?”

“No… It’s not that,” she said through a fit of coughs. “Look.”

She pointed up and I saw that the room had been filled with smoke from the Elderwood Trent’s burning body.

Of course. If there’s fire, there’s smoke. I confirmed as much when I nearly burned down the forest upon my arrival in this world. If the boss’s body burned like a real tree, then smoke building up in the room should be the next logical step. The only reason I hadn’t considered this was because the lower-level trents died so fast that smoke never really had the chance to materialize. But with the Elderwood’s larger pool of health, its body was sure to continue to burn and fill the place with smoke in the process. Which meant we now either had to beat the boss as fast as we could, or we would both die from smoke inhalation, if not its attacks. And Yua’s extra sensitive nose already seemed to be hurting her from the overpowering smell of burnt wood.

In my haste, I had jumped into the fight slinging what I was sure would be super-effective spells at the boss, only to end up making the fight harder before it even started. I should have guessed something like this might happen after seeing how the Proud Great Wolf reacted to its fur being set on fire.

“Master! Iron Fist!”

Reeling from my own lack of foresight, I had forgotten to keep an eye on the boss. One of its limbs was already hurtling towards me by the time I noticed it, but Yua leapt into action to save me.

Using her iron-hard fist, she punched the flying branch as hard as she could, the same way she’d blocked the goblins’ swords and spear numerous times now, and deflected it away from me with a screeching metallic clang. But unlike with the goblins, the force behind the Elderwood Trent’s attack countered her force and sent her flying backwards instead. Spinning through the air, she managed to land next to me without issue, coughed again, but smiled strongly to show she was otherwise unharmed.

I was not only surprised by the strength of that ability of hers, but by her own accuracy when using it. As far as I could tell, the only thing the ability did, unlike my initial thought of it, was that it made her fist as hard as an actual block of iron, meaning it was up to her to aim where she threw it. Meanwhile, I could barely see the Elderwood Trent’s attack when it was coming right for me. It was moving too fast. And yet, she hit it without looking like she put any real effort into doing so.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Good job, Yua. Change of plan. You work on defending me and I will hit it with my magic.”

“*cough*… Understood, Master.”

A small cough of my own burst from my throat as the smoke filling the room finally started affecting my human senses. Knowing that it was going to make the smoke worse, I threw out another Fire Ball. Considering how the first few did a third of its health and the lingering burning damage was taking it even lower, my spell was still the best weapon we had at our disposal.

Another ball of flame burst against its body. It screeched again, but this time Yua covered her ears as soon as its mouth moved. Seemingly furious at being unable to move from it spot guarding the door whilst being burned alive, the Elderwood Trent lashed out at us again with all four branches at the same time.

“Iron Fist!”

Yua jumped between it and me, its target, and swiftly punched each of the branches out of the air as they came at us. From the looks of it, controlling all four branches at once made each individual strike weaker, because she didn’t budge from where she planted her feet this time.

Not wanting to waste the multitude of chances her skill had given me, I continued the magical assault all on my own.

The Elderwood Trent screeched again once my spells took its health to the halfway mark. Yua continued to throw out her iron punches to protect me, coughing intermittently as the smoke filling the room grew thicker and thicker with each successive spell.

Soon the black smoke permeating the upper half of the room grew to be so thick, so dense, that when I looked up, I could have mistaken the sight of the deep dark swirling clouds as having removed the ceiling to let me stare into the void of space on a clear, starless night. But there was no beauty in this and no moon to light the way. By then, even I was coughing regularly and both Yua and I were having a hard time just trying to breathe.

My head started to ache, but I kept up the attack the best I could. For the first time, I was truly grateful for my ability to cast magic silently, as speaking would have only increased the amount of smoke I let into my lungs.

Down to the final third of its health, the Elderwood Trent screeched yet again, this time sounding as though its fury had reached the breaking point. But instead of immediately lashing out immediately as it had before, it twisted its branches around one another, creating two, coiled spears of living bark. I didn’t even have time to contemplate how much damage a hit from one of those would do as it swung the first branch that was now as thick as a tree trunk all on its own at us.

“Iron Fist!”

Unperturbed, or at least still willing to face this new danger head on, Yua launched another strike at the attack headed our way. To my surprise, she still managed to deflect it, but not by much. All she was able to do was kill its momentum as she herself reeled back and shook away the pain that clearly lit up in her wrist. The boss didn’t give her enough time for her to recoil fully, as its secondary mass of branches flew at her backside.

Her ears caught onto this before her eyes did, but when she turned, nothing happened.

“Iron… Iron…*cough*”

Yua tried to activate her ability again, but fell into a powerful fit of coughing just as the boss’s second empowered attack closed in on her.

“Yua!”

Coughing myself, I ran to her side as fast as I could and grabbed hold of her. Without even thinking on what I meant to do once I put myself between her and the boss, I threw my hand up and used Material Creation to materialize a thick wall of dungeon stone in front of us.

The Elderwood Trent’s branch slammed so hard into the new stone wall that it gouged out a thick chunk of it, turning it to dust. The concussion of the hit alone knocked the both of us to the floor despite us not being hit by it directly. Surprised to see that my impromptu defensive barrier actually worked, I hurried back to my feet to prepare a comeback.

Yua continued to cough uncontrollably. With her being unable to stand and fight anymore, I made sure I stayed close enough to protect her while I launched as many Fire Balls as my mana would allow.

None too happy about my continued attacks and its so far failed attempts to strike us down, the Elderwood Trent lashed out again by raising both of its paired limbs up high into the air, as if trying to empower them with the smoke weakening us, before slamming both down in a vertical strike that was meant to end us for good.

Using the chance its own hesitation bought us, I reached up and added a roof to what was left of the wall I built. Seeing the damage the first hit did to the structure, I made the addition twice as thick as the and extended it to cover both of our bodies. Thankfully, the speed at which I was able to do this even allowed me to add in more supports to keep the mass of stone from collapsing on us when the boss finally slammed itself against it.

I heard the stones above crack, split apart and explode all at once. The attack sent debris scattering in every direction hit with a terrifying force that reminded me of a shotgun blast. I watched as the tiny pebbles that had once been our only line of protection hit the floor, filling my line of sight with dozens of tiny explosions.

It felt like my heart stopped for a second or two due to the intense vibrations the impact caused. I had no idea how much longer that hastily put together structure would last against a continued barrage, so the only option I allowed myself was to get out of there as fast as I could to distract the boss while Yua tried to catch her breath.

Seeing that the structure should be able to hold out against at least a couple more hits and gritting my teeth, I jumped out from behind our hiding place. I launched another wave of Fire Balls at the Elderwood Trent as I ran around the room, putting as much distance between me and Yua as possible in the process. As I predicted, it was much more interested in revenge against the one inflicting so much pain upon it that it completely ignored Yua and aimed all of its attacks at me.

But its health bar was already almost empty. It swung at me, this time much, much harder, the flames spreading across its trunk now stretching across its branches to add to the danger. Somehow, it must know that this was likely its last chance to at least take me down with it as the raging fire continued to eat away at the last slivers of its health.

The fire raged on. Burnt leaves and chunks of bark fell to the ground as I jumped as far away from its final attack as my body would allow, grateful at how the thing had to guess at my location from where my spells landed, as its strikes all either missed me completely or were easy to dodge. After briefly consulting my mana bar to see if the slight weight I felt dragging my eyelids down came from the smoke filling the room or from the effects of mana exhaustion, I fired my last shot at it.

The Fire Ball was swallowed by the ever-burning cloak of flames now surrounding its entire body. For a moment, I thought that the fire turning its flesh to ash somehow managed to stop my projectile, as it didn’t seem to do anything when it disappeared, but then all four of its branches flopped lifelessly to the ground like there was never any sort of force holding them up to begin with. The Elderwood Trent’s face and body drooped forward, almost like it had resigned itself to death once it saw there was no way out.

Concerned that its hulking mass might fall on us after my fire weakened its roots, I ran back to Yua’s side and quickly built an arrow-shaped wall between us and the boss. As I thought, it collapsed to the floor with a concussive thud that tossed up all of the ash and embers that had built up on the floor around its body.

Yua continued to cough in my arms. Her skin had turned almost the same shade of pale it did when she used up her stamina to heal me, but the second the Elderwood Trent died and burst into light, not only did its flaming body disappear, but it took all of the smoke and ash permeating the room with it. The same way the Proud Great Wolf’s blood disappeared upon death.

Almost instantaneously, and as the ash she’d already inhaled was stolen from her lungs too, Yua’s breathing became much smoother and her coughing had all but stopped. Thankful for this, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders to give her some support.

“I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble. If I had thought that burning it would cause so much smoke, I would have come up with a different plan.”

She looked at me, coughed one last time, and shook her head.

“No, Master… I still think this was the best way. I’m just a little disappointed that I was mostly useless this time.”

“What are you talking about? Useless? You could have died from breathing in all that smoke!”

Probably in part to the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, I spoke a bit too forcefully when she once again tried to absolve me of my mistakes by turning the problem back onto herself, despite how she was still trying to catch her breath. She winced and twitched her ears beneath the force of my voice.

“Master, the last time I fought it, I was all alone. All I had was my fists and its body was so hard, that it took me over an hour of constant fighting before I finally beat it. This way may have been riskier, but it wasn’t more dangerous.”

And once more she hits me with the logic of someone that has spent most of their life fighting. And she was right. Dodging its attacks for over an hour sounded like an amazing feat she should definitely be proud of enough to warrant bragging about, but one miss-step could have ended both that fight and her life. All my fire did was shorten the total time the fight took to a few minutes at the cost of not being able to breathe properly.

But still…

“Even if that’s the case, you almost got hit because you couldn’t breathe.”

“And Master saved me,” she said with a smile, putting her hand on the one I wrapped around her shoulder. “The wall you made saved us both. If master wasn’t so amazing, we’d be dead.”

Come on. Looking at me with that lovely smile isn’t fair. Stop it, or I’m going to misunderstand.

“I-If I was so amazing, I wouldn’t have put you in that kind of spot to begin with.”

She shook her head and laid it against my shoulder. Her breathing noticeably calmer now.

“No, Master is amazing because we wouldn’t have been able to get this far if he wasn’t.”

“But you said you got here by yourself.”

“I did, but that was only because other adventurers had already cleared the floor. All I did was run into the boss room. It took me a whole month of showing up to the dungeons as soon as dawn struck, just so I could clear some of the monsters and beat the boss all on my own. And this floor took me three months. But today we’ve already fought through two full floors and did so in only a couple of hours! The thought of continuing to fight after that shouldn’t even be something we could dream about seriously without laughing at ourselves.”

One to three months per floor? I don’t know how many of the monsters she had to fell herself first before she could count beating the boss afterwards as beating the floor, but that’s absurd! Aside from the various dangers we’ve faced, the actual act of progressing through the dungeon was mostly easy fighting our way to this point. Not counting the bosses, it was almost too easy. Knowing her love of fighting to be just a few steps before fanatical, she must have jumped into the dungeon before she was actually ready and took longer because of it. I mean, sure, my EXP boost helps, but she was able to handle the monsters just fine when we first met.

Still, if she’d been fighting in the dungeons for months if not years until she was taken and was still only level 3 when we met, then leveling must be insanely slow for normal people in this world. No wonder why she was so shocked to see her progress.

While I took a moment to think this over, Yua closed her eyes for a second, as if she meant to take a nap right then and there. So, I reached into storage to take out our second stamina potion. Her eyes popped right back open at the sound of the bottle being uncorked by my teeth.

“Oh, Master, I don’t need…”

“Yes, you do. We’ve been fighting for a few hours now. Even if you say you are fine, you should still drink this. You said it yourself, continuing like this shouldn’t even be possible, right? If we’re going to continue, you’ll need energy to make sure you’re awake and aware that this all isn’t some dream.”

“But it would just be a waste.”

“Alright then, how about this, you drink half and I’ll drink the other half. That way, we’ll both feel better. If you won’t do that for me, I’ll just take you back to the inn and keep going on my own.”

She may be strong, she may be nimble, she may love fighting, but I won’t continue letting her risk her life if she’s not in peak condition. Regardless of why we’re here. Unlike me, she doesn’t have the stamina regeneration trait, so she needs this a hell of a lot more than I do.

Yua pouted rather cutely at my offer and blushed as she looked up at me. To be honest, despite the heat radiating off of her body, she really didn’t seem all that tired. I could see in her eyes that she still really wanted to keep on fighting, but it didn’t matter. She just spent the last couple of minutes struggling to breathe and, even if the smoke was gone, it’s better safe than sorry for us right now.

“Well?”

“A-Alright.”

Satisfied with her compliance, I drank down roughly half of the bottle, taking in the slightly bitter flavor of what could have been mistaken as a cheap tea if it were hot, before holding it out for her to finish off. She reluctantly placed her lips where mine had been just seconds ago and drank. I watched as the small portion of her stamina bar she’d depleted in the fight refilled itself. It wasn’t much, but again, better safe than sorry.

Once we both had our share, I stuffed the empty bottle back in the item box.

I grunted as I stood, but Yua hopped to her feet with all the speed of a Jack Rabbit, as if to show that the potion did its job, and offered me a hand and, much to my heart’s content, a radiant, blushing smile. I took the offered hand with only enough hesitation to allow myself a moment to memorize the wonderous curl that took to her lips. Once I got to my feet, she turned to put a hand on the stone wall I made. Then she punched it.

“Master, the wall you made is amazingly strong.”

“Yea, I’m glad I thought about trying that ability out in a fight.”

While the stones did appear to be exceedingly durable, after checking on the damage it took from the boss’s attack, I realized full well that they are clearly not indestructible. They no doubt had several uses that I could think of now that my head was clear, but I shouldn’t rely on them tanking too many hits for us. I compared the boss’s attack to getting hit by a truck and that didn’t seem all that inaccurate, seeing as the damage it’s strike left in the stone blocks was reminiscent of what it’d look like if a car rammed into a cement pole at full speed.

“Well, let’s see what the boss dropped then get out of here.”

Her tail swishing, Yua ran over to the only thing the boss left behind and came back holding a stick about half as long as she was tall. A little less than three feet, by my guess. Its thicker end bulged in a circular pattern similar to that of a knot in a tree trunk’s surface. While the rest of it was so thin and crooked that it might snap in half at the slightest bit of pressure. All in all, it didn’t look any more interesting than any other random tree branch you could pick up anywhere in the forest floor.

Yua stood there with it in her hands, wagging her tail while waiting for the verdict.

Easy there, girl. Keep acting like that and I’m going to be forced to think you’re secretly a dog-kin.

Smiling back at my own stupid thoughts, I Appraised the stick.

[Elderwood Staff. Value: 50 gold coins.]

“What…”

“What is it, Master?”

“Yua… you beat the boss before, right?”

“Yup!”

“Did it drop one of these then too?”

“Hmm? No. It dropped a larger vial of Trent Tree Sap. Why?”

“Because Appraisal says that this is a staff. Does it mean magic staff? Don’t Mages use wands here?”

Among the groups of what were likely adventurers roaming the city upon my arrival in Amoranth, which I first mistakenly assumed to be a group of city knights out to get me for smuggling myself in, I did notice that the ones dressed in stereo-typical mage robes all carried some sort of wand with them in place of a sword. In fact, some of them even had leather scabbards specifically made for their wands resting on their hips. But not once did I see someone carrying around a staff.

“Maybe,” Yua said. “It’s hard to tell what Mages use. Since they can hide their wands in their pockets, you rarely see them holding one unless they are fighting. When they aren’t, they just walk around like regular people.”

“Hmm… I guess I will just have to try it out then.”

I took the staff from her and, after checking its description again, I saw that its only effect was “magic empowerment.” So, because I could cast magic freely without any sort of conduit, I figured that all staves and wands existed to boost your magic’s power a bit. Considering how I started off only being able to cast a few spells within a minute or two before I wiped out my mana stores, I figured something like this would have been extremely beneficial to any other mage around my level, as it would make those few spells that much more powerful and therefore more useful. But with the aid of my Mage class leveling so quickly and boosting the total amount of mana at my disposal right along with it, actually exhausting my mana was only getting harder and harder to do. The boosted power would be nice, but it wasn’t strictly needed.

With this in mind, I aimed the staff’s knotted tip towards the door leading to the next floor. I imagined casting Fire Ball again, but instead of thinking about it coming from my palm, I imagined it coming from the tip of the staff and the titular red glow of the spell appeared.

Since I saw that it was actually working, and the thought of using a staff to cast magic like the wizards of older fantasy stories, I decided that it wouldn’t be so bad to abuse my boosted mana regeneration to see what this thing could do. So, I fired off my spell and a Fire Ball easily three times the size of the ones I had been summoning until now shot out from the staff. And at twice the speed, no less. It exploded against the door with an impact almost as loud as if I had thrown a boulder at it. I didn’t even feel a kickback when using it. Judging by its price, I didn't think this would count as an enchanted weapon, but its effect was pretty powerful.

“Wow! Master, that was so amazing!”

Bending over next to it as she clapped, Yua examined the staff as if it were a work of priceless art found in a world-class museum that specifically catered to magic aficionados. Her ears twitched happily and her tail swished about, unintentionally whipping my thigh repeatedly as she ogled the thing. It was easy enough to see from the reaction of both these appendages and by her expression that she was exceedingly impressed by its power. However, there was a small problem with this thing that she was sure not to like.

“Yea, it’s really strong,” I said, ready to disappoint. “But I’ll have to sell it when we get out of here.”

“Eh? Why?”

“Because Appraisal says it’s worth 50 gold coins. That would put us only 47gold away from our goal. As much as I would like to keep it, we don’t have much of a choice.”

Looking dejected, her cat ears drooped. Not that said dejection lasted long, as her ears perked back up faster than she did after taking the stamina potion. She clenched her fists on either side of her chest to excitedly plead her case. Had her sizable breasts not been unintentionally squished together in the prosses, the pose she made would have given her a child-like aura of impatience.

“But I want to see Master use it!”

Looking at her beautiful face so eagerly begging me to do something for her while her tail swished about so fervently that she might have achieved liftoff had it been spinning in circles, I felt a pain in my chest at just the thought of turning her down.

Really, this girl makes me too wishy-washy.

“… Fine. I’ll try it out on the next floor. But if things look like the staff might end up damaged, then I’ll have to play it safe and put it away. Alright?”

“Yes, Master! I will definitely make sure that doesn’t happen!”

Trying not to enjoy the sight of her eager happiness in acceptance of my choice, and thereby narrowly avoiding a sugary heart attack in the process, we started for the next floor. Smiling broadly, Yua’s head suddenly cocked to the side and a brief confusion took her smile away.

“Master, why is it that you can cast magic without saying anything?”

“Oh, uh, that too is one of the traits you saw. Remember? The silent casting one?”

“Oh. I see,” she hummed, her smile flitting back into existence.

“It doesn’t bother you, does it? I mean, without my speaking the words, to you it must feel like my spells come out of nowhere in a fight, right? I hope it’s not too distracting.”

“Not at all. I just thought it was odd, since none of the other Mages I’ve seen fight in the dungeons can do that.”

I didn’t know how I felt being compared to other Mages with her smiling like that, especially not when I had the benefits of that Goddess’s blessing on my side, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I imagine that, if she spent all that time fighting in here, she must have seen various forms of combat put on display.

“Speaking of other adventurers, Yua, is it common for the first floors to be so empty?”

The way she spoke about it before our first trip to Amoranth’s dungeon made it seem like we’d be fighting against not just the monsters here, but against other the Adventurers also trying to eek out a living. But we’d yet to find even one other person down here, Adventurer or otherwise. There were clearly more monsters on the first floor during our second trip here than there were yesterday night, so there were people here at one point. Now that I thought about it, it was odd to see this place so empty.

Yua’s tail gave a single curious flick as she put her hand against the boss door to push it open.

“Now that you mention it, it really is weird. This place is usually fairly packed.”

“Is there maybe some holiday where adventurers choose to stay home and relax?”

I don’t think adventuring, at least working in the dungeons, is the same as a regular day job, but putting a stopper on their exploring for a good vacation would make great sense of their absence here. If adventurers were so important to the city as everyone seems to think, then I could easily imagine them creating some sort of holiday meant to give them thanks. Like, maybe they get free drinks at the bar, or something, and most of them got too drunk or too hungover to want to work. But would they do that against the threat of the monsters breaking free?

“I don’t know,” Yua said, shoving the door open. “I’m not very familiar with most human customs and traditions. Just what I learned in the slave house and from speaking with Adventurers. Maybe it’s just luck?”

“Luck… yea. That must be it.”